Foul Weather Ahead April 16, 2008
Posted by carpebanana in : Ramblings , 1 comment so farToday was warm. We did some of those crazy warm weather things you do. Put screens in the windows and open a few cautiously to make sure they were not too swollen to be get closed again (our house has some sort of kidney problem ~ it retains water during the winter. The rest of the world humidifies and we de-humidify, year-round). Had Miss Language hang out the freshly washed whites and table linens for a bit of bleaching by our long-gone friend, Mr Sunshine. And even got radical enough to wash and put away the winter coats, mittens, scarves, hats, and boots and exchange the whole lot for ball caps.
I would have gone for packing up the corduroys and sweaters, too, but that would guarantee a 100% probability of an unexpected cold-snap coming through Bananaland.
We also got to watch Mr Music at batting practice. The coach is big on keeping your elbows up. This is funny for us as we just learned in Williamsburg that ladies in those days were considered very rude if they raised their elbows from their sides. Colonial women could not play the violin because of this. Guitar was fine, though. Seems they could not play Little League, either.
And what things sound better than a bat hitting the ball? Not much. I agree with George Bailey about train whistles, but the bat on the ball? That may be #2 in my book, unless we are going to count particular voices. Or something like the Trumpet of the Lord.
GEORGE - Thar she blows. You know what the three most exciting sounds in the world are?
UNCLE BILLY - Uh-huh. Breakfast is served; lunch is served; dinner…
GEORGE - No, no, no, no! Anchor chains, plane motors, and train whistles.
UNCLE BILLY - Peanut?
VIZZINI - Stop that rhyming and I mean it.
And now I hear the happy sound of my book calling for bedtime reading.
Possibly More Than You Wanted to Know April 15, 2008
Posted by carpebanana in : Ramblings , 4commentsSome days are lamer than others, for no particular reason, at least none discernable to me. Clearly this has been such a day. The high points, as I look back, were #1.) I had a banana tonight that was just to the right ripeness as determined by my tastebuds and #2.) my doctor removed an impressively large chunk of earwax today. Be glad I did not have a camera along and did not think I ought to ask to bring it home. Earwax may well be the grossest substance on Earth, though I will withhold judgement on that till next week when Miss Language completes her pig dissection.
Also, Miss Dog Lover was *most* unhappy today in her speech session. The powers that be want her to learn idioms. She does not like idioms. In fact, she wishes “people would say what they mean.” She was particularly angry about the sentence where someone “let the cat out of the bag about a surprise birthday party” and refused to even read the sentence. She got home too mad about the dumb cat in the dumb bag and the dumb party to do her math lesson. And don’t even ask about “buttering up your boss” or “nipping things in the bud.” She is convinced idioms are not worth a hill of beans.
Bgarish? April 14, 2008
Posted by carpebanana in : Ramblings , add a comment
I am not too sure about this outfit. I am not sure if that donkey thing is some sort of political statement and if there is another shirt that says “Elephant Brings You Happy with Joy!” though that does not have a very Republican sound to it. How about “Elephant Brings You Prosperity with Stock Options?”
But what I wondered most about is that Genuine Bgarish thing at the bottom. Always one the lookout for new vocabulary, I checked with dictionary.com. No listing. I checked with Google and got this. What a deep disappointment to find that what Google thinks “bgarish” is ~ “swinish, brutal, cruel”, is actually just a computer scanning type error with a bad /o/ in “boarish.” So much for the mirth and whatever else it says (romak??) of the outfit.
Don’t Call Me Jonah April 13, 2008
Posted by carpebanana in : Ramblings , 4commentsOur Sunday school has been about missions and it seems one thing our pastor is intent on getting through our heads is that God means for us all to be missionaries, whether we believe the proper translation is “Go and make disciples” or “As you are going make disciples.” (We will skip the rabbit trail about whether we are in Jerusalem, Samaria, or actually are already at the ends of the earth. I tend to believe I am at the end of the earth, at least, that’s how it feels from here.)
Anyhow, you know how it is. You have this nice tidy plan about what gifts and talents you have and how God ought to use those for His glory. And then apparently He has other plans. So, Devastatingly Handsome and I had a few plans about sharpening our children into sharp arrows and the whole thing with those arrows being our main mission field. Well, it turned out that in the sharpening process, some of those arrows need lots of contact with a variety of medical professionals and therapists, the kind of people we had never checked off on any of our lists of People We Feel Gifted and Equipped to Minister To. So God brought more and more of them into our everyday lives and even into our own home. Until we finally got the picture: (part of) our mission is ministry to medical and therapeutic professionals.
I had almost forgotten this lesson until I remembered it in class today. Good thing. I know what can happen to reluctant missionaries. They can end up covered with whale puke.
Cool Beans Widget April 12, 2008
Posted by carpebanana in : Ramblings , 1 comment so farI got me a cool beans word of the day widget over on my HSB blog. I cannot figure out how to get it here, but you can go look. (Please feed Valin a banana on your way scrolling down the sidebar. Thank you.Mr Music worries about Valin not getting enough to eat.)
If you click on the back arrow you can see the word of yesterday. And you can keep going back though I did not experiment to find out how far. And once you have gone back, you can go forward, but not up to the word of tomorrow. Too bad. A little time travel is a cool beans thing itself.
I am so technologically challenged I can only hope some day the word of the day is “widget” and I find out what on earth it is that I now have.
Geomeatric Confusion April 11, 2008
Posted by carpebanana in : Ramblings , add a commentMiss Dance has proven a strong geometry student and will start the final chapter in the wonderful Jacobs text next week (on non-Euclidean geometry, fun, fun). So we are aware of little things like prisms, angles, theorems, etc, around us. Therefore, it is not really my fault that the ad in our grocery flier threw me this week:
Beef Round Cube Steak - $2.99/pound
So which is it, round or cube? or some 3D version of squaring the circle?
Bits of This and That April 10, 2008
Posted by carpebanana in : Bananalets , 2commentsI know little boys are supposed to be snips and snails and puppy dog tails. Mr Music always has liked his life being bits of this and that in combinations likely never before seen in this quadrant of the galaxy.
I offer you this photo of his current favorite pen and pen holder.
Now, what all does that have going for it? the ink from a disassembled pen (and I assure you he still has all the other parts, though likely combined with Lego or play-doh or stuck into his bit of “garden”), a feather left over from our bird unit, and the Christmas flutey noise maker makes a wonderful holder. Gotta love it.
This same boy who just started Little League, does not like the idea of settling down to one sport, let alone one position. He last played on a team a few years back when it was T-ball and never really did get the concept of playing one position. The final play of the season was the finest moment: Mr Music was up to bat. He hit a mighty hit in the vicinity of the second-base man. By the time he scooped it up, and threw in the direction of first, Mr Music was already there. So there, in fact, that he noticed the first-base man wasn’t, and so, Mr Music neatly stepped off base and caught the ball himself. So, what was that? safe, or out at his own hand? There were no umpires as there was no score-keeping, some of the kids could not even get through their heads that the instruction “run home” did not mean run to their own house. We had to fish a couple back from the outfields as they thought they were following the coaches’ orders by running home.
Well, now yesterday was Little League practice. And apparently Mr Music’s coach was not impressed with Mr Music’s combination (similar to the funky pen above) of batting and ballet (picked up from the lovely Miss Dance). He has perfected the technique of hitting the ball, then doing a complete pirouette. Mr Coach explained to him that his right foot is not to leave the ground. Mr Music, therefore, feels Mr Coach does not recognize his natural superior skill in the sport and has been busy explaining to us all that really, we have him signed up for the wrong sport, he is “built for football.”
Right.
This led to a discussion of football at the dinner table. Miss Dance has no time for football and dismissed it simply, by saying, “Football? You want to play football? It’s just a bunch of sweaty guys going around patting each other on the butt.”
Negotiations April 8, 2008
Posted by carpebanana in : Bananalets , 1 comment so farI have no idea if Condoleezza Rice is going to run for VP or not. But, if she does, I think I am fully qualified to serve as Secretary of State.
In other words, I was successful in my negotiations with Mr Music, who just started a season of Little League. He is at that stage in a boy’s life where each hearty meal ends with, “Can-I-be-excused-and-may-I-make-myself-a-sandwich.” So, last night when we got home from practice, and I made him a grilled cheese, I explained that the trade-off is that he will have a shower once he finishes the sandwich. He objected that he “did not really sweat (much)” and is “clean enough.” I reiterated the position No shower No Sandwich and we reached an agreement for the rest of the season.
One much-needed clean-up
in exchange for
One much-desired sandwich
Surely, negotiating world-peace could not be much harder or more important than cleaning up a 9 year-old male.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Oh, and I am kicking around the idea of knocking Old Possom’s Book off yesterday’s list in favor of the dictionary. Couldn’t live without that one, for sure.
Tag, I’m It April 7, 2008
Posted by carpebanana in : Ramblings , 4commentsI am tagging myself with the meme from Sinksmummy.
7 things I’d like to do before I die
1. Get rid of the junk in my life.
2. Finish the birth samplers for all my children.
3. Be able to remember what I read.
4. Be able to communicate what it is I want to say.
5. Become more like Christ.
6. Make sure my children know they are loved.
7. Learn to be gracious.
7 things I can’t do well
1. Sustain effort.
2. Sustain thought.
3. Sustain purpose.
4. Bake a pie crust.
5. Crochet without pulling it too tight.
6. finish memes.
7.
7 favourite movies
1. Princess Bride
2. Babe
3. The Name of the Rose
4. Harvey
5. Because of Winn-Dixie
6. (I’ll be back if I think of two more)Miss Language claims my life would not be the same without The Pirates of Penzance but I think it is an overstatement.
7.
7 things I say often:
1. Sit down and finish your math.
2. Is your retainer in?
3. Did you wash? Go wash!
4. Be careful!
5. Is your math done?
6. Did you make your bed?
7. Is anybody planning on coming to dinner?
7 favourite books/authors
1. The Bible (Almighty God)
2. The Screwtape Letters (C S Lewis)
3. The Valley of Vision (Arthur Bennett)
4. Knowing God (J I Packer)
5. The Book of Psalms for Singing (?? I guess King David and Others)
6. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time (Mark Haddon)
7. Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats (T S Eliot)
7 things I want to see:
1. complete works of Rembrandt
2. impressionist works in the Art Institute of Chicago
3. Miss Language’s books, both literal and offspring.
4. Miss Dance raising a crew, all on pointe.
5. Mr Gingersnap’s smiling face.
6. Miss Dog Lover in a happy home.
7. Mr Music raising a godly family.
**Disclaimer Necessary Due to My Obsessively Overly-Conscientious Nature**
I do not guarantee that these are actually my favorites… and they certainly are not in order. Please do not consider this meme legally binding. Or morally binding. Or cinematically binding. Or lexicograpically (?) binding. Or anything.
Now it is time for hot chocolate.
Now, there’s a great category I will add:
7 favo(u)rite foods: (not gastronomically binding)
1. chocolate
2. hot chocolate
3. cheese
4. cake
5. popcorn
6. salad
7. pomegranate
Put On Your Walking Shoes April 4, 2008
Posted by carpebanana in : Ramblings , 3commentsIt’s a warmish rainy day and we’re going for a ramble ~ not just a short stroll, but a ramble. Everything from powerful prayer tools to easy perfection with a stop along the way. That’s Friday for you.
First, some blog posts just arrive in your mailbox. Yesterday we got one of those cellophane packets of ads for homeschoolers. Everything from de-worming your children to teaching Latin. And this one even included an ad never before seen in this household (and, had it arrived on the first, it would have been totally dismissed as a weak April Fool’s joke): a folder announcing The World’s Most Powerful Prayer Tool. Not, as you would expect, some sort of journal or even kneepads. No, it is a necklace ~ a flat round disk that looks like a flying saucer with a cross on it. (Miss Language is obliging with a photo as we cannot find this, uh, exclusive item online, so excuse us if quality is not up to snuff).
It is the Q-link Prayer Link. It will “improve your prayer’s concentration, power and clarity.” The whole brochure is an instant logic lesson. You can get one for 99.95 + shipping & handling or 10 or more for half off - let me know if I should get a bunch engraved with Bananas and ship one out to you. Their site does not seem to carry the prayer model so I think the folks who sent out the brochure have modified the original Q-link product to suit the market. I did find this interesting analysis of the original product. I especially appreciated this part of his explanation of the inner-workings of the Q-link: there is a modern surface mount electronic component soldered to the centre of the device. It looks impressive, but whatever it is, it is connected to absolutely nothing.
Now, on to our next stop: the photo du jour at Engrish.com.
A part of me thinks whoever posted this sign is ready for the arrival of my Mr Music. He would jump. He would run. He would leap. And Miss Dance would do arabesques and whatnot. But for me? “NO JUMPING??” The only reason I would consider jumping from such a point would be so I would not have to worry any longer about my inevitable fall. I do not even walk along the railings in upper floors of shopping malls, or let my children anywhere near them. And don’t ask about parking garages.
And then our final stop is once again to the mailbox here at the Banana’s. Today Mr Music received a packet of ads he got from signing up somewhere as a retiree. (It’s disconcerting to have a 9 year old getting ads from retirement communities but there it is. You know how homeschooled kids tend to be advanced.) Anyhow, this packet has the ad for EarthBox ~ one of those big crates with drainage for people like me who are all too good at killing any plant they touch.
We always look at our junk mail as we eat lunch, kind of on the Logic Light Curriculum, and this particular phrase jumped out “With EarthBox®, it’s easy to be perfect.” Wow! Here I thought it took that sanctification stuff and all that I was taught about way back in Junior High youth group. I still remember the retreat where we learned all sorts of Bible formulas. My favorite was the one for sanctification: G=K+O/.T (translated by our awesome pastor as Growth equals Knowledge plus Obedience over a Period of Time).