ANHINGA!

And in this morning's paper we discover that it rained five inches in the 24 hours of Monday. I asked Jim how much snow that would have been. He said multiply by 12, which would have been 5 FEET of snow. "Too bad we don't have global cooling," he said as we watched the gunnite truck with its long long snow crab leg lounging over the neighbor's new garage putting in what looks like a property line to property line cement patio. Yesterday I heard on Steve Scher's weekday show that city planners are thinking what we need to be doing is restoring to each plot of ground, especially in built areas ie my neighborhood, the ability to deal with its own water, which is to say eliminating runoff by such means as increasing permeable surface, like the new Ballard Library did by planting grass on their roof, collecting water for irrigation, laundry, flushing and filtering it for drinking. Part of the problem the planner said with our Puget Sound storm sewer system is also that it is tied to the sewage sewer system so that when we get for example five inches of rain in a 24 hour period raw sewage flows directly into the Sound.

Momentarily I leave for my osteopath appointment which I hope will shed some light and relief on my irritated nerve. Actually I don't care if light is involved. I want to walk like a person and not jerk to a halt while my after surge of nerve pulse calms down to a walkable normal.

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Later that same day, when she was supposed to be putting together a syllabus for a ten day poetry workshop series for seventh graders, Laura encountered a thank you to a list serve which had the phrase "in this era of Pop Tarts and Little Debbie" which she felt compelled to copy into this blog.

In the Era of Pop Tarts and Little Debbie

where all is sweetness and flouncy dresses
even what is tart is sweet
comfort warm as a gag reflex