Debate Tournaments and Watermelon Seeds

You know you’re getting old when a speech and debate tournament looks like this to you.

When I was a teenager, my cousins did speech and debate, and I thought it was the coolest thing ever. They might as well have been James Bond. Now, with my own teenager doing speech and debate, it looks like somebody released a 354 member cast of Spy Kids. I thought the last three days were going to be relaxing…maybe get some writing done, read a book, get some coffee. Nope. It was non stop judging, filling out judging sheets, walking to the next place to judge, freezing, eating, more walking, more judging, more freezing (clearly I didn’t pack well for the yo-yo freeze/heat cycle that is a CA spring). I don’t really enjoy judging, because a) I don’t really know what I’m doing, b) there are some “technically correct” speaking tips/tricks that are super distracting to me, but apparently everyone else thinks they’re the bees knees, c) I really hate giving extremely subjective criticism to sweet kids who have clearly worked super hard. When you judge a round you get to put a little sticker on a giant board as a way to publicly shame you into doing your allotted work. But no judgment, it helps make the tournament work. I of course totally forgot to put my stickers up.

Jim held down the fort while I was gone. I got home to Will very worriedly jabbering about giant killer watermelons. Jim explained later: Will saw him eat watermelon with seeds still in it and was so worried his daddy was going to grow a watermelon inside him, he had been watching for warning signs with a wary sense of impending doom. The only way Jim could assuage his fears was to tell him that because he didn’t eat any dirt there was no way for the watermelon to grow. Crisis averted. Parenting win.

The Spark Of Life

We dissected sheep hearts in class today. When I led this same dissection lab two years ago, I studied and poured over youtube videos and diagrams. This year a Navy nurse friend of mine led the presentation and dissection which made me realize I knew absolutely nothing. I was like a child reciting ABC’s, “Right Atrium, Right ventricle…”. I would have her back again tomorrow just so I could listen to her talk…about anything medical related. It was like having a real live“explain it like I’m five” person.

It sent me down a research spiral. Did you know that the heart of a baby fetus starts beating independent of the brain? I knew the heart always had its own electrical muscle, but I always assumed it went hand in hand with brain development inside the womb. They studied mice fetus hearts to see if they could break down exactly when that first “Spark of life” happens (pun intended?). They thought they had it figured out, but then surprise.

Check it out:

"We were surprised to find that calcium activity preceded the assembly of the machinery that does the contraction. You could imagine that the contraction machinery would have been in place first, waiting for the calcium signal to arrive, but in fact it was the other way around," said Shankar Srinivas, a professor of developmental biology at the University of Oxford, who co-led the study.

Hmmm… it’s almost like there really is a divine spark.

The calcium waves start off haphazardly in cells far apart, like lost fireflies. But then quickly—within a couple of hours—they come together to pulse in synchrony at a point when the beating becomes visible for the first time. Researchers want to find out how this switch occurs to be able to make functional heart tissue in the lab and to better understand heart disease.

3 Ways To Spark Your Kid's Imagination

I actually shouldn’t be writing about this, I should be reading about this. Somewhere in my desire to not raise kids as legalistically as I was, we developed an electronics addiction in this house. I need a step by step AA level-esque game plan to kick the habit that doesn’t include never using electronics, and isn’t full of inspirational quotes. I need it to be practical and pragmatic. Does it exist?

In the meantime, this is what works thus far.

1. Put them to work. Trying to lure my children off of electronics never works. All of their toys are boring, there’s nothing to do and it feels like they sort of wade through life waiting for the next opportunity to get on electronics…even if that’s five days away. But if I assign mopping the floor, scrubbing the toilet and raking leaves in the backyard, they all do their jobs and then magically find plenty of things with which to entertain themselves.

2. Play by yourself. Adults don’t usually sit on the floor in a batman mask and start building a giant zoo out of magnatiles and play animals. It’s like catnip. (see previous post on how I get my children to eat their vegetables.) The same mom radar that allows babies to sense when a parent is trying to lay them down in a crib, is still alive and kicking at older ages. If you build it, they will come. Good luck trying to sneak away.

3. Turn off the router. Preferably have your husband turn off the router remotely from an app for the best Deus Ex Machina effect. If they start to read the instruction manual for the router, crawl under the house to see if the Cat5 cable is still intact, and hypothesize with each other on ways to fix the internet, then at least they’re getting language arts, PE and Socratic discussions done.

I wish these were my kids, but it will never be that green here. Ahem.

How to lose weight, find the bad guy, and cure the coronavirus

An oh so helpful list to enjoy over the weekend.

1. When people ask me how I stay so fit, I tell them it’s because I have four boys. They laugh, but it’s the gospel truth. I made myself poached eggs over curried vegetables for breakfast and got approx 1.2 bites before it was consumed by my ravenous children who beg for cereal and then act like they’ve never eaten five minutes after the dishes are cleaned and the food is put away. I have a current thing for stir fries. Stir fry with udon noodles…stir fry with couscous….stir fry with lentils. But doesn’t matter what kind of stir fry it is, I rarely get to eat it. I could put fried worms and rotten fish in my stir fry and all of my children would think it was amazing. I know it’s my own fault, but they’re so cute when they ask for a bite. The problem is there are four of them and a few of them have gigantic mouths. I guess I should be grateful they’re eating vegetables.

2. Part of the reason I don’t watch many movies or TV shows is because I am the most gullible and easily spooked person ever, and pretty much have to watch every scary-ish movie sitting in Jim’s lap, clutching him in terror (which he considers a perk…especially when we were d̶a̶t̶i̶n̶g̶ courting). I need clues, big obvious clues about who to trust and who not to, which is why I was stoked to read this: “Apple won’t let bad guys use iphones in movies”. This may make me actually like iphones a little….hmmm…or not.

3. Approximately 62,000 men and 26,000 women die from alcohol related deaths every year, which means that Corona (the beer) is more deadly than the virus (Thank you Owen for that one). I thought since my kids know their Latin, they would get a kick out of something being named “crown”, but no… they instead think it’s hilarious to pretend like they’re popping open a can and then clutching their throat and dying violently on the ground. I’m trying to nip such behavior in the bud, but it’s not going well. We haven’t been hit by the Corona virus, but we have had some lingering coughs here, and it rekindled my love for the Lobelia herb. Seriously works amazing on coughs, but tastes like death. My husband says that it cures your cough by making you never want to breath again. I use this one, but if you use it, don’t blame me if you sprout horns out of your tongue.

You say Beetle juice, I say Betelgeuse (and a canceled star funeral)

We had to send back the flowers, and cancel the dirge musicians. My astronomy class was planning an epic goodbye to one of their favorite stars (because who doesn’t like saying “Betelgeuse”), but it looks like those plans may be on hold. The so called super giant used to be in the top 15 brightest stars, but had faded so drastically in the last month that people who know things (but apparently don’t really know things) said it was going to explode and be gone. <cue the hired dirge>

…but it’s made a miraculous recovery!

Rumors of Betelgeuse’s impending death have been greatly exaggerated. The red supergiant star appears to be in no danger of imminently exploding, even though a recent, dramatic dip in brightness hinted that it could be on its last legs. The latest observations reveal instead that the star is starting to regain its former light.

It’s still looking a little weird though. Charlie and I were taking out the trash last night and noticed it’s blinking and flickering rather oddly…more so than it did a few months ago. So maybe it’s not out of the woods yet. We’re having a hard time picturing Orion without a shoulder. Does this mean the scorpion finally got him? Is Zeus reneging on his deal with Artemis? So many questions, but I think we should still have that star-watching goodbye party.

Socrates would roll over in his grave if he saw the iphone, and a Saxon Math lifesaving hack

Came across this quote today from Socrates. I’m not sure if this was his opinion, or if he was explaining someone else’s opinion, but he clearly would have done well in the viral article world of social media. This excerpt from Phaedrus, could almost be an epic rant against electronics instead of an epic rant against books.

[Writing] will create forgetfulness in the learners’ souls, because they will not use their memories; they will trust to the external written characters and not remember of themselves. The specific which you have discovered is an aid not to memory, but to reminiscence, and you give your disciples not truth, but only the semblance of truth; they will be hearers of many things and will have learned nothing; they will appear to be omniscient and will generally know nothing; they will be tiresome company, having the show of wisdom without the reality.

In completely unrelated news, if you or someone you know is suffering from Saxon Math disease (the illness is best diagnosed by these symptoms: unfinished lessons, uncorrected lessons and general wailing and gnashing of teeth). A fellow math triage mom pointed me in the direction of mymathassistant.com and I can’t believe nobody told me about it sooner. It doesn’t replace the Saxon math books, but it gives your dear child a place to write down the answers. Unlike the real world where lessons may or may not get graded, the web service gives them instant feedback so they know whether they need to re-work the problem right then and there or move on to the next one (in the parent controls you can set how many attempts they’re allowed to have). At the end of the lesson, I get an email telling me how many were correct the first try etc. It’s like manna from heaven.

Work smarter, not harder…just don’t tell Socrates?

Pineal Gland, Repentance, and Smooth Moves

Or as I screw up and say it “Pineleal gland, repenitence and smeeoooth moves, which is totally unintentional, but in my opinion an improvement. (despite my husband dying of laughter every time I say stuff like this).

When I found out a few of my kids have legit auditory processing issues, I realized that it probably comes from me. Somehow I sidestepped the more difficult parts of an auditory processing problem by burying my long-skirted, homeschooled, nearsighted self in books where everything makes perfect sense (or not…but at least it’s all clear cut).

So take this with a giant grain of salt, but I had an epiphany the other day: What if listening to music or watching something on a screen is the same difference as watching somebody eat vs ingesting food, or watching someone have sex vs actually having it? There is absolutely no comparison between listening to a symphony (even if it’s on $300 headphones), and being in a symphony hall. Listening to an old message of a loved who has passed away is never going to be as good as actually having them in front of you. What if we’ve been sold so much on listening devices (I blame the inventor of the phonograph) that no one can actually play instruments in their home? Live?

I read a book(ish) on the the pineal glad (i.e. the intersection of ancient thought and modern thought, which is my kind of book, you can buy it here). Your pineal gland (located in your brain) has always been called the 3rd eye, but the only real thing we know about it these days is that it regulates melatonin and other circadian rythym things, but they think it’s very sensitive to music. Also, calcification is bad.

There’s an interesting study on it here.

They say organ music opens the pineal gland because of the vibrations. As I cried through a hymn in church today, I wondered if that’s why we have organs in churches the same way some churches have amazing stained glass.

Whatever the case, an open pineleal gland really helps with the repenitence.

Winter Break, Purple Cabbage and Dirt

It’s a break week from CC and cottage school, which I always thinks entails lots of sleep, books read, pancakes and trips to the library and beach. Instead I find myself in a messy house trying to conjugate “voco”, answer a question on absolute value of numbers, and vacuum up an exploded sensory bin while my two youngest burrow holes in a laundry pile that is so large it has them realistically pretending to be prairie dogs.

In better news, I finished “French Double Digging” my garden. It has only taken me a month and a half, which means I should have it planted by August. Robbie did me a solid and drank all of the pickle juice out of the abandoned jar in the back of the fridge, so we were able to conduct one of those 24 hr soil tests where you put some soil and water in a jar, shake it up, wait 24 hours and see what your sand to clay ratio is (or something like that, I’m clearly not an expert yet). I also need to perform a PH test, but I’m torn between buying some Ph strips off of Amazon or steam distilling water and using purple cabbage as a natural ph strip (because let’s face it, half the reason I’m gardening is to see if I would survive a Zombie apocalypse and I’m guessing “2 day Prime shipping” and “Ph strips” aren’t going to be in the common vernacular during a zombie apocalypse).

We did have french toast for breakfast, and we have slept in, so I’m counting those both as wins. We haven’t gone to the beach, but William built a giant marine aquarium out of mud, water and plastic animals so again…clearly I can check that off the list.

Maybe tomorrow the kids can reorganize the bookshelves, we can call that a “Library Day”, and I can count this winter break as a win all the way around.

The Moorish Pirate Named Christopher Columbus and/or The Search For New Blogs

I’ve been on a Christopher Columbus kick lately, mainly because my eldest is on an anti- Christopher Columbus kick and has been regaling us with all of the horrific monstrous things Columbus is accused of doing. Did you know he allegedly was possibly a pirate/privateer against the Moors? (it’s hard to tell…they didn’t have social media and Alexa in those days to track everybody). In fact, it’s hard to tell much of anything about Columbus since so many of the accusations and heroics are steeped in politics and scandal. Not much has changed. Regardless, it is fairly impressive that the landlubbing son of a weaver ended up sailing across the Atlantic ocean before the Middle Ages were barely over. That would be like one of my kids ending up in the NFL.

You can read his actual logbooks here: The Journal Of Christopher Columbus

“Pinta” is not the actual name of one of the three ships, it was the nickname sailors gave it. It means “Prostitute”. Fun to think about next time you’re singing the CC song with a bunch of four year olds. The Santa Maria crashed into a reef on Christmas Eve which I’m sure was a bummer for the crabs, coral and the men who had to bail everything out and haul it to shore while Santa Claus was making his rounds. Fun to think about next time the holidays are a bit tetchy with the relatives.

I noticed the other day that my blog list is getting rather slim and I find myself skimming looking for new ones. Any recommendations? I like variety so the genre doesn’t matter. Or did everyone move on to other platforms. Sometimes I feel like the last person left who still prefers reading things over watching youtube, tiktok, or listening to podcasts.

The healing tank, 9 boys & a girl, and an overgrown playhouse

Tall pine trees, a sturdy three story house riddled by woodpeckers and the only thing that’s missing are all of my siblings saying goodnight like the Walton’s. My parent’s home is like a Star Wars’ healing bacta tank…although it maybe shouldn’t be since my dad broke his hip on a broken beam over the garage when I was eleven, and my sister Liz and I raised and schooled our younger siblings in the overgrown playhouse in the backyard while our parents worked at building a house from the ground up like Ma and Pa Ingalls. (I’m trying to see how many of my favorite childhood movies I can fit in.)

It’s currently inundated with a zoo of boys (and one adorable girl who gave me my first Disney makeover). When Jim and Kevin were college roommates, I don’t think either one off them pictured this one day.