Perspective

Hello! Hoping you are having a good week! We are having a very productive week with school; wishing the same could be said about the garden too. Ah well, Mother Nature has no intention on delivering sun to Seattle anytime soon, unless it happens to be wrapped in a "sunshower", so we might as well enjoy the last little break before the real gardening work begins, eh? After all, we'll be planting 6 tomatoes, two cukes, and a ton of green beans and fending off hungry crows from our blueberries and boysenberries this year. Wish us luck. :o) As a little aside, i am hoping your raspberry patch, should you have one, looks as promising as our this year. My goodness, for fear of getting stung, you can't get within 2 feet of our raspberry canes. I tried and was immediately swarmed by bees that look like they may be from a hive. They've got funny little colours to their bee-hinds. :o) It's rejuvinating to see the raspberries already starting to take shape. Thinking i might try to make some raspberry syrup this year as well as jam.

If this year's self-imposed Lenten break helped me with one thing, it was gaining a bit of perspective. I don't need to feel guilty if i'm not posting something everyday (although, we are so busy around here, it leaves me feeling udderly behind when pictures and events i want to post collect on the camera.) I mean, really, you have something you could or should be doing right now too, rather than reading the internets, right? ;o) We, as a society, have become a bit more passive than generations before us. We want to be entertained seemingly every minute of the day (thanks more than ever to the t.v., computer, phonebot...etc. but there's enough blame to go around for the swimming lessons, dance classes, movie theaters, sporting events, etc.) Some of us just happen to have a good balance of all of it. Others of us (like me) find ourselves like a swinging pendulum between utterly in control of entertaining one's self and accomplishing tasks and letting it all go to you know what for the want of someone else to do all the work. :o)

I guess this week has been a bit of a combination of the two. I've been neglecting my blog in order to finish up garden plans, trying to keep up school with this year's "finish" and next year's "start" seemingly approaching at that same speed at the same time, watching Dylan Ratigan "preaching the gospel", as it were, keeping the economic scandals facing our nation in our faces and not allowing his viewers or the gov't reps he interviews to succumb to the goldfish syndrome (aka "The 5 Second Attention Span), and playing the new game i got for Mother's Day in hopes of burning a few more calories each day than i take in. Today, i doubt that is likely as we're having homegrown quiche for dinner. Again. As there are 5 dozen eggs in the fridge and i broke the broody and she's laying again.

Speaking of my Mother's Day gift, when i saw this game for the Wii called "Just Dance" i was intrigued.

One of my greatest memories about growing up was dancing in front of the boob tube to the latest music videos from Mtv. This game is based on that: songs from the Fifties to the Naughties that have an avatar performing a composed dance to the tune. The idea being that you dance along to the music, the way the avatar does, as if they are your mirror's image. Cookie Monster and i just love it. She loves to watch me do the nerdy moves of the professor avatar to the tune by the Caesars called "Jerk It Out" (i love that it reminds me of the way my friends and i used to dance in high school.) I love watching her dance the "Mashed Potato". She does really well--all she needs now is a poodle skirt. :o) The hustle, or whatever the 70's style dance moves are called in this number, is starting to grow on me, as Cookie Monster loves the song, "That's The Way (I Like It)". Love the 80's music and moves--the Blur, Kylie Minogue, Blondie! It's such a workout too, which is entirely why i wanted it. After about 6 songs, i've played 30 minutes, and not to be too indelicate, but i've never perspired so much in my life! :o) Just talking about it is making me want to hit the publish button and go get my groove on.

But first things first, it's school time. Cookie Monster is almost finished with our "1st Grade" year. And we've gotten a nice routine down too, while she completes her workbooks or writing or colouring, i break dinner into steps that can be completed in 20 minutes or less and get to getting. As soon as the sun comes out again, i'll be fitting garden tasks in with the dinner ones.

Cookie Monster is about 26 lessons away from finishing her 2nd grade math text, so we are about to incur a serious hit to the pocketbook for the next year's text. I shouldn't look at it that way though, i suppose--it's much cheaper than a mediocre private school or an uneducated child. :o) In the last few lessons from this year's text, she's learning multiplication tables to 5's, measuring area and perimeter, geometric shapes, and tangrams. We're slowly getting the hang of the spelling curriculum--namely how to start it with the student spells at a fourth grade level already but she hasn't learned the phonetic alphabet or grammar rules. She's taken to teaching herself the piano from her new lessons we just purchased, and can play Old MacDonald Had A Farm from memory now. She's really become a hound for art history too. We've made it through these wonderful books about Botticelli, Da Vinci, Michelangelo, Breugel, and Goya. If i had thought about it beforehand, i think i would have waited to introduce the artists when we came to their period in world history. So i am thinking i will re-introduce them with her favourite paintings by each artist as we come into the times in world history. Dover sells these educational packs of artists' famous paintings printed on postcards, so i like the idea that after we are finished studying the cards we can use them for correspondance for thank yous or birthdays.

Hoping you all have a wonderful weekend, and also some pleasant weather!
Take care!
Fondly,
Whit