Rainy Friday

Just as I was worrying that the new plants in the garden had gone a day too long without being watered, here came the rain again.

So you see, things do have a way of working themselves out.

Today the girls and I bought a new parakeet. And a new cage, and mineral block, and water bottle, and grit, and grit bowl...the animal itself is always just a fraction of the cost, and the cost, the financial cost, is just a fraction of what we pay out with our hearts when we become responsible for these other lives, isn't it?

She is blue, and her name is Houdini. Now, to my 10 year old daughter, Houdini was a marvelous escape artist, the namesake of a friend's late parakeet and of the hamster in Lynn Reid Banks, I, Houdini. But to me, and perhaps to other people of my generation and the one before it, Houdini will always be Tony Curtis in the 1953 film version of the man's life. I'll have to add it to my Netflicks account and see what I think of it as an adult.

On the way home from gymnastics tonight, I caught the middle of a Fresh Air interview with Karen Armstrong, and even though S said, "Pleeeeease turn this off, Mommy. This is so bo-ring," for once I didn't reward her for remembering to ask politely (if somewhat desperately) but instead hushed her violently and said that even if she whined and cried, I was going to listen to it. I would just turn it up louder than she could be. Does this mean that I love NPR more than my own children? Wait a minute. What kind of question is that? I'm striking it from the record.

I do remember being bored STIFF by my maternal grandmother's insistence that whatever else we were doing came to a grinding stop for the MacNeil/Lehrer Hour. But I knew that she still loved me. She just, for those 60 minutes, needed me to be very, very quiet.

Back to the Karen Armstrong interview, though. I find myself fascinated by religious scholars, many of whom are themselves seekers as well. And besides, she has an accent. I'm a sucker for an accent. I have mentioned that, haven't I?


Going to bed now (again - I'd been there for an hour before I got up to blog). Sleeping in tomorrow - hooray for the weekend!