The Fluffy White Death (aka snow)

Today is a snow day. Alice does not have school; they called it off at 7pm last night. Something is missing.... I can't put my finger on it....




The snow isn't supposed to start until early this evening. Granted, if we get what they say we're going to get (which is anywhere from 3 inches to a foot) it will shut the entire city down for several days. The funny thing is we have to go brave the grocery store today because we are out of milk. I'm considering making Alice wear her bike helmet because this has the potential to get ugly.

Tristan

This is quite possibly the most romantic piece of all time. We're playing this, sans soprano tonight. It is Isolde's love death from Wagner's opera Tristan und Isolde. Basically Isolde has come upon her lover right as he is dying. He dies in her arms and then she dies of grief after singing this aria. It is one time where I am not wishing an opera singer to die a little faster from down in the pit. Just gorgeous.

Pleasant Purple

So, things are going well at Wondergirl's school. About a month ago she won the Good Citizen award for her class. It was a big deal and involved walking across the stage in front of the whole school to get a certificate, ribbon and pencil from the principal. Wondergirl's class operates on a color system for behavior. Every day the kids start out on "Pleasant Purple." Then, if they make bad choices, they move to Oops Orange, Yucky Yellow, and, finally, Ghastly Green. (It's not really ghastly green, it's some other "g" adjective that I can never remember. We call it ghastly green here.) When a child lands on Ghastly Green, their parents are called. Kids can also move up to Beautiful Blue if they do something exceptionally good.

Most of WG's class winds up in the orange to yellow range by the end of the day with several hitting the dreaded green. Her teacher has her hands full. The class is rowdy, and it is also her first.

WG is coming up on 50 consecutive days of being pleasantly purple. Tim and I think that's a pretty big deal, so I think she will be getting some sort of surprise reward when we visit Granny Julie and Friend John for Thanksgiving.

Happy Halloween!

Jumpy Balls

We have been on pantry probation for a little over a week. I was trying my best to make meals from what we have around. I've done a pretty good job with it and have found some things along the way that I'd forgotten I had. The 5 pound bag of frozen cranberries, for instance.

Wondergirl loves cranberries. She always has. When she was in speech therapy, her therapist encouraged us to talk to her constantly. I did. Not being one to baby talk, I explained things to her. One of those things being how cranberry farmers separate the bad cranberries from the good. Cranberries bounce like little balls when they are fresh. The bad ones won't, so somewhere I read that the bounce test is how you easily separate the good cranberries from the bad. I thought bouncing fruit was fascinating, and apparently Wondergirl did too because a year later, at age 3, she confounded me one day by asking me to buy "jumpy balls" while we were in the fruit section. (which shows you that pre-verbal does NOT mean pre-comprehension!) I had no idea what she was talking about. After a lot of frustration I figured it out. And I bought a bag of jumpy balls. Which she ate, raw, in about two days. The thought of eating raw cranberries makes my face hurt a little bit, but WG is all over them. She just ate some this afternoon, in fact. I'm sticking to muffins.