Making it Up As I Go

It is 12:09 pm. The sun is shining, but it was pouring about half an hour ago. Now it’s still windy but the sun is out.  It is currently 84 degrees with 74% humidity.  We’re hoping it starts raining again.

We’re all in the living room. The girls are watching Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, which I told the girls they could watch when it was raining (isn’t it wonderful to watch movies in the rain?). Now that it’s sunny, I couldn’t very well tell them we weren’t going to watch it. So they’re relaxing and I’m writing this. 🙂 As I type, Carratucus Potts is trying to convince Mr. Scrumptious to buy his Toot Sweet candy.  As I was turning it on, I saw Dr. Doolittle, and discovered that the girls don’t remember the book at all. So apparently we need to reread it. And apparently I need to go back and add it to the post of books we’ve read, because it’s not there.

Oh, and it’s started raining again. Yay!

The girls are very serious about their movies. 🙂 And we need something on the wall behind the couch.

This is the view out the sliding door:

This is my view- what my desk looks like today.

That’s an autographed picture of the divine Miss Julie Newmar (it even says, To Maryanne, Thanks for everything, Julie Newmar. Could you die? If you have no idea what I’m talking about, you should watch To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything, Julie Newmar. “Who’s Wong Foo?” “I have no idea, but obviously they were close!”), a tatted heart that my momma made me, a drawing of Modesty Blaise by Joelle Jones, photos of my wonderful, crazy friends from CA, and a Dena McMurdie original watercolor.  Hiding behind the watercolor is a Jim Lee sketch that’s half me, half Roxie from Gen13 that he drew at a signing at Atlantis.

Today has been a good day, I got up at 5:30 to read scriptures, workout, and meditate, and I did all that and was showered by the time the girls got up at 7. I’ve somehow managed to do that for the last couple days, and we’ll see if I can keep it up. The day definitely goes better if I do.  I haven’t meditated on a regular basis before, and I am remarkably bad at it. But I’ve read a lot about it, and I trust that there are benefits to a regular practice. So I will sit. And sit. And sit.

Once the girls were up, we had breakfast and they played for an hour or so. Then we did school. We read the story of the angel visiting Zacharias from Luke, and the girls deciphered the Biblical language (we read it in the comic book earlier in the week, so they weren’t going in cold). In math,  Tiny has started adding while solving for an unknown (what plus 3 equals 6?) and is uncannily good at it, and Z is embracing multiplication whole heartedly. It’s even made her more kindly disposed to the review addition and subtraction problems she has to do.  Both girls did handwriting (Tiny practiced I’s, and Z worked on h in cursive. It was a challenge, but she did well.) Z usually fights writing, but I got her a new workbook from Lakeshore this year that has writing prompts, and she LOVES it. She wrote a good six sentences about going to the science museum. Tiny did her reading lesson and read a few extra books while Z did her spelling. Then we learned about Atilla the Hun, which was quite exciting.

Then we had lunch, and here we are.

Last night I read How To Be Interesting In 10 Easy Steps by Jessica Hardy, a quick little book that’s packed full of good ideas. I wish it was longer- I wish she had gone into things more. The things she writes about are things I absolutely hold to, but I could see how someone coming to the ideas fresh might need a little more guidance. She has such good things to say about how you have to reach out, get outside of yourself, be interested in things, and share the knowledge that you have. Some quotes:

What you have is worth a lot. Seek out the people who need it. Know what you can do and tell people that you’re willing to do it. They will treasure and remember you. Your time. Your talents. Your compliments. A seat at your table. A cup of sugar. A clean pair of socks. The world needs whatever it is that you have.

Bring others into your world. Let them play where you hang out. Don’t wait for invitations when you can host. You can get something started as long as there is at least one person you can invite.

Sign up to learn things. Philosophy, archery, accounting, painting, diving, fire eating- anything you can admit you do not understand. You never know when you’ll need a random skill.

Yes, yes, yes! I say! These are ideas I live by. It was nice to see them articulated clearly.

Now I’m trying to decide what to read next; I have a ton of options but nothing is jumping out at me at the moment. I may just have to pick something and go with it. I want to get the new Salinger biography. I really want to see the documentary based on it, though I doubt it will play here. 🙂 But the biography itself may tide me over. We’ll see what I end up with.

I just realized that if it’s Weds afternoon, then So You Think You Can Dance should have been on in CA by now. But I haven’t seen any posts about it on Facebook, and I usually do. I’m going to go investigate.  If you haven’t watched the opening number from two weeks ago, you really should, it was SO. VERY . GOOD. And the music is awesome. I’ve been complaining that the music this season has been eh- that they needed to go shopping at the “crazy dance music store”. And they did! Here’s the dance. You really should watch it.

What’s going on with you at this moment?