Laura (and Calvin and Hobbes): China to Scotland - Homeschool Blogger

Wordless Wednesday: The garden is waking up

Wed, 28 Jan 2009 03:59:00 -0600

It's a different world

Thu, 8 Jan 2009 05:19:00 -0600

Last Saturday, we woke up to a cold house. A trip out into the garden led to the discovery that there was no gas left in the tank; we thought that we were on an automatic top-up plan, but apparently not. After I had made numerous calls to the gas company, a sweet bloke delivered two canisters at 7pm on Tuesday night, and emptied them into the tank. This tided us over until Wednesday morning, when the tanker came to do a proper refill. In the mean time, we were very thankful for our small copse - which provides fuel and kindling for the wood stove - and the electric shower. Otherwise, we would have become very cold and smelly.

At about the same time that the gas went out, we started catching whiffs from the vicinity of the septic tank. It suddenly occurred to me that I had been doing a lot of washing since we moved in, because all our clothes and bedding had become musty in storage. Had I overwhelmed the septic tank? We decided to have it emptied, just in case, so a local farmer/septic tank emptier came over with a tank pulled by a tractor. He stopped on the road and walked up to our door to announce that the turn was too tight for him to come up the drive. On previous visits he had gone across the neighbour's pasture, but the field had now been ploughed and planted, so he couldn't cross it at present. He left suggesting that I call him in September, after the harvest. Today, the whiff has gone, so I have my fingers crossed that the septic tank has recovered its equanimity.

As husband said, 'These are not problems that one has on the 67th floor of a Hong Kong tower block.'

Wordless Wednesday: Fettes College (private senior school), Edinburgh

Tue, 6 Jan 2009 15:18:00 -0600

Part of a conversation after reading The Journey of the Magi, by TS Eliot

Tue, 6 Jan 2009 13:22:00 -0600

Hobbes: I didn't really understand all of it. He talked about birth and death mixed up together. Oh! I know! We usually talk about birth as the time when you come out of the womb, but I think that birth is when you first learn something, first have an experience. Maybe at death there is a flash of peace that is like that moment of inspiration at birth.

Calvin: I think the narrator is talking about the death of his old ideas, of his old religion. He travelled to see Jesus, and knew that he had found the truth. Now all his old life, his old religion seemed a waste to him, just a waste of all his past efforts. Now he wants to die, because he is no longer interested in the life around him.

Hobbes: He saw that Jesus was good. I think that Jesus could have been good without going against the Romans and being so famous. If he had gone on being good and teaching quietly, and curing people who were ill, he would have lived to do more good, rather than being killed.

Laura: That's an interesting point. Do you think that Jesus was deliberately causing his own death?

Calvin: Yes - he had to die in that way, it was how he could redeem people from sin.

Hobbes: But he could have done so much more good if he hadn't died then.

Laura: You two are talking about two different aims. Was his aim to do good to the people he met, or did he have to die in order to do more good? (pause) There are some interesting images in the poem - let's look at them. It says, "Six hands at an open door dicing for pieces of silver."

Hobbes: That's chance, gambling away your life - dicing is a kind of gambling, isn't it? Before he saw Jesus, [the narrator's] life was wasted, was gambled away.

Calvin: The pieces of silver: Judas. That predicts the betrayal of Jesus, it's there at his birth.....

Wordless Wednesday: Late Autumn walk, Fife

Mon, 22 Dec 2008 17:56:00 -0600

A puzzle: what is this 'S' for? If you already know, please don't tell

Wed, 10 Dec 2008 04:48:00 -0600

Another Greek conversation

Wed, 10 Dec 2008 03:02:00 -0600

Hobbes (looking at the Wordless Wednesday pictures): Blondie is so sweet!
Me: I have to clean up her run today though - that will be much less sweet.
Hobbes: Why don't you just divert a river, like Hercules did to clean up the stables?

Wordless Wednesday: Blondie, latest addition to the China/Scotland crew

Wed, 10 Dec 2008 02:56:00 -0600

I ran over the laundry

Sun, 30 Nov 2008 07:40:00 -0600

Our shipment arrived on Thursday, so we are trying to fit the contents of two homes (our family home in China and husband's bachelor pad in Hong Kong) into one house in Scotland. Since taking possession of the house, we have discovered mice in the loft (causing damp marks on the sitting room ceiling, due to customary pee locations), mice in the kitchen (above the cabinets, feasting on ornamental grain sprays) and mice in the utility room (nice and cosy behind the dryer).

The boys don't have beds yet - they are being delivered tomorrow - but today we searched every box in the house for our bedding, so that I could get it washed. Days are very short at present, so it was pitch dark and three degrees C below freezing when I went out to my car with a bag of sheets. I was taking them to wash at our temporary accommodation, because the washing machine at the new house is unusable. I suddenly realised that I had left my car keys in the house, so dumped the bag of wash by the boot of the car. A minute later, keys in hand, I climbed into the front seat and sat watching the ice dissolve on the windscreen. I backed out of the driveway, feeling a slight bump and assuming that I'd hit the grass edge.

It wasn't until I reached the end of the drive that I remembered the washing. The stars were brilliant above, but the moon wasn't up, so I was forced to stumble back down the drive and scrabble in the frost for the - only slightly tyre-marked - family bedlinen.

Wordless Wednesday: How Sunday began .... and ended

Tue, 25 Nov 2008 15:26:00 -0600