melannen | Oobleck fell over Georgetown once in the 1960's.

So we're back in Maryland. I've typed up and backdated three entries I wrote on the trip. They are rather whiny because I wrote them when I had time-- generally when I was bored and tired. But I *did* have fun. Mostly. The most exciting thing that happened was when we stopped at a little gift shop at Sunset Beach and this black cat with lighter dapples poured himself out from the crawl space under the building and I swear he looked just like black oil creeping over the ground.

And we stopped to see Pop-pop on the way back on Father's Day, and he and Aunt Carolyn swapped artifical knee stories, and that reminded me of the last time we were there with someone with a bad knee and Pop-pop was making a huge batch of sausage balls so I asked Mom if we had the recipe and that inspired her to go out and buy all the ingredients and make me make some for the pot-luck church ladies' meeting tonight, so I did, and then she made me go to the meeting, where I explained viruses and defragging to Miss Jerry, who is annoyed at her computer, and thinks you have to take it to the shop in order to wipe the hard drive.

There has been a funeral every week this summer. Mom's going to another one tomorrow for one of the church ladies.

Aunt Carolyn said I should get a part-time job at the church this summer like she did when she was a kid. I told her I'm there three or four days a week anyway, and Mom said no I'm not, I'm exaggerating, this week I'm only going to go to quilting and the meeting on Monday. And church on Sunday, of course. And oh yeah, Game Night Tuesday night. Oh. She supposes that is four times. I keep asking Mom what inspiration I have to get a job when it seems like every day she comes up with something else we can do this summer "unless my daughter gets a job." We can go to NJ-- unless I have a job. We can go up to RI to see Sister-- unless I get a job. We can go on a long camping trip-- unless I get a job. We can go to Ohio to party with her sister-- unless I get a job.

Not to mention I took a long nap in my hammock this afternoon because it was so nice out that I couldn't bear to do anything else. I dreamed that

stellar_dust was still home and she was teasing me about fic and she thought my current idea was really stupid. Well. Just because Mom got me thinking about childrens' books this weekend and I started thinking to myself:

When Skinner went out of the town for the day, 
He said to be good, 
Or he'd dock all our pay.
I sat there with Scully. 
We sat there, we two, 
In our room in the basement, 
With nothing to do. 

And then the phone rang and I picked up the call.
A friend of mine said, 
"I have heard of a fall
Of snow that's bright pink, just the color of ink.
Snow shouldn't be pink.
Not pink, I don't think."

And he thought that somebody
Ought to go see
Why it was pink
When it just couldn't be.
Somebody, somebody,
Ought to, you see.
Then he thought of two somebodies.
Scully and me.

"Pink snow?" said Scully.
"PINK SNOW?" she said.
"Mulder, I think you
Are out of your head."

"It's Fortean, Scully.
Things fall from the sky,
Like frogs and spaghetti, 
And no-one knows why.

And sometimes it's hail
That's shaped like a heart,
And sometimes it's oobleck,
And sometimes--" 

"Don't start.
Snow's colored by dust," she said,
"Dust in the sky. And whatever the reason,
It's not FBI."

"It's a mystery, Scully!
We ought to explore!
And I know that town's name.
I have read it before."

So I found the file.
"Here's what I recall!
There were ABC's there,
In that town, just last fall."

"ABCs, Mulder?
Like DEFG?"

"Not alphabets, Scully.
Cryptozoology.
It's a term that they use,"
I told her, "For a cat.
A big cat that is seen where no cat should be at.
Alien Big Cats.
They show up in a town
Where no big cats belong,
And nobody knows how."

In 
(I have to look up some true, yet Seussian place names for this verse.)



"A black panther here,
And a lioness there,
Or maybe it's one that has stripes in its hair.
And often," I said,
"There are other things, too,
In places where big cats don't live in the zoo.
Pets disappear!
Strange noises at night!
And sometimes the sky will just fill up with light!
And even--"

"And even," she asked me, "Pink snow?"
"I don't know!" I replied.
"Let's go find out! Let's go!"

---

We found the address. 
We found it all right.
But the snow wasn't pink.
The snow was pure white!

Scully gave me a Look.
A Scully Look that
Made me quake in my boots,
Made me hide in my hat.

---

"The snow fell that morning.
The snow fell quite deep.
I watched the kids shovel it into a heap.
But then, as I watched them,
They both ran inside.
I think they saw something and wanted to hide.

The next time I looked,
There were spots in the snow.
Pink polk-dot spots.
And they started to grow.

I couldn't see well
While the snow tossed and flew,
Like a blizzard was blowing
Except no wind blew.
And when it had stopped
And the wind was quite still,
The snow was all pink.
Solid pink! 
Down the hill.

I don't know if it fell,
Or rose up from the groud,
Or a pink-snow-bringing whirlwind
Whirled it around,
But I thought it was strange,
So I called my friend Art.
But he didn't tell you the most strangest part.
Because he didn't know
Because I didn't say
Because it happened after
I called him that day.
There was a bright light
That lit up the whole room.
And then came a noise.
A loud noise, like
VOOM!

And I looked out the window,
And down at their lawn,
And the snow was pure white!
The pink snow was all gone!

Today I learned: It isn't "Always a little and never a lot,/ or something may happen, you never know what."
It's actually "Never feed him a lot./ Never more than a spot!/ Or something may happen./ You never know what."

Current reading: A Fish Out of Water, by Helen Palmer, illus. by P. D. Eastman

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

And I am *not* going to write it, no.

Yes you are.

Scully was the daughter of Captain Bill Scully of the U. S. Navy, and her paerents found her rather trying. Their other three children were perfectly normal military brats, with acceptable careers ambitions and conventional dispositions, each more successful than the last. Scully was sucessful enough, but her hair was bright red, and she wore it cut short and business-like insted of in long flowing curls like her sister's.

And she wouldn't stop thinking. Her parents were quite sure that no Navy man would want to marry a girl who would stand on tiptoe to look him in the eye instead of qazing demurely at him through her lashes. As for the girl's disposition--well, when people were being polite, they said she was strong-minded. When they were angry or annoyed with her, they said she was stuborn as a pig.

No I'm not. Besides, she doesn't even meet her true love until book two, and that's the one I don't have. Book one would be all Willis and Deep Throat and Blevins (and Krycek and Diana and Marita as Alianora and Keredwel and Hallanna)--

No I'm not.

See? I told you you were.

that's the one I don't have.

Didn't you just say you're going to the library?

Bill and Maggie Scully did the best they could. They helped her get into the best schools to teach her allthe things they thought she ought to know-- caring for people, and literature, and science. There was a great deal of science, from the details of the theory of relativity to why it was not possible that aliens were abducting humans. (Quantico still had an occasional problem with aliens.)

Scully found it all rather dull, but she pressed her lips together and learned it anyway. When she couldn't stand it any longer, she would go down and bully her brother Bill into giving her a shooting lesson. As she got older, she found her regular lessons more and more boring. Consequently, the visits to the shooting range become more and more frequent.

When she was twenty, her father found out.

"Riflery is not proper behavior for a young lady," he told her in he gentle-but-firm tone he had learned in command training.

Scully tilted her head to the side. "Why not?"

"It's . . . well, it's simply not done."

Scully considered. "Aren't I a young lady?"

"Yes, of course you are, my dear," said her father with relief. He had been bracing himself for a flood of angry words, which was how his other children reacted to reprimands.

"Well, I shoot," Scully said, with the air of one delivering an unshakeable argument. "So it is *too* done by a young lady."

"That doesn't make it proper, dear," put in her mother gently.

"Why not?"

"It simply doesn't," Maggie said firmly, and that was the end of the shooting lessons.

I don't know where you could have gotten the impression that I am. Because I'm *not*. Besides, I'm only reading LJ to avoid going back to rhymes, so you shouldn't encourage me, really.

hehe heh! yaaay. Oh you should definitely write it. ;)

And I have the second one. I don't know how that helps, but I do. lol.

And I haven't read anything else by Patricia C. Wrede, I didn't even know she had other stuff out. My library's a little behind the times....

The same thing happened over the cigarettes stolen from her father's bureau, the clairvoyance lessons from her sister, the breaking-and-entering lessons from her brother Charlie, and the "extracurricular instruction" from Dr. Waterston. Scully began to grow tired of the whole business.

When she was twenty-two, her father discovered that she had switched her specialty from pediatrics to forensic pathology.

"How long has this been going on?" he asked wearily when she called home in response to his message.

"Since I broke up with Dr. Waterston," Scully said. "I suppose you're going to tell me it isn't a proper career for a woman."

"Well, yes. I mean, you could do so much more. It isn't a proper use of your talents."

"Nothing interesting seems to be a proper use of my talents," Scully said.

"You might find things more interesting if you applied yourself a little more, dear," Scully's mother said over the other line.

"I doubt it," Scully muttered, but she knew better than to argue any further when her mother used that tone of voice.

Right before she graduated, Scully wrote to her godfather, an old friend of her father's from Agnus Dei who worked in the State Department.

"Dana, kid, this sort of thing just isn't done," he said, fanning away the cigarrette smoke that seemed to be lingering in his office.

"People keep telling me that," Scully said.

"Well, you should listen to them," her godfather said irritably. "I'm not used to being hauled away from my meetings to talk to confused adolescents. And you really shouldn't ask me for anything unless it is a matter of untmost importance to your life an future happiness."

"It *is* of utmost importance to my life and future happiness," Scully said.

"Oh, very well. I suppose you've fallen in love with another married man. Well, you always were an ambitious child. Tell me about him."

Scully sighed. "It isn't a him."

No, no, I'm definitely not writing it. I don't know why you people keep saying I should.

My library's *way* behind the times, too. The Mairelon books are great, though, they're YA, half mysteries and half Dickens-like Regency romances with magic thrown in. Plus, Mairelon is sexy in an very Mulderish sort of way. I think you would like them.

The second one always somehow has eluded me. When I was first reading them, our library had all but that one, and now I've found the others at used bookstores but not that one, so I barely even remember the plot.

Sexy in a Mulderish sort of way? I'll have to look them up, then. ;)

Actually, I've only read the third once, and I've never read the fourth. lol, and the crossover, once again, is tres cute. :p and the "extracurricular instruction" from Dr. Waterston. Ahhhhh! *hides her eyes*

Oobleck fell over Georgetown once in the 1960's.

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