Making it Up As I Go

The girls are in the middle of writing persuasive essays about why they should get a turtle. It’s amazing how much less they argue about having to do writing when it’s on a subject they have a vested interest in.

We got our shipment last week and our house is now full of stuff. It’s not too bad, the living room, upstairs reading area and the girls’ room are pretty much under control. The school room didn’t really get anything added to it (except to the closet, which is now a mess) so it’s still pleasant. I’ve spent the last week doing tons of laundry- all of our clothes and bedding got here smelling moldy and musty. So now I have massive piles of clean laundry in my room, which is an improvement from massive piles of smelly laundry. Hopefully everything will be organized and put away by the end of the week.

Facebook has been seriously depressing lately- so many people arguing about so many things, and so many of them are so angry and (at least to my mind) misguided. I’ve had to unfollow a few people because I was getting frustrated whenever I saw their posts.

I have had this song stuck in my head for weeks now. It just makes me laugh. It’s the “lalalalala grapes” part that gets me.

I’m reading a book called Savage Park by Amy Fusselman and it’s really interesting. It’s all about how we do and do not mindfully inhabit space, and how that, combined with a fear of death, leads us to be overprotective when it comes to kids playing. It’s really thought provoking, but the thing that really gets me is that she describes an amazing park in Tokyo that we never went to and I’m super sad because it sounds amazing. I wish I had a transporter and could just zap myself there for a day. I have some shopping I’d like to do there too. 🙂

We stopped reading Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban about halfway through. The dementors were freaking the girls out, which I suspected would happen.  Now we’re reading Anyone but Ivy Pocket which is really quite funny. Tiny picked it out at the library, and it was an excellent choice. Lots of sly humor.

We all got new bikes last week. Tiny is learning how to ride without training wheels, which she couldn’t do in Tokyo because of all of the hills. But we’ve got lovely flat roads here. She’s coming along nicely.

I’m seriously obsessed with the soundtrack to the new musical Hamilton. I haven’t been this in love with a whole album for a long time, single songs, sure, but not a whole album. The music is just electric. I don’t know why it surprises me, it’s the music of a revolution, and anyone who knows me knows that’s a major soft spot for me. Lin-Manuel Miranda’s lyrics are so complex and clever, they make me grin. I remember when I saw In The Heights and I couldn’t breathe at one point  because I couldn’t believe he was doing what he was with the language, the rhymes were just so unexpected and glorious.

And I love beyond words the fact that this is a musical about Alexander freakin’ Hamilton. Who does that? I love that Miranda was obviously fascinated by Hamilton, to the point that he wrote an entire musical about him, and his work makes other people care about Hamilton. I think that’s where the best art comes from- not someone trying to figure out what will sell or what the market wants, but someone creating something because they’re so fascinated by it that they have to.

There aren’t any songs up on youtube yet, but this clip has my favorite song in it. (Although I also LOVE the song Satisfied, it’s so heartbreaking and gorgeous. There’s just SO much in it. It’s such an example of narrative through song.)  I’m thrilled that Miranda was just awarded a McArthur Genius Grant.

We’ve been doing poetry in school, and we just started Ogden Nash. The girls have been writing poems once a week inspired by the poems we read each week. I’m trying to get them to see both that poetry is work, that it’s worth working to get something right, but also that it’s fun and that they shouldn’t freak out over it. Their poems this week were about a squirrel and a rat. Z was more self conscious about whether or not hers was “good”, which makes sense because she’s older, but I’m hoping that we can keep the fun and joy in the creativity as long as we can.

That’s all my thoughts for now. What are you thinking about?