Little Moonstones Nature Academy and Beautyschool...June: Week One: The Sun

 It's been awhile since I have blogged, admittedly. Been busy going to college. Doing very well, on track, working on goals and getting straight A's.... Cannot complain. 

We have been trying to get BellaLuna enrolled in a preschool, but we are too "rich" for the Head Start Fred attended and too pooooor to pay every month... So, I have been working on a home preschool "curriculum" for her. This summer we are all doing it together, She, Fred and I....and by autumn, I will be working with her more "intensively" so she gets a good start. 

I have been loosely following the Little Acorns monthly/weekly themes, and then tweaking them to make them our own.

This first week the theme was The Sun. Each day, I created things to do related to the sun. Most days follow a rhythm of :

Circle Time

Yoga

Storytime

Worksheets

Craft time

Movie Time (related to the subject) 

Lunchtime

Parktime

Each week will also have a corresponding letter of alphabet for Bella to learn. This week was S week.
I also had little packets of worksheets and coloring pages to go with each day's theme. If you'd like to see more information about this, find it here on the Pinterest Board for June.....

Little Moonstones in June

It seems like we need more time each day to do all the things I would like to do but we have to pick my husband up from work in the afternoon and it interrupts us. Pretty soon he will be getting himself home and we can perhaps do more each day.

Our Clean-up song this week was:

I have decided to share our program for others who may be interested in "homeschool" or in supplementing their children's public school program with a more nature-centric, gentle "schooling"/learning.

The first week's theme was The Sun. I split the days up so the children would learn about different facets of subjects that pertained to the sun: The Sun, Japan (Land of the Rising Sun), Icarus, 

and Native American Sun Dance.

 ( I have scheduled Friday as "errand/cleaning/appointment" Day)

for Day One: The Sun....

First we had Circle Time and read The Way To Start A Day by Byrd Baylor

 

This is a wonderful book and I knew as soon as I was preparing the Sun week, that it would be a perfect start to our little Natureschool. The book tells about how all different cultures and even animals have ways to start the day that honor the sun. 

We then talked about the sun, basking in the sun's rays outside. It was lovely.

Moving into the house, we did our Yoga Time. I knew it would be neat to learn The Sun Salutation, so I searched for a video to teach children the sun salutation and found this gem: 

It is called The Sun Dance by The Bari Koral Family Rock Band. It is very fun and a very good way for children to learn the sun salutation. 

It was then Storytime and so we read the book : 

It was a neat retelling of an Aesop's fable. My Fred is rather fixated on tornadoes at the moment, so he loved drawing the correlation between his more "windy" way of being and his sister's sunny disposition. It was cute. 

For Craft time we did a very simple project to start the day and made Handprint Suns. Here is Bella's....

For Movietime we watched a video retelling of the story of the sun and the wind:

 We then watched a Nova Special about the sun.....

We concluded the day by going to the park. 

Because monday was the Full Strawberry Moon, we went to the nearby Pick-Your-Own strawberry farm and picked strawberries to make strawberry shortcake. Part of what I hope to do is to "celebrate" each full moon with the children in some way. I think that is important.

Tuesday's theme was Japan (Land of the Rising Sun) 

At circle time, I brought out the globe and showed the children where japan was and we discussed some of the "social/cultural/geographical aspects of the country.

Our Circletime story was the Japanese tale of Amaterasu, the sun Goddess and her brother, Susano, the wind.  The Story of Amaterasu....

We Then Had Craft time and made Japanese Flags and learned that lots of states and countries have symbols of the sun on their flags, including the two states they've lived in, and how that showed that the sun was significant and important all over the world. 

Here is Fred's flag: (he had the idea to put it on a stick....) 

We then had a second storytime and I told them the story of The Man Who Made The Trees Blossom.

We then made thumbprint Cherry Blossom pictures...

For our movie, we watched "My Neighbor Totoro", we hadn't seen it before, and I wanted to take the chance to watch it. Gotta love summer! :)

We concluded the day with Parktime, again. It was a lovely day.

Day Three's Theme was Icarus & Phaeton.

At circletime, I read them the story of Phaeton from D'Auliaires Greek Myths....

We discussed how sometimes kids want things that aren't very good for them and how it is the adult's job to make sure they make good and safe choices for awhile. That was neat.

We came inside and had a second circle time and I read the story of Daedalus and Icarus.

We then watched the movie of Jim Henson's The Storyteller about Icarus and Daedalus. It was okay, but I am not gonna link it here, as I didn't love it.

We then had craft time and made Icarus wings by gluing tissue paper "feathers" to posterboard "wings". Silly me didn't get a picture before I sent them to recycling. But they were cool, trust me! :)

Day Four's Theme was Native American Sun Dance.

We went to the local nature preserve to spend the day in nature, as the Native Americans would've done. We had a picnic lunch at high noon (so the children would SEE and FEEL high noon, as the sun was directly above us in the middle of the sky....)

I read them the Cherokee story of the first Sun Dance....

Cherokee Myth

We then made prayer sticks with ties of the Four Directions and learned about them and then fastened onto them our "ceremonial sun dance masks" and the children did their "sun dance"...it was lovely.

We finished the day in the river, the one Fred was named for....

It was a great week. Looking forward to Week Two: Fireflies.....

Grand Winter Break Unfuckery 2012

One of my favorite new sites is (pardon le french) Unfuck Your Habitat... http://unfuckyourhabitat.tumblr.com
It is a very very straightforward blog where the moderator motivates people to clean (unfuck) their homes (habitats) with great gusto, gifs, and quite salty (but awesome) language.
It is working for me. Something about the linguistics of Unfuckery is working for me, unlike "Clean" or "tidy" or "Flying" (ick) ever did(n't).

So, with this lovely last week of winter break before class starts back up again, I will be Unfucking a room in this Habitat each day and at the end of the week I shall have something resembling a Home again...

Today is my "day off", as it is Bastian's 13th birthday... (!!)

But yesterday, I unfucked the bedroom, and it truly needed it....
Damn the embarrassment, here goes....

(pardon the not-so-awesome photography....i was using instagram on my itouch in bad light)

Here is the left side of our side of the room.....BEFORE

That doesn't even look like a bedroom...which is quite sad, but you know how these things go.... This is Jonathan's side of the room, but the mess is all ours.... The boxes are boxes of toys and stuff that got moved there for some reason... poor Joffie, having to wake up to this and go to sleep to this every night. It has never ceased to amaze me the messes I have been able to get us all into.....

Here it is after I went through EVERYTHING, got rid of two bags of trash and a box of charity and touched, dusted, loved on, and appreciated everything else and every bit of wall, baseboard, furniture, etc. What is left is what is loved and what is cared for and it is so much better now...

Still a bit cluttered, but thoroughly loved and cared for now....And much better, I think.

Here is my corner of the room, before....

This doesn't really do justice to the amount of mess and ick that was over there. We have had down comforters for a year and I have not had much wherewithall so there were feathers all in the corners, and there was a lot of junk on and around that chair...It was just not comfy, put it that way...

Now it is quite restful and empty and sorted and feels much better....

When we first moved into the house, it was just horrible. We moved cross country and rented this house without seeing it....(yeah, won't be doing that again anytime soon...) and We were quite disappointed. Since then I have been too exhausted and poor to move...(and just wanna finish school and move to yellow springs and not move again until then) But this house has been quite a challenge. Quite a pauper's kingdom. When we first moved in and it was so distressing (we have since done some sprucing up, anyway)....The ONLY Thing that would help me feel at ease at all was to lay in bed (which at that time was an air mattress...) and say to myself "IF this house were in England, I would be thrilled..... Reason for me telling you this, is that I think that vibe comes through in this picture. It is very much a century and a half old ohio country house....

Well, the children are still in our room since there are only two...(a huge regret and Jonathan and I consider moving into the front parlor often, if only for the last year here...but we haven't yet...) And their side of the room has the potential to be really cozy and cool. The BEFORE picture betrays how much crapola was there before I started.....

And the after isn't much different... but they love it... and that is what is important, I think... The bulletin boards are going to be "Happy Boards" where they put up pictures of things that make them happy and that they are grateful for (Fred is having anger issues and I always try to talk him down by having him tell me things that make him happy and are good in his life and so that kinda the point of having them... So he remembers....

So, we shall see how long this lasts....It was edifying to do and I am glad it is done for now. It really is comforting. I am eager to do the downstairs this week. More pictures to follow.

fairie night quickly approaches

We Moonstones love to celebrate the Midsummer Solstice. It is our whimsical night of fairies and treats.... The children make fairie houses and in the morning the fairies have left them little earthly treats.

Fred, Bella and I went for a nature walk just now, just a simple walk five blocks down the street and back around...nothing of note was growing wild (except some wild morning glories that we lifted out of a crack in a driveway of a vacant house...HOPEFULLY they will take root and grow up and around our big tree...) but when we got home, there was a LOVELY bundle of beautiful bits to create with....I figure we will do this several more times, before the official midsummer revels, next Wednesday night <3

slowly but quite surely

Things are going at a very slow, yet lovely pace. I am learning very very much about delicacy and patience and gentle waiting......

(All things I should've learned from mothering. Oh well, better late than never....)

Things are coming along on Moonstone Acre, and I couldn't be more pleased.

Things are so sublime and delicate and I am finding myself suddenly in my element.

Earth.

and so it begins

here are the seedling babies......call-before-you-dig is coming friday and sunday i till...... so excited! full moon next weekend (jonathan and fred's birthday weekend) I will plant.....sow excited ;)

Same with the blog...I now have a fast computer and every reason on earth to blog more....Taking the summer off school,so no excuses!

Much love to all....Stay tuned..!

santa came

The Queen of Christmas

There was a little plywood house on the town square painted white. Every second week of December they brought it in on a flat bed. Stored it at Old McElroy's farm the other fifty weeks of the year. It was Old McElroy's wife and the ladies in the Mother's Club who had the idea for this some twenty six years before.

The men in the Chamber of Commerce put the money up to build the house and the guys from the Fraternal Order of the Eagles made sure that it was manned from 9 AM to 7 PM six days a week for twelve days, give or take when the Saturday before the Twelve Days Of Christmas fell.

It was real town effort, the Santa Claus Haus in lovely downtown Marseilles, Ohio, and the grown-ups got almost as much of a kick out of making it happen every year as the children did of wishing inside of it. No one ever complained about it at all. Sure, occasionally there were Santa snafus and little discrepancies in what Santa said would happen and what the parents could afford. But all in all, it was a much-used and much-loved landmark during its short existence each year.

Wired for light and heat, there was also a speaker that churned out Christmas music from a tape recorder. Two windows on each side to let light in were curtained in red gingham. Fake evergreen garland ran along the top of the room bedecked with red plastic ribbons and bows. A "throne" sat directly in front of the door, to the left of it sat a big red velvet bag filled with wrapped empty-yet hope-filled cardboard boxes.

Outside the door was a little porch with three wooden steps leading up to the door and the Magic Mailbox, which was really Old McElroy's old mailbox painted green and sitting atop a candy cane colored post. But to the children in town, that mailbox was a conduit to the Big Man himself. It was almost always full of paper and was emptied more than once every day of the week and several times on the days of the weekend.

The Mother's Club was responsible for getting the letters returned to the proper child's parents when the children had left a name. A task which they gleefully undertook and eagerly awaited each year. But there were always the few requests better handled by the Churches. "Dear Santa, Stop my Daddy from drinking..." or "Dear Santa, Just give my mommy a coat", for instance. Those went to the Churches.

It was a quaint little town and most had enough to eat and more than enough to make them happy. But there are always exceptions, and for some poor unfortunate souls, those cold, dark, bleak days of December are a constant tooth-grinding battle. Mrs. Miller, for example, whose son had died in Vietnam and with him her happiness. Or Old Sloopy, the bait shop owner, whose wife had run off Christmas of '54 and left him four kids to raise, the scrutiny of the whole town breathing down his neck, and no best friend, because she took him too. There are as many kinds of heartbreak as there are people in the world. And in a town like Marseilles, every one of them is more intriguing than the next. The people that carry these broken hearts within them and within the town limits of Marseilles, Ohio do a heck of a lot of drinking to cloak them in some semblance of normalcy.

Penelope's life wasn't normal.
 Not even close.
 And in the "smile and nod" area she failed miserably.
 She had always been a pot boiling over, like her Grandma said. Whether she was distraught and brimming over with tears and wailing, or on the ever-so-rare occasion that she allowed herself to be happy, she was a ringing volcano of mirth and melodic laughter. There wasn't much in between. This was about ten years before the word "bipolar" existed in Parke County, though. So, for all that knew her, which was Everyone, Penelope was just the weird, somehow exotic and completely eccentric 9 year old basket case they all knew and loved. Or hated. Mostly hated.

Yes, it was one thing for the kids to tease her and bully her mercilessly. They'd always done that. And with her it was just too easy. But, it was another thing for the adults to visibly dislike a nine year old girl.

But she made them horribly uncomfortable. They didn't like her around their kids because she seemed incapable of playing or fun. Instead she pried at the kids for Answers. All she seemed to want was Information. She wanted to know how the kids Felt, for Chrissakes. She didn't want to play Barbies or watch the Brady Bunch. She wanted to know what they thought God LOOKED like, or how long they would survive after a nuclear holocaust!

The things the adults heard through the open doorways when Penelope came over would simply curdle their blood and they'd find themselves tightening their toes and clenching their fists at the mere mention of her name.

But, she rarely went to other children's houses, anyway. Maybe once in a while, when a sermon was especially guilt-inducing, a kid would decide that they'd better be nicer to Penelope or spend eternity in hell. But children soon forget, and Penelope was so boring and awful that those cases rarely lasted past Tuesday.

So, she was Lonely on top of it all. On top of having a brain that was way too big and filled with clattering marbles, broken glass, and what felt like the gunk at the bottom of the lake. On top of her heart that swelled with the love of all Humankind and on top of an ocean of tears, happy and sad, within her, that would drown an elephant. On top of the cold and the bleak and the darkness that is just the virtue of Tuesdays in December.

On just one of those Tuesdays, December 18th, 1985, Penelope found herself on top of Santa's porch. She found herself full of Magic and a sense of hopefullness as numb as her fingertips. She felt as though when she turned around, she would see not the Hardware Store with its display of Franklin Stoves and anamatronic elves in the window, but the Real Live North Pole.

She felt that when she got done asking Him and opened the door again, she wouldn't be walking back out into this horrible town full of falsely happy-looking Mannequin-people, but into her New Life. Not like she would walk the cold grey concrete walk back to her creaky, dank, drafty, frozen and unpleasant lonely room, but to a castle where she would live forever as a beautiful Princess.

She would sleep on a mattress filled with money! She would have a Court of people who wore fine clothes and lived just to entertain her and clamor for her friendship. She would have a library full of her very own books that she could read away from the sickeningly piteous looks of the dowager librarians at the library in town.

She would wear wool and furs and sit by roaring fireplaces and never be cold again! She would be happy! Really happy. She would feel Happiness in her bones. Her brain would feel like feather pillows and lemon meringue pie and her heart would again turn from a stone to meat and pump warm, comforting blood throughout her newly beautiful body.

She HAD to wish like this. She had to want the magic this intensely. She had to become Belief itself in every inch of her beingness. Because Blake had told her there wasn't a Santa. Blake, her dear boy whom she loved best in the whole world, had told her there was no Santa, just some old schmuck from the Eagles where her father played pinochle all day. Told her to look him right in the eye and ask him if he wasn't Tom Pearson or John LeMay. Blake told her to stop being a baby. There wasn't a Santa who would ever give her anything that cost more than $25.

So, she stood there, white-knuckled, and watched her hand turn purple as it clutched the door knob. She wiped the snot from her lip with her free hand, rubbed it on the tail of her flannel jacket, and turned the knob....

It doesn't matter what He said.

(Luckily it was Billy McFlarety, the "Irish Poet", the guys at The Bar called him, who was wearing the Santa Claus Suit on that Tuesday at 4:48 pm and not old Roscoe Moyer, who was due in at 5. For decades afterwards, not a December passed without a thoroughly maudlin Billy McFlarety spinning the yarn of the Poor Little Princess From The Santa Claus Haus. By the turn of the century, it was a local fairy tale- but by then, so was Penelope.....)

It only matters that seventeen minutes later she stood on the porch of the Santa Claus Haus, licking the sugar Santa-face off the absolutely delicious lollipop that all the children got from Santa. (the boys making it a game to see who could collect the most before being barred from trying....)

It only matters that when she walked back out of the plywood door and into the dark but tree-lit street outside, she Believed. She knew in her heart of hearts that she would someday have the very life she had wished for. That she would have the beautiful life she believed she would have.

She just had to get through the one she had now. And there was some good in it. Santa had shown her that! Had told her that he wanted not to hear what she wanted but what she already Had that was good. And it worked! Like a dam broken, it all gushed out. And she saw a tear roll down Santa's cheek as she told him all the tiny, vast wonders and beauty in her life. (and just barely missed his beard shift when his white-gloved hand went to wipe it away....)

And he called her Beautiful! Santa said she was by far The Most Beautiful Girl In The Whole Town, because she had the most love in her heart!

And he said that even if he only brought her Things every year, that it was just a signal to remind her that she could have any Thing she wanted if she believed enough. And that even if life got hard and she felt all alone, He would Always be there in her heart reminding her how good this felt to list what she already had that was good and to not want Things just because other people had them.

And that someday she would be the Queen of her life, just like she wanted. He Promised her that!

So she walked the cold, grey, concrete walk home, but she didn't see it. The Spell was broken! She was free as a bird! She thought to herself that she would go home and start making presents to leave anonymously at the Old Folk's Home like she did every year. It was getting close to Christmas, after all. She didn't have much time.

And she couldn't wait to call up old Blake and tell him that there most certainly WAS a Santa Claus, that he absolutely was in the Santa Claus house in Marseilles, and that he told her that she would definitely be a Queen someday!


Twenty years later, Penelope Fairheardt, noted millionaire children's author of a series of books about a little girl from a small town in Ohio who becomes the first Queen of the United States, and changes it into a fairy land of happiness of sorts, received an epidural while in labor with her first child. At the instant the doctor pierced her nervous system, Penelope had a flash memory of the Santa Claus Haus in downtown Marseilles.

She was overcome with a deep feeling of well-being. In between contractions, she asked her husband, Blake, if he remembered the day she had called him up and told him in no uncertain terms that there WAS a Santa Claus and that Blake would marry her someday and that they would be richer than anyone in that nasty little town ever would be. He smiled wistfully and said, "Of course...." Three hours later, their son was born. Instead of naming him Duncan, like they had planned, they named him Claus.

Three Saturdays before Claus' first Christmas, famous author and apple of the eye of Marseilles, Ohio, Penelope Fairheardt stood on the steps of the brand new, permanent Santa Claus Haus on Fountain Square and as she cut the candy cane ribbon, she looked out into the adoring crowd of her former horrifying townspeople and exclaimed, "Each of you are The Most Beautiful Children In This Whole Town because you all have so much love in your hearts!"

And in that moment, so much love radiated back to her from the crowd that she felt like she was the Queen of Marseilles and the Queen of Christmas and she knew that she would never be cold or lonely again.

My First College Creative Writing Paper

For our first assignment, our teacher told us to "Write about a disaster you had in a kitchen"....I gasped. Here's what I came up with....

************************************************************************************
The acid she that she always took did not really make the world technicolor and swirly and disorienting. It seemed to darken the world and leave it with a pallor not unlike the Dickens she loved to read. In the heat of summer one could harken back to Woodstock and Song of Solomon and countless other verdant rainbow-sensual cultural memories and enjoy one's trip more. Mushrooms were best in spring and most wonderful to ingest in autumn, and weed was the same all year long, with the odd more-fun or less-fun intensity.

But this was the winter of her Discontent and this was the deep-freeze of Rock Bottom. And on this Winter Solstice, there would be nothing more brilliant than to gluttonously digest than acid, bourbon and coke---the brown cola kind not the powder. She was not stupid- just addicted. 

It was a night of driving around just being high as a kite on top of being drunk as a skunk. Not that she drove. That would imply that she were responsible enough to do so. She most certainly wasn't. She merely rode, and from the middle backseat position, spoke through the rear-view mirror to the driver, her Lover, and side to side at the teenage boy and girl she was taking turns making out with. The girl riding shotgun hated her guts. She was trying to woo The Lover, the soulmate, a vain attempt to take something away from Her. But how does one steal from a supernova or usurp a deity?

And in the backseat she spoke on like a Buddha, a burning bush, a prophet, a wildwoman. It doesn't matter to remember now what she said, and all she can remember of it is that it was the last time she ever said any of it. That whatever it was, it was the end of everything, and it didn't seem like it at all.

It was the end of the world and she didn't know it yet. As Someone's Mom's Buick wound its way hundreds of miles in the December darkness, she was having the kind of trip that brought to mind wooly mammoths, blankets laced with smallpox, and rust. Columbus, Cincinnati, Indianapolis were just pins in some cosmic map, She wasn't really There- in all three cities and then Home in one night.

Solstice Raves. Eschewing Christmas and all other notions of Holiday Cheer for drugs and lights and loud techno music. She wonders now what would've become of all of them if She'd been left to her own devices. If what had happened never happened. It was three days before Christmas and she hadn't bought a single gift for anyone else yet. Had no plans to. Too stoned. Too wasted. She was always too much of everything negative.

It was the last night She believed in God, but she didn't know that yet either. Didn't know that every molecule in her beingness was about to be involuntarily blown into the chaos sphere.

They drove the back way into town that morning. Is 4:00am night or morning? On that Solstice night- the longest and deepest and darkest, it certainly felt like night. The sky was an indigo bordering on violet.

They passed a cop sitting on the side of the road in his car, the windows steamed up. Nothing like a carload of acid freaks passing a sitting cop to inspire fear and paranoia and also biting humor. "He's probably asleep." Someone said... "Maybe he's dead" ha.ha. She would get quite intimate with that policeman before the sun came up, but he did not know that yet.

For now there was no thought but the acid, the trip, the anticipated bacchanalia with the two teenagers, and the entire universe that existed in their four psychadelic heads. The car door sounds were both loud in the stillness and muffled by the snow as they got out of the car. Passenger seat girl had been ditched first. was just the four of them arm in arm.

The cold was like fiberglass, biting and alive. She thought of Jack Frost blowing shards of splintered ice across the surface of her skin, of her face. The cold was preternatural. It existed seemingly for reasons beyond December. She didn't know that yet, but She could sense it.

Rushing the teenagers around the house with a cursory "Shush!" and a warning not to wake up her father, she stopped, pulled The Lover to her and looked at his face as if to memorize it. (She did this often)

"I feel like I will never see you again for some reason" She said. "I am having a pretty bad trip."

He kissed her eyebrow. "There was a snowflake there. I kissed it." He said.

She watched the corner of his mouth turn up and his dimple pop in, like she'd done a million times, but this time it seemed more precious than ever before. He urged her to relax and pulled her hand to lead her to the side door of her little basement hideaway under her father's house. The light shone on the walkway from the kitchen window.

"Shit! My dad is up! I hate seeing him when I am like this. It makes me feel guilty and he looks like a bear and it bothers me!" She opines. She pauses at the door.

"Let's go downstairs. If he calls down, he calls down. If he doesn't, you're good" The Lover implores, longingly looking into the basement window, eager to get to The Teenagers and then to sleep.

"I gotta piss. I am gonna have to go up there anyway." She says, letting him in. She notices little clumps of snow on the stairs where his feet have been. She tries for composure. Fails. She has always been her father's favorite, the princess. But in her current state, she doubts she can pull that off. So she tousles her hair and decides to go with the old "Fell asleep at my friend's house" routine.

 For the rest of her life she would feel her hand around the doorknob turning it, could stay in the next five seconds forever. And a part of her did. Does. Is.

There was only one sound above the muffled giggles and coos of the three downstairs in the candlelight.... the refrigerator humming. Three clomps of her own feet at the stairs leading up to the kitchen. Then that doorknob and the sound of every latch and spring and hinge in the door giving way and opening.

"Hey daaaaaa....." Silence. The most silent silence imaginable.

One would think that an experience like that would be etched in her memory. But to think that would be to severely underestimate the chemicals, both natural and manufactured, that pulsed through her heart and bloodstream, the chaos and shock that fired and misfired the neurons in her brain.

She saw it all in completeness but could only think of a few words at a time.

Dead. Black face. On the floor. Left arm bracing, broken, crooked, pained expression, boxer shorts, excrement, Death.

She screamed and looked around the room for The Reaper. But he was gone. Like Santa Claus is gone on Christmas Morning.

Her body went through several superstitious self defense mechanisms at once, crossing herself (though she wasn't catholic), spinning in circles three times, hiding her eyes from Death's stare, chanting, mumbling in tongues. If there had been ashes, she'd've piled them on her head. If there'd been sackcloth she'd've torn it.

Her screams brought The Teenagers. She didn't get them pushed back before The Girl saw everything. She expected hysteria, but The Girl was calm. The Boy threw up. She could hear him outside in the snow. The wind rushed in, but she was numb. She told them to go. To get coffee or something and wait until it was safe to go home. She never saw either of them again. What they thought of those three minutes, she would never know.

She garnered the courage to poke him in the arm a bit. Cold. There was never any doubt whatsoever.

Her Girl Scout babysitting class training kicked in. "When witnessing an emergency, always note the time and as many details as you can before immediately alerting the Authorities...."

4:16 am. I am stoned. I am stoned. I am tripping balls and my father is dead on the kitchen floor. Those were the details.

As for calling the Authorities, that just couldn't happen anytime soon. She'd call her mother first. She would call anyone to take this away from her.

The numbers swam on the telephone, twisted and writhed and changed shape. Her mother did not answer. Four siblings- all unreachable on this one morning. She sat alone at the kitchen table. Completely aware of her aloneness. Completely aware of Mortality and Immortalilty.

She looked out the window. The sky was denim with white rhinestones. The cosmos was right up there, and now so was her father. She made out Taurus. How fitting. She and her father were taurus. One day before the day of her birth her father had turned 40. Now they'd be 59 and 19 forever, she guessed.

The thought crossed her mind that the first people ever on earth saw the same stars and that maybe there was only one day and one night and that it was our perception of Time that made them Different. Adam and Eve and Cain and Abel....

And then, Paranoia. How did he die? Murder?! Nothing made sense. Redial. Please please, mommy, pick up. Somebody help me. Somebody please help me!

She must've been saying this aloud and loudly, for The Lover apeared in her vision.

"Oh, shit! Oh god! What??!" He cried out, rushing to her on his knees, grabbing her hands and placing them on his face. She wanted to dive into his body somehow, to become him and escape her life. Escape all of this. They didn't speak. She didn't cry. She told him he'd better go. She had to call the police. If her mom didn't answer she'd call 9-11 next. She had no other choice.

He relented reluctantly. He went downstairs. Got his coat, his scarf, glove, boots. She watched the yellow stitchings as he laced them up and tied them. British boots. They'd been going to go to England. Would they now? His scarf was damp on her cheek as he held her again. She would feel his gloved finger on her ear for the rest of her life. He told her not to call the police if she didn't have to. He told her to come over later. He told her goodbye. Three clomps, door springs, goodbye.

Alone. Like stone. Like the ocean is alone. In a tomb. His denture cup was lying by the sink. He'd been getting ready for bed. Hours. For hours he'd laid there. What was she to do? Her family was all unreachable. Was it the end of the world?

9-11. 9-11. 9-11. Just dial it. She lit a cigarette and walked through the house looking for what?

The television was on. It was playing the 24 hour weather and local information channel. Green. Blue. Red. White letters. Musak. 11 degrees. 5:07 am. Mom's library card number. Where is my mother? Where is my father? Is my mother dead too?

Dialing again, she found herself standing in her father's bedroom, staring into the mirror. No answer. Ringing. Ringing. Ringing. It sounded like locusts. There was a cigarette burn on the cuff of her grey wool sweater.

Her eyes fell on her father's wallet. She opened it. License, various cards all with his name emblazened on them, reminding her that he would never be using them again. And twenty-eight dollars. She took the twenty and the three and left the five. Who knew when she would ever get any money ever again. It was a good thing she took it. It was her inheritence. It was all she ever got.

It bought her a carton of cigarettes, some clearance christmas candy, and a bottle of laundry detergent to take to rehab a week later, after a violent, acid laced confrontation with the girl-in- the -front- seat led to the police giving her mother the ultimatum of rehab or jail in the emergency room at 2 am, when they'd buried her father that morning.

She dialed one more time. Something had to be done. The locusts again. Grasshoppers. Plagues. Ringing forever.

She hung up the phone, tried to compose herself, failed again, but a tad more successfully this time. She brushed her teeth, lit another cigarette, stood looking down on her dear, dead father, said under her breath, "I'm sorry, Daddy...." and dialed 9-11.

She just couldn't be alone anymore.