Bottom Dwellers

Check these guys out. I want to call the fish "A Mudsucker" or a "Dogfish" but I don't think either of those were right. My eight-year old nephew, Josiah, flipped over a barnacle-covered rock, swooped his hand down into the muck underneath, and fished (ha,ha) this fine fellow right out of his fearful floundering. (Ha,ha, and it's definitely not a flounder). Wait, wait, he perched on the edge of the rock. . .I'm trying hard but I my fishy puns are at an end. My public will be devastated.

He flounder, and then, sadly, he lobster. (I stole that line from an unknown source).

And who knew starfish could look like this? Actually, the creature below is not a starfish but a seastar. Look at all those legs. . .so much more amazing than the stock starfish I learned from preschool flipbooks.

They come in plummy purple, too.

I was walking among the tidal pools when I slipped on a mass of seaweed, flew in between two rocks, and grated my leg on a patch of barnacles. Following this event, I enjoyed a round of antibiotics, one tetanus shot, and many evenings of discomfort. The scabs have just fallen off, and my leg is pink and gorgeous. Nobody else whacked themselves. . .the children are like goats on the rocks, surefooted. If anyone can think of a better, more oceanic simile, I would be grateful.

Today I am once again with the children while Martin pays the piper at school. Why did I think going to Target (through construction traffic) was a wonderful idea? I have a massive bag of toilet paper but I'm not sure it was worth it. I threw the kitchen sponge at my middle daughter today after she smeared toothpaste on the wall. My zen is shot and I am becoming a bottom-dweller, a Mudsucker, a Dogfish. School starts in one and a half days. . .60 hours and 12 minutes, not that I'm counting. (Just kidding, I didn't really count--I just pulled that number out of midair.) There's some really great stuff under rocks, for the record, and it stays pretty cool and shadowy. Maybe you should crawl under one and join me.