02.13.07
Communication, 21st Century Style… aka The High Tech Beggar…
So I’m sitting here in front of the tv with my family and Pumpkin (dd 14 yrs old) has just finished a book she found in our library. It is an allegory, and not one she knew we had. She loved it so much that she read it aloud to her sisters and accused me of ‘withholding’… She should know by now that if I BUY a book, it is WORTH reading… (other than the odd book that ends up a waste of a good tree anyway… which isn’t often) he. he. he. Anyway, as the book indicated sequels she made for the downstairs computer to look them up on Amazon. Shortly, an IM window popped up requesting my attention. It was from Pumpkin… who was still downstairs on the other computer. I know. We are sick people, IMing in the same house. However, were we not sick people, I would not have this for your reading pleasure. What can I say… the child IS creative… (Unfortunately, the smiley’s we used did not transfer…) We did end up talking about yet another book she wanted from another series that is a family favorite and that is when things got fun…
Pumpkin: I am looking at
Pumpkin: a book that I have been looking for
Pumpkin: for a year and 8 months
Mom: title?
Pumpkin: I was told it was comeing out in july
Pumpkin: PLEASE MAY I TELL IT TO BUY?!?!?!?!
Mom: title?
Pumpkin: Rangers Aprentice:The land of Ice and Snow, book 3
Mom: it is set up to purchase on that computer?
Pumpkin: What does that mean??
Mom: you had best let me do it dear
Pumpkin: Now????Pumpkin: I’ll beg
Mom: that could be interesting
Pumpkin: Shall I start
Pumpkin: ??
Mom: oh please
Mom: I am not sure that it is possible
Pumpkin: Oh thou merciful mother, who bore me in thy body….
Pumpkin: And has fed and nourished me…
Pumpkin: and probably has quite a few gray hairs on thy head because of me……
Pumpkin: I BESEACH thee…..
Pumpkin: Oh please take note that…
Pumpkin: all the money and effort you have spent on me…
Pumpkin: from teaching me to read and not bite thee…..
Pumpkin: to getting me braces so that my teeth wilt not sprouteth from my ears……….
Pumpkin: may yet go to waste….
Pumpkin: for if I do not get this book before the next month is up…
Pumpkin: I shall probably die…
Pumpkin: of anticipation…
Pumpkin: for now that I know that It is out………
Pumpkin: and that I do not have it my body begins to waste………..
Pumpkin: I beg of thou, oh most merciful and compassionant majesty…..
Pumpkin: to grant me a repreive…..
Pumpkin: so that I may live….
Pumpkin: and thy money and effort shall not be in vain…
Pumpkin: So To make a long tale short
Pumpkin: I beg of you …
Pumpkin: buy The Icebound Land (Ranger’s Apprentice, Book 3) by John Flanagan NOW
Pumpkin: Lest I fall down and die at they wonderful non-stinky feet
Mom: awwww and you were doing SO WELL…
Pumpkin: I can start again
Mom: oh no… that will be QUITE sufficient… for this book anyway
Pumpkin: If it please thee to grant the humble wish of the un-worthy and VERY stinky bunny-keeper…
Pumpkin: and If she were to pay for it..
Mom: oh well, one does have the ability to redeem ones begging self, doesn’t one…
Pumpkin: woulds’t thou also get the 4th book wich I justnoticed at the very bottom of the screen???Mom: you are SO good…
Pumpkin: Shall I start again?
Mom: no, that is quite sufficient. boon granted.
Pumpkin: I thought it best to take it slow
Pumpkin: and THANK you
Mom: yw.
Pumpkin: Oh merciful OnePumpkin: we are drooling all over the key board down here
Mom: we?
Pumpkin: Yep
Pumpkin: Still in shakesperian type mode
Mom: ah ha
Mom: uh dearest?
Mom: you DO realize this is a PRE order?
Pumpkin: Noooooo
Pumpkin: I didn’t
Mom: ordered anyway as a pre order
Pumpkin: but I’ll settle for that
Pumpkin: THANK YOU
Pumpkin: AM DOING CARTWHEELS
Mom: yw
Pumpkin: ON THE CEILING
What can I say? The child can beg with such class… heaven forbid she realize how fun that was and decide she wants yet more books…
08.09.06
Poetry…
Precious (10yo) is into poetry. Oh, I knew she liked it… mainly because I keep finding one of our big volumes of poetry out around her favorite parts of the house… but who knew she had such good TASTE? (Not to mention the serious pride issues I get from my severely dyslexic child loving poetry. *snort chuckle*) Today she chose the following poem to use for penmanship practice…
Even Such is Time by Sir Walter Ralegh
Even such is time that takes in trust,
Our youth, our joys, our all we have,
And pays us but with age and dust,
Who in the dark and silent grave,
When we have wandered all our ways,
Shuts up the story of our days.
But from this earth, this grave, this dust,
My God shall raise me up, I trust.
We may have to get her some more volumes of poetry for her upcoming birthday. 
07.09.06
The Lair of the Librarian…
Librarians are unsung heroes. We have a home library, it has taken years of work to catalog and maintain, not to mention new acquisitions… and the process has given me an appreciation for Librarians unlike almost any other profession. The office of Librarian must be one of the most anal-retentive jobs on the face of the earth, and also the most masochistic. After all, so much work and effort to achieve and maintain order… and then they OPEN THE DOORS and LET US IN! How they manage to not SNARL at the NERVE of the intrepid souls who touch the sacred shelves is beyond me, ok, that’s a lie, snarling I’d understand… it’s the RESTRAINT of not KILLING US that boggles the mind…
Those who know me best are laughing by now. They know what brought this on… Yes, I have been cataloging books once again in preparation for the new school term, always necessary before planning the lessons for said term. Once cataloged, the books must be shelved and as they are NEW, room must be made on already groaning bookcases for the new arrivals. Shelving books in our home library is not unlike walking into a child’s room for the first time in six months. The disorder apparent at first glance is deceptive, greater evil is afoot beneath the sheen of disarray and if it is not yet radioactive, it is not for lack of effort. For the bookcases, this translates into books shelved improperly… adults in the juvenile section, 550’s in the 590’s – or vice versa, books pushed behind others so as to be invisible when searching spines… all manner of evil to the librarians eye, and all done by those most HELPFUL of creatures… the children.
One of those children made the mistake of entering the Lair of the Librarian while she was at work. The Librarian (me) barked a request of intent to said child… and as this was the ELDEST child who’s self-preservation instinct is the more reliable, said child stopped cold in it’s tracks and carefully swivelled it’s eyes round to the Librarian and cautiously said, “I was going to get a book?” with the proper inquisitive tone. The face of the Librarian must have given away the carnivorous desires lurking deep within, because the look on said child’s face instantly changed and it said, “but I really don’t need to do that right now!” At which the beast within the Librarian grumbled a bit over the lost meal, as it watched said child back slowly away from the books… and if that beast muttered something along the lines of ‘my precious’… well, what Librarian would blame it?
In a few days, when the Librarian has finished the job and has exchanged the Librarian hat for the one which says Teacher, when the books currently lurking forgotten in the recesses of the house have been read and reread by… those creatures… and the Teacher is once again lost in the planning stages of the next school term, the children will again enter the Lair of the (now dormant) Librarian and gleefully pillage the shelves for stories and other lore for yet another term in safety under the more benevolent eye of Teacher or Mom… but the Librarian only slumbers and who knows when she will awake…
06.29.06
Girl Speak/Boy Speak…
So my eldest has found a book in the ‘grown up/great literature’ section that doesn’t look boring… and finally found one of my favorite authors… Alexandre Dumas. The book is The Man in the Iron Mask. We happened to have it taped, so watched the movie last night. She is definitely hooked. Dh and I teased her about her not liking it, so why didn’t she let US have a go… to which she instantly assumed ‘penitentiary meal position’, book clutched protectively to her chest, shoulders hunched, eyebrows furrowed ferociously… entire posture screaming TOUCH MY BOOK AND DIE. To which I responded, but Pumpkin, the GROWN UP section doesn’t HAVE any GOOD books! (quoting her own words back to her of course) Did you KNOW that you can exaggerate the above posture? It takes GREAT talent and skill, and a substantial helping of Pubescent Hormone Therapy, but it IS possible. I have witnessed it.
Fast forward to poolside today, the neighbor boys are playing in the water with the girls, and Pumpkin, in true enthusiastic bibliovore fashion, inquires if this young man, a few years her junior, has read The Man in the Iron Mask. To which he replies, “The comic book?” The discussion went downhill from there, until I finally had to step in and explain to him that she meant a REGULAR book and that she wasn’t simply confused re: comic book titles, and to HER that there were comic book titles somewhat similar. I could tell that Pumpkin was somewhat frustrated… he was a BOY after all, and this was a really fabulous book with lots of heroism and chivalry and battle and stuff… SURELY he had read it… In the end, no, he hadn’t read the book. End conversation.
And they say we TEACH these differences… 
06.16.06
Hemingway…
Not long ago I posted about a large number of school books having arrived. One of those books has finally been read by one of the girls… Hemingway’s Old Man and the Sea, finally finished….. by Cricket! Nine years old! Pumpkin’s reading The Hobbit in two days as a 7 year old still holds the Most Impressive Read Award, but I have to say this one is a very. close. second. I asked her what she thought of it, to which she replied, “It was good, but I felt sorry for the fish.” 
Book Fever
I went in to tuck my oldest daughter in for the night last night and got an unusual response to my usual ‘Sweet dreams’. She muttered,”Not likely.” 
I, of course, questioned such melancholy only to find it due to a BOOK! Here I’m wondering what slipped through the safeguards that would give her such trouble… after all, this child watches movies all the time that would give another nightmares with no trouble at all. The book was second in a new favorite series (loosely based on the Rangers from Tolkien’s LOTR series), recently released. She had come to the end of the book only to find a cliffhanger of an ending. This was a hardcover and there was a blip on the author along with a picture in the back flyleaf. As Pumpkiin was wailing about the long wait until the next book came out and how awful it was going to be, and how she wasn’t going to be able to sleep for thinking of what might happen next etc et al… She all of a sudden interjects a new problem. She said, “I’ve SEEN this author (the pic), and he’s a STORYTELLER (our family’s term for a person of senior citizen type age as a result of their being a wonderfully inexhaustable fount of stories)!!! WHAT if he DIES before he finishes the next book!?!?!?! THEN where will we be????” Mumbling something conciliatory, I picked up the book and headed to bed myself. First thing I did upon opening the book to read it, was turn to the back flyleaf and check out the author’s picture. I like the series too, just how close ARE we to that horrid possibility of author’s death? Shouting with laughter I hollered across the hall to her room, “PUMPKIN! That poor man isn’t any older than your FATHER!” I heard some sheepish mumbling reply… and I do think she got to sleep… eventually.
06.10.06
Book boxes on the porch…
So I recently placed an order for some books we’d need for the next year of history. This time from Barnes & Noble since I had MyPoints book money to spend there. Thus, boxes turned up on my porch today. The reaction was very. amusing. I was napping at the time and Precious, my severely dyslexic 10 yr old, burst through the door (without knocking as is our rule) to ask if I KNEW that there were FIVE boxes of books on the porch? I gave her instructions, which did NOT involve opening said boxes. When I got up, my eldest was waiting for me. She was wanting me to call her when I got ready to open the boxes because she didn’t want Precious to have first dibs on anything good therein. Finally, when I sat at my desk, computer whirring busily with multiple windows open and conversations going, to open the boxes I had children hovering over me. Finally, I had to assure them that they would get to see the books and I would CALL them if anything of interest to them had arrived before they would leave me to open boxes in peace.
The books received in this shipment are as follows:
- 1984 by George Orwell
- Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller
- Mein Kampf by Hitler
- Invitation to the Classics by Cowan and Guiness
- The Old Man and the Sea by Hemingway
- Western Civilizaton by Jackson J. Spielvogel
- Christianity and Liberalism by J. Gresham Machen
- Reflections on the Revolution in France by Edmund Burke
- The Anti-Federalist Papers and the Constitutional Convention Debates byRalph Ketcham
The titles in blue were the ones that sounded good to Precious after a brief perusal (and an explanation about what the last one was about). The eldest hasn’t seen them yet. As a friend recently stated, no battle plan survives contact with the enemy, and these books weren’t purchased for the 10 yr old anyway (yet) but it will be interesting to see if she actually chooses to read any of them.
I would be most content if my children grew up to be the kind of people who think decorating consists mostly of building enough bookshelves. ~Anna Quindlen, “Enough Bookshelves,” New York Times, 7 August 1991
