When blocks aren't just blocks

Alex and I were building some things with blocks before lunch and I grabbed one of those turban-looking pieces from the HABA set to top my tower with. Alex grabbed it off the top and said, "No mama -- that's PEOple."

Those are the pieces that he and Uncle Joey were pretending were people going up the steps and over bridges during his visit at the end of June. This is his legacy.

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Masterful Manipulations: Short Story Homeschool Co-op Class

I taught a class on iconic short stories this spring at our homeschool co-op. I don't know how many of my former English teachers may have passed since, but any that have are rolling in their graves at this news. I find teaching especially stressful but this class exceeded my expectations in basically every way and that might have made it worthwhile. We read 20 short stories, which I was free to choose primarily on the basis of how much I liked them. I organized them based on loose associations. Table of Contents (We never officially read this, but it was so short, I included it in case I needed to read it aloud during that first class.) One Summer Night , by Ambrose Bierce Short Story Elements To Build a Fire , by Jack London Irony The Necklace , by Guy de Maupassant The Gift of the Magi , by O. Henry The Ransom of Red Chief , by O. Henry Irony - American The Veldt , by Ray Bradbury The Lottery , by Shirley Jackson Setting - Irony - Foreign The Sniper , by Liam O'Flah...

Lazy Saturday

I took a three-hour nap this afternoon (no fooling) to make up for my restless sleep last night. It put a big hole in the day, but I'm feeling much better now and I'll be better prepared to lose another hour of sleep tonight. Tomorrow will be the first ever observation of Eastern Daylight Savings Time in Indiana. They've been warning residents of the imminent clock-setting for roughly three weeks on the radio -- and I only listen to the radio while I'm driving around town. Although we'll miss the convenience of Central Time's TV schedule, we're glad we won't have to play "What time is it in Indiana?" with our families for another summer. Come to think of it, we don't have cable anymore, anyway, so the TV schedule will hardly affect us. It seemed the local broadcast channels were on "Indiana time" last year. The day didn't go quite as planned. We had been invited to our yoga instructor's home for an afternoon of "jammi...

Another month passes me by

To quickly recap: We enjoyed a late-October weekend in St. Louis, accidentally arriving during the 8th inning of the Cardinals' World Series Winning Game. At the Ballpark Hilton. One block from the stadium. It was a night -- and very early morning -- to remember. We visited the zoo, Union Station, the Arch, the Botanical Gardens (to see the Chihuly exhibit), and I don't remember where else. Great city, good times. The furnace installation was completed on November 4th, and we've been toasty warm ever since. On November 15th, I hosted (with the immense help of three friends) 20 at the Ladies' Gourmet dinner. "Cranberries" were the theme ingredient. Everything was delicious. I was exhausted. The afternoon before leaving for St. Louis, I taped three half-hour shows for the Health Department, which I then had to scramble to assemble and deliver by November 17th. Of course, nothing ever goes smoothly over at the studio, so it took three times as long as planned ...

Indiana Idylls

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