The little people got haircuts today. Miss Baby spent some time shaking her head and smiling — apparently it feels light and pretty. The Little Guy talked to the haircutter nonstop throughout the event. First off, he instructed her, “no clippers please,” then looked at the book, and picked the one that “looks like my normal hair.”
They look good, and they can see now.
So I was reading Jasper Fforde’s Lost in a Good Book during the Little Peoples’ bath, and the Little Guy was intrigued by the cover art, and wanted me to tell him about the book. So I told him that it is about a woman who can jump into books: she reads them out loud, imagines the scene, and jumps into the book. And, yes, it’s pretend.
“So it’s imagining about imagining,” he says.
Then he wanted me to tell him the whole story, which is pretty complicated, since it involves bookjumping and time travel, and I haven’t finished it and don’t know how it will turn out. He was impressed by the idea that real people can go into books, and amused that book characters can come out into the real world (Miss Havisham is a terrible driver and gets Thursday in trouble with the law). He then asked, cleverly, “Can they go into the books, and then travel back in time inside the books?”
It’s not really a kid’s book, but I think it’s about time to try another big read out loud book — maybe Lion, Witch and Wardrobe — he’d love that wardrobe — or The Hobbit.
The Little Guy has been happier with his schoolwork lately. A few weeks ago, we began a new homework method. The teacher sends a packet home every Monday, with pages assigned for the whole week. We try to finish the entire week’s worth of work on Monday and Tuesday. He works hard and fast; he gets into the rhythm of it — he even enjoys it a little. Today, he wanted to leave the last page — where he has to draw a picture and write a sentence on an assigned topic — for later in the week. But he saw the topic, and immediately thought of a sentence, and eagerly and happily finished his work. In the past, he’s taken almost the same amount of time just to do his Monday homework. There are a few little things remaining — some counting, and our daily reading, and practicing his spelling words — but those won’t be hard. It’s nice to have a kid who can delay gratification, and impressive when he can do it.
Yesterday afternoon, I took the Little People to the park for a birthday party. Several nice kids from the Little Guy’s kindergarten class were at the party, and they played in the bouncy house and ate cupcakes and had a nice time. The Little Guy was very good with his baby sister: he protected her when she insisted on going into the bouncy house, and played on the playground equipment with her. (She, by the way, giggled every time she fell down in the bouncy house, and insisted on playing continuously until my DH came to the park to take her home for her nap. She wound down slowly, happy but tired: must…keep…playing).
There was another birthday party in the park that afternoon, including several kids that attend the same school as the kids at our party. There was one little girl, who wore her hair in a pageboy and wore khaki pants and a white T-shirt. The Little Guy was intrigued and amused by her: “She thinks she’s a boy.” As proof, he told me she wore brown. “But I’m wearing brown.” “Yes, Mommy, but little girls usually wear pink and purple.” He had a conversation with her that I didn’t hear, but he reported that she insisted that she was a boy. He was a little puzzled at her refusal to follow gender rules, but he chose to be amused by it. That’s when I decided to explain the word “tomboy” to him. It seemed to help.
The Little Guy has been on a big Thomas the Tank Engine kick of late. Today he requested “Thomas and the Magic Railroad,” which we didn’t own, but downloaded through the Tivo (which, by the way, is a dangerously easy way to buy a movie).
This feature-length film starring talking train engines also includes two Academy award winners — Peter Fonda, and Alec Baldwin. Peter Fonda is sleepwalking; the least he could do is think about the nice new swimming pool he’s going to put in with the money he’s making. But Baldwin? Baldwin IS Mr. Conductor. He throws himself into the role with almost alarming enthusiasm; his cheesy lines sound motivated and sincere. What can we say? If the role was good enough for George Carlin, who is Baldwin to turn it down? Throughout the movie, Sir Topham Hatt remains nothing more than a voice on the phone (he’s off island at a train conference, if I recall correctly). This way, the portraits of him and of Lady Hatt are still the little wooden figures familiar from the TV show, and consistency is preserved.
I made this observation to my DH, who commented on how much it bothers him that more recent versions of the TV series the drivers are rarely portrayed. It’s true; the driver is the ego to the engine’s id, and the new shows lack some balance in this regard.
OK, so this week is the big used book sale in my office. There’s quite a variety, and at a bargain. I’m suggesting $1 for paperbacks, 50c for paperbacks, and 25c for trade paperbacks, but those are just suggestions. My motto this week is “Take books, leave money.”
So come on by, during the following times: M 9-12:30, T 9:00-3:30, W 9-12:30, R 9- 3:00, F 9-12:30. I won’t necessarily be there all that time — I have classes to teach – but I will leave things open for self-service.
(I actually once saw a self-service bookstore — there’s a mammoth used bookstore in Ojai, that takes up several houses, and they leave several boxes of paperbacks and a coffee can in front of the fence when they’re closed.)
At our church, the person who assists the pastor with the service is the liturgist. This person gives a little “witness of faith” at the beginning, announces hymns, and reads the scripture. It’s a lay role — folks in the congregation sign up on the bulletin board. Today was my turn.
In my “Witness of Faith,” I talked about Hildegard von Bingen, and told a story about Ila, and teased the pastor (that always goes over well). The readings for today included the passage in Isaiah, which predicts the lion laying down with the lamb. It includes the prediction that, “the toddler shall put his hand in the serpent’s hole.” Apparently Isaiah never spent much time around toddlers; they will do that whether the kingdom of God has come or not: “Hey, what happens when I do this?” We also read the story of the capitalist and the worker. OK, the Gospels are full of parables about capitalists and workers. This is the one where the owner develops his land, leaves it to his renters, and then goes on a trip (God sure vacations a lot in parables). Then he send the slaves to collect, and they get beat up and killed, so he thinks, “They’ll respect my son” (again, it’s funny to me that Jesus casts the Father as the dimwitted optimist), and he gets killed too, of course, and Jesus basically says, “If you mess up this world, God will kick you out and find someone else who will take care of it — and it will serve you right, too.”
In the first service, the pastor misspoke: instead of describing an African road as full of potholes, he said it had many large “potlucks,” which seemed to me a particularly appropriate malapropism for the church.
It was a long day — longer for my DH than for me. He got up early and dragged all our stuff onto the lawn; I got up just before the Little People. They were excited and intrigued by the whole business, so, after they rushed through their breakfasts, we headed out to the lawn for the experience. The Little Guy tried to chat up the customers– a bit too aggressively. Miss Baby toddled about, playing with and buckling straps on all her old baby toys. The Little Guy played with her, and with a little girl from down the street whose big sister brought her to the yard sale. He also had a cooler full of water bottles, which he occasionally remembered to sell to people to raise money for Nothing but Nets. Most of the day, though, the Little Guy took care of his sister; they brought out their bubble machine and played on the lawn, then they played with blocks inside, and watched trains on youtube (when my DH and I went in to check on them, cuddled up on my DH’s desk chair, Miss Baby would turn to us and say, “bye,” or, “I’m with Daniel, go away.” After lunch, they climbed up and down the stairs in front of our building.
Yard sales often provide the opportunity to meet a variety of unusual people. Some were chatty; some weren’t. Some spoke little English; others were quite bilingual. I surprised one lady when, after she called out to her daughter in Spanish and the Little Guy asked what that meant, I told him. One lady went through the baby clothes, and bought a whole box of baby socks. Then she discovered a bag of old bras — I’d pushed them aside, thinking they were too tacky to sell on the lawn. She wanted them all, saying,”I always need socks and bras.” That was my seriously wierd sale of the day.
At the usual time, I took Miss Baby into her crib, and she napped for three hours, which is exceptionally long. That was the time at which we planned to close up the yard sale; as the Little Guy and I pulled away with giant bags of stuff for Goodwill, some folks walked up. We came back about 45 minutes later, to find my DH on the phone. He hadn’t been able to shut things down, and had actually done a brisk business since we’d left. All the things we were surprised hadn’t sold, sold in the half hour after we thought we had ended the yard sale.
We did OK, money-wise. But, more importantly, we got rid of stuff. There will be at least one more yard sale, once we get further on our packing and cleaning, but this is a good start. We’re all filthy dirty, tired, and sore.
Well, you didn’t. But I’ll tell you anyway: here are some of The Things a Person Should Know How to Do.
Knitting, of course, and crochet. Basic sewing, by hand at least. How to change the oil in a car, and check the air in the tires, and do something about it. Cement-mixing and brick-laying are handy; certainly one should know how to dig properly. Obviously, one needs to be able to construct nice sentences and paragraphs, and build a good 5 paragraph essay…. Peg out a tidy clothesline…. Some cooking: roast a chicken, bake bread, make an omelette, grill a hamburger. It would be good to be able to change a bike tire, fix the chain; make a kite, or at least fly it. It’s useful to be able to play poker, and 21, and Uno, and chess and checkers and backgammon. Some household competency would be nice: a little basic wiring, clearing drain clogs, plastering, hanging pictures…. Write a thank-you note….. keep a plant alive, watering it, pruning it, harvesting it…. frame a photo, landscape and portrait…. build a fire and put up a tent and hang the food from a tree…. It’s good to be able to swim, and read music…
I know, I’m beginning to sound like The Dangerous Book for Boys, or the Daring Book for Girls…. But I’m always impressed by people who can do things, and aspire to be able to do things. I guess that’s because so much of my life is about knowing things instead of doing things, and I spent years learning to know things, but I spend a lot of time — at home and at work and elsewhere — trying to figure out how to do things, or paying other people to do things that I can’t do.
So what’s on your list of Things a Person Should Know How to Do?
Last week, a student brought her crochet to class. I don’t mind needlework in class- I’m probably more distracted by it than the students are. I was excited — she’s left-handed! I’m left-handed! I’ve regarded my lefthandedness as the primary barrier to learning crochet, and here’s someone who can help me!
So today she came to my office, and, within an hour, taught me to crochet. I made a chain of loops, and then I went around and hooked the needle into previous loops, and made increases, and crocheted in a circle. Kind of. More of an oval. I was pleased with it, nonetheless. Amigurumi, here I come!
I know, I know. Knitters are knitters, and crocheters crocheters, and ne’er the twain shall meet. I will admit that I prefer the smooth, soft fabric produced by knitting, but crochet has its uses, and it just seems like the kind of thing a person should know.
(And, yes, I do have a long mental list: the kinds of things a person should know. I don’t know them all, but I feel like I should).