And So The Long Day Wore On

I woke up during the night to the sound of rain and a child crying with a headache. The count this morning of children sick and crying is…let me see…one, two, three, four, five…is it possible that the baby has so far escaped? She is driving everyone crazy with her cheerful good health and condescension, “Say please Marigold, and I will give you the book.” Gak.

Yesterday, not knowing that disease and death were almost certainly upon us, I blithely snapped badly out of focus pictures all day of moments that might possibly be construed as amusing. Clearly nothing like any of this will happen to day. I think I will put everyone in chairs and couches with blankets and Kleenex and allow only sleeping, or something. I'm the worst when anyone is sick. I feel personally affronted. “Buck up” I say, “it's not that bad. Stop moaning.”

So anyway, yesterday was long, and it began with the discovery that I had neglected to turn on the dishwasher the night before and so no one had their proper mug at breakfast. I dug around in the cupboard and distributed into the hands of my thin weak children these vats of hot liquid.

It was pancake day. And it is true, making the pancake batter the night before does produce lighter fluffier pancakes. But also, because the batter is so settled, I found it impossible to make them round.

Alouicious was already feeling better yesterday, as the others were beginning to descend into the valley of illness. He forced himself to eat six pancakes, and drink a large mug of coffee. Then he wrote a poem. A long poem, a page long. It was so long I said I had to read it later, by which I meant today.

Elphine has been working on the same four lines of a poem for two days, trying to rhyme flower and bower and…? She is very frustrated. Why all the poems? Well, for whatever reason, in a moment of anger, I commanded everyone to write a poem, and now it's turned into some leviathan. Marigold and Gladys are always shouting at me, “I want to write a poem!” and waving paper and pencil in my face. Gladys insists she has to “write a whole book of poems” “right now”. It's exhausting.

That sounded like a humble brag. Surely having a pack of children clambering to write poetry must be construed as a homeschool success. I ought not to complain. Except that it's so much work for me. So. Much. Work. And I am terrible at poetry. I can read poems. I can memorize them. Writing them is entirely another matter.

Anyway, where was I? After the poem and some math and me finally pulling myself together, we started school at like 11:39 or something. We've been reading Proverbs, very very slowly, but due to questioning and something or other about the chatechism, we read Lazerus and the rich man. And while we were talking about the Soul that Can Never Die, Marigold made this

“Look” she said, “it's the tomb of Jesus.” And then she said (and I realize there is no humility for me anywhere in this, but also a big amount of gratitude for Chatechsis of the Good Shepherd) “God puts the mustard seed in the ground and it grows into a big tree and the big owls and the baby birds live in it” and then she danced a little dance.

Then we went to church because it was my Shepherd's Bowl day. I labored away chopping onions and green peppers and whatever while Elphine made lunch for everyone. I think she made it overly complicated because it took her a long time but then I noticed that she was asking each person where they wanted to sit. And this was the result.

I guess it's hard to see. Basically they picked tables as far away from each other as possible except Romulus who went from one table to another to schmooze with with each and every one of his sisters. You can see, tragically, that we have to paint the big wall again.

My soup seemed to go on forever. But at some point, someone from church came to draw with the children. They have been working on portraits for several months. The teacher was particularly impressed with Gladys this week because apparently she sat and looked at the person they were supposed to draw for like ten minutes or something, without doing anything. She just looked at her. And then, as the teacher was telling everyone to wrap it up, she sketched this.

I don't know why she put boxes around the eyes. She puts boxes around everything. A box for everything and everything in its box.

We got home from church about 7:30. Well, I did. I think the children came home much earlier and helped themselves into movies and the Xbox. I think someone came running over while I was laboring away with pots and grease and said, “daddy says we can play xbox but he said to ask you” which is the usual way. And then I say, “I don't know, go ask your father” and so the long day wears on.

When I finally collapsed into a chair at home and Matt had pressed a goodly measure of gin and tonic into my tired hand, I looked over and saw the dog and cat, thus communing. The dog was grinning, as he always does, but it didn't show up in the dark. The cat was looking like she might like to leap over his back and dash off somewhere. I have caught them sometimes playing, or sleeping awfully close to each other, though neither one would be willing to admit it.

And then, when it was really past time for bed, Thin Changing from a Baby into a Girl but still kind of a Baby Elspeth came in like this.

She always has chocolate on her face because she just goes and puts her paw into the chocolate tub and licks it off, even when she's been told not to.

So there you are. Thursday, as some call it. And today is Friday, so that means the sharp slope up to Sunday. If you have a paint brush and you live in Binghamton, on Saturday we'll be painting the Big Wall. Have a great weekend!