That’s just how nature is.

I never know where the next blog theme will come from.  I wake up, have a cup of coffee, really wake up, and start the day.  I certainly don’t plan my day around a theme, but before I know it I hear something in the recesses of my brain asking, “Did you notice that?  That’s totally connected to what happened in the car two hours ago!”

Did that happen before I was blogging, and I just never noticed? Did I miss my French Revolution day because I wasn’t paying attention when it happened?  What about the day that was all about shag carpeting?  Did I miss the day that the boys were wondering about snot, and asking me about how soap works, the same cold day that I couldn’t open the honey jar?  In other words, did I miss out on my viscosity day simply because I wasn’t blogging?

Today’s theme was eggs.  At least I thought it was.  Which is why I made this list:

1. I had to stop at the store to buy Luncheables for Kathiana and CutiePie, who were flying to Costa Rica.  I remembered I needed eggs, and bought a dozen.
2. The boys and I finished our Life Cycle poster today by adding the life cycle of honey bees. Here’s the deal:  The queen lays fertilized eggs in small brood cells.  Those become female worker bees. She lays the same kind of fertilized eggs in cells that hang upside down.  Those eggs, after getting extra food, become queens. Finally, she lays unfertilized eggs in cells slightly larger than those for worker bees. Those become male drones.  That’s right.  Unfertilized female sex cells become males without ever getting a male sex cell.  Drones have grandfathers, but no fathers.  I can’t get my head around it.  What kind of chromosomes are in those eggs to allow this to happen?
3. I got my period today.  Which is rare, because I am peri-menopausal.  (Which I can barely believe I am posting on the blog.)  But something about dying days of my eggs has given me a nearly unbearable case of PMS, during which I shouldn’t be around people.  (Do you remember me yelling at the kids that they were going to be going back to school?  Or getting mad at CP for not sleeping?  It really is ugly.)
4. Finally, and kinda sorta related to eggs, or at least to females and motherhood, the boys and I saw The Last Lions this afternoon.  There is a scene where a mother lion leaves her injured cub to die alone because she won’t survive if she doesn’t. We were there with a teenage friend of the family whose mother died two months ago.  And I put CutiePie on a plane today to go live with her grandparents because her mother can’t take care of her. Lots of mother loss.

I was crying.  The girl whose mother died was crying.  Ezra was crying.  After the movie, he kept asking, “Why did she have to leave her cub?  Why couldn’t she just stay, and do everything she could, and at least try, and at least not leave her alone?”

Zach answered, “Because she would die too.  And that’s not good, Ezra.  That’s just how nature is.”

Ezra hung his head in defeat and replied simply, “Okay Zach.”

I felt more like Ez.  I wanted an answer.  A better answer.  But for tonight, I’ll let Zach’s answer suffice.

Scrambled eggs are delicious.  Bees are friggin’ amazing.  I’m not going to have any more babies at 44.  And sometimes lions let their babies die alone.  That’s just how nature is.

And just like that, I know what the real theme for the day was.