Saturday, February 5, 2011

There's been a bit of a lull here at Sycorax Pine. Largely because everything has gone to hell in that proverbial handbasket I keep around for times just like this.

How to explain what has happened over the last ten days?

Well, let me put it in this context: my parents went off on a delightful, spontaneous trip to Costa Rica to celebrate my mother's birthday. Normally we talk every few days on the phone (since we live in different countries), and when they ask how I'm doing I say something terribly prosaic about Mt. Grademore, or teaching prep, or my feeble gym-going. When they arrived back from Costa Rica, this is the conversation we had instead:

SP:

How was the trip???

Mère/Père Sycorax:

[I had roughly the same conversation with both parents at separate times that day]

Glorious. When we woke up every morning,

they'd left a thermos of coffee outside our door,

and we'd wander outside, coffee in hand,

to watch the monkeys fight with the tropical birds in the trees....

SP:

That sounds amazing.

Mère/Père Sycorax:

How was your week?

SP:

Well.... I crashed my car in a snow storm, fell hard not once but twice in public,

screwed up my neck in a way that makes it hard to drive or sleep,

became embroiled unwittingly in a major workplace conflict,

and I think I've agreed to buy a house that has a dug well and a cesspool.

Do you think I'm going to die of cholera?

Mère/Père Sycorax:

Um....

It never rains but it pours, eh?