Help me, Obi-Mom Kenobi! You’re my only hope.

The following posts (earlier posts) are all from an older blog that have been merged into this one to save the pictures attached. Just so you know.

I know something you don’t know. I know something you don’t know. I know exactly how many cars turn both left and right off a southbound exit ramp and turn left onto a southbound entrance ramp at a certain road on a US highway, between noon and 12:30 p.m. on a typical Saturday. How is that? Because The Boy and I went counting cars this weekend with The Dad. Oh, yes, it’s true. Our lives are completely crazy. As it turns out, a fair number do but the exit ramp does not backup excessively, even though the wait can be a couple of minutes sometimes. It’s really a perfect place for a roundabout…

After that adventure, we headed off to find a Christmas tree. The Christmas tree. The one Christmas tree to rule them all. Ok, maybe not to rule them all, but definitely the best one to dominate a corner of our living room for the next several weeks. I think we succeeded. In our quest to incorporate the brightly lit evergreen into the dark, and only getting darker winter season:

The Boy tested out the all-important huggableness factor (huggability?) of different trees.

We agreed to take this little number home. Thanks to the anonymous stranger that took our picture.

The Dad gave The Boy some tips and held the tree as The Boy worked the handsaw.

After setting up our new friend, and having a little discussion about how friends don’t let friends run out of water or drop needles all over the floor, we gave the tree some time to settle in and shed any extra ice or snow still clinging to its branches before moving in for the decorating session.

Ah, yes, the decorating session. I plugged in all the strands to make sure they were operational. We were go for lighting. The Dad hung the first set of lights. We plugged them in to see how they looked. And then there was… no light. He took them down and we tried various methods of reviving the strand: check for loose bulbs; check for missing bulbs; check the outlet; shake strand vigorously; swear under breath. Nothing. Hmm, how odd. Hmm, soldier on.

I checked the second stand and we were once again operational. The Dad hung the second set of lights. We plugged them in to see how they looked. Again, no light. This time, however, we did find a bulb that had fallen out while they were going up onto the tree. Eureka! Back up they went and this time they worked perfectly. Ok, we were on our way with the lights – right up until the point where we ran out with still a full third of the tree to go. Conveniently, we live within walking distance of a store that sells tree lights. After finishing the lighting, we dug out our tree garland, ornaments and tree skirt and went the distance. With all three of us hanging things, it took no time at all.
When all was said and done, we turned out the rest of the lights, turned on some Christmas music and relaxed in the glow of our happy little Christmas tree.

Let the baking begin!

My Dutch teacher called last night. She is back from her summer holidays, her sons are back in school and she is ready to begin again. Therefore, The Boy and I are going to start our lessons back up next Thursday afternoon. Yeah!! I am really looking forward to this far too much. While I firmly believe that no knowledge is wasted, my fascination with the Dutch language makes no sense at all.

The ugly truth:

• I live in West Michigan. In case your geography is a bit off, that is no where near Western Europe.
• While W. MI has a humongously large percentage of people of Dutch descent, there are only approximately 10 people in the region that can actually speak the language to any degree – and my tutor’s family, The Boy and I make up 6 of them. The other 4 live in a nursing home and believe that Hitler has just bombed the harbor at Rotterdam.
• I get to The Netherlands about every ten years, if I’m lucky.
• While IN The Netherlands, the locals – who can smell foreigners (buitenlanders) at twenty paces – immediately switch into grammatically perfect English the minute I step into the room.
• It is easier to steal plutonium than to get a work visa in the European Union.
• All public service employees in The Netherlands, even fast food workers, seem required to speak the following foreign languages to have public contact: English, French and German. Seriously, I have seen fast food workers switching effortless between Dutch, English, German and French without even missing a beat. I wouldn’t be qualified to work at the golden arches, let alone as a counselor!
• In the world’s most densely populated country, I could only afford a cardboard box under a busy overpass, on Tuesdays and alternating Thursdays, even if I ever could obtain said work visa and job.

And yet, I am thrilled to be starting back up again. I’m reading my children’s’ stories, doing workbook pages in my Speel en Oefenboek (play and practice book) for children 7 and up, making vocabulary cards, highlighting words in my Dutch/English dictionary that I have had to look up, and watching (the sometimes creepy) Dutch TV shows via the internet. The Boy was given the chance to “opt out” again, but has declared that he want to keep up with his lessons too. I’m doing a little happy dance just thinking about starting back up again.

try to stay calm until I return.

The three of us went tadpole and polywog hunting at the wetlands pond at Blandford Nature Center. We successfully caught (and returned) tadpoles, but the polywogs eluded capture – although we did see several.

My niece graduated from high school. Her mother was just pregnant with her around the time that I met The Dad. That fact alone has given me wrinkles.

I finished The Simpsons and Philosophy: The D’oh! of Homer last night at the bookstore while waiting for the boy to finish poking other kids with a medieval weapon. This was not a woo-hoo fun read (which I half expected from the title), but it was interesting. The text is comprised of a series of essays on multiple topics, some of my favorites were “Lisa and American Anti-Intellectualism,” “Simpsonian Sexual Politics,” “Enjoying the so-called ‘Iced Cream’: Mr. Burns, Satan and Happiness” and “A (Karl, not Groucho) Marxist in Springfield”. While I don’t enjoy philosophy in general, getting all the different ‘isms’ and ‘ists’ mixed up after a while because eventually most everyone ends up sounding angry and belligerent (kind of like a two year old saying, “Yeah but” and “But whyyyyyyyyy” over and over), I did like significant parts of this book because I could see what they were trying to explain in the behavior of these well-known characters. Really, though, how could you not like a book, at least a little bit, that starts off like this: “Dedicated to Lionel Hutz and Troy McClure (whom you might remember from such TV shows as The Simpsons)”

Taking yet another book from my pile of books begun this year but not finished pile, next up is the absolutely not going to be working my brain too hard historical fiction, Presidential Agent by Upton Sinclair. Here, Sinclair writes about the glory days of espionage just prior to World War II. His protagonist is a smooth-talking, charmingly-handsome, globe-trotting and (need I say?) rich art dealer who just happens to be the son of a major US munitions maker. Selling his way into all the nasty amoral mansions of Europe and America, he makes money and gets information that he uses to the benefit of the greater Red good. Within the first couple of chapters, our hero meets with President Roosevelt and becomes – have you guessed? – a presidential agent, getting clandestine information and forwarding it on to the White House. I read this book about 15 years ago and am looking forward to seeing how the experience goes this time.

Hmm, it’s time to get to work, so I guess Richmond Lattimore’s translation of The Odyssey of Homer will have to wait. This is just keeping you on your toes, isn’t it?

How am I supposed to get anything done around here if I’ve got to respond to so many comments every day? I mean, a girl’s got to sleep sometime, you know… I’m sometimes getting up to 3 comments a day! OK, that doesn’t happen too often, but I’m willing to struggle on, if it means that much to you. That’s just the kind of girl I am.

Want something fun? Like the Beatles? Watch this:

This video gets The Boy (a huge Beatles fan) laughing faster than anything else.

Oh, and since I’ve a bit of a rant going anyway, GeezOhPetes people. Will you just stop nagging me for a moment about the books I’m reading? So you want to know all about them, huh? Alright, alright, I’m happy to oblige.

Michigan: a History of the Wolverine State is a densely informative book, so it’s taking a while. It was originally (and is still) used as the primary collegiate text for Michigan History classes around the state so this is not a quick beach read. It is, though, quite interesting and has been known to follow me to dental appointments and The Boy’s extracurricular activities, where it interferes with my ability to keep current on celebrity gossip. I pick this book up at least twice a week and give it some time to stew in my brain on the other days. I consider it essential reading for all Michiganians and will be strongly recommending it to The Boy when he get to the high school years.

I’m also reading Charles Darwin’s The Origin of Species about twice a week, with some necessary stewing time in between. I first read his autobiography last fall and it really put me in the groove to tackle this initially intimidating book – I mean, this is the granddaddy of all biology texts. I wish I’d read it earlier because Darwin elegantly lays out the basics of evolutionary biology in a clear and interesting manner, with significant correlation to the changes produced by man in domestic animals. I’ve been surprised by a few misunderstandings of the process that I’ve picked up through the years. Either way, it has only increased my respect for the author.

What’s that? You want to know about The Odyssey of Homer and The Simpsons and Philosophy, too? Wow, you are an inquisitive bunch. OK, I’ll tell you more about them next time.

After woodcarving tonight, we were lucky to see The Dad pull into the driveway 3 1/2 hours before we expected him. So there really wasn’t anything else we could do, we simply had to walk down to the local ice cream place for some frozen joy. Before getting the icy delights, though, we did our civic duty by voting in the church next door and picked up our holds from the library across the street. Sigh. I just love this neighborhood. The Boy had 3 books on tape waiting for him, all three guaranteed to hold him spellbound.

You see, The Boy loves to listen to the Hank the Cowdog tapes. Loves to listen to them. And frankly, I rather enjoy them myself. There’s just something endearing about hearing fantastical tales of life on the ranch from the perspective of a canine Head of Ranch Security. While I’m sure that they’re quite amusing and informative in print, I can’t imagine that they’re in any way even half as good as when they’re being read by the author. Hank has a tendency to mix his metaphors and Drover (his almost-faithful sidekick) amazingly finds all sorts of ways to get out of anything even remotely scary (Oh my leg…), but they always get their man, or Vampire Cat, or One-Eyed Killer Stud Horse in the end.

If you have little boys, or bigger little boys, or silly girls, or even a goofy teen in your house, you simply must borrow these tapes/CDs from the library. Stopping for ice cream along the way is recommended, if at all possible, as it puts everyone in the right frame of mind. However, if you’ve got a passel of kids in the house, just go ahead and buy the whole series so that you don’t drive the librarians crazy checking out the same titles year after year after year after year.

I’ve been trying to get out for walks with The Boy and The Dad in the evenings again, a habit we fell out of when the weather turned nasty. I love that time of the day. The sun is setting, the sidewalks are nearly empty and the talk just flows.

Tonight I asked The Boy what his idea of a perfect “right now” life would be (I’ve been on a “make your own life & re-take your time” reading kick lately). He thought for a while and then said, “I think it would be a house with a stream in front of it and next to a woods and be about the size of our house. I’d like my friends to live nearby, take fencing and woodcarving classes, and have a park in the neighborhood that we could go play at.”

Hmm, I thought, our house is “approximately” the same size as our house, nearly all our friends live close by, he currently takes fencing and (starting earlier today) woodcarving classes, and there is a park we can walk to with tennis courts, basketball courts, baseball diamonds, playground equipment and a stream that leads to a pond and is surrounded by woods.

It’s nice to know that he’s feeling content.