Schedules and a zoo anecdote

This week I had my sister in town. Gleek had a special evening performance. Kiki and I had a dinner to attend. I went to the zoo. I sent Howard off for a convention trip. And I prepared us all to take a trip ourselves. Add to that the complications of trying to get six children to go to sleep in two bedrooms when putting two awake children in the same room virtually guarantees that they will not fall asleep. Bedtime has been rather like one of those riddles where you have multiple animals and a single boat which can’t hold them all at once, only certain animals can not be left alone together. Every night we’ve managed to figure it out, but every night the solution has been different.

The breakage in routine has also interfered with the brainspace that I use to form blog entries. So instead of thinking up something myself, I’m just going to tell the anecdote that I told to Howard and that he said I should blog.

I was at the zoo with my sister, her two kids, and Patch. The day was chilly and rainy, so we took refuge in the Small Animal House. Most of the visitors in the park had the same idea. The place was pretty crowded. My sister and I quickly noticed a dichotomy of interests. Her daughter was interested by large mammals like giraffes. Patch was far more interested in snakes, turtles, lizards, and bugs. He was in heaven in the Small Animal House. He led me from window to window. He pointed to each animal and demanded to know what it was called. I’d read the plaque next to the exhibit and give him the name. Sometimes we would stay for a minute to watch the animal other times we moved on immediately. The pace picked up and the demands of “What’s this?” flew fast and furious. We wound our way to the very last exhibit. Then Patch turned to me with wide eyes and said “How do you know all this stuff?” Apparently he thought I was just pulling all these names out of my own memory. I pointed out the plaques and told him I was reading. He thought that was pretty cool too.