Tuesday, November 25, 2008

The mathematician makes a treehouse

This is the project that David was working on all fall, which was finished just before Halloween. It has a trap door, and everything.



You can see that I finally found the cable that connects the camera to the computer. Just in time for the holidays, too.

Blowing off school today

We're going to blow off school today so that I can teach the girls the ancient art of beating all of the crowds who will be at BJ's and Wegmans this afternoon and all day tomorrow. And how to clean out all of the old food out of the refrigerator so that we can fit in all the new food.

While I'm at it, I have to try to straighten out the Webster Library on where exactly their Planets video is... I dropped it off at the Fairport Library last week. I swear.

Monday, November 24, 2008

Write or Die!

For all of you who need to write, who should be writing *right now* as a matter of fact instead of reading my blog, there is a terrific web site that I just found as the result of a link at Writer's Digest:

Write or Die!

It gives you a text box. You enter your goal (time or number of words). You start typing. It punishes you if you stop before your goal.

It's just what I need. Seriously. I think this will work.

Sunday, November 23, 2008

Tagged but not tagging

I kind of don't get all this tagging business. Maybe I'm behind the times.

Lynne from 3-Ring Binder tagged me for a random six things about myself. So, I'll do it, because it's kind of fun, but I'm not going to tag other people in case they'd prefer not to be tagged. (If you'd like to be tagged, go ahead and tag yourself.)

Remember, people, these are random things, not the important things. So I think I'll do a rock-and-roll-through-my-ages theme.

1. My first rock-and-roll love was Shaun Cassidy. Someone gave me his debut album Shaun Cassidy for my 8th birthday in 1977, when the album had just been released. His hair looked greenish on the cover, but I didn't care. He made my little heart just "da do ron ron."

2. When I was 15, I spoke with Bruce Springsteen's drummer, Max Weinberg, on the phone. He had called our house, because my mother had taught him Algebra in the 8th grade in Maplewood, NJ. I was the only one home at the time, so I got to speak to him. ("This is Max Weinberg," he said, when I answered the phone. "It IS?" My voice rose several octaves in disbelief, and, okay, excitement. He laughed.)

3. In 1993, I spent an evening drinking with friends, badly singing all of the lyrics to Simon & Garfunkel's Greatest Hits. I finally understood the line in "The Boxer" about Seventh Avenue.

4. I have seen Rush seven times, the last two on my own in Madison Square Garden in 1994 and 1995.

5. Neil Diamond's voice reaches a place deep inside me. No one knows this at all, not even the chair. (Well, now you do.)

6. Whenever I hear Five For Fighting's song 100 Years, I reach for the tissues. It's that 39-and-a-half age getting to me.

Flip-flop

On the subject of "no child's character being set in stone -- REALLY":

Lately, I am noting -- to my shock -- that my girls seem to have flip-flopped on their approach to reacting and over-reacting.

Madison and Ella were born 20 months apart. About 20 months ago, when Madison was 7, if there was anyone who was going to over-react to a situation, it was Madison. No question. Once the child got going, she found it difficult to stop. Things would spiral downward, she would make the situation worse and worse (almost, it seemed, on purpose), and draw increasingly hysterical conclusions until either she ran out of steam or one of us adults somehow broke through to her.

Ella would look on at Madison's scenes in wonderment, and quietly ask me why Madison would do such things. She never would, she said. She could see clearly how Madison was making it worse.

I thought it was that Madison was passionate and Ella not so much. Really, I did. I thought it was a character trait, and that this was the way it was going to be.

Ha.

So now, it's Ella's turn. Wow.

Now it's Madison who sits watching, calmly, while Ella throws herself into a fit. Her passion and fire in these are absolutely equal to what Madison was doing 20 months ago. One small difference: Ella is much, much funnier...though not on purpose.

When Madison used to do this, her mode of expression was screaming hysterical accusations and conclusions at us. You could almost see the wheels of imperfect logic spinning wildly out of control in that little brain. Ella doesn't do this: What Ella does, when she's being teased or criticized, is she decides to take umbrage--and threatens that she is going to do something outrageous in response. She then proceeds to do it, to the hilarity of all watching. For example, about a month ago she threatened to take off all of her clothes, she was that mad, and then proceeded to do it. I wasn't there, but David just about split a gut laughing. So this incident gave rise to a new expression in our house: "Clothes-removing mad."

Unfortunately for poor Ella, subsequent outbursts have resulted in more such phrases: "Table-body-surfing mad" and "Chair-moving mad" are just a couple. Last night, she generated a new one, I'm afraid: "Running-away-to-Mexico mad." She actually made it out the door, though only to the back yard. I refrained from pointing out that the back yard was north of the house, not southwest. (Later, at her request, we did a bunch of calculations about how long it would take her to run away to Mexico using various modes of transportation. After remembering that they speak Spanish in Mexico and that her Spanish wouldn't be up to snuff, she modified that to New Mexico--almost as far, and easier to get by.)

The fact is, our laughing fit to bust at these outbursts makes her feel worse. Madder, of course. More upset. But we just can't help it.

My point is that what we thought was a character trait in Madison was actually a phase. The fact that Ella--our little go-with-the-flow distributor-of-sunshine Ella--is going through this now will be extremely useful in helping me keep an open mind as they go through other phases in the future. It reminds me of how labeling a kid--who is, by definition, in constant development--is probably a bad idea.

Wednesday, November 19, 2008

An accurate observation

The girls usually start their wander-downstairs early mornings on school days with a little television.

(Go ahead, scowl, you purists. :-) It works for us.)

Madison was down first today, unusual for her. She was still pretty dazed. As she passed me, yawning, she said,

"I'm going to watch TV for a little while now. It's the only thing I can really do with my eyes closed."

Tuesday, November 18, 2008

A new poem from John Enright

John's posting of his new poem, called "Perspective" was so perfectly timed for us today that I almost can't believe it.
Perspective

We who were children once, recall
the childish power
to squeal in joy, and then to bawl
sorrowful sobs in the space of an hour
over things that now seem small
but loomed much larger then,
when we were little women and men.

You CAN try this at home

Finally, a child of mine is getting into the Laura Ingalls Wilder books that I loved so much when I was young. It's Ella! She reads some out of them, but would prefer to hear me read, because she gets so much more from them when she's not sounding out words herself.

Madison is getting into the act somewhat, too, but usually prefers her own Maximum Ride books by James Patterson lately.

So it's been Laura, Laura, Laura around here lately. And, yesterday, I had a stroke of brilliance:

By thinking through the five books we've read so far (Farmer Boy a definite favorite), we identified all kinds of things that the Ingalls family had to do to get ready for winter. And then, we tried to find parallel things that we can do in our time to get ready for winter.

So, for example: Ma and the girls had to mend all of the mittens. Well, we didn't have actual mending for the mittens, but the pile in the front hall bin sure needed pairing up and organizing. For that matter, so did the entire coat closet!!! They went at it with vigor. It is now beautiful. Ecce closet.

Heh heh heh. Am I pleased with myself? Yes, I am.

Today, we'll put seed in the bird feeders and stack firewood! Tomorrow, we'll finish going through all of the clothes they've grown out of and do some mending. Thursday, we'll search through the old toys that they've outgrown to make way for new holiday presents.

Oh, I can go on and on, and I think I will...

Well, as long as I can milk this, anyway.

A little early, but not really unexpected

I think what woke me was the ghostly quality of the light coming in from the window. After a few minutes of wondering, I swung up and peeked out at the street light. Yep. Snow. Sticking snow. Falling thickly, with no wind.

Beautiful, you know.

Not that I'm exactly looking forward to not seeing the ground for the next four months. And, now that I'm going down this path, I am reminded that I haven't yet gotten the leaf heap (joyfully blown together) out to the curb, and that Ella needs more sturdy winter boots.

All right, that's too prosaic for 4am. So I'll abandon this line of reasoning and remind myself of Ella's contemplation of a little snow shower yesterday afternoon:

"Maybe fairies are cold-blooded, but in a good way. Maybe each snowflake is a fairy baby."

There, that's better, isn't it?

Sunday, November 16, 2008

Clickstery solved

The Clicker has been missing from our house for the past 10 days.

I didn't lose it.

David certainly didn't lose it.

So it must have been one of those little critters, the ones who actually use the TV, who misplaced it after a David Attenborough viewing.

They were kind of distraught. They were reduced to watching the episodes of Fetch with Ruff Ruffman, Kim Possible, and What Not To Wear that we had already recorded, because there IS a "list" button on right there on the DVR box from Time Warner.

The TV room is very small. The critters insisted that they had searched every square inch of it. I took a desultory look in places that it might be in other parts of the house, but didn't see it. I let it go. Who needs TV, anyway? I've been too busy to watch it for years.

This morning, I decided to put some effort into looking for The Clicker, myself, because I had heard that there is a series about the science of the Universe on the History Channel which is playing on Tuesday, and as Madison has been lately discussing the scientific and philosophical aspects of the finite universe theory with us, I thought that this would be good to record. So I needed said Clicker.

I decided to check in the obvious first place to look, the place they had insisted they had scoured inch by inch: The cushions of the couch. You know, the one we always sit on while we're watching TV. There, under the cushions, was The Clicker. Along with two Other Clickers, the battery covering to the DVD player, the missing library book, about a dozen scrunchies, and countless pens. One can only wonder at the psychology of kids: They look in the couch, don't see The Clicker among all the other stuff in there, shrug, and then carefully replace the cushions without, say, transferring the DVD remote to its proper place next to the TV.

I got to make fun of the critters. They didn't like it. But they're glad to have The Clicker back.

Friday, November 14, 2008

Happy to be average

Madison is one of those kids who is constantly evaluating herself. (Sometimes, she tries to insist that I give her grades. I resist.) She has fortunately come to grips with the fact that she is not perfect at everything, and handwriting has been one of those things that has helped her realize this.

Her handwriting, though, has gotten MUCH better this year. Much. And it has helped her with her work and her thinking; as she's able to write things down more quickly and legibly.

Here is how she described her handwriting today, proudly...

"My handwriting is extremely...average."

Thursday, November 13, 2008

Another "out of the mouths of babes"...

Today is St. Augustine's birthday. Not that he's necessarily a guy to celebrate per se, and not that anyone can be sure that his birthday was actually November 13 (don't know how Wikipedia got that), but certainly a cultural figure to know. David was discussing theology with the girls, and Ella came out with this one:

What the HELL is heaven like?

and then she cracked up.

(Gosh, it sounded funnier when she said it than it looks on the page.)

The group of them is currently having a great free will vs. determinism discussion around the kitchen table. Madison has been trying to maintain the determinism position for months, and is having a good time doing it.

Update and clarification: Madison wants it known that she doesn't *want* determinism to be true, she LOVES the idea of making choices. And she doesn't like the idea that all of her mistakes are pre-determined, that she's fated to make mistakes.

I love this, because it means that she so thoroughly understands that ideas are true or false, without any regard to whether you want them to be true or false.

Thursday, November 06, 2008

Happy Birthday, John Philip Sousa

John Philip Sousa was born on November 6, 1854, in Washington, DC. It's easy to say he was the most famous composer of marches of all time. His music is the exact opposite of depressing; even Monty Python used Sousa for their opening music.

David had this nice thing to say: You can put John Philip Sousa's music right up there with Bach's Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring and the fourth movement of Beethoven's 9th Symphony: It seems to belong to the universe.

And, it's not religious!
--------------------------------

Ella has been blossoming lately into much more of a penetrating thinker than she used to be. Last night at the dinner table, she was full of serious questions, and listened carefully to the answers. Why did more people vote for Barack Obama than for John McCain? What does Obama want to do as President? What is the war in Iraq all about? What will happen to the good people in Iraq if our soldiers leave? What is individual liberty all about? Will there be more or less liberty under Obama? Was McCain or Obama more in favor of freedom?

When Tony and Tatiana come for Thanksgiving, she wants to ask them a lot of questions about what it was like to grow up in Cuba, a country where the government places a low value indeed on individual freedom. I'm sure they'll fall over themselves telling her all she wants to know.

Last night after Ella was in bed, David turned to me and said, "I just want nakedly to admit how proud I am of our baby." I knew just what he meant.

Wednesday, November 05, 2008

I am not depressed

I am not depressed
I am not depressed
I am not depressed

Oh, there you are. I was not referring to the election, but something more important: I am now officially in the last six months of not being 40.

More, though, I am not depressed because Ella did NOT get at all injured this morning. I took the girls out for a beautiful hike in 60-degree November weather at the southern tip of Ellison Park. There is a huge tree has fallen down across a gully. The tree is absolutely magnetic--it provides the perfect opportunity for scampering across to the opposite hill. Ella had been back and forth a couple of times, when on the last trip back, she slipped. I saw her go down. My stomach lurched. But somehow, she was able to catch herself against the trunk with her hands on the way down, retarding her fall and allowing her to make the eight-foot drop on her feet, which, given that she is four feet or so tall, made it only a four-foot drop. "I'm FINE!" I heard her peep out as soon as she landed. Thank goodness. Four feet in space landing on one's feet is a lot different than eight feet in space landing on one's head.

I am also the opposite of depressed in that Madison has taken to the Pythagorean Theorem like...like...like a child of a mathematician to the Pythagorean Theorem. She is particularly entranced by 1-1-square-root-of-two triangles.

Tuesday, November 04, 2008

Our election-themed morning

Bowing slightly to the home-schooling tradition of talking about elections and the political proces on Election Day, the girls and I spent this morning talking about Dave Barry's customary campaign for President. We talked about:

  • What Dave Barry stands for

  • Dave Barry's views on the issues (he agrees with YOU)

  • Dave Barry's qualifications to be President


    And we watched a couple of YouTube videos.

    You can even buy a Dave Barry for President set of greeting cards. (We didn't. But it might have made me feel better today.)
  • Saturday, November 01, 2008

    Imagine opening your door on Halloween to this:

    This video is only a few seconds but it says it all.

    Dress Like a Piano Day

    My friend John made me get in the photo, and somehow he performed this miracle of making me look 10 years younger, so I shall be indebted to him always.



    Amazing what a donated flat-screen TV box, a box cutter, an exacto knife, a hot glue gun, some paint, and a little applied physics can do! All I had to buy was the strip of fabric, and I found a cheap battery-powered Christmas candle up in the attic. I downloaded the sheet music from the internet, and voilĂ .