Life's been good to me so far

This is a pretty good school day. I had everyone up and eating oatmeal before Isaac had to be at school. We did have to scrape the dried gum off the back of his neck before he went, and Aaron and Jake were pretty angry with me about Monday morning early rising, but hey.

Ananda and I went through some online lists of educational offerings on Netflix, and we picked a few that could be supplemental to the day (anything from BBC: Nature or National Geographic, or episodes of Cosmos - BUT JUST ONE MYTHBUSTERS PER DAY, PERIOD! :p). After the homeschooled kids did their chores, and Ananda and I spoke to her Marine Science teacher on the phone, they watched those shows for about 2 hours.

Since then, and lunch (reheated italian soup from last night), Annie's submitted a Marine Science essay based on articles about endangered coral reefs, and a guitar video (of herself), and has been working on a drawing that is supposed to convince me she needs a bigger sketchbook ever since. She's using an online tutorial and there is no peeking allowed.

Aaron picked an old National Geographic off the shelf to write a report on something inside of.

After I gave Elise a bath, she came with me to pick up Isaac. He has peer tutoring for half an hour after school on Mondays and Wednesdays (and regular tutoring before school on some days). She wanted to learn a bunch of F words, so we wrote out a few (family, fairy, five, etc) a couple of times and then made word cards with them. Now she's doing the "ABC" section of her Brainquest K book.

Jake spent about an hour on Brainquest today, half BURNING THROUGH math that is easy-peasy for him, and the other half doing reading and writing at a regular pace.

We're in a pretty good rhythm. For Ananda, for instance, she has 3 online courses right now (high school level Marine Science and guitar, and 6th grade level Civics - she's actually a 7th grader but it's all working out). On Mondays, Tuesdays and Wednesdays she has to submit at least two assignments per day to virtual school - she has to make sure two per week per course at minimum get submitted. She also has to do a 2 page rough draft and then a final draft book report (on her choice of book; she reads enough that it's never an issue), and at least 4 math assignments, for me each week, as baseline minimum homeschooling. So a lot of that but not all gets done on Thursdays and Fridays.

Aaron I tend to get two kumon math or one writing assignment per day out of; they're split about evenly between reports on nonfiction things I make him read and creative writing/journaling (I let him pick between the two). I want more but we're actually getting to a point where THIS is done consistently. He's also somewhat happier and more active, since his cast came off, and will be dancing again starting Wednesday. He uses a lot of his free time on FL studios making and sharing keyboard music, and planning the Deadmau5 head he's going to make out through various means including paper mache.

The two of them went camping in the Everglades with TLC for Izzy's birthday, this weekend. She came home covered in mosquito bites and a sunburn, both of which are lingering; he is paranoid enough about bug bites that he stayed completely covered the entire time.

I am off to wing some stuffed peppers for dinner.

I've had a very full week.

Today, Grant and I took Aaron and Elise out. We dropped him at dance, and took her with us to the Apple store to look at a laptop Grant dropped that's having some kind of problems which he made worse trying to open up and fix himself. The four of us had lunch at Panera and walked around the Falls (where the Apple store is) as we waited for our appointment.

Whenever I'm in the Apple store, I'm struck by how wildly aesthetically pleasing it is. So monochromatic and sleek, without being cold. So spacious, even when packed. It seems very significant that all the employees walking around are normal people. You can get a 19 year old girl, or someone middle aged, or anyone, to help you at the Apple store - the standard weird IT guy vibe is just not present. They have a whole table surrounded by bean bag chairs where kids can sit and play on iPads. The funniest part of this is that nearby, employees are patiently teaching middle aged people to use their new iPads - but nobody has to teach the toddlers or preschoolers. They just hop on and start playing games while someone explains the things to their parents. It makes me think adults should consider handing their own mystifying iPads to their four year olds at home - "Can you please show Mommy how to get on the internet?"

It's been a pretty calm day. Grant and I took a nap. He mowed the grass and fixed the library table and washed some dishes. I went through some bags of clothes someone gave us, with the kids, and cleaned up the library and reorganized the shelves, with Ananda, and made dinner - chicken with mushrooms, mac n cheese, steamed broccoli and our new favorite side dish, sliced cold cucumbers with soy sauce and sesame seeds.

Elise fell asleep in my lap a little while ago, as we talked quietly, and then Grant came and carried her off to bed.

The week, though, I don't even know where to begin.


Florence and the Machine was AMAZING Wednesday night. I mean. There just are not words. Grant and I took Ananda. Izzy babysat my other kids. She got here at around 4, and then Annie and I went and met Grant at his job, grabbed some food and headed over to the show.

It was Annie's first concert, and my first non-Tori Amos big concert (I've seen Tori 3 times, and a bunch of small shows and outdoor events and things for no-name and local acts). Grant had been to see Radiohead previously. She used saved allowance money to get a necklace before it started, and I got the Lungs record to hang on the wall because the cover is beautiful. In case you don't know, records are now widely available for this, and since nobody has a record player they all come with free downloads of the album on MP3, which is somewhere between clever and ridiculous. Like, Urban Outfitters now has a whole big vinyl section, with a freakin' display of "album frames," it's kind of silly.

Our seats were pretty good. 10th row, but down a bit from the stage (which was at one end of an oval arena that is sometimes for NHL hockey games - the central floor area was general admission). We had some cool talking and new facebook liking before the show started, because the row behind was filled with an entire roller derby team. I shared how Grant and I both got separate speeding tickets the same day last year while listening to Florence's Drumming Song, and how she really owes us over $400. The woman who runs Elise's old preschool was there, too, with her husband, and we met up a bit and were texting.

Their opening act was ok. Bass laden ambient alternative rock, I guess - The Maccabees. Overall I was impatient for them to stop because, come on, I was really excited for the main event. I drank a double rum and coke while they played in the hopes that I could manage to stand for the entirety of Florence's set, and jump around and dance like a fool, without any weird back/hip/foot pain (that worked really well, incidentally, combined with the adrenaline from being there and how much it rocked - but I was paying for it bigtime later, I couldn't let anything at all touch my foot the whole way home in the van O_o).

So yeah. Giant swish of fabric uncovering the huge golden harp, and lights off dark, and wow. The set changed in so many ways for each different song, just brilliant. HER ENERGY is infectious and astounding and seriously entertaining. She sang the first song (Only If For A Night, my latest new favorite) standing there at the mic stand, and then Drumming Song came on (I turned to the roller derby girl like THIS SONG and she laughed) and as the music went wild Florence broke away from the stand and started running jumping leaping laughing all over the stage as she wailed like she does. Lungs is right :p

She was wearing this gorgeous black and red floor length gown that had ripped up the side backstage. Between songs at one point she explained that she'd safety pinned it but one of them came out as she danced, and went in her foot, so she had to take a minute to fix it. Have I mentioned I love this woman? I may be in love with this woman.

Rabbit Heart was next, and that is a song I have some deep personal history with on several levels. She talked beforehand about raising up people you were there with who you loved - your friend, or spouse, or lover, or someone you gave birth to.

The looking glass, so shiny and new
How quickly the glamor fades
I start spinning slipping out of time
Was that the wrong pill to take?
You made a deal and now it seems you have to offer up
But will it ever be enough?
It's not enough
Raise it up, raise it up -
Here I am, a rabbit hearted girl
Frozen in the headlights
It seems I've made the final sacrifice

It sounded great live, and it was making me cry at that volume, this song was right in with my worst moments and the time that inspired me changing a lot of things in my life - and then she ran down off the stage, into the general admission crowd, right past us and was dancing barefoot and wild with her floor length ripped dress hiked up to her knees, at the other end of the floor, before racing back to the stage, somehow without getting mobbed.

This is a gift, it comes with a price
Who is the lamb and who is the knife
When Midas is king and he holds me so tight
And turns me to gold in the sunlight

I must become a lion hearted girl
Ready for a fight
Before I make the final sacrifice

It was just great. Cosmic Love was after that - I could die happy.

She did Between Two Lungs, and No Light, No Light - which is my current speeding ticket endangerment song - and so many great songs. Everything I really wanted to hear. There were two slower songs everyone sat down for and they were good, but then the single organ note at the beginning of Shake it Out started and the entire place (over 10,000 people) leaped to their feet at once screaming and she drew it out, that one note as she talked to us forever about Florida and going out that night and regretting it in the morning and so on with her lovely british accent.

I don't even normally really like Shake it Out but I was there screaming the lyrics with Annie everytime she turned the mic towards the crowd, thinking YES what is this I can never leave the past behind, I can see no way, I can see no way and now everytime it comes on Pandora I tear up. I swear I'm turning into one of those Michael Jackson fangirls you'd see tearing their hair out and getting wheeled out unconscious by paramedics in the front rows in the 80s :p Not quite, but really she puts on a great show. It gave Grant this whole existential crisis just to see a human being fully realizing their potential that way - that she's unleashing all this passion and nobody can get enough of it. That she's travelling the world jumping and dancing and singing her heart out and 10,000 people at a shot pay money to come be a part of it.

It was really good stuff. They made us shriek and howl for awhile before they pranced back out for the encore, which started as What The Water Gave Me. The gates to the floor were opened and people streamed down and out into the main area in front of the stage, and Ananda and I raced down for that. Then she (Flo) did this big you guys are gonna jump up and down for me thing and started Dog Days Are Over and everyone lost their minds, we jumped laughing hysterically with our hair in each others' faces the whole song and then stumbled out arm and arm with Annie raving that it was the most awesome thing that's ever happened in all of history.

So yes, that was fabulous. I'm extremely glad I went, and happy everytime I look at the album on my wall, and enjoying the music even more than I did before. And my school kids were sleeping when I got home, and Ananda and Aaron stayed up half the night with Izzy (she slept here).

Thursday started horrifically early and was anticlimactically busy - Grant had arranged to be off, but it was just. Ugh. 7am came awfully early, getting Isaac and Elise up and ready and to school and then heading off to college and back again to get everyone for dance and PATH, and I had a mandatory dance company meeting, and we had to retrieve the car from the train station since I'd driven Grant home the evening before, and deliver Izzy to her mother, and Isaac's homework and Miralax and Elise lost a tooth and so we needed cash, just a million things nonstop. A lot of it good - I got a serendipitous extension on a lot of Spanish work I had blown off and some relieving financial news. But so much time in traffic, and my sister came to the park during PATH with her kids and I barely even got to talk to her.

Friday was mostly a huge drag. My bike was stolen right off my front porch (lock cut and thrown to the side in the grass) - which is my second bike stolen off our porch, though the first one was not secured and so I blamed myself that time. My kids were all being as tedious and moody as possible - Annie PMS'ing x100, she and Aaron needing guidance and clarification on every single possible small point with Virtual School, such that I spent three hours with Jake waiting to go to the library as I just went back and forth between the two of them beating my head against a wall. Then, when I took him, the library was closed. Just one of those days. By evening I managed to reclaim it somewhat, I pulled Annie out of her frustration to bake pumpkin bread with me after I'd retrieved everyone from school and karate, and we had tea with it out on the deck. Then I read them Shel Silverstein poems in the tv room for half an hour, and by the end of it everyone was acting decently...

And that's about all I've got time for this evening. Planning some pictures tomorrow :)