Blog Readership

 . . . is down by one today. But since it's my grandma, it is a big one.

Grandma makes me regret ever saying, or thinking, that it is an insignificant epitaph to be a faultless housekeeper. Because she was, and it was significant. Her house was always a place of refuge and serenity and beauty. And dinner rolls mostly made of air, and quilts that were a family history in stitches, and delicious but strange tuna salad. She loved watching baseball and partisan politics.

The thing I think I learned the most from her, though, was a deep respect for the personhood of little children. She loved children, but she was not the type to pounce or coo or demand kisses. She insisted firmly that no child ever be forced to give hugs or kisses (she never lacked for volunteers). She listened to them seriously and talked sympathetically. She always kept the chest of toys and the stack of books ready. And when her eyesight grew too poor to read the books to the ducklings, she would listen while they read them to her.

Twin Time

It is the time of drama camp. (So any well-earned rest after the end of school must wait a bit.) This year Duchess and Deux are both performing in Beauty and the Beast. Deux is very excited to be playing the role of Chip, the teacup, and Duchess is the baker's daughter and a pepper shaker.

But beyond our one chance of the year to experience the joys of wearing shoes before nine in the morning, it is also my first chance in a very long time to have extended periods of times alone with the twins and get some answer to the question of what is going on in their heads.

The answer is, "A lot."

They have opinions on everything. And questions on everything. They talk about them all the time. And when the big kids are not there as a buffer, they talk to me. They talk about why cars need gas and whether zombies could have their brains and eat them, too, and whether anyone would donate cake to Goodwill, and whether the existence of the wind, with unseen causes, proves the reality of magic.

Dot asked me one day, "What is inside of bones?"

"Well," I said, racking my brains, "It's kind of like a sponge, with holes, only hard, and in the center there's a squishy part that makes your blood."

"Ah," she said.

Moved by her interest, I overstepped myself. "And birds have hollow bones, so they can be light and fly."

"So birds don't have blood?" she asked.

It took me a moment to see the connection. Then I was flummoxed. All these years I have known these two facts but never put them together. (Fortunately there is the internet and so I later discovered that yes, birds have bone marrow, as the hollow spots do not take up the entire bone.) We also checked out a cross-section of a bone at the grocery store.

I may need to start them on school to slow them down to where I can keep up.

Wind-up

I got to attend three days out of a six-day trial: pretrial motions and jury selection on the first day, opening arguments and the first witness on the second day, then missed the bulk of the testimony and showed up for end of trial motions, jury instructions, and closing arguments. The case involved a property that had once been used for dry cleaning--the family owning it has been cleaning up dry cleaning solvents out of the soil for several years since discovery, but the developer-neighbor who had his sights on the whole block wanted more, sooner, different.

The jury came back for the defendant (that's us). There's a piece left that the judge still has to decide--I haven't heard what yet, but she seemed fairly favorable to our case thus far. I got to make my first argument in court. Since it was on a question where we just wanted the judge to stick with her previous ruling, it wasn't too hard to make: "Yes, your honor, you're absolutely right." Still, I flatter myself that I avoided saying anything stupid, which is a good start.

My new dresses looked good, I thought, though no one was around who would tell me so. (I was staying with Bookworm, who does not offer opinions on dresses.) Opposing counsel, in recess discussions about technology, did make a reference that I would of course be too young to remember overhead projectors in grade school, so apparently I have not yet evaded the curse of never looking like a grownup. (I didn't tell him that I had, in fact, *taught* school using an overhead projector.) I undoubtedly should get pictures of the dresses, but I can only find the cord for the camera that doesn't work.

Meanwhile His Majesty stayed with the ducklings, and they had such a marvelous time visiting the parks and the library that they are most disappointed that the trial is over. To my great pleasure, they actually managed to complete a decent component of school work under their own steam while I was gone. This was done mostly with the motivation of getting their daily computer time despite my absence, but it will do for a start on personal responsibility.

And with that, and some more work since, we have at last come to the end of school, on time, and, in fact, a day ahead. (Once they realized how close we were, they plowed through what was left today.) And I believe all the research I had to do on that case--which has dominated my life since the end of March--is over. I feel rather as if we have come through fire and water to get here, but here we are. My feet are up. They need it.

Another Snarky Thing I'm Not Saying on Homeschool Forums

There's a news article making the rounds which says something like this: Homeschooling is growing at 7 times the rate of public school enrollment.

To which I can only say: Duh.

Most kids are already enrolled in public school. The only way public school is going to grow significantly in enrollment is if there are suddenly, say, twice as many kindergarteners as there were graduates. Which doesn't happen very often.

The vast majority of kids aren't already homeschooling. Therefore, it takes a very small number of kids switching to homeschooling to make a significant rate of growth.

If that doesn't make sense like that, try imagining a town with 100 kids in it. Ninety of them are in public school, eight in private school, and two homeschool. This year there are two extra kindergarteners, and one of them goes to public school while one gets homeschooled. Voila! Homeschooling is increasing at the rate of 150% (3 instead of 2), while public school is increasing at the paltry rate of just over 1% (91 instead of 90). So homeschooling is increasing at 150 times the rate of public schooling!

This is not exactly worthy of a headline.

(This turns up in other areas, too. Just keep in mind when someone talks about X belief system/activity/product being the "fastest-growing" in its field, it usually means it was really, really small to begin with.)

The Visitation

DOB's parents have been out for a two-week visit, during which we did lots of fun things like listen to the house be quiet because the children had all gone out to the trailer to see them. We did not go on a last-minute weekend trip to the coast, although we did all the packing and unpacking for it. We did go see Narnia in the woods and it stopped raining just long enough for the show, but the battle was very realistically muddy.

The case I have been working on for the last several months is supposed to go to trial this month (whenever a courtroom opens up), and I'm supposed to get to go along and help with voir dire. This, in turn, proves to be a good excuse for getting some very nice clothes and shopping at an actual department store. DOB was kind enough to do it with me, which was good, because if there's one thing I can't do by myself, it's spending money. Also, he has good taste. I went with dresses, which both looked better and didn't require me to hem. I am too tall for petite and too short for regular, so unless I want to wear four-inch heels (which is never, ever going to happen), I would have to hem all pants. Or just wear them to rags at the heel, which is what I do with jeans.

Also, with extra babysitters on hand and willing to stay very late, we went out for a late night Magic tournament at the local game shop. I astonished myself by coming in third. Bibliohippo came in fifth, and DOB seventh, so we were all prime numbers and pleased with ourselves.

School has been a little less than inspiring, what with all the other fun things going on, but I am determined to get finished before summer drama camp, so we slog on. I am hoping to enliven things a little this week by making comic books about Columbus. Also, it looks like we are going to start probability in math. And perhaps--just perhaps--it will really stop raining.

The Highest Calling

It's Memorial Day, but I never got around to finishing writing the things I wanted to write about Mother's Day. If I were a cool blogger I would have announced a series and published them on a schedule and invited other people to weigh in, but I am not a cool blogger.

One of those floating phrases that tends to draw fire when it passes is that motherhood is "the highest calling of a Christian woman" or something like that. And then comes the shots--What about those who can't have children? What about those whose children have (it happens) grown up? Why isn't fatherhood so important?

Those are all good questions, but they don't get down to the heart of the matter, which the "highest calling" people have expressed so poorly as to obscure it entirely. The highest calling of anyone, of everyone, is to love God and love people. Mostly to love God BY loving people.

So if you have small children depending on you, then yes, your highest calling is to love and care for them (ahead of others simply because of their dependence). But even if you don't, or never will, somewhere, somehow in your life there are people to show God's love.

Motherhood may be challenging, but caring for the sick and dying is just as challenging, and devoid of cute photo-ops. In many ways it is more profoundly human and divine than raising children. Even animals care for their young, but only humans honor the past.

But whether it's caretaking or missions or generous donations or just working a job that other people need and being nice to the janitor, all of us have the same calling and the same opportunity and the same commandment: Love one another.

The Grammar Commando Takes the Stage

When I was a kid, all the cool homeschooled kids did the spelling bee. Some of them even went national. I never did this, despite a significant natural aptitude for spelling. (This is completely a gender-linked trait in my family. None of the male members of the family can spell at all, while all the women are pretty good at it. However, the guys can fix washing machines, and on the whole, my life would probably be better if I could drop the spelling of "pusillanimous," a word I have never used except right now, and replace it with information on how to operate a socket wrench.) When we played Huggermugger, a word game with a heavy spelling component, my siblings would refuse to tell me the word I had to spell correctly: they would just read the definition and then I had to guess what the word was *and* spell it correctly. I thought this unfair, as it was the only game I could win. But I still got it right every time, so I didn't protest too much.

This week, DOB found me the chance to take spelling onto a slightly wider stage, as the local adult literacy group has a spelling bee as an annual fundraiser and his Rotary club was sponsoring a team. It was only a very slightly wider stage, and there were eleven three-person teams on it, on a very hot May night in a community college theater built in the good old Washington tradition of "Air conditioning? Who needs air conditioning?" The ice ran out before the eighth round.

Many of the other teams had themes and costumes and banners and special cheers, like the "Beeutifuls" the "Trio in Bee Sharp," the "Bee Gees" (complete with disco ball) and the "Spellz Angelz." Our team had the uninspiring name of "The Bee-Wheres." However, good spelling and good costuming were apparently not correlated, as in the final round it came down to us and another Rotary club with the slogan "We Bee Ducks" and fuzzy yellow headbands. (I don't get it either. But, they could really spell. In fact, their main speller kept correcting the pronouncer.)

My great triumph of the evening was "parricidal," a word passed on by two previous teams, including the ominous Ducks, because nobody had asked to have it defined. Once I knew it was "pertaining to the killing of a close relative" the spelling was obvious, but everyone else had been thinking of parasites. However, I went down in flames on "ciguatera," a tropical disease caused by fish poison. (The words to hope for at the end are the really long ones with lots of Latin roots. Get an obscure short word from India or Brazil and you're sunk.)

So, we came in second, but it was still a lot of fun, and it even counted as a date night although we spent the whole evening at opposite ends of a crowded room, most of the time unable even to exchange significant glances because the Trio in Bee Sharp and Spellz Angelz were in the front two rows.

And while I'm feeling inspired, let me point out a spelling error that I've been seeing a lot of online lately.

This is satire:

This is a satyr:



See? Not the same thing. Also, it took me awhile to find an image of a satyr suitable for this blog. Those dudes have a reputation to maintain, and they work hard to maintain it. 

DOB was gratified not to be called up as an alternate on the team--his spelling is solid for ordinary purposes but not at the competitive level--but he is volunteering for team theme design next year. His thought is to call them the "Spell Casters" and have everyone dressed as wizards, including one dressed as Gandalf who, whenever another team tries to use their one free pass on a word, stands up and shouts, "You . . . shall . . . not . . . pass!"

Stress and Motherhood

A survey is showing that three kids is the most stressful number to have, and after that it's easier. Since that is what my mother always told me, I will not complain to much about the lack of meaningful statistics given. She had cause to notice, having spread seven children out over nearly two decades. (I was the magic stress-reducing fourth child, too, so that may be significant.) I also noticed my stress level go down significantly when we went from three to four children, probably because I spent the whole time in between in labor.

This has not been enough to entice me to further exploits--not that an extra child would be so hard, it's the acquisition process I no longer have the stomach for (quite literally). Also, it was enough of a challenge finding a vehicle that would fit four kids and a wheelchair. Upgrading is not really an option.

But, I definitely believe I am less stressed than mothers with three, or two, or maybe even one child. There are so many things that just don't matter once you realize you don't have time or energy for them any more. I saw one mother write about how she found it so freeing to be reassured that "As long as your children are fed, clean, clothed, and loved, you are doing a good job." And I thought: clean? clothed? Why? Fed, yes. You can't get away without feeding them, although here economies of scale come in. Clean and clothed are definitely optional.

Or again, a lovely mother of one little girl posted on Facebook about the challenges of getting stains out of socks. And I thought: stains? socks? What are those?

Also, once you have four you have hit critical mass for playmates--chances are anybody can find somebody to play with at any given time. 

There are stressful things, like looking at the grocery cart and bill and imagining what they will look like with four teenagers. I try not to think about that. It's too noisy around here to think, anyway. I'm getting very good about not thinking about things. Which is, I suspect, the key to a low-stress life. 

Rethinking Mother's Day

I am painfully conscious of the awkwardness of me writing this post, but, alas, that will not stop me.

It's about Mother's Day.

I have seen churches where it is a kind of competition, with the mothers standing up and prizes handed out to those with the most or the oldest or the youngest. This, understandably, has been criticized as cruel to the bereaved or barren.

Our current church, trying to be more mindful of the variety of human experience, recognizes *all* the women at once. I understand the sentiment, but I don't really see the point. Why call it Mother's Day, then? It's like having all citizens be recognized on Veteran's Day.

But I think both approaches misunderstand the holiday. (For one thing, why is this part of church? Isn't church supposed to be about, well, God? But that's another post.)

No, we're even missing the point of having Mother's Day. Did you know the woman who brought Mother's Day about as a recognized holiday, Anna Jarvis, did not have children? Mother's Day was never about claiming honor as a mother. It was about giving honor to our mothers.

Back in the day, as my grandmother taught me, everybody got a corsage on Mother's Day. Red if your mother was alive. White if she was dead--because loss is also universal. It wasn't about a status some people had achieved and other people hadn't. It was about being grateful for the tremendous gift of existence.

Not everyone gets to be a mother, but everyone had a mother. Someone's body nourished yours before you even knew you existed. Someone risked her life to give you yours, and will always bear the marks of it. Someone (maybe someone else) put food in your mouth when you still didn't know what your hands were, taught you to use food and the toilet. Maybe they did it badly, even cruelly, yet still they gave you the moon and the stars and that is something to be thankful for.

Perhaps if our focus on Mother's Day was outward, on gratitude and not status, we could better share it without slighting anyone.

Bad Parenting Confession

At Easter, the ducklings got bags of candy from the church Easter egg hunt. In a fit of hurried Easter cleaning, I tucked them out of the way up high in their closet, intending to get back to them later. We do not take a Wonka Sr. approach to candy, but we do try to dole it out very slowly and, in the past, under supervision.

Then I sort of forgot about the candy, or at least it sifted down to the very large receptacle in my brain labeled, "Things I Really Ought To Do Something About One of These Days." Until one day I was tidying up their room (let's not go into THAT parenting question) and came across a sizable stash of candy wrappers. Evidently they had not forgotten about them. So then I thought perhaps I really should address it except I wasn't quite sure how. They hadn't eaten all the candy, so evidently they were not consuming it recklessly, I hadn't expressly forbidden the candy, and mostly I just really didn't want to be bothered with it.

I continued taking the blind-eye approach until I saw the boys dashing past me outside with something in their mouths. This raised two red flags in my mind--one being that actively hiding something from parents is a different category from not bothering to mention it, the second being that just possibly they were eating something dangerous from outside (though on reflection, the latter was very unlikely). So I made them tell me what they were eating and assured them that it was fine--eating a piece or two of candy once a day was not going to hurt them, just not to bother me about it.

No such luck. Immediately, and ever since, I have been barraged with questions. Can you get the bags down? My bag is out and everyone else still has some! How many can we eat? Can we eat this kind?

I kind of wish I had just let them keep hiding it.

It's time for a post

Because if I don't post, then all the posts I thought-about-but-didn't-make pile up deeper, and get muddled together, like the papers on my desk, and the bookcase, and the other bookcase, and the pictures of epic battles of merfolk get muddled up with the natural gas statement and the traffic ticket (ouch) and a rough draft of a map for the next role-playing adventure.

And then I never get around to recording the way the oven thermometer that exploded and destroyed the roast chicken, or how much I love spring coming because the ducklings play outside after supper--even in the rain--instead of jumping on the couches, or my mixed feelings about having work or not having work, or my brilliant insights on an issue I have since forgotten (that one must have sifted off onto the floor and gotten thrown away).

So now I have posted and we can think of it as a clear slate and the next time something drifts through my brain I can actually post about it instead of about not posting.

Now if I could just do the same for my desk.

Teaching to the Test

The Duchess turned 8 before this school year began, which means she has met the minimum school age in our state and must complete a standardized test every year. This isn't shown to anybody so it always has seemed a rather pointless requirement, but it is the law and if it makes them feel better, it is no great burden to us. Especially not now that (as I discovered) you can just get them done online. As far as Duchess was concerned, it was a freebie 3 hours of computer time she didn't have to earn. So what if it was all bland multiple choice questions?

When I was a kid, this was our big social event of the year, as we went down to our church's Christian school and did them in the nursery. We didn't usually actually do them with the class--that would have taken too long and we were always impatient--but we could go out at recess and play with the other kids. Also we got cooler snacks than usual. It was still very low-key--in fact, we often graded the results ourselves, or I graded them for the younger kids once I was done with mine. One year Rocketboy tested with the first and second grade class (I'm not sure why, he shouldn't have needed to take them yet--maybe just to keep him out of the way?) and brought home the chicken pox. That was most unfair to the rest of us, who being considerably older suffered far worse than he did.

I have mixed feelings about standardized tests. On the one hand, they pretty handily demonstrate all that is most wrong about systematized, impersonal, factory-model education. And building curriculum on the basis of scoring well on these tests is about the best guarantee of creating a curriculum that would bore anyone to tears.

On the other hand, they just don't seem that hard to me. Mind-blowingly dull, yes. But not hard. If you can read and think clearly, it's not that difficult to score well. And you don't have to be teaching to the test to teach reading and thinking.

Still, this was my first encounter as the teacher and I was a wee bit nervous. Especially about math. And grammar. I don't hold to the standard methods or sequence for teaching those subjects. Duchess has never done a page out of a math or grammar workbook. She reads a lot, she writes (or copies) a lot, we do lots of mental math and real-life problems and math games, but I have never shown her how to do multi-digit math problems on paper, or taught her the rules for comma usage, and I knew the test would be full of that sort of thing. Not that it mattered. But still. I figured we had reading comprehension and vocabulary and spelling covered, but everything else was up in the air. Mostly I didn't want to shake her confidence that she was good at math and that it was fun, and standardized tests are designed to have problems that are too difficult. Or there might have been a little bit of fear that I was teaching it all wrong. Maybe.

She did get a little concerned when she saw multiple-digit multiplication and other things she had never encountered before, but I told her to just think it through as best she could and give it her best guess. And she did. And it worked--in fact, she was off the chart in math concepts and way up in computation, despite never having done long division in her life. Grammar was the lowest, but even so she did fine, on the rather simple principle of "what looks right."

Now back to our regularly scheduled programming of making up word searches, designing historic paper dolls, and jumping off the bed.

Teachable Moments

For the last few game nights with the kids, we've been playing a role playing game I developed--basically a very streamlined version of GURPS set in the Olympics. They are all loving it, and the twins have finally overcome their fear of combat and were enthusiastically taking actions to take down a hungry cougar. Dot (a lizard) decided to jump on his tail to distract him, while Dash (a child) started digging frantically (he has been very fond of his shovel) and found several pails of water (why not? it was a beach and we are always losing pails there), which he then used to hit the cougar on the nose. This involves a lot of rolling and counting up dice, and taking away hit points when they are injured, and adding them on when they find healing herbs, so besides being a lesson in natural history and divergent thinking, it's a great math activity.

The next day, Dash was sitting more-or-less quietly while I read out loud to the older kids, until I noticed what he had drawing. On both sides of two sheets of paper, he had drawn recognizable scenes of his four favorite Magic: The Gathering characters and was conducting duels between them.

We may have the world's geekiest preschool curriculum.

Easter Monday

I kind of hoped that this would be the year I increased my blog postings up to those of the olden days, but clearly March was not the month for that to happen. I worked about as much in March as I have been doing in four months. Then there was school to be done. And Easter coming. And horrible colds.

So today we are taking a nice, slow, easy Easter Monday. Yesterday we had sundry family members over, lots of food, and a sunny seventy degrees. That last one is unheard of for a March Easter here. The ducklings insisted on getting out the wading pool and their small cousin joined in until they were turning blue.

Preparing for having everyone over meant catching up on all the housework that had been sliding for the past month. We got it done, thanks to Chore Wars. We are trying to make this a long-term chore system, turning in the XP or gold pennies for game time on the computer or with me. (I point out that therefore I should get to turn in MY XP for time by myself.) Duchess and Deux especially accomplished great things with the extra inspiration.

Two-thirds of the Duchy was involved in singing in church on Sunday. Well, Dot actually spent the time hitching her stockings up, and Dash suddenly discovered he was weak in the ankles and couldn't stand at all, but that is the expected function of four year olds in the children's choir. Duchess did a fine job with her solo, and so did DOB with his. I wrote the lyrics for DOB, and Deux did word searches under the counter at the back of the church. So everyone had a good time.

Miscellaneous

The environmental attorney I work for has had a case that he thought was headed for settlement suddenly turn out to be headed for trial instead, which has meant I have suddenly had almost more work than I can squeeze in sorting documents. This is, on the one hand, not the most scintillating of tasks, but on the other, one that it is easy to keep at for hours on end even when I'm seeing cross-eyed (unlike research and writing which require a certain degree of mental clarity) and I am attorney enough to know the joy of billable hours.

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Between work and school, then, I have been happy to let the cleaning part of life slide, until DOB started having dust reactions. He thinks it's more because of moving offices last week, but I'm thinking that not vacuuming in a month is not very helpful, so I have been getting reacquainted with the vacuum cleaner this weekend.

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I came across this link that reminded me of another not-actually-in-the-Bible statement I should dispute: "God will never give you more than you can handle." Actually what the Bible says is, "God will not allow you to be tempted beyond what you can resist." We are promised grace for temptation. We are not promised that we will never be taken beyond our physical, emotional, financial, or spiritual breaking points. I've been there and I know it's not true.

But not only is it false, I wonder if the very presence of the idea doesn't make us cold to each other. It's a pat, comfortable thing to say, "Well, you know God won't give you more than you can bear." Or, in other words, "Depart in peace: be ye warmed and filled." If God's not going to give those folks more than they can handle, then the rest of us don't really need to get involved, do we? But sooner or later most of us are going to come across more than we can handle; that's why we are commanded to bear each other's burdens.

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Late Friday evening I went to call the kids in for bed and discovered that Dot had outclimbed her range in the fir tree. Deux was up with her, being stuck above her in the tree. They did fine for a while pretending they were Tigger and Roo, but eventually Deux figured out  a way around and Dot began to panic. I climbed up to retrieve her while DOB talked with her about the advantages she would find from being a bird, which kept her distracted until she had to face the terror of me trying to lower her. Fortunately we had a friend visiting who helped bridge the last distance to DOB and solid ground.

Before we were up the next morning, they were all climbing the tree again, though Dot was careful to only climb as high as she was sure she could get down. I am very appreciative of gutsy kids, though I did wish a bit that they could have given me a little more time to recover.

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After doing classes at the Y through the fall and winter, we have decided to call it quits for now. The kids are tired of going to classes, and I am tired of being in a loud building full of moving people for three hours every Saturday morning. DOB shall have to just do his workouts by himself. Except for all those loud, moving people. Maybe I will take the kids to the park. Or maybe I will sleep in while they climb trees.

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I have moved and brightened up my homeschooling blog, so if you want to read the details of what we do and very occasional pontification on educational subjects, that's the place to go.

Urgent Notice

We interrupt this giant pre-deposition document sorting to bring you an urgent homonym bulletin from the Grammar Commando. (Spell-check proof errors are the bane of the Internet.)

Yoke = Implement used to harness animals, like so:



Yolk = Middle part of the egg, like so:



In metaphorical use, "yoke" is the one that is used in phrases like "laying a heavy yoke" on someone. A heavy yolk would be pretty messy. If you use yolk in such a context . . . you'll have egg on your face.

I'm Not Going To Put a Clever Title on This

Because undoubtedly all clever titles on the topic of knitting have been done to death.

Despite this, and despite the fact that I am not young and hip enough to be a young, hip knitter, and not old enough to be a granny knitter, and have the hand-eye coordination of a banana slug, I have gotten into knitting. It started with wool mittens for the ducklings, in the hopes that they would keep their hands warm in the rain, which is the standard winter weather around here.The mother of our park friends showed me how.

I started in December, and for the first week I felt like I was battling a porcupine. Then the porcupine vanished and was replaced by cheerfully clicking needles churning out row after row of even stitches. It took me until the beginning of February to get mittens for all of the ducklings, but we at least had a few cold, wet days left to appreciate them. Of course, after all that work they are worth quite a bit more than their weight in gold to me, so I am as strict as the mother of the three little kittens.

Then I finished all the mittens and didn't know what to do with myself next. I'd gotten used to having something nice sliding through my fingers during the evening viewing of Monk or while playing games. Fortunately DOB decided he needed a knit hat, and he doesn't do acrylic. So we found some gray Peruvian wool and the shop lady wound it into a giant cake of yarn for me (apparently you're NOT supposed to just pull from the skein until it gets into a big snarly mess. Who knew?) I'm going to make it with dinosaur spikes.

I still haven't gotten the hang of patterns. They all seem to have this crazy idea that I am going to want to do what they say and go out and buy yarn according to their instructions and be able to read their cryptic little code. But I don't want to. So I just keep trying things until they turn out the way I want. Which is why I have started DOB's hat nine times, though I may have what I want this time. It's OK with me, as it prevents me from having to start a new project, which might involve buying yarn, which costs money.

And I am NOT raising sheep.

Random Adventures

Except for the pictures with the Duchess in them, these were taken by the Duchess. (The others were taken by our January visitor.) I only found out about the tabletop statues game when I was taking pictures off the camera.

Toy Stories

Dear Sunday School Teacher, VBS Worker, Person Behind the Counter, Random Person Who Likes Playing Santa Claus,

I appreciate that you are delighted by the presence of little children and like to make them happy. I am very grateful for your vote of confidence in my decision to spread my genes around. I understand that gifts are delightful to children and that you love to see them squeal and open them. I also realize that gifts are a safe bet and that there are many, many inexpensive options out there.

That said, I would appreciate it if you would take into consideration the effect your gifts will have once they have come over to my house (times four) and been subjected to the churning process that is family life for a couple of days. Or, if imagination fails you, consult this handy guide. Remember, kids will be happy opening anything, including toilet paper,* so you might as well pick out things that will not tempt me to hate you.

Sincerely,

The Mom.

*I am referring to small children, of course. Teens and pre-teens only want cash and food, so don't waste your time. Medium-sized children are unpredictable.

Candy *
Thank you for another opportunity to rot their teeth and wreak havoc with their immune system. And I don't even have the kids with allergies, who must hear yet again why they can't have that. When you are going to pay for dental visits and sit up all night with a cough, then you should consider offering candy to children.

Stickers ****
Not bad, really. Yes, they get stuck to everything, but then, if you have kids, you have things stuck all over your walls (and their clothes) anyway, and stickers are far from the worst. Goo Gone works wonders. They don't have sugar and can be thrown away without a qualm in a few days.

Small Plastic Toys *
Oh yay, more things to step on in the night. And lose parts. And cause the children to cry when they break and get thrown away. And they WILL break, probably in the car on the way home, causing an emotional storm that will distract the driver and cause us to wreck. Do you want that on your conscience?

Legos ****
Although they are small and plastic and painful to step on, they at least do not break on the way home, and it doesn't matter so much when the parts get lost, I already have a large bin devoted to them, and I'm already stepping on Legos  all the time, anyway, so it really doesn't matter to have a few more.

Pencils, Erasers, Etc. ***
I have mixed feelings here. On the one hand, they don't involve sugar or injured feet. There is usually a logical place to put them. On the other hand, the pencils and erasers in colorful designs that you always choose are terrible quality and will neither write nor erase, and when I want to write something they are ALL I can find. I hate that.

Notepads *****
The kids can always use more paper to draw on. They are like little machines for converting stacks of paper into messier stacks of paper. I appreciate your contribution to their obsession.

Bubbles *****
Fun, disposable, active, and the worst that can happen is something gets soaked with soapy water. I'm a fan now. I wasn't when I had children under three, because then something getting soaked with soapy water was the ONLY thing that would happen.

Balloons **
Yes, balloons are fun and filled with joy and hope. Until they burst. And then all that built up happiness reverberates into despair. Have you ever spent the evening with a toddler who has just discovered the transience of human existence? (On the other hand, bigger kids are just after the biggest explosion possible. Which makes this a particularly bad choice for a house with multiple sizes of children.)

Noisemakers
Is there a way to do a negative number of stars? Really? I think I will make a recording and blast it into your house at two in the morning. 

Jesus is Not the Answer

So how does the modern penchant for approaching everything as a puzzle to be solved affect religion? It's almost swallowed it up. That's what BIBLE stands for, right? "Basic Instructions Before Leaving Earth." How to have a better life, God's way. God's answers to man's problems.The instruction manual from the Maker.

Which is pretty sad. Think of the scintillating metaphors the Bible uses for itself . . . honey, a sword, fire, bedrock, precious jewels . . . and our favorite metaphor is the most tedious and forgettable lump of words literacy has produced?

There are so many practical examples of this that I won't even bother to list any. You've seen the books, heard the sermons, read the blog posts. Full of how to improve your marriage/financial life/parenting/relationships/happiness by doing things God's way.

Yet anyone who reads the Bible with half an eye for the actual story will find out that a lot of people followed God and had pretty terrible lives; and some other people did a whole lot of awful things and still got rewarded. If you teach the Better Life Jesus long enough and hard enough, people start to notice that life doesn't really work that way and start walking away from the whole facade.

The Bible wasn't written to be a self-help manual and if (God have mercy) that's really what you want out of life, you can get a thousand other more specific self-help manuals for much less trouble. People don't need yet another self-help manual that is a couple of thousand years out of date.

This is practical atheism. The eternal, the transcendent, the permanent--that's an afterthought. What matters is living right and getting rewarded for it right here, right now. It doesn't matter how correct your doctrinal statement is if that message is the one that gets repeated and lived.

Sometimes people don't miss the whole point; sometimes it's framed in terms of man's problem being sin and God's solution being Christ--but this, well, it's still missing the point. It makes the whole thing about us and slants it as if it were all over but the shouting.

The history of the universe, the meaning of life, is not a "problem" with a "solution." It's a story--a tale of love, betrayal, exile, restoration. It's a story we get to participate in, but it is not primarily about us. It is a true story. A real one. It is not tidy or predictable. And it is not over yet.