Friday bullets, July 17, 2020

Here we all are again at another Friday. I don't know about you, but it always seems like a minor accomplishment these days.

• Y. is an official family mower now. She did quite a bit of mowing for J. this afternoon. Y. and K. will have to sort out who gets to mow. J. is happy to off load the job, and we have plenty of grass to mow.
• As I was driving to one of the barns I routinely go to these days, I drove past a golf course. It was quite a hot day, and as I drove past I thought to myself how terribly silly those golfers were standing in the hot sun golfing. The irony didn't strike me until later that I was driving to go ride a horse in the blazing hot sun.
• I had a minor equine success on Tuesday. Remember my epic fall last year? It happened in the outdoor arena, and for various reasons, I didn't ride in the outdoor again last summer. On Tuesday I was back in the outdoor again, so it felt like a small victory to ride in it both without incident and without trepidation.
• The other day J. happened to mention that I had a package arrive in the mail for me. How exciting! I hadn't ordered anything, and it is always exciting to get a mystery package. It could be anything! When I got downstairs to look at the box which arrived, I was not quite so excited. My surprise package was bugs. I have a standing order for fly predators which arrive once a month to help keep the flies down. This is what my mystery package was. Not exciting.
• Don't you hate it when after you have done a huge purging of excess stuff to realize that there was one thing that you wish you hadn't gotten rid of? I decided to pull all of our Ancient Greece stuff of the shelves today so I could begin thinking about planning the school year. As I was sorting through various resources trying to get a handle on how I would structure our learning, I realized I really wanted a book I had given away. What is worse, it is now selling on various used book sites for over $100. I will not be buying the book, but it is so annoying. (I knew we would be doing Ancient Greece one more time!)
• We picked a dinner's worth of green beans, chard for tonight's dinner, and six cucumbers from the garden tonight. Yesterday we had a wonderful salad all from the garden. It is wonderful to essentially grocery shop from the back yard. 
• Time is starting to hang heavy on various children. It doesn't help that it is unpleasantly hot much of the time and no one wants to go outside. This is actually my secret weapon in a successful school year start. My children are so tired of filling their free time that they are thrilled to get back to a regular school schedule.
• R. is standing here in my bedroom singing Chinese songs to J. There are so many Mandarin lyrics in that head and she has absolutely no idea what they are in English. 
• We finished reading the Wrinkle in Time trilogy by Madeleine L'Engle yesterday. I now know why I loved the first book, remembered bits of the second, and had absolutely no memory of the third. The third was the weak link. It was so episodic it was a bit difficult to follow, and some parts were just odd. You know it's odd when L., who has a very high tolerance for unique uses of language and a very high level of comprehension, looks at me at the end of a chapter and says, "That was... odd. I'm not sure what happened." I think it kind of sums up the bulk of the third book. On Monday we will head back to Swallows and Amazons territory with the book, Secret Water.
• I love having the library open and inter-library loans working, but suddenly I have three rather long books sitting here that I need to read before they are due. The next Amelia Peabody book is going to have to wait for a while.
• L. has just informed me that she has decided it's time for her to start her next book. I needed to take a deep breath in reaction. 
• We had almost no mulberries this year. Certainly nothing to make syrup out of. This is disappointing because we really like mulberry syrup on pancakes and now we need to wait another year.
• G.'s four riding lessons she got for her birthday have been taken. She loved them. We (the trainer and I) decided that what she really needs now are just lots of miles to help build her muscles and confidence. I can do that at home. Then I can have her take some more lessons when she is ready to move up to the next level. Yesterday was her first day riding at home since her lessons. She did great. She was able to trot Bristol independently around the pasture. It was a little bit more stressful for her than on a school horse in an indoor arena, but she succeeded
• I am continuing to bribe K. with ice cream to feed and water the chickens.
• We have seen a ridiculous amount of cow birds come to our feeder. It does support my theory that the little baby birds which kept falling out of the nest in the barn were being pushed out by a cow bird nestling. They are not terribly attractive birds.
• Anyone else feel as though their emotions are all over the place these days?
• There now seem to be three frogs living in the pond. Two big ones and one little one.
• I am missing having two crock pots.
• I have been teaching L. to play the guitar. No, I do not play guitar. But I bought a book for her that is very detailed about playing the guitar, so I am helping her through it. I do read music and can understand fingering charts. I guess I am learning to play guitar as well. 
• The craziness continues. I absolutely cannot understand how someone could voluntarily choose workbooks over any other more engrossing form of learning.
• I fear I am becoming a crank in my old age.
• The okra plants are nearly as tall as I am. At least that gives them a good chance of surviving the cucumber vine onslaught. There are no okra pods to pick at the moment, though.
• The Warriors chapter book series has been exceedingly popular here among L., G., and Y. They read and talk about the different books and cats (they're about cats if you don't know them) endlessly. H. has decided she doesn't want to be left out and has started reading the first one. Since comprehension is a struggle for her, I'm not sure what exactly she is getting out of it, but she will sit and read for long chunks of time. She has also heard the names of the different clans and cats enough from listening to the endless cat/clan debates (we all have), so is going into them with some familiarity. I'm curious to see how this plays out.
• I had to buy new riding boots this past week. On Monday, the sole came off of one of them... again. This is not the first time to happen, and M. keeps gluing them back together for me. Since I bought them used possibly seven years ago, it seemed as though it was time to replace them. I think I have gotten my money's worth out of them; one of the best $5 I've ever spent. My new boots were not $5. In order to get the same level of cost effectiveness out of the new boots, they will have to last me for the next one hundred years or so.

And with that, I'm going to say good night. Enjoy your weekends!