Aberrant Physiology FTW

I apparently have developed a weird mutant immunity to poison ivy.

12yo daughter has not. Yet.

Briefly ...

The last two weeks have pretty much been a tour of the third level of Hell. I've barely been online, and as I am a rather private person by nature I'm not likely to post much about it.

I will, however, share the fact that my dad is home from the hospital now and doing much better (on his couch, watching his soccer, without random medical people poking him every half hour). I plan to see him today but have to call first - as he said, he has a 5k run today, and then is helping this guy move furniture. (I wonder where I get my smartass sense of humor from ...)

The Dad Update

Just got word that my dad is recovering well and will be moved out of the ICU today. They will also be giving him a nicotine patch so he will stop being so mean to the nurses. :)

Past and Present

I suppose, in a way, MLK's dream has come true, at least in my kids.

They don't understand what all the fuss is about with President Obama.

"He won the election, didn't he? Somebody always wins, right? So what's the big deal?"

We explained a bunch of times what the big deal is. But they don't believe us, I think. How lucky they are, to be able to scoff at the idea of a whole society discriminating against part of itself based on the color of the skin. In our little neighborhood, there is nothing to support these old tales of segregation.

"I knew he was gonna win, anyway," the boy said the other day.

"Oh?" I asked.

"Sure," he answered. "He's from Chicago."

Only As Old As You Feel

"Listen, Mom!" my 12-year-old daughter, Blossom, said to me the other day. She was working at my old laptop, and as she struck the keys a metallic, mechanical sound issued from the machine. "I made it sound funny!"

"That's a typewriter sound," I told her.

"Listen!" she repeated, hitting (I know) the 'Enter' key, and eliciting that old-school ratchet-and-ding. After a few more feverish taps, she looked up at me. "A typewriter?"

"Yes," I said, suddenly feeling about a million years old. "Remember when we went to the museum last summer, and saw those old machines in the Newspaper display?"

"Ohhh," she said. "You had one in grade school, right?"

"Yes," I said again, finding a chair and easing my ancient bones into it.

"Neat," Blossom opined, typing a few more lines. "That was before CD-ROM, right? You had to use floppy disks."

"No, dear," I answered. "Something even more archaic. It's called paper."

Educating the Masses

When my oldest daughter, Rose, started kindergarten, she was excited and I was sad - my baby was growing up! She had taught herself to read before she was out of diapers, and the classwork was so boring for her that she spent more time assisting the teacher than being a student. The next year, she was even more bored: the school asked if she could help with remedial reading for third graders, but even this didn't keep her busy enough to keep from disrupting classes. So before first grade was over, we decided to pull her out of school and teach her at home.

We tried "homeschooling" at first, but before long realized that her learning style was far better suited to "unschooling" - and in the years since, her siblings have also been flourishing in this loose, self-directed learning environment.

Now, my eldest baby is teaching herself Japanese, and has decided she will become a forensic scientist (joining me in yelling at the television when we watch "Forensic Files" and the investigators miss the obvious). Her younger sister, 12, is torn between cinema and diagnostic medicine (she loves "House, MD" and the new-to-her Sherlock Holmes mysteries); and my son, 9, wants to be an engineer (or maybe a pirate, or possibly a astronaut, or an invisible ninja) and has already taken apart and reassembled most of our clocks. And the youngest, well, she's bent on world domination, and heaven help anyone who stands in her way.

It would have been so easy to send them to "real school" - but I shudder with horror at the thought of what would happen to them in the local conformity factories. There is nothing in my world as thrilling as hearing one say "learning is awesome" and another responding "shh - I'm trying to learn this."

A passion for learning is probably the best gift a child can receive - and it's free, infinite, and will last them the rest of their lives.

News from the Fronts

Sheta (and her home) survived Ike! Yay!

Mood:

Relieved

And my uncle managed to be bitten by a bat.

The Boy's New Smile

While I was working on the "August EC Stuff" post my son was playing at his friend's house on the trampoline. I don't like the trampoline, and have a standing rule that the kids can't be on it if there isn't an adult outside watching them on it - not just outside doing stuff, but actually watching them.

Of course, just having supervision can't prevent accidents.

And he's the kind of kid that, through his tears of pain, apologized for breaking an adult tooth! I got him calmed with the assurance that the dentist will be able to cap it and no one will ever know unless he tells them (or loses the cap); and got him back to smiling by pointing out he has a fierce fang now and a wolfish grin, and had better not bite his sister Blossom no matter how bad she torments him since he'd cut her up bad for sure (not that he's ever bitten anyone, but silliness was called for).

I suppose it is the natural perversity of childhood that they can't have these minor accidents during normal office hours; it's always the middle of the night or on weekends. I almost hope he doesn't get his cap done before Halloween: he plans to be a pirate, and the broken tooth would enhance his costume nicely.