Moira is on a braiding spree thanks to Pinterest. Thought I would start sharing some of these do's for fun in case you might want to try your hand.
Here you have fishtail braids. I am not sure why they call them fish tails. The only tail I have seen braided like this was my Arabian's before a show. It was harder than it looks back then. It is pretty painless now since I only man the camera and not the comb lol.
If you want to give it a whirl there is a tutorial with good graphics here.
“All in all, it was a never-to-be-forgotten summer — one of those summers which come seldom into any life, but leave a rich heritage of beautiful memories in their going — one of those summers which, in a fortunate combination of delightful weather, delightful friends and delightful doing, come as near to perfection as anything can come in this world.”
– L.M. Montgomery, Anne's House of Dreams
I put it off as long as possible, this pool thing. Together with 'planes, trains, and automobiles' water is high on the list of things I abhor. Being an only child of a non-swimming mother (from an entirely non-swimming clan on both sides) probably took care of any chance I would turn out otherwise. I have no happy water memories. Cannot even begin to list all the things I dislike and distrust about bodies of water, starting with getting wet.
I have driven my children to swimming lessons. I have encouraged them to sign up for camps that involve canoeing and tubing. Whenever invited, I have happily packed their beach towels and sunscreen and sent them along with friends to swim. I take pictures of them swimming. I am a swimming enabler of the highest degree. Just please don't ask me to get in the water. Please. Especially if you are in the teeniest pink tankini ever made, swaddled in layers of flotation devices, with two bitty pigtails.
And freckles.
This time I got in. It took a good half hour to gradually lower myself into the bracing English water, despite all the directions from the peanut gallery side of the pool to just jump in. See, I don't generally "jump in" to things easily. But I do get there in my own time.
Eleanor Roosevelt said to do one thing every day that scares you.
Check.
In fact this has been my motto many days these past two years. The upside being that every day you do that there is one thing that scares you a little bit less. There are lots of ways to die to yourself. For most of us it is done by this petty martyrdom available to us everyday. Little opportunities to face your fears, to thwart your will, to make someone else happy. And that it did.
But it was still cold.
My ducks in a row. May you splash with this much joy and abandon all your days.
Or rather, a roundabout.
“I’m gonna ride it allll night looong,”
These are the lyrics playing in my head on the way
home. We have been here a month
now. I should feel as nonchalant as I
sound taking down the directions to Moira’s babysitting job. 29 years of driving under my belt and all.
I’ve got this. I think.
A wave of (over)confidence washed over me as we pulled into
the drive after a nearly flawless, uneventful trip there. I delivered her just a little bit late, which
isn’t half bad for my record.
The round trip was so named for a reason.
“’Round and ‘round and ‘round she goes, where she stops
nobody knows….”
Agnes, the GPS, sometimes has these great ideas. Today was one of those days. She suggested I enter the dual carriage-way
(two lanes either direction) left, cross the lanes of traffic, cross the
median, and enter right – into the passing lane – going the other
direction. Since both lanes on my
initial side were full and she gave me 200ft to make this maneuver it was a no-go. No problem, says Agnes. There is a roundabout (or 7…) just
ahead.
The big roundabouts (opposed to the mini’s or the double
mini’s) are like huge wheels with spokes radiating off and out onto other roads
or, sadistically, into yet more roundabouts.
They have two lanes. Therein lies
the problem. You are to be in the inner lane until you need to exit, when you
are to move to the outer lane. This all
has to happen in a matter of feet, complete with turn signals. If you have no earthly clue which exit you
need then your ear is straining to hear your GPS cues, which inevitably are
announced just as you approach the exit – in the wrong lane. Such was my lot.
What followed was a Chevy Chase flashback. I could have my
own National Lampoon production and those are words I never thought I would
write. Reminiscent of a very bad ‘dizzy cowboy’ experience years ago. To
correct the faulty exit, Agnes sent to me a series of other roundabouts until
we were pointing homeward again.
A smidge unsettled, I later missed my turn right in our
nearest village and veered off onto the street instead. That doesn’t sound like a problem now does
it? As it turns out, there is a street in this area aptly named “The Street.” Where
do you live? The Street. Which street?
The Street. Who’s on first? Wha..?
All’s well that ends well though and it did. Eventually my vehicle, a Gulliver in
this land of smart-car Lilliputians, turned in on the farm lane. The circulation returned to my knuckles as
the hares darted in and out of the hedgerow and I gave myself a high five.
Kieran was at the table reading his book report book when I walked in. Marquette and Joliet. “Did you know they had a paddler?” he
says.
“Hm, what?” I said,
hanging up my keys.
“Marquette. He
had his own paddler on his trips.”
And in that moment a solution to all my roadway
misadventures appeared, right there in paperback.
I just need a paddler.
Driving. Alas this is not my skill set.
We are still trying to figure out the best place to shop for different things. And how to get there. And whether or not we can park. I knew I had a couple viable parking options near this particular farmer's market so we made our way to check it out.
Things we expected to see:
produce
street performers
flowers
Things we were surprised to see:
Underwear – in nearly inconceivably large sizes and every color of the rainbow. And not just one vendor either.
Hardware – like an open air Ace Hardware store. (do they still have those?) Apparently THIS is where you buy that stuff here.
A duck. As in what was that? Oops, excuse me. Oh. You're a…. duck. Right there.
I walked out with a wooden broom (do other people run through metal and plastic ones like we do??) an armful of hydrangeas, and a crepe-y embroidered cotton sundress in a deep rusty color which I hope to pair with a jean jacket as the weather changes. I may have broken some fashion rules there but I can't pass up Indian cotton.
Colin bought lunch. For £3 you can pick up a bacon/egg/double cheeseburger the size of a plate. Kieran tried heroically to finish until I pointed out that he could simply close the lid and carry it home.
Moms. We solve that sort of crisis just.like.that. ; )
I have told this story, I'm sure, that I didn't expect to have boys. Maybe one. Someday. After girls. Surely girls would be first. I knew girls. Colin was born before sonograms could accurately predict gender and the military hospital forbid technicians from hazarding a guess. We were told not to even ask. We didn't. I knew anyway. It was a girl. It had to be.
I knew girls.
The male species was another story. There weren't a lot of them in my early life and I had a hard time picturing what it was you were supposed to do with them. I had cared for a few little boys as a babysitter, but I wasn't involved with footballs and bugs and wrestling. Loooooong (and loud) discussions about sports statistics and cars were completely foreign to me. Me, with my collection of Victoriana, my fondness for classical music and coordinating table linens. Maybe I wasn't sure where I would fit in there.
That anxiety fell away as the first blue blanket filled my arms. And then another. And another. Six all said, in two groups of three's. A mighty band of brothers who have run circles around me for a lot of years. They are loud. They are messy. Left five minutes in the same room, they are inevitably tumbling over the edge of the sofa or playing keepaway. They eat. A lot. I know this because I find apple cores and pop cans behind beds and on the bathroom windowsill.
They also send me music for my ipod when they hear something they think I might like. They suggest books or movies because the heroine "is just like you, Mom." They fix my phone app's and tell me how to figure out my computer. In a given day I have discussed how to know you are love, how we to decide how to vote, how to find the area of a triangle, and how to tie a shoe – all with equal gusto and sincerity – with one or another of them.
So I don't have to wonder anymore about how I fit into their world. They showed me.
Right in the middle. : )
You don't raise heroes, you raise sons. And if you treat them like sons, they'll turn out to be heroes, even if it's just in your own eyes.
~Walter M. Schirra, Sr.
Summer made a late appearance in England this year we are told. When we arrived last month it was so cold we had to turn the radiators on the first night due to the damp chill that had settled into the old, empty house. While our American friends were sweltering, we were carrying jackets and umbrellas. The word on the street was that summer was over.
They spoke too soon. : )
This has been the second weekend of near perfect summer weather. It is quite hot for Northern Europe but just right for us transplants. We have been outdoors for most of it, coming in reluctantly when dark falls, children dropping into bed sunkissed and thoroughly exhausted.
I felt a little bit guilty not working on the last bit of sorting and shelving. But not enough to come inside. The rain will fall soon enough. You only get so many opportunities to sift the sand together. They won't always squeal when the waves chase them up the shore after all.
"'It was an awkward business, my dear, your spending the autumn at South End instead of coming here. I never had much opinion of the sea air.'
'Mr Wingfield most strenuously recommended it, sir, or we should not have gone. He recommended it for all the children, but particularly for the weakness in little Bella's throat – the air and the bathing…. Oh my dear sir, her throat is so much better that I have hardly any uneasiness about it… the bathing has been of the greatest service to her.'"
– Emma, Jane Austen
I have always been intrigued by the way books have portrayed people's hopes and fears about air and water. In some works, from Shakespeare to Laura Ingalls Wilder, there was great suspicion about air quality, particularly night air. By contrast, mountain air and sea air were widely recommended to those suffering from any number of ailments. When all else failed, moving to warmer, coastal climates was often tried when it could be afforded.
Maybe it is those old books or maybe it is how little time I have spent at the sea in my life that make for my fanciful notions of the shore. Either way, I had my heart set on an afternoon at the coast now that it is relatively close by. We ended up at Felixstowe, known for its spa and 'convalescent home' for those seeking therapeutic advantages the local coastal breezes afford. Even today there are wheelchairs pushed up and down the length of the promenade. Such a difference from our hospital rooms with their sterilized air and tightly secured windows which allow patients to see, but not feel, the air outside.
Anyway, although local opinion seems to be that it is not the loveliest coastal area to visit, I found it all magical.
To resume our history of the decline: the beginning of the end of the formal study of the Greeks arrived in the 1960's. Classics – lonely amo, amas, amat in the carrel, Demosthenes' hokey sermons on courage and sacrifice, Livy's advice to fight the good war – became worse than irrelevant. The entire package was viewed as part of the reactionary establishment. It had to be jettisoned. Classics was ancient, it was dominated by 'old' white males, it was time-consuming and difficult. So much page-turning, so many "no's" and "don'ts", and "stop-its." Absolutes, standards, memorization, and traditional values had no place on a campus where modernity, relevance, and ideology were the new mantras; to say as much publicly brought self-affirmation and a sense of revolutionary commitment.
University administrators caved in to the complaints of young often self-righteous students. Curricular 'reform' followed, resulting in the virtual abandonment of core courses – important, basic classes which required students to gain at least some familiarity with the literature, grammar, philosophy, history, and language of Classical study. (Even the Vatican gave in, dumping latin as the Church's universal language.) Professional 'educators' and social scientists leaped into the vacuum, spreading therapeutics through the university, metastasizing their "I'm growing" and "Tell us about yourself" like cancer cells in a weakened system. The seeds of the "feel-good" curriculum were planted, the crops of which we are harvesting in today's pressing concern for institutionally imposed self-esteem. This new, ultra-sensitive curriculum… ran directly counter to Greek wisdom.
Students of this new age, no longer either compelled to memorize irregular comparative adjectives or eager to soak up the corny wisdom of Sophoclean tragedy, now needed to be enticed back into the traditional classroom. Scholars were forced to win back their students and to convert the now preoccupied public to their own particular enclaves.
– Who Killed Homer? Victor Hanson and John Heath
An upside to moving an imposing volume of books all over the planet is to unearth hidden gems in your home library. I have acquired a good many more books than I've had time to read in the past couple decades. It is a great pleasure to dig into them now, with not much more time perhaps, but a somewhat clearer head. Sleeping through the night – at least more often – does that for you. ; D
I will confess I do not read latin and Greek in the original, however as the university went, so went the lower schools. The same fallout seems to have been experienced in trickle down fashion right through the grades which I do deal with daily. This book coincided with Colin, Alannah, and I watching Men Who Stare at Goats, which was equal parts hysterical and tragic to watch as a child of the 70's. They combined to leave me with a perpetual head shake and occasional grumble to myself this past week.
While the answer is not a joyless 'cracking down' I do feel that viewing absolutes and rigor differently is in order. Re-establishing a truth and rigor-based (versus an emotions-based) curriculum right here at home is a goal worthy of consideration lest we, too, find ourselves in a position of needing to entice our own students as we head 'back to school' shortly.
The bigger issue is the long term effect of relaxation of standards in our self-esteem. I thought of that over and over while reading Emma.
"Emma was sorry… to be always doing more than she wished, and less than she ought! Why she did not like Jane Fairfax might be a difficult question to answer; Mr. Knightley had once told her it was because she saw in her the really accomplished young woman, which she wanted to be thought herself, and though the accusation had been eagerly refuted at the time, there were moments of self-examination in which her conscience could not quite acquit her."
How many of us are like Emma today it seems: clever and just well-read enough to appreciate education, but not disciplined enough to have truly acquired academic excellence. We are articulate, versus substantial. We like to think about thinking much as we like to think about exercise, nutrition, theology, teaching, homemaking, or any number of other topics far better than actually digging into the doing of them, which is always conserably less romantic.
These are the things I have been chewing on lately, particularly as we prepare for another year of learning. (and travel and sports and arts…) It is always daunting initially, looking at the year ahead and all we hope to accomplish, all we really must fit in. Step by step and day by day we proceed and, by the grace of God, succeed more often than not. Having these reminders helps.
It's been an eclectic summer of Grace Livingston Hill, Beverly Cleary, and Jane Austen on one hand. Hanson, Raymond Moore, and a handful of social science titles on the other.
Brain is full. : )
Alannah is back guest blogging her summer culinary adventure's with us:
We’ve been going through The Pioneer Womans cookbook and tried out her Chicken Pot Pie. Since I didn’t realize how long it would take for me to cut all the vegetables into tiny pieces (we had to double it which didn’t help) I was in a bit of a rush. Because of this, I didn’t let it thicken up as much as it should have. Luckily, no one would’ve known the difference.
It. Was. Delicious. : )
Round two tonight.
– Alannah
Starry Sky Journal 