Its been a long ten day winter break with the kids home. They have had fun but I can't say we did anything spectacular. We kind of lurked around in the low light and stayed out of the rain, when it rained, and the wind, when it winded. That was quite often. We ate lots of cookies, drank coffee (well, I did, not the kids) and generated a mountain of laundry.
Frost had a few days of rolling playdates and sleepovers.
Wren played lots of minecraft and chess.
Everyone whined and complained at least once. If they didn't have something to complain about personally, they complained about someone else complaining and those eddies of discontent just about did me in from time to time.
Joshua took a few days of and played quietly on his laptop, his computer CPU (we hope its the CPU) being broken.
Beezle is fat. I am not going to say more about it other than both the pets want to eat more than they should. Kitty has taken to foraging for leftover food from the stovetop and I had a disgusting experience today where I snacked on a piece of toast Wren had leftover from lunch - it had cream cheese and smoked copper river sockeye on it - but found it a bit soggy so I threw it away.
"Kitty really enjoyed Wren's leftover toast" Josh mentioned, hours later.
So, I had eaten kitty saliva. Tasty.
In other weird news, I was walking at Magnuson Park with Beezle and Wren when we met another pair of Dachshunds and walked with them. The young women who owned them was named Amy and while we were walking alongside her Wren asked "When in the Big Bang were dogs created?" and rather than allowing my rather rambling "around the time humans came into being" explanation, she launched into a detailed exposition of the origin of dogs 50 million years ago and how they branched off from other furry critters and then from wolves. Wren was not expecting so much information.
"How do you know so much?" I asked.
It turned out she was an archeologist doing her dissertation at UW.
AND
She was working in Indonesia.
No, not just Indonesia, but on the very micro-sized dot of an island I lived on for a year long ago. Its crazy that she had just returned from Banda Neira in September! She had a picture of Gunung Api on her smartphone.
So that was weird.
I thought I had cracked my tooth but it was just a guava pip wedged in a crevasse. Wren and I both love canned guavas from Mexico. These were a favorite desert of mine growing up and I have recently discovered them in Safeway.
Frost needs a book to read. He's all hooked on digital media. If he gets a moment he watches Yogscast videos on Youtube instead of reading. I am dismayed and wish I didn't have to police everything. Screens are everywhere.
Wren says "I need to poop!" (he tells me because he still needs help wiping) and then keeps on saying "I am not ready yet!" After he's been in the toilet long enough to hardboil an egg I check on him to find him all done but playing iPad on the toilet! In fine silence.
Argh!
Anyway, at least he draws and plays chess and shoots the air and makes popping noises. He is also very interested in faeries and potions.
We were very impressed by the local parochial (Catholic) school when we interviewed there last week. We think we will apply and hope Wren is accepted to give us the choice to send him there. He would probably become a bit Catholic but not entirely. He is quite adept at making up his own epistemology. Here is his theory of emotion:
Wren: You know the body seasons?
Me: What?
Wren: You know the way you feel things in your body, different things... like the body SEASONS?
Frost: You mean 'emotions'. They are called emotions.
Wren: Well, yes... emotions. Emotions are body seasons and they are ruled by a heart which has pipes to different parts of the body and they have core alliances where the energy flows, it flows through the popes. There are different parts it flows for the sadness and parts for the angry and parts for the different motions.
Me: How do you know this stuff, Wren?
Wren: I know this because when I grow up I am gonna be a scientist of all the body stuff.
That is as well as a Tibetan Buddhist and a minecraft player.
Its late, I just wanted to catch up a bit and now I am :)
