Where the bells they do ring and the little birds they sing

[sovay]

I don't know what I did to deserve dreaming that I bailed on a boring and alienating party and ran into Van Heflin who was sneaking out of a similar dinner function, but it was great.

Although the MBTA fell over to the point that it was faster to walk to Porter Square than wait for the next bus—so I did—I still met choco_frosh at the bookstore and we set off for an afternoon of hanging out, which turned out to involve discovering the Boston Printmakers' North American Print Biennial 2017 at the Lesley University Arts Center (where I fell in love with Neal Harrington's The Fish Lady of Toad Suck Holler (2016), which I cannot afford at $850 an ink-washed woodcut but long for anyway, because it looks even better in person) and Harvard's I ♥ Science festival at the Museum of Natural History (where I petted a gravid hissing cockroach and had a wonderful conversation about jellyfish) and winding up at Tatte's afterward for hot tea and baked goods. It never rained on us very hard and I have a money cowrie in my pocket, from the Boston Malacological Club. I may be taking my ungodchild to the aquarium next week.

And now I am watching figure skating with my mother, because that is the important thing about the Winter Olympics.

Comments

[selkie]

Do you ice-skate? If the Boston Pride drafts Noel in 2028, God willing and the nuclear clock don't click over, we'll tell her to let you and Spatch in ...

[sovay]

Do you ice-skate?

I do, actually. I haven't in years, but I suspect it's not something I've forgotten how to do. I enjoyed it.

If the Boston Pride drafts Noel in 2028, God willing and the nuclear clock don't click over, we'll tell her to let you and Spatch in ...

Fingers crossed for all of that, then. I would like to see my godchild on ice.

[selkie]

Oh, well, that's Wednesdays, Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays. The other days her ice time is severely curtailed by Montgomery County's insistence on mandatory second grade.

[sovay]

The other days her ice time is severely curtailed by Montgomery County's insistence on mandatory second grade.

(The horror.)

Truly, I am glad she has something she loves so much.

[selkie]

It really has been her thing, insofar as she has a thing besides reading (she is exceptionally level, like an actual level you can check the green blobby in, about most things) -- I remember when she was five and she decided to skate and figure was AWFUL and she cried, but we went back and strapped on the hockey rentals and she just ran, flew, and hasn't stopped wanting to fly since. It's not that she does anything particular on the ice but chase the speed, outside of hockey practices proper. It's that it's a thing she needs to be doing. I did not imagine we would get a kid whose vital thing, besides reading, would be sprinting around on knives. And caring about how the ice feels and how her body pushes itself into balance. If she keeps dreaming the same dreams, who knows?