Spider Count 2009

Have you noticed they are extra large this year, by the way?
• In The Bun's Room: 3
• In the bathroom: 15
• Sneaky Buggers that got away: 14
• Enormous basement spiders living in the window: 4
• Basement spiders too close to laundry doings, had to go: 2
• Spiders building webs right in my way:5
• Misterpie killed for me: 1 unsmackable one
• Swarming cars I'm in: 4 -> 2 of them with kgirl. Coincidence?
• Marching bravely - but stupidly - up my arm: 1
• Sneaking up and appearing beside me: 4 (not bad!)
• Getting all up in mah grill: 1
• Babies born and died on 3rd floor: about 60, including 1 in my hair and 1 I think I inhaled
• Not Babies on the 3rd floor: 2
• Basement spiders that snuck upstairs: 2
• In the shovel I picked up: 1 + 2 egg sacs. Blech!
• In the dishwasher when I opened it: 1
• Weird little striped jumpy ones: 3
• Hallway ceiling: 3 - they like it there.

Spelling

I am running into a dilemma lately about spelling. How to explain it, I mean, and some pondering about how we learn it.

We start out teaching them, our kids. We teach them phonics and sounding out and stretching the words out to listen to them more carefully. We teach them The Rules: the 'e' on the end makes the 'i' say it's own name. Except when it doesn't.

Because it's not that simple, not in English. I tell Pumpkinpie she can sound things out alone, and sit with her as she works, but it's not infrequent to hear, "Okay, well, this is a funny word, so that short 'o' sound is actually an 'au' here." And while it's all fine and good for me to understand that the extra letters, the silent partners in "light" and "knife" come from Middle English, were once not silent at all, that doesn't help a five year old who is trying to write things on her own. So how did I learn to spell all those things on my own, long before I ever read The Lais of Marie de France?

I've been wondering about this, about how I acquired, how she can acquire what feels like a simply instinctual knowledge of spelling these words, just knowing which words are weird, and in which ways they vary from The Rules.

I'm sure my friend Alberta could actually illuminate this for me, but the more I think about it, the more I feel that it comes down to simply reading. It seems to me that in seeing a word over and over, we just come to recognize it, as we recognize that lady who lives on the next block, the person who keeps visiting our workplace as a repeat customer, the houses we pass and dogs we see walking about in our neighbourhoods. They simply become part of our world. We can describe them as we can any of those other familiar things, sketching their images in letters.

Think about this - when you see a word misspelled, what does it feel like? It seems to me it feels like when you see your friend or neighbour, and you can tell it's them, but something is just a little off, a little different. You run over your mental image of them and compare - did they cut their hair? Shave off a beard? You figure out which piece is not as you remember, and with a word, you put those things back the way you remember so that you can recognize it as right again.

But if I'm right, there's no way to teach that - it's simple exposure. So all those explanations, all the repeating of The Rules, the steering her gently through or around the exceptions, all of her trying, all of that is not the answer, not really. It's hard to tell a child like her, a girl who is determined to master things, who recently said to us that she wanted to just learn all the French and get really good at it so she didn't have to worry about it anymore, a girl who likes to be an expert (and fast), that all of that is only part of the learning, and that the greater part will just come with time, and reading.

Still, her reading is coming, so I suppose it will follow, in time. (Breathe, mama, breeeeathe.)

Dear Spiders,

For your future reference:

Swinging from my Christmas star is not "fun."
It's "certain death."

Yours most seriously,

kittenpie

Dave Cooks the Turkey

For some long time now, one story has been my favourite to hear at Christmastime.

It's not any of these classics, though I like to share those with kids.

It's not one of those heartwarming stories that yes, I also love, but not the same way.

It's something that makes me laugh, and reminds me that no matter what mayhem my family might dish out at Christmas, it's not all that bad, and it will pass, and one day, I will laugh about it anyhow. (I do now, by the way, about this story.)

And? It's a Canadian classic.

I can't find a YouTube link of it, and I'm not even 100% positive that this is Stuart Maclean reading it, but this is the best video I could find for it so that I could share it along with you.

Meanwhile, if you want to hear the for-sure Stuart Maclean reading it, you can find that here.

The Beauty in the Everyday

We were discussing, in book club last month, the everyday. Someone looked at me and said, "Well, I would say you are pretty everyday." Yes, I agreed, it's true. I am.

I am, in fact, ordinary in a family of extraordinary people. A sister and father who regularly appear in media thanks to their creative approaches and fertile minds for design. A mother who is extraordinary in ways that set her apart and spring from her own brilliance, though they are not celebrated. And me - ordinary.

The unusual is in fact much prized in our family. The phrase, "You're so predictable" was something of a taunt when I was young, though I never understood why. What was so wrong about that, I wondered.

Even my BioDad marches in his own one-man parade, living a different, slower, quieter kind of life even while the rush of a big city swirls around him.

And then there's me.

Every once in a while I feel it, keenly, mostly when my family come around. I feel how plain, how unexciting, how bound to the average path I am, my life is. i wonder what it would be like to be extraordinary for just a short time, but even in my daydreams, it is a short, bright thing, ending in coming home to the life I love, the life I have chosen.

The thing of it is that even while the extraordinary has, of course, a certain brash appeal, it doesn't hold me. The peacock is wildly showy, richly coloured, undeniably gorgeous. but the peacock makes me say, "Wow" and walk away, leaving the zoo and going back home. Instead, it is the sparrow who draws me in.

It is the sparrow, a small, boring brown bird, who makes me look closer, who hops up to catch crumbs that I drop to entice it so that I may study it further. It is the sparrow who, when you look closer, reveals not dull brown feathers, but richly complex patterns created by the overlayment of multiple feathers, speckles and bars melding into something muted, not drawing attention to its own beauty.

It is the sparrow who fills me with wonder, and makes me leave the neighbourhood cafe or park still marvelling and thinking about what I have seen, about how something so tiny can be so perfectly wrought, miniature feather by tiny bright eye.

It is the sparrow, the mouse, the housecat that make me study them more minutely and bring me closer than any other amazing, fantastical creatures do to contemplating creation and the divine.

So yes, I am ordinary. I am everyday. But mostly, other than the occasional longing for a brief moment of "Wow," I am okay with that, because I am someone who finds beauty in the everyday. A brown sparrow I may be, but I fly where I wish, unheeded. And that is perfect for me.