In Which Daisy Muses about Exercise, Citrus, and Eggs

1. I'm not exercising like I'm supposed to. I tried buying an exercise DVD. My all-too-energetic daughter asked me repeatedly why I wasn't following the instructor's movements.  "Uh, because I'm DYING?"  Need to do this EVERY day. Why does exercise have to be so terribly boring?  Your brain just sits there unused while your body begs for mercy.

2. I'm thinking about the 2010-2011 school year.  Don't know for sure what my plans are yet.  It is still very early but it appears that, mostly due to finances, Heart of Dakota may not fit into the picture.  I have an pretty good stack of books that can be used for the Renaissance and Reformation time period so it looks like I'm just going to make it work.  I'm thinking of it like a fun game. What can I get away with NOT buying?

3. Oranges, mandarins, tangelos, grapefruit, lemons...I'm sick and tired of citrus. It is impossible to eat it all. I feel this same way every year.  Citrus is the zucchini of the California world. You can't beg people to take it away.  Maybe I should resort to dumping bags off on people's front porches, punching the door bell, and sprinting down the street. I scoff at the idea of ever sticking an orange in a Christmas stocking.  My kids would think it was the new coal.

4. Lastly, and most importantly, I'm out of eggs. Eggs are pretty important around here. They made carrot cake this weekend, puffed up a German pancake, and fried up nicely this morning for breakfast.  The trouble is that I really HATE going to the grocery store just for one thing. You never buy just one thing. You waste money. Sometimes I can just forgo that item.  Take relish as an example. DragonFly thinks he will die without it but it really isn't likely to get me all the way to the grocery store just so he can better stomach his hot dog or beans or bread or whatever else he is trying to put it on.  The void created by eggs cannot be ignored though and so I'm off to the grocery store today. Too bad they won't take citrus in exchange for eggs.

Who is My Neighbor?

Retelling of the Good Samaritan.

Once upon a time, there was a man who lived in a nice neighborhood. This man was not a Christian.  This neighbor (as we shall call him) was a prickly sort.  He occasionally let it be known what he thought about Christians, but for the most part he kept to himself. He was a good neighbor in that he kept his yard looking clean, took his trash out, and didn't play his music loud at 11pm. Then one day the neighbor became sick and in need of assistance.

A very conservative Christian lived next door and saw his neighbor every morning as they got into their cars and left for work. The conservative Christian rarely said anything to his neighbor.  In the beginning, he had tried to talk with the neighbor but quickly found his beliefs unlike his own. He thought that if he became too close with the neighbor his beliefs might rub off on him.  The Christian volunteered at the local conservative political headquarters. What if someone saw them together? His other Christian buddies might think less of him for conversing with the nonchristian liberal neighbor.  He remembers the union signs and Vote for Obama signs that had been up in that guy’s yard.  Doesn’t that guy work for a beer company or the art museum or something like that?  And so when his neighbor became ill, he vaguely wondered why his neighbor was no longer leaving for work at the same time, but he didn’t take the time to discover the reason.

On the other side of the street lived a Christian home schooling family.  They knew the neighbor, also.  They were polite and said, “Hi,” whenever they saw him out mowing his lawn or working on his car.  They were very careful though to keep their children on the right side of the street.  The man was a secular homeschooler.  He was on the same forum with the Christian home schooling family and they knew what he thought about the Bible and that he was, well, offensive. So when the man became sick, they knew he was sick and they left a loaf of freshly-milled homemade bread on his doorstop out of a good sense of Christian duty.

And so the man remained sick and alone and in need.

In the last house on the street living a dirty rotten sinner saved by God’s grace.  He also recognized the prickly neighbor. More than that, he recognized himself in the prickly neighbor.  He saw that they mowed their lawns in the same way.  They both liked fixing cars so he stopped by the neighbor’s house and talked about cars and lawns.  He learned some new tricks for fighting the nasty weeds that they both had.  At times, the prickly neighbor said things that were offensive and a little harsh, but the dirty rotten sinner decided to overlook these comments because he remembered that he was often prickly, too.  He noticed when the neighbor became ill.  He FELT COMPASSION for his neighbor.  He took his neighbor to the doctor, sat with him during his illness, and sacrificed his own convenience and his own rights for those of his friend. 

Which of these three, do you think, proved to be a neighbor to the man who fell among the robbers?” He said, “The one who showed him mercy.” And Jesus said to him, “You go, and do likewise.” Luke 10:36

And no, there is nothing wrong with being a conservative Christian or a Christian homeschooler, just as in the original parable there was nothing wrong with being a Priest or a Levite.

Book 7 - Old School

Book seven for 52 Books in 52 Weeks is Old School by Tobias Wolff.

Three times a year a distinguished author visits the narrator’s New England prep school. The sixth form students engage in a competitive writing contest vying for the ultimate prize; a private audience with the guest. The narrator of this book desperately desires to win what he views as, “the laying on of hands that had written living stories and poems…to be anointed.” Robert Frost and Ayn Rand are the first authors of the year to visit, “but the final guest is one whose blessing a young writer would do almost anything to gain..."

This book reads like a short story. You are given the information necessary to propel the story line forward and not much more. The author uses clear and concise speech that translates into every sentence being jam-packed with significance. I finished reading it and immediately wanted to begin again, knowing that I had missed subtlety of meaning along the way.

I really enjoyed this book. I felt at home among the English masters and writing students who viewed their interactions as “the ritual swordplay of their speech.” I was thrust back in time to my own final college year to darkened coffee shops where a professor and a group of acolytes passionately discussed religion and philosophy. It made me long for a viewing of the Dead Poet’s Society again.

If you read the book take note of the lack of quotation marks. I found this fascinating at times and annoying at others. I’m not sure what device the author was employing, but it gave the feeling that one wasn’t quite sure if the narrator was quoting those around him or giving his interpretation of the conversation. It struck me as funny that the author would write a novel dedicated to the formation of writers and yet choose to completely break the rules of writing. Perhaps a message?

General Information:

195 pages

Copyright 2003

Alfred A. Knopf, publ.

Genre: Fiction – Preparatory Schools, Creative Writing, New England, Authors

The Birthday Boy's Day.

The very first present of the morning was RAIN. We had DragonFly open his first gift which was....rubber rain boots. He has been stomping in puddles all day long.  He'll make his own puddles once the rain is gone.

He took a break from the rain and went out for brunch with the family at Marie Callenders.  I love this picture!  After brunch we stopped by Barnes and Noble for a little bit. Who doesn't love book shopping?!

DragonFly picked one present to open while at the restaurant. A Transformer's board game!  The kids have been playing this most of the afternoon.

We found these at Costco. They seemed a fun way to introduce the kiddo to classic books.

More Transformers. Are you sensing a theme?

G-Force!  I think I'm the only one in the family who thought this movie was just okay. DragonFly thinks it is hilarious. His favorite part is, of course, when the mice say, "Poop in his hand!  Poop in his hand!" Beautiful.

Real gorgeous cake, isn't it? LOL. It is homemade and organic carrot cake with cream cheese frosting.  We scrounged around and could only find three candles.  Oh well, DragonFly didn't care.  He just wanted to EAT IT. 

Happy 8th Birthday, DragonFly!

And Year Seven Goes Out With a Bang!

I'm giving you warning right now. If you are the parent of a perfectly obedient, wonderfully self-controlled, calm and mild-mannered child, click here. It will take you far away from this post because I'm not going to handle very well someone saying, "Sounds like a behavior problem to me."  There, I'll wait for you to leave.

(Can you hear the Jeopardy music in your head?)

Buh bye!

So the rest of you, please send some compassion my way!  My son is going to be eight years old in a few hours. I can only imagine that he decided to have his seventh year go out with a bang.  In the last 48 hours he has managed to...

1. Climb up onto the bathroom counter top to exam dirt in his nose.  Slipped and careened into the toilet, the shower door, and the bathroom door, finally, landing on his head.

2. Tried to use a stool to reach into the top cabinets of the kitchen and yep, you guessed it, slipped and landed on his...head.

3. Somehow, I don't even KNOW how, managed to have the wooden chair land on top of him in the his bedroom and suffered from a scraped up side.

4. Skydived off the bed by accident and landed on an unsuspecting Sage.

5. Completely shut down the registry computer system at Target.  Yes, I was there. Yes, I was watching.  We were waiting for his sister and I was indeed more concerned about his sister in the bathroom alone at the time than what he was doing near the computer.  He only PUSHED one button, I swear.

6. As usual he has played one particular song ad nauseum.  Lately it has been Singing in the Shower by Sandra Boyton.

7. Pinched his finger with a clip and then screamed at the top of his lungs. After being helped and questioned about his behavior he is responded with, "I didn't think it would hurt THAT much."

8. He has not stopped talking since 6am this morning.  I am not kidding. Not even for 5 minutes all day long.  My ears are ringing.  I now know more than I ever wanted to about the directions on Transformer toy packaging.

9. Lastly (for this post, but since it isn't midnight yet, I suppose he could still pull something else), DragonFly exploded a glow-in-the-dark stick all over his bed, his clothes, his body, his sheets....and is now sleeping on the couch.  It's everywhere. I don't know how in the world I'm going to get it all clean.

I'm exhausted.  Does it help to add that he is the most loving child on the planet and doesn't have one mean bone in his body? He'll likely kill me nonetheless. I have to write this stuff down because I am so using it for black mail later in his life.

Happy Birthday, DragonFly

Happy 8th Birthday, DragonFly! I love you so very much and am very proud of you.

Week in Review 2/1/10 - 2/5/10

Buttercup: CTC: Unit 20

 

Buttercup...

...read quite a bit about Socrates and the structure of Greek government.

...listened to Jim Weiss' Heroes in Mythology. (I found her listening with rapt attention more than once).

...enjoyed the following books this week: The Ancient City: Life in Classical Athens & Rome, Science in Ancient Greece, and I Wonder Why Greeks Built Temples and Other Questions About Ancient Greece.

  

...drew the Parthenon and thought it was much easier than the Greek soldier.

...learned about the western deserts and oases of Egypt. There is a black desert with basalt rocks and a white desert with limestone.  

...completed a word study of the Genesis account of The Flood.

...completed her Greek work on Delta and Epsilon at Starbucks.

...thinks school work and Starbuck's hot cocoa go well together.

  

...did well on her English test.

...FINALLY finished her Singapore math book. (Can you hear the Hallelujah chorus?)

...is flying through Level E of Spelling Power.

...got a little motion sick at the Planetarium (I always do, too), but enjoyed it.

...zipped around the roller rink for P.E.

DragonFly: BIGGER: Unit 14

  

...read about Washington's men being cold and without shoes during their march to Trenton.

...suffered the indignity of excessive M&M taxation by King George's representative (ME).

...learned about the qualities of good leadership.

  

...traced Henry Knox' trip to bring cannons from Fort Ticonderoga to Boston.

...created a transportation notebook page to compare forms of transportation in Knox' day with those of now.

..Kept the Then transportation in black & white because everything was in black & white back then. Bwhaaa. Crazy kid.

 

...completed four lessons in English.  You'll note I often either do the work orally, will create worksheets for him, or will copy the page (permission granted from R&S publishers).

...is flying through BJU math but the review has been good for cementing his skills.

...finished studying John Aubudon and completed a notebooking page on his life.

...is begging me to let him study astronomy next, especially after the Planetarium field trip. (Well, see. We might need a detour for a few weeks).

...turns eight years old on Saturday!

Sorry, I don't have more pictures to share.  Hopefully next week we'll be back to normal. Sage took off two days again this week and is heading to the doctor.  Three weeks with the same illness and it is definitely time to see the doctor. Add to that our monthly roller skating, field trip to the Planetarium, and birthday celebration and this week has been a bit crazy.