Random snippets: a

There are so many things floating around in my head I want to blog about. I have mentioned before that ideas get stuck up there and keep circling, circling, like all that plastic in the north Pacific gyre, never escaping, never completely dying away. . . . Really, as I tell DH, I blog mainly to maintain some hold on my sanity. Parenting and homeschooling sucking most of my mental abilities, then the flotsam clogs up the rest--gotta get it out somehow! Lucky you. ; )

So I'm going to make this a snippets week--to release little odds and ends that have been swimming around up in there. . . (and so I can have the fun of blogging without having the pressure of making coherent, fully-fleshed out ideas.)

a)
I love old-fashioned books.  The ones with charming characters, timeless stories, quaint attitudes and wholesome values (which usually match up with my values too!), details which bring the past to life, and lovely old-timey artwork.  The Secret Garden.  The Railway Children.  All-Of-A-Kind Family.  Gone Away Lake.  Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm.  A Little Princess.

There is very little contemporary literature that can compare with these works in the quality of the storytelling and the value of the ideas within.  The best I have come across are The Mistmantle Chronicles.  And The House of Thirty Cats.  The Penderwicks comes close. 

But I have realized there is one drawback to my children being reared on mostly old-fashioned books:  their vocabulary shows it.  Usually this is charming.  Sometimes, it is pretty funny.  Earlier this year Sunny wrote a poem about Spring, in which I required her to assign a feeling to the season.  The resulting poem:

Spring is Gay

A Five Senses Poem

Gay is the color of shining yellow.

Gay sounds like robins singing.

It feels like a loving hug from my Mom.

It smells like fresh honey and jasmine blossoms.

Gay tastes like pancakes drenched with syrup and berries.

So unfortunate how her word choice distracts the reader from fully appreciating her lovely imagery.  But I could not bear to tell her not to use the word, since she was technically using it in its original sense.  Why spoil the word for her just yet?  And while we talk a lot about the things of this world, we have not yet deally delved into the topic of homosexuality.  We know some families who have two mommies or two daddies, so at some point her own observations and thinking will bring the topic up for discussion.  But until then, no need to get into unnecessary explainations about political appropriations of language. . . .

But the other day came another classic.  Happy was telling me about how Smiley loves a certain little red rooster toy, which they taught him to call "Cock."  I did a good job keeping a straight face while she was telling me about it, but it was hard: "Smiley loves his Cock.  He loves to hold his Cock.  Whevever I am holding his Cock, he wants it and hollers at me, 'Cock! Cock!'  He gets mad if he does not have Cock."

Etc.

When I told DH about it, he blamed me.  I protested my innocence, and thought about where Happy would have heard that word in a book. . . And found the answer in the pages of Mother Goose (a 1999 edition, I might add!):

The cock crows in the morn
To tell us to rise,
And he who lies late
Will never be wise:
For early to bed
And early to rise
Is the way to be healthy
And wealthy and wise.