How many miles to Babylon?

How many miles to Babylon?
Threescore miles and ten.
Can I get there by candle-light?
Yes, and back again.
If your heels are nimble and light,
You may get there by candle-light.


I leapt out of my seat, waved the book of nursery rhymes at Jonathan, and shrieked, "Look at this! It's a Babylon candle! I found Babylon candles! It's like in Stardust!"

Jonathan is used to my reading habits. He put down his book that he was reading, accepted the tome of nursery rhymes, and agreed, yes, it was definitely where Neil Gaiman got the idea for Babylon candles. I have tracked down a reference in its native habitat!

 If you don't remember, Stardust is a fantasy film from about ten years ago with Claire Danes and Robert de Niro and a bunch of people. The hero and the star do, indeed, travel by Babylon candle. The movie makes a joke of it -- the star knows what they're called, but as the hero had never heard of them, he refers to them as "bubbling" candles and she corrects him. I hadn't realized they were a thing outside that story.

The wiki page on "How many miles to Babylon" mentions that it used to be a game like sharks and minnows, where the kids stand in two lines, sing the song, and the "shark" tries to catch them when they run back and  forth. I'm thinking we need to start playing this game again.

Because traveling by candle-light is definitely the coolest.

A DIY quiver

It's been a while since I posted any sewing projects, and this is a fun one.

I was having issues with my bows and arrows. The bag I was using was the equivalent of short wide armor, because bows are always longer and more awkward than you expect, and they kept falling out and making a nuisance of themselves. I eventually raided the bag for a car snack bag and stacked the weaponry on top of Kate's kitchen. It was possibly not ideal.

Last week Meg and I picked up a yard of (arrow print!) cotton duck fabric. I already had the wide blue grosgrain ribbon and a selection of giant beads.

The base of the bag is a half-circle, and the body of the the bag is a simple cylinder. I finished the inside seams with more of the blue grosgrain like Hong Kong seams, and added a casing around the upper edge for the drawstring.

The strap is a loop of ribbon. I sewed it vertically the full height of the bag over the seam. One bead is behind the bow, as a kind of slider, and then smaller beads are at the ends of the ribbon to keep them from slipping out.

I feel like I need a Katniss cowl, or possibly Queen Susan's magic horn, OR BOTH, so that I can go dashing through the woods picturesquely shooting things with my newly portable archery supplies. Anyone want to come with me? 

We're up to Greece now

Since we talked about the Iliad and the Odyssey today, I was browsing some illustrations for them. I showed Meg a gorgeous one of the one-eyed monster (Cyclops?) that tried to eat Odysseus.

"Why do giants try to eat people?" asked Meg.

I considered. "They ought not to do so. It is evil."

Meg accepted that. "Well, in Heaven if there are giants, they'll be a lot less pesky."

Poisonous plants

"Leaves of three, let it be," said Meg. I was so proud of her for knowing that.
"And do you remember what plant that is?" I asked.
"Poison ivy," she said matter-of-factly. "And dragons-bane."

Patricia Wrede is a great storyteller, but she's not doing much for my botany lessons.

The moral of the story: call the Gungans for your underwater battle needs

Jonathan was reading one of those beginner-reader Star Wars books with Meg. The scenario was an underwater battle on Mon Calamari, and the plot... well, it pained him. We in our house do not suffer quietly. So I started liveblogging.

"If you're fighting underwater, USE BOMBS. Carolyn, they're using blasters and spears! Sometimes that's fine, for close quarters. But when you're not fighting hand-to-hand, you should break out the artillery and have fun. I'M JUST SAYING. ...I'm sorry kids, not only did you get flanked by 3 mph jellyfish, you're being surprised from above. By mining rigs. Have you heard of sonar? 'But it gets worse!' Really?"

"So apparently the big bad guy has these cyborg jellyfish. Electrified cyborg jellyfish. But the electrified cyborg jellyfish are too powerful, so they have to ask advice from Yoda and Mace Windu. These are the tactical golden boys behind such tactical maneuvers as, oh look, it's a giant plain filled with robots. Let's land and fight them with hand to hand combat, instead of, say, shooting them from space with our armada.

"So they come up with a plan. Let's call the Gungans! The Gungans are in fact an aquatic species, so this is actually good advice. And surprisingly the Gungans, unlike the elite Mon Calamari, actually have weapons that can make the jellyfish explode. And they use them. I am professionally chagrined."

"But apparently they can't fight as well as the Gungans, so I don't know what they're doing with their lives."

"'But Padme gets a crack in her helmet! Anakin tries to use the force to keep water from dribbling in.' Good luck, you're up against another force: PSI. 'But the electric eels keep jostling him and he loses concentration!'"

"Okay, there's TWO SPECIES on Mon Calamari. How did they not check the bite marks and say, "The king was killed by a shark. A giant shark." What, do they not do marine biology? So he throws a grenade at him that doesn't explode. ON PURPOSE. Wait, where did he get explosives? Did he borrow them from the Gungans? Did Jar-Jar teach you how to fight??"

"'But he couldn't have done it without Captain Ackbar,' -- who didn't do much -- 'the Jedi,' -- who also didn't do much -- 'and the Gungans' -- who did basically everything!"

Upon which Meg asked for something, possibly another book. "No, Daddy just finished reading you a book with more commentary--"
"Than text," I added helpfully.
"No," Jonathan said, "I was going to say more commentary than you get usually."

More bloggage over at HSLDA

My next post is up at the HSLDA blog. I feel like there should be a contest for who can spot the most cultural elements/references in this one. Prize: virtual Awesome Points.

Overheard at our house:

"Where's the Phantom Tollbooth? It was hiding under Tim Keller!" Jonathan

Meg and Kate updates

Meg is five years and one month old, and she can read on her own. She knew letters and sounds at two, so I was confident it would come eventually, and for the past year or more she has been putting the sounds together laboriously. I am pleased to report the skill is here. No printed matter is safe - she'll sound out chalkboards, packaging, web pages, yarn labels. "What does that say? Wool----spun."  She can follow along the song overheads at church, which coincidentally makes her more likely to sing and less wiggly. (YES!) She is reading the species names on all her animal puzzles and books. (Yes!) She reads the Dick and Jane books to herself, because she likes them and I don't. (Yay!) She reads board books to Kate. (Yahoo!) So basically this development is thrilling to me.

Jonathan read Meg the first chapter of The Phantom Tollbooth and distressed her by shutting it without putting in a bookmark. She was astonished when he opened it right back to the correct place.
"Daddy, how did you do that? Are you MAGICAL?"

Meanwhile, while Meg reads everything that will hold still, Kate has started moving. All. the. time. She goes everywhere, grabs everything. She pushes dolls around in the doll stroller (she loves dolls), pulls all the books off shelves (she loves books), drags things off tabletops (Mommy's toys are so interesting, and is that coffee?). She climbed up onto the couch by herself (she loves the couch!). She brought me a whole pile of craft paper (because paper is so cool), having located the drawer, opened it, and helped herself. She's learned to wipe her nose with a Kleenex and trot over to throw the dirty one in the trash, which is adorable, and also I keep the Kleenex up high now.

This afternoon Kate mysteriously appeared all wet, and we thought perhaps she'd gotten Meg's water bottle? The dampness just smelled like water, so we weren't too worried until I went to take off her wet things and discovered squelchy toilet paper and splashed water all around the toilet. The toilet had not been flushed. It was disgusting. That girl got a bath so fast she didn't know what was happening and everyone, especially Meg, has been informed that the toilet MUST be flushed, I'm not even kidding, and also SHUT THE BATHROOM DOOR. ALWAYS. The Nodwick blogger, about three years ago, ran a post about the sirens who live in dishwashers and toilets, and sing a song only toddlers can hear. We don't have a dishwasher, but apparently we have an especially alluring cadre of them in our toilet.

In the "just cute" file...

Me to Kate: "Can I interest you in a mouse and a maraca?"
Kate took them and started shaking both.

Supermodels and dragon collections

A well-meaning woman at the store complimented Meg on her glasses. "You look like a supermodel!"
This seemed to puzzle Meg, so I thanked the lady on her behalf. Sure enough, she asked me, "What's a supermodel?" I described it as someone who tries on clothes for someone to take pictures of them, which completely befuddled her. Adults are incredibly weird. She assured me she did not want to be a supermodel.

Meg also doesn't approve of princesses or fairies. She does not want any princess or fairy anything for Christmas, so don't get her any. The examining room at the pediatrician's office offended her deeply because it had princess stickers all over the walls, and she told me so very loudly, and furthermore that girls don't like princesses. Boys like princesses! A completely random passing doctor was apparently amused, or distressed, or something, and came in to try and persuade her that some kids, boys and girls both, actually do like princesses. She wasn't very successful.

This week we're listening to The Voyage of the Dawn Treader on CD as we drive in the car. (We drive plenty.) Queen Lucy is apparently okay, not being a princess. I paused the story as we arrived at the dragon's cave and had Meg guess what Eustace would find inside.

"I don't know."
"What do dragons like to collect?" I prompted her.
"Stones?"
"Yes! What kind of stones?"
"Arkenstones?"
 Dragons do like to collect Arkenstones, so there. Ha!

I am so proud of Meg's cultural attainment. 

Galoot the sword

I dipped into an old medieval verse epic Morte Arthur (not Malory's, another one) which called Gawain's sword "Galuthe." It's really just as well this didn't make it into the general tradition. Galuthe doesn't have the same ring as Excalibur.

"Excalibur is looking particularly shiny today, wot?" "Oh, yes yes. Lovely day for it and all that. And did you get Galoot sharpened after that tiff with Sir Pellinore?" "Your majesty, my sword's name is GALUTHE." "Ah, that's just your Northern accent!"

Fierce guardians of the library cards

I'm seriously having issues with the Berryville library. The librarians may have layers like onions, because they guard their library cards as jealously as an ogre its toll bridge. For background. Berryville has pretty much no bureaucracy and everything but the post office, even the library, is physically in the same building.

So I was caught flat-footed the day I tried to get my new library card, present address firmly in mind and two small girls in tow. I was informed in no uncertain terms that if I wanted to check things out I had to come back with suitable papers - they handed me a list - and have a nice day.

So I perused the list. Utility bill. Okay. So yesterday, while Jonathan watched the girls, I went back with a utility bill and two or three other items to prove our Berryville residence. They didn't like them either. Those papers were in Jonathan's name. (Because, guess what, he called to set up our utilities.) Aren't they in my name too? Obviously not. Could the librarian call Jonathan to confirm he's my husband? No. They don't do that. Bring them a piece of mail with my name on it. Any piece of mail will do. [Hmm.]

I left, defeated.

A sympathetic relative asked if I was considering identity theft yet.

So today, after church, and meeting our landlady, and after determining that I needed chocolate chips for a Death By Chocolate zucchini cake with ganache and that I had to go out to the grocery store, I dropped by the library again. I took several items of mail with my name and current address on it - an ad from the utility company, an ad from Garnet Hill, and some kind of insurance statement. "Any piece of mail will do" was replaying in my mind.

The Berryville library is closed on Sundays.

The entire Berryville county building is apparently closed on Sundays.

The end.



On happier topics, when Jonathan's parents came down last week, they brought a whole bin of my old toys, including a collection of stuffed animals. Meg is particularly fond of one I called Asenath, after Joseph's Egyptian wife. Meg doesn't like that name, though. "Have you seen Little Miss Kitty? She's white and fluffy. She's the one Mom calls Asthma."

Feels like home

A friend invited us to go berry picking at the Mackintosh farm this morning. It was downright chilly - only about sixty-five, which is ridiculous for late July, and it was wonderful. Hurray for the polar vortex. (It DID come back in the summer when we would appreciate it!) Meg and I actually had more fun in the veggie patch than with the blackberries: the berries were fine, but on the other side we found zucchini and eggplant and peppers in their natural habitat. Meg especially got a kick out of picking peppers. 

The zucchini plants at the farm had both ripe fruit and blossoms on the same plant, which I thought was so strange. We have two zucchini plants out back, both of which are blooming, so
I figured I might as well check them. And we had a huge zucchini - six inches long and nearly as thick. It looked like a watermelon. Cool.

The zucchini that looks like a watermelon

I finally worked up the courage to take the girls out back to our deck. The poison ivy has been poisoned (well, once) and was lying low, and since I washed our little dumpster the wasps haven't been around, so out we went. Also, I couldn't waste that 70-degree weather. I knocked the spiderwebs down and we picnicked for dinner and kicked a ball around afterwards.

It's so nice to play outside. It makes it feel like home. Also, what makes this house feel like home: Sayers books by the bed, Wodehouse books in the bathroom, and library books on every flat surface in every room where Jonathan has been, like a trail of bread crumbs. I love it.

Kate is great: nine month update

Today is Kate's actual three-quarters of a birthday! She's a cheerful,* friendly, social baby, who likes to charm everybody who passes by.

She also likes to eat. She's at that funny stage where she'll be playing happily and discover suddenly that she'd quite like a snack, and just up and start screaming. Exciting. Her favorite food, bar none, is sauteed onions. She likes them alone, with bell pepper for fajitas, on or with pretty much anything, and last night she ate onions, asparagus, and beets, roasted with balsamic vinegar. I nearly fell over. She likes beef (cut up small), and she likes enchiladas (green chile and all), and she devours pretty much any fruit. She does not care for baby food purees, considering them beneath her time and dignity. But any food on my plate is a matter of deep interest.

She hasn't figured out rolling yet. She has a squirm that's almost a roll, but it's unpredictable. She crawls backwards nimbly, and she's developing this awkward over-the-leg scoot for forward motion. She can go from sitting to stomach, but it's harder to get up once she's down. She's just started trying to pull up on things, which doesn't do her much good since she refuses to try standing up. Sitting is so useful. She's so good at it. She likes sitting. Standing is unnecessary.

She loves books. She likes to wave the pages back and forth. She really learned how to scoot forward to get those grown-up hardbacks we tend to leave just out of reach, and yesterday she was showing me and Jonathan this really cool thing: a book cover opens and shuts! Watch this!


*Unless she's hungry. She gets this from me.

Library principles

As Martha Stewart says, which books you want to have in your library is a very personal decision. But if you're like me, eventually you run out of places to put new shelves and you have to actually pick a few volumes you can live without -- before the shelves make like a black hole and collapse in on themselves, taking the books with them.  (Dun-dun-DUNNNN!) You never know.

I'm finally coming to a place where I can admit that just because it's a good book doesn't mean I HAVE TO OWN IT. This has taken years, y'all. I'm finding the easiest ones to get rid of are classics that the library has, or are readily available -- like Shakespeare. I have the complete works; the library has the complete works; the internet has the complete works; I do not also need to have all the plays in single-play bound format, though I'm keeping the copy I used when directing a play because that's full of notes like a scrapbook and therefore irreplaceable.

So to make your sorting easier, I now present you with some principles for your personal library.


Good Reasons to Keep a Book:

1. You like it.

2. You want to lend it to friends.

3. You want to read it a lot and will almost certainly want to read it next after nine p.m. or after the libraries are closed.

4. You want to read it a lot and the library is apparently run by philistines and doesn't have a copy.

5. It's just that awesome.


Inadequate Reasons to Keep a Book:

1. You've read it.

2. You haven't read it yet.

3. Somebody gave it to you.

4. You paid money for it.

5. It was free.

6. It's a good book.

7. It's so bad, you want to quarantine it.


Anybody have any good stories about culling their libraries, or not culling their libraries, or really epic collapsing shelves?

(This list brought to you by popular request after my Kitchen Principles post. I love getting popular requests.)

Sam Vimes would be proud

If you saw me this winter, I was probably wearing my brown cowboy boots. Just a guess. They were my birthday present and cost about four times what I would normally spend on a pair of shoes. I wore them everywhere, every day, from church to stomping around in the woods. They were real leather and I conditioned them properly, and when spring rolled around, they still looked practically new.

Compare this to a pair of ankle boots I got while I was expecting Meg. They're cheapy black plastic pleather stuff, a half-size bigger than usual with a gentle wedge and the softest, squishiest footbed ever, so they were perfect. I wore them for about those six months, put them away, and when I got out my maternity wear this spring, noticed the outer layer was peeling everywhere. They're still comfortable, but they look awful.

Terry Pratchett, if you've read his books, calls this the Sam Vimes Principle. Vimes says you can spend $10 a year every year for cheap shoes, or spend $100 up front and get a good pair that will still be going strong ten years later. I think I just proved the principle. I am so buying good boots from now on!

Meg and Goldilocks

It's always curious, finding out what bothers your little one. Today we were reading "Goldilocks and the Three Bears," and Meg got antsier and antsier as Goldilocks did more and more naughty things. Finally she clapped both hands over her mouth and hopped away.

She closed the book for me.  "There are some things that she's not supposed to do."

Quote

Meg was looking at my Pride and Prejudice poster. "King Herod and Mr. Wickham, they're both two wicked guys."

Words of wisdom

"Don't pull sisters' tails, even when you're very grumpy," Meg said during lunch.
"That's right," I agreed. "Are you thinking like in the Angelina book, when the princess pulled her sisters' tails?"
"Yeah," she said. "'Cause pulling your sisters' tails hurts their feelings and their tails."

It grabbed me

Yesterday I was sorting books and came across one I used to read often. I kind of accidentally cracked it open. I read it while I put on a movie, made soup, fed Meg, and ate the soup myself. In fact I read it pretty much all the way through to the last page, which led me to believe maybe I shouldn't get rid of that one.

A fuller world

Currently I'm in the middle of Timothy Zahn's Allegiance, which is a Star Wars book. The more I read Zahn the better I like him. He is one of the few male sci-fi/fantasy authors I can think of who seem aware that their worlds are going to have culture, art, fashion, and non-scientific things going on, and then makes that relevant to the plot. In Allegiance Mara Jade is eighteen and still posing as a Countess as she moves through the elite Core society. I like how Zahn describes her court dress and shoulder sculpt and how she transforms it into weapons. It's so Mara Jade.

Also, there's nothing quite like finding a book by a favorite author which you thought you'd read, and then discovering you haven't. :-)