More fine kid language

Yesterday Ella commented on the weather.  "What a nice, pillowy wind." 


She's nine and a half, impatiently waiting for fourth grade to begin in a couple of days.  She's another kid of ours who watches and listens closely to the world, thinks deeply about things.  I wonder what she'll be like in another ten years. 


She's already quotable.

I love the magic inside our kids' worldviews . It pops out in seemingly mundane conversations, reminding me that my reality is just that--my own--and pretty dull.  


It's been so oppressively hot and muggy lately. Cliffy, who's seven, and I had just come in and chugged cold drinks.  I came up for air, and said something like, "Oh, life-giving cold water," and he sighed and said, "Yeah, it's like drinking wet air."


He was absolutely right about that. 

Shiny Things?

I have an area in my brain that I use like a hamster's cheek pouch, since, to my disappointment, I was born without that feature. 

It's where I keep the shiny things.  Those are things that could distract adults from the important  business at hand.  If you write or create art, they are thethe good stuff:  pretty pebbles and ideas and found objects.  I tuck those things into my mental cheek pouch and let them roll around for a while. They get unconscious stuff stuck to them, like burrs or mental pocket lint and lose their shine for a while. I'll fish them out later, and these are things that become the cores of stories.

 

 I added the koi pond you seeat the top because it caught my eye--ooo, Shiny--when I saw it on my daughter's blog, http:\\ohhey-rosie.blogspot.com.  Those fish seemed an auspicious thing to have, since what do fish love?  Shiny things, of course, and your cursor.  They'll mob your cursor because they think it has food.  Click a couple of times, and it shall be so.

This blog will eventually show you parts of favorite my picture book manuscripts resulting from my lifetime of Attention Surplus.  Those stories help me recognize why it's good to keep my eyes open for the good stuff.