7 Catch Up Takes

7 Catch Up Takes October 9, 2015

One
Looks like seven quick takes is seven years old this month. The Internet must be growing up, by now, into something sophisticated and mature. Certainly quick takes has aided in that hope and dream. Can’t remember the first time I linked up but I have loved the form, over the years–the concentrated effort to say seven whole things before 8:30 in the morning, each thought considered and completed. It is the antidote to never being able to speak out a whole sentence, uninterrupted by children or phone. Yesterday, for example, and this is probably because I’ve been away, I was not able to say more than half a word to anyone without a bevy of children coming in at the critical moment to destroy the remembrance of what I was trying to say.

Two
The children were glad to see me, for a short while. We sat around for a long time while they told me everything and then I went over to church and made chicken noodle soup for the first time in my life. Shepherd’s Bowl cooking was exactly the right thing for the level of mental concentration available to me. And it’s good for me not to cook the same thing over and over and over again.
Three
If a week of school goes reasonably well, I keep Fridays as Reading Day, meaning that I read out lots and lots of extra books that are not in our chosen curriculum. It’s my way of stuffing them with stuff other people expect them to know in hopes that they will appear to be as reasonably educated as the culture in general. I instituted this long ago after we had spent a year on Rome, and enjoyed it very much, but were maligned by some little kid full interrogating judgment. We were enjoying some days at a far off camp site, trying to rest from our labors, and this other little kid assaulted them with a volley of observations and questions like, “well, you don’t look ten” and “who killed Abraham Lincoln” and “I’m going to tell my mom that you’re walking around the camp by yourselves and she’s going to go tell the office.” After mentally homeschooling this kid for several weeks, and instructing my own children in a variety of nasty comebacks (which I thought better of and told them never to use) and then, after careful consideration, I instituted Friday Reading Day for art, music, cultural information, fun science, American history (which we will, I swear, eventually get to formally) and anything else that strikes our fancy.
Four
Friday Reading has not only born the fruit of better relatability to other annoying children, it has unstuck me from my regular manner of homeschooling which is a panicked rush through material without taking time to enjoy it and talk to the children. I do love to talk, but it can be hard to talk to children especially if they’re always talking at you. Friday Reading has slowed everything down and made a way for intellectual curiosity and exploration, for asking questions and looking for an answer to them right then and there.
Five
The weather says there’s a ninety percent chance of rain today. That sounds delightful. We’ll all stay in and drive each other crazy. What could be more charming.

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Six
Going to try and pray more than the Prayer of Jonah this month. It has obviously served me well over the past many months, witness that I’m alive and not dead, but I feel that perhaps my praying could be slightly more. Like maybe I could return to actually praying for other people, in more than a panic when they ask me. I know, it’s a novel idea, and probably useless (just kidding) but I’m totally going to give it the good old college try.
Seven
Also, I’m going to clean the kitchen. ‘Of course,’ you say, ‘of course you’re going to clean the kitchen.’ ‘No really,’ I repost, ‘I am definitely going to clean the kitchen, including the floor.’ That will be the fun thing I do this weekend. While I do that, Go Read More and Better Quick Takes!


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