The Life of the Wife...

I've made a new discovery, for which I'm very grateful. Arthur has a new fun thing. He thinks it's the funniest thing ever when I lean over him and say, loudly and clearly, "The rain in Spain stays mainly in the plain." He'll look up at me, his eyes will get very wide and he'll start to giggle. I can say "The rain in Spain..." for about five minutes without loss of amusement factor.

I can tell you that I'm being sure to ennunciate very carefully.

Yesterday, Mark made the Savoure girls cry when he shook their hands goodbye. I'm still not sure what I'm going to do with my Wednesday mornings.

The Library is an OK place to go... except that Mark is convinced that if I take Arthur there too many times one of us will catch consumption. There are some times when I agree with him; the other day one of the patrons at their cafe sounded like she was going to cough her lung out.

I could go to Sweet Life... they've got nice pastries. But only so-so tea. At least they're not as loud (or expensive) as Cafe Zenon. Marche would be OK, but it's a bar; and I can't very well bring an infant into a bar, can I.

I've thought that maybe I should simply have the full moon days be days when I have my own tea salon and cocktail hour. With eurdite subjects like

• The use of griffin imagry from Babalon to England
• The alure of intelligent design
• Short presentations of music and poetry
• Why can't downtown Eugene support tea salons?

Hmmm. It's tempting. And I suppose it would motivate me to clean the house a bit more.

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In an only slightly different direction, I was reviewing the pictures I've taken to my various visits to the MET and I've noticed something. As I looked at the pictures, I had a sense of pleasure that seemed, well, a little odd. I mean, sure, it's nice to see pictures of old artefacts and dead people's jewelry and tombstones; and Mark would chime in at this point that having pictures is a whole lot nicer than cluttering up our house with acheological knick-knacks. But I felt a little like a safari hunter reviewing animals heads as I looked at my MET pictures for the hundredth time.

And, I'll admit it; I would like to wear the golden diadam of Hyksos Princess (Dynast 15 (ca. 1640-1540 BCE) Gold, carnelian, amethyst, lapis lazuli, sard, rock crystal, steatite, and faience) with the little ibex and gazelle heads and flowers. But what about the other stuff -- you can't wear an insense holder or a
hieroglyphic inscription or a statue.

And then I looked a little more closely; I relized that a lot of the art that I like in the MET has something to do with processionals and feasts. Even the Christian art; the expulsions and assumptions are movements from one place to another. Those insense holders and
funky bronze quadruped ritual items from Anatolia, the rhytons, the Proto-Elamite kneeling silver bull; they're all props for a grand entrance to a party. Even the sundials and clockworks measure the processions of the heavens.

Maybe "procession" as the ultimate expression in all art can be another cocktail hour topic.