We've been receiving The Denver Post on Sundays for weeks now. I have no idea why. A few weeks ago when we went to the zoo I gave an almighty leap at the jump-measuring place because I hoped I could improve on a previous performance. Your standing long jump is supposed to be at least your height, and I am taller than four feet. This time I did manage five feet plus a little, but--I am a 35 and decaying fast--I leaked a little. I whispered this to my mother-in-law to make her laugh, and she did; so did JHT, who overheard, except he laughed louder, not having to empathize. Later that afternoon, when I got back from renting my skis, DMB gave me something she'd torn from the paper, a research solicitation for women with incontinence. I laughed like a drain.
Today I read some of the paper, but if a paper is going to arrive on our doorstep, couldn't it be The New York Times? The front page had stories about DU hockey and a war widow while stories about the Japanese hostages, the September 11th commission, and protests in Taiwan were buried elsewhere in the front section. DU and the widow belonged in the "Denver and the West" section, which I enjoy. It's just not a paper with a national or international perspective.
Mostly the weekly wodge of newsprint means that Blake gets fresh flooring more often than previously.
---
RDC primed the ceiling and I put another coat of white on the closet shelves, which are a pain in my ass. I am halfway through War and Peace, anyway, which I wouldn't be if the shelves were less annoying.
Counters on Wednesday!
---
I weeded, since the weeds as well as my darling plants are thriving in the moist soil. I expect the vegetable seeds have been drowned, but potatoes are sprouting in the compost. I don't have a good idea of how potatoes grow. I mean, I understand how a plant grows from a potato, but how a plant develops other tubers in the course of a season I don't know. Do they spread a lot? How do you know where a potato might lurk? Would they work in my south garden? I have been tempted to grow potatoes ever since Nisou responded to my surprise that her family grew them with praise of the bite-sized baked potato.
---
The clevernesses in The Well of Lost Plots are often too clever for my best enjoyment. I do, of course, appreciate that Lenny is allowed to spend his free time in the park set aside for the overabundance left over from Watership Down.
Whereas the clevernesses in the Cyclops episode of Ulysses are far more clever than I will ever be equal to. Is there anything Joyce didn't know? How much everyone hates Leopold Bloom, and why, is grating. The Irish history lesson was nothing new: I am my father's daughter, and there are some exaggerations I took in on his knee. Or at his other heel, his left one being occupied by a dog, on our long ramblings in the woods.