What can it all mean?

It's still there.



Lurking.

Menacing.

Waiting.

It doesn't do anything.  It doesn't lead anywhere.  No one, for example, has stepped out of it from another time or place.  It doesn't appear to lead to another dimension, although one might argue that I am not qualified to make that determination.  And, in glaring defiance of the principle "if you build it, they will come," no one has even stopped by to use it.  Nor does it seem to signify anything.  I thought for a while that the unexpected arrival of a Purple Porta-Potty must be portentous (say that ten times fast), but I have yet to decipher its meaning. Its ways are subtle and devious, too much so for an ordinary thing like me.

It does seem to have brought a few disturbances with it. For starters, Emma suddenly announced the other day that her softball coach was holding pre-season (I'll say; someone should remind her that softball is a spring sport around here) training sessions.  At 6 in the morning. And she wants to go. At 6 in the morning.  It's an absurd hour to be driving anywhere with an 8th grader, especially now when it is dark and cold. But I am the mother:  I drive, therefor I am, and all that.  I just wish I had a spiffier car.  Something with a little zip to it. Or seat warmers.  Either would work for me.

Another anomaly:  my kids are entirely uninterested in Halloween costumes this year.  Matty says he'll plunk one of his existing Star Wars costumes on, Nate is going as an an "army guy" for which El Husbando will be supplying the outfit (how?  we have nothing appropriate here except for one camouflage bandana), and Emma is going as some sort of pirate in a skirt (assuming she can stay awake after her early morning at pre-spring training).  The shocker, though,  is Isabel.  The ultimate costume girl, the girl who spent one year as a blue inchworm (my best one: blue fleece zip-up union suit with accompanying body length stuffed tail, all made  without a pattern) and another masquerading as cauliflower (white sweats and sweatshirt, hat made of white terry cloth stuffed in a very lumpy manner)--the same girl who wore her tiger suit to pre-school for weeks on end and even drew up plans for dressing up as an end table-- the very girl who tested my ability to create these same costumes out of nothing year after year--is out of ideas.  She has no clue what she wants to be this year and cannot even say for sure that she wants to dress up.

Top left:  (1) a paired costume--Emma was the artist, Isabel posed as the art; (2) the tiger suit-- I made it for Emma when she was little and all of the kids wore it (some more than others) and felt terribly brave-- I will never part with it; (3) Isabel as a penguin; (4) elegant in a fabulous cape.  Bottom left: (1) a fabulous chapeau; (2) another fabulous chapeau, because what is a girl without her hat? (3) dragon costume-- she put it on at her sister's birthday party and we had to pry her out of it; (4) wearing bunny ears, just for fun; (5) still another fabulous chapeau, still for no reason we can recall.

Strange times are indeed upon us.