Yesterday, Sunday, when she had approached this gathering of boy and dog Nathaniel had shoved the animal away and when it still pounced on his legs as he walked away from it, he kicked it on its belly. She didn't mind him showing that he disliked her. She saw it as a passing stage: a diminishing but still open animus toward her for the trip to Asia and Europe without him, resenting this distribution of her attention to include two other males, taking umbrage over her slight favoritism of the chosen over the natural members of family if he did indeed perceive it (certainly he saw and resented the grocery shopping with Rick that was done without him), this refurbishing of the whole of family within contrived Friday night croquet games of bonding regardless of the mood and wishes of individual family members at the time, and this slipping out of a boy's closeness to his mother so that he might fit into himself. She did not concern herself with that in the least. He could critically assess her and show his dislike openly so long as it was done respectfully. True motherly love was raising children and not needing to smother them in maternal, nurturing instincts or expecting understanding that their egocentric beings could not muster. The paddling yesterday was not as punishment for hostilities toward her (hostilities that existed because of issues he was trying to resolve in himself) or to oppose Skinner's belief that negative reinforcement accomplished very little. It was done as justice for the dog and a statement on behalf of it and all other animals that they weren't there to be targets of aggression. It wasn't negative reinforcement per se for none of that could work with him. She knew that skinned knees from bicycle accidents and the whippings he got from Michael (Whippings she was beginning to resent) were proof that the boy was somewhat stoic to pain. Outside of learning that Nathaniel did not dislike his pooch (only herself) she lost herself in Internet articles on owls until she and Rick began racing and banging their carts against each other down the aisles of the grocery store, and Monday went by uneventfully. On Thursday morning, when everyone had gone in accordance with their habits, she ate some burnt toast with her grapefruit and for ten minutes stared at a coffee pot with glazed eyes. There was a time when inanimate objects never failed at reflecting the ennui by which she gazed at them, causing profound ideas to be projected onto her consciousness like a great beacon of light shown onto a screen in dark movie theatre --a filmed documentary of the entity and its discoverer, Parmenides. Now meditation on a blank wall brought a sketch of that wall within her memory and this was all.