Work Plans for the Week of December 19, 2016: Food Crafting, Lots of Science, and CHRISTMAS!!!

Yes, these work plans are late. We had a day trip on Monday to the Children's Museum of Indianapolis, and day trips always throws off my blogging schedule, as I can only find the time to write on my personal blog on the days that I'm not doing my paid writing for CAGW.

These work plans are also a bit of a repeat. School last week went okay, but I seriously underestimated how much a business trip of Matt's would affect us. It was quite an eye-opener to realize how much I depend on my partner to get that second load of dishes done and that second load of laundry and haul the kids around to their evening activities and supervise the completion of their last bits of school so I can veg out and even turn off the TV after I fall asleep. Nothing like waking up at 3:30 am because YouTube randomly switched from my livestream of the ISS to a video on the hollow Earth conspiracy theory, not being able to get back to sleep, and then spending the entire day either chauffeuring kids or madly scrambling to make party food that we need THAT DAY and etsy orders that have to be shipped THAT DAY and checking my email to confirm the address of Will's Pony Club party and discovering that not only does it start half an hour before I thought it did, but that there's a GIFT EXCHANGE!!!

I donated a publicist's review copy of a cookie decorating book and kit to the cause. Not only can the publicist apparently just hold her breath and wait for that review that now isn't coming, but dang it, it was also going to be a Santa gift for Syd!

AND I get there to drop Will off and a co-hostess expresses (maybe slightly passive-aggressive) surprise that I'm not staying, because apparently all the other parents are staying, even though there was nothing said in any of the emails about parents being expected to or even welcome to stay. And she's the first kid there, because maybe it really does start half an hour later but there was a mistake on the email? Or I'm just really prompt? I never figured that out. And then Syd and I get home so I can make a play dough etsy order real quick and find that the dog has pooped on the rug by the door, maybe because she wasn't feeling well or maybe because we'd been in and out of the damn house all damn day and hadn't had time to play with her. And then Syd and I spend all of Will's party time making and packaging my play dough order--

I couldn't have gotten it done without my play dough chef!

--then haul the dog into the car with us (because I'm sure as hell not leaving her alone again!) to run back to get Will 15 minutes early from her party so I can go in and pretend like I'm a good, attentive mom, only to find her alone with the hostess AGAIN because all the other guests and their good, attentive moms randomly left fifteen minutes before THAT.

We drive back, get the dog in the door, and are greeted by Matt, who FINALLY got home, after a delayed flight, from his trip. I am just a teeny bit ashamed to say that I walked straight into his arms and burst into tears.

And that, Friends, is why that Friday's schoolwork became Tuesday's schoolwork, completed on Tuesday without manic energy or fuss of any kind.

Memory Work this week is mostly spelling words, because I can't make Syd do her Wordly Wise at home so we're doing it in the car, where she can't get away, instead. Books of the Day are more books from the Banned Books list and some pre-reading for the Black History Month essay contests that the kids usually enter. Other daily work includes typing practice through Typing.com, keyboard with Hoffman Academy lessons, journaling or story prompts with me, Wordly Wise for Will and Word Ladders for Syd, their current events journal (it wasn't meant to be a long-term project, but I keep extending it because I'm so pleased with how it's going), and for Will, SAT prep through Khan Academy.

Tangent: If anyone is interested in our prep plans to get Will ready to take the SAT in the spring, as a seventh grader, just ask!

And here's the rest of our week!



MONDAY: We spent the day at the Children's Museum!

TUESDAY: Both kids are almost done with their respective semesters of Math Mammoth, with Syd finishing her final review next Monday (because yes, I am making the kids do math next week so that they can finish their respective semesters by year's end) and Will doubling up math lessons next week and finishing on Friday. They're both doing coordinate planes still, although Will's math adds in integer calculations and Syd's math adds in graphing with different types of graphs.

That's one reason why the coordinate grid foldable, although it's not as hands-on as I usually like my hands-on math to be, is so useful; the kids retain their calculating ability but often lose the terminology, so after they labeled this coordinate plane I had them put it in their school folders to keep as a reference tool.

The kids do one lesson a day in their Analytical Grammar (for Will)/Junior Analytical Grammar (for Syd); Will is currently studying adverbs, and Syd is studying prepositions. In February, after essay contest season and the National Mythology Exam, I'd like to start a packaged writing/literature unit with both kids (I'm a little embarrassed that I don't want to create my own curriculum, as that's exactly what I used to do for years as a freshman comp instructor at our local university... but I don't!), so hopefully we'll have reached a good pause point for Analytical Grammar by then.

There are so many fun activities to explore the difference between inherited and learned behavior, but we did just one more to cement the concept before moving on: the Animal Survival Scenario worksheets from this unit. I required the children to answer in complete sentences and to provide a video example to flesh out one of their claims. Will used this gorgeous video from Planet Earth to flesh out her claim that swimming is a learned behavior in polar bears.

Aphrodite and Ares are our subjects in Greek mythology this week; interestingly, D'Aulaire's Book of Greek Myths does not tell us the story of Aphrodite's origins, so Will helpfully read it to us from The Myths of Greece and Rome. We prefer Guerber's edition to the Bullfinch, just so you know. The trading cards are also coming along well, with the kids drawing thoughtful images on the front and writing relevant facts on the back of each.

I had thought that I would change our our literature activities by the week, but the kids are really enjoying reading and checking books off of their MENSA reading lists, so we're just going to keep running with it. I'm looking forward to graduating Will up to the next list, because she's been complaining lately that she's read everything in the children's department and most everything on the young adult shelves--and she has! I walk the adult fiction shelves with her and help her choose books sometimes, but of course mom recommendations are always suspect, so more reading lists with more books that she hasn't read are ALWAYS welcome!

WEDNESDAY: The current module in our Animal Behavior MOOC is animal communication, and after watching the introduction to the module, this day's assignment asks the kids to interact for ten minutes with a pet, then write an essay describing the animal's communication during that interaction.

Will has always been a reluctant writer, so I'm thrilled that Syd loves it so much. She's taken to the Junior Scribe badge activities with gusto, completing them all independently, although I do have vague plans to perhaps encourage her to illustrate her work and then get it printed and bound into a book... we'll see. Fortunately, Will seems surprisingly enthusiastic about earning her Leader in Action award, which requires leading an entire Girl Scout troop meeting--and if there was ever proof that Girl Scouts encourages kids to stretch themselves out of their comfort zones, this is it! She has several possibilities for activities related to the Brownie World of Water Journey, including making polymer clay raindrops, edible aquifers, seashell crabs, and terrariums, We'll be making everything except the terrariums (I forgot to buy activated charcoal) today, so that Will can evaluate each in regards to how difficult it is to make, how difficult it might be to teach, how consistent the results might be, and if it seems fun!

I continually wish that I was doing more with Story of Science, as one reading comprehension activity and one hands-on activity don't seem like enough to distill all of the interesting content from the chapters, but I also bought those Quest Books so that I could save myself the lesson prep time... Perhaps I'll sit down over our Christmas break and research more activities, or perhaps I'll learn to let it go. Regardless, we're sticking to the Quest Book for this week, so this day's activity is answering reading comprehension questions for chapters 6-7.

THURSDAY: This day's Animal Behavior MOOC videos are on signals and information and modes of communication. After watching the videos, the kids will explore the Animal Communication Project to learn more about various animals, and also research video examples that provide evidence of the claims made in the Animal Communication Project readings.

Our Story of Science demonstration on this day is changing the acidity of water, using bromothymol blue as an indicator. In order to do this demonstration, however, my good friend has to dig through all of her stuff to find her bromothymol blue that she's going to let me borrow (because doesn't everyone have lab chemicals in their pantry that they're willing to lend out like a cup of sugar?), so if it doesn't turn up, we'll put off the demonstration until it does.

My kids don't exactly realize that not everyone receives random craft kits in the mail like magic, so they're never quite as excited to review them as I am, but even they're pretty revved up about this Star Wars felt kit that we're going to test out and write about. I'm thinking we'll turn them into ornaments!

FRIDAY: As with all other instructors on the last day of school before Christmas, I don't expect to get much done today. If they can get their daily assignments and a trading card for Ares completed, then we're going to spend the rest of the day making gingerbread houses while drinking hot chocolate (mine with bourbon) and listening to Christmas music.

And then it will be Christmas!

I Lost the Babies, But in Other Ways I Am Organized

Willow and Sydney had a playdate this morning because I wanted to get some work done. Specifically, I wanted to grade papers all morning, not read books and play board games about dinosaurs and see if the laminator will laminate leaves and playfight with sticks in the front yard and maybe watch a segment of Mythbusters--these are my favorite things to do of a morning, true, but grading papers? Must be done.

So we invited an adorable little schoolmate over to play with the girls, and there was much running up and down stairs and in and out of the house, etc.--your typical playdate. At one point in the morning, however, Sydney came in and asked for a snack, and so I thought I'd find Willow and the little friend and see if they wanted a toasted cheese quesadilla, too (the little friend claimed, however, that she isn't allowed to eat snacks at other people's houses, but that's a later story). I didn't see the girls upstairs, so I ran down to the basement playroom. No girls. I figured I must have missed them somewhere upstairs, so I ran back up and looked in all the rooms, calling their names. No girls. Now I figured I must have missed them downstairs after all, so I ran back downstairs, and looked in the bathroom off of the playroom and the closet under the stairs, calling their names.

No girls.

So now I think that they must be hiding, so I run back upstairs and look really well in all the nooks and crannies in all the rooms, calling their names sternly and announcing trouble to come if hiding places are not revealed.

No girls.

And now I start to panic. I think of all the places in which a mischievous hiding little girl or two could come to grief--did one girl lock another in a Rubbermaid bin made empty due to our recent organization, and then panic, herself, and hide? Could they have climbed into the broken dryer and then passed out? Emptied the chest freezer of food, hidden that food, climbed inside the freezer, and shut the door on themselves? Drunk a full bottle of hydrogen peroxide and crawled underneath the kitchen sink to die? I run back downstairs, like an IDIOT, and check the dryer, and the freezer, and the nook where the furnace lives, and the space around the chimney.

NO GIRLS.

And now I think, I HAVE WASTED TOO MUCH TIME. Whatever has happened, I have wasted lots of precious minutes running back and forth, while these children are in danger or dead. So I run back upstairs, heading straight to the cell phone so that I can call 1) 911 2) Matt 3) the little schoolmate's mother.

And as I pass the hall closet, which I have looked in at least four times in the past few minutes, I hear "gigglegigglegiggle." And from beneath the winter coats and behind the stroller and sturdy boots crawl Willow and her little friend, just giggling as hard as they can giggle.

And that's how I had my first heart attack.

In other news, the expansive organizational project of the girls' bedroom and our study/studio, the two messiest rooms in the house on account of they are constantly inhabited by three of the four messiest people in our family, is finished. I didn't finish grading papers this weekend, but I did finish putting all my favorite things, and all of the girls' favorite things, into clear plastic bins with sturdy lids. And then I labeled those bins. And, um, color-coded them. Because if you're going to do something, you might as well overdo it.

Here's part of the closet in the study:
You can see the bag in which I keep my teaching materials for my cloth diapering classes; the bin containing acrylic, oil, and tempera paints; the bin containing bulk colored pencils, the big jug of Mod Podge; the smaller box of plaster of Paris; four rolls of contact paper; the bin containing the one-inch pinback button machine and all its parts; the bin with all our hole punches; and the edges of small bins that contain seashells and artist trading cards. Oh, and at the very top, my brand-new and best-beloved Cricut, which I'll rhapsodize about some other time soon.

Here's another view of that same closet, if you can believe it:

You can see the big bin of bulk crayons, with our various pads of artist's papers stacked on top of it; bins of popsicle sticks, wooden cut-outs, and river rocks; the box of activated charcoal that, combined with the river rocks, goes into our terrariums; a bigger bin with all our paintbrushes; a small bin of pom-poms (and perhaps googly eyes); and bins of scrapbook embellishments and blank puzzles.

You probably can't see the labels on these bins, but every bin is labelled. And every bin has, below the label, one of three things on it--YES, NO, or WITH PERMISSION, and is underlined with either a green, red, or yellow marker. One of the main things I wanted to accomplish, as well as actually having a place to put all my crap, is to help the girls understand what materials they have access to. I take their roles as collaborators in our shared art and as artists in their own right very seriously, and I wanted to reassure them of what supplies they're permitted to use unsupervised, what they must be supervised to use, and what is off-limits. Basically, only the vintage beads, the jewelry findings, the soldering supplies, and the scrapbook embellishments are forbidden. The most important distinction in my mind is the WITH PERMISSION from the YES, or, for Sydney, the yellow underline from the green underline.

Bigger shelves elsewhere in the study hold bigger stuff:

Here are bins of blank papers, vintage papers, purchased scrapbook papers, scratched/warped vinyl record albums for crafting, and bulk markers. On top of one of the bins is a huge book of wallpaper samples--this is lots of fun for flipping through.

Even my desk received its fair share of attention, desperately needed, with a couple of nice, big paper bins labelled--

Although I'm not sure why I marked them NO--you'd think I'd welcome the help of anyone who wanted to do my paperwork drudgery for me...

I Finally Got Covid

Welp, I lasted almost three years without Covid, so it was a pretty good run, I guess.

I don't know if I finally picked up Covid at the gym or at one of the high schools I sub at or during a Girl Scout cookie transaction or somewhere else (my money's on the high school), but my reign as smug Covid virgin is now over. 

It's funny (funny weird, not funny ha-ha), because the day before I started feeling sick, and three days before I'd finally test positive, I randomly looked up how long my latest bivalent booster was supposed to last. I read an update that said it was generally wearing off 4-5 months later, and I was all, "Dang, four months?!? I got *my* booster just a little over four months ago!"

Fucking sigh.

I just keep on testing positive and feeling miserable, so I'm pretty stoked for the day that I can leave my bedroom quarantine, or, barring that, just for the day that I wake up and then don't immediately feel like lying down for a nap.

And you guys! I had to miss my trip to go visit my college kid! This was going to be the first time that I got to see her after leaving her at college. We had tickets to see the live show of our collective favorite podcast, and we were going to buy her some new clothes because it turns out that I was right and she was wrong about how many outfits one needs at school (ahem), and then we were going to kick around Columbus for a day while I looked in her face and squeezed her around the middle and listened to her voice and just generally soaked her in properly.

Instead, I lay miserably in my bed at home, following along on Life360 as Matt did all those delightful and much-anticipated activities in my stead. He got to take her to see Cecil and buy her a new coat and wander off on a pointless detour to the pet store--

--and buy her fresh produce (the kid was about to murder someone for some berries) and take her to the zoo:

I am still utterly distraught and beside myself with jealousy. I will never get over it.

My high school student did occasionally leave gourmet baked goods at my bedroom door, at least:

Yes, she made that fruit tart from scratch. No, I have no idea how delicious it is, because I lost my senses of taste and smell and all I can perceive is that it's crunchy and juicy and soft and cold.

You know who else is really helpful when you're sick?

Cats, man. Cats are phenomenal when you're sick. This particular dude has been happy as a clam to spend his days snoozing on top of the quilt on top of the electric blanket on top of me lying like a lump in bed and staring mindlessly at moving pictures on screens.

I did decide, though, that when I can muster a few extra percentage points of brainpower and I'm feeling like being a little productive, I should at least try to martial the energy to whittle down my massive collection of library books by performing the novel activity (lol) of actually READING them, gasp! 

And it turns out that when you spend literally (lol) half of your days reading, you can mow through a lot of books!

Discounting a few that I skimmed and/or abandoned without finishing, here's what I've burned through in the past ten days:

• Harrow the Ninth, by Tamsyn Muir
• Juliette Gordon Low, by Stacy A. Cordery
• Jo: An Adaptation of Little Women (Sort of), by Kathleen Gros
• A Heart That Works, by Rob Delaney

Delaney's book reminded me that when I was a kid, I randomly read what I feel like is an unusual number of non-fiction books written by parents about their deceased child's terminal illness. My grandparents owned Angel Unaware, probably because it was written by Dale Evans, although they, too, had lived through the deaths of two of their children by the time I found that book on our shelves, so who really knows--I never asked, and I never heard them, or to be honest anyone of their generation, ever speak voluntarily about any topic having emotional content. I am fairly positive that I bought Alex: The Life of a Child from Wal-mart, where I scored most of my mass-market paperbacks until I was old enough to prowl the mall and their Waldenbooks store--can you imagine the luxury of a full-on bookstore INSIDE A MALL?!? I bought SO MANY inappropriate books there, from the Simon Necronomicon to every every single lurid tale of dubiously consensual incest that V.C. Andrews could come up with. I don't remember where I found Death Be Not Proud, but I loved that one the most because of all the loving descriptions of chemistry equipment that the kid continually requested for his at-home real science laboratory. 

I don't really know what I was wanting from those books about child death when I, myself was a child, although I can guess that it was probably something like interest in a peer's lived experience, morbid curiosity about death, fascination at witnessing an adult verbalizing their complicated feelings about their relationship with their child... also, I was such an avid reader that I read the back of the Pop Tart box while I was eating breakfast, the golf magazines in various lobbies, and the motel's King James Bible if I ran out of books while on vacation. 

Delaney's book was partially the same--I checked it out from the library because people were talking about it on Reddit, picked it up to actually read it out of boredom, and found that the peer's lived experience that I'm now interested in belongs to the parent. A Heart That Works is both awful and beautiful, and I probably didn't need to read something that would have me crying so much considering how stuffy I am, and it was definitely a bad idea to read something that would have me desperate to hug my children during a period in which I definitely cannot hug either of my children.

But later, Syd and I sat on the floor in our different rooms, separated by a crack in the door that I peeped through, and she told me about the nice day she'd had driving around town with a friend, running their parents' errands and spending their pocket money on costume jewelry. Even later, we all Zoomed with Will, and she talked about how her classes are going and how unappetizing the cafeteria food is and what she might want to study next semester. And then Matt, who's decided to just ride or die my Covid infection even though he's still happily negative, brought me something crunchy for dinner and watched TV with me until I fell asleep at the super wild time of approximately 9:00 pm. 

It was the Covid-era version of everyone I love hugging me hard, and I'm honored and grateful to have it.

Day 11 in England: To Avalon with King Arthur

 

With the whole of Le Morte d'Arthur under our belts, the teenager and I were especially excited for our day at Glastonbury, also known as Avalon, burial site of Arthurus, Rex Quondam Rexque Futurus. 

But first a Full English, then a bit of time exploring THE most epic creation in all of England:

Mini Stonehenge!

Here's our full day:

• Glastonbury Abbey
• Glastonbury Tor
• window shopping in Glastonbury
• drive the long drive to Devon

We needed emergency crisps and biscuits and Cadbury bars for our long afternoon drive later, so we stopped by a Tesco Express on our way out of Salisbury and the college student found that our favorite biscuit, Jaffa Cakes (or are they a cake? I feel like England has a Whole Thing about biscuits vs. cakes), also sells something called a Jonut. And it. Is. Delicious!

I am currently very sad that my mouth is not full of Jonuts, Cadbury with Popping Jellies, and scones with clotted cream.

With Matt's three full days of driving experience by this time, we didn't actually do too badly in the narrow streets of Glastonbury, especially considering that window shopping along High St. later, we would see SO many near-accidents and drivers screaming at each other. 

Fortunately, we were able to avoid driving on High St.! Apparently the hippies wake up kind of late, because there was plenty of parking available in the one public lot near the center of town, and from there it was just a short walk to Glastonbury Abbey.

The history of archaeological excavations at Glastonbury Abbey is very checkered--the first archaeologist was also a spiritualist who believed that the dead spoke to the living, and he included some architectural features in his site maps that he hadn't actually found... but it was fine, because a spirit had used automatic writing to tell him it was there!

Ahem.

So there's a lot still not understood about Glastonbury Abbey and its history of occupation, but the museum did have some cool artifacts:

These cool artifacts include some contemporary ones, as the museum also displayed stuff they found during a recent dredging of the pond on their site:

And, of course, it had the obligatory several shelves of used books for sale!

I wish now that I'd purchased that Misty Copeland memoir and the A to Z Atlas of London and Suburbs.

Then, out the door to explore!

You know we love our architectural ruins! This is the Lady Chapel, supposedly sited on top of an even earlier "Old Church." There are glass walkways that allow you to cross the ruins at height, and stairs that give you access to the lower levels. Grass and flowers grow on the tops of the stones and in the cracks in the walls.

I love how they arranged site access so you can see and explore these formerly underground areas.

This site was fun to research with the kids, because it is VERY steeped in the spiritual/mystical woo of Glastonbury. I didn't buy the map of ley lines that I saw in one of the High St. shops (a fact that I actually super regret now...), but apparently we're just walking right over all kinds of crossing ley lines here!

Just east of the Lady Chapel is the Great Church, dating from around 1230:

Once upon a time, it was the second largest church in England, but during its construction it fell on hard times and upkeep and renovations got too expensive. Fortunately, monks discovered that King Arthur and Queen Guinevere, long associated with the area by legend, were actually buried on the property! Yay! The monks got tons of money after that, they were able to finish building the church, and they reburied Arthurus Rex in the middle of the Great Church:

We walked around the grounds of the old abbey, exploring the space and admiring the views--

Here's where King Arthur's grave was discovered!

The site also has a surviving plant from two thorn trees that used to grow on a nearby hill. They were seen as holy thorns, possibly originating from the staff of Joseph of Arimathea, who local legend has it possibly visited here with a little lad Jesus back in the day. The Puritans, being religious extremists, cut down those original thorn trees, but lots of local gardeners had their own cuttings, and this tree is said to be from one of them:

There was a shuttle from the nearby visitor center to the base of Glastonbury Tor, but it only took cash, alas, so after exploring the abbey grounds, we walked the 1.3 miles from the abbey to the tor, uphill all the way:

The path is that way!

The pedestrian footpath was actually really nice, ranging along wooded paths and through gates that led us across fields and under arches of overhanging ancient trees:

Getting closer!

This was a HARD fucking hike, and my asshole family left me completely in the dust:

There's no place to sit and rest other than in the nettles next to the path, no place to really make it easy to pass someone who's slowly huffing their way upwards, and behind me as I slowly huffed were at least a dozen various UK vacationers taking their kids up the tor for a Saturday afternoon picnic. Not only was I about to die of a myocardial infarction, but I had to keep up my pace so as not to inconvenience the people following me. Also, my face gets REALLY red when I'm hot. Like, REALLY really red, so a couple of times total strangers asked me if I was well. 

I finally made it, quietly weeping and absolutely beside myself with embarrassment and exhaustion. 

But look at that view!

Check out these rats who left me to die, hanging out as happy as clams without me:

To get back to the abbey, you just do the trek in reverse:

But fortunately the ice cream truck at the base of the tor DOES take credit!

It's also much easier to enjoy how pretty the walk is when I'm walking downhill:

We spent most of the rest of the afternoon window shopping along High Street, where they have SO many awesomely woo stores. I particularly liked The Coven, White Rabbit, Goddess and the Green Man, and Speaking Tree, but there were so many little shops with tarot cards, dragon statues, sword letter openers, needle felted goddesses, etc., interspersed with hippies on the street giving away free hugs and trying to sell beaded necklaces. 

We bought sandwiches and crisps from a little co-op grocery, ate them near another thorn tree on the grounds of St. John the Baptist Church, then hopped back in the car for a quick two-hour drive to the sea. 

We landed in an inn in Instow, which on this Saturday before a Bank Holiday Monday was HOPPING! The whole town was bonkers crowded. Matt had to drop us off and park a mile away at a cricket club, then he and I hung out downstairs in the pub chaos for a while before our proper dinner:

Our rooms above the pub didn't have any air conditioning, so we had to leave our windows open (also no screens--does England not have rabid bats?) to the noise below, including a live band. I really wanted my sleep, but it *was* pretty magical to be lying in bed, reading my surfer memoir--

--and listening to the magic that is every single person in the pub below me loudly singing the lyrics to an Oasis song:

I think it's the most British thing I experienced on this entire trip!

• Day 1: We made it to England!
• Day 2: Westminster Abbey, National Gallery, Trafalgar Square, and Six
• Day 3: British Museum and Buckingham Palace
• Day 4: Mudlarks and Southwark
• Day 5: Natural History Museum and Victoria and Albert Museum
• Day 6: Pax Lodge, the Tower of London, and Afternoon Tea
• Day 7: Back and Forth by Boat to Greenwich
• Day 8: We Careen Our Way to Canterbury Cathedral and Dover Beach
• Day 9: Dover, Hastings, and a Holloway
• Day 10, Part 1: All the Giant Rocks
• Day 10, Part 2: Stonehenge, At Last!
• Day 11: To Avalon with King Arthur
• Day 12: Tintagel
• Day 13: In the Footsteps of Mary Anning
• Day 14: Homewards!