Music

Usually we kick things off heavy with Haydn or Bach or some Duke Ellington, but recently it’s felt necessary to go either Xavier Rudd in the early a.m., or an ‘80s & ‘90s deep cut blast to move our souls in the right direction. So I moved the dial to 11 - This is Spinal Tap reference - to Brian Adams’ Summer of ‘69, Crumb’s Celebrity Judges, Collective Soul’s Heavy, and Scooter’s Friends. There. Now we can roll.

Games - Mancala

I defeated the 5-year old. I’m at peace with this. Completely. He has beat me enough times to make me cling to whatever semblance of conquest and authority I can.

Then I lost to the 14-year old. Badly. Ego back in check.

Bible

We discussed the Ten Commandments and their wording. I have no problem with the word “No.” At the same time, I’m also a proponent of phrasing things positively whenever possible. From a creative standpoint, I’m a believer in the role boundaries play and how they significantly help you to focus and finish whatever it is you’re doing. Same thing here: the role that boundaries in life - such as The Decalogue - can help to provide clarity, focus, and joy to our lives. The deeper we examine each of these, the more sense they make in terms of enhancing and broadening our appreciation of life and and ability to seize opportunities, find joy, help others, and build ongoing strong relationships.

Religion

We briefly discussed Taoism, and will circle back around to it. The often-overlapping relationship among Taoism, Confucianism, and Buddhism is interesting to me.

Drawing

There was squabbling over markers and who should stockpile what amount. The number of times I have reminded two particular children that 99.9% of the time, they can only use one marker at a time is incalculable. Yet I seem to have failed sometimes with helping this fact sink home. I recognize there are power struggles at work, and the markers are a Macguffin…yet I still struggle sometimes to effectively reinforce ideas of sharing and how they make life easier for everyone. Including me. :)

We all find ways of fighting back against oppressors though; fight against the authoritarians, and I expect it might be maddening to my children to so casually reference myself as an autocrat when it suits me, and to suggest ways for them to rage against the monster, in this case, me being the monster and the machine. I encourage them to direct their rage against me, however, when they must, rather than each other. And sometimes their response is passive-aggressive in the hilarious…

Our five-year old carefully drew a lovely, intricate portrait with a handful of characters in it, and then presented to me, fully-aware of his peripheral audience:

Here you go, Daddy,
he said. It’s you, and Mama, and Sissy, and me.

Am I in it?
his younger brother asked immediately from next to him. Where am I?!

The Older’s expression shifted slightly; his ever so slight tell as he fought down a tiny joyous smile as he studiously avoided eye contact after getting the reaction he wanted.
I’m sorry,
he said to his Brother the Lesser without remorse or sorrow,
I’m sorry, but there’s no room for you in the picture. I only had enough room to draw us, there isn’t any room for you in the picture.

The resulting explosion of indignancy, was, I suspect, the precise reaction he had internally engineered and plotted out. With a smile, the Older turned away in a veneer of sorrow and announced his intention to draw more pictures of himself with his Mom.

Nap

I had an orange stuffed dog that was given to me in the hospital when I was born, and I have kept ever since. Our youngest has taken a liking to him and wants to hold him tightly as I hold him for his nap. Yes, I could probably just try lying him down on a bed. But he’s two, and I pick him up and he lays his head on my shoulder and slings an arm up on my shoulder, and it’s a few minutes of quiet breathing as I walk and dance with him in the midmorning, before I set his big little baby not baby body down on bed, and I can remember no time I have regretted holding him in this manner before his nap. But it will not be forever.

Reading - The Problem in Cell 13 (1905)

I read aloud the classic short story by Jacques Futrelle. The premise is simple and has influenced a thousand stories since: a learned man - The Thinking Man, the Professor, believes in the power of a focused mind to problem-solve about anything. Including his way out of a prison within one week’s time.

That’s the setup, and although technology and a hundred years “progress” has made some parts more difficult to understand or make sense, it’s still an engaging and exciting process trying to figure out what he’s up to over the course of his week’s confinement and whether or not he’ll succeed…

Footnote: Jacques Futrelle later died as a passenger on the Titanic. Apparently he gave up his lifeboat spot to someone else.

Vocab (from reading)

Ardor - enthusiasm or passion

Complacency - not concerned, accepting of one’s self and current condition

Feigned - pretended, faked, simulated

Listless - without enthusiasm or energy

Nomenclature - a term applied to something, a system of names in a particular field, how names or are chosen or created for something in a field (think: binomial nomenclature)

Nettled - annoyed or irritated

Perturbation - anxiety, unease, something deviating from a normal state

Petulant - sulking, bad-tempered

Recumbent - lying down

Sepulchral - referring to a tomb, gloomy

Featured