good day today
appalachian olympians
as they contemplate transmogrifying another impertinent mortal.
Beware their wrath!
gratuitous picture of a delicate flower (with bed head)
In our house, calling someone a “delicate flower” attributes to them the most witheringly frail degree of contemptible wimpiness, but I have to admit* my excessive sensitivity to these stupid time changes. If I were to assemble a list of optimistic responses to the imminent end of civilization as we know it, I would have to put the demise of daylight savings time near the top of the list.
*I can admit it here in this forum but never to those blond demons that I live with. One hint of weakness and they will surely attack.
hermione and the muggle(tacky) tourist
Finn and her best friend from her new school were inseparable last night. It is hard to tell in this picture, but our neighbor french braided Finn’s hair for her. Her dog Barley, our family’s favorite dog, thought the french braid process was hurting Finn, so Barley barked and whined at his owner until she was done. Finn was very happy with how her costume turned out. It was a fun night.
fallie, mumblelard, finn, floyd (left to right)
I think this is the closest to Halloween that we have ever carved jack-o’-lanterns. Going to Florida last weekend really threw us off schedule. Between taking birthday cupcakes to Fallie’s class, opening presents, carving pumpkins, and eating birthday cake with my parents, today was a busy but fun day.
Tomorrow we go to the Halloween party at the nature center, Saturday is the neighborhood Halloween party and trick or treating, and Sunday is Fallie’s birthday party with a dozen children and even more adults. It looks to be a busy but fun weekend. I love this time of year.
A Straight Folded Drop; A Prime Engagement
by Susan Taft
No wondering about the aptly black figure cawing matter into my good ear. I would wonder if it weren’t so dark. I would be the subject of a classical dancer’s nightmare if the absorber of my morbid larval sleep had been yellow, like Mr. Cage, the entertainer at my domestic site. It is worth wondering if the giant crow was after little Cage, but only for a slip of a moment. I knew, and the poet friend I soon called knew that the triangle to which I awoke—-the dented pillow holding an ear and two eyes, the nightstand-as-field for a composition of murder weapons, that huge black bird with his cold emesis of doomcalls—-was not a symbol. We are not artists like that.
So I got out of bed when the crow had been insisting for at least thirty minutes. I went to the window which has no screen. Out went my face, into a sweet morning. The bird was looking right at me from a very near, tall spruce. It was in a position to have been watching me sleep. It could have flown in. Maybe it did. It cawed at me without stopping. I said thank you, thank you. I left to get a baked potato for him, split it and filled it with seed from Mr. Cage’s tiny pantry. Maybe that’s all wrong for a crow. It’s the gesture, of course, a map-tack on a schematic of birds and sleepers.
Something the size of that bird, exactly the weight of it and very much the sheenless black of it, with its Harley beak and legs, was pulled out of me last night wile I rested from suicidal mania. I still feel bad, but Cage looks about twice as bright, and that means I’m better. Going to survive this fall, I’m guessing.
(via EXQUISITE CORPSE, NO. 49, 1994)
fly agaric (Amanita muscaria) or gee whiz I haven’t had a good old fashioned psychotic episode in a while
Muscarine poisoning is characterized by its psychotic effects. It leads to a condition akin to drunkenness, accompanied by hallucinations and convulsions with episodes of hilarity. There then follows a sub-comatose, depressive phase when the victim falls into a long, deep, drugged sleep. It is hard to awaken the patient and when wakened, he is in a depressed state from which it is hard for him to recover. (via The Great Encyclopedia of Mushrooms by Jean-Louis Lamaison and Jean-Marie Polese)
Jean-Louis and Jean-Marie proceed to mention that everyone from Lapps to northern Italians use them in “religious rituals,” and question whether or not the Ancient Romans really used them as a poison or if they possibly confused them with Death Caps.
These are up the street from us near some really nice wild muscadine vines.
i can’t be certain but i think some stew is going to happen when floyd gets up from her nap
waiting for dinner
I read some on the deck, but mostly I listen as Fallie tells stories to Gopher Guts about her day at school and the events, real and imagined, that filled it.
