Most toilets flush in the key of E flat.

That's one of those factoids I did not realize my life was missing.

That, why is music like an icy sidewalk (If you don't see sharp, you'll be flat!), and Every Good Boy Does Fine comprise practically my entire knowledge of musical notation. I read it this morning when I visited Jeffrey's teacher Mrs. Hoffer before school started; she, Sarah's teacher Mrs. Larson, and I'm guessing near everyone else at Longfellow Elementary are in the off-and-on process of packing to move their classrooms elsewhere in the hall for next school year. Once the kids start they move quick enough, get their showers and change their clothes and eat their breakfast -- truth be told, it's usually ME they have to rush out the door, not because I'm not done with my Bible reading or breakfast but because they pick at each other and it surprises me they want to go to school early!


Of course, when I went to school growing up it was on a bus and school was six to seven miles away.


I can hardly classify Tim Burton's The Melancholy Death of Oyster Boy & Other Stories (ISBN 9780060526498) as more stupid fairy tales. And before you ask, yes, THAT Tim Burton whom you probably know as the creative juice behind among other movies Beetlejuice, Edward Scissorhands, Frankenweenie, and The Nightmare Before Christmas. From Stick Boy and Match Girl in Love -- that's a short story in here, hence the selected caps -- to Robot Boy to Stain Boy to the Pin Cushion Queen to the title character, it seems like Tim Burton has all the special plans in mind for kids. Sort of a Gothic version of Peanuts, if you think about it, with the adults playing peripheral roles but saying a bit more than wah-wah.


"James"

Unwisely, Santa offered a teddy bear to James, unaware that
he had been mauled by a grizzly earlier that year.

(Melancholy, p. 71)


I got home after work last night and Sarah had then and still had this morning a half-swollen shut right eye and a heavy case of the sniffles. Anyone who's got allergies around here is sneezing their heads off right now, partly due to the seasonal transition and partly due to a fire from Alberta its smoke and residue having drifted in our direction. It's no fun being sick, but it's no excuse to be rude. Please forgive me, but that has been getting to me the last day or three especially when the kids though they have each others' backs get nasty with one another. Did get their school reading done though, despite themselves, and when school gets out for them on the twenty-fifth we can all start doing some reading more challenging that repetitive for their grades. I know they can.


Sarah looks at a five-tiered bookshelf in our dining room and says there's nothing to read?


That's something we shall have to remedy,


David