Gray, chilly, bleak, rainy day here. We are spoiled by all the San Diego sun. Days like today make me feel like I’m made of tissue paper, in danger of dissolving during the brief sprint from house to car.
We had to go out for a while this morning, and now [...]
This is news that shocks me to my core. The other day a faraway friend called me, shuddering, to say she’d just discovered head lice on her five-year-old. She knew I’ve been through that particular horror myself—twice, a year apart, the second occurrence being just days after we arrived here [...]
• Our read-aloud of Winter Holiday, which we began in (gulp) September.
• Our new read-aloud of The Twenty-Four Days Before Christmas. This one’ll be a cinch (she says recklessly)—it’s a shortish book, something between a very long picture book and a children’s novella. Although it features one of my [...]
Things people around here have enjoyed of late:
Things:
My sewing machine. It was in the shop for weeks, and now it’s back. I am happy. We had it whirring all afternoon: I am months behind in our online quilting bee.
Games:
Apples to Apples. The Shakespeare Club kids always pull this out after [...]
What happens when you read one of Karen’s posts aloud to your husband in front of the small fry?
The three-year-old decides “Feral Squirrel” is a perfect nickname for her baby brother, that’s what.
[...]Mamalion asked for my potato soup recipe. I’ve been making this soup since college; my aunt gave me an old cookbook she’d had since the 50s and this was pretty much the only recipe I ever tried in the whole book. Easy and oh so yummy.
Peel and dice one small [...]
A few happinesses for a Monday morning…
Lesley’s new calendar is in her shop.
This piping hot cup of cawpy I am sipping. (That’s hot cocoa to those of you without a Wonderboy.)
Candles on my kitchen table.
Small folk in footie pajamas.
Shower gel that smells like fresh oranges.
That [...]
Originally posted Jan. 25, 2005. This was one of the first posts I wrote for this blog. At the time, Jane was nine, and Wonderboy was just a few months older than Huck is now.
In March of 1997, Jane was 21 months old. I took her to a friend’s [...]
There are days when your own life seems surreal to you.
I mentioned the G/I doctor has ordered a bunch of tests for young Wonderboy. For some of the tests, we needed to deliver a stool sample to the Children’s Hospital—between the hours of 9 and 11:30—within one hour of, er, [...]
It’s because I’m too busy having conversations like the following…not to mention chasing after the scattered fragments of my sanity afterward.
SCENE 1
G/I Dr.: We think it’s possible your son has Condition X. There is no conclusive test for this, but here’s this list of expensive and time-consuming tests I’d like [...]
We started our day giggling over this science humor:
Via BoingBoing, conveyor of many delights.
[...]
Fans of Maria Wilkes’s Caroline books will be interested to know Maria has a new picture book out, a sweet holiday story called The Star of Christmas. Published under Maria’s maiden name (Maria T. DiVencenzo) and illustrated by Elaine S. Verstraete, this gentle and golden-hued tale [...]
I tweeted a request for computer programming tutorial recommendations (for Jane), and a number of useful suggestions came pouring in via Twitter and Facebook. We’ve not had time to investigate them yet—we are busy enjoying a grandparent visit for a couple of days—but I thought I’d post the list here [...]
Things I did this week:
• Spring cleaning. I know, I know, I’m six months late. Or six months early: maybe that’s a better way to look at it. Besides, I once heard a chaparral expert mention that Southern California’s true spring is in November (going by plant [...]
The everyday magic of surface tension: “the quality of a liquid that causes the surface layer of that liquid to behave like an elastic sheet.”
HT to my hubby, as usual. He always finds the best stuff.
[...]We’re lying side by side, reading. A book for him, a screen for me.
Me: I want a cupcake.
Him: What? Where’d that come from?
Me: This post I’m reading. See?
I point at the word. CUPCAKE. It looks somehow magical, evocative, as if it were spelled out in actual cupcakes instead of plain [...]
Wonderboy: My hearing aids aren’t working.
Me: Oh, are your batteries dead?
Wonderboy: Huh?
Me: Do you need new batteries?
Wonderboy: What?
Me: Come here, let me check your hearing aids.
Wonderboy: I think my batteries got dead.
(And yes, we can communicate in sign language as well, but during this conversation I was holding a plate [...]
Just one week ago, Jack was in his prime. Ruddy, round-cheeked, he had a cheerful grin for all the world.
Then he went out one night and got lit up.
Now, sad to say, that once sprightly youth has aged before his time. He spends his [...]
“It’s rather an unusual case,” said Madam Chairwoman blandly. “The prisoner is a poet. You will all, I know, cast your minds back to the many poets who have written favorably of our race—’Her feet beneath her petticoat, like little mice stole in and out’—Suckling, the Englishman—what [...]
Once upon a time, there was a very tidy cupboard.
Then along came young Sir Destructalot.
Having wreaked maximum havoc, he paused, well pleased with his efforts…
…and looked around for new frontiers.
Enticing prospects beckoned at the far corners of his world, but first [...]
What I should probably try to chronicle tonight is how Jane, Beanie, and I came to the conclusion this morning that Plutarch is garlic. (That’s a compliment.)
But it’s late, and I only have a few minutes here, and the pieces of today that might disappear if I [...]
Well, my day went something like this:
Drove to children’s hospital for Wonderboy’s appointment with our favorite specialist, the esteemed yet down-to-earth doctor of genetics. Only one of my boy’s many many physical anomalies seems to be genetic—the albinism—but Dr. J is also a dysmorphologist, which means she takes an interest [...]
Because I sliced my thumb and forefinger while washing a knife this afternoon (nothing serious) and don’t feel like doing much typing.
And because you can’t ever go wrong, can you, posting pictures of scrumptiousness like this?
Yesterday he managed to snag a bottle of barbecue sauce out of [...]
I hate to break it to him, but I think he’s a little too big to play Tom Thumb.
[...]
Here’s something fun: the Cloud Appreciation Society. Float on over to check out some amazing photos, learn about the different types of clouds, and marvel at the Cloud of the Month. I particularly enjoyed the Society’s manifesto:
WE BELIEVE that clouds are unjustly maligned
and that [...]
A conversation reported to me by the 14-year-old:
Wonderboy (looking at book): “Biscuit is spelled B-I-S-C-U-I-T.”
Jane (hiding book): “That’s right! What does B-I-S-C-U-I-T spell?”
Wonderboy: “Biscuit!”
Jane (still hiding book): “That’s right! How do you spell Biscuit?”
Wonderboy: “With letters!”
[...]Overheard: the three-year-old exclaiming over the nine-month-old, “Oh, they just grow up so quickly!”
[...]During yesterday’s evening tidy, Jane asked Wonderboy to put a pair of shoes away in the cubby.
Wonderboy, as many of you know, is hard of hearing. Even with his hearing aids in, he cannot pick up soft unvoiced consonant sounds such as those made by the letters C and T.
Which [...]
“You, child. What do you know of Greece?”
Betsy had not understood much of what had passed, but she remembered her nursery night-light burning in a little pan of grease and she said, “It is a bright light.”
Uncle Ambrose leaned back in his chair and stared at her and his jaw [...]
Perusing my archives, I see the wonders of Balboa Park have inspired a good many posts. (And other creative pursuits.)
I draw (a little); she paints (a lot).
• Helixes (viewing mummies at the Museum of Man; visiting the Botanical Building)
We counted koi in the long lily pond [...]
Banded Garden Spider. Legspan: three inches.
That hole at the tob of the web?
Is where I stuck my hand.
[...]
Another week full of drafts and snippets, words squeezing into the teasing interstices of busy days. Most of what I jotted down had to do with the subjects that got their hooks into us: a chronicle of paths wandered, links explored.
(detail)
During our Balboa Park day last [...]
(A photoessay.)
[...]
This is one of those weeks during which I filled up my drafts folder with fragments of posts but never had time to finish anything. We’re having such perfect weather here, perfect even by San Diego standards: brisk, not chilly, not hot. Glorious. I’ve been working on [...]
Why, I wonder, am I so compelled to write about my reading life? I suppose it has something to do with memory, with holding on to things (we recall best those things which we have narrated, as Charlotte Mason was astute enough to recognize), and also with the way putting [...]
The September Carnival of Children’s Literature is up at Susan Writes: another excellent assortment of posts from the prolific kidlitosphere.
[...]
The Beany Malone books by Lenora Mattingly Weber have been recommended to me many a time over the years, usually by fellow Betsy-Tacy and Anne Shirley fans. I finally got around to reading the first in the series, Meet the Malones, and I found it enjoyable and—peculiar.
The [...]
A perk of living on the west coast is that by the time I get up on Monday morning, the East Coasters have written their morning-after-Mad-Men posts. I don’t know about you, but I love the dimension that internet recaps and essays have added to my television viewing. First I [...]
Betsy-Tacy Convert Week is underway!
I received my giveaway copy (destined for Laurie of Seaglass Hearts) and am rooting for Team Philomathian. The reissues are perfectly lovely, I must say. Wonderful feel to the covers (and that swoony vintage art), the classic Vera Neville illustrations, and loads of photos [...]
Jane shares my relish for a good little-kid story and often emails me choice snippets of conversations she has overheard. This one made me laugh out loud for real (LOLFR?).
Rilla, AKA ‘mommy’: “I want a lollipop!”
Beanie: “No, you’re too sick to have a lollipop.”
Rilla: “But I WANT one!”
Beanie: “Oh, fine, [...]
What we read today (an excerpt; “the astronomer” is a boy named Dick, who is stargazing with his sister, Dorothea):
“Got it,” he said. “Just over the top of the hill. Come and see it.”
Dorothea joined him. He pointed out the bright Aldebaran and the other stars of Taurus, and offered [...]
I like to make these lists now and then, snapshots of what everyone in the family was reading at a given point in time. Lately I’ve been trying to take note of what the kids are reading and jot the titles down in my notebook. I don’t catch everything, [...]
In case you missed this at the bottom of a long post earlier this week: A hilarious performance of Rossini’s Cat Duet by sopranos Felicity Lott and Ann Murray. This is the same duet that Betsy and Tacy performed in the school concert every year to the delight of [...]
Tomorrow is the last day to sign up for Betsy-Tacy Convert Week.
If you’d like to participate but don’t have a potential convert in mind, Bonny Glen commenters Lenetta and Anna would love to be adopted.
Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins, the sequel to The Hunger Games.
I don’t care if this book got a zillion volts of buzz. I loved it anyway.
(Heh.)
What I thought before reading The Hunger Games, upon hearing the premise (dystopic society sends lottery-selected teenagers to horrific danger dome [...]
I shared this story in the comments on Sarah’s lovely blog…it’s so funny I can’t resist telling it here too. Several years ago, when we lived in Virginia and my oldest child was about 8 or 9, I took the kids to a living history museum (the ten-awesome [...]
“There are quiet places also in the mind,” he said meditatively. “But we build bandstands and factories on them. Deliberately—to put a stop to the quietness….All the thoughts, all the preoccupations in my head—round and round, continually, What’s it for? What’s it all for? To put an end to the [...]
After I posted my Robert Pinsky story, I sent the link to Facebook and got this comment from Sally T., a Facebook friend I know through homeschooling—not writing—circles:
Heh — that would have been about the same time that I was poetry editor at Quarterly West, at the U of [...]
