Last night, Lindsey, the babysitter, drubbed me in Boggle. I think her score was more than triple mine. I'm not positive about this: I was having trouble keeping track of my running total. My brain is soft. Words elude me. In fact, the word "elude" eluded me for about a minute.

Now I'm half-lying/sitting in bed, the baby sleeping on my chest, head heavy just below my collar bone on my right side. The pen is hard to manage but I'm afraid to shift for fear of waking him. A heavy-headed baby is easier to write with than a baby awake on the bed beside me.

I was just reading a book of poetry. I wo't say which book or by whom as I have nothing very nice to say about it. I'm forcing myself to finish it, this short, single volume. But I keep having to retrace my steps and reread the short poems over again. My thoughts are distracting me--
"It's beautiful but..."
"I don't want to write poetry like this..."
"So what?"

So I realize I'm not really paying attention and maybe my "so what" or "I don't get it response" is not a result of of the poetry being obscure but, rather, just because my brain is soft.

The baby stirs and resettles with his head pinning my right bicep to the pillow. This writing is almost illegible. "No big loss," I berate myself. I put the notebook down and try to read carefu;;y, but the baby is making a sweet growling noise and I find myself thinking about how the Canadians use the word "some" or "right" instead of "very" as in: "That's some small baby!" or "That's a right small baby there, it is!"

"OK," I think, "if you have nothing nice to say about this book, at least try to say something intelligent about why you don't like it, why you really don't like this perfectly competent and well-written book of poems." I try. I try to think "critically." After about three minutes of what might be closer to meditation than thinking I come up with this:

"Reading this book is sort of like eating sour patch kids candies. There are surprising words and phrases and the author uses language in intriguing ways that pucker up the mind and widen the eyes like the sweet/sour sugariness of candy but, in the end, I'm neither sated, bloated, sickened or addicted."

It is hardly worth the bother to settle the baby who is some some small and has some lot of hair and is right beautiful in the sling, walk through the rain to the unreliable computer connection where I might or might not have access or ability to type up this entry, but its all I've got to say.

Soft mind. Boggle loser. Lazy reader. Worse critic. Baby mother with milk on the brain in the muggy, rainy beauty of the Maritimes. I've got less wit than Anne Shirley had in her little finger.

I give the book of poems to Lindsey; perhaps she'll find something useful there.