rain

Thank you, Jesus, it's raining. We had the third driest year in Southern California history this year, and rain this late in April is almost unheard of. We needed it badly. Especially the heap of plastic bowls, spoons, and measuring cups that I let the kids use the other day to "make a mixture" -- they used flour, corn starch, baking soda, a LOT of water, and various colors of washable tempera paint. I came out from where I had obsessive-compulsively started to put all my loose nuts, seeds, and grains into matching mason jars...

an aside: I swerve between rapid-fire sloppiness, through self-loathing and the hatred of little crumbs stuck to the bottom of my feet and seeing every little thing out of place, every stain on the carpet leaping up at my eyeballs like a soiled chipmunk with rabies, then into big thrusts of cleanup and organizing, for which I ignore my children and work for hours at a time...at which point i become mommie dearest, hollering at children and spouse when they dare to muss my arrangements...and then I throw up my hands and surrender to rapid-fire sloppiness once more.

Anyhow...when I came out and saw them, my 2 and their friend, I was stunned at the level of mess they had managed to make in only about a 20 minute period. Paint, flour, water, soupy sticky pink mess all over the sidewalk. They were skating in it. They were standing in the bowl. They were thrusting their arms in up to the elbow. Now, all their equipment is sitting out there with dried crust of pink flour gunk all over it.

Thank you, Jesus, it's raining.
And my garden is happy too.
The chickens are cowering in the coop.
The whole house is still asleep.
I'm thinking about that mess at Virginia Tech. I can't quite fathom it, truthfully. Same thing happens every day in Iraq. Thanks, o leering commander-in-chief and henchpeople. From what I can tell, that kid who shot all those people was so blatantly mentally ill that he should not have been in a state university. Where were his parents? Sure, yeah, let's blame them! No, no, no, no blame. No judgment. He was sick. He got guns. End of story.