in search of a dream to call home
I absolutely cannot stop listening to this song, so I thought I’d share it with you. It is the official version, so you have to actually go to YouTube to watch it. But it’s worth it.
httpv://youtu.be/zNtDe7hfETQ
Fashionable Italian hippies recreating Woodstock in Amsterdam, and Laura Pausini by firelight. What’s not to love?… Read more
The title of this post was the sign my college roommate posted in the kitchen of our six-person apartment my freshman year. It was made even funnier by the fact that her last name was Kitchen. I adored my roommate, but I’m afraid I was one of the offenders. Between my untidy housekeeping and the fact that I was always coming home at odd hours having forgotten my key, and knocking on our bedroom window to be let in, I was lucky we were such good friends. I guess maybe she figured I would grow up someday.
And maybe I have.… Read more
Since we are at present a one-car family (as opposed to being a zer0-car family during a good portion of the last couple of years abroad), sometimes we have to get creative about getting all our transportation worked out. Today the children and I took Tony in to work so we could grocery shop. He works from home in the afternoons, so we picked him up after spending some time lunching in the park.
It worked perfectly. Our only problem was how to fit in the homeschooling we normally do between 10:00 and 11:30. Fortunately, most of our schoolbooks are available as audiobooks on librivox, so we can take them along in the car.… Read more
Now that the spiders are gone (hurrah for my non-squeamish husband), I’d like to invite you all to visit. You’ve been dying to come to Disneyworld for ages anyway, right?
Since we’ve had no immediate takers in the visitor department, here’s the first installment in my little virtual home tour.
First of all, I can’t even begin to say how in love I am with our new house. This may be partially a result of the fact that we haven’t lived in our own house with our own stuff for two whole years. Oh, and there’s the little matter that this is move number twenty of our eight-year marriage (you do the math). … Read more
Like Axa, I’m O.K. with snakes. Lizards don’t bother me, even if they’re crawling on me. I can pick up snails, and I have even petted a slug at (Axa’s request, of course). But arthropods. Oh, arthropods. I do not do arthropods.
Due to nature study, and my commitment to helping my children say “ohhhh!” not “ewwww!” when they see an insect, I can now get on tolerably well with ants, ladybugs, crabs, praying mantises, and even beetles (and by “getting on” I mean literally letting them get on me and not freaking out). This has been a long and painful process, and I’m still working on the occasional flare up of internal anti-insect sentiment.… Read more
Nope, it wasn’t alligators; just snakes. And they weren’t in our backyard. We actually had to go looking for them. The Lyonia Environmental Center next to the library sponsored a 1 1/2 hour talk on local reptiles. Axa and Raj sat raptly through the whole presentation, which was very well done, I thought, by the seventeen-year-old daughter of the president of the Lake Region Audobon Society.
At the end of the presentation, they let everyone (everyone who wanted to, that is) come up and hold the snakes. Raj consented to touch a snake with one finger only, but Axa was in poikilothermic heaven.… Read more
So far, every homeschooling term seems to be more interesting than the last (at least to me; my kids might think differently). I wonder if this can continue indefinitely. This term we started Ambleside Online Year 2, which focuses on the Middle Ages.
We did get interrupted halfway through the second week with the job offer that brought us to Florida. Between finding housing, flying out here, packing and unpacking, and everything else, zero formal school happened for a good three weeks. Of course, that doesn’t at all mean that no learning happened. The process of moving to a new place is always a rich opportunity for learning and growing.… Read more
I don’t know that I’ve ever moved somewhere I couldn’t find lots of things to like. But Florida seems to have more than its share of fun and beautiful things. First of all is the scenery. Maybe it’s just that we’re coming straight from tumbleweed country, but Florida feels like a jungle. All I can see out my back window is trees. Out of the front window I see my neighbors across the street, and then more trees.
We spent Axa’s birthday at Daytona Beach, which according to itself is “The Most Famous Beach in the World.” It was certainly the widest beach I’d ever seen–wider even than L.A.… Read more
Well, we’ve already accomplished our New Year’s resolution — a new job. It took us a little farther away than we anticipated, but we’re always up for that. So we have a new home too. And we’ve finally unpacked all our furniture and belongings and books!
It’s certainly not our farthest move ever–a mere 2500 miles. As I write from my long-neglected roll-top desk, it’s a balmy 75 degrees outside. Axa has already caught a number of frogs and lizards. The beach is a half hour away. And just as a bonus, we don’t have to decipher rental contracts or public transportation systems in a foreign language.… Read more
I’ve been reading a lot of books about Italy and the Middle East lately, and this week I have some really wonderful ones for you.
Figs, Dates, Laurel, and Myrrh: Plants of the Bible and the Quran by Lytton John Musselman
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
What did Eve really eat in the Garden of Eden? Which plant produced Christ’s crown of thorns? Are the “lilies of the field” actually poppies? Not your ordinary Biblical commentary, Musselman’s book concentrates exclusively on the flora of the Bible and the Qur’an. The author is a respected botanist who has lived in and conducted research throughout the Middle East for many years.… Read more