Sunday, February 19, 2006
Twelfth Night
Madam B and I love to read a book (especially a Shakespeare play) and then rent the movie version and compare. However, this time I didn't get the book read. But her narrations were just excellent, as I think she loved this book so much! She laughed out loud more than I've heard her laugh from the comic writtings of any book, and she keep declaring that I just _had_ to read this! And I want to, as I love the wit of Shakespeare, but I just haven't had the time. I can't find much to match the brilliance of Wills anywhere,as the man, in my opinion, is just the most brilliant with words, I can hardly stand it sometimes when I find such great wording in his writings ... but alas, here I am digressing!
So, back to the film --
Of course, all the great lines could not be left in, so reading the play is always better, but they did well in showing the humor - there is a scene or two that happened in ways you might not have thought of, but I guess for 1996, it was configured in their minds that that's how it could have gone and it is said to be one of Wills' more 'mature' comedies ...(although, I think, much of Shakespeare's writing is for a mature audience.)
We did recognize a few of the faces - Viola played Miss Lucy Steele in Sense and Sensibility and Maria was the nutty constant talking lady, Charlotte, from the same film. But I've not the need to tell you, as you'll recognize them for yourselves ...
This type of movie might not be everyone's cup of tea, but it is truly mine! And when it comes to entertainment and escaping for awhile, to mine ownself I must be true ....
"But be not afraid of greatness: some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon them."
"If music be the food of love, play on..."
"Still you keep o' the windy side of the law."
(I love) "How now" (as a greeting)
Friday, February 17, 2006
I so needed a good laugh
These are answers provided by 7th to 12th graders on exams. Laughter is good for the body, soul and spirit. See if these don't make you laugh ~
On the subject of Science:
- "When you breathe, you inspire. When you do not breathe, you expire."
- "H2O is hot water, and CO2 is cold water."
- "To collect fumes of suphur, hold on a deacon over a flame in a test tube."
- "When you smell an odorless gas, it is probably carbon monoxide."
- "Nitrogen is not found in Ireland because it is not found in a free state."
- "Three kinds of blood vessels are arteries, vanes, and caterpillars."
- "The largest organ in the human body is the head."
- "Respiration is composed of two acts, first inspiration, then expectoration."
- "Dew is formed on leaves when the sun shines down on them and makes them perspire."
- "A super-saturated solution is one that holds more than it can hold."
- "The pistol of a flower is its only protections against insects."
- "Germinate means to become a naturalized German."
- "The skeleton is what is left after the insides have been taken out and the outsides have been taken off."
- "A planet is a body of Earth surrounded by sky."
- "A fossil is an extinct animal. The older it is, the more extinct it is."
- "To remove air from a flask, fill it with water, tip the water out, and put the cork in quick before the air can get back in."
- "The process of turning steam back into water again is called conversation."
- "The earth makes a resolution every 24 hours."
- "Algebracial symbols are used when you do not know what you are talking about."
- "We believe that the reptiles came from the amphibians by spontaneous generation and the study of rocks."
- "The dodo is a bird that is almost decent by now."
- "English sparrows and starlings eat the farmers grain and soil his corpse."
- "People shouldn't be allowed to shoot extinct animals."
- "Humans are more intelligent than beasts because human branes have more convulsions."
- "If conditions are not favorable, bacteria go into a period of adolescence."
- "A triangle which has an angle of 135 degrees is called an obscene triangle."
College Answers
- The following are real answers from college students on exams.
- The subject - Music
- "The piano finishes off the piece."
- "[Beethoven] went death but still kept on writing and producing music. He wrote one more symphony after his death."
- "Smetana suffered the same fate as Beethoven and went death."
- "The computer-generated sounds came in with a screeching nose."
- "It was the most fun self-culturing experience I have endured."
- "Shania Twain, Janet Jackson, Michael Jackson." -- A student naming "three female vocal ranges, from low to high."
- "Claude Debussy weekend the tonality."
- "The piece continues on with shirt notes."
- "[I was] uninterested in leaving before I could here more."
- "The cello and harpsichord were playing in a very fast beast."
- "Now tuba, Trump bone, and French horn play..."
- "I enjoyed the song immensely and was pretty."
- "It was fun to recognize the Rhonda format and predict what forms would be coming up next."
- "It started out with all the instruments giving out a welcoming horning."
- "[It] ends with all of them playing a short long note."
- "The movement ends with a final foul note."
- "The trumpets play tonged notes."
- "I really like how they would sometimes hold their beat and jump to the other."
- "[The group played] the Second Suite in F by Gustav Hoist."
- "The third movement was a lower pitched, the flute as if it represented one person and the orchestra a few others, the harsh tones and the melancholy feeling that felt as the orchestra with its brass section the cymbals and the strings all expressed a very angry and vengeful melody."
- "When the tempo got fast it got me in an exiting mood."
- "[Meter is] how many beats may be heard before one is stressed."
- "The melody was plaid for the most part."
- "This piece got my attention from begging to end."
- "The horn blowed the piano."
- "Robert Schumann wanted to become a virtuoso but became a composer because of a disabling finger."
- "The orchestra sounds like they [are] not worming up yet."
It's not life in the fast lane....
The Promise by When in Rome
When you need a friend, don't look to a stranger,
You know in the end, I'll always be there.
But when you're in doubt, and when you're in danger,
Take a look all around, and I'll be there.
I'm suffering from bloggers block. I don't like days to go by without posting to my blog, but I feel like it's been justonelongday since, what day was it ...ummm, the other day.
Today, I found myself painting the outside of my house. I wanted to sell the house As Is - lived in - not run down but ready for a makeover, you know? And Mr. B said, 'yeah, okay' ...pause...I should have known at the ....pause....
He thought about new windows. Well, he did more than think about them, he went and bought three and someone helped him put them in. Three is all we can afford right now and that was weird too, because I said, "how much are they?" and he said, "their $103.00, and that's not a bad price."
I thought, "Wow that is a great price!"
Then later, after the lovely windows are in, and we are looking at them thinking how nice they look in the living room, he says, "not bad for $300.00."
I'm ....pause....gulp, "Did you say $300.00? I thought you said they were $103.00?"
"Well," he said no pause, "Each. $103.00 each."
Then we got into a discussion of the meaning of 'their' ... which I had always thought was a plural pronoun ....but so goes life and communication with the people that you interact with everyday!
So, the windows being replaced lead to some boards out front being replaced, and with the 'threat' of rain coming (so I was told), I found myself painting the front of my house.
Madam B stepped up to the plate and helped. So the first coat of primer is on before the rain. At least, I was told it was going to rain ...we will see.
Anyway, I feel like I'm in over my head. But there's nothing else I can do, so I'll just keep going till I drop.
Wednesday, February 15, 2006
View from the middle
The School day during the packing --
Madam Blueberry has finished The Twelfth Night and loved it! The first thing she did upon completion was fly into the computer, and see if there was a recent movie about it, (there is one from 1996), and hope that it did the real story justice. Having listened to her oral narrations daily on this story, I have laughed out loud with her. We did want to, when we have the time, look up some of the things that might have been found humorous in Wills days, because sometimes we'd look at each other like, ummmm, don't quite get that one ...
She wanted me to call the local video store right away to see if they had it in. Maybe I'll do that tomorrow. I just thought that was funny, but I do hope that the most recent effort of the film, that we found on line, is a good adaptation.
I don't know which Shakespeare she will read next. The one I have here at home that she hasn't read is Henry V. Her high school plan this year was to include Twelfth Night, Macbeth, Pericles Prince of Tyre, Richard II, Hamlet Prince of Denmark, but we have read Othello and TN ... I think I’ll just let her choose the next one herself.
The reading in Johnny Tremain today was fun because it just happen to overlap her American History and given me a new interest in Sam Adams. Madam B wants to know why they named a beer after him...and I didn't really know. I hadn't read much about him, except to know that he had some guts about being a Patriot -- found this quote by Mr. Adams:
Samuel Adams, the political leader in the American Revolution (1722-1803) who said:
He who is void of virtuous attachments in private life is, or very soon will be, void of all regard for his country. There is seldom an instance of a man guilty of betraying his country, who had not before lost the feeling of moral obligations in his private connections.
It does not require a majority to prevail, but rather an irate, tireless minority keen to set brush fires in people's minds.
Mankind are governed more by their feelings than by reason.
The natural liberty of man is to be free from any superior power on Earth, and not to be under the will or legislative authority of man, but only to have the law of nature for his rule.
From little we read of him in the history books, he was a stern and serious man, no fooling about, but crust more serious about being a Patriot, and seem to know exactly what that should entail. A little gutsier than his cousin John, whom we studied early in the year. They both seem like good men in different ways.
While we were doing Math we began to talk about how many calories in a gram of fat and next thing we never we were making soup and figured out – Now, I’ll have to check Madam Blueberry’s records to be exact, but it was about less than 100 calories per cup.
I’ll get the recipe posted tomorrow with the exact calorie amounts – I will tell you it’s an easy and good soup; it’s one of those that you can add other things of your choice and it will work for you. Even for company!
In poetry she began a unit on Phillis Wheatley ~~~~
~~On Being Brought From Africa To America
'Twas mercy brought me from my pagan land,
Taught my beknighted soul to understand
That there's a God, that there's a Savior too:
Once I redemption neither sought nor knew.
Some view our sable race with scornful eye,
"Their color is a diabolic dye."
Remember Christians; Negroes, black as Cain,
May be refin'd, and join th' angelic train.
----Phillis Wheatley
In our Scarlet Letter read aloud, we are tempted to just fly on through, as Hester has told the Reverend that he must go, and told him, also, he was not meant to go alone…could it be that she is proposing that she and Pearl go with him? Should they sail away from the people who are judging them so harshly?
And weather wise - it cold here in the nights and in the mornings -- the type of weather that doesn't encourage you to get up and get moving!! So we have to draw the movitation up from practical reasons and standpoints.
I miss some relaxation! Maybe next week....
The race is not always to the swift, but to those who keep on running. ~Author Unknown, in reference to Ecclesiastes 9:11, "I returned, and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all."
Don't let the fear of the time it will take to accomplish something stand in the way of your doing it. The time will pass anyway; we might just as well put that passing time to the best possible use. ~Earl Nightingale
Tuesday, February 14, 2006
Happy Valentine's Day





Madam B baked some cupcakes for our friend's class at her school. It was quite a project since I had managed to break our big oven so she had to labor with the little toaster oven cooking 6 at a time ... so here are some of results, I call them CupBake Creations -- oh and she used both chocolate and white cake mix so each CupBake has a swirled effect.
The first photo is of the little heart cookies she made so that each Cupbake would have a little heart on it.
And if Mommy doesn't mind...
This is a picture I took ( and darkened) of my (sweet) baby, James.(Madam Blueberry ~)
Monday, February 13, 2006
The First Call
"Lions and tigers and bears, oh my!!"
Sunday, February 12, 2006
New Buzz Words
Culture jamming - apparently this is acting out against a main stream idea, that in itself seems to influence people with no foundation as being good other than it is the current idea. Such as, the over purchasing or consumtion of goods for no purpose other than just to own said goods, or the thought that these said goods will make you happy. I think what I mean to say is it's a form of activism against commercialism. This leads us to ...
Whirl-Marters - apparently Whirl-Marters are activist against ove- consumerism, and at any given time they will whirl-mart a superchain store, with no announcement or plan, they walk the aisles of major stores (such as Walmart) just walking slowly and pushing an empty shopping cart. It has something to be with quiet protest, as apparently Walmart does not allow protesters in the store. Of course, I don't know any store that allows protesters in the store, but anyway,
They walk aimlessly up and down the maze of the aisles in the store with an empty cart. This has something to do with being entitled to that space without purchasing anything. That leads to...
Buy Nothing Day ~ apparently that day is November 26th which is, I think, suppose to be the biggest shopping day of the year. I did not realize that I have been participating in Buy Nothing Day all my life as I have never, that I can recall in my conscious mind, shopped after Thanksgiving. I detest busy stores. Once, at a Walmart grand opening my mother talked me into going to, I was so overwhelmed by all the traffic and the people that I locked my keys in the car with the car running. And no one could help me. The police officer asked me if my child was in the car. "No," I said, "I'm holding my child right here." "Sorry then," he said, "I can't leave my post to help you." So I made a couple of phone calls and everyone I called ,but no one could help, so we called a locksmith and he was laughing but he broke us in before the car ran out of gas. It took so long, we never got in the store to shop. But I would have hated it, I know.
Anti-preneur - now this is the word that lead me to the other words above. It seems there is a Canadian magazine called Adbusters that is trying to break the chain of name brand and being so mind-fixed on name brands, so are encouraging people to come up with their own brand of item and not buy the name brand item. It sounds like a fighting fire with fire method. So the people who come up with the items that aren't the name brand items, but maybe more organic or something but definitely doesn't feed the corporate machine, is an anti-preneur.
So anti-preneurs are culture jammers, but don't necessarily whirl-mart, but would probably give a shout out to those that do especially on Buy Nothing Day.
It's all new to me....
As long as I live, I can't believe some of the things that people come up with in order not to go along with that which is going on.
Why not take all that good time and energy and put it into feeding the poor or buying a child in need a pair of shoes. I'm being to cynical. I can't judge others for peaceful protest and finding a legal way to express their outrage of the things that go on around them.
I guess I have an activist bone in my body somewhere, as I did take to being a pirate by wearing one gold hoop earring in my protest of Aging Boringly. But being old, which got here before the boring part, I misplaced my earring so my pirating days have been put on hold.
I know I am not an over consumer. I know I don't need material things to make me happy. But what I don't know is, should I silently walk about stores with empty carts to pass along this message? Some how, I think, it works out better to bake a cake for your neighbor.
Oh well, free world, and all that, I suppose -- some people don't even like baking!
tu tranquilo,
Miss Roxie
Saturday, February 11, 2006
The Captain by Alfred Lord Tennyson
He that only rules by terror
doeth grievous wrong
Deep as hell I count his error.
Let him hear my song.
I linked the rest should anyone like to read it. It just really makes me think about taking a gentle hand in relationships.
The Captain
~ Alfred Lord Tennyson
Stardate - Captain's Log
Moving out (date still unknown) update -
What a day. I don't think I wanted to wake up. Mr. B woke me at 9:30!! That is late for me. He came in armed with a cup of hot coffee, and I heard his voice in my dream! I was still dreaming! I was up late last night with Madam B. We watched a movie called The Constant Gardner. I don't recommend it to anyone, but it was heavy and brought up a lot of questions about the (awful) state of the world, and we talked about everyone from ourselves to past Presidents and administrations to Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt! You just can't go to sleep after a heavy conversation, so we sat on the couch for awhile until the heaviness went away, and then we searched on line a bit for recipes, until we felt we had laughed about a few things and then went to bed.
Mr. B. also woke Madam Blueberry out of a dream this morning, too. He was saying quietly to her, "Waffles....waffles....waffles" She said the word kept coming into her dream, and she couldn't make sense of it...but her dad wanted her to make waffles for breakfast. Blueberry, of course! They are good!
So she made breakfast, and I made lunch - spaghetti with meatballs and garlic bread and spinach casserole,
and we decided Mr. B. was responsible for dinner (we've not been fed yet)...
and we proceeded to drink waaaay too much coffee ...
So as of right now,
My dryer is in my family room, and my family room looks like the liquor store warehouse. Did I ask Mr. B to pick up boxes? Yes, I did.
And did he? Yes, he did ~ but he made sure he wasn't going to have to go again .... I should post a photo.
He ran into one of our neighbors at the liquor store, and she said she almost had a heart attack when she saw our For Sale sign out front. She was very complimentary to us as neighbors, so that was nice to hear.
In my packing I came across some books to donate to my church library and then thought, what will they think if I give them the books in a Crown Royal box? I know this is probably too politically correct of me and shallow, but I put them in the most neutral box I could find. I am weak.
My laundry room is so cute right now. Nothing in there but the washer and the hot water heater. Madam B and I painted the walls a mauve color last week. It was a color that I mixed with some paint I had left over -- It was actually the dumbest thing I've ever done to paint those unfinished walls a color because it was just absorbing the paint so, it made it a long and tedious task, but it just didn't dawn on me at the time I should have just painted them white as it would have been a whole lot easier, but 'oh well' ....win some, lose some.
Anyway,
the floor in the laundry room, Mr B. painted gray with concrete paint and it looks cute! Treat yourself to a cute laundry room. I wish I had done this years ago. Why do I not treat myself nicely?
The rooms are all still a mess. Tomorrow I have to have some orderliness somewhere. I just have to. Please.
We spend our days in deliberating, and we end them without coming to any resolve. ~L'Estrange
Nope...I resolve, one of these rooms will be peaceful tonight before I retire.
An Unsettled State of Being
This state of life we are in right now, I'm not enjoying it's unsettling feeling. It seems to be taking to long. Every room is a mess, and I can't feel peace in that. It's like too much of a mess and then I can't function.
Constant questions: What do you keep? What do you discard forever? What do you need? What do you really, really need? Are we out of boxes?
In the current run, how do you have a life while you are leaving one and going to enter into another one, that will be for the long run? I have to have one now. I know I'll work it out, I'm sure of that. I'll survive, I'm sure. But I feel so lonely in the process. I wonder why that is?
So it's just the process that is annoying. In the middle of it all, you can't see but so much to do that it is paralyzing....and all that has to be done, must be done. So there then. I must go and do it. Settled.
It is human nature to stand in the middle of a thing. ~Mariane Moore, "A Grave," Collected Poems, 1951
Friday, February 10, 2006
Losing Track of Time
School is interesting here. It's a 24 hour around the clock session. Actually, it's been quite interesting working the shifts we are working as it is showing me that learning is definitely not 8 to 3! LOL. But I am proud of my daughter. She could just easily slide by on her school work as she is working so hard with us on other things around the house, but she is trying to do each and every subject without being reminded. Of course, I am like an arobotron ..."did you do your math?....did you do your math?....did you do your math?...." comes out on autopilot.
This week in Cooking Class, it seemed to be a good week for trying subsitutions in recipes as I am just about out of everything!
Just today:
We have adjusted the Banana Bread recipe (again) and added some charming oats on the top, and have adjusted (our favorite) Spinach Casserole recipe.
Reading is our best and, I think, most favorite thing.
Last night, or maybe it was in the wee hours of the morning, Madam B drilled me on a bunch of history dates from her last semester, and I didn't know but one. I did make a couple of real good guess though! ...but I guess that shows how much I've been paying attention! LOL.
Madam B will be 16 in 12 days. I wish I could think of something BIG to do, but this year is lean pickins and so much other stuff going on. She such a great girl, I am so blessed. I love her so much. She is so good to me. She can pick up my steps as I'm going along and she keeps me from stumbling. She's the best song anyone has ever sung to me. She's my little girl grown up so beautifully. I have to look twice sometimes just for the wanting of the pleasure of knowing 'that's my child.' Sweet Emotions, that's her.
We put our For Sale sign out, but you can't read the number I noticed, (a little Freudian slip there?) so I'll be buying some more black marker when I go out later. Putting the sign up was emotional.
"We all take different paths in life, but no matter where we go, we take a little of each other everyhwere."
---Tim McGraw
Wednesday, February 08, 2006
Poetry and Michelangelo haiku
Poetry flows through
The pen that spills words anew
Tempers meanings do
Michelangelo
Sculpting out his way through life
And painting through strife
Johnny Tremain haiku
Johnny, where art thou?
Silver all around you now
Silversmith no more?(Just at chapter four)
Some days ya' just gotta ramble....
and
Home again. Looking for the groove of things. Still packing, still planning, but still maintaining a daily schedule of some type for living in the now. Now Here as opposed to No Where is the constant struggle....as in, I can't leave before I go.
and
Speaking of Nowhere.
Madam B was examining this word the other day. She felt that nowhere was also now here more than we think....basically, 'nowhere' and 'now here' is the same thing. You are nowhere but now here at the same time. She's been examining these words that come together. I should encourage her to write about this because when she originally has a thought about them .... she leaves me going "huh?".....that's the way I feel some days after her dissections.
Last Sunday night on the ride home from church, Madam B told her Dad she couldn't wait to get back to 'Johnny Tremain' and 'The Twelfth Night.' That is so cool, I thought. It's great when there is pleasure in a book that you are assigned for your schoolwork!
We did one of our up till 1 AM school days -- sometimes we just can't sleep, so we do some school work. I think my child is a true night owl because I get more discussion from her in the wee hours of the morning than in the center of the day.
Haiku ~
Here's a flash from Madam B -
Look how cool this is
I can write a haiku
James just ate a bug.
Twelfth Night ~ Yesterday morning, right before coffee I was greeted with "Olivia told Viola she loved her and I think the fool is awesome, he is _so_ funny." My head was fuzzy, 'Olivia loves Viola? And you love the fool? My gosh...what are we talking about?'
brain - tick, tick, tick, and finally the wheels fall into place -- 'Oh, Oh....kay. Shakespeare'. I feel better now. I thought maybe she was watching some weird thing on the TV while I was gone....
The more she narrated from the book, I began to marvel at the fact that Shakespeare could be the foundation idea of soap operas. This story is just plain silliness with a twirly plot.
I told Madam B that the real reason she was so enjoying the 12th Night is because she would like to talk like that! They are very sarcastic to each other .... but it truly is a comedy. It leaves her laughing out loud and never before have I heard so much, "Mom, I gotta read this to you!"
I just returned from a southern run to the area of the new house to drop off some boxes and take my inlaws home, and I was more tired than I wished I were. Sometimes I don't think it's the fatigue of driving, I think it's the thinking of all that awaits me. Okay, and the fatigue of driving.
I hear advice - and from others, from their mountaintop view of things, I suppose they look around and see clearly the order of things I should do. I listen. But regardless of all the good advice, I still have mine own self to contend with. Sometimes my view is a little foggy, looking through weary haze and clouds which might be misty tears. But I'll manage to get it all done. "All things work together for good...."
I saw many police officers on my trip, drank lots of coffee and had a flash thought that I didn't have my drivers license. After all the coffee and seeing all the police officers, I began to feel a tad stressed at that fact. I checked and it wasn't there! Panic. I pulled over - for another coffee -I let someone else look in my purse, and there it was - in an odd spot. You know that's always the way. You do one thing different from your little routine and there you are - lost in (the) space (between your ears).
Back to Madam B ~ She tried a blueberry pie this week, but it didn't hold to specs. I never got to try it. She fooled around with altering some ingredients in our favorite banana bread recipe and made it healthier and that's always a good thing! Next experience was to take the chocolate chip recipe we love and see if it could be shaped into hearts.
Before I left she had baked some really cute cupcakes! I'll put some pictures up later.
She's been successful with her recipe gatherings and has some breakfast, lunch and dinner menus together. We were just thinking, we need to go into planning for * leftover menus* like the magazines do. It's a practical world on certain days. Not here. But somewhere.
I would like to share with you two poems we were discussing. I like them both.
Love's Secret
~~ William Blake
Never seek to tell thy love,
Love that never told can be;
For the gentle wind doth move
Silently, invisibly.
I told my love, I told my love,
I told her all my heart,
Trembling, cold, in ghastly fears.
Ah! she did depart!
Soon after she was gone from me,
A traveller came by,
Silently, invisibly:
He took her with a sigh.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Come not, when I am dead
~~ Lord Alfred Tennyson
Come not, when I am dead,
To drop thy foolish tears upon my grave,
To trample round my fallen head,
And vex the unhappy dust thou wouldst not save.
There let the wind sweep and the plover cry;
But thou, go by.
Child, if it were thine error or thy crime
I care no longer, being all unblest:
Wed whom thou wilt, but I am sick of Time,
And I desire to rest.
Pass on, weak heart, and leave me where I lie:
Go by, go by.
Tu Tranquilo,
Miss Roxie