Imagination (and Garden) Gone Wild

We haven't been to The Farm in almost three months.
Everything is just on hold and now, with a housing boom on up here, we're looking at having to buy another house just so the kids can have a backyard because rents are ridiculous.
I'm imagining the mess at The Farm and it's haunting me.
It'll be like Mrs Frisby and the Rats of NIMH - the mice will have taken over the house and built their own civilisation in my kitchen, complete with food processing plant because my sunflowers and corn have gone berserk, taking over the entire second block.
The earwigs will have evolved and be walking upright.
It's raining down there so the grass will have overgrown the piles of rubbish and junk - that's got to be a bonus.
And our you-beaut grey water system - all paid for - is sitting in a box somewhere because we're not there to point to where we want it to go.
I miss the place - happy as we are here at the moment.
I think I'm going to go buy some organic non-hybrid seeds on the internet on principle.

In Perspective

A friend of ours lost her husband and her three-year-old son in a car accident last week.
We don't know them well enough to help, but we know them well enough to worry and miss them.
The day before it happened she and I were discussing plans for our two little boys to start dancing together and she was excited about the songs and dances she'd picked for them to do.
How would I feel if I woke up and The Man and The Boy were gone? Just gone forever?
I can't imagine and I could never have expected it to hit me the way it did.
I felt guilty to feel so bad, when I really didn't know them well.
I felt like I didn't have a right to feel sad when here she is, with her three other kids, dealing with losing her husband and her baby.
I hear she's going to be ok.
Every moment is precious.
It's not just a cliché when you're standing this close to that kind of sadness.

Boundaries

The Boy and I were watching TV the other day.
While he sat between my stretched-out legs on the couch he absently ran his hand over my ankles.
Bewildered, he turned his little head, bird-like, to look up at me.
"Mummy," he asked. "Why don't the prickles go all the way down to your feet?"

Easter Bunny

I am now back at work in my Home Town, in an office full of women.
Due to the miracle of nature, and a full moon, everyone in our office is now on the same...mmmh, let's call it 'cycle'.
Which becomes very obvious when production deadline falls on the new moon.
One male customer was unwise enough to actually vocalise the comment "what's wrong with you girls today - you all look so drained?"
Did you ever see the original Dawn of the Dead? Where the zombie hosts shambling across the car park all lift their faces at the same time and turn towards the new victim as she skids into view?
Well, then you can imagine why this man left without getting a receipt for his classified advert.
But what highlighted the lunar looniness to me was when my daughter came to work one afternoon and, after wandering from office to office, started crying in the car on the way home.
"What's wrong?" I asked The Girl.
"Mummy, why did Easter Bunny come to your office today and not to us?"