When I was home last week my mother gave me a book she used to read to us when we were small, The Tenggren Mother Goose. It was first published in the 1940s (click on the book if you want to see a really enourmous image of the cover) and apart from the fantastically Scandinavian illustrations (you might remember having a Tenggren nightmare after somebody read you The Poky Little Puppy) there's also that wildly creepy strain of Brothers Grimm thinking that I think they banned from childhood once Holly Hobby made the scene. I flip through this book every night with Jackson before he nods off and I thank God he can't read yet when I see how some of these rhymes actually end. The old woman who lived in a shoe? She had a lot of kids, yeah, but she knew what to do, she gave them some broth and she gave them some bread and then she fucking whipped their asses and sent them to bed. Then on several other pages there's a bunch of animals that get the shit beaten out of them, as well as some fucked up marriages (viz. Punch and Judy), and it also turns out that if you don't do your laundry until Saturday -- WELL! "They that wash on Saturday, Oh! they are sluts indeed." This book is fucking killing me.
Today at the park, where I was trying to get Jackson's balsa-wood-and-rubber-band airplane to fly anywhere but into the koi pond, we saw a couple getting their wedding pictures taken. She looked like she'd stepped straight out of Sense and Sensibility, and he looked like he'd just time traveled in from the Zoot Suit wars. They also had a mariachi band getting warmed up before the ceremony, which was about to take place in a quieter corner of the park. Good luck to them, I hope they find some common ground for themselves somewhere in the sixteenth century.
Jack has a gig in Ventura tonight and Jackson's in bed so I'm flying solo. I've got half a bottle of wine left but all the animal crackers are gone, so it looks like it's time to move on to shots of twelve-year-old tawny port and fudge-covered Oreos while I reply to four weeks' worth of e-mails. Yes, maybe you're right, I should just finish what's left in my glass and go to bed. Thank you, I often need a steadying hand like yours before I step off the curb into oncoming traffic. God bless us every one. Good night.