I'm Going Slightly Mad

MORNING UGLIES: Thursday morning means ballet and library. We had three DVDs due to take back to the library, so I asked CJ to go to his room and retrieve them. I might has well have asked him to rotate the tires on my car.

This task is something that should have taken him between 10 seconds and two minutes (max) to do. When there was no sign of him or a single DVD for three-plus minutes, I poked my head in the door to find him peering into the cabinet where we keep the DVDs. He's holding a Fisher Price flashlight and shining it in the general direction of the kids' DVDs. I repeated the list of things for him to find and I also turned the overhead light on for him (duh!) so he could actually see. He was less than an inch away from all three items.

Yeah, well 10 minutes later he was still empty-handed and I was extraordinarily annoyed (better known as pissed). He can read. He can see. He is very familiar with the three titles he was to find, they were literally in front of his face and he was (for whatever reason) completely incapable of finding them. And it was time to go to ballet/the library/the post office). Aaaargh!

I made CJ take the 20-high stack of DVDs out of the cabinet, spread them on the floor in front of him and presto! the DVDs magically appeared. I honestly don't know how long it would have taken him to do that on his own. Clearly, his mind was elsewhere and his heart wasn't in it. In the end, he felt bad and I was mad. And so started our day. ...

(ed. note - when Christian proofed this, as is our SOP he asked, "Why do you suppose CJ does that?" meaning sometimes shift into the "out there mode" when presented with an easy task like fetching DVDs. With time and distance from me being Super Annoyed, I immediately knew why. "It's because he saw all those movies and started thinking about them, and the sequels he wants to make for each one of them." If you've spent time with CJ you know that in his head he has a sequel for every movie he's seen and video game he's played. So tomorrow, I'm going to talk to CJ about what happened and get his post-mortem take on it.)

OUT, ABOUT: While Bee got her pink on in ballet, CJ and I strolled Magnolia, first to the library a few blocks north (where we did NOT check out any more DVDs) and then doubled back to the post office to the south.

We got in 45 minutes of brisk walking, so that's a good thing. And CJ got about 5 minutes of park time. He didn't seem to mind the rain at all - in fact, poor course conditions didn't deter him from trying to set "a new world's record" of crossing the playground equipment.

LIKE SAND THROUGH THE HOURGLASS: Yesterday I picked up an intriguing little tome called "The 60 Second Encyclopedia - The Most Amazing Things Ever Done in a Single Minute." It came with its own little hour (minute?) glass, which I just knew would entrance CJ. (I was right.)

We conducted a couple of tests to see how accurate the cheap little timer was. We compared it to the kitchen timer on the microwave and the stopwatch on my cell phone. Remarkably, the little sand contraption was within one second of being accurate.

The 5x5-inch, 306-page. graphic-rich book contains bite-sized stories about feats accomplished in 60 seconds. Subject matter ranges from garbage (41,667 plastic bottles get thrown away every minute) to hair growth (.000018 inches per minute, on average) to the rate of CD revolution (200-500 RPM). My favorite factoid: "When stadium sports fans 'do the wave' at a big game, the speed is nearly always 1,200 seats in a minute." Who knew?

It's a cool little book - entertaining and educational - and a great tool to help quantify things. Annabelle kept perusing it all day long.

MEASURING UP: In early afternoon, the kids practiced their measuring skills in preparation for a trip to Lowe's. We needed a whole bunch (a couple of hundred lineal feet) of trim and moulding for six windows in the new entry, as well as trim for the wood-paneled ceiling. Fortunately, CJ and Annabelle are veterans with a steel tape. We got all the measurements we needed within about 10 minutes. :)

FACEPLANT: The kids had another skating session this afternoon. I guess CJ was feeling a bit saucy today after his success yesterday, so he wasn't being as careful. As you might imagine, that resulted in him landing on his face on the floor (not sure how his hands were otherwise engaged and couldn't save him, but oh well). So he might be sporting a bruised cheek for a day or two.
BELLY UP TO THE BARS: This afternoon the kids got a little glockenspiel practice in. We went through a couple of exercises in their book, I let them have a few minutes of free-form composition and performance, and then I wanted to work with them and their rhythm (or lack thereof). I found an online metronome tool that's cool - I could easily adjust its tempo with precision.

CJ and Annabelle's tempo was less easy to adjust with precision. ;) Man oh man did they have a hard time getting the beat. They'd be just ahead of it or just behind it. Or way ahead of it or way behind it. That said, I realize they're new to the glockenspiels, so expecting them to play the thing with proper form and spot on rhythm at this point is completely unrealistic.

LIVE! FROM OUR LIVING ROOM: Tonight after dinner, CJ basically begged Christian to play "live action Castlevania Bloodstream" with him (Castlevania being an old school video game). In the middle of a fierce battle between the good guy, Simon (played by CJ), and the bad guy, Dracula (played by Christian), Simon went in for the kill.

"Simon gave Dracula a wedgie!" CJ declared with glee.

Silly me, I always thought garlic, sunlight and a wooden stake through the heart were the only ways to ward off Dracula. Who knew a simple schoolyard wedgie would do?

SWEET HEARTS: No doubt traditionally schooled kids will be getting massively sugared up on Friday, when classes will have their Valentine's Day festivities. But my poor "unschooled" children are denied this indulgence, so as a great alternative, Christian took them to the Community Center tonight for a community cookie decorating shindig.

And just to make sure they don't miss out, while they were at that event, I was whipping up some cookies for them to decorate at home tomorrow.