Saturday is a special day ...

What is going to happen next?

This is the only person in our house who has had a good day, and even her day has not been that good.

T.V. captivates her as it does me.

Rhiannon is alone.  She has drawn the paino bench up close to the T.V.

She is enjoying the rising action.

But that can only last for so long.

Oh no!  Something scary coming up!

As you can see. Something terrible is about to happen.

Her fear is only virtual.  Still her hands are poised, ready for whatever it is that is scaring her.

How about the rest of us? 

Things aren't any better.

Xavier heard 3 Grimms tales this morning, and I think we heard the worst of the stories with one called "The Wilful Child".

After we had read it, he counted how many lines it had taken to plunge us into that depth of terror: only 11 lines in the whole story.  But the worst story ever.  And that scare was early in the morning, when the sun was out and we hadn't used up any of our reserves of energy yet.  To calm ourselves down we talked for a while about the 3 stories -- the other two being The Three Army Surgeons and The Seven Swabians.  He and I worked out morals for all three stories:  be obedient, don't boast and think for yourself.  Still, those words don't capture the imaginative delight that the old German story tellers created around fear.
Mary tackled the cirty household job of "put-away-stuff-that-no-one-else-knows-where-it-goes". Hey! A job that only she could do.  By noon she was wondering why it looked like other people were working and she had nothing to show for her efforts.  The same could be said for what she did from noon until 9 pm.  A story right out of Grimms -- a woman who worked all day and did nothing.

I took on the wash: pre-spot, sort, wash, dry, fold, get someone to put all of the folding in its right place.

Doing the wash!  This job ought to be unionized and put into a higher category than even the one that the plumbers and electricans are in when it comes to work out of the home.

Leo was faced with the weather: ice and then slush and rain on top and the water having no other place to go, streamed into the shop.  He had to go out and buy a pump to keep the mess down.

Yup. For Rhiannon, the terror was virtual.

For the rest of us, it was real.

Arta