My Latest: Packed Lunch and Home Repair (and Panic)

a write-up of the felted wool lunch bags that I made for the kids

a review of How to Fix Absolutely Anything: The Instructables Guide to Home Repair

and a round-up of other DIY packed lunch storage solutions--I really want to make a bento box!

Things are a little crazy around here right now. Matt's focused on getting all our utilities hooked up, moving our stuff over to the new house (he's really only got time for one trip every evening, so what gets moved is kind of random--yesterday the coffee table, all our old yearbooks, my writing portfolio, and some potted plants went), arranging the repairs that must be done, figuring out how to make the most massive wall-mounted pipe-and-marble bookshelf EVER (more on that later), and researching the couple of things that we MUST buy--dishwasher, king-sized mattress.

I'm working on downsizing our possessions so that we're not moving for the rest of the year (yesterday I went through billions of glass and plastic kitchen storage containers--do we really need THAT many mixing bowls?!?), packing, and figuring out new stuff that we should probably buy/make/rejigger for the new house--computer station for the kids, TV stand with video game storage for the small living room, probably a second TV stand for the master bedroom so that we're not squinting across the room at our small-ish TV, and where are the kids going to put all of their thousands of treasures, none of which they insist can live in a bin with other treasures, but must instead be displayed, individually, with the maximum possible wasted space?!?

On top of that, I've been doing some crafting/shopping for sleepaway camp next month--Will has no pajamas, the kids both require socks that go "over the ankle," and their own flashlights, and EVERY ITEM MUST BE LABELED.

Oh, AND it's already high time to get organized for our big road trip and dinosaur dig. The paleontology and Laura Ingalls Wilder unit studies need to get fired up, and I need to figure out what to buy to keep us from dying of heat stroke, and I'm worried that I should actually go ahead and pack us for this trip, lest all the stuff that we need--binoculars, bug spray, sunhats, etc.--get lost in boxes and can't be found next month.

Hmm, should I go ahead and pack for sleepaway camp, too, for the same reason?

And what about Will's birthday, which will take place during our dino dig? Should I buy, wrap, and bring her present along? Have her birthday early? Late?

Okay, I need to stop writing now. I have seriously just elevated my heart rate while sitting at a table in the middle of the public library. I'm going to go get that current issue of Entertainment Weekly that's on the shelf over there and not think another thought about my to-do list until I have read the entire thing.

The Eastern Tent Caterpillar Hatches

This was quite a year for Eastern tent caterpillars, and Will, especially, just reveled in them. She held them, she let them crawl on her while reading or doing schoolwork, she lost them in the house and then rediscovered them crawling across the kitchen table or on someone's shoulder (sigh), she built habitats for them to watch them eat and cocoon, she wrote about them in her journal, she showed her friends how she could gently put her hand inside a tent and pet the hundreds of caterpillars inside, she bravely defended them to adults who griped about them being pests--"Actually," Will would always speak up, her reticence about speaking to adults forgotten in defense of her caterpillars, "Eastern tent caterpillars are native to this region. They won't kill trees."

Finally, after the entire caterpillar season was over--after many caterpillars were helped across streets and parking lots, after many caterpillars were brought inside to play before being taken back to their trees, after a jar filled with leaves and twigs and several caterpillar cocoons was left out in a rainstorm and drowned, to much devastating grief and guilt--Will found herself with one last Eastern tent caterpillar, one last chance to love it, feed it, give it a safe place to cocoon inside her kid-made bug barn, and raise it to an adult.

She hatched this weekend:

I didn't realize that the moths would be so pretty! This one is female, and she was so cutely fuzzy. Look at her feathery antennae!

They're nocturnal, which I suppose explains why I've never seen them before, and the females also have a very short lifespan, so we got this one back into her environment as soon as possible so that she could eat, mate, and give the kids some more babies to love on next year.

Will is a little sad that there aren't any more Eastern tent caterpillars around to love, but at least she has a good three dozen tadpoles in a glass aquarium out on the back deck to comfort herself with.

Special Effects Makeup for the Girl Scout Entertainment Technology Junior Badge

Girl Scout badges are something that we work on almost every day, often as part of the kids' schoolwork. If you were diligent about the extra activities that you assign or the badges that you select, you could absolutely use Girl Scout badges as your entire homeschool curriculum, but we tend to work on the kids' Girl Scout badges as unit studies along with our other studies--it's a great way to insert novel areas of study into my otherwise pretty methodical lesson plans.

One of the badges that Will's been working on for a while now is the Entertainment Technology Junior badge. She's filmed a stop-motion animation, built a thaumatrope and a catapult, programmed in Scratch, and done a lot of reading and documentary watching. A few weeks ago, she said that she wanted to complete the "Create your own special effects" step, so I pointed her to the children's face painting book that I had checked out of the library for this, helped her find the face paints and brushes, and set up our giant mirror outside on the deck for her:

The mirror is filthy because, although it's huge, we're always moving it, often outside, for various activities.

Will REALLY wanted to paint Syd's face like a puppy, but Syd just was not going to let her. Syd did, however, consent to act like a puppy for us:

Instead, Will decided to paint herself like a zombie: 

I've been wanting to restock this clown makeup with additional colors for YEARS. Now that we're finally out of white, that's my excuse!

 Will worked hard on herself, with a ton of focus, and was THRILLED with the results!

Immediately after this, we biked over to our polling place so that I could vote in some local primaries (and spend some time with the kids studying and explaining the ballot--it's part of Will's Inside Government Junior badge!). Will was hugely tickled to discover that every single poll worker was interested in hearing the entire story behind her makeup--of course, instead of actually telling them the story, Will just began to act like a zombie who was staggering over to eat their faces off, but that's her way of acting thrilled. One poll worker was so impressed that he clearly sensed a kindred spirit in her, and pulled out his phone to show her a bunch of photos of a greenhouse that he built behind his house. That dude has a pineapple tree in his greenhouse! And a fig tree! With figs!!!

Will still has a few activities that I'd like her to complete before I sew her Entertainment Technology patch on, but to be fair, this badge is HUGE, encompassing what amounts to an entirely different subject for each step. This is absolutely one of those badges that, if you were schooling solely through Girl Scout badges, could take you through an entire semester of math, science, history, creative writing, technology, and art. 

My Latest: Blue Jeans and Rosemary

Matt took the kids to a Girl Scout camp-out at the professional baseball field in Indianapolis this past weekend, so I had a full 24 hours to myself--the longest, I think, that I have EVER spent away from my girls!

It was wonderful. That first night, after they had left, I baked French fries for dinner, then read and watched Harry Potter movies until I fell asleep in the smack middle of the bed. I got up super-early the next morning, as I often do, and then realized that, gloriously, I did not have to tip-toe around the house for the next two hours! Up north in Indy, our other early riser, Will, discovered that getting up super-early at the baseball field meant that she was one of the few girls to get to have a doughnut before they ran out. Back here at home, I turned on the lights, made some coffee, and got right to work with the crafting and writing that I had to do; by the time the rest of the family got home that afternoon, I'd written three posts for my freelance gigs, completed two urgent craft projects, and packaged and mailed an etsy order--basically my entire weekend's work! And that's not even counting the cooking, cleaning, gardening, exercising, and shopping that I also got done.

But back to that writing--here it is:

a write-up of 3D design software that can reduce production waste

a tutorial for breaking down blue jeans for crafting

and a tutorial for upcycling broken coffee mugs into plant pots

Productivity like that *almost* makes me want to suggest that Matt take the kids out for the day more often, but I would really only want to do that if he promised to only take them places that I didn't want to go to, too, like to the middle of a baseball field to sleep, or to the Children's Museum for the thousandth time. Anywhere else, and you'd probably find me right there with them, elbowing the kids aside to get myself to the front of the line.

Book Review: The Forgotten Seamstress, by Liz Trenow

Take note: My reviews always contains billions of spoilers! Be warned!


The Forgotten Seamstress by Liz Trenow
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Fair warning: I was given this book by a publicist who knows that I like "crafty" books.

This crafty book, however, also speaks to another of my reading passions: the postmodern novel. If you haven't read The Crying of Lot 49, think of The DaVinci Code, I guess--you've got your questionable narrators, your ending that isn't totally tied up into a neat little package, your mixing of high and low cultures, your "metafiction", etc. Add to that my further loves of mysteries and conspiracy fiction, and I was happy as a clam reading about a prince's secret seamstress lover, the conspiracy that incarcerated her in a mental institution for decades, and the tricky methodology for establishing the provenance of a quilt of hers that resurfaced something like a century later.

My favorite aspect of the novel is the relationships between the female characters. The men are either thoughtless cads who use their wealth and privilege to abuse a woman without money or resources, servants of the plot (like that interior design guy), or amiable, affable, easy-going fellows who most definitely would NOT seduce a woman, lock her away, and kidnap her baby. The female characters, however, are complicated, they suffer and prevail in small ways and then suffer some more, but are able to rely on each other in ways that they cannot rely on their families or the men in their lives. It's telling, I think, that the prince does not rescue (or even seem to think about ever again) his former lover; it's the heroine's best buddy who eventually finds her and saves her, and the woman who secretly, illegally adopted the heroine's baby who aids her, and then brings her into her family, as well.

Because relationships are complicated, and lives can be sad, it's fitting that the book doesn't end with absolutely everything happily ever after. Frankly, I have doubts about the longevity of Caroline's business idea--patchwork upholstery? Really?--and that antique quilt is never going to be the same, no matter how extensive the restoration, and why would you not want to tell the world that you're a part of the royal lineage?!? Are UK people just bored with the whole royalty thing, that they seriously wouldn't be interested in being Queen Elizabeth's great grand-niece or whatever? I'd totally be all over that--I want to be a duchess!

But the ending fits the book, since you know that when the story is over, there is still going to be some sad and some happy and some sad again in the characters' lives, just as their will be in ours.

View all my reviews

Homeschool Field Trip: St. Louis Zoo

The St. Louis Zoo will likely be the final zoo that we visit in our Year of Zoos, since it was last June that the kids and I spent a day at the Cincinnati Zoo. And as we were four hours into a ten-hour drive from Arkansas to Indiana at the time, we spent approximately three hours at the St. Louis Zoo, not the full day, but nevertheless, the adventure made both children very happy and our Will saw plenty of those animals that she loves so much.

When we've got a limited time to visit someplace, I like to let the kids check out the map, then each choose one spot for the whole family to visit. This has worked in big places, like the National Mall, in small time increments, like 90 minutes at the Children's Museum, and it worked well for one afternoon at the St. Louis Zoo (it wouldn't have if the zoo hadn't started its late summer hours just that weekend--phew!). Will got to choose first, since she'd gracefully[-ish, eventually] conceded to Syd's desire that we go to the zoo instead of the St. Louis Science Center, as Will wanted--I came out on Syd's side, since I preferred to spend the afternoon walking around in the nice weather rather than following the kids and standing around while they played inside a museum, and, since Syd's working on her Girl Scout Bugs Brownie badge and Will's working on her 4-H Entomology project, I wanted them to see the insect exhibit at the zoo--and she chose, as always, the reptile exhibit:

This kid seems to have a special connection with animals, and I am always seeing moments like these.

There was an empty habitat in which the background scene was still being painted, and both kids, old hats at scientific classification and museum signage, found much humor in the academic in-joke that was this sign:

Syd found navigating us next to Sea Lion Sound, her choice, to be a pretty big challenge--

--but we got there eventually!

The children never tap or bang on habitat walls, ever, but I do often notice them gently placing a hand against a transparent wall as they observe the animals inside:

My choice, obviously, was the insect habitat, although frankly I almost changed my mind when I saw who was sponsoring it:

Seriously?

Each summer, I toy with the idea of raising silkworms, since we have two mulberry trees in our yard.

We're not doing the intensive butterfly study that we did last year, but we still very much love them.

 We needed to buy some young chicken sitter friends some souvenirs, so Matt made his choice be the gift shop, which is conveniently by the exit, an aid to an easy transition out of the zoo:

The promise of choosing a statue to pose by also helped get them out.

 After our fact-filled animal afternoon, I looked in the rearview mirror soon after we'd gotten back on the road to find Syd entertaining herself thusly:

Hydra vs. griffin should DEFINITELY be a zoo exhibit!

Homeschool Field Trip: Spiro Mounds in Oklahoma

Spiro Mounds weren't unbearably boring as I'd thought they were as a child, but the place was calm, quiet, and peaceful, so I can see how I'd thought so at the time. Straight from Cahokia Mounds with a mind full of context, however, and in the company of my own family, they were quite pleasant to hike:

We had a self-guided tour (a single photocopied pamphlet, borrowed from the front desk, with some faulty pagination--how many decades has it been so?), several informational signs along the way, and our own prior knowledge to help us understand what we were looking at, especially as many of these mounds are vastly smaller than the giant Cahokia Mounds that we were used to. Almost a game to try to see the humps in the meadow:

I believe that this was also our first long family hike through this particular type of terrain:

The kids had mixed feelings about plains-hiking. On the one hand, it's a change of pace, with a much different view--and no hills! On the other hand, there were zero of the shady trees that always lower the temperature as we hike, and, as Will often helpfully reminded us, it was hot!

Matt invented a game with her that I'm probably going to regret the next time we go anywhere: the gist is that everyone is on a field trip (Gee, where could they have gotten that idea?), and they're all whining at their teacher, only it has to be silly whines. So Will can now hike happily enough, as long as she's also whining, "Mrs. Templeton (that's my imaginary name in this game)! My water bottle is only half full!"

"Mrs. Templeton! That squirrel is climbing on the mound!"

"Mrs. Templteton! Where's the bathroom?"

"Mrs. Templeton!"

Yeah. Thanks, Matt.

Of course, in the South, the payoff to everything being blazingly hot outside is that the air conditioning hits you with a wall of bracing cold as soon as you go back inside, so everyone had a pleasant time cooling back off in the museum, looking at antiquities, watching a documentary, and, you know, grinding a little corn:

This museum doesn't have even a fraction of the budget of Cahokia (as a matter of fact, we almost couldn't pay the admission to get in, because they didn't have a credit card reader--yikes!), so I was frankly impressed that the place was as respectable as it was--outdoor historical sites require a LOT of maintenance! I still want to visit Serpent Mound, but with this trip, I think that these two kids of mine have absorbed just about as much information about the Mound Builders as they're going to be able to absorb for a while.

And since next weekend, we have our dinosaur dig orientation with the paleontologists and other families who'll also be at our dino dig in a month and a half, I think it's about time to move our geography and history studies out West!

P.S. I heard a lot about this scandal during our visit, and I requested this book from our university library as soon as we got home:
I'm prepared to be both enthralled and horrified by it.