Making it Up As I Go

It is 2:30 pm.

I am drinking ginger ale that is so sharp it burns my throat.

The girls are upstairs playing something.

We just got  back from a walk that included the post office (mailing off a birthday package), the grocery store (got to restock the cereal), and a wandering route back home. We passed the Nigerian Ambassador’s residence, which is really rather pretty. As always, as we walk around I wonder who lives in some of the houses. There’s one house in particular that we often see people taking pictures of, or taking pictures of themselves in front of. We’re guessing either someone famous lives there, or maybe the house was in a movie or something. There isn’t really a way to find out, so we just keep wondering.

I should be sewing right now. I need to start working on the girls’ Halloween costumes, but I am quite nervous about getting the sizing, etc. right, because I’m not very experienced at sewing things to fit. I’ve been putting them off for that reason, but it’s that exact reason that I need to get moving on them; if I mess them up I need time to get them right.  But, seeing as I am typing at the moment, I’ll work on them tonight.

Bruce gets back from the US tomorrow, and we are all quite excited. We just got off Skype. We seriously live in the future.

I finished Van Gogh: The Life by Steven Naifeh this morning. What an incredibly depressing book. 976 pages of sad.  Incredibly well researched and well written sad, but so. much. sad. It makes me wish that the Doctor Who episode Vincent and the Doctor were real, and Van Gogh actually got to hear Bill Nighy say all those wonderful things about him. If you don’t know what I’m talking about (or even if you do) watch this. Really, go watch it right now. And you really should watch the actual episode too. It’s heartbreaking and gorgeous. Unfortunately, based on this book, I don’t think Vincent’s portrayal in the episode is accurate to his actual self, but I’ll take it anyway. Isn’t it interesting how we do that? Van Gogh was not a pleasant person. There was a reason why he was so alone. But because we admire his art, we want him to be admirable as well, so we turn him into a sweet, tortured soul, driven by a desire to express  inner beauty, when really he was bitter, angry, guilt ridden, and cantankerous and painted in a continuous attempt to pay his brother back for supporting him. He painted because he’d dug himself in so deep that he had no other options. And he painted glorious, beautiful, transcendent works of art. And those can go together, even though we’d prefer the other narrative. Heck, he’d prefer the other narrative.  So in my imagination, I choose to believe that the Doctor and Amy did visit him, and did add to his pile of good things. Although, according to this book, he still would have died when he did, because the author doesn’t think he committed suicide, but rather was accidentally shot, and the evidence is pretty compelling.

We started learning about Islam today, which has Z’s brain working overtime trying to figure out Muhammad. We’ve been reading the New Testament stories, so she’s quite familiar with the angel Gabriel, and we believe in prophets, so when Gabriel visited Muhammad and told him that there was one true God, Z piped up, “And he became a Christian!” She was quite perplexed when that was not what happened. This is why I LOVE homeschooling. I don’t necessarily have an answer for her, but we can talk about it far more than she’d be able to do in a classroom. One of B and my goals for the girls’ schooling is that they gain an understanding of the religions of the world, and I love that we can talk about how our beliefs intersect with others, and how we differ. And more than anything, I love the look that Z gets on her face when the context of something clicks in. She realized today that the mosque we went to in January was a Muslim mosque, and was so excited. So now we’ll need to go back, since now the girls will know what they’re looking at.

I need to start reading the book for my book club, but I have a whole stack (well, a metaphorical stack, since they’re on the haunted Kindle) of books about Japanese folklore that I really want to read instead. Nanowrimo starts in 2ish weeks, and I do not feel properly researched.

One of the kids who lives in the other half of our house is learning how to play the flute. They are practicing one note. It is amazing how wrong one note can go.

I’ve fallen down a Doctor Who clip rabbit hole. And they’re killing me. If you don’t watch Doctor Who (or if you do) you should watch these, just to get a feel for it. Because it is absolutely glorious.  An immense, glorious story about bravery and love and diplomacy over violence and friendship and becoming a better person and fear and faith and beauty and wonder. This is one of my favorite scenes ever. And this, oh this makes me cry.  And I can’t believe I just found this one, I’ve been looking for it for a long time. The Doctor’s smile at the end makes my life. That is the smile of forgiveness. And oh! I forget just how very much I love the beginning of this story, with 9 and Rose. Her trust in him, it kills me. And I just watched a video of Donna Noble’s top 20 scenes that has reaffirmed to me that a. She is my absolutely favorite companion, b. I want to rewatch all of her episodes, c. I don’t want to rewatch all of her episodes because her leaving is HORRIBLE. But ANYWAY, you should watch Doctor Who. Yes. You. Can you really say no to this face?

The girls are now watching My Little Pony in Japanese. I don’t know how much they get from it, well, it’s subtitled, so Z can just read those- I don’t know how much Tiny gets- but they enjoy it.

Hmm. I seem to be out of things to say. What’s going on with you at this moment?