A Series of Unfortunate Events

We cleared the strep--actually Dash and I never got it, thanks be--just in time for a round of flu. This time I'm pretty sure Dash did get it, though he stoutly denied it. Still, when a 9 year old boy heads straight for the couch after school without even a sideways glance at Roblox, something is definitely up.

Deux had a really bad time of it and I didn't feel so well myself, especially since I had a contested hearing and a bar dinner the second day of it. (I did win, though. The flu seems to be lucky for me.) Then we had a much-needed weekend to be sick in, and the internet went out all weekend (for reasons entirely unrelated to the reason the internet had been going out at the office every day all month) and the washing machine broke and the dogs dug a new hole under the fence.

I never actually missed a day of work, but I was dragging pretty badly by the end of the week. So Friday morning DOB offered to get the kids to school--he had morning court--and let me sleep in a few hours. Sound in theory, but Duchess in a moment of exuberance knocked Dash's glasses and a lens fell out and then DOB, in an attempt to superglue it back in the frame, had superglued himself to the glasses. So I got up and got DOB unstuck so he could get to court. At this point the lens was in but so covered with superglue that it was useless for its intended purpose, so we took it out and I tried to put in the lens from his old, even more broken frames. I managed it without supergluing myself, but still got the lens hopelessly covered in glue.

After about an hour of applied nail polish remover, we finally had a functional if not very beautiful pair of glasses for Dash and I took him to school and gave up on the resting and went in to work.

We are mostly better now, although Dash is napping again. And a friend who came over to give an opinion on the dog fence issue has suggested an approach that will allow us to avoid buying more fencing and take advantage of something we do very well--grow eight-foot tall Himalayan blackberries with thorns like razors. If a few of these are relocated to the fence, it should be ample deterrent for digging and if a few of them take root (and they always take root) the solution should be self-perpetuating.

Sara Jones maintains that February is the evil month, but I am sincerely hoping that February can have a bit of mercy on us.

Loathsome Diseases

This time of year people are posting uplifting things on Facebook about magically ridding themselves of negativity and drama to face the new year which will bring nothing but uplift and positivity.

What I find is that the new year is laying in wait with its own new store of negativity and drama. Such as, say, two-thirds of the family getting strep, some of them in places one did not even know it was possible to have strep.

Apparently Duchess actually had it last month and I didn't notice. Well, she did complain her throat was pretty sore a time or two, and one day she felt bad enough to stay home from school, which is pretty bad in her world, but I made her some tea and figured it would pass. I tend to take after my grandmother who reputedly refused to believe my father was particularly ill when, as it turned out later, he actually had polio. She made him go out and play anyways. The doctor later told her he probably was all the better for it.

Then DOB was ill, but DOB generally is ill this time of year to some degree or another. His sinuses do not care for winter.

Then Deux and Dot had the first week of school derailed by mysterious and unpleasant symptoms. Unfortunately things reached a head just when I was scheduled to take Rocketboy to a endoscopy appointment in the early morning, so DOB had the fun of dealing with miserable children overnight and emergency doctor appointments in the middle of court while I was semi-guiltily enjoying a ferry ride all by myself and order-in ramen and other such luxuries of city life with Rocketboy and Bookworm.

But I returned home with lots of books from Bookworm and everybody has medicines and ointments and after a few days are starting to feel semi-human. And I cleaned the fridge.

Chesterton on Being a Lawyer

" . . . we should always be much more inclined to trust a solicitor who did not talk about conveyancing over the nuts and wine. What we really desire of any man conducting any business that the full force of an ordinary man should be put into that particular study. We do not desire that the full force of that study should be put into an ordinary man. We do not in the least wish that our particular law-suit should pour its energy into our barrister's games with his children, or rides on his bicycle, or meditations on the morning star. But we do, as a matter of fact, desire that his games with his children, and his rides on his bicycle, and his meditations on the morning star should pour something of their energy into our law-suit. We do desire that if he has gained any especial lung development from the bicycle, or any bright and pleasing metaphors from the morning star, that they should be placed at our disposal in that particular forensic controversy. In a word, we are very glad that he is an ordinary man, since that may help him to be an exceptional lawyer."

~G. K. Chesterton, Heretics

First Post

Well, it is the new year and I have started the Aeneid. Turns out I actually really like it. It's not as gruesome as the Iliad, and not as discursive as the Odyssey, and spends less time on the sunrises.

It's still about the Trojan War, though. Apparently it took several centuries for everyone to get over that one. Only this is the story of the losers. History may be written by the winners, but poetry is written for the losers--or in this case, the current winners who want to remind everyone how they started out as losers.

Besides Troy, the thing these books have in common that is almost impossible for modern retellings to recreate is the sense of the gods as the primary actors. Moderns may try, but we cannot entirely take it seriously; we think they must just be putting it on and revert to cynicism as soon as they are offstage. But it's not really about the adventures of Aeneas; it's about Juno's and Venus's plans to check and counter-check each other and poor mortals just get caught in the middle.

Maybe they were wrong, but then, maybe they had a better appreciation of their limits than we do.

I'm not great at reading epic poetry--there are a lot of allusions to other places and people that I certainly don't want to bother digging out, so then I start skimming and then I realized I missed a key clue as to who is talking or doing something because they will use three or four names for the same entity. Poetic variation is overrated.

In other readings, I'm still finishing up Heretics by Chesterton and Napoleon's Buttons by Penny Le Couteur. And I just got Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency in from the library, but I haven't started it yet.

Back to the Classics Challenge #1: The Aeneid

Taking a cue from Uglemor, I will be rolling a D12 to determine the sequence of my Back to the Classics Challenge reads.

(Exception will be Swiss Family Robinson, which I will start whenever we finish Watership Down.)

And my first roll is . . . 11. I'll be starting with the Aeneid.

Well, get the tough stuff out of the way first has always been my motto. Starting tomorrow.

Hounded

We had a picture-perfect Christmas, complete with an inch of snow on Christmas Eve *and* the Christmas tree falling over in the middle of the candlight service, and I don't think you can get much better than that.

My main obsession, however, remains keeping the puppy in.

Somebody suggested buried chicken wire. I tried that with what I had on hand, and although it didn't work, it seemed to require him to go around the edges, which suggested that it might work if done sufficiently. So I bought three big rolls and we spent all day one Saturday with me digging and spreading and DOB tying the edges to the fence and the kids chipping in with shovels and stomping things down.

This held for two days. And on the third day, he escaped again.

The weak points this time appeared to be at the points where the fence joins to the house--one one side he had actually chewed an enormous hole in the shed in order to get through and play with the cat, and on the other side he had scraped enough away from the foundation to make the addition on that end look in similar peril. Even with our best efforts, he managed to pull things apart at both ends to get through. So he had a few more days of running free until the following Saturday.

DOB suggested we try cement next, so Deux and I filled in the holes, stretched the wire back out, and poured cement on top. It wasn't pretty, but it might hold. The real challenge was keeping the dogs away until it dried (i.e., inside, and they are not used to being inside and get very restless and certain nameless offspring find it exceedingly stressful). This, on the day that was also supposed to be the one day I had to clean and prep for Christmas. (We had a very big case that hit a critical point the middle of the week before Christmas, and at some point I hope to be able to tell more about it.)

That held on one side, but on the place next to the enticing kitty-filled shed he managed to rip the cemented chickenwire and the fence apart one more time and Christmas Eve he was running loose again. So I went out and wired the chicken wire and the fence together in a bond of peace and goodwill that should last for the ages.

At least, it's lasted so far.

That Kind of a Day

We have one very complicated case going right now that involves coordinating things with several different groups. I had promised someone a drafted document to see if they could sign off on it by ten in the morning.

Naturally, this was the time my brand-new (refurbished) computer that I had just gotten everything set up and downloaded onto went on strike and started freezing up every few words or clicks or attempts to download. 

I did finally manage to get my document off by eleven, and meanwhile had contacted our tech guy, who decided the best course would be to just send his closest available person to bring a different tower for me to try out. The closest available person happened to be his girlfriend, who has tried to tell him that she should not be given technical tasks. But it was simple, right? Just swapping out the tower and pressing start.

Except the wireless had to be connected, and somehow when she pushed the buttons that were supposed to connect the computer with the router, instead what happened was our entire internet went down. So now I couldn't even work on someone else's computer, and neither could anyone else. For awhile we didn't even have phones.

A more technical tech person was dispatched, our internet was eventually restored, and I had my second new computer allllmost set up just in time to leave to get the kids. 

That let me start in on my second exercise in futility of the day, which was trying to patch the fence so the puppy could not get out. This issue dates back to last spring, when it turned out Panther, the puppy we got last year, went into heat so young we didn't have her fixed yet.

Natural selection favors dogs who can dig under fences. Judging from the variety of color and fur in the litter, maybe a few of them. So in June we had a litter of eight puppies--puppy midwife was not a skill I had planned for, but personal experience with mammalian reproduction let me roll it at a +3, and everything went well. Although in the throes of nursing difficulties, DOB and I vowed to each other that we would not, under any circumstances, keep one of the puppies.

You know what happened then. One of the homes we had lined up fell through and it just happened to be the home for the puppy who most adored Duchess and whose affection was requited. And reflecting that crushes on puppies seemed a safe outlet, we caved.

Unfortunately, Mammoth takes after his father in the fence-evading department. The past several months have been an endless round of filling in holes only to have them dug out again, like a slow-motion game of fetch. Last weekend we dealt with a particularly warped section of wire fence by barricading it with a giant section of wooden fence. We went in, certain he would have trouble getting through that, only to see him out again the next day. A little investigation revealed that he still had enough room to simply slide through his old hole and behind the wooden fence section. 

I tried placing a second section of wire fencing, partly buried, right behind the first one where the big gap was. That seemed to hold well, enough that he had to trouble himself to dig a new hole.

Which leads us to the current project, which is that someone told me that chicken wire lying on the ground next to the fence and covered with an inch or so of dirt would catch in his claws and deter further digging. I happened to have enough lying around left from a previous owner to cover the current favored spots. So we'll see how well it works. 

After that I took a long, hot bath and ate cookies. 

Tardiness

Apparently the children (I can't really call them ducklings anymore, they are not short and fuzzy enough) are supposed to have an excuse slip from me to get out of being marked tardy should they, in fact, be tardy. I don't understand how this works. Surely if I am running so late they are tardy I am also too late to write four notes about it?

Duchess suggests I could create a preprinted sheet and then just check the appropriate box. Something like this, I suppose.

Dear Teacher:
Please excuse [Name] for being late for the following reason:

• The cat got in.

• The dog got out. 

• The cat and dog were locked in mortal combat.

• One of the wheelchairs broke down and we had to rearrange all the cars and which piece of equipment was in which car in a sequence so complicated I could not possibly reconstruct it. 

• A child who has survived a decade or more on this earth somehow forgot until we were actually in the car that shoes were an essential part of public attire. And also that the absence of food is a common cause of hunger pain.

• We passed through a field of time distortion on the way here.

• Nobody knows the trouble I seen.

• The next season of Grimm had to go back to the library today and therefore the parents had to stay up late to watch it. 

• Gremlins, most likely.

• My own abject failure to be a responsible adult. 

• Other:___________________________________________________________ 

Somehow I still feel like I'm missing something here.

Oddly, we were almost never tardy last year. We must be getting too slack.

2018 Back to the Classics Challenge

This blog needs a reboot, and I need some inspiration. For the last few years, life has thrown enough challenges at me that I've just tried to keep my head above water. But I'd like to at least try to choose some of my own challenges this year.

So I'm going to try the Back to the Classics Challenge. And just to make it more interesting, I'm going to restrict myself to books I already own--as much as possible, books I own but have not read or at least have not finished. (According to the rules of the challenge, it doesn't count if you start before 2018, but I assume it's OK if I go back to the beginning.)

And, as part of the rules, I have to post reviews of each book, so that will top my posts this year as a start.

Let's see how it goes:


1.  A 19th century classic - any book published between 1800 and 1899.

The Master of Ballantrae, Robert Louis Stevenson. Picked up at a library sale sometime. Never read.

2.  A 20th century classic - any book published between 1900 and 1968. 

The Fall of Arthur, J. R.R. Tolkien. Recently published, but definitely written before 1968. Gift from a co-worker last year, haven't really gotten to it yet.

3.  A classic by a woman author. 

Unless I think of something else for this slot, Frankenstein, by Mary Shelley. I started it last year but didn't finish.  I'll have to start over, which will be annoying. Don't remember where I got it; it's one of those nice Barnes and Noble editions, but I'm sure I didn't buy it new.

4.  A classic in translation.  

Kristin Lavransdatter, by Sigrid Undset. I've read it before, but it's been about a decade. Also I think this translation might be different than the one I read first, from the library. Picked it up at a used bookstore a few years ago.

5. A children's classic.

Swiss Family Robinson by Johann Wyss. This will probably be a family read-aloud. I think I read it once as a child, which was about the least number of times I've read any children's book on the shelf. We have a nice annotated one I found at a library sale.

6.  A classic crime story, fiction or non-fiction. 

Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky. Can't get much more crime than that. No idea where this one is from; the print is tiny but the book looks new.

7. A classic travel or journey narrative, fiction or non-fiction. 

Two Years Before the Mast, Richard Dana. Bears all the hallmarks of a long-ago library sale.

8. A classic with a single-word title.

Ivanhoe, by Sir Walter Scott, because I don't think I've ever actually finished it.

9. A classic with a color in the title. 
I was going to pick The Red Badge of Courage, Stephen Crane. I think I tried to read this about the age of 10 and didn't really get it. But then I realized that the copy I have is a Watermill, and my experience of those is that not only are they abridged with a machete, they then lie about it. So not that one.

I'll do The Scarlet Letter instead. I've read it before, but not since my early teens.

10. A classic by an author that's new to you.

Jude the Obscure, Thomas Hardy. I probably won't like Hardy. But I've never given him a try. Probably library sale.

11. A classic that scares you.

The Aeneid by Virgil. Somehow I've never been able to get into it--not even a retold version. I shall try again. Part of my Great Books of the Western World, which was a wedding gift.

12. Re-read a favorite classic.

Orthodoxy, G. K. Chesterton. I got in the mood for reading Heretics after watching a Murdoch Mystery in which H. G. Wells featured, and once I finish it I'm sure I'll want to do Orthodoxy. Long-ago Christmas present. I have a lot of Chesterton.

Groundhog Month

Every February 2, somebody posts something about how little a groundhog could possibly know about the coming of spring.

This year the groundhog fought back. February 2 was bright and clear, a rare occurrence around here.

That night, it snowed.

That was a brief snow. The next weekend, it really snowed. Six inches of wet, sticky, heavy snow that took down whole stands of trees and knocked us out of power for three days. And unlike our usual heavy snows that turn quickly to rain, it stayed snowy for most of the week.

Then we got the stomach flu. Fortunately, I suppose, not until the power was back on. (Being on a well, we have no water when we have no power.) Still, it was a pretty ghastly bug and left us with one or more not-quite-well-enough-for-school child for the next week.

On one particularly memorable day, Dot informed me first thing in the morning that she needed to stay home. Since it was DOB's day to sleep in, I said this wouldn't be a problem and took the other three kids to school and headed to the office. An hour later, I got a call from the school that Deux was no longer in school-compatible health. I drove to the school and while I was there, walked into Dash's classroom, looked him in the eye, and asked him if he was sure he felt well enough for school. He was fine. I took Deux home and returned to the office. Two hours later, I got a call from the school that Dash was down for the count, too.

It's been trying to snow again this weekend, but so far it's mostly stuck to the cold, driving rain at 36 degrees that is even more miserable than snow.

Usually by this point in the year we are hearing a noisy nightly chorus of frogs. I heard a few feeble peeps on Tuesday but I think they gave up.

I think the groundhog has proved his point.

Out of the Valley

The winter is a valley, with the solstice resting in darkness at the bottom. I always count backwards and forwards as we pull away from it. Now we have gotten as far from the solstice as early November. Soon we will have passed the three darkest months and climbed back out into the daylight.

Already it stays light until almost time to fix supper. I don't have to rush to walk the puppy the instant I get home from work. I am terrible at naming birds by their songs, but something is singing that wasn't a few weeks ago, that on a level below knowledge tells me that spring is coming.

After some more or less easy terrain, we will come to the mountain peak of the summer solstice when the days are so long that sleep is difficult and we seldom see the stars. And then down again.

Without homeschooling I feel a little adrift. DOB and I visited a used bookstore and I didn't know what to do with myself. For the past decade I've always been on the lookout for books for school. And homeschooling moms read the most interesting books and have the most interesting conversations. I hang out on the fringes of the conversation but it's not *my* conversation anymore. I'm not making plans for next term or next year. I'm not pondering how to ease a child through a rough spot. There's homework to help with, some (usually only Dot has any), but it's not at all the kind of work I would choose for them. 

I'm not even reading very discussable books at the moment. I'm tired and my brain is fried and Duchess and Deux always want me to try out their latest middle-grade fantasy series. 

I even tried doing a google search for people who weren't homeschooling but wished they were, but all I could find was advocacy articles on either side. And I am tired of people dividing themselves up into camps and shouting at each other. (Law is like that a bit, I guess, but on most cases and with most fellow practitioners we know there's weaknesses and strengths on both sides and our ultimate goal is to find resolution, not prove our moral superiority by the loudness and frequency of our speech.)

Truth be told, I do like practicing law. Even litigation. This past month I've had my first trial (a very small one) and first deposition. It's fun. And exhausting. It's hard to balance with coming home to a family but we are working to figure it out and hopefully DOB and I will be able to take turns being the exhausted one.

Winter Air

It's too late to start the new year with a grand new blogging resolution, so I can just make a post.

This has been a very wintry winter. Snow and ice and dry, harsh air. Colds and flus and ear infections. DOB regains strength, slowly. I do my first major motion and my first summary judgment motion and my first trial (rather anticlimactic that, the opposing party was in jail and didn't show up). Since the first of the year DOB has been slowly returning to his place in the office and it is a great relief to have him back. We've hired another attorney in the meantime to help with the workload and she may stay on, as we are supportive of a kids-in-school schedule.

The kids go to school and come home and play Legos and video games. I feel guilty about not making them go outside more, but at least their school is strong on recess. For Christmas DOB granted them moderated access to nearly all of his best Lego sets--Harry Potter and Pirates of the Caribbean and the like. We've rearranged the house to put our bedroom in the old schoolroom, and turn the master suite into a game room.

The kids are learning to take turns cooking supper, each according to their inclination, which means Dash and Duchess experiment with stir-fries and udon, Deux opens cans of beans, and Dot bakes potatoes and puts out the shredded cheese. Either way, we eat.

I miss homeschooling. I don't know what to do with myself in a used bookstore anymore. I've been on the hunt for school books for the past decade. Helping with homework is most definitely not the same thing.

Things are still tough, but happy. After the past year every day alive and together is its own little miracle.

Is there life after school?

I have from time to time seen people with grand "afterschooling" plans of all the great activities they do to enrich their children's lives after regular school is over.

After the first week and a half of school, I would laugh uproariously at such a concept, but I lack the energy. My afterschooling activities consist of trying to come up with enough calories to sustain everyone and trying to convince the relevant descendant either that doing homework will not kill them or that failing to get straight A+s will not kill them. That some people manage to do school and other things like sports and music fills me with awe. They do stuff at school, right? That's enough, right?

I'm sure it will all get easier once we are used to it, and once the aftermath of the car accident has sorted itself out, and once I've figured out the Holy Grail of easy breakfast and lunch that everyone will eat and survive to the next meal on. (I have my doubts that easy even exists after a certain critical mass-- basic sandwiches for four kids who eat two or three sandwiches each is a whole lot of sandwiches. And having them make their own means somehow coordinating the movements of four people through a confined space while all of them have very strong opinions on how everyone else should be moving.)

Right at this particular moment, though, Dot is listening to a book on CD, Duchess is reading a book for fun, and the boys are coloring pictures about life in medieval Europe. So maybe we're not doing so bad at enriching life after all.

Time Change

It's been a long summer.

I haven't posted.

Big changes happening.

Let's stick to two of the obvious ones:

1. The descendants (they really are too big to be called ducklings any more) will be going to school in the fall. Which, as you may have noticed, is practically upon us. Although schools around here seem to be the last ones in the country to still hold out for after Labor Day. It's a big change and we will miss homeschooling, some more than others. But running the business and homeschooling both was just too much for the grownups, and bills have this pesky way of needing paid.

Their Majesties have very kindly made it possible for the children to attend the church school where Her Majesty teaches math. Deux is finding the prospect of being able to do whatever math he is up to about the only consolation for facing the prospect of doing school with other human beings in the room. Duchess is finding astonishingly trendy ways to style the uniforms. Dot and Dash are just waiting to see how it all shakes out.

I am sorting through mountains of school supplies.

2. We have increased the number of dependents by 50%, albeit strictly in the non-tax deductible, furry category. In other words, we got a kitten. And a puppy. They are cute. They are furry. They are prone to chewing on things and digging up the flower bed. The kitten (white with black spots, name: Smudge) started out small and fragile and we couldn't bear to leave him outside, so we started keeping him inside and penning him in the bathroom at night, but he grew quite a lot and is showing a temperament more in keeping with an outdoor cat, so we are transitioning him out to the garage. The puppy (black lab, name: Panther) we have managed to stay strong and keep her outside, as she is going to get much bigger and even chewier.

We tried to make the change of a new (to us) car for DOB, whose new wheelchair assembled better sitting in the back of a small hatchback, but it got taken out by an inattentive driver and even once DOB's back allows him to drive again, he is thinking that driving in big trucks has its merits.

Dog Days (and Panda Days)

Duchess has a small stuffed panda with obnoxiously large and sparkly eyes. He is cute. This is a highly valued commodity among today's youth--I blame manga art--I would have been embarrassed by such considerations when I was a child. But anyway, Poncho is a small panda who rides everywhere with one or the other of the children.

Having something that small and helpless and beloved is always a risk. During the chickenpox Poncho went missing for two miserable days, only to be discovered sitting in plain view on the side table.

Far more perilous was two weeks ago, when Deux had happily had him riding along in his shirt while he built forts in the woods only to realize he had vanished. Finding a small stuffie in a hundred yards of knee-deep brush proved to be a hopeless project and we bid Poncho a sad farewell. Until the next evening, when it turned out he had been sitting on the staircase under somebody's abandoned laundry the whole time.

Last weekend Poncho vanished again, and after a brief spat of searching it turned out that I was sitting on him. Well, if he *will* sit in the crack in the couch, he will get sat upon.

It does seem to be about time we got an animal that at least has some homing instinct, and we are planning to get a dog in the near future. Most of them are thrilled with this prospect, but there was a bit of skepticism. Until the day when they picked up a stray lab, fed it and took it for walks, and it spent the night. That was enough to win over all the skeptics. Unfortunately, at that point they found the owners. But we now have a stash of dog food and a leash and find the prospect just a little less intimidating.

Another milestone which has passed is equipping everybody with knives. I have been thinking about this for a long time, but confess I had anticipated nothing more exciting than standard pocket knives all round. DOB, who collects blades himself, had much grander notions, and gave everyone the chance to choose their own style from his extensive catalogs. Duchess chose a Bowie knife with an intricate handle, Deux a machete nearly as long as himself, which has the blackberries on the property trembling; Dot preferred a small green-handled blade that DOB already had in stock, while Dash practically chose a multi-tool which has 12, no 13, no 15 different uses, not counting clonking someone on the head with it. Actually so far everyone has been very responsible with them.

Books Read in March

Blackout and All Clear by Connie Willis: I don't have words for how much I love these books. Together (they can only go together, they are two parts of the same story, not a series) they are 1000 pages of pure bliss. Yes, it's convoluted and confusing and time travel probably doesn't make sense. I don't care. The second time around I was actually able to follow the characters in their different personas and make sense of what was going on. The first time through, a few years ago, I couldn't and I didn't care. They're about World War II, of course, but mostly they're about heroism and patience and love and whether goodness really matters in a world that usually doesn't make sense.

It was really silly of me to check out the first one on a whim and then start it before I had the second one in from the library. Actually, it's really silly of me not to own these.

Gentleman Jole and the Red Queen by Lois McMaster Bujold. It's kind of disappointing in a series that began with epic planet-destroying threats in every book to have petered out to a plot line built on petty contractor disputes and exploding insects. Also the morals were way too, well, "Betan" for me. There were some nice musings on aging and parenting, though.

Paradise Lost, books VII-X. Mankind finally falls. Is it the woman's fault? Or is it built into the system? Regardless, the demons all turning to snakes was a great moment.

Father Brown, by G. K. Chesterton. I can't remember which books I've read, because I'm going through the Omnibus but haven't finished it yet. Anyway, this was necessitated because we tried watching the newer Father Brown BBC series that stars the actor who plays Mr. Weasley. Well, the casting was perfect--few actors could capture that blend of unassuming exterior with deep insight so well. But the writing was frankly terrible. It moved the whole setting forward to the 1950s and converted it into one of those standard village homicide series with a nosy amateur that have presumably decimated the British countryside. None of the exotic locations or fantastical atmospheres dispelled by Father Brown's flash of insight and ability to distinguish between the truly and falsely spiritual. We made it through about three episodes and gave up in disgust. After a few books the taste is mostly out of my head.

Oliver Twist. We must have finished this early in the month. It was a tough read for Duchess and Deux, but I think they grew through it and Duchess at least was enjoying it by the end. (Deux doesn't admit to enjoying much that isn't an equation or a game with an inordinate amount of rules.) Now we're reading Kim which I am determined they shall enjoy, so I'm reading it out loud.

We finished The Phoenix and the Carpet. I still think the chapter when the Phoenix demands the worship of his "priests" at the Phoenix Fire Insurance Agency is one of the funniest ever. I tried reading this to the ducklings years and years ago and it went completely over their heads. This time they were rolling on the floor. DOB was rolling his eyes. We are now reading 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. 

I'm pretty sure I must have read some other books, but I can't for the life of me remember what they were. They must pass into oblivion.

The Pox Departeth

We have survived.

We are never, ever, ever going to do that again.

I hope.

Duchess came down on Tuesday night and the twins followed on Thursday and Friday. By Saturday everyone was pretty much down to sucking on Pedialyte popsicles and watching endless episodes of Get Smart while lying limply on the couch.

Well, except for Deux who was feeling very left out, since he had never gotten that sick. So he had to get his being sick time in with everyone else even though technically he was much better. He didn't rank a seat on the couch, though.

Fortunately the grownups' immunity held strong, although I did get a nasty cold that was much exacerbated by sleepless nights with itchy kids. So I think this weekend I get to lie around and be sick, although I don't care for Pedialyte popsicles or Get Smart that much.

Bunnies and Chick(en pox)

This year will undoubtedly go down in family lore as "The Year We Had the Chickenpox on Easter."

Except we didn't *exactly* have it on Easter. Deux had pretty much scabbed over by Easter, and Duchess didn't come down sick until Tuesday.

Still, chickenpox has loomed over all the festivities, keeping us out of general gatherings, and keeping away everyone except those confident in their immunity or desiring to acquire some. (I did let asymptomatic kids go to the sunrise service--I figured outside they could adequately avoid everyone else.)

We did manage to dye eggs with friends (who were hoping to catch it) and have a reduced family gathering on Easter. It hasn't been entirely without festivities.

So far Dot and Dash have not had any definitive symptoms. Duchess is in the throes of misery as the eldest sufferer. Deux endured the whole thing with relentless stoicism and a whole lot of Alphabears on the iPad. (His verdict: having chicken pox was not worth the extra iPad time.) Where Deux acquired them in the first place I cannot imagine, as he does not exactly vigorously seek new acquaintance and I haven't heard of anybody we actually know having them.

I have laid in a stock of movies and now am just hoping for everyone to get it quickly and be done.

The Horror!

I promised myself that I would *never* do this, but I did. I couldn't stop myself. The twins were complaining, yet again, about the fact that they were expected to work on the exact same math page at the same time, not to mention having to write down some of the answers instead of doing it all orally.

Finally, I blurted out, "You know, in regular school, the kids all have to do the same math page. Twenty or thirty of them."

Dash: "They do? Not at the same time, though?"

"Yes, at the same time."

Dot: "Well, not the same page."

"OK, technically not, but copies of the same page. And they have to write in all the answers by themselves."

Dash: "I never, ever want to go to regular school."

Cure-All

The last couple of weeks we had a round of nasty colds go through (I think there were at least two separate viruses swapping back and forth).

So last Sunday I took the time to just sit on the couch and Be Sick all day. Except for about fifteen minutes of standing up and chopping long enough to get this chicken soup cooking. This chicken soup contains pretty much everything I've ever heard of being useful against a cold, and if you're not into healing properties of foods it's just an incredibly easy and delicious soup, with none of that grandiose roast this and blend that nonsense that people keep cluttering up honest, simple soup recipes with. Between the soup and the resting, I was back to functional by Monday. All amounts are wildly approximate.

Chicken Curry Cold Cure Soup
 2 onions, chopped
A big ol' spoonful of minced garlic
A glug of olive oil.

Sautee in the bottom of a large pot.

Add
2 quarts chicken broth (Way better with proper homemade broth from bones, of course)
Two cups or so each of chopped carrots, celery, and potatoes
Two cups chopped, cooked chicken
1 T grated fresh ginger
2 T curry powder
1 t. turmeric
1 t. oregano
Salt and black pepper to taste

Cook until the veggies are soft, about twenty minutes. Add 2 cups frozen broccoli and the juice of one lemon; let it all get hot again and serve.