Horsestickball

Four year olds are crazy around the world. The week began with the cries of, "I w-w-want my my my mooooommyyyyy," and ended with, "Fuck off, ma!" (Yes, one of the children said that to his mother. Then a child approached me and said, "What the hell is this?")

They've only had three hour school days so far. Come in, play, "tidy up," sit down, have snack/lunch, play in the school yard, have an activity or read a story, go home. Everyone forgets that they miss their m-m-mommy by snack time.

I went to the zoo yesterday. It's in a giant park in Dublin. Like, this park is huge. I got lost trying to find the zoo. It was a nice walk, though. The zoo itself would have been great had it been only open to people who are me. Seriously, who decided that it was ok to let other people into the zoo? They were all standing in front of the exhibit signs and getting their grubby hand prints on the exhibit glass and letting their children run amok. (On a side note, I just googled "amok" to make sure it was the word I wanted to use, and while it is, the true meaning involves a killing spree. The more you know.)

BUT. I saw sea lions, and everybody knows how I feel about pinnipeds. And these sea lions got called into their pins by the zoo keepers. The zoo keepers had the gates open, but the sea lions were not going to have that. They closed those gates. They were like, "I don't want all these crazy people staring at me, this door needs to be shut." Man, I wish I was a sea lion.

Also I saw gibbons. And they were pre-cious. So were the gorillas. Oh, and the golden lion tamarins which my dad really likes. Sorry dad, I didn't see a llama.

There was also some kind of heron type bird. It wasn't part of an exhibit, but it landed on a fence outside of the zoo restaurant. I've nicknamed it "Josh" after my bff Josh because of its mannerisms. Josh the bird was standing on a fence modeling while about five or six people walked up to him to take his picture. Then he decided to terrorize a little girl and keep running towards her.

And I also saw what I have since learned is the game of polo (better known as horsestickball).

Then today I went to the National Archaeology Museum. It was only open for three hours, so I'll need to go back again. I loved seeing the stone molds they used in nine million years ago to cast metal into knives and swords and what have you. My absolute favorite thing over which I got extremely excited was a large stone with Ogham writing. And that's simply because I adore the author Madeleine L'Engle, and Ogham stones come up in at least one of her books.