The Professor and Mary Ann

Yesterday Will got home late and upset. He'd been working on an animal report, and he'd lost the rough draft. Knowing it was due the next day, he'd tried to recreate it, but when I read through it, I was disturbed by the fact-to-fiction ratio. Truth has been an ongoing issue with him this year, and it is too often passed over in favor of an embellished story. So in the koala report, the part about koalas getting flung out of eucalyptus trees had to go, as did the part where babies pinch their parents noses while sleeping. Then there were the nonsequiturs like "I've eaten bamboo!" and "G'day mate!". It was pretty short afterward, like "Hostel" on Clearplay. We underlined each of the facts in his report, then we looked up koalas on the internet to fill it in. We discovered that like many marsupials, male koalas have bifurcated penises. I told Will "It pays to do the research, because truth is always stranger than fiction." but ...

Today was Sebastian's birthday. I really can't believe it's been five years since we had the quickest, easiest, delivery of any of the kids. You know, the way they tell you it's going to be in those birth classes: 'select some calming music and bring along candles to sniff' kind of nonsense that never actually is used or helps and generally just gets in the way. Well, with Sebastian it did happen. We brought Schubert's impromptus and read old Economists and he was born in about six hours of labor and I was a true convert to the epidural. Mmmm hmm! Now look how huge he is! His grandpa took him out yesterday to buy him a bike helmet, having read that Sebi should have input on it so that he'd like it and be invested in it. Sebi's head was so mammoth that he didn't even fit the 8+ size. Yup, he's got a youth 14+ helmet and will probably turn out like HEEEED from So I Married An Axe Murderer (in case you haven't seen it, Heeeed is not an axe...

Last week Rob's sister Betsy, who teaches school locally, had her students put on a play about World War II. She's perhaps the best teacher in the whole entire world, having received the genes from both her father and mother, and getting the nurture from them as well. So you'll have to believe me when I say that she is able to transform 30 kids from the east side of town into soldiers and mothers and children in concentration camps for half an hour. It is an amazing introduction for them to understand some world history. We always go, as much to show the kids as to support Betsy. This year, Rob came home from work, took one look at Joss , and decided he was not going to take that loud thing to the play. So I had to stay home with the Fluffster . I was even more sad about missing it when I found out that Thomas S. Monson (the LDS church's leader of leaders) attended it. He attended it to see his grandson, who was performing in it. Almost a decade ago, I actually taugh...

Last week, Will told me that he wanted to build a machine that would get him out of bed in the morning, get him dressed and make him breakfast. He wanted to call it the Boy-O-Matic. Probably because of the gendered name, it make me think about these types of machines in movies and the fact that they are always for men (usually eccentric bachelor- or widower-type men). There's the famous breakfast machine for Chitty Chitty Bang Bang , Wallace & Gromit's alarm clock/dressing/breakfast machine , one in Calvin and Hobbes, Back to the Future and several I've never seen in Flubber, Brazil, Honey I Shrunk The Kids, The Great Mouse Detective, and Waiting. As often as not, we see them malfunction (and never really quite function). I guess the joy is all in the tinkering. But I tried to think about any female character who wanted, created or used something like this, and I couldn't come up with anyone. The closest thing I could think of was Cher in Clueless with her computer...

This is the last time Rob's cub scouts were all together. We have just had a ward realignment, which as the Professor says "in the parlance of the ward, it was a 'reduction' not an 'augmentation'". So we're down from two dozen or so cubs to about 16. This is Will putting his solid gold car up at the gate. It turned out to be a lightweight, but everyone was gracious at this event, sharing their graphite and helping out (we'd heard legends of grumpy parents and people fighting, but nothing like it here). Another cub's dad helped Will to add weights to it while Rob supervised, and in the end it raced well. Poor Will is the scout we're having to learn on. We'll know better next year. In the meantime, his car had flash and style. The gentleman on the right is Rob's assistant cub master and secret weapon: he did everything. Rob just had to show up and yell. And now Joel has been called elsewhere and Rob has got to find a new one. Never...

Rob and I have just survived yet another of the kids' patriotic programs. There is a regional event around here which I shall call Heap of America. It brings in thousands of elementary school kids to our very own Big Mac on campus to sing patriotic songs and cause traffic jams. Our school gets so fired up about it that they hold their own event every other year (perhaps we'll call it Heaplet of America). It isn't our favorite. Actually we loathe it. The kids miss class daily for about a month beforehand. The crowds are huge and unruly. In past years rival groups of Polynesians tried to outdo each other in hooting for their kids. Everyone is crammed into folding squeaky metal chairs in the gym. You can never see your child because ImaLou has got her beehive up a good six inches tonight or her husband LaPriel has a vintage 15 lb. video camera going directly in front of your child's face. This year both kids even had to sit and sing with the lights off for a slide show fo...

This little boy doesn't think he knows German. A few months back he informed me that he only knew one German word: "wasser". The problem is that he doesn't know what is German and what is English. Sort of. His orthopedic surgeon got a huge kick out of the fact that when Rob was talking to him in German at the hospital, he said "Dad, talk English to me!", but the kid had a broken arm! Last week while I was out one night, Rob had Sebi and Joss at home. He took advantage of the time by playing Star Wars with Sebi and speaking lots of German with him. It backfired on him. Sebi said he was tired. Rob repeated it in German "Ich bin mude" to have Sebi say it. Sebi said, a la Jar Jar Binks, "Mesa mude". He tried to get Sebi to say "Wir sind in der Badewanne" and Sebi said "Wesa in der Badewanne". Currently Sebi seems to be winning this war. It remains to be seen who comes out ahead once we're in Austria and there are go...

Tonight our guests very graciously complimented our dining room chairs and Rob and I were talking about all the other dining sets that we'd had before this one. We'd had the table that Rob inherited from his grandparents from an old folks' home in Florida, which he wrote his thesis on and would periodically write notes on when he happened to run out of paper (you'd have to ask if he'd gotten everything down somewhere else before you could wipe the surface). Later that table became Maddie's changing table which would have been dangerous had it not been shoehorned in between all the rest of our furniture. Then there was the D.I. trestle table which seemed like such a step up. At one point, we had two arm chairs my parents had given us as projects, with cane seats and backs. One of them had a rip in the caning on the back. At dinner one night, Maddie was sitting in it, wiggling around in her seat, when suddenly she worked herself into the rip. It tore loudly, she l...

Yesterday Maddie got braces on her top teeth. After getting her appliance, she said this wasn't too bad. By dinner, she was singing a different tune! She chose pink and green glow in the dark bands for her first six weeks -- very pretty for braces. And tonight, she competed in another meet and we finally brought a camera. She came in first in her heat and took five seconds off her 50 yard freestyle time. She and Rob couldn't hear them announce her the winner of her heat, and from this angle he couldn't even tell who came in first, but Sebi and Joss and I saw that she was way out in front. I think she's actually more excited about the braces. They make me feel so old , all of a sudden, and I realize that there is this huge, lanky thing with orthodonture walking around the house. I am informed that her brother calls Maddie the Metal Mouth Missile, which was certainly apt tonight.

I would like to compose a post-Academy award tribute to my own Leading Lady.  The category? Hottest Woman Appearing in a Film I Teach.  A Countdown of the contenstants: 5. Irma Vepp, Les Vampires (France 1922).  On my on-line course evaluations for my "Crime and Aesthetics in French and German Cinema" course, several students reminisced fondly about how I had referred to criminal mastermind Irma Vepp as "Naughty and Bouncy."  Several Times.  In front of the class.  Even though it caused a situation at my yearly review, I stand by my evaluation.  All crimes should be committed in that nasty suit.   4. Hildegard Knef, THe Murderers are Among Us (Germany 1946).  Oh, Yeah.  Love in the rubble.  No one works a head-scarf like this smoldering and damaged Trummerfrau.  And, afgter running around with cute ash-smudges on her nose and saving her man from committing murder, she pulls it together and shows up in the last scene as a proto-1950's bouffant-coiffed domestic go...

Have we mentioned that Rob is now the Cubmaster? It was something of a shock, but it has been great for getting the boys excited about scouting (and let's face facts: Rob and I are lukewarm at best on a paramilitary, homophobic, psuedo-Hitler Youth organization, so our boys were destined to embrace it wholeheartedly from the start). One of the first arguments that Rob ever won with his parents was over scouting. They had moved into a neighborhood with no other kids his age, and so his eagle project would have been almost entirely solo (with some help from his younger brother). He proposed that instead of getting his eagle, he work towards becoming a Sterling Scholar in foreign languages at OHS. His parents finally agreed, and he did make Sterling Scholar at OHS, and went on to become the statewide foreign language Sterling Scholar. So my husband is one merit badge and an eagle project shy of his eagle, which just so happens (Freudianly?) to be exactly the same as my brother, Mr. T...

Aside from the show on Friday night, it seemed like I spent most of the weekend trying to get Fluffy to sleep in a strange bed. I know it wasn't true, because we also went out to breakfast, had fried chicken sandwiches from Blue-haired Betty's, visited my grandmother, shopped for Easter dresses, went to Trader Joe's, watched "Ghosttown" and "Kit Kitteredge" and "Mamma Mia", attended church, and visited with friends. The weather was absolutely beautiful. It was gre en and rainy and made us miss living in California terribly. It has been white and brown here and we're ready for a change. Grandpa and Fluffy read a book. Among several thing I forgot to pack for the trip were toys for him. He made it through the weekend with two books and a small lion. Grandma and Joss played a lot. He pulled up on everything and learned to climb their stairs. I wish I had the picture of him sitting on the yoga ball. He was pretty tickled with that. He also lo...

Grandma and Grandpa Shumway surprised Maddie and I with Wicked tickets in San Francisco, and flights out there for Presidents' Day weekend. Joss, by virtue of his age and size, got to come along too. We flew out on Friday the 13th, and it wasn't until we were in the car that I realized I'd never really traveled alone with kids before. But the combination of Maddie and Joss was good, and we had no trouble, and got to the theatre in plenty of time to buy souvenirs and get settled before the show. I'd tried to read the book before going, but the further I read, the more awful I thought the show would be. I gave up halfway through, and I think the unsung hero is the woman who adapted the book for stage (a true genius). They used the concept and characters' names, and that was about it. Maddie and I enjoyed it thoroughly right up to the applause, where the girl standing in front of me jumped up out of her seat. And not for the lead, either -- she was giving a standing...

Joss gets to share his three quarter birthday with Abe Lincoln. Here is what the boy does right now: He is in constant motion from the moment he wakes up until he finally drops to sleep. He wants to crawl all over everything, pull up on everything, unplug everything, and stick everything in his mouth. He's particularly fixated on the night lights that change color (which the Professor has always detested -- he's been known to wake from a dead sleep in the middle of the night and stumble cursing out to the hall to rip one out of the socket). Joss is starting to stand alone for a moment, and he's just beginning to cruise along furniture at the right height. His favorite toy is a set of stacking rings from his wise Aunt Betsy. He loves to dump them off, smack them together, and hit them on the floor. Joss still loves bath time every night with his nighttime wash in the jetted tub, and always has his hooded frog towel ready afterward (from John and Clarissa). He is staying pat...

Today the kids had the day off. Since it was raining and I wasn't up to taking the gaggle of them somewhere, we had friends over. We made valentines and played Wii and listened to the Wicked soundtrack, and then I promised the girls that we could make cheese. Jeff and Saydi gave us a cheesemaking kit and I'd tried it twice before. Here, for the benefit of anyone else trying to make 30 min. mozarella, is what we did. You dissolve the rennet in 1/4 cup of water. Separately dissolve 1 1/2 tsp in a cup of water. Pour one gallon of milk (pasteurized but not ultra pasteurized) into a stainless steel pan and stir in the citric acid. Heat to 90 degrees, then take off the heat and stir in the rennet. I let it sit about 8 minutes (instead of 5). Then you have to slice the curds, which is what the girls are doing here. Called something else if you are a schoolage boy. Stir slowly until curds reach 105 degrees. It turns back into this watery mess. Then I departed from the directions. ...