Friday bullets, March 24, 2017

This will be quick, I have a lot of painting to get to.

• J. is enjoying his new job, though much of the it feels as though he is drinking from a fire hose, as far as trying to learn everything he needs to learn. Yesterday was a momentous day, and possibly a turning point, when J. mentioned that only two people started their conversations with him by saying, "So, is it true that you really do have 12 children?"
• The internet is not always a bad thing. Yesterday, we were reading our teatime book, and one passage had one of the children wandering around her house reciting Ophelia's mad scene from Hamlet. Not wanting to waste an educational moment, I paused and asked the assembled children where the quoted lines were from. D. made an educated guess and said, "Shakespeare." I then asked which play. TM then chimes and and says, "Hamlet. Is it that part where she goes crazy?" We all pause and look at him a moment, and P. asks, "How did you know that?" TM replies, "Oh, I watched it on YouTube." 
• Part of cleaning out The Folly meant that I found a one foot stack of financial documents which were well past their expiration date. Some of the middle girls have sat endlessly feeding these documents through our shredder. I would pass through the kitchen and I would see Y. and H. sitting with chins propped on hands, slowly feeding through the paper. Clearly, Dante missed a level of his inferno. And then the shredder decided, it, too, was done, and stopped working. They then started ripping, but now R. was able to join in. There is nothing she likes better than to be given a pair of scissors and cut paper into very small bits. She can do this endlessly. For obvious reasons, we don't always indulge this desire, but yesterday she was happy to get to help and to cut paper into little, tiny bits. 
• I found yet one more school binder of A.'s, and in going through it, she discovered many stories and magazines she had created at about the same age that my younger crew are now. This has created a positive frenzy of writing amongst them. Each child has been carrying around a notebook and diligently writing... and writing and writing. Even K., for whom writing has never been a whole lot of fun, has filled a minimum of 4 pages of densely packed writing. When I announced today that it was going to be warm and possibly 70 degrees, he asked me to pause, got out his book, and recorded the fact in it. 
• This writing frenzy has had its funny bits, too. Well, funny if you know what is being written. One of my children, one who is still figuring out English sounds... 'th' still comes out as 's' sometimes and 'a' and 'e' sound interchangeable to her... is also writing. Most of it is discernible. J. did come down and warn me about one particular spelling, though, and I'm glad he did. Y. wanted to write 'thanks'. Now, stop and think how this might be spelled if you are still working on the above sounds. Also stop and realize that 'nks' sounds a lot like 'x'. This is why when you read any words written s-e-x, you need to pronounce them 'thanks'. 
• We never know what L.'s imagination is going to come up with next. Last night, L. had conscripted K. into being a stretcher bearer and we see the two of them carrying Blue Teddy (L.'s precious stuffed animal) down the stairs on a long under bed bin lid . L. then announces that Blue Teddy is very sick. "His heart went from 33 to 12 to 2. That's not good." She then wanted someone to do something about it. J. dug out something from the kitchen that could (very) vaguely pass as a defibrillator, and shocked Blue Teddy's heart back into working again, and told her he would be find, he just needed to rest. So L. and K. cart Blue Teddy up the stairs again to go rest in the hospital. As we were getting everyone tucked in, L. repeatedly informed me I was being too loud because Blue Teddy was trying to sleep. You'll be relieved to hear that Blue Teddy made it through the night, and K. and Y. have now become the designated doctors. It has been touch and go all morning, with L. coming to me to report Blue Teddy's heart numbers. This is a tricky thing, you realize. Before uttering the appropriate remark, you must first determine if these numbers are good news or bad news, otherwise you run afoul of the game... and L.'s annoyance. So far Blue Teddy is still with us, mainly because I told K. that death wasn't an option.
• Finally, because every post with an animal picture seems to be far more popular than the ones without, a Kenzie story. Kenzie does not like thunder. He is terrified of it. He will either cower under my legs if I am sitting at my desk, or hide in the basement, or sometimes we will find him sitting and shivering in the pantry. He is definitely a storm early warning system, as he will know a storm is coming long before we have any idea. This is why sometimes one of us will open up the pantry door to find this.