My wife and I disliked our neighbors long before they put out the flamingos.

Just about every day I go to the library to work.  There is a wonderful lounge where I can sit at a big table, put my earbuds in and write.  On Fridays they have free coffee and cookies.  Anyway.  To get  to the lounge you have to pass the lost and found which I really never paid much attention to.  It was always full of the usual stuff–mismatched gloves, child sized winter hats, the occasional toy–the stuff that always seems to get left behind no matter where you are.  However a few weeks ago I was passing by and stopped.  Sticking up from the bin were a pair of pink, plush bunny ears and because I can’t resist bunnies, reached in and took it out.  It was pink and white with a blue bowtie but perhaps more importantly, it was big.  Small things getting mistakenly lost or left behind I understand because they tend to be items you don’t notice are missing until they are needed–the odd glove or the child’s winter hat–but someone had brought this bunny in with them. There was a good chance this bunny was always needed.  This was somebody’s *friend.*  That in mind , I tried to envision the circumstances under which the bunny was left behind.  It made me sad to think there was a child out there without their stuffed bosom chum and in my mind’s eye envisioned milk cartons with the bunny’s picture on the side.  What makes me sadder is that the bunny is still in the lost and found.  Somebody out there is missing a bunny and that just doesn’t seem right to me.

I before E except after C or sounding like A as in neighbor and weigh?  That’s just weird.  And why is it the past tense of teach is taught when the past tense of preach is not praught?  I knew a kid whose last name was Praught.  He used to wear green pants and was overweight,  I remember he came to my house for dinner once and all he ate was salad.  He liked those Eagle Force action figures that were small and made of die-cast metal and were probably made to compete with GI Joe.  Bird chirping outside the window. Sky is achingly blue.  Spring is coming.

Blizzard is a noun.  It is storm with dry, driving snow, strong winds and intense cold. He is also a supervillain in the Marvel lexicon who wears a battlesuit containing cryogenic circuitry that enables him to generate and focus intense cold.  It is also a frozen treat offered by Dairy Queen.

There was a boy made out of chocolate
which I admit is cool.
He did have one big problem, though,
in that he couldn’t go to school.
The other kids would tease him, see
no matter what they felt.
And when they chased him in the yard
then Chocolate Boy would melt.
So he began to teach himself
all the things he’d need to know–
like readin, writin’, rithmetic
and how to cook and sew.
But sadly he lived all alone
he had no choice left but to do it
for it’s a melancholy life to lead
when your guts are made of nougat

gobbledygook – n. language characterized by circumlocution and jargon, usually hard to understand. (Much like I am in the morning.)