Dorkiness

I am a dork. No, no, don't make polite denials. I know it. I ENJOY being a dork. It's fun.
I love to read. I love to read history, and occassionally...grammar. Yes, that's how bad it is. Eats, Shoots, and Leaves was a great book! It's a book making fun of people's grammar mistakes, for you non-dorks.
The podcasts I listen to? Several BBC programs: Global News, From Our Own Correspondent, The History of the World in 100 of Objects, and Documentaries, a French Word-of-the-Day, and Grammar Girl. Yes, Grammar Girl. I listen to podcasts about adverbs.
Last month, on my weekly trip to the library, I was really pleased with the three books I brought home: Animals in Translation: Using the Mysteries of Autism to Decode Animal Behavior by Temple Grandin, The Dog That Drove Home, the Snake Eating Mouse and Other Exotic Tales of the Animal Kingdom by Vida Adamoli, and The Story of English: Revised Edition by Robert McCrum, William Cran, Robert MacNeil.
I start reading all my library books at once; I don't go through them one at a time. I'll tote them around to various rooms in the house as I'm working, and just pick up which ever one happens to be handy. Eventually one will pull ahead and I'll focus on it for a while.
I really liked Animals in Translation. There was a lot I doubted, but I thought the facts and insights into animal behavior were fascinating. That means, if you know me, you will avoid me for at least two weeks, in order to prevent yourself from being bored to death by "interesting" anecdotes from the book that I simply must inflict upon you. If you know me REALLY well, you will merely brace yourself. It's futile to resist.
The Exotiv Animal Tales wasn't as good, but I did like some of the stories. Try not to mention nursing, puppies, or snow to me for a while, or I'll tell you about the Welsh woman who was snowed in without formula, and nursed her newborn on her loyal German Shepherd, thus saving his life.
The Story of English was very interesting - about the history and development of various forms of English. I didn't finish it before I returned it. It was overdue, so I wasn't allowed to recheck it. I have to wait until Friday to find out how it ends. Ha!
I like being a dork. I have to go now, there's a tornado documentary on PBS.

Remodeling...

My blog that is. Excuse the mess and clashing colors. Nate's working on improving a header for me. As soon as he gets that finished, I'll put it up. If he does a good job, I may force...um...persuade him to do a whole layout.

Martha Speaks

Last night I cooked for company. We had ginger-glazed pork chops, cream potatoes, roasted corn, and a spinach salad with a little of everything in it. The night before? Bean burritos. As I was whisking the glaze, I realized this must be why Nate always invites people over!
Actually, we invite people over because we enjoy spending time with them, not because my husband is angling for a balanced meal. Mostly.
Anyway, when we have people over, I start preparing that morning. I spend the first half of the day cleaning. Maybe, if you come over to my house, you wouldn't notice that I dusted the towel racks. But I did. Because I love you. And because I'm crazy. But mainly it's love. Ok, that's a lie. It's crazy to dust a towel rack, and crazier to put it on a To Do list!
While I'm cleaning, Suzy's has one conversation topic. "When are my friends coming? Are my friends coming today? Is today the day my friends are coming? Are they coming after my nap? Are they coming? When are they coming? My friends, are they coming over to my house? Today? When are my friends coming? Will my friends come today? Is today the day my friends are coming over to my house after I nap but before I go night-night? Is it? Is it today?" Did that annoy you to read? Play it on a loop for 8 hours, and you'll have an insight into my mentality yesterday.
After lunch and getting Suzy down for a nap, (last words: "Are my friends coming over after my nap?") I am already tired. I get a shower and clean clothes, but no makeup. On a very good day, I have time to put on makeup. That is not today. I have to get busy making dinner, and I expect the world to just be grateful that I put on deodorant.
So I start cooking and cutting and cleaning (because it never stops) and bustling about. I have a To Do list of 21 items, and I am smoking through them, occasionally adding more as I think of it. Suzy is up now, and repeating her loop again. By 3 pm I tell her that if she asks me one more time when her friends are coming, I will run screaming into the street. I think I'm being funny. Suzy looks up, horrified, and begins to sob. "If you run away, I won't have a mommy anymooooore!" More sobs rack her tiny body, and big tears roll down her face. That, my friends, is a joke that bombed. So I scoop her up and kiss her and tell her that I will never run away or leave her. After a few minutes, she has calmed down enough to ask, "Are my friends coming over before I go night-night?" I run screaming into the street, and it goes down hill from there. Just kidding about the end. (I have to say that because my mom will think I really did.)
Nate comes home, and starts the grill. I go outside to ask him to help me shuck the corn - we've already established that I'm crazy, right? He asks me to bring him a cloth so he can clean the porch rail. This has not made it to my To Do list at all. I have things I have to do, and I have things that I want him to do that I haven't told him yet. If you could see in my head at that moment, it would just be "The corn! The corn! Just shuck the stupid corn!" I am working myself up to a good frazzle. I tell him no. He mentions it again. I go off like a bottle rocket. There was nothing good to see then. I'm thankful I took the time to slam the door first, or the neighbors would still be talking about it. When slamming the door is the highlight of your behavior, you are misbehaving!
It is so bad, that I instantly know. Sometimes you can try to justify yourself, but some times the Holy Spirit immediately convicts you. I apologize to Nate and ask his forgiveness. He forgives me, but he is hurt, and I must say he rather defiantly cleans one porch rail before shucking the corn. We now have one immaculate white porch rail; the others are still dingy yellow from pollen.
While he's taking it out on the porch rail, I get a call from an old friend. I update her on the day, leaving out my impersonation of fireworks. As she's saying bye, she adds, "Be a Mary and not a Martha!" Very rarely do you have a whole day's worth of issues summed in seven words. This was my entire problem. I was being the biblical Martha (with an unholy dash of Martha Stewart.)

"Now as they went on their way, Jesus entered a village. And a woman named Martha welcomed him into her house.
And she had a sister called Mary, who sat at the Lord’s feet and listened to his teaching.
But Martha was distracted with much serving. And she went up to him and said, “Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me to serve alone? Tell her then to help me.”
But the Lord answered her, “Martha, Martha, you are anxious and troubled about many things,
but one thing is necessary. Mary has chosen the good portion, which will not be taken away from her.”
Luke 10:38-42

I had so focused on my To Do list that I neglected to listen to Christ, in the process giving my daughter an abandonment complex and verbally abusing my husband. I repent.
When our guests arrive, I haven't set the table. I'm just starting the potatoes. I totally forget to grill hot dogs for the kids and end up microwaving them. And I don't care. We talk with our friends about the things the Lord has been teaching us through our trials. We listen and laugh and fellowship like brothers and sisters in Christ. I'm a Mary. Life's better that way.

After a Long Absence...

Last week I got an email from my mom, saying that she had went to the trouble of updating her blog as I requested, but she had checked, and as I hadn't posted in over a month, she was not going to feel guilty about ignoring hers. I got the idea that if I ever want to hear from her again, I had better write something! I procrastinated and finally pull myself to the computer, and I find an email from a friend pointing out that I haven't posted in a while!
I could lie and say that I had nothing to write about, but the truth is that my absence from my blog was chaotic and emotional, and most all of it is stuff I had a hard time even speaking out loud to people (so I mostly didn't) and I certainly don't want to publish it on the internet! But it's better now, so no worries!
So this is a post, to let all four of my readers know that another post is coming. I would go ahead and write something here, but that into just sort of kills the oomph of anything, doesn't it?

Knick-Knacks

I have held back on what I’m about to confess for fear of offending just about every other woman in America: I hate knick-knacks. Now, I do not hate them in your house. You can have them on every available surface and I’ll never say a word. I hate them in MY house. I hate moving them, dusting them, looking at them.*
I like my decorative items to be functional as well as pretty. Vases, fine. Bowls (preferably food-safe so they can double as serving bowls), great. Candlesticks, picture frames, little boxes that hold stuff, wonderful. Porcelain shepherdess, no. Crystal unicorn, no no no. My knick-knack collection consists of three Willow Tree figures that double as book ends.
Nate, however, does not share my horror of bric-a-brac. He tries to be accommodating, but occasionally our differences come to the surface.
This week we were attempting to get our guest room a little more guest-friendly. We took down a hideous and dilapidated bookshelf. I thought that was a good thing. I forgot that up on the top of that shelf, where I could barely see them, was Nate’s stash of knick-knacks. A word here about Nate’s knick-knacks: they are random, masculine, and ugly. They make a useless porcelain shepherdess seem fetching. The day he decided to display his preserved head of a baby alligator on his desk at church, instead of the guest room, was a happy day. His collection also includes a fake pile of dog poo.
So, while I’m grocery shopping, Nate is in the guest room, busy moving books and movies, when he decides to do something with his now homeless knick-knacks.
His solution? He strew them across the dresser and tv. When I came home I found the dresser – and I already dislike that there is a tv, dvd player, playstation, and an over-sized vase of flowers on it- now sported a wooden alligator figurine, a quartz alligator figurine, a minature Florida Gator football helmet, (notice a theme?) a picture of Suzy and her cousins at Christmas (which wouldn’t be bad at all, except they were all crying) a picture of his grandparents (fine) a brass thermometer, a boomerang, a signed baseball, a very small, wooden Chinese incense ball, three flat rocks, and the crowning glory- a Russian nesting doll of Boris Yeltsein. It had the added charm of opening up to reveal all the previous Soviet leaders back to Lenin.
Needless to say, I was appalled.
When I realized that we would never come to an agreement as to the attractiveness of such a display, I pointed out that our pre-school houseguests this week would probably destroy them. So Nate put them in a drawer, to be brought out at the appropriate time. I hope that time is not when my sister comes to visit next week, or anybody else for that matter.
All this is just the lead-up to this morning while making my bed, I noticed a Willow Tree figure had been moved from it’s post as bookend, and replaced with an exact minature replica of Minis Tirith. If you don’t know what that is, it looks like this:


Isn’t it lovely?
But the tops, the absolute tops was picture frame. Yesterday Nate had taken a frame with one of our engagement pictures off of the dresser and said he was going to put in on his desk at church. Isn’t that the sweetest thing? Wouldn’t you feel all sunshine and lollipops inside if your husband did that? I was touched. Until this morning, when I saw that the engagement picture, which had previously been right next to the alarm clock (thus the first thing he’d see in the morning) had been replaced with an autographed picture of Steve Spurrier. This is Steve Spurrier:

Yes, Steve Spurrier, Heisman trophy-winning quarterback of the Florida Gators and former National Championship winning coach of the same, has now usurped my place of honor.
I hate knick-knacks.


*This is excepting Christmas decorations and decorative crosses.

Miss Prim

This morning as I loaded the dishwasher, Suzy was working hard rolling out blue play-do with her beloved pink rolling pin. She was chatting with me about the state of my relationship: "You are Daddy's wife. You are just married. You're not his *woman*." She said "woman" like it was a bad word.
"But I am his woman," I answered.
She retorted, "Well! I'm not. I am a *lady*."
Well then.

Preschool Lesson Plan - The Ocean

This is a lesson plan I did with Suzy waaay back in September. I thought I might post one every now and then. If nothing else, I know at least Suzy's grandmothers are interested!

The Ocean

Monday- Family Day, Nate's day off (no school)

Tuesday
Bible- Bible story and catechism with Daddy in the evening

French - watching French cartoons about the ocean and beach, learning names of some ocean animals. (French is my least successful subject with her. It's embarrassing to even chronicle this in a blog. Please never ask her the name of something in French. She doesn't care. At all.)

Physical- Dancing together

Art - making a paper plate fish

Reading/Cognitive - Reading ocean books (Everyday. She especially liked Dr. Seuss's Cetation Station. Go ahead and ask her what a cetation is. She cared about that!)
-Learning ocean songs. She loved this one, to the tune of The Wheels On the Bus:
"The sharks in the ocean go chomp chomp chomp,
Chomp chomp chomp, chomp chomp chomp,
All through the sea...
The crabs in the ocean go pinch pinch pinch, ect
The octopus in the ocean goes squirt squirt squirt, ect
The sea horse in the ocean rocks back and forth, back and forth, ect
The whales in the ocean go spout spout spout...
The fish in the ocean go swish swish swish..."
(She still asks to sing it sometimes. She likes to add things now that don't belong in the ocean, to see what I come up with. The car in the ocean goes glug glug glug, the bike in the ocean doesn't go far, doesn't go far...)
Math/Activities - Fish tanagram mats (she only did this for about 2 minutes, but I should try it again now that she's older)
-Sea animal die-cuts for sorting
-Examining shells
-Sand pudding ( A cute idea. You take vanilla pudding, and then put finely crushed vanilla wafers on top, so when you give it to the child, it looks like a cup of sand. Except Suzy doesn't like vanilla wafers, crushed or not, so she didn't eat it. I'm beginning to regret choosing this lesson plan to share. But I've typed too much now to change it!)

Wednesday
Bible- Bible story and catechism with Daddy in the evening

French - watching French cartoons about the ocean and beach, learning names of some ocean animals.

Physical - Running outside.

Art - wax paper fish. (Oh great, another educational failure. This project was way to teacher-driven for a preschooler. Actually, I did the whole thing, so it was pretty worthless. She just watched me, which was not the goal. I thought Suzy could shred the crayons, but she couldn't. If you have an older child, this is what it is: you take crayon shavings and place them on a piece of wax paper. Place another piece of waxpaper on top. Put an old towel on your ironing board, and put the paper on top of that. This is experience speaking. I have melted red crayon on my ironing board cover. With your iron hot, pass it over the paper, close, but not touching. Otherwise all your colors will swirl together and make brown. When the crayons have melted, let it cool, then draw fish shapes and cut out. You could also do flowers. I won't, but you could!)
Reading/Cognitive- Coloring an illustration to Rub-aDub-Dub rhyme, reading the rhyme.
-Ocean animal memory game

Math/Activities - Sink or Float game (This was fun. During Suzy's bath, I gave her a variety of items for her to drop in to see if they sink or float. Easy and educational!
- Octopus for lunch (I made an octopus out of a hotdog. Leaving about an inch and a half uncut, you cut it lengthwise so that it has eight little legs. Then you plop it in some boiling water until the legs curl up. Put it on a plate and add two little ketchup eyes.)

Thursday
Bible- Bible story and catechism with Daddy in the evening

French - watching French cartoons about the ocean and beach, learning names of some ocean animals.

Physical- Dancing together

Art - handprint octopus (This was a cute one. I painted her hand, except for her thumb, and then she made a print on blue paper. We did this several times. After they were dry, we added eyes with a marker, but gluing on google eyes would be cute too.

Reading/Cognitive - Rainbow Fish story re-telling. (We read Rainbow Fish, and then I gave Suzy some paper and crayons. I asked her to draw something she remembered from the story. We've done this with several books and even poems. She always enjoys it)

Math/Activities- Tuna sandwiches cut into a fish shape

Friday
*Story hour at the library* (Then we spend another hour getting books in the library.)