New Pet

Haven't been around here much the last little while. We're renovating the kitchen, about which I'll never speak again because who cares, AND, AND we have a new pet. It takes a lot of hard work, and a lot of my time and energy to banish it from my thoughts. Is it because it is so very that much cute? Winsome in it ways? It is not. It is because it is this:

Meet "Slick," our mealworm.

CBE cuts must have been pretty drastic this year, because instead of a classroom hamster or duckling or even fish, each Grade 3 child at Kid's school was given a mealworm to keep in a plastic cup.

The first question I had was the most obvious one: What are they teaching kids these days? One look at Slick, and I knew she was Grace Slick...honestly-- honestly, now: have you ever seen a more feminine looking mealworm in your whle life? Me neither. It's not easy to find darling pet accessories for mealworms--not even a measly hair ribbon or a bedazzled collar. I worry about Grace Slick now, a lot. What if she wakes up one day and is gender confused? Not that it would bother me one way or another, I just want her to be in a loving relationship, but still: there might be a way to make life easier for her and I think it might be marabou. Yet, I don't think the teachers have even broached the subject of gender, which: HELLO? Is that not the first thing anyone of any age would wonder upon first laying eyes on a mealworm?

One day, sadly, Grace Slick will be turning into a beetle of some sort--or such is the nonsense with which they're filling Kid's head. I see her more as a Ramone or perhaps a Dandy Warhol. Although she would look smashing in this:

That there is a Victorian dress decorated in more than 1,000 beetle wings. It was once worn by Ellen Terry as Lady Macbeth.

If you had been asked five minutes ago how to draw a logical line between Calgary Board of Education cutbacks, mealworms, Grace Slick and Lady Macbeth, you wouldn't have been able to do it, would you have?

My work here is done.