A Walk In the Woods

I walked out my back door this morning, looked up, and saw this.

Isn't that a cheery view to start the day?

Gunnar rode off to school on his bike,

and I headed out on a walk, and then...

look closely at the photo.

Look at the dark trees to the right...

Rain.

From where???

Oh well.

A delivery man - stopped along the road - and I looked at the sky and had a good laugh.

It only lasted a minute or two.

More signs of spring in the woods.

Yellow twinflower.

Roberts Geranium - more lavender than pink when you see them in person.

Thimble berry blossoms everywhere.

(Yes, they're in the rose family.)

And these, I've forgotten the name of.

A tall spike with inconspicuous green flowers.

If you look closely, well...

they remind me of spiders.

Wild blackberry.

Nootka rose.

And the star flowers are blooming.

Seems right out of a fairy tale, doesn't it?

Like elves would dance here.

And, though Kerry hates them,

I love the common dandelion.

This, however, mystifies me.

I've been watching this house go up for several months.

This is obviously the front of the house -

lots of windows -

while the back has hardly any.

And while the "front" faces the narrow road and the neighbor's

overgrown ivy-and-blackberry-infested hedge,

the "back" faces this view:

Even if I wasn't an architect's wife, I think I'd still be stunned by that design decision.

Maybe they just bought the plans out of a book and

didn't give a moment's thought to the actual building site.

What a wasted opportunity!

Grasshopper Days

Grasshopper Days

For today, Monday, March 9, 2015.

Outside my window...  sunny :D  Very spring-like.  Though the dogwood trees are not leafing out yet - still just twigs.  But it's coming.

Hearing...  Tate practicing piano.  He's already surpassing my expectations, but he's only two months into lessons and for-the-love-of-Mike-would-you-please-count!  There is ONE PIECE he's learning right now that's driving me to the Cliffs of Insanity.  It's in 3/4 timing and has several measures with a quarter-note-four-eighth-notes pattern.  And he keeps playing it as quarter-note-triplet-quarter-note.  And I will go to him, make him stop, and tell him to count it out. And then he plays it correctly for about 30 seconds, until he slips into the triplets again.  Arrrrrgh.  SLOW-DOWN-AND-COUNT!

Pondering...  he's really doing well, he's really doing well, he's really doing well.  Really.

Thankful...  for the flexibility of homeschooling.  My mom called me today shortly after I'd picked up Tate from the high school to ask if she could borrow Tate and Gunnar for some manual labor.  YES.  Yes, absolutely.  Boys need hard work more than they need desk work sometimes.  Actually, a lot of the time.

Creating...  my neighbor asked me to come over on Saturday to help her make a tote bag.  She's actually a much more experienced sew-er (not a "sewer") than I am and she can read patterns, but this isn't a traditional cut out the pieces, pin it to your fabric, sort of thing she's used to.  (It's a great pattern from Monica Solario-Snow of Happy Zombie, and you can find it here.)  I've already made it a few times, and modified the measurements to make different sizes, so I was actually able to teach HER something - quite a role reversal :D

Going...  to stay home tonight.  (I mean, I'm skipping rehearsal this week.)

Looking forward to...  someday we will have no debt.  Someday.  And that will be glorious.

In the kitchen...  thawing some elk meat for dinner - we've eaten nearly all of Tate's deer (just a little bit of sausage in the freezer).  And I need to think about what to make this weekend.  We're having company for dinner Saturday - a local family whose daughter is going to get a CI soon.  I'm not a fancy entertainer, but- you know - company.

In the learning rooms...  when Grandma called, we deferred the rest of today's work to tomorrow.  No worries.  I usually schedule Tate and Gunnar into four days and use Friday for "catch up" anyway.

Around the house...  I finally let go of my Valentine roses, and all the primroses I bought are looking a bit meh - time to plant them outside.

The Mother Load...  I almost have my office cleaned up... it must be time to start a new project ;D

Noticing that...  I looked around the house this morning and thought that Wyatt had gone off to school without his backpack - oh no!  But when I looked closer, it was full of dirty laundry.  Things I Cannot Explain.  (WHY?)

A favorite quote for today... 

O Lord, support us all the day long,

until the shadows lengthen,

and the evening comes,

and the busy world is hushed,

and the fever of life is over,

and our work is done.

Then in Thy mercy grant us a safe lodging,

and a holy rest,

and peace at the last.

 - The Book of Common Prayer

A devotional thought...  if you're interested... our chapel is sharing daily Lenten Devotions here.

A few plans for the rest of the week...  all the usual things (homeschool, CAP, music lessons) and dentist appointments for all the boys.  Fun times.

A peek into my day... 

Things I Cannot Explain...

Wyatt is winding up a semester at school this week.  I can (and regularly do) check his progress online. He knows this.  We talk about how things are going.

So when I saw the D+ I was a little surprised.

He'd written an essay - a comparison paper - based on the two "books" they've read in English class.  And I use the term "books" rather loosely as the first, while it is a chapter book, is labeled 4.0 (which means the text could be read independently by the average student beginning fourth grade), and the second was a comic book (3.3 - third grade, third month).

To be fair, there are some wonderful books written at that level.  C.S. Lewis' Narnia series comes to mind, or the Redwall books.  Writing that draws you in through wonderful story-telling and vivid description.  Themes that encourage you to be better, or that challenge your thinking.  Not so these books.  Blech.  Playground vernacular at best.  And it's not as if the subject matter corresponds to the reading level (violence, profanity, racism, masturbation, alcoholism, etc.) either.  Yikes.

So Wyatt wrote his paper.  I proof-read it and helped him type it up.  I might've given it a C, really, because I thought he missed the larger themes... but I'm an adult, and I can't expect him to see what I see.  Still, the D surprised me, even with the +.

His English teacher has a policy that (if they're meeting deadlines) students can revise their work to get it up to the grade they want, so I "encouraged" Wyatt to have another try at it.  I figured his teacher would've given him some helpful comments, some constructive criticism on his writing.

And you know what it was?  He needed a better topic sentence for one of his paragraphs, and all the rest was formatting.  Indent here, not there.  Too many spaces here, too few there.  Etc.

And that raised his grade to an A.

Really???

I'm not arguing with the value of following instructions.  If the teacher wants your paper formatted a certain way, you do it.  No question.  Get with the program.

But what value does his writing have?

The teacher left NO comments on the content of his paper, or the thought he put into it, to praise or to point out problems.  No challenge to think more deeply.  No encouragement to articulate his thoughts better.  Nothing.

Sigh.

Houston, We Have A Problem...

Um.  Yah.

You know what this is?

Guess.

Bottom right.  The big one.

When Gunnar first noticed it, we marked it with a black Sharpie so we could tell if it was growing.

I don't think we needed the Sharpie after all.

But, on the bright side, we have a work of modern art on our front window!

Things That Make You Say "Hmmmm..."

This has got to be the oddest photo from Hurricane Sandy that I've seen yet.  I bet it will show up mis-labeled, sometime in the future.  My imagination runs wild ;D

On a creepier note... just what is the liquid those cars are submerged in???  Did a Jell-O factory flood?

Irony?

Someone Help Me...

This makes sense, how?

Irony?

Well.

Some days just go like that.

After a crazy-busy week of back-and-forth to Seattle, motivating Wyatt to finish his testing, starting therapy with Tate, and trying to keep the fam on an even keel, Kerry noticed that we had no plans for the weekend.  An intolerable situation, from his point of view. (See my eyes rolling?)

And that's how we ended up having a lovely family (of six) over for lunch on Sunday.

And this is what happened:

*  The bread I started in the bread-machine before we went to church didn't rise properly.  I think I added salt when I should have added sugar (not enough "food" for the yeast?)  There was just time for a quick run to the grocery store before our guests arrived.

*  I cut my finger, slicing veggies in a hurry.  Then realized...

*  The sweet tea I made the day before had leaked all over the fridge.  Sticky.  Oh joy.  When they arrived, to find me with my head in the crisper, I told them they were SUCH SPECIAL COMPANY I decided to clean the fridge in honor of their visit.

*  I forgot to serve the potato salad, and found it (in the fridge) after they left.

*  While the kids were playing a game outside (maybe sardines?) Gunnar crawled through dog poop and got it all over himself, requiring assistance getting undressed (to keep it out of his face and hair), an immediate shower, and special high-power load of laundry.  I'm not sure there's water hot enough for that kind of situation, but we tried.  Ewwww.

*  And the upstairs toilet is clogged.

*  As our (very-much-enjoyed) company left, I looked around the house at the dishwasher full of dishes, the sink full of dishes, the leftovers that need to be put away, the crumbs on the floor, the movie that needed to be returned to the corner store within ten minutes, the sand spilled in the boys' bedroom, and noticed the forecast for several days of rain... I reminded the boys that they needed to mow the neighbor's lawn.

*  But Kerry insisted they shouldn't work on the Sabbath.

What about me?

The Secrets of the Universe

In the school room, I watch one of the boys reach into the bucket for a pencil.
He pulls one out, looks at the tip - dull - and puts it back.  Then repeats the process.  And again.  With a look of growing disgust.

Um, son?  There's a process here you're missing.  It's a fairly simple one.  It goes like this:

 If you want the pencils to be sharp, then

you have to sharpen them.

*sigh*

TICE

Things I Cannot Explain...

I love color.  It makes me happy.  When we bought this house (when my grandparents died), most of the rooms were painted beige.  With flat paint, no less.  There was a blue-and-pink Victorian bedroom.  Another bedroom had black wall-paper with enormous pink and white flowers, and Pepto-Bismol-pink trim.  (That is NOT the kind of color that makes me happy.)  And the whole rest of the house was dull beige.

Depressing.

We did a lot of painting.  Some of you noticed the deep turquoise bathroom.  That was the boys' request, and I was happy to oblige.  Given that they really wanted to paint that color on the outside, it was an especially happy compromise.   And then I found this fabulous formica for the counters.

(I was tempted to use the coral version of if in the kitchen, but orange isn't my happy color and I wasn't sure I would love it long enough to commit.  Good decision.)

For the rest of the house I chose three colors - a green like a green apple, a buttery yellow, and a periwinkle blue that all play very nicely together, and painted all the trim (doors, ceilings, etc) white.

All that to say, to each their own. 

I realize not everyone finds this as wonderful as I do.  I think it puts my in-laws (whose entire house is shades of brown) into some kind of visual overload when they come to visit, but they don't live here.  And I don't live in your house, so do what makes you happy.

What I don't understand is the absence of color.  Specifically, the popularity of gray.  In this climate.  I can't tell you how many blogs I've seen with people repainting their houses (interior) gray.  It may have a swanky name, like Oyster Bay or Samovar Silver, but it's gray.  And you know what I see when I look out my window, 19 days out of 20?

Gray.

All I can say is that you people are made of sterner stuff than I am.  Because with all the gray outside, if I saw gray, gray, and more gray inside, every single day, I think I'd need Prozac.

What about you?  What colors do you like?  Are you bold in your homes?  Or do you stick to neutrals?

Hmmmm...

I wonder about things.  Sometimes things that matter, and other times random things.

Like what on earth would possible induce a grown adult to legally change his name to

No kidding.  And what a fantastic guy.  (Eyes roll.)

So what prompted the name change?  Could it have anything to do with this?

P.S.  I thought about labeling this one "Creature Feature", but did not want to degrade the animals.   

Good grief.

Not Very Christmassy, But Real Life

There are reasons I don't go out to the garage very often.  Here you see a few of them.  (No, I don't mean The Boy.)

That makes my head want to explode.

This... well... what can I say.  It's the Testosterzone.

This, on the other hand, makes my heart sing.  Gunnar loves to take things apart and see what's inside.  He usually remembers to ask first, because - Lord have mercy - he is not so much into putting it all back together.  But, as Kerry's fax machine went belly up, he can have at it.

He doesn't just smash things, as we sometimes enjoy, but really takes them apart carefully.  Then he brings me his treasures ;D

Things I Cannot Explain

Things I Cannot Explain

Things I Cannot Explain

Well, boys in general.  But in particular...

You'd think I was trying to kill them, asking them to write a two paragraph summary of what we've covered in history.  Or getting them to write much of anything.

But in the thirty minutes I spent checking email and reading blogs before school this morning, the three of them jointly wrote a story.  Granted, it was not exactly a literary masterpiece, but GOOD GOLLY MISS MOLLY it was seven pages long!  In usual testosterzone fashion, it was an action-packed, globe-spanning epic.  There were the inevitable explosions and militant rabbits and battles and nuclear-whatever and odd runway vehicles.  And priceless gems, such as this:

The seats were tossed about, funneling Irish* Indiana Jones fans through the windshield into the Wiener-Mobile.  It crashed through the wall, Irish movie-goers clinging to all parts of the thundering hot dog.

But write about Indira Gandhi?  Or taxonomy?  Surely you jest.

* (No Irishmen were harmed in the telling of this tale.)

P.S.  Can I just tell you, in the midst of all the raw BOY-ness of their story, how adorable I find the way Gunnar uses the word presently?  He's been reading The Secret Garden again.