Sunday, November 22, 2009 - Festive Beverage Suggestion
Miss Dog Lover has developed a festive, somewhat non-traditional beverage just in time for you to be able to serve it to your guests at Thanksgiving Dinner. That is, if you are bold enough to be first.
Last evening at snack time I walked in the kitchen to hear the iced tea she was pouring for herself making odd, non iced tea, sounds. I asked what she was doing and of course she said, "Just getting some tea." Hmmm.
My maternal instincts went immediately to red alert. I took a closer look and listen and noticed the empty poprocks packet.
The somewhat noisy and unpredictable combination of iced Mandarin Orange Celestial Seasonings and Strawberry Poprocks was such a hit Miss Dog Lover chugged it and made herself a second.
Let me know how it goes over with your guests if you give it a go. Me? I'm wondering how it would work to add poprocks into the stuffing of the big bird before baking. Could be an explosively good Thanksgiving at our place.
This entry has an apologetic tone. That is because I am such a doofus.
I lay in bed this morning trying to decide if it really was warm enough to get out from under the blankets or not. During that time of semi-wakefulness, I composed three great blog entries. As soon as I got up, I jotted down enough of each idea that I'd be able to post the entry. Wonderful - I figured I was set for posts for the next week or two. As I count, that was my first mistake.
I wanted to link to my Miss Language's blog and also to her friend's. So I dutifully sent off an e-mail, making sure that was OK. There was my second mistake.
So now, they are reminding me I have not posted yet. So I went and grabbed the list so I could spout off with this wonderful post, first of three. (Yep, third mistake and here I shall quit counting.)
I grab the list and what does it say:
black holes/FB
Outwitted/Fort Knox
type-O angels/HS
and I have almost no idea what it means. Now, I know I should quit while I am behind, as the saying goes, but as I say, I have quit counting mistakes so here goes.
The first part (black holes/FB) had something to do with a comment I saw on Devastatingly Handsome's FB about FB being one of the biggest black holes in the universe, and then there was a comment about "what do you mean, 'one of'?" And I know that somehow I then had hold (in my semi-waking state) of a brilliant insight about the nature of black holes and I am pretty sure about whether or not relative sizes comparisons are, well, relative or not. And I think it had a tie-in with Francis Bacon. But beyond that... no idea. My great blog post was sucked away as by a black hole.
And then part two, the Outwitted/Fort Knox was going to be something beautiful and inspiring about Edwin Markham's poem "Outwitted"
He drew a circle that shut me out—
Heretic, rebel, a thing to flout.
But Love and I had the wit to win:
We drew a circle that took him in!
and how it applies to some people we know, in particular one whose heart has been locked down tighter than Fort Knox since toddlerdom. However I know nothing about the brilliance of this post whatsoever.
And the final thing on my list (type-O angels/HS) was from a chat I had with Miss L's friend. We were talking about a matter for prayer and I thought I had the name wrong. She told me it would be ok, something like there were angels who correct type-Os (is that spelled right?) in prayers. It occurred to me that the Holy Spirit does that on a major level, not a spell checker so much as a prayer checker. But, again, I have No Idea where I was going to go with any sort of insight.
So, today's moral: my first thoughts of the day are probably not the best. Let's hope not. And even if they are, I can't hold onto them.
A few days ago, I dunno why, maybe it's swine flu in the news, I found myself thinking about a little buddy of mine from my freshman year in college.
Francis Bacon.
Francis Bacon is a small pig. He looks a lot like this fellow, only he is
2.5 centimeters long from snout to tail. He lived in my soap dish and I had to be careful he wouldn't go down the drain when I showered.
Some people thought he was not real because they did not see him, only my sketches of him. That is because he lives in a different dimension, so you can only see him (and he appears flat) when that dimension is exactly perpendicular to ours, or at least that's my understanding of the phenomenon.
I started thinking about angels and how they seem to move in a different plane than ours, too. Maybe you can see them, or a bend in the light, when their dimension is perpendicular to ours. I thought that was maybe a rabbit trail, or a pig trail, but don't know enough about pigs in general to know if they make trails or not.
In related deep metaphysical wondering, I am wondering what other beings exist in time at all. I wonder if we are the only ones. I am not too convinced time even exists for creatures like dogs. And certainly not small outlined pigs.
Thursday, November 12, 2009 - Saxon Math Strikes Again
Miss Dog Lover is on the final lesson in 7/6, wherein they introduce finding the volume of a cylinder by saying "Imagine pressing a quarter down into a block of soft clay. As the quarter is pressed into the block, it creates a hole in the clay. The quarter sweeps out a cylinder as it moves through the clay. We can calculate the volume of the cylinder by multiplying the area of the circular face of the quarter by the distance it moved through the clay."
At this point I stopped reading, looked at her blank face, and said, "Do you understand what they are talking about?"
Miss Dog Lover, "I understand but it sounds sort of useless. Who would want to put a quarter in clay? It's messy."
There really are no words to say how cool it is as a non-musically oriented mom, to have a son who is studying piano and can sit down at it and make something up and holler to you in the kitchen, "Hey Mom, doesn't this sound like seaweed?" and you realize that is EXACTLY what it sounds like.
This morning at breakfast I got to wondering: What would you miss if your dear children went to public school and you did not spend quantity time with them? I am looking for specific answers that don't readily come to mind. If you have some, post them in the comments, and I shall compile a list. I think they would make wonderful reasons to encourage others to homeschool.
My inspiration: the sudden realization that if Miss Dog Lover were not here with me, I would not hear her twanging a concert on the elastics the orthodontist provides for dental alignment. Not even iTunes provides that service, last I checked. :)
Arby reports that (he) "would miss Major Havoc’s long-winded explanations of those random ideas that roll around his noggin’ but take FOREVER to be explained, and the huge grin that he gets when he realizes that I understand him. Those are moments that classroom teachers rarely have time for, leaving the Major Havocs of the world frustrated and disappointed."
My friend Christina, over at JugglingPaynes, says she "would miss the endless random discussions that pop up in the course of a day. Most topics revolve around superheroes lately, for example why do Spiderman's villains seem unable to live through the end of a movie? Batman's villains are much better at surviving. If you kill all your villains, who is left to fight? New York needed something like Gotham's Arkham Asylum, where they may as well have installed a revolving door considering how easy it is to escape. ~~ Hang on, the conversation just picked up again over here... "
Cellomom feels she needs to read the comments as they come in "cuz right now, I'm the one with the blank look when ds talks to me sometimes, and I see his frustration. I'm longing for some quiet, and I'm tired of the mess. It's been a long week. I will say I would miss the closeness with my kids. There just seems to be an easy camraderie with them most of the time." Ah, I know that feeling.
Mrs Q may be on the other side of the planet, but her feelings are familiar, too: I would miss the conversations around questions such as, "How many metres of double-sided tape would it take to cover an elephant?"
I'd also miss having a good excuse not to have to stand at the door and listen to the salesperson explain why I should change to their telephone/internet/electricity provider. "I'm sorry I can't talk to you now, I'm very busy homeschooling."
A new friend at Eagle Eye Academy writes that she "would miss those pajama days. Y'know the ones where your kids never get dressed and run around all day from one activity to the next with the excitement of learning! I would miss the adoring "I did it!" faces that they have when sounding out a word or figuring out a math problem!! I can't imagine days without them."
And Kellie (BTW, go vote for her) has a home like mine. She "would miss my messy kitchen table littered with everything from a worn copy of The Witch of Blackbird Pond, thirteen pieces of broken chalk, a plastic ruler, a hot pink calculator, the empty wrapper of a Fruit-by-the Foot, and a smudged spelling test dated Sept. 19, 2009. I would also miss the grubby hands that left my table in such a state."
Wednesday, November 4, 2009 - Melrose Takes a Day Trip
Tuesday Miss Dog Lover and Mr Gingersnap had medical appointments in the big city. So, we decided to make a day of it and visit the plant conservatory there. This was a pretty routine field trip with lots to see and Mom talking altogether too much instead of just letting the student body look. However, Mom was greatly relieved when Mr Music quit making Darth Vader sounds in his efforts to help the plants grow by exhaling extra carbon dioxide for them.
Melrose, of course, begged to go along. Here he is, in a banana plant.
And again, in a different one. He did not eat any bananas whatsoever.
And this is called a Flamingo Plant. I include this for the owner of the world's most amazing fish and who happens to love flamingos. Hopefully seeing this will make her feel better.
Late October starts my looking forward to Christmas. As a former elementary teacher, my mind moves through the year from one seasonal bulletin board to the next. By now I have things refined so that Reformation Day leads into the season of harvest and Thanksgiving, followed by Advent, Christmas, and Epiphany. There is a sort of building that I think extends in my mind from the work of the Reformers that the Puritans and Pilgrims based some of their beliefs on, up through a Biblical understanding of Christ's coming.
I am offering a photo tour of early November at our place. :)
We received this unique Reformation Day greeting, now hung on a kitchen cabinet (quite an honorary position). It came anonymously ~ unsigned and even unpostmarked ~ though I doubt it would take us 95 guesses to come up with the sender.
Here are some of our family set of turkey handprints lining a stairwell. It's fun getting these out to see how everyone's grown since they were first made.
And here are my fun Thanksgiving shakers. Miss Dog Lover was just telling Mr Music that the salt shaker is a girl and the pepper one is a boy. Let's not go into any actual turkey anatomy, OK? They are allowed to kiss on our table but everyone knows things may not go beyond that. Decorum.
Here is our copy of Of Plymouth Plantation, an ear of the corn we grew this summer which startled us with its purple-ness, and a very lovely cornucopia we received as a wedding gift. Please disregard the hairball. It has been removed since I uploaded the photo and noticed it. But just so you know, we are thankful for hair.
And the last stop on this tour is to say hello to the turkeys: Blessings and Bradford. They can rest secure in the knowledge that their fiberfill stuffing will not end up on our table in any capacity involving knife and fork.
Monday, October 26, 2009 - Who Needs a Better Mousetrap?
What I would be delighted with is a better pencil. Pencils and sharpeners are the bane of my homeschool.
Miss Dog Lover demands sharpness. So, we sharpen pencils about every 18 letters. No kidding. And they break like crazy - really, I think they manufacture them out of 3/4 inch segments of graphite.
Anyhow. Last Friday I took a new 8-pack of pencils and sharpened them all, except leaving one full-length for comparison. This pack was typical of my recent experience.
As they get shorter and shorter without producing a point that does not fall out, my frustration builds. By about 2, I am not happy. By the time I reach 4, I have nothing good to say about pencil manufacturers. By 5 I have nothing good to say about anything.
