Holiday Events and Armored Bones and Zodiacs

This has been a week of cleaning up messes. During the two weeks of book shipping I do not have time or attention to spare. This means that the fridge accumulates left overs. The piles of dirty laundry grow exponentially. The dishes don’t get out of hand, but the garbage does because we start eating food that can be microwaved in 2 minutes or less. I’ve spent the last couple of days cleaning up after all of that. Things are beginning to be more organized. Bloggable things accumulated during that time as well. So in the interests of cleaning up, here is a hodge podge of subjects:

At this time of year it seems that every organization feels a need to commemorate the Holidays. This means that my calendar is quickly cluttered with events that other people have scheduled me to attend. Naturally this leads to some conflicts. This year for maximum convenience three major events were scheduled in exactly the same time slot on the same day. This evening from 6:30-8:30 there will be Patches’ preschool concert at a nursing home, Kiki’s band concert, and a church congregation party. All of these events are for the whole family. In some ways this simplifies my planning. We can not make all of these events, so we’ll go to the only one that has course credit attached. Band concert here we come!

I grew up believing that crusts are more nutritious than the center of bread loaves. I still didn’t eat them, but I felt vaguely like I ought to. Then I grew up and learned to make bread from scratch. That was when I figured out that the only difference between bread crusts and bread is how thoroughly the bit of dough is cooked. If anything the crusts are less nutritious because they’ve been cooked more. Ever since I’ve felt vindicated in removing the crusts from my sandwiches. I even remove crusts from the sandwiches of my kids even though part of me decries this as wasteful. I have never once told a child that crusts are better for them. However somebody must have imparted this particular myth because one day I walked into the kitchen to hear Gleek very seriously telling Patches that he should eat his crusts because they would give armor to his bones. I tried to counter this piece of folklore with some scientific fact, but the kids would have none of it. They all like the idea of having armored bones. Alas this fascination with armored bones has not increased crust consumption. Instead they just speak of it very seriously when they leave the crusts on their plates.

One day Link came to me to ask very seriously which constellation he was. I was a little confused because I was pretty sure that he wasn’t a cluster of stars. Further inquiry uncovered the fact that his class had been talking about the Zodiac. Other than knowing that I’m an Aquarius I’ve never paid much attention. We went to the internet and discovered that Link’s sign is Virgo. I looked up at him and told him this. His face crinkled in dismay. He’d been hoping for the scorpion or the lion. No 10-year-old boy wants to have some girl as his symbol. I told him to wait a moment and I looked up the Chinese zodiac. We quickly discovered that Link was born in the year of the ox, as was I. He thought it was really cool that we were both Oxen. I breathed a sigh of relief that the Chinese zodiac had provided a more acceptable symbol for my boy. I remember my own dismay at being an ox when I learned about it as a child. I wished for the year of the horse. But now I’m glad to be an ox with Link because it turned the day into a happy one. For kicks we looked up the rest of our family. Link cackled with glee to learn that one sister was a snake and the other was a pig. But the highlight was discovering that Howard was born in the year of the monkey. Link practically danced with delight because he knows Howard thinks monkeys make everything funnier. Link ran off to tell his dad about the delightful discovery.