My friends...

I was going to write about the use of the vertical in the Ocean Park paintings of Richard Diebenkorn. However, the St. Anthony of Padua Institute is planning something very exciting and we had an emergency work meeting, leaving me with little time to write. And, I am trying to get fellow home-schoolers up in arms in an effective way (have I ever mentioned how much I hate petitions and letter writing?). So, even though I have done a lot of preparation for this Diebenkorn essay, it will have to wait until next week (inlaws are coming this weekend...no time, no time). Sorry.

You do know that I only treat the blog this way because no one pays me to write it? I know, it is crass, it is mercenary, but the writing that always gets done is the writing that comes with a check. And the bigger the check, the more work I put into it. Boy. It stinks to see that in writing, but it is the truth.

And, while we are on the topic of... no, we are not on the topic, but allow me to rant...squirrels, have I mentioned that I am much less fond of them now that I am trying to entice songbirds into hangin out at our house? Melanie does not like the idea of giving the bird feeder a crown of razor wire, but I am warming to it. My grandmother was the opposite. She fed the squirrels and complained about the birds getting into the squirrel food. It must have been a lingering old-world nostalgia for the plague or a notion that mammals are better than birds, which they are, but mammals that carry plague and don't sing are useless mammals in my book. Yes, they are cute, in the way that rats are cute, but enough is enough. Rodents is rodents.

Bring on the cat. We feed the thing, don't we? Isn't it part of the contract? We feed the cat, it rids the place of all rodentia.

Hmmmmmm.