"See you in hell, small fry."

Our she-danio hatched another brood, and I managed to get four fry into the breeder tank-within-a-tank. Three promptly vanished. I assumed they slipped out the tiny vents and were eaten but I didn't want to share this theory with Rocketboy. He had his own theory.

"Maybe," he mused, "they went to h-e-l-l." Which prompted Hombre's remark above.

Odd. First because we don't talk about people (or fish) going to hell. That's just not our thing, although on trying days I long to use the threat of eternal damnation to bring the kids into line. Also, because he spelled it. He's been watching "A Boy Named Charlie Brown" all week and is now a little obsessed with spelling bees.

A-n-y-w-a-y one fry remains in the mini-tank, eating the fish version of baby food and flitting about like a hair with eyes. A nice biology lesson, assuming we can keep the little guy on the path of righteousness.

Victory garden update

The lettuce has bolted. I wish it a fond farewell and plan to compost what's left later today. It had a tasty run.

The peaches are a little bigger than marbles now. Dogzilla chases birds obsessively. I hope that will cut down on pecked fruit.

Dewberries and blackberries have green fruit and more blossoms. The dewberries are wild; the blackberries are thornless 'Apache.' They bear the first year! After a disastrous attempt at a strawberry patch a couple years ago with a friend, I decided to start very small here. Now I wish I'd gone whole hog -- our few 'Chandler' plants are doing well.

Herbs: The cilantro has set seed -- I'll be collecting it later this week. Basil seeds are in the ground, and I eagerly await their sproutage. We have enormous rosemary shrubs out front but (1) I'm allergic to rosemary and (2) every he-dog in the 'hood pisses on them so I leave them well alone. My chocolate mint and spearmint are doing so-so -- I put them in a container so they wouldn't swamp the garden and I think they resent it.

Roots: Carrots and onions (1015s) are just about done. We're already eating the thinnings. Garlic should be ready soon!

Tomatoes: The real reason people garden. Mine are still small and none has set fruit yet. I've got 'Yellow Pear,' 'Lemon Boy,' 'Early Girl,' and something else out there. The peppers are a mixed bag. The cayenne has already got green peppers, but the bells are taking their time getting going.

Rocketboy has been reading about gardening and wants to plant a Three-Sisters-style hill with our strawberry corn, pole beans and watermelon seeds. Perhaps today. I'll let you know how it works out.

I'm waiting for the liver-n-onion plant

The Independent says scientists can now insert human liver genes into rice plants to make them resistant to a variety of herbicides. On the one hand, how interesting. On all the other hands, ick. Next thing you know, Soylent Green really will be people.

Shhhh! Rocketboy is asleep!

They're both asleep actually, which is a major miracle at 8 p.m. I am almost done knitting my first non-scarf garment -- a boatneck shell for myself. I'll post pix when it's done. And then what am I going to do? Another scarf. Retrenching is always good, and my little brother wants one like the scarf worn by the Doubtful Guest. He says it should be red and white. Okay, then.

Shop of fools

I was out with the baby thrifting for a couple of hours. I looked like hell on my own but great next to Hurricanehead. He was snuffly, red-eyed with allergies and had smeared cookie goo all over his head and the belly of his onesie. He wore no shoes and his haircut has grown out into something like a mullet. Precious as he is, with him on my hip we could've been the cover shot for Modern Slattern.

In the checkout line, I saw a small bookcase. Fifties vintage, with an open back and shelves canted toward the rear. It was a perfect match for one I have, and I asked the clerk if it was for sale or on hold. Usually at this store if you want to hold a piece of furniture you have to pay for it right then, and they put a sold tag on it while you finish shopping. There was no tag, but it was awfully close to the counter.

"On hold," she said, then paused. "But that was a looooong time ago. I don't know if that lady's still here."

She rang up my stuff slowly. (I've dealt with her before. This gal just does not zip along.) I wanted the bookcase if it was available, so I pressed the issue.

"Do you think she's still here?" I asked.

"I don't know," she drawled. "I haven't seen her in a looong time. I'll go look around."

And she did. Forever. The line behind me grew. Children became restless. Older women looked at my kid's grubby face and gave me the hairy eyeball. Hurricanehead decided to practice his high-pitched screaming. Finally, the cashier returned.

"She's not here," she said. "I'll sell it to you."

And she did. Just as she handed me my copy of the receipt, she looked up, pointed to a woman in the blouse section and said loudly,

"Maybe that's her! Ma'am?!"

Great, I thought. Now I have to keep holding up the line while my child screams and we do a refund. Which at this store goes about as quickly as applying for a mortgage.

The woman ambled over. Then the cashier did something unbelievable. Of all the ways she had to handle a mix-up, she chose what I think was arguably the worst.

"You know that thing?" she asked the woman, loudly enough for everyone in line to hear. "She just bought it," she said, pointing at me.

"You sold it to me," I stammered. Oh, brother. I was ready to get my card back out and submit to the refund process when the woman opened her mouth.

"My little table?" she asked.

"No, I bought a bookcase," I said. Whew -- we weren't talking about the same item.

Except that, incredibly, we were. I looked at it again. Remember, open back, canted shelves. No flat surface on top, about six inches wide. How the hell, I found myself thinking, could anyone mistake this for a table? And then my id said, Don't back off. This bookcase needs a good home. She'll take it home and throw it out when her dinner slides onto the floor.

The line behind me grew more restless. The clerk began to explain that she'd searched the store for the woman, which everyone in line could attest to. The woman ducked her head and ran out of the store.

She came back in as I was carrying a bag to the car and complained to me that it wasn't fair that I had bought her table. I told her I was sorry, but the clerk had looked all over the store for her and thought she had left. She ran out again, slowly. It was kind of awkward as I was right next to her as we headed to our cars. I briefly wondered if she might attack me, but mostly I just kept wondering, How could she think it's a table? She drove away. Good.

When I went back in to get the bookshelf, a woman in line asked, "Did she just come back in and confront you?" Yep. The cashier laughed and said, "We're in trouble now." Speak for yourself, I thought.

I like my bookcase. I just wish it didn't come with weird baggage attached.

A slowly evolving list of resources

I dig Darwin. Okay, not his dated, sometimes offensive writing style in Voyage of the Beagle. But his theory of natural selection rocks. It also scares folks who believe it's a sin to think, presumably because they might accidentally outwit God. My down-home sampler of Darwin-related nuttiness:

Saddest: Hombre, as a junior in his East-Texas high school, was one of a few students in his class who didn't bring a Bible the day (the day?!) evolution was to be discussed, not in science class of course but in "honors" world history. A fellow student asked him if he'd grow more hair on his arms if he moved to Alaska. I fault the teacher for this, as Hombrito's questioner clearly didn't understand the difference between Darwin's and Lamarck's theories. Duh.

Most absurd: My friend was decorating her son's room. The kid loves science, and she'd found the perfect wallpaper border, depicting a timeline of the universe from the Big Bang forward. Her SIL came unglued at the very idea of such heretical wallpaper. Even though it went perfectly with the comforter of the apocalypse.

Most infuriating: A mom at a homeschool gathering, assuming we all believed the way she did, went off on evolution as a religion. "If you add oxygen their whole theory falls apart," she kept saying, clearly not having studied the role anaerobic bacterial respiration played in creating the atmosphere we have now. When I pointed out that not everyone present shared her beliefs, she called me an extremist.

Worst implications for the future: We were at the library. A homeschooling mom sat with her two kids going over a stack of books. She opened one, perused, and quickly snapped it shut.

"Oh, no," she said in a loud, preachy tone. "This is an evolution book. We only choose creation books." and then she gave me a smug look. I rolled my eyes so far back in my head I thought they'd get stuck, took my science boy, and stumbled out of the area. Hombre and I later wondered why such a person would even encourage her children to read. After all, they might encounter other big bad ideas in a book someday.

Texas is always in a wad about teaching evolution in public schools. It's been pitifully amusing 'til now, but Michael Ennis explains in the April Texas Monthly that it's about to bite us in the tail in terms of jobs. We do very, very poorly in science education, specifically in teaching evolution. As biotech becomes a larger industry, we're not going to have a qualified workforce to lure or keep employers here.

For those of you who, like me, want your kids to understand the world we live in, here are some evolution-related resources we like. I would love to hear what you recommend, too.

Our Family Tree: An Evolution Story by Lisa Westberg Peters. Peters explains scientific principles beautifully in her kids' books, and this picture book is, I think, her best. She not only explains the general timeline of evolution, but does a great job of emphasizing the common threads that run through the timeline. And it's written in a lovely, warm style.

The Human Body: How We Evolved by Joanna Cole. Geared for slightly older kids, and with a more detailed history of hominid evolution and lots of line drawings. Cole is the author of about three million books, including the Magic School Bus series. Love the Bus books or not, the woman knows how to put ideas across to kids. And this book lacks the visual clutter of the School Bus books.

The Real Eve is a video that traces modern humans' movement from East Africa into Asia and beyond. Very dramatic, with exploding volcanoes and sea crossings and interviews with researchers, it's one that rewards repeat viewings.

I really would like this list to evolve so let me hear what you're using.

Summer Hummer bummer

If gas is getting so expensive, then why do I see so many shiny new Hummers on the road? Saw two yesterday at an intersection near my house. Saw two near my brother-in-law's up near Dallas a couple of weeks ago. There's a dealership loaded with them in a nearby burg. Haven't seen the Barbie Hummer in a while, though. Perhaps it's out at the Malibu beach house.

I heard on NPR recently that gas prices are expected to stay high for the next year at least. I guess anyone who buys a Hummer doesn't care what they pay for gas. Fine. They probably don't care what other people think of them. Okay. And I'm guessing that not many Hummer drivers actually manned humvees in the military. Fair enough. What concerns me is the proliferation of heavy vehicles that drivers insist on piloting as if they were cars, instead of factoring in the extra weight and driving accordingly.

Whenever I see a Hummer or Excursion or the like on the road, I think briefly about gas costs and then longer about how the body on one of those things rides high enough to overrun the door on a smaller vehicle.

A few days ago someone driving an SUV (a Chevy, not a Hummer) ran a red light near my home. Happens every day of the week. It's hard to get those things to stop on a short yellow. Although this particular time, my neighbor's daughter was hit by that SUV and killed. Family and friends have to adjust to a sadder, emptier life, and a soldier was called home from Iraq for a funeral instead of his wedding.

Got to be careful out there, folks. Even people who don't care about expensive gas or the state of the environment should care about safety. Isn't that a reason people buy those big rigs?

Monday = Rocketboy's picks of the week

This week Rocketboy turns his attention to the finer points of outdoor living. Thus his picks for ideal kid living are

• eating barbecue
• having a treehouse, which is a major dream of his, and
• planting good climbing trees.

Enjoy!

Gettin' my old on

Such a week. We buried my great-aunt Wednesday. I would go on about her, but she told us that when she left we would deal with things as they are, not the way we want them to be.

I'm now down to two "old ladies" in my family from a childhood high of about a dozen. All these women were like bonus grandmothers to me, and in some cases I was closer to them than to my actual grandmothers.

I like to think that I've folded into my psyche the lessons I've learned from these women, even if they weren't overtly teaching me anything. I know they have shaped the way I operate in the world. And I find, to my idiot surprise, that as I get older I'm becoming more like my old ladies in my worldview and interests.

Take knitting, for pete's sake, or vegetable gardening. I have a mending day each week and I wear a hat when I work in the garden. This is not the person I imagined I'd be when I was twelve and couldn't think of anything duller than being old. Now you couldn't pay me to be twelve again.

My old ladies have been able to indulge in certain habits that, sadly, are either out of reach for me or no longer advisable. There will be no chain-smoking, no standing Valium prescription, no big black Christian Dior cat's-eye bifocal sunglasses with green lenses for me. I can't afford to get my hair done every week. And as much as I would love to pan-fry a big fat hamburger in Crisco, melt a wedge of Velveeta over it and follow it up with fudge-iced cake for a dessert, it's not going to happen right now. Perhaps given a few more years I'll think it's an excellent plan.

Wrapping up a good life

My attendance here will be spotty for awhile. A beloved great-aunt is in her last hours in another city, although she really left us a few weeks back.

I have the task/punch in the gut/honor of writing her obituary to send to her local paper. What to say? How can I limn an entire life in a few words?

I once asked Auntie D if I could interview her for our family history, and after some thought she declined, saying they'd had no books, "no pleasures," in her childhood home and that she'd rather not think back on it. I do know that she lived through a tornado when she was four, cowering in a bedroom with her parents as the twister tore the roof off their farmhouse. She told me she used flashes of lightning to see and keep from stepping on splintered pieces of their home as she ran barefoot to the barn for shelter from the storm.

I knew her as a well-read, gracious retiree who brought huge boxes of books to her nieces and nephews for every special occasion and just because. Someone who, even in her eighties, read constantly and was not averse to hitchhiking around her Hill Country town and going down to watch the river at flood stage over my mother's protests. If she feared anything, she kept it to herself.

My great-aunt made a good life from the most threadbare of beginnings. She had the confidence of someone who had always been self-sufficient and the generosity that comes with that self-assurance.

She insisted for years on her desire to die alone in her own home. The in-her-own-home part was not possible, but she is indeed dying alone, in part because she's in isolation and in part because we are honoring her wishes.

"It's how we all go, anyway," she used to tell me. That refrain, combined with "Oh, things can always get worse" used to make me think she was awfully morbid for such a sweet old gal. In fact she was a self-made realist and truth-teller, and even though I know she's ready to leave I hate to see her go.

Martha Who?

Spring is delivering warm breezes and lush rains, and I am up to my ass in roses. I'm not a rose person, but someone who once lived here was obviously a hobbyist rosarian. All eight shrubs out back are going full bore. So I filled an heirloom vase (all right, an empty honey jar that normally holds sippy-cup straws) with fat pink flowers for the kitchen table.

Past experience led me to think of roses as finicky, disappointing plants, but these are not the spindly stalks of my youth. They look good, they smell good, they're free and they have no icky chemicals on them. Beats buying the ones flown in from Colombia.

I got spooked by florist flowers recently after Hombre brought me some astrolomeria that lasted three weeks. It was like vase of the living dead. But today I was able to kick back and watch Hurricanehead feed rose petals to the dog with nary a twinge of anxiety. Pretty cool, even for someone who's not into roses.

I've been called out

You go out of town for a few days and come back to find you're stuck inside a Book Meme, courtesy of the Barking Moonbat:

Book meme! Passed on ...

You're stuck inside Fahrenheit 451, which book do you want to be?

Chicken Soup for the Whatever. That way I can warm myself by the flickering flames of more interesting works.

Have you ever had a crush on a fictional character?

George Bush's Compassionate Conservative! Wouldn't it be cool (or at least marginally better) if he existed?

The last book you bought is:

Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi. I think between Hombre and me we've given about three copies as gifts so far.

The last book you read:

In Praise of Slowness by Carl Honore. I returned it overdue so the message must've gotten through to me. It supercharged my nutty knitting-gardening-walking-homeschooling frame of mind, although I guess supercharging wasn't the point.

What are you currently reading?

The Stitch N Bitch Handbook by Debbie Stoller. Knitting is turning out to be great for car trips (unless I'm driving) and doing something with my hands while watching the kids.

Five books you would take to a deserted island

• How to Stay Alive in the Woods by Bradford Angier, for retro survivalist tips
  
• Wildflowers of Texas by Geyata Ajilvsgi so I could finally learn the names of the million types of yellow wildflowers my friends always ask me to identify
• a good dictionary
• Naked by David Sedaris and
• Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri because it sounds good and I haven't been able to get hold of it yet

Who are you going to pass this stick to (3 persons) and why?
Noteworthy to Kristin, as a welcome-to-the-blogosphere gift
Zeebahtronic, because it might get her mind off rising real estate costs, neck hair and spam
and Bobinrob, always good book, movie and music references going on there

Texas wants to protect my marriage!

As a variant on my reproductive-rights rant, I now say that when Republicans say they're for smaller government, they mean one that will fit into your bedroom.

HJR 6, a proposed state-constitution amendment banning gay marriage, may be voted out of committee soon. There were plenty of folks at yesterday's hearing explaining why this is a hateful, discriminatory plan.

And then there's Warren Chisum, the resolution's author, peddling his own patented version of reality:

"You can't find anyone in this amendment that's discriminated against," said Rep. Warren Chisum, R-Pampa, who wrote the amendment and sponsored the state's Defense of Marriage Act passed during the 2003 legislative session. "Homosexuals coming up and saying, 'We're married, too.' That's what this protects [married couples] against."

Thanks, Warren, but no thanks. Hombre and I can maintain our own marriage without any interference from the state, and we can mind our own damn business while doing so.

Not Rocketboy's Monday picks

R'boy is with his grandmother all week. So Hurricanehead offers his picks for fine toddler living as best he can, being very modestly verbal.

• Gibbons -- good for some laughs at the zoo, especially if they have a five-story playscape on which to cavort.
• Carousel horses -- good for riding while looking up at the lights and saying "wow" like a stoner 500 times during the ride. Be aware: Etiquette demands that you scream as if being peeled when it's time to disembark.
• Howler monkeys -- good for howling. May also entertain your older brother by pooping while he applauds.

We took the kids to Ft. Worth for the weekend and to do the grandma drop. The only thing better than two train rides and the zoo is to, completely by chance, have your Blue Angels-obsessed boy spot a Blue Angel jet overhead at the zoo. Right, we said, when he told us what it was. Little did we know (until we read the paper the next day) there was a two-day Blue Angels air show about 20 miles away.

So as we left the hotel for day 2 of the zoo, we saw them flying in formation in the distance. As we walked we could see them zooming along the horizon and doing some tall loops, but they were so far away it was easy to confuse them with birds.

At least until six of them flew in formation over the river by the station where we were waiting for a train. We could see the yellow detailing on the wings. I have never seen so many genuinely rapt little kids. As lagniappe goes, it was all right.

The real cost of staying home with the kids

The kids were acting so grumpy yesterday I thought I'd lose my mind. I called Hombre at the office, hoping for some consolation. There I was, sleep-deprived and trapped with my tooty kids; I knew my man would give up the sympathy.

But what he said made me feel utterly alone in the world:

"I just ate a whole pint of ice cream in two minutes! And I get to split prize winnings of nine dollars and forty cents!"

Screw the income, what I miss about working outside the home is the food.