soapboxdiner

President in the Making

So the pruning went well and the garden looks just about as good as a garden can look with shorn iris, sedum in seed and too-leggy geraniums. Exciting stuff even for those of us who love it.

I kid, I kid.

But the day with the family was fabulous. The kid got to show off his fresh-from-lessons swimming skills in the hot tub. My mother and I went to the book store, where I got Steven a DK Encyclopedia of Animals and a humorous little picture book filled with photos of Look-Alike Things. This is just the greatest book. There are pictures of houses with manicured lawns made of towels and trees of broccoli, windows made of tea bags and roofing eves of coat hangers. They all look real. Even eyes trained to look for the oddities have to search. He loves it.

I have to tell you, I have the most amazing child. I swear, he is a prodigy. Tonight he was asking what a riddle was, to which I answered, "Riddles are puzzles of words." When he asked me to share one with him, all I could come up with on the fly was, "What animal walks on four when young, two as an adult, and three when it is old?"

He got it! Never in his short little six years of life had he heard that riddle before and the little rascal just put his fingers to his temples for a moment (very grown-up like) and then answered the question correctly! I am as puffed up as a blow fish I'm so proud of him.

To thank me for cleaning out the garden, my mother also gifted me with a book: The Complete Works of William Shakespear. She said, "It's not my thing, but I think it is something you would like, right?" It was so sweet of her. I would have preferred any of the Sedaris, Kingsolver, Atwood, Bronte, Kirouac or Wolff's lanquishing on the discount table (whoa am I to confess I have never read the Greats...) but how can one snub Shakespear?

I came home and read a sonnet to my child. The prodigy. He told me it was boring and asked me to read him Anthony and Cleopatra instead.

Make way for your future president, everyone.

11:16 pm - 08.24.02
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