Badgers

 

 “I’m a beast, I am, and a Badger, what’s more. We don’t change. We hold on.” 

This is Trufflehunter in CS Lewis’s Prince Caspian, explaining to Nikabrik the dwarf why they must protect Caspian and restore him to his rightful throne: “Narnia was never right except when a son of Adam was King.” 

Yesterday morning I was listening to Numbers chapter 4 and noticed how often badgers’ skins were mentioned. Over and over, as the tabernacle and its contents are described, it mentions a covering of badgers’ skins—seven times, in fact. 

It’s not an accident that Trufflehunter and Mr Badger (from The Wind in the Willows) are the way they are. They endure. They protect the holy things.

Cedars

 

 I was reading Leviticus 14 this morning and was struck by the use of cedar wood to be burnt with certain offerings -- specifically those pertaining to being cleansed from leprosy, which is a kind of rot.

Here's what I know about cedar -- it's high in oil, which means that it's resistant to rot. You can cut down a cedar tree, lop off its branches, and use it for a fence post without having to cure it, which is why a LOT of old fence posts around pastures are cedar trunks. They'll last a long time just stuck in the ground like that.

Also, because of that oil content and how aromatic it is, certain bugs hate it, especially the kinds that get into your clothes and ruin them, like moths. This is why cedar chests are popular for storing sweaters, and if you have the resources for it, a cedar-lined closet is ideal.

All this reminds me of the passage that says, "Lay not up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt . . . "

Cedar being used the way it is, including in the Temple, seems to point us to the Resurrection where there will be no more death. 

Mindfulness

My morning walks are something like a meditation time. When I first starting walking regularly I would bring along an audio book or my French lessons and I found that I hated it — I couldn’t focus on the walk or the book. Instead I focus on the walk itself, and it’s much more pleasurable and relaxing that way.

First I focus on my feet, how I’m placing them. This will sound silly but it’s actually necessary for me. A couple of years ago the pain in my right foot became so bad that I finally went to a doctor and he put me in physical therapy for a few months. Turns out that the weeks I spent walking in a cast after breaking my foot when I was five years old caused me to develop bad habits, and the years of that gait caused damage to my foot, my ankle, my knees, hips, back, and neck! So the first thing I do is make sure that I’m planting that foot the way I should be and pushing off correctly.

Then I spend a bit of time noticing my hips and lower back, checking for correct posture and muscle usage. Then I move up to my upper back, neck, and shoulders, making sure they’re correct and relaxed, so that my chest is open and relaxed and I’m breathing properly. Then I cycle through again to make sure I haven’t lost anything along the way.

CS Lewis said, “When you put the feet right, everything else comes right.” 😀

This sounds time-consuming, and it was at first, but while I’m concentrating on my gait, posture, and breathing, I’m also taking in the look of the ground and noticing whether it shows signs of recent rain or wind. I’m smelling the air and feeling the temperatures. I’m listening to the birds and other animals and to the sound of the wind in the trees. I’m looking up at the sky and noticing the color and whether there are any clouds and what they’re like.

Nowadays focusing on my own body has become easy enough that it doesn’t take much attention or energy, so I have more of that for simply noticing the creation and letting my thoughts wander to whatever I want to think about.

There’s a specific technique that I had learned before all of this came up, and I think it’s why focusing on all those things came fairly easily for me. It’s counting your breaths. This sounds dumb, but it’s actually pretty hard.

Go sit or lie someplace quiet with no distractions. Then breathe in to a slow 3-count and out the same way. Count in your head, if possible, so you can keep your body as quiet and relaxed as possible. At the end of each cycle, count that as 1 breath (keeping count on my fingers works best for me). Try to get all the way to 10 without thinking of anything else. If any other thought intrudes itself, push it out and start over counting.

The goal is to be able to count to 100 (ten 10s) while maintaining that level of focus. It took me weeks and weeks to get there, but it’s worth it! Especially if you have an annoying dental procedure coming up and don’t like using the laughing gas. 😉

~*~ ~*~ ~*~

(This post was originally a comment at Joy’s blog.)

What I've been doing instead of reading math

* Going to the Y and hurting myself on the treadmill.

* Going to the Y and hurting myself in the pool.

* Lying around regretting my life choices.

* Reading light, fluffy fiction -- Dandelion Cottage, free for Kindle, recommended by the Deputy Headmistress.

* Reading light, not-so-fluffy fiction -- The 101 Dalmatians, which was my favorite book in the 5th grade.  Bill Peet did a wonderful job translating the book to screen for Disney, but if you've only seen the movie you've got to read the book, too.  It's delightful and poignant.

* Playing an insane number of rounds of Net Game -- I can't tell you how soothing it is to line up all those pieces properly and see the whole thing light up with power.  It's like a drug.

My high score just before leaving town in July, which I have not been able to top since. 
This is driving me crazy.

* Also Mahjong, but it's not nearly as satisfying as Net.  Too much chance involved.

* Eating avocados, my number one comfort food.





~*~ ~*~ ~*~ Interruption ~*~ ~*~ ~*~



A moment of silence for this poor dead hummingbird my son just brought me.

So tiny and beautiful

The real thing is much smaller than this picture.  It's not even three inches long from the tip of its beak to the end of its tail and its wings are only a little larger than a dragonfly's.

~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~


Now, where was I?  Oh, yes. What I've been doing instead of reading math.

* Blogging stuff like this.

* Overseeing the final stages of our long-anticipated new laundry room.  I think we started this project four years ago now.

* Reading about right brain / left brain differences.

* Trying to read the backlog of Peter Leithart articles in my feed.  He must be an angelic being -- it seems that he has no need for sleep or food.  Just reading and comprehending what he writes about would be a full-time job for me.

* Instigating a heated discussion on Facebook, which didn't do anyone any good.

* Lying around regretting my life choices.

Wait.  Did I say that one already?

* More Net game.

* Coffee.  Lots of coffee.

* And chocolate.

Randomness

While we were traveling last month I read Tom Sawyer to the kids, and started Huckleberry Finn.  I'd forgotten how funny Tom Sawyer is and was glad that the kids spent most of that book laughing aloud.  Huckleberry Finn's quite a character.  He can make up the most fabulous, detailed story to explain who he is and what he's doing in order to fool whoever needs fooling at the moment.  We stopped several times just to marvel at his ingenuity.  Not that I'd consider that sort of thing a virtue, exactly.

But then this week while reading The Wanderings of Odysseus we came to the part where he wakes up on his own island, but doesn't know where he is, or who the young man is who tells him he's on Ithaca.  It's Athena in disguise, but Odysseus, true to form, makes up the most fabulous detailed story about being a Cretan who was running for his life with his treasure and had sought help from the Phoenecians, and on and on.

At that point I put down the book and said, "I never thought of Huck Finn being like Odysseus before!"

To which one of my children (and you know they're all a lot smarter than I am) replied gently, "Well, it is a story about a guy on a raft having adventures away from home."

~*~ ~*~ ~*~

Speaking of Odysseus, that book is so annoying.  When I was reading today's chapter, the one with the dog and the old nurse, I could hardly read two paragraphs together without all the waterworks in my head springing a leak.  It was ridiculous.

~*~ ~*~ ~*~

During our Morning Time on Tuesday afternoon *ahem* I inadvertently let slip that at least 90% of the time I squelch the impulse to burst into song at random times during the day, and I got fussed at.  For not singing random songs like we live in a musical or something.

They wouldn't accept my excuses that even if I could sing in a way that made the song recognizable to the hearers, they still wouldn't know what I was singing because the songs were mostly show tunes and the pop music of my parents' generation, with a smattering of 70s pop and TV jingles thrown in.

Kids like to hear their moms sing.  Even when it's far from perfect.

~*~ ~*~ ~*~

Be sure to read the comments to my last two posts if you're interested in some practical bits of information on incorporating music lessons for little ones into your day on a tight budget and math story books.

Also, in case you missed the update to my last post, Dawn will be hosting Wednesdays with Words from now on. :-)

~*~ ~*~ ~*~

Last month my mom introduced me to the wonders of cherry juice for easing joint pain.  Let me tell you, after taking this elixir for a week and then forgetting to for a couple of days I've become a convert.  It is amazing the difference it makes in the way I feel.



You add two tablespoons to water and drink it once a day. I just add it to maybe 4 ounces of tap water and drink it that way, but it's awfully tart and you might need to dilute it more and ice it the way it is in the picture, if you decide to try it.  It's kind of expensive -- $30 for a quart -- but the quart will last you a month, and surely it's better than taking pain killers on a regular basis.

~*~ ~*~ ~*~

The weather here has been absolutely gorgeous this summer.  Usually by this time I'm exhausted from the heat and sorely tempted to curse my Scots-Irish ancestors who came to Virginia instead of Nova Scotia, but we've had several cool nights this month and the days not nearly as hot as usual, so it's been really pleasant.  Now, if we could just ditch Daylight Saving Time so that the sun would come up in the morning instead of staying up till bedtime it would be perfect.

~*~ ~*~ ~*~

Here's something Eldest Daughter drew yesterday, commenting, "I need to work on Maria, so instead I drew this girl with horns and a mullet."

I can't imagine where she gets her randomness from.

Randomness: Music, poetry, and Star Wars edition

Sometimes I play a piece of classical music to call the children to Morning Time.  Usually it's something by whatever composer we're studying, but today it was the beautiful Kyrie from Haydn's Missa in tempore belli, which my fifteen-year-old daughter and I will be singing this spring (the whole Mass, that is, not just the Kyrie).



There's a point where the words "Christe, Christe eleison," are sung dramatically with a long pause on the last note and the music stops for a breath.  Then the soloist comes back in with "Kyrie eleison, eleison."  It happens at about 3:17 in the video above.

When the soloist started singing again, my eleven-year-old said, "I thought that wasn't the end!"

After the song was finished, we talked about how you can tell whether a song is finished by the way it feels -- it has resolved the conflict.  That Christe eleison ended on a cliffhanger.

Then someone mentioned "The Empire Strikes Back," and somehow we started talking about all the Star Wars movies and how the Anakin Skywalker that was portrayed in episodes two and three couldn't possibly have grown into the magnificent Darth Vader, and eventually we segued into our day's reading from The Fairy Queen.

~*~ ~*~ ~*~

From Canto V:

VII

The Sarazin was stout, and wondrous strong,
And heaped blowes like iron hammers great;
For after blood and vengeance he did long.
The knight was fierce, and full of youthly heat,
And doubled strokes, like dreaded thunder's threat:
For all for praise and honour he did fight.
Both stricken strike, and beaten both do beat,
That from their shields forth flyeth fiery light,
And helmets hewn deep show marks of eithers might.


VIII

So the one for wrong, the other strives for right;
As when a Gryffin seized of his prey,
A Dragon fierce encounters in his flight,
Through widest air making his idle way,
That would his rightfull ravine rend away;
With hideous horror both together smite,
And souce so sore that they the heavens affray:
The wise Soothsayer seeing so sad sight,
The amazed vulgar tels of wars and mortal fight.


IX

So the one for wrong, the other strives for right,
And each to deadly shame would drive his foe:
The cruell steele so greedily doth bite
In tender flesh that streams of blood down flow,
With which the armes, that earst so bright did show,
Into a pure vermillion now are dyed:
Great ruth in all the gazers hearts did grow,
Seeing the gored wounds to gape so wide,
That victory they dare not wish to either side.

~*~ ~*~ ~*~

I'm having to rethink our school day.  Mike has been home on furlough since the beginning of April -- the contract his company was working on came to an end and the bidding and selection process for the new contract dragged out for weeks and weeks.  We've finally found out that the whole thing is done and he'll be officially out of a job on Friday... maybe.  The way things have been going I wouldn't be at all surprised if it works out differently after all.

So our days feel different and flow differently, and because some of the new jobs he's looking into are work-from-home jobs this might be the new Normal.

~*~ ~*~ ~*~

By the way, you could consider that a prayer request.  We really, really, really want to be closer to my mom, so ideal for us would be a job somewhere between Little Rock and Oklahoma City.

~*~ ~*~ ~*~

The girls and I are watching a new drama, a melodrama called Angel Eyes about a girl who loses her sight in an accident.  She is befriended by a guy and his family, they fall in love (well, I mean the guy and the girl, but really it's his whole family and the girl), but then the family suddenly has to leave the country because Reasons, and it's years before the guy is able to go back to Korea and find the girl.  In the meantime, a corneal transplant surgery has restored her sight... so she doesn't recognize him when he comes looking for her.

So far, this show has been just perfect -- the acting, the music, the script, the camera, the directing and editing, the characterization... Just perfect.

Of course, we're only eight episodes into a 20-episode show, so that could always change.

Here's the title sequence.



I think it's going to have a happy ending, even though it's a melodrama -- they sometimes do.  I'm thinking especially of Missing You, which was the melo-ist melo I've ever watched and had such a happy, well-written ending.

Randomness

I had a head cold earlier this week that made me feel so woolly-brained I could hardly think.  Consequently we got zero schooling done.  The kids are obsessed with Minecraft and World of Tanks.  Minecraft is endorsed by The Libertarian Homeschooler, and WOT by my husband and adult children who often play it with the youngers, so I assuage my guilt by telling myself that they are learning Strategy and other Important Life Skills while playing these games.

~*~ ~*~ ~*~

This Ancient Greeks class is killing me.  Even on a good week I usually read the biography in my kids' copy of Famous Men of Greece instead of from Plutarch, Herodotus, or Thucydides, as the syllabus calls for, but owing to the head cold and the inability to think properly, I skipped nearly all of the readings and I'm just listening to the lectures.  They're sooo interesting, though.  It's not a waste of time.  This week we're covering the reforms of Kleisthenes and the Persian Wars.  When I have time I want to think about the differences between earlier Greece under Solon and what it became under Kleisthenes.  Under Solon's laws it was more aristocratic and feudal.  Under Kleisthenes' it was more democratic and statist.

~*~ ~*~ ~*~

The two oldest girls and I have been been watching a Korean drama called Two Weeks that just ended, and I'm feeling a little empty.  It was really exciting (action, intrigue, romance, treachery, heartbreak, murder... and that's just the first episode), and it ended well, with the bad guys getting their just desserts (plus redemption for more than one of them), the good guys who did bad things acknowledging their errors and making restitution, and all the right people on their way to getting a happy ending.

Lee Joon Gi (the Magistrate from "Arang and the Magistrate") plays Jang Tae San, a good-for-nothing piece of trash who doesn't care whether he lives or dies.  His ex-girlfriend shows up one day to tell him he has an illegitimate daughter he never knew about who's dying of leukemia because they can't find a bone marrow donor, and asks him to take a blood test to see if he might be a match.  Miraculously, he is a match, and he feels that for the first time in many years he has a reason to live.  But that day, his gangster boss discovers some things that send him into a rage, and he frames Tae San for murder.

If, like me, you know anything about donating bone marrow, certain aspects of this show you'll just have to ignore.  Tae San has lived so badly in the past several years that I don't think he'd even qualify as a donor, and then over the next several episodes he suffers several injuries, and of course he's not supposed to be getting any infections just now, on account of the bone marrow harvest coming up.  I just had to decide that Tae Sannie has magic healing blood, and get over it.  I guess it's like any show -- if you're a lawyer you can't bear to watch courtroom dramas; if you're a cop, police shows will drive you crazy, and so on.

But the depiction of the relationships between the characters is so well done.  Their backstories are slowly revealed throughout the show and add depth and meaning to their present choices.  The little girl is adorable.  The characters' emotions and reactions are believable.

The music is mostly forgettable, so that's a mark against my hypothesis that the quality of the music is a decent indicator of how well I'll like the show.  I'm glad it worked out that way -- some of the music in the early episodes is so schmaltzy that I was afraid I'd wind up hating the show and I really wanted to like it.

~*~ ~*~ ~*~

Oh, and I have to share this with you.  Bought this drying rack at Walmart a month or so ago and love it.  I line-dry a lot of my clothes and when I can't put them on the clothes line, I hang them in the shower in my bathroom, which is small and crowded even without laundry hanging around.  And then, if I don't get things hung up early enough in the day and they're still damp when it's time to take our showers at night, we have to move them, and, well, it's just a hassle.

I know. First world problems.  But I love this rack.  It's collapsible so I can keep it in my closet when I'm not using it.

Best $15 I've spent in a long time.

~*~ ~*~ ~*~

Well, tonight's Razorback game will be starting soon and I have to quit blogging so we can set up the computer and watch it.  Y'all be good.

Edited to add:  Alas, no ballgame.  I usually watch them on ESPN.com but they don't air every game -- this is two weeks in a row now.  This is the one time of year I wish we had TV.  Wish I could just get a football season package.  I know.  More first world problems.

Mid-Term Break

Six weeks of school = time for a break!

Yesterday I slept late then went to visit a friend and her new baby. Today I’m taking my son shopping for baseball pants. This week I also need to make some phone calls, get caught up on housework and book-keeping, and think about the next six weeks. And there’s the post I’ve promised to write for Ideas Have Consequences. Plus I’m reading two books on mathematical thinking and have signed up for a free online class on the same topic.

Mozart is our composer this term, so I need to remember to play something each day. I don’t like background music, so Listening to Music is always an event for me. Also, we have half a chapter of Stories of the Old Dominion left over from last week that I need to read to the kids, plus we should catch up on our timeline books.

The garden needs end-of-season care. I hope to go down to the river for a walk – we haven’t been there since the spring. It’s a half-hour drive a longish walk just to get there – from the parking lot you have to walk through about a quarter of mile of woods down a steep and winding path – but it’s so beautiful and quiet and we nearly always find fossils.

Also, I’ve had Drawing for Children for more than a decade but have never used it because it seemed so overwhelming. But a couple of weeks ago I was looking at it again and suddenly it occurred to me that I don’t have to do a drawing lesson every day or even every week. Just once a month would be more than they’ve ever had, so I’m hoping to get to that this week using lessons from Donna Young (recommended by Brandy), but, um, my week “off” is starting to look pretty busy.

And so naturally instead of doing any of that I’m sitting here typing a blog post and experimenting with a different color scheme for the blog. And I just spilled coffee on my white shirt. :-p

Randomness...
The hardest part of getting the house ready to move is using up the last of the food. I always seem to end up with things that I can't quite make a meal out of without having to buy something else...

In seventeen years as a military wife, I've moved ten times, and most of the times have been in the rain. Four years ago when we found out we were coming to the desert, my first thought was, "Oh good! Surely it won't rain while we're moving!" Well, it rained when we moved into the rent house. It rained when we moved into this house. And it's been raining off and on for the past week. They're not predicting rain for next week when the movers are scheduled to be here, but we'll see...

Needing some inspiration and structure in educating my younger ones, I'm thinking of using Ambleside Online next year. I think I first found this link at Cindy/Dominion family's blog.

Three of my younger children are at my mom's in Arkansas having fun. Two nights ago, Mom and Pa took them to the rodeo, arriving around 7 p.m. The boys seemed to really enjoy it, but around 9, Princess Grace laid down on the bleachers and announced, "I have had just about as much of this as I can stand!"

Our big table is lonely with a third of the family missing from it. We've taken out the two leaves and closed it up, so the six of us can sit close together.

Today we discovered in our town a little grocery store that sells locally grown organic produce, honey, and eggs. Ain't that just the way it always is? I'm not a good networker in real life. Just a couple of weeks ago, my husband came home from work and said one of his coworkers had told him that her next-door neighbor is part of a food co-op that buys real milk. Turns out the woman is a member of our homeschool group, and just happens to be the mom I talked to the most while our kids were in ballet lessons. Now why didn't I find this out two years ago? I should send my husband to the homeschool mom's meetings and ballet lessons. He'd've found that out right away. He's the kind of person who comes home from running errands and tells me about all the people he met and their life stories. Some people are just gifted that way, I guess. My mom is like that, too, but somehow I didn't get it.

Earlier this week, Rick Saenz posted on Looking forward to the unexpected. It was a needed reminder to be thankful for everything the Lord brings our way, even when it wasn't what we had planned. Sort of an expansion on Valerie's EGEATP.

Good night, and God bless y'all!
:-)

Randomness
Tomorrow is Thankful Thursday. What if I run out of things to be thankful for? Am I allowed to recycle thankful things? Or do I have to make my own rule?

Last weekend our storm door (actually, it's not a storm door, it's just all glass - but you know what I mean, it's not the house door) fell off its hinges, so Monday evening Mike and I went to Lowe's to buy a new one, which made me happy 'cause I've been wanting a real storm door, so I can have fresh air when it's nice out, or just light when it's too hot to have the window open. This one is really nice, and Mike and #1 Son got it almost completely installed this afternoon, all but the handle. You Muffin Mixes out there need to be sure that any potential suitor knows how to fix things. It's so nice having a husband who can do all of that kind of thing himself and teach our sons.

Also last weekend, we spent another evening contra dancing. Everyone has a blast except for the two oldest. They know the steps and are good dancers, but they are evidently too cool to have fun doing anything. I recommend teaching your kids to dance when they are small children so they will grow up enjoying it. Our 5 yod is just perfect - she remembers the steps, she smiles, she moves gracefully. My 4 yos is a very enthusiastic partner but he still cries when he doesn't get to dance with Mama. I'm pretty sure he'll outgrow that part, though.

Sora has a recipe for plum pudding that looks really good - no suet. I think I'll get one started this weekend.

So I was looking at my drafts and I have ten things in there I've started and never finished. Story of my life. I'm great at dreaming and planning, but when I start to do it, the details always bog me down. Like the thing about posting pictures of my garden. Mike found my camera a few days ago, so I've taken some representative pics and planned out how to arrange them and what to say about each one, but now I can't find the cable so that I can upload the pics onto my computer!

(N.B. this post was originally composed at 4 this afternoon, then posted as... you guessed, a draft!)

To continue my randomness. Most of the family has gone to the chapel for supper, Bible study, and evening prayers. My 3 year old never took a nap today and I didn't think he would be equal to the entire evening, so we're skipping the supper and Bible study and going for prayers.

The Wednesday night Bible study was started by the LCMS chaplain, so we always use the Lutheran Hymnal for evening prayers, and I can't tell you how much I love Lutheran worship services. Most of the Evening Prayer service is sung, including the opening prayer (congregational response is in bold):

Jesus Christ is the Light of the world,
the light no darkness can overcome.
Stay with us, Lord, for it is evening,
and the day is almost over.
Let your light scatter the darkness
and illumine your Church.

Sometimes we use the Compline service instead. This is the last prayer in that service, which is also sung:

Guide us waking, O Lord,
and guard us sleeping
that awake we may watch with Christ
and asleep we may rest in peace.

This melody of this prayer is particularly beautiful, drifting downward at the end.

Well, it's time to go to prayers now, so TTFN!

**Update**
Well, Lutheran liturgy is beautiful, but the theology is downright schizophrenic. I arrived early enough to hear the last 15 minutes or so of the lesson. We're studying through the Augsberg Confession and tonight we covered Articles VII and VIII, the Invisible and Visible Church, respectively.

Maybe it's not the theology that's the problem - the Augsberg Confession seems sound - but it's the way it gets put into practice that I find so confusing. Without going into any details, let me just say that I would no more attend a joint worship service with Jews and Muslims than I would with worshippers of Molech and Ashteroth, but I am more than glad to receive Holy Communion with Christians of other denominations.

I guess this wouldn't bother me so much, except that, being without a faithful Reformed church to join here, we had hoped that the LCMS would work out, and it's not - because of the communion issue. And I do so love their worship services!