And The Mome Raths Outgrabe.

I heard this once, said this once, and read this once this weekend.


And at no time did any of these circumstances have to do with "Jabberwocky", the poem my title line today is from. It appears twice, actually -- at the end of the first stanza and at the end of the last stanza in "Jabberwocky" first appearing in Lewis Carroll's novel Through The Looking Glass -- and in my opinion it's there both times to show that we all have our Jabberwocks to slay, our fears to overcome, and then it's back to normal.


Or "normal", depending on your approach.


FRIDAY I heard this when I was with Martha, Sarah, and Jeffrey after work watching The Witches of Oz, a 2011 mash-up of four of L. Frank Baum's Oz books set there that extends them into the present day. In order to keep "The Changing Word" that can transform anyone or anything into anyone or anything else out of the hands of the Wicked Witch of the West, the Wizard agrees to personally not interfere with the Witch in exchange for her keeping away from the City of Emeralds.


That's what the Emerald City is originally and remains called in the first book, by the way.


Jeffrey caught onto the key word personally. Glinda and the Wizard both send Dorothy out of Oz with the key the Wicked Witch would need to open the book to read "The Changing Word" and she lands in a Kansas field where Henry and Emily -- check your references -- find and raise her. When Dorothy grows up, she learns that the stories she's written based on her grandfather's (Baum's) work are real and in New York where she goes as part of a publishing deal are all around her.


And the title line, by the way, is said by the Wicked Witch when she's facing Dorothy.


Which implies that like the TV series Once Upon A Time (season 6 starts five weeks from yesterday)and my own novel Refugees of the Emerald City, the places you read about in children's fiction are all somewhere very real. SATURDAY after Martha got home from work, I must admit it's a bit of a blur -- I mean, Sarah needed to get a detangling brush for her hair so the kids and I went out for a while to get that and also went to Minot Public Library (ahem) the third time I'd been there for a while!

What can I say, I find a good read and I stick with it. Or try to.


SUNDAY we got to church in the morning for our newest niece (technically new great-niece) Avery who was with her mom Breanna, two of her friends, and Pastor Janet who had also baptized Breanna nigh twenty years ago, so this was the first mother and child she had baptized! We took pictures with her after the service but I haven't seen them yet, the ones with that blue banner with Avery's name on it.


Meh.


After church we went to Robert and Sharon's house for a hot dog lunch to celebrate and just hang out for a while. We were having lunch outside since Robert was grilling and soon came back inside because no one likes bees around. Ants we expect, bees not so much. Jeffrey asked me to come upstairs with him for a bit, and I lay down as we watched an episode of Austin & Ally where the title character and aspiring pop star gets into a copyright lawsuit.


This is a Disney Channel show, so of course the title character wins!

Here's the thing; Austin's business manager told him that this lawsuit would ruin his career as a pop star and he'll "have to change [his] name and move to North Dakota!" Austin replied with this inflection, "There's a North Dakota?" Jeffrey and I took that line with some umbrage, and considering that Austin & Ally within the Disneyverse (haven't used that term in a while) is set in Miami, Florida ... you have to wonder if I changed my name to get here.


I'm not going to tell.


Anyhoo, I saw the last "mome raths outgrabe" reference at my in-laws house in the Sunday comics, specifically in Scott Adams' Dilbert as part of the boss' explanation of where the company's money is going. And Saturday, I nearly forgot, was when I said this to Martha about something that didn't make sense to me at the time and I got one of her quizzical looks for it. This week she took personal time to be with us getting ready for and driving Sarah and Jeffrey to their first days of school!

And they're ALREADY asking how I'll get them to two different schools next year!


'Twas brillig,


David