Tuesday, February 21, 2012

Picasso Cats and A Parchment of Code

Gooney Bird and Ms. Lowry did manage to teach me something, didn't they: Think up an intriguing title for an absolutely true story.

Well, that's how far the learning went. The story itself isn't anywhere as fancy.

The vigorous scratching sounds - as of a pencil on paper - was incessantly hitting my ears. Tuning out the familiar sound, I went about my business of making the night's meal reassured by the fact that Og was building his toboggan in the nook where I can keep an eye on the proceedings.

"Dinner's ready", I called out aloud, hoping to save a few steps to each room in order to rope them all in one by one.

"Not yet, Mama, I am still working. Maybe in five minutes?", Ana responded.

Saving the mostly-done toboggan for later, Og enthusiastically shouted, "I'm coming!" and set out the place-mats and went over to bring Papa to the table.

A few minutes later, Ana was standing next to me holding up a parchment-looking thing and a white piece of paper.

A cursory look showed the white paper as having some cat drawings on it; the parchment-looking thing turned out to be a piece of paper with torn edges (and a few cuts), colored golden yellow with a golden yellow color pencil (the vigorous scratchings made a connection now), with some sort of symbols on it like hieroglyphs.

"Tell me about it, Ana", I asked automatically while dishing up the food.

"See, Mama? This code is from the Jewel Fish of Karnak. I wanted the paper to look old, just like in the book, but it doesn't look as old. How can I make it look really old, Mama?"

"Hmmm... I usually apply some used coffee grounds to get a sort of burnt edge and maybe stain with some tea or coffee... do you want me to help you with that?"

"Maybe later. And I want to do it myself. Look at the code, Mama! I made it easy for you to read. Read it, read it!"

And I did.



"My mom died when I was born" ?!

No idea as to who wanted this message encoded in the first place, and am hoping optimistically that it isn't her subconscious spilling its (or is it my?) guts out.


"Oh, and, these are just Picasso cats, Mama, they are not supposed to be cute, but they think they are."


There you have it! Two unrelated things, connected only by the wildest stretch of the imagination.


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4 Comments:

At 8:00 AM, Blogger Dee said...

Sheela - you should make a book of all the cool stuff that you do with kids, so it'll be useful for mommies like me :)

 
At 8:28 AM, Blogger Sheela said...

Dee:: Thank you! that's a sweet thought... unfortunately I was not involved in these :(
But, hey, wait... isn't this blog a sort of book i am making?! :)
Hope K and Baby D are doing fine. Cheers!

 
At 3:55 PM, Blogger Megan said...

So in love with these, Sheela. She's got her mama's amazing intelligence and creativity.

 
At 11:16 AM, Blogger Sheela said...

Megan::That is such a sweet thing to say! Thank You! And, you give me way to much credit :)

 

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