It was a good weekend for gardening, except for the snow and frost. Our apple tree is getting ready to blossom – it will be the first time, and it is nearly 10 years old, so we’re praying the frost doesn’t fuck up the blossoms. Also decided, late in the afternoon on Sunday, to transplant two box trees and three blueberry bushes (everything was much smaller when we planted our garden and is now starting to get crowded), as well as trim some stuff. So I ended up having to hurry to get everything done by dinner. We’ll see if the plants survive.

All children who read Feral Living are hereby reminded that Easter was one week ago, and chocolate Easter bunny season opens today. This means that while you sleep, fathers around the world are going to be getting into your stashes of Easter chocolate, which they have found by now, no matter how well-hidden. Say goodbye to your bunnies and chickies and eggs.

I mentioned to a friend recently how odd it sometimes is to me, an American living in Europe, to hear references to American cultural phenomena that have arisen since I left the country more than 20 years ago, and of which I have no knowledge at all or only slight familiarity, such as a lot of TV shows, or making the “loser” sign on one’s forehead. Although much American pop culture is exported throughout the world and eventually makes it to Austria, the loser sign simply does not exist here. She suggested I teach such things to my daughters and start trends. Beta has, in fact, made Halloween parties fashionable in her circle of friends. But teach my children to make the loser sign? I could never do that.

Were you an exceptional child, but you were sent to a normal school with everyone else and eventually learned to hide your exceptional side and act normal and came to regret it as an adult, or at least wonder whether things would’ve turned out differently if you’d gone to a school for exceptional children, or at least been in some program?

Or were you fortunate (or unfortunate) enough to have actually attended some special school? Was it a good idea?

Alpha and I have been thinking about this lately. We were both smart kids, etc etc. And now the question has come up whether we would be doing Beta a favor by sending her to a special school for exceptional children. We will have to look at the school, and Beta will have to agree, but we are both sort of leaning towards sending her. What do you think?

Gamma was selling me a book at bedtime. “It’s my turn to pick out the book,” she said. She selected one of her favorites, Bible stories for children. “How about this one? You like fairy tales,” she explained to me. “This is God fairy tales.”

In bed, she thumbed through the book, viewing the illustrations, looking for the story she wanted to read. “Let’s see. Flood. Rainbow. Bad guys. More bad guys…”

“What about this one?” I asked.

“No, that’s King Herod, he wants to kill all the babies. Very bad guy. They had to keep moving around to different countries.” We were looking for a happy story, I guess.

“Where’s the one where they throw him down the well?” she finally asked. So we found the story of Joseph being sold into Egyptian slavery and read that. What impressed me was that she seemed to have memorized the entire Bible, especially the Old Testament, which is admittedly big on action and drama. So this sheds new light on our problems teaching her the days of the week. Because she is obviously a sharp kid. Just now, writing that previous sentence, I remember my cousin’s son, who has Down’s Syndrome, and has all the Disney characters memorized, including their stories.

Learning. I have no idea how it works. Do any of you homeschool your kids? How do you manage that? I don’t think I could ever do that.

Tracy is back in business.

Yesterday was Alpha’s birthday. We… Alpha is a beautiful person. I love her.

The evening went okay. By the evening, a lot of people had remembered her birthday and given her flowers. I even managed to give her flowers.

I’ve done better birthdays, I admit.

The restaurant was very good. You really missed something, Pat. The name of the restaurant is “Wrenkh”. There are 3 in Vienna. We went to the best one, in the first district (1010). Do you own google search for details. But it’s a funky little place in a designy way and we both had… risotto. With what is called “Baerlauch” (actually, the ae should be an umlaut “a” with those two little dots over it, but not everyone has umlauts on their computers and I forget the code) in German and for the life of me I can’t find the English translation (Joeri??). It is a plant that grows wild, smells like garlic (we were walking thru the woods by the Danube on the weekend and it was in full swing and the air smelled like garlic) and I suppose may be some sort of leek since “Lauch” means leek in German. Bear leek, I’ll call it. It looks a lot like lily of the valley, the leaves, which are the part you eat, with the difference that bear leek is edible, of coures, while lily of the valley is poisonous, a fact that causes the number of amateur bear leek harvesters to fall by a few every year.

Bear leek risotto is not the food of romance, unfortunately, for reasons I will not list here.

But it was very tasty. The wine was good, etc etc. Good service.

Oh, I just remembered the original gag I was going to do in this post. We met by the State Opera in Vienna – there’s an underground parking lot there. Then we ambled across the street and got a coffee to go at the new Star*uck’s there. Then we walked the length of the Kaerntnerstrasse, turned left by St. Stephen’s Cathedral at the Stock-im-Eisen-Platz and walked to the end of the Graben, where we had icecream to go at the Haagen Dazs. That’s what European dates are like nowadays.

Then Alpha got a foot rub. With lavender oil.