January 31st, 2025
Wake to simulated crashing sounds and minifig-screams from the living room... Patience is also blending her chocolate-banana smoothie in the kitchen which she shares with Yali, shuffling around in her slippers like a granny...
Shortly later Yali and Patience begin light bookwork, exchanging remarkably affable moods with one another as we glide into a math session that somehow stretches past two hours with all the distractions... which might have included Yali attaching a giant exercise band to the basement banister, allowing it to pull him luge-style across the floor... “WHOOOOOOO!”... “Can I try?” Patience wants to know...
A little chai rooibos tea for the sinus loopiness late morning... the kids watch my face as I try it for the first time... “Smells like a gingersnap!” Yali optimistically encourages me... it does, it does, but... “...tastes like old leaves in hot water”... which I guess is any tea, really... still, the sinuses are aided...
Math concluded, Yali leaves to plan “evil pranks on Puck” who is in his black book that particular morning... I never learn what these plans are...
At one o'clock switch on the livestream of Dr. B's memorial service from Nashville... the preacher who memorized all of his sermons and always knew all six of us kids by name (even when Carrie-Bri and I still looked like twins)... [this of course while Yali is sliding up and down the living room floor on that giant rubberband and Puck is pestering me about shopping for coat racks at Goodwill]... “the grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God shall stand forever”...
The kids need the outdoors... with the yard so super-soggy, bring them to the park down the road for about half an hour... while I sit in the Toyota with books and notebooks... look up at one point to Yali chucking chunks of ice-snow at Patience as they run laughing around the playground...
Back home, the tooth that has been loose in Yali's head for months, finally and suddenly emerges (no blood... it's been loose so long, apparently there's none left in there)... he walks around whistling through the gap like a tea kettle for about the next ten minutes...
Spend some time exploring geography curriculum programs for next year while diplomatic relations between all three kids slowly begin to deteriorate into the late afternoon...
Oxbear partly distracts from this by bringing Yali to the basement workbench to complete the last bits on his pinewood derby car in a powder blue styled in the theme of “Harry Potter”...
As peace once again settles... everyone disbands for the evening...
- Puck to O'Fallon to hang out with J
- Collette and Patience to the studio for a private lesson
- Oxbear and Yali to the pinewood derby weigh-in
Sit on a drizzly lot for an hour with a free quarter pounder looking over some of the nearly 7,000 Åland Islands of Finland on Google Maps...
After the kids are tucked into bed, Yali reemerges to hold out his tooth in a Ziploc... “If the tooth fairy doesn't bring me money...” he grins... “I'm going to start a war!”
For grins : partial Googling record of January (and slightly earlier)...
- Origin of the Jolly Rancher
- Did kids wear braces in the 40s?
- Did the Mohawk use tomahawks?
- Does Jonny Lee Miller speak Mandarin?
- What good is a Sweetgum tree for?
- Charles Bronson's ancestry (Lithuanian; Catholic mining family with 15 kids)
- Grandala birds ("searing" blue; Himalayas)
- Origination of "Sing Sing" (from the Indian phrase "sin sinck" meaning "stone on stone")
- Was Clay Hart Christian?
- What does sand look like magnified 300x?
- Was Burl Ives Christian?
- Is Diego Luna Christian?
- Can you wash a weighted blanket in the washing machine?
- Do potatoes and butter provide all the nutrients one needs to survive?
- Difference between Sikhism and Hinduism
- How fast can a panda run?
- What is Yorkshire pudding?
- Age of Jimmy Carter at death
- How many children live in poverty in the United States?
- Does white vinegar remove rust?
- In which countries are guns illegal? (Brunei, Cambodia, Comoros, East Timor, Eritrea, Guinea-Bissau, Maldives, Marshall Islands, Nauru, North Korea, Palau, Solomon Islands, Somalia, and Vatican City)
- What are Zainab's fingers? (Egyptian dessert)
- Are there likely undiscovered civilizations in North Africa buried under the sand?
- Life expectancy by country around the world
- What is living in "Edinburgh of the Seven Seas" like?
- What was the Knights Templar?
- What is a polar bear guard?
- Territory of the Great White
- Which side of a sanctuary is the “Gospel” side?
- Witchcraft in Romania
- Who played Sirius Black?
- What is a brownstone?
- First dog in space (Laika)
- What do Muslims believe happens to Christians and Jews after death?
- Why did David Hasselhoff perform at the Berlin Wall?
- Why is bull fighting still allowed?
- Who is Wyatt Earp?