Sunday night, evening worship, and thankfully I was able to sit and listen to the sermon without having a pile of squirmy children smothering me, then on to home, once again having to endure Miss DeGarmo on the music box, as well as the rather humorous monologue of Catherine in the backseat. She was looking out the window up into the sky, vainly searching for constipations of stars. After the first couple of snickers from the front seat, she realized the error of her verbiage and corrected herself to say she was looking for constitutions. You almost hate to tell her it's "constellations," but you have to balance the desire for humor-through-malapropism with the very real possibility that she'll tell someone her parents showed her all the constipations in the sky.

Raises all sorts of uncomfortable questions, you know.

Home, and some very quiet soup and sandwiches, and a nice early turn-in. Early being defined as "before eleven."

Monday, Reba had to get up and go to work, which meant that I had to get up and get her awake so she could go to work. I am hoping that one day science will invent something that will make it unneccessary for me to have to wake up to wake her up. I did manage to drop back to sleep, though, with a brief stirring when she poked me and told me goodbye. That, I didn't mind, because I at least got a smooch out of the deal. I drifted back off, the sound of the Today show and the kids waking up and getting into trouble providing the proper hallucinatory background.

The entertainment value of that finally wore off and since the sun was well up in the sky, and since I had stuff to do, I made myself get up.

First order of business was breakfast. I thought we had some sausage left, but there wasn't, so I made a big pan of scrambled eggs with cheese and--


SPAM! HOORAY! for SPAM! I like Spam just fine, although it can be a bit salty, and the texture is a bit spongier than it might ought to be. (If SpongeBob had not been a sponge, he could have been a brick of Spam, you know.) The kids? I don't know--sometimes they say they like it, others, not. No use tempting fate with a big skillet full of eggs and processed pork, though. "What's for breakfast, Daddy?"

"Scrambled eggs with little chunks of ham and pork shoulder, kids! And CHEESE!" Mmmmm!

They liked it just fine. As an added affront to as many ethnic groups as possible, I served it on flour tortillas with some salsa, breakfast burrito style. Yes, it's not only possible, but there's even a recipe for it!

After the requisite cleanup, I got to work on stuff for work that I had neglected, as well as helped Jonathan on his social studies project. It seems he has been assigned the task of drawing a big picture of a Revolutionary War British soldier--any other time, I suppose we'd want to deny the humanity of imperialistic European colonial oppressors, but since we're now the world hegemons, I guess it's appropriate to try to see our former rulers with kindness and empathy. Or something. It is a bit of a different tack, seeing as we usually teach history from the winning side's point of view.

ANYway, we had found one of Don Troiani's excellent portraits of a young grenadier with the 33rd Regiment of Foot.

I printed out the picture and let Boy use the opaque projector at church to enlarge it to bigger size (while I was gone hunting meat), and then yesterday his job was to color it in.

I figured this would be a pretty good choice--the 33rd was a well-respected, professional group, and it was part of the battle of Fort Sullivan, as well as the later Southern campaigns, which would have made it possible that they squared off against great-great-great-whatever-Grandpa Sabert, who was a gunner with the 4th South Carolina. Might be good to let Boy know that although pretending to be a Lobsterback was all well and good, it would be better to remember he had actual relatives back then involved in the fray. Or, possibly, I'm just trying to be contrary about the whole thing.

He did a real good job on the picture--probably too good. The Hand of Parental Involvement was actually not in heavy use this time; he's just getting real good at drawing. Later on during the day, I also got out my musket and other junk from back when I was doing reenacting. He doesn't really seem to remember me doing that. Could be because I didn't get to do it very much. Anyway, he was quite impressed all over again, especially with my homemade ship's biscuits.

Lunch came and went, and then Mommy got home and we had supper, and then, "OH! DAD! I need a copy of To Kill a Mockingbird! And I need it for class tomorrow!"

In defense of Oldest, she had told Reba some time last week she needed it, but the message didn't get passed along. I volunteered to go out and get it, as well as to get gas in Reba's car, and get her an air freshener for her office. No, I didn't care that it was nearly 9:00 when I went out--in a way, it was just an oddly appropriate sort of confluence being that I had spend the day at home for the Martin Luther King holiday, had taught an impromptu lesson on the natural freedoms of man, and then wrapped it all up by getting a copy of Mockingbird. I'm not sure where air freshener and gasoline comes into that, but I suppose they probably do.
posted by Terry at 3:11:00 PM