- My 10yo had a big project due today, and we were working until bedtime last night to get all the parts and pieces printed out and presented neatly. When we finished, he sighed with relief. He said, "Mom, have you ever had a big project and a deadline and you weren't sure if you could get it finished?" I said, "Yes, darling, I sure have."
- Are you sick of hearing about my dissertation? Do you wish I would stop grousing about it? Believe me, I am SO ready to stop talking about my dissertation. But it is crunch time, crunchy crunchy crunch time, and I am crunching away. Today I am trying to get chapter 4 revised. I have five chunks left, and I am going to write a quick take each time I finish one. Watch this space -- I'll see if I can get it finished by bedtime.
- I had a moment of blogger's regret when I realized that my oldest son had commented on my MathCounts post without reading the other comments. I felt churlish for not responding (belatedly, thank you all for the congratulations and good wishes and reminiscences), and especially about not remembering that Tracy had mentioned the "mathlete" thing. I asked him if he might like to comment again after reading the nice things people said about him, and he said, "This is why I don't want you to blog about me." SIGH.
If you have wondered why I rarely blog about my sons, it's because my oldest went through a stretch where he didn't want me to write about him at all, and I realized how quickly his brothers would be the same age. I remember WRITHING in embarrassment when I was in junior high and my mother talked to one of her friends about me. Imagine if she had posted it on the web! It makes a person grateful to have come of age in the era of carrier pigeons. More or less.
I mostly blog about the baby because if she does get to junior high and say, "How could you write about me like that? All those posts about how cute I was and how much you all loved me?" -- then I will tell her as lovingly as possible to get a grip. And I won't even feel guilty about it.
- On the subject of blogging about kids, it's hard to know what to blog without seeming braggy. If I restrict myself from talking about our struggles, then I'm left with telling you how super-awesome my kids are. And of course they are super-awesome, but they're also real kids and they make real messes and they do things that leave me spluttering real splutters. It's a tricky balance.
- For instance: they're really into numbers. Rob commented about thinking that "8!" in the supergeek post meant 8 factorial. They love factorials. They talk about them all the time. On the playground last fall, a kid said to Joe, "My dad could beat up your dad!" Joe said, "As if! I bet your dad doesn't even know what 8 factorial is!" I was astonished the day before yesterday, when the 10yo asked him, "What's 8 factorial?" and Joe answered right away: 40,320. Weird, huh?
It's hard to get the tone right, to make it clear that I am not saying "Behold, my genius children" -- only trying to share a snapshot of life in our family, where we all like numbers but where I am on my fourth attempt to tape the dryer vent back together. We're not so much with the handy around here, about which more later.
- Our dryer wasn't working right. It would get hot and spin the clothes
around, but it took them forever to dry. So I took it apart. (She said modestly, secretly pleased with her
hexhead-screwdriver-wielding self.) Inside I found enough lint to make
a baby sweater, enough change to buy a cup of coffee (in 1990), and
enough buttons to open a haberdashery. (A very small haberdashery.)
Also, an assortment of Lego pieces and rocks.
The dryer works much better now, except I have to tape the vent hose
again. You would think that duct tape would be just the thing for
taping ducts, but it doesn't hold. I have new tape and steely resolve
-- not to mention an alarming pile of laundry. If the PhD thing doesn't work out, maybe I can go into dryer repair.
- My brain hurts. Revising is slow. The end.
More quick takes, most of which are probably finished, are
here.
Recent Comments