The Weekend Doin's

Wow, that almost came out "The Weedend Doin's" but I guess we'd better not go there.

My only acquaintanceship with weed is the kind that grows in the garden. And pretty soon I may have some growing indoors, if I don't get control of the clutter.

But then as I always say, "You can be on top of the housecleaning or you can spend extra time at your computer...but you can't do both."
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Man, I can hardly wait for school to be done. Yesterday was one of those six times per year that we go to the libraries and I barely made it home without falling asleep. These excursions during the academic year are really taking a toll on my schedule.

Working this activity into the narrow window between when it is acceptable to take them out (did your school let out early? is it a snow day? *knowing stares*) and get back in time to throw together supper, is tricky.

Basically, I have four hours to hit two libraries and two stores, and that includes 1.5 hours just for driving.

Fortunately, the librarians in Hampton know we homeschool. I can arrive there before the end of a normal school day and get nothing but friendly greetings (you can take the awkward and suspicious looks for a couple of years, but after a while it's harder and harder to ignore....sorta like a couch that's been handed down from two other families).

Next time I do this and miss my nap, I may want to take along some caffeine, just to keep my mind sharp.

As in, sharper than when I stopped for a red light and pulled out as though it were a four-way.

I spent the next 20 minutes looking in my rear-view mirror for the black helicopters.

There were swirling blades, but they were only the ghostly white wind turbines shrouded in the light mist of Iowa's pseudo-spring.

In the city of second librariness, we also stopped at the Mart-of-Wal for weekly shopping needs. Because, in a tight economy, it always makes so much sense to shop two times per week.

Cutting our margin of book procurement extra close, we dragged our limited supply up to the check-out desk, 15 minutes before closing time. It was then I was reminded of a 2 dollar fine.

And you cannot check out books owing more than a dollar in fines.

Mining my wallet for change, I scrounged up $1.55, making me feel exceedingly adrenalized and relieved.

You don't want to experience the hassle of library day, once every two months, only to leave one library sans libros.

The grocery store presented another challenge, in that the rest of this month's food allotment needed to last two weeks, but I think I've got that problem licked.

It's just going to involve a lot of eggs.
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April is poetry month, which I discovered from the display of poetry books in Iowa Falls. I grabbed Garrison Keillor's Good Poems, and already, it has lived up to its title.

Here is one I opened to at random...

Bats

A bat is born
Naked and blind and pale.
His mother makes a pocket of her tail
and catches him. He clings to her long fur
By his thumbs and toes and teeth.
And then the mother dances through the night
Doubling and looping, soaring, somersaulting--
Her baby hangs on underneath.
All night, in happiness, she hunts and flies.
Her high sharp cries
Like shining needlepoints of sound
Go out into the night, and echoing back,
Tell her what they have touched.
She hears how far it is, how big it is,
Which way it's going:
She lives by hearing.
The mother eats the moths and gnats she catches
In full flight; in full flight
The mother drinks the water of the pond
She skims across. Her baby hangs on tight.
Her baby drinks the milk she makes him
In moonlight or starlight, in mid-air.
Their single shadow, printed on the moon
Or fluttering across the starts,
Whirls on all night; at daybreak
The tired mother flaps home to her rafter.
The other all are there.
They hang themselves up by their toes,
They wrap themselves in their brown wings.
Bunched upside-down, they sleep in air.
Their sharp ears, their sharp teeth, their quick sharp faces
Are dull and slow and mild.
All the bright day, as the mother sleeps,
She folds her wings about her sleeping child.

-----Randall Jarrell

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