Thursday June 1st, 2017

The exercise:

Write about something that is: rocky.

And we've made it to June! Goodness me.

Spent the day with the boys while Kat got some work done. Max is still having a blast at playschool, now with a new twist.

Class lets out at 11 and for the last couple of weeks the benches in front of the elementary school have become the unofficial meetup spot. The parents get to sit and chat while the kids run around and play outside for a while. It usually starts out with Max and three or four of his classmates (there are only eight kids in his class total) and by the end we have to drag the last two or three out of there.

Today Max was out there for over an hour. It's been really great to see.

I had Miles with me and he was okay for a while just sitting on my lap while I talked to the moms of the other kids. Eventually he wanted down and then he spent the rest of the time either trying to eat grass or crawling after the bigger kids.

Pretty fun.

Mine:

The road ahead is not clear -
We're in for a fight my dear.
Every step will be a fight
As we try to reach the light
Of another waiting dawn,
Before all our love is gone...

2 comments:

Greg said...

You sound happy that Max is spending more time socialising! It does sound like they're all having fun though, and it's probably good for you to have a chance to talk to other parents of kids of similar age and share problems and solutions :) The class size sounds rather good too, I was a little surprised when you said there were only 8, but it's much, much better than 20.
Your poem is short and sweet, and has spirit too it. Not bad when there's a rocky road ahead!

Rocky
The crew of the Starboat Surprise! were all sat in their environmental protection suits in the cold, dark Bridge-room. Their operating system was rebooting (again) and during the reboot all the major life-support systems went offline. Each of them was anxiously watching the main viewing screen, praying that it would turn blue soon, ping, and indicate that the reboot had completed. It took a further five minutes of fraught silence before it finally started the initialisation sequence, and ten more minutes after that before air started hissing through the room again and the heaters turned on.
"Check the air content before removing helmets," warned Captain Painwake over the suit radio. "Remember what happened to Karen."
It was nearly half-an-hour before they were all back out of their suits and sat in the accustomed chairs, navigating the Starboat onwards to a spacedock where they could try and get it repaired.
"Computer," said Captain Painwake. "How much further to Deneb-7?"
"Hoooowah!" roared the synthesized voice of the ship's AI. "Fourteen days, but I bet if we push the engines we can make it in 8!"
"What?" Brummie, the Lieutenant-Engineer stared upwards at the ceiling. The ship's brain was actually housed in a small glass sphere somewhere in the middle of the ship, but they were all used to looking up to where the voice seemed to come from. "No! We know there are instabilities in the plasma flow. Fourteen days is fine!"
"Pussies!" roared the AI. Painwake facepalmed.
"Computer," he said.
"My name is Rocky! I have been upgraded and am more sentient than ever!"
"Rocky? Like the–"
"Like the boxer who never lost a fight!"
Galicia, the ship's historiographer looked puzzled. "He lost fights in all the odd numbered movies," she said. "Why would you–"
"I'm Rocky I!"
"Oh hell," said Painwake quietly. "Rocky, please continue on course at our previous speed. We're trying to avoid being seen by any pirate-boa–"
"Aha! Worthy opponents! Full speed ahead!"

Marc said...

Greg - yeah, the small size was one of the main reasons we enrolled him. Just don't think he'd do well in a large class. And yes, I'm thrilled his becoming more social :)

I love your AI. I would not want to be on its ship, but I love reading about him. Would be very happy to see Rocky swing by for more visits!