Picture of a Man
Calvin Forbes
He draws a man
bright swirls of red.
And I say give me a tree.
He points to the middle
of his red and says,
“There’s a tree!”
Tonight without complaining
he goes off to sleep
asking why in his storybook
the big boats have little
boats. He shouts
goodnight: I ask if he wants
the light out–
he says no, that he can’t see
without the light.
A different excuse than
last night when he was plain scared.
Later I turn off the light –
his face soft as a breast.
And I know then what another man
meant when he said
maybe I could have loved
better
but I couldn’t have loved more.
I thought of a woman
like that once.
This child is all I have left.
pea

I am hoping to get more people to come read my blog by doing this….Hi I am Kerryanne…I am a college student…and I am really fun to talk to (just ask Eka!) I think most of my posts are intresting….for a while I gave up posting because I didn’t think anyone cared to read my blog but now I am hoping to become a little bit more popular…
check me out at www.snazzykat.com/tinkerbell !

I’m the cute one!!
I love you Eka you rock!!!

If you could have the life of another blogger for a day, who would it be, and why?

1. What, precisely, does it take to get an Outback restaurant in a town?
2. If you have a declawed cat and you bring home another cat, is it better to have that cat declawed as well?
3. Am I strange for not wanting to have my (potential future) sons circumcised at birth, but instead let them choose that path later?
4. What make McDonald’s cheap pancakes so darn addicting? Is it the syrup?
5. Is my digital scale conspiring against me by adding and subtracting eight pounds at random? What is suitable punishment for such an act?
6. If a TV network reads names from a list of soldiers who have died in action, is it automatically an inherently political act?
7. Where did my concentration go?
8. Will I be a good father some day? Can I convince myself of either answer?
9. If a car leaves Point A at 74 miles an hour, and a second car leaves ten minutes later going 75 miles an hour, where are my car keys?
10. How in the world did “Smarties” get that name? Should the person who made them so addictive be pelted with Sweet Tarts until they cry?
Love the blog, Erika. Someday, Squeaky and I will get to Boston. No, really.
Sincerely, Z. Hendirez
http://www.zippyhendirez.blogspot.com (yes, a blogspot account. Sue me! )

A big street party . . . for all can be had every April 29th (night) and 30th (day) in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, as part of Queen’s Day (Koningsdag). I’m living just outside of A’dam, in a litte city called Leiden, and it’s just lovely. There is much more to the country than pot; for example, there are Rembrandts, Vermeers, and the amazing train system.
Anyway, I just got back from the Queen’s Day celebration. The Netherlands is a constitutional monarchy, which no one (who doesn’t live here) seems to know. Our Queen is Queen Beatrix and she’s lovely. Queen’s Day is NOT her birthday, but it is a day to wear lots of orange (the royal color) and be outside all day with the rest of the Dutch people in the country. There are even free concerts all over A’dam.
It really was quite wonderful and fun. If you’ve ever thought about coming to the Netherlands, and like huge parties, come on April 28th and stay until early May. You’ll get to see the country and celebrate in style. Just remember to book your hotel room early.
brought to you by Elay of Ontogeny Recapitulates Phylogeny.

I signed away my firstborn this morning when the Home Depot guy AND the contractor came to look at the roof. Looks like we could possibly be rid of the ghetto-unfabulous current roof in as soon as two weeks. I’m saving our secondborn child for the siding guy – we’ll be meeting with him in the next few weeks.
I took a break from the “too much to do” list and spent the rest of the day with Alisa and baby Keegan. The center was having a huge rally, so we stopped by and saw a whole bunch of teens we hadn’t seen in forever. Then, over dinner, Alisa said she and I were like Monica and Rachel in the previews for tonight’s episode. I watched it while walking on the treadmill – and she was so right. Talk about making me bawl -
- considering just moments before, I was on a bit of a high. I came home tonight to a message on the answering machine from the Director of the school I really want to teach in this fall. Looks like I’ll be calling and setting up an interview first thing in the morning!
Now – on to grading papers and finishing up plans for tomorrow’s class. Is the semester over yet?

Randomness on a late April morning, live from the Eka household:

Today just sucks. Come to think of it, the past few days have sucked. The end of the semester is just a nightmare – papers, drafts, finals, student meetings, craziness. I’ve been on campus since 7, I got to sneak out for a minute because a student stood me up, I have to go back momentarily – and will be going, going, going until 7 tonight. Throw in there that my computer got some funky-ass virus last night and that I slept like shit because my evening was all thrown off – I’m not a very vibrant, cheery eka today, that’s for shit’s sure. Coffee hasn’t done anything but give me one mother of an overtired headache. The poor kids in class this morning were like, What is wrong with you? My sorry ass is draaaaaaagging.
Anyway, I have a confession. I wanted to post about it last night, but oh yeah – there was something eating my poor, already-destroyed machine -

View the rest of this entry…

So I saved a puppy today. It wasn’t really a puppy as much as it was a fairly large, beautiful collie-sheltie-looking dog. She was running loose back and forth across a really busy street, so I pulled over and chased her down. She had a lead attached to her color, but no tag. Beautiful, well-taken care of – so I’m sure someone’s going to get home from work and freak out that the dog is gone.
Luckily, a contractor drove by and stopped – apparently he’s used to dealing with loose animals because he had animal control on speed dial. I waited with her until they picked her up, and made sure I got a number to call and check on her. I called Jay a little later on to tell him that “I saved a dog, I saved a dog!”
His reply? An I-know-where-this-is-going, “Let me guess – and if in one week no one claims her, we have ourselves a dog.”
If he were home, he would have seen my puppy-dog eyes, but he wasn’t and I was in the car by myself, so I put the puppy-dog eyes away and quickly reassured him that I was certain the doggy-family was a good family and they would go get her tonight.
But if they don’t…. they’ll hold her for ten days. I mean, really, if she’s there for a whole ten days, well, we can’t in good conscience let her stay there any longer….
I better work on my puppy-dog pout, ’cause I don’t think the puppy-dog eyes alone are gunna work for this one.

Apparently, love transcends all languages – I’ve found quite a few non-English blogs in my referrers in the past few days, all linking to the Love-In.
My favorite so far? “El 25 de Abril fue el blogger love-in day. Chale. Algo de sexo anal diviertanse.”
I have no idea what chale means. Same for algo and diviertanse. And while babelfish provides very little insight, I am, however, smart enough to figure out what “sexo anal” probably means – and it’s enough that maybe, just maybe, I really don’t want to know what chale, algo and diviertanse mean anyway.
Translation, anyone?