Peonyiana: September 2004 Archives

Alicia has this neat widget on her blog -- a little picture of the moon's current phase. (At this writing it is waxing gibbous.)

I thought of it last night. We were out running errands and it was getting dark. Hambet usually isn't out that late, and when he caught sight of the moon he grew very excited: "Look! It's the moooooooon!"

So all that evening we were watching the moooooooon. He was quite delighted when he saw that it was following us, so we talked about that and about how the moooon is very far away. He wanted to know what the moooon is made of -- I told him "rocks" and Daddy told him "cheese." Hambet admonished him: "No, Daddy, the moon is made of ROCKS." He grew very upset when we turned north and he couldn't see the moon any more -- "I have to look at the moon! Where is the moon?! I have to look at the moon!" -- and was just as delighted when we turned south again and he could see it out the window. When we got back home he hopped out of the car and ran out into the driveway so he could stand, stock still, his little face pointed at the sky so he could gaze at the moooooon a little longer.

And it had been a while since I'd taken a good look at the mooooon. How crisp and sharp and chalky-white she looked! Even the horrible light pollution couldn't totally obscure the outlines and shadows of her craters.

And I found myself remembering some lines of a poem -- by Sylvia Plath, of all people. I'm not big on Sylvia, but a few lines from this particular poem had stuck with me, and they came back as I looked up:

The moon has nothing to be sad about,
Staring from her hood of bone.

"Her hood of bone." I just like that metaphor. The rest of the poem ("Edge") doesn't interest me too much -- I don't have much patience for obscure and morbid -- but it's posted in the Extended Entry if you want to read it.

...just household stuff and scrapbooking stuff and trips-to-the-dentist stuff (Hambet had a good checkup, and I'm realizing that I don't remember the last time I was at the dentist... wonder if I can look it up in the archives....)

Today I assembled a cheap bookcase to handle our book overflow. It went pretty well but I think the next time I go for something like this I want to stick with IKEA -- those little locks with the Allen wrenches are a lot easier to handle than the things on this model.

Hambet was very interested in the whole operation and was begging to help, but unfortunately his version of "help" involved scattering teeny parts all over the place and begging to use the hammer. He got his chance when I went to get the phone and left the hammer unattended for a fatal moment -- when I came back he was going right to it, carefully imitating the way I had tacked the back piece (the big flat part) onto the bookshelf frame. Alas, he had not noticed that I was only driving the nails into the edge, and was cheerfuly whacking away driving nails through the middle. So now the back of our new bookshelf has a constellation of nail holes in the back. Right at eye-level too.

So now I'm transferring stacks of books from the closet onto the new bookshelf, and it's the kind of task that always takes me way too long -- I start opening the books, and flipping through them, and thinking about which one I want to read next, and wondering which ones I should let go of, and coming up with a new scheme for organizing our books -- the whole Gentle Madness thing.

But I should get going -- only 45 minutes until the Iron Chef hour (the hour in which I stare into the freezer wondering what I'm going to make for supper tonight.)

Meanwhile, dear husband Posco has a big decision to make in the next few days; I would be grateful for prayers for discernment. Thanks!