(While crowded around the computer, watching Facebook videos.)
Me: What do I smell
Me: Is that–poop? I look around. Marlee’s on the couch. It’s not a dirty diaper. I sniff Meena’s hair, then Oliver. Then: Oliver’s hand.
Me: Oliver, why does your hand smell like poop?
Ollie: (shrugs) Because I’ve been sticking it in my butt-crack.
Took the chickens to the Victoria Albert Museum during half-term. I want you people to understand how cultured I am, but I confess it wasn’t intentional. We were trying to see the dinosaur skeletons at the Natural History museum across the street, but the line zig-zagged out from the door and went winding round the block and so we fled across the street to the less popular “V&A”.
Ollie was well impressed by the naked statues–he wondered if a guy battling a snake on a square platform was supposed to be in the shower–and as we passed out of the room headed for the children’s activity space we passed a bust of Albert Einstein. We stopped and looked at it. “You know who that is?” I asked him.
“No.”
“That’s Albert Einstein,” I said, carrying on down the stairs. “He’s generally thought to be one of the smartest–if not THE smartest–guy who ever lived.”
Fast forward: we go to the activity room, build a box, draw some pictures, wander around a bit more. On the way out we pass by Professor Einstein again. Fancying myself rather a good mother for it, I take the opportunity to reinforce the lesson. “Ollie, you remember who that is?”
He glances over. Shrugs. “Uhhhhh–Elvis Presley?”
While driving off the ferry onto the dock, returning to England, everybody exhausted from the emotional intensity of the funeral and non-stop traveling it took to get there and get home, Oliver’s voice floats into the silent car from the back seat:
(You really must imagine his part with a British accent.)
“MEEna, do giraffes attACK you?”
Rod and I giggle, looking sidewise at each other. Meena has her headphones in and doesn’t hear, so I answer. “No, Honey,” I say. Then I add, trying to appear serious, “I don’t think giraffes are very aggressive.”
“Well . . .” he pauses. I can practically hear his thoughts clunking around as he gathers them up. “Are they quite LAzy, then?”
