05/14/2012

1.  Monday.  It was a pretty good Monday because we didn't do regular lessons.  The boys each had a couple of assignments left over from last week, and practicing, but otherwise it was pretty free for them.  I managed to be busy all day, and yet I feel like I didn't accomplish much.  I was a little stressed out and on edge.  I'm not exactly sure why.  The house was a little grimy this morning (floors are in need of a mop, the table and cupboards did not get washed last night), but it wasn't that bad.  I have laundry to do (as usual), but we're not at a crisis point yet.  We had things to finish, but not too much.  I'm not sure what it was.  Probably sugar withdrawal.  I'm not kidding!  I hope it passes quickly.  :-)
Tomorrow I resolve to not act stressed out.  What good does it do except make everyone else stressed out?

2.  I finished a book yesterday called "The Shallows."  I highly, highly recommend it.  It was fascinating and horrifying all at once.  Seriously.  I want to throw away the computer and our cell phones and maybe move to an Amish community.  OK, maybe not that last bit.  I constantly marvel at how fast time passes (I obsess about it on this blog), and it worries me that my kids often say the same thing.  Time did not pass that quickly for me when I was a kid.  I know a certain acceleration of time is a part of aging, but I can't help but think that the speed-obsessed world we live in right now is also contributing greatly to this sense of accelerated time.  I remember watching a movie once about a person who got a remote control that could fast-forward through time.  At first he used it only to fast-forward through particularly irksome things-- past a sickness or a boring dinner.  But gradually he uses it more and more until it gets a life of its own and starts skipping past years of his life.  OK, maybe melodramatic, but I wonder if our obsession with speed, with immediacy, may be coming with a price?  The price of not being able to hang on to the moment, but finding ourselves caught up in a fast-forward motion of our own.  Anyway, everyone should get this book and read it. 

3.  Mosey is on a mission to repair all his 5 billion stuffed animals.  He loves his stuffed animals, and they get a lot of use.  Since getting Sandy, she has also put some of Mosey's stuffed animals through some unwanted use.  :-)  Today he got out needle and thread and started trying to repair some of them that have stuffing leaking from various rips and tears.  It was not a great day for me to help him with a great big project like that, and I'm afraid I wasn't very accommodating.  I did sew up a few split seams, and showed him how to thread and knot a needle, and tried to show him the basic technique to repair split seams.  He worked on his animals for quite some time, and actually did a pretty fair job of it!  Mosey is always very confident in learning new skills.