09/09/09

I'm taking part in an 09/09/09 Diary project and writing down events and conversations from the day. Here are nine things that I've noticed so far:

1) I woke up at 6:00 a.m. wishing that I had gotten nine hours of sleep.

2) My daughter started 9th grade today. Before she left for school, my three-year-old warned, "Watch out for pickpockets!"

3) At the breakfast table my nine-year-old son told us the title and author of a potential book: "How to Make Split-Second Decisions," by Oliver Sutten.

4) 9 times out of 10 I can turn my little one's perspective around. Our morning drive went something like this: O: It's a bad day. Me: Why is it a bad day? O: It's foggy. Me: I think it's magical. Look outside real hard and then all of a sudden you see a tree pop out! O: Look, I see one!
Later, at school, O said to the school administrator: It's a magical day today because the trees poofed out of the fog!

5) At nine o'clock I noticed a dad taking a picture of his two yellow-raincoated children in front of school. I mentally patted myself on the back for bringing my camera and a raincoat for child #3's sendoff to preschool. I hung his raincoat on his hook but he sent me on my way before I could take a picture. I rushed away gratefully to retrieve his lunch that I had forgotten in the fridge.

6) Then I took a side trip to the pediatrician's office, where I picked up my youngest's medical forms, which are nine days overdue at his school.

7) A fellow preschool mom was telling me about her nine-year-old's school anxiety. When I commiserated and told her my kids were the same way, she said, "Oh, I forgot, you're a pro." Later on I realized I should have replied, "No, just pro-lific." Unfortunately my brain always quips too late.

8) The fog burned away by mid-morning. The sun shone down from a patch of sky between the clouds, and the world was green and golden. Goldenrods are blooming in great clumps now (many more than nine!), arching their slender, feathered necks and golden tassels on the margins where human maintenance meets gentled nature: along roadsides; in a tall line behind a split-rail fence; in squared rows in a fallow field; in an arrow-shaped patch pointing to the tree line at the top of a horse pasture; waving slowly in a meadow that was once a farm and now a nature preserve; along the treed border between neighboring farms; covering a gentle berm of bulldozed earth; in wispy traces on the rock island dividing the creek into two streams under the swinging bridge. They are at once half-wild weeds, a nuisance, a vibrant coda to summer, and prelude to the onset of yellowing leaves.

9) My son and I stopped by the creek after school. We saw a Great Blue heron patiently waiting for fish just under the dam. It was a still, deliberate creature, capturing its prey with a swift, deliberate jab. (Sorry, only one heron, not nine.)

I've also included two photos from our family visit to the New York State fair, for the sole reason that bunnies and pigs are cute, though the first thing that came to my mind when I was editing the pig photo was "bacon on the hoof." I have a one-track carnivore mind.