Oprah Lives

We ended up getting new wood floors for the guest wing to help Li'l A's allergies as well as my mom's, got a bigger car (a Toyota Highlander Hybrid that seats seven and uses less gas than our old five-seater), and found Kuroji the puppy.

I dunno how or what Li'l A knows about Oprah, but he makes a good point. Sitting down to breakfast and looking forward to the day, he says: "It's like Oprah was here."

Agree.

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New Heights

A certain person in our house is at a growth spurt, and each new inch brings her a whole new strata of discoveries. This last month has been a crucial one that put her at eye level with several tall cabinets. She keeps bringing me little boxes and trinkets that have been in exactly the same place since we moved here to exclaim how about how awesome it is and what's it for and did I know we had this awesome wonderful amazing beautiful thing?

Yes, baby.

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The apple that fell close to its mama tree

Some of us are hippies and some of us are simply... hip.
(T-shirt via me; headband glory via Baby A.)

Flow

Amma, my mom, teases me about living in a village because her family has been city folk for over three generations. (Her grandfathers--her actual, biological grandfather and his younger brother--ran away from their new stepmother to make their fortunes as diamond merchants and to write poetry in Madras. Childhood memories of visits to any jeweler in the city is replete with Amma's oh-so-casual mention of the Jalagam name resulting in a flurry of special treatment.)

But on a day like today when Big A and I needed to talk through stuff, I'm glad I live in this village and across from Glen Helen. Talking about how we spend our free time and what social commitments I make on our collective behalf--which we really needed to do--is so much easier when I'm concentrating on how to navigate stepping stones across a waterlogged creek rather than on how to word watertight demands.

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The Graduate (Li'l A)

Li'l A is off to conquer middle school! Also seen: ribbons on hardware won for being all round awesome (blue) and for being on the student council (white).

Super Short Summary: Li'l A sat in the first row with his best friend DD; Baby A delighted in being able to nab two pieces of cake; Big A scoffed at the idea of a graduation ceremony for elementary school, but came anyway; I'm sure he secretly wished he hadn't because I cried about four million times.

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Lifestyle

(Memorial Day)
This planet now pills
every star's still sequins
entrails of every flight
bark asylum, loss--
show tasseled claws

Shredding underworlds
serve cold, stale smoke +
streetlight-plastered night.
There's sensing I will die
in driving, airports, absence.

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AN(T)IMUS

Now that everyone's
looking, let's say it:
Ants know nothing
they travel illegibly

you're a windmill
fielding vacuums
while they prowl
decompositional

splicing suburbia,
picnics; where
I like when you lie
(above me, hovering)

love scissored restless
wake up happy wake up
margins of repeated dying
sun our un-tempered hope.

________________
Note: Not so much a poem about Memorial Day festivities as the memory of Big A's complaints about being "over-scheduled" although he attended just one of yesterday's three planned events. (The kids and I went to all three. Ha.) We'll have to find some way to accommodate my need for variety and his need for quiet.