Mo Shuile Togam Suas

okay, so today Paddy ran away from the second half of his cross of ashes at the Ash Wednesday service.   Not sure if he thought she was done, or if he got a bit freaked out now that he’s six about the “remember that thou art dust…”

Busy day today —

Sean was sick and stayed home.

We had an appointment at the therapy unit in town for Aidan and it took almost two hours.

Then he had to get labs.  Two sticks.   The phlebotomist gave him two big  bandages that made him look like he’d had day surgery.  He was quite proud, and remembered her instructions not to take the bandages off until he had drank the soda he got at Target (we went there to get a few things for Clare’s birthday).

So we didn’t get home till almost four.   Up here it has been misty and rainy and cold all day, with the huge snow piles turning icy now, but down there in town it was bright and gentle and the fruit trees were in blossom.      The foothills were emerald green lightly frosted with white and orange wildflowers; a few months from now they will be their normal thirsty gold color but right now it looks like a scene from the Quiet Man or something.

Mardi Gras dinner — extra large burgers with spices and all the trimmings, and spiced fries.   Kieron didn’t convince me to open a liter of soda.

It was a bright sunny day — California blue and gold — and our Sierra glistening white snow and silver ice.   Even the Durango with its snow tires had some trouble climbing our driveway in reverse this morning as I drove Sean to school.

We ran out of firewood, and so I sawed branches that we’d stored in the garage for future kindling.   I was enjoying the sawing and it’s a good way to warm up when the thermostat’s at 64 degrees and the fire is barely going, but I think I’ll start having Brendan and Kieron do some of it.   Aidan wants to help but is limited to adding them to the stove (with supervision).    No saws for him yet.

The firewood guy promises to come Thursday or Friday, though; hope it doesn’t snow.

Tomorrow we have to start singing Ashes again.    My daughter refers to it as the “Phoenix song”.  Sure, it’s fine to rise again from ashes and “create ourselves anew” if we’re phoenixes (and proud of it!) but for the rest of us, who don’t have a hand in our own generation or re-generation, it seems to miss the point of what Lent’s about.    Actually, what life is about.   Oooh, and that “the dreams not fully dreamt…!”   Sugar shock on a fast day!  Plus the melody is just so ….so…. SO  (the last SO sung in a sort of screech when most of the congregation gets two notes above their vocal range).

But we’ll wear the ashes till they wear off, and hear “remember that thou art dust, and to dust thou shalt return”.  That part of it is good.   The little ones, who are bored by the silly middle-aged third-rate-movie hymns, are solemn and interested in the ashes and have to inspect everyone’s forehead in the evening after we get home.

Paddy, trying to wake me up from a doze this afternoon:

“mom, I’m hungry, hungry…. it’s time for some LIGHT REFRESHMENTS….”

Kevin just drove off to his uncle’s funeral.

It was a scramble finding all the components of his suit, which he rarely wears.   Hunting through all our storage for his belt, for instance, made me realize I have some work to do around here.    Lent is a good time to work on the “hidden places” — closets, drawers, places where things get stuffed.  I’ve very slowly been improving in this.  Today’s scurrying, though, showed me I have some way to go still.

Clare, hunting yesterday for something else, found our old box of pictures.    Looking through them yesterday in odd corners of the day wrapped it up in a nostalgic narrative “I remember this…!  I can hardly believe we were ever….!”     She put up a collage of Kevin and Aidan from almost ten years ago.

Kevin was showing the kids a video of old family movies from way back when he was a baby — the days of 3 minute reels.  His brother converted them to video form a few years ago so they were more accessible.   There was a shot of his uncle, the one who just passed on, looking hearty, in the prime of his life.

A jumble of thoughts and memories — maybe sorting through closets and putting order to old things is a way of showing respect to these material tokens of elements of our life and history.

I just talked on the phone with an old friend from college.   We were talking about how Sean isn’t that thrilled with having to go to school every day, and she surprised me by saying she LOVED high school.  I know that some people do, but I hadn’t realized that she was one of them.  One of Them.  That sounds funny.   Now if all his family were going to school and it was just taken for granted that it was a good thing, would Sean be enjoying himself more?

Anyway, he’s home now and said he had to walk up through huge slushy snow banks that turned into puddles at the bottom.   His shoes are drying by the fire at the moment.

It is pouring rain today and the trees look ghostly.   Aidan and I dropped Sean off at the bus stop and I made peanut butter muffins.   We are on our last batch of firewood.   Past time to order more.

I spent half an hour tidying downstairs.   Aidan is looking forward to when the other kids wake up and I vacuum, so he can see his old friend the filter (it’s a bagless vacuum).   Even though it’s almost nine, the house is quite silent.  I guess everyone was up pretty late last night.

Clare’s been photoing the days so I’ll put the links:

• Friday Evening
• Music Session
• Chess 

Tonight I made Sean’s three peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and wrapped them and put them in the fridge, because today is the last day of this 10 day break and tomorrow he’ll be out the door to meet the bus again.  So those photos feel a bit archaeological to me already, remnants of the past week.

The teens and Kevin are still on their Charlie Chan run.

Paddy and Aidan did some almost-real playing today.   They set up the hot wheels on their tracks and had races, and they played a hide and seek game.    This kind of interaction does not regularly happen.   Paddy seems to be trying harder to be tactful in his talk with Aidan.

Still thinking upon habits.  It’s like starting to clean the house beyond straightening.  Suddenly you discover all these corners to which no attention has been paid for MONTHS.   … plus things that don’t work or need repair.  It’s a lot like that.

I talked to Liam on the phone.  He is finally in the last stages of his thesis, which is due in mid-March.   Then he has his oral defense.   He sounded a bit weary.    He describes how he writes his paper:

He loads up the paper on Open Office.  He looks at it for a bit.   Then he lunges around his room feinting and parrying with his sword for a while.  Then he looks at it a bit more.  This goes on for a while.   Then sometimes he sits down and plays his classical guitar for a bit.  He’s also been composing songs and just finished a story with some geometrical puzzle in it.   He’s going to bring it home to read it at Easter break.  He says he has more ideas for new things when he has a lot to do.

In between he does get things done on his thesis.  But I think he’ll be glad when that’s over.

I spent the morning working on my study of Charlotte Mason and her ideas on habits.  I’ve printed out a few things to ponder and am now on my way downstairs to make waffles for the kids (definitely talking brunch since it’s already 10:30).

The kids have been playing/quarreling around me.   The quarrels have been the milder ones where mom doesn’t strictly need to intervene.

We woke up this morning to icy rain.   It’s supposed to rain all morning.   This is Sean’s last day to walk out of his room at 8 am and to play football on the king bed with a beanie bear and with Kieron and Aidan.

Clare said she thought Prince Caspian was pretty good, though rushed in places and silly in other places where they were trying to capitalize on the success of the last Narnia movie.   Kevin said he liked it, especially the place where the resistance is being besieged and the squirrel suggests storing nuts.   We both had a mental picture of the squirrels who live in our roof coming to consult with us about what place in our house should be reserved for the squirrel’s winter food supply.

Our priest mentioned “the kingdom by the lake” as a paradigm for how we should think of our little mountain town and the communion of saints.   Because of that and Kevin’s squirrel thoughts, I started thinking of a story like Napoleon of Notting Hill where the squirrels become our allies in some war against the intruders of some so far unspecified sort.

Off to make the waffles — Paddy is getting frantic in his hunger.

Kevin and the teenagers are watching Prince Caspian.  I have been in the same room with them, on my laptop, but only glancing up once in a while, so I have no idea how good or how true to the story it is.   All the parts I glance up at I recognize from many, many, many readings of the book.    I can say one thing — visually it’s beautiful.  Isn’t that enough?

Aidan fell asleep, true to his habit of dozing off early so he can be up before 7 am.   Earlier this evening he came downstairs with a strained face and said, “I need a cup.  I’m going to throw up.”  I took him seriously and rightly so.  He threw up and then said, “That’s all.  I feel fine now,” and went back upstairs.   He seemed OK the rest of the evening.   All the day before he was eating like crazy and acting almost giddy.  Maybe that was the problem.

Brendan and I talked about history and politics.    He has been perusing the Wall Street Journal every day and now knows way more about current affairs than I do.  Kevin has been getting a free WSJ sub for about six months now — or did he originally get a free 6 months and then pay 6 months?  I can’t remember, but anyway, it’s coming to us free right now.   I’m not sure why.

Brendan also unclogged the street drain below our house which was blocked by a big snow berm the plow left.    This was a community effort he wasn’t asked to do and we hadn’t even noticed it was clogged, so I was happy he took it on his own initiative.   Usually our neighbor who lives closer to the drain has to clear it so the street doesn’t get flooded.

Paddy is watching The Adventures of Tintin (cartoon TV version) while I type on here.  He just told me he’s hungry.   And he wants me to read The Dragons of Blueland to him.  So I had better wrap this up.

Looks like Neptune just showed up in PC.  Did that really happen in the book?  Maybe it is a river god.  But it looks like a significant one.   If that’s a river deity I would not want to have Poseidon himself angry at me.

I just read about Poseidon and his wife giving the British Isles to their favorite son, Albion, in Our Island Story.    I read it to Paddy.   Who seems SO ready for this kind of reading, I feel very apologetic about keeping him so long in picture books.   Still, picture books are works of art in their own right.   I took a class on Children’s Literature in middle school (an alternative charter) and it was a wonderful class.

I know I haven’t written on here for a long time.  I was trying to stick closer to my main blog over at Sierra Highlands.  I find it really hard to simply journal over there, though, for some reason, while my little homeschool blog over here seems to invite casual typing.   So I decided to go ahead and open this up again and see how it goes.   Maybe I am just the kind of person who needs 3 blogs.

They have lost confidence in everything: Their neighborhood. Their kids. And their own ability to teach their children how to get by in the world. As a result, they batten down the hatches.

Cindy quoted that in a post on the “free range” theme called Don’t Get Me Started.

She made the point that driving cars is dangerous, too. It’s funny that she mentioned that because my daughter and I discussed this a few months ago when we were talking about these new scare reports that sweep the nation every now and then, and the lengths people go to as a response.

Maybe it’s dangerous to microwave plastic. I don’t do it, at least. It’s easy to avoid. But I do hop in my car and drive my kids to things, just like most people do, statistically putting ourselves in a danger zone.

What about where we live?

In the city there is air pollution. I know kids with chronic respiratory illnesses that clear up in the country.
In the country there are bears and mountain lions! At least where we live there are! No one’s been attacked so far around here, but you never know!

I think it’s very perceptive to tie the fear in with a loss of control that people are experiencing. We see the horrible stories going on in the world and apply them directly to our lives rather than see them in statistical proportion. I noticed this particularly when the geneticists showed me the charts when I was pregnant at age almost 40. They flipped from the normal risks of certain chromosomal defects to “my” risk, which was I think maybe 1 in 100 at that time? But then, I had just gone through a medical go-round with my sixth son where the odds had been AGAINST his survival by about 1 in 100. Not exaggerating — he had a rare medical condition which killed over 95% of infants, plus he had acquired Adult Respiratory Distress Syndrome, which the PICU attending said had a 30 percent mortality rate even for healthy adults. Aidan was five pounds and six weeks old at the time. He made it, though. Paddy had the same condition. He had a lot more odds against him than just the advanced maternal age factor.

This put fear so firmly in perspective. Yes, you do what you can. But we all have a terminal condition called human mortality.