It is nearly long enough to put up again after November's choppage. I mean, I can put it up, but it's nearly long enough to stay up even if I, say, move. So here it is, up, and when I looked at myself in the mirror I wondered if I could deal with hair actually as short as this looks, because I liked this effect. I don't mean to look like Norman Bates, either, I was just hiding my chin.
But I can't hide my eyebags.
The setting: the Children's Museum of Denver. The players: JJM and JPM, who will need aliases, and me.
The first scene: a room with a road carpet (? a rug printed with roads to zoom cars along) over here, Duplo blocks over there, and a lot of wooden blocks in the corner. JJM said JPM would like the cars and Duplo and I said, "Goody, blocks for me." I did two things with the blocks: one, putting them all away in their cubbies, like with like, because I am all into organizing--magnetic poetry and proverbs, stuffed animals--which JJM knew from at least Thanksgiving, when my playing with JPM's toys consisted mostly of nesting the five-sided cubes--and two, building low towers for JPM and other kids to knock over. I would cry "Yea!" and applaud at each topple (and quietly feel slightly proud at detaching myself from my creations). One little boy wanted to demolish a tower, but his grown-up, thinking that would be rude to me, called to him not to knock the towers over. How should I have told the man that it was okay, that that's why I built them? I even built them wide and low with the thinnest blocks on top, for minimal toe-smashage.
Mostly I was stowing away the blocks, though.
Our next stop was a 30' wall covered with giant fridge poetry-style magnets of letters, numerals, and words, thoroughly jumbled. I approached the board to assemble JPM's name, and JJM observed to her son, "Uh-oh, this one could take Lisa days." (I hadn't even told her about the measurer's comment yet.)
I howled with laughter, partly because it was true but mostly because, damn, on first seeing it, I didn't think to order and sort the characters, but as soon as she said it, I felt the need.
Later, I mentioned dismantling the tree and dealing with the cards, putting photographs in albums etc. JJM said, "You keep photographs of other people's children?" Or something like that. Not contemptuously, but mystified. And yes, yes I do. This struck me as so obvious I didn't know how to explain it. I used as an example a card we both received: "If you saw Begonia, Ms. Begonia, and Baby Begonia at a party and happened to take a good snapshot of them, you might put it in an album, right?" She allowed as how that was so. What's the difference?
I freely admit I am a freakishly, unnecessarily over(-)tidier of blocks and magnets and books and DVDs and lists. I cannot see in any wise whatsoever how keeping pictures of my friends' children, as well as those of my friends, is freaky in the slightest.