Sewing on Lots of Little Patches

Here it is, National Sewing Month, and I've dragged the sewing machine back upstairs to the dining room table. And the first thing I've been sewing is various patches and insignia on the Girl Scout vests.

While I do this I think about scouts quite a bit. I think about the woman who murmured to me during a meeting, "They're getting rid of the badges, you know." Well, if they get rid of the badges, Annabeth is out of the program. It's as simple as that. She's in it for the badges, folks. And I don't know if they're actually getting rid of the badges or not, although I've heard that line before. I've also heard that they're NOT getting rid of the badges. And I've heard that they don't know if they're getting rid of the badges or not, they'll be figuring that out later ... presumably after they decide whether people are using that insipid Journeys program or not, or if Journeys goes the way of the Studio 2B.

I wonder if they'd give us an exit interview. Ask us why we left the program. Heaven knows they spend oodles of dollars trying to figure out what would attract new people; do they ever spend time trying to figure out why they loose current members? Eh, most people would probably either lie or only tell part of the reason, so maybe it's just as well they don't bother.

I also think about a family who has left our troop, has left Girl Scouts altogether. The mom was troop leader for a couple of years, and the daughter had good friends in the troop. Rick and I were discussing it, and said, "Oh, I guess they got too busy with other things," but really, it was more than that. Last year during cookie sales the mom had commented to me that she didn't want to support the national organization at all, and wished she could ditch the cookie sales because of it. I vaguely recall that her opinion of GSUSA went down hill as she looked through the Journeys material. And there were other factors, too.

I started pondering what an exit interview should look like. "Why did you decide to leave our organization? Choose one:" Here are some choices I'd like to see: The way the camp catalogs are laid out makes no sense. Ticked off about the Journeys programs. Realized the Back to Nature cookies taste better than the Girl Scout cookies of the same flavor, plus they're available year round. Sometimes calls to Council seem to enter an alternate reality. Decided this year's Thinking Day patch was ugly, and fell into despair about ugly patches. Couldn't figure out why we have both wings for flying up to Juniors as well as a rainbow for bridging to Juniors, and really ticked off that we have to sew both onto the vest because they're such odd shapes to sew around. Also, the iron-on stuff never really works right, so you have to sew everything on or else glue it, so let's just stop pretending these are "Iron-On".

(Brownie Try-Its are the worst for that last one -- they seem like they're ironed on nicely, but then the little corners of the triangles stick out and catch on something, and before you know it they're all popping off and people are looking at them and thinking, "that's it, I've had enough of this -- it's been one frustrating experience after another, and I've reached my limit and we're dropping out NOW.")


In the meantime, the badge program still exists, I've learned to sew everything down, and we're still planning to spend this year in Scouts. And we got a new camera, so Annabeth was running around experimenting with it while I was sewing the oddly shaped patches (Thalia will do the IPs herself since they're rectangles and relatively easy).



And I did the wings on Annabeth's new Junior vest myself. And the rainbow. I don't begrudge the wings even though they're toughest thing to sew on, because I've always thought they were wicked cool. But the rainbow? And this new flag shape? Give me a break.

Things We Did This Weekend

While Annabeth and I were at dance on Friday night -- the 7-8pm session, not the 4-5:30 session (yes, we spend our life there) -- Rick and Thalia went to a redbox video thingy and ended up getting Get Smart, which we've never seen. When we got home the kids put on jammies, popped popcorn, and made ice cream sundaes; we stayed up watching the movie, then. It felt like we were at a slumber party. And it was a fun, silly movie that was just perfect for that sort of thing.

Saturday we spent enough time poking around in the vents and raising bits of the basement's dropped ceiling panels to finally figure out why the vent in Annabeth's room has such poor airflow -- it had detached at the joint where it goes up the wall from the basement ceiling on up. This probably got jarred loose while the contractor was doing some wiring this past summer. We spent an amazing amount of time getting it back together.

The kids decided to learn to do handstands. They watched the appropriate video on this page and, yes, clickered/tagged each other for those points.

We decided to roast a boneless turkey breast for Sunday lunch. For the past year I did this sans thermometer or any other sort of gauge (having lost them in various household moves), but decided I hate the uncertainty of whether I'd cooked it "just right". I had gotten one of those re-usable pop-up gauges to try, but when I tried it last spring it NEVER popped up. So I'd gotten a brand new meat thermometer, which I stuck in the turkey Sunday, carefully following directions. And when I checked the turkey after the appropriate time, it showed no temperature whatsoever. When I nudged it a bit, the thermometer fell apart. By which I mean, I had to cut the end out of the turkey because the entire top had broken off. And I've decided that if Ma Ingalls could cook without so much as an oven gauge, timer, and precise weight information, surely I can figure it out too. (By the way, turkey is one of the proteins most of the family can eat without issue -- we can't have soy, most beans, proteins derived from grains, several kinds of nuts, peanuts, beef, dairy, halibut, haddock, various other seafood I can't remember off the top of my head, etc. etc., so it's worth trying to figure out).

And for supper we had a fire in the firepit again, mostly because it was so amazingly cool out. Rick was reminiscing about when he started working for Anheuser-Busch years ago on this very date, and was living in a flat in a fourplex in south city near the brewery (and even nearer the intersection of Chippewa and Grand, for those who wonder about stuff like that), and his very first shopping trip was to buy a window air conditioner because the temperatures were in the 100s and people were dropping dead from the heat (as opposed to the following winter when people were dropping dead from the cold -- gotta love St. Louis weather). Further fueling the nostalgia was a newspaper ad for Mateker's -- didn't they used to be in south city? Because I swear every time we talked to Grandma she would tell us the price of bananas at Mateker's, and also tell us how she loved using their ground beef because it had so little fat that you wouldn't get more than a tablespoon of grease off of a meatloaf.

Thalia and Annabeth decided that the cool temperatures made it a perfect day to bake cookies. They did not find it the perfect day to wash the cookie sheets when they were done, mostly because by then the fire was going outside and they needed to set sticks on fire.

And I discovered a new obsession which replaces the clicker/tag training obsession -- floor barre. I spent much time surfing the internet reading about Zena Rommett and Stephane Dalle , as well as others who claim to have the "best" floor barre. We may need to invest in a DVD. Which will probably be by Rommett, because although I like how Dalle keeps exclaiming voila!, his accent is a bit too thick for me. So, of course, I couldn't wash the cookie sheets either because I was watching at every single youtube video and googling every permutation of words like "floor barre".

Weekly Report 8/28/09

MATH

Thalia is working in Jacob's Algebra, and, frankly, it's pretty easy here at the beginning. She's reviewing things like order of operation, and working with 1 and 0.

Annabeth is in RightStart D. Earlier in the week she was working on multi-digit multiplication, and by Friday was doing division. She has about 40 lessons left in this book, and we've discussed whether she'd like to work 4 days per week to finish in about 10 weeks, or 5 days per week to finish in 8 weeks. She said she'd rather work 6 days per week.

LANGUAGE ARTS

Annabeth has started to work on First Language Lessons vol. 4. We're zipping through the lessons, which are mostly review.

Weird coincidence -- Bridgett mentioned rules for capitalization on her blog one day, and the very next day we had a lesson about it in FLL. And I discovered that various style manuals treat prepositions in titles differently, per FLL. I'm pretty sure that Annabeth won't retain that information (that different style manuals have different rules) but it is now firmly fixed in my mind. Although I've managed to live many, many years without having a clue about this, so I'm not sure what difference it will make now.

Thalia was in an "off" week for Analytical Grammar, and thus didn't do any grammar. She only has one season left, and has been asking what she's supposed to do for high school. What, indeed?

In the meantime, the new writing program she asked for, Jump In. Well, actually she hadn't asked for this specific program, but after looking at samples of various choices she decided that this one didn't look too dumb. Writing Strands was one of the other choices, in case you wondered. Anyway, I haven't been that thrilled with Apologia material before -- I think their science books are sort of dippy, and can't make it through a chapter of them without deciding to ditch them -- but maybe the tone is just right for a writing program.

LATIN

Review test week in Latin Alive for Thalia. Annabeth and I haven't started back up in Latin for Children, due to inertia.

HISTORY

I've picked up several history-related books from the library, and the kids seem to be randomly reading them without any over-arching scheme of "this one first, then that one follows chronologically". I've decided that this is a great way to do things, since then we can move ahead in Story of the World as needed, without worrying whether we're reading the "correct" corresponding literature.

Having said that, we haven't read anything out of Story of the World this week. Thalia read an essay in National Geographic's Almanac of World History on European Imperialism, and then outlined it. Our plan is that she will read essays related to our reading in Story of the World, then outline, giving her more depth in her studies and bonus practice in outlining.

SCIENCE

Thalia is gearing up for her co-op science class by reading the material that should be covered before the first class. They'll be studying Physical Science this year (using Apologia, of all things, but at least I don't have to deal with it). She set up an experiment using a battery, some copper wire, and some water ... I was out mowing the lawn at the time, and no smoke billowed out the windows, so I guess it worked.

Annabeth and I have been puttering around with plants. She wants to continue learning botany. I spent part of the week trying to figure out what we'd done with all of the books when we re-did the kitchen. Annabeth spent time looking through the books as we found them, noting interesting projects.

READ ALOUDS

We continue with The Secret Garden and Little HIstory of the World.

OTHER STUFF

Piano, dance, theatre class. The weather was warm this week, so we spent a lot of time at the pool. It's been a fairly cool summer, and we haven't gone to the pool much at all, so we made up for it by going nearly every afternoon this week. After all, we can do Latin when the weather is crummy, but we can't swim and play in the sun much longer this summer.

Work in Progress Wednesday

Okay, first things first. The camera was dropped on the floor while it was turned on -- in other words, while the lens was out. Which means it now has the dreaded "lens error" message. Which translates as "time to go buy a new camera because the pins have been knocked out of place and that's a really expensive repair".

So, the only camera I have available to show you how far I've gotten with the new collar is the camera on the computer.



which sort of lacks.

Oh, hey, I wonder what would happen if I put the collar on and stood really close to the computer.



I think I'll be spending some time today looking over camera reviews. And crocheting.

Q is for Quantity

This is the amount of coffee I can drink.



Any more and I'll be too jittery to sew, crochet, knit, or read a book. Or type, for that matter.



(Actually it's a Starbucks Frappuccino Mocha -- every once in a while I buy a small bottle, drink about a fourth of it over the course of a week or so, then pitch the rest in the trash. This is what I consider exciting and daring. Also, a fairly cheap thrill.)

100 Species Challenge

1. Strawberry
2. Black-eyed Susan
3. Rose of Sharon, Althea
4. Potentilla
5. Vinca
6. Grape Hyacinth
7. Tiger Lily

8. Lespedeza

When we moved here we inherited a fairly weedy lawn. The slope is really funky and the soil is crappy, so it's in sort of a permanent drought. Plus the previous owners didn't care, which typically translates to "don't mow very often, and then scalp it down", which is a technique that favors weeds over grass.

Anyway, there's a bunch of some plant that I hadn't seen before. It looks sort of like clover






and in some areas it's totally taken over.



So the other day some guy came to our door selling lawn chemical applications. I'm not big on lawn chemical applications -- I figure if it's all sort of green and approximately the same height, we're good (except I hate zoysia grass, but that's another story). So I don't place a high priority on killing various short green things and then fertilizing other short green things.

BUT, he commented that he could get rid of the lespedeza (well, except he pronounced it differently -- more like les -pi--dee-jah). Ooooooh, how cool. I used the word in sentences while I was talking to him, fixing it in my brain. And then when we were finished talking I ran inside to google it.

(As an aside, he also assured me he could get rid of crabgrass, clover, and violets. We have virtually no crabgrass, and I happen to like the violets. I'm neutral on clover, aware that it was considered part of a healthy lawn until about the 1960s and the dawn of lawn chemicals. On the other hand, I've gotten my share of bee stings from walking barefoot through lawns with clover patches, so I don't consider it quite so necessary.)

And discovered varying opinions on the plant. I found a place to buy seeds so you can use it for erosion control and for "food and shelter for wildlife" such as deer and quail. Obviously it's growing taller than it does in our yard if it's shelter wildlife. And we seem to have no trouble attracting deer, although they prefer daylilies and hostas over lespedeza, in case you wondered.

And yet, in Kansas it has been declared a noxious weed. And I found a comment that Missouri may declare it a noxious weed also. It seems to be a case of an okay plant running amok and killing off the competition.

Other bits and pieces of lespedeza trivia: Goats and sheep will eat it more readily than will cows. It has a high tannin content, particularly late in the season. I imagine this makes it bitter. And there's been research on using it to help with internal parasites in ruminant animals. I haven't found any human uses for it yet -- I always like finding out which plants we can forage, assuming we don't spray them with chemicals.

I couldn't find any organic controls, other than using herds of goats and also burning it off. I don't think either method would be popular with the neighbors. Not that the neighbors object to chemical applications -- I need to go take pictures of what happened to our lawn when one neighbor decided to "help" with the "violet problem" we supposedly have.

More about the 100 Species Challenge here, and a link to all of my 100 Species entries is in the sidebar.

Our Weekend So Far

Along with several hundred other people,


we went to the Fabulous Fox



to see Mary Poppins.



We went with Aunt Linda. And sat in the Fox Club (although I think other seats would've been better for this show -- the balcony overhang made it hard to see a couple of the special moments).



Aunt Linda had her iPhone with her, so most of the pictures of the day are on that, as she let Annabeth use it. Annabeth took pictures of everything -- the pink lemonade they were drinking beforehand, all of us sitting around the table, the theatre. On the way out she took dozens more pictures of houses along Lindell and then people walking around Delmar, where we went to the mecca of



Fitz's to wallow in root beer (Annabeth's favorite drink). We had supper there, and discussed what we liked about the show.

And it was tough to say what was THE favorite -- there are so many good parts! The statues, the chimney sweeps, the trip to Mrs. Corry's gingerbread shop, what the various actors brought to their parts, the sets (I was enchanted by the scrims used in the park scene -- nerdy but true). The show will be here another week -- we highly recommend it!