Colds, poetry, and Happy New Year!

As my Facebook friends know (and are probably tired of my whining already), I've caught a cold. Being rarely sick, I'm feeling like a pretty big baby with all my talking about it. ;) And, I seriously under-estimated how long it'd take me to get over it. I do remember I read somewhere once (probably at an About.com forum) that colds usually take 2 to 3 weeks to run the course, so what I thinking when I thought I was getting better on the fifth day?

Actually, I blame my kids. They also rarely get sick, but when they do, they take only 5 to 7 DAYS to get over it...completely! I forget that I'm no longer young and my body doesn't recover like it used to.

I've had some requests to translate the poem by Li Bai (see my previous post on poetry). So, here I go. I will give a word-by-word translation and then an approximate, more artistic one. The original poem:Taking the first line:Ignore the red stuff on the corners (just some artist signature bits or something). The first line, word-by-word, is: bed, front, bright, moon, shine. More grammatically, it could be "The bright moon shines at the foot of the bed."

The second line:Word-by-word: suspect, to be, ground, on top of, frost...or "I thought it was frost on the ground."

Third line:W-b-w: lift, head, look, bright, moon..."Lifting my head, I gaze at the bright moon."

Next line:W-by-w: lower, head, think, native village (the last 2 words go together)..."Lowering my head, I reminisce about my village."

Then, the 5th line is an odd one. It's not part of the poem, but the first two words are the author's name, Li Bai:and the last 3 characters make up the name of the poem, "Quiet Night Thoughts":
I am not the best translator in the world, but poetry is also much harder to translate than other things simply because much of the beauty is lost going from one language to another. So, I don't know if you get the mood of the piece in my translation, but it is a sad one similar to what Westerners feel at not being able to make it home for the holidays.

That's a bit of a downer segue into this next paragraph, but I want to wish you all a very happy New Year! I hope that your 2010 will be all that you want it to be and even better! I look forward to reading your blogs and hope you'll continue to visit mine.

Next time, I'll post about the stollen I made this past week. :)

** edited to add: note for Meg_L - incidentally, that last character of the last line is the second character in my Chinese name. I just realized I still haven't posted my name in Chinese for you on FB.

"I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be." ~ Douglas Adams

Poetry to Treasure - blog hop

Heather over at the Well Read blog, and a fellow Twittermoms mom, had a very fun and educational post about teaching poetry to kids.

This may not be exactly how Heather envisioned my post to be, but I'll share some thoughts and poems as well as answer a few of the questions she has for other homeschooling parents regarding teaching poetry. Below are her questions in bold, and my answers:

Who is your favorite poet?
One of the first poets I loved was Li Bai who wrote some of the most moving poetry I've ever read. Yes, I can read this poem! It was one of the first ones my mother taught me. This brings me to a tangential story: I was schooled in Hong Kong until the age of 8, never learning any poetry there. (Perhaps they taught it in older grades, or perhaps it wasn't taught at all; I don't know.) Once we immigrated to Canada, my parents decided that they must do something so that my sister and I maintain our heritage, so they (mostly my mom who was a certified teacher in Hong Kong) took it upon themselves to teach us Chinese through poetry, essentially homeschooling us in that topic even though "homeschooling" was not in their vocabulary.

My next favorite poet was Alexander Pope, whose biting wit was well-suited to my teenage angst-ridden self. Robert Frost is a perennial favorite. Of the modern day poets, my favorite two are children's writers: Helen Frost and Rebecca Kai Dotlich. They are as lovely people as they are superb poets.

Can you think of a poetry lesson that was extremely meaningful, productive, or just plain fun?

When we did Shakespeare in our literary co-op (and we study him at least once a year), the kids got to learn about his inventing words for his plays and poems and a little bit about the bawdy bits. That was, I think, when we laughed the most in a poetry lesson.

I also liked when we taught the kids limericks and got to write our own. :)

Do you include modern poetry in your lessons?

I am sorry to say I don't incorporate more poetry into our everyday learning, but we have learned about modern poetry. Some of our favorite forms are acrostics and concrete poems.

How do you define the worth of poetry?

Poetry is just like music - it works a part of the brain that may not get as much use normally, and therefore makes you a more whole person. At least that's my hypothesis!

My boys have been part of a literary co-op for four years now and have learned some of their poetry through that. I also have done a poetry unit with ds#1 back in 2005 using the Scholastic "Teaching 10 Fabulous Forms of Poetry" book, learning a few things I never knew myself.

I'd like to leave you with two of my favorite poems, and a recommendation that you also visit the Florian Cafe: Poetry Commotion.

~~~~~~~

"Fog" by Carl Sandburg

The fog comes
on little cat feet.

It sits looking
over harbor and city
on silent haunches
and then moves on.

~~~~~~~~

"On the Collar of a Dog" by Alexander Pope

I am his Highness's dog at Kew
Pray tell me, sir, whose dog are you?

~~~~~~~~

Didn't that shake you and quake you and made you goose-pimply all over? ;)

And whoever knows where that "shakes you, quakes you" quote comes from wins a little prize! Seriously. Just tell me in the comments section. I don't know what the prize is yet, but I'll think of something. ;)

Have a great Sunday!





"I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be." ~ Douglas Adams

Have a wonderful holiday season!

I knew it'd finally catch up to me: I have a cold. Hopefully, dousing myself with oil of oregano and cod liver oil will ensure that it won't be with me for too long.

I would like to wish my bloggy friends a Merry Christmas, happy Hannukah, joyous Winter Solstice, and whatever else you may be celebrating!

Thanks to my sister for finding this to share with us:"I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be." ~ Douglas Adams

Raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens

...these are a few of my favorite things!

This past week, I encountered lots of my favorite things. One of my favorite things is knitting, so starting off, I finished another hat. This one dh, the fuss-budget, actually liked and decided to take it even though I was knitting it for myself.
Then, a lovely package arrived in the mail (not brown-papered and tied up with string, but the contents were equally wonderful) from Michelle (Blog of the Soap Pixie). Michelle made a bevy of lovely things for me! Clockwise from top left: a pretty card, a folder of bookmarks and tea bags (details below), a bar of her very pretty soap with a cool and cute packaging (she'll be selling these soon, so keep an eye on her blog for it!), a box of mini-cards, a lavender eye-pillow, and a dazzling holiday bracelet (that I've been wearing ever since I received it).
Here are the mini-cards close-up. Is that ever sweet, or what?
And here's the nifty folder with all the bookmarks and tea bags! Ds#1 already has dibs on the frog bookmark. :)
A day or two after Michelle's package arrives, Joanna's Product Body box of goodies got here. I was running out of Whipped Shea, and bought a couple of jars of that plus their new holiday scent gift box.
Tadaaaa...the holiday scent gift box opened up...obviously the gift was for myself. ;)
Sweet Jo gave me some extra goodies for free: see the cuuuuute pink bag with the following yummies? She also gave me (see first photo) a Hyacinth Bath Bomb that smells intoxicating and that I intend to use as soon as I can spend some quality time in the bathtub.
Another wonderful thing that came in the mail is Carrie's Home for the Holidays laundry soap. I wanted to get more before she sells out because it's my absolute favorite detergent right now! Carrie, always the dear, sent along a couple of little gifts for the boys - I can't show you exactly what they are because they don't get to open them until a couple of days later. ;)
A close-up of the pretty, embroidered towels that Carrie includes:
And last, but definitely not least, I spent a lovely Friday morning with my IRL and blog friend Cake (Whistling Leaf Blower). She checked out our garden, such as it is in the winter, and also brought me my Pay-It-Forward/swap gifts: a psychedelic bookmark for the boys, a pack of cosmos seeds (one of my favorite flowers), a mistletoe sprig, a jar of pear chutney, a pebble hair clip, 2 felted soaps (woohoo!!!), and a coin purse made with the top of an orange juice container (very cute, very creative).
Here's the coin purse, opened up:
I just loooove this hair clip!
So there you have it, some of my favorite things indeed! It was a good week, and with the weekend gone, I look forward to another good week.

What has been some of your favorite things recently?

"I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be." ~ Douglas Adams

Home, home(schooling) on the range...

...where we learn that in North America, we don't have antelope (they're pronghorn; antelopes are in Africa) or buffalo (they're bison; buffalo are in Asia).

I also learned that there is such a place called "Cornell College". I had always assumed that when I say "Cornell" (as in, ds#1 took a bird biology course from Cornell), or when I see "Cornell" (as in, Carl Sagan was a long-time professor at Cornell), that they mean the one and only Cornell University. Imagine my surprise to hear about Cornell College, which is in Iowa, not Ithaca, NY. Learn something new every day.

We're 2/3 of the way through the Prentice Hall Biology labs, which the teens seem to be enjoying so far. :) I swear the moms get more excited than the kids do, though, when an experiment works. We'll reconvene in mid-January, giving the kids a well-deserved break over the holidays.

On to more photos from 2004!

The kids were taking tennis in the summers. Here's ds#1 working on his back-hand:and ds#2 muddling through:
The Asian Culture Center at Indiana University offers half-day summer camps every year. The boys are hard at play making masks with the other campers:
More reading in their spare time:
There are many interesting limestone caves in our area; here we are at McCormick Creek State Park (I think; dh will correct me if I'm wrong).
On a field trip to the Indiana State Museum:
The boys peeling eggs for deviled eggs. Not sure why that's so amusing, but, apparently, it is.
Slave labor! The boys helping to harvest carrots and other things.
Playing with their best friends:
The guys with one of our watermelons that was bigger than their heads:
Marbleworks was one of their favorite games (before evil Wii came into our lives).
Carrie (Under the Willow Gifts) may recognize this place - Sidling Hill in western Maryland. We always pass by on our way to visit dh's relatives.
And speaking of relatives, here's one of our favorite aunts (always has a good toy to amuse the boys) from western MD:
Our friend C's mom has a little vineyard in her backyard. It may be little, but in a good year, it produces tons of fruits. 2004 was one of those bumper years. This was the crop we got after C and her family had already had their fill. The boys were helping us process them.
Here's my goofy son #1 with a couple of his creations, a wind-sock made from a plastic food tub and a puppet made with a paper towel tube, a toilet paper tube and chenille stems. I miss those days when that's all it took to make them smile like this. ;)
Next homeschooling post: more photos, and a look back on what they've learned and what else we need to do for the 2009-2010 homeschool year.

"I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be." ~ Douglas Adams

You mean it's not Thursday?

Dang...I missed posting this for Thankful Thursday. But, please humor me and pretend it is still Thursday!

I'm thankful, once again, for my soaper pals! I can't even begin to tell you how wonderful these ladies are - their talents, generosity, and loving spirits keep me cheerful even when I'm feeling annoyed by life in general.

I want to give a special Shout-Out to three soaping friends before I talk about the fourth. My Tadpoles and I want to give heart-felt hugs and thank-yous to (in alphabetical order) Carrie (Under the Willow Gifts), Michelle (Blog of the Soap Pixie), and Trisha (Suds to Love) for supporting our little enterprise!

And now, I want to show you some photos from another generous soaping pal: Sherrie (Birch Bark Soap).

Sherrie mentioned that she wanted some saffron in herTwenty-Two Pleasant blog and since I had some that we weren't going to use, I gave them to her. In return, she sent me a whole bunch of goodies that are so lovely, I had to post about them. Here are the goodies:Sherrie sent 2 bars of her delectable soaps (I'm not going to share the Orange Vanilla...nyeah, nyeah to my guys):Sherrie's very talented photographer husband, Adam, gave me some gorgeous photo cards:Sherrie also threw in these super-cute mini slate labels. Can't wait to use them on my jars!Thank you again, Sherrie!

I am very lucky and very honored to have made friends with all of you!

"I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be." ~ Douglas Adams

Random Tuesday fact and thoughts, plus Chocolate Pecan Kisses

I don't see why I keep resisting the Random Tuesday meme in its original form. After all, my mind is ADD enough that most of my thoughts are completely random, and I lose track of what I was saying mid-sentence. Or maybe that's senility and not ADD.

Therefore, today, I'll share a few random thoughts, and a fact. And as a bonus, a recipe!

Thoughts:
1) I am the biggest chicken driver. I will resist driving as much as I can get away with. If there were a Santa, I'd have just one item on my wish list to him, and that is to have a life-long 24/7 chauffeur who will take me wherever I need or want to go.

2) While searching the fridge for the 2 egg whites that I was going to use to make Chocolate Pecan Kisses (recipe below), I noticed that we have a jar of pickled herring, a bottle of cabbage water indicator, a jar of tsukemono, a bottle of kefir, a measuring cup with duck fat, a few small jars of anchovy oil, and 2 bottles of oyster sauce in there (along with enough leftovers to feed a small army...or 2 growing boys). Are those odd things to have in the fridge? I was grateful none of them were fuzzy and walking.

3) I have the scissors skills of a 3 year old with fine motor problems. Seriously, every straight line I have ever tried to cut has been crooked and ragged-edged. This is why I have two paper cutters, and I use them all the time. Unfortunately, I still have trouble with all the other shapes that need cutting.

Fact:
We've been studying bacteria in ds#1's biology lab class - yes, the excitement never ends. Anyway, I found the following to be a rather interesting fact from the textbook (Prentice Hall Biology):
Bacterial toxins are usually divided into two groups: exotoxins and endotoxins. Exotoxins are produced and released as part of the normal metabolism of certain bacteria. Endotoxins are typically lipopolysaccharides that were originally part of the cell wall and that are released by the lysis of the bacterium. In general, exotoxins are much more potent than endotoxins. Diseases caused by exotoxins include botulism, cholera, diphtheria, gas gangrene, food poisoning, scarlet fever, tetanus, and toxic shock syndrome.

Now that I've grossed you out with talk of bacteria and diseases, here's the recipe I'd mentioned. ;)

Chocolate Pecan Kisses**
1 egg white
1/3 C sugar
1/2 C miniature semi-sweet chocolate chips
1/2 C chopped pecans

Place egg white in a small mixing bowl; let stand at room temp for 30 minute. Beat on medium speed until soft peaks form. Gradually beat in sugar, 1 T at a time, on high until stiff peaks form. Fold in chocolate chips and pecans.

Drop by rounded teaspoonfuls 2 inches apart onto parchment paper-lined baking sheets. Bake at 250F for 40-45 minutes, or until firm to the touch. Turn oven off and let cookies dry in the oven for 1 1/2 hours.

Carefully remove cookies from parchment paper. Store in airtight container. Yield: 1.5 dozen

**my alterations to this recipe included doubling the egg yolk, but halving the sugar, and using regular sized chips - chocolate and cappucino.

These are soooo tasty!

"I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be." ~ Douglas Adams

It's about time I talked a bit about homeschooling...and take a walk down memory lane

This blog isn't about homeschooling per se, but homeschooling is as much a part of our lives as homesteading...in fact, I would say more so. We've been doing both for almost the same number of years.

So, I'm thinking that I really should talk about our homeschooling, maybe once a week - as a record for ourselves, perhaps, and also as our duty to be proponents of it.

We have been extremely lucky in that, except for a handful of encounters (probably less than 5 in the past decade), we have received only warm support, some glowing praises, and even some admiring envy when we tell people we're homeschooling. I know people who have horror stories.

Naturally, homeschooling isn't for everyone, and you should always go with what works best for your family and kids. We had our reasons for starting to homeschool (gifted for one, special needs for the other), and it's been a great journey so far.

Anyway, I was thinking I'd post some photos of our homeschooling fun, and since I'm too lazy to scan in photos, and our digital camera-ownership only go back to 2004, I'd start with showing you some photos from that year. Hope I don't bore you too much, but then again, I won't hear you if you fall asleep on the keyboard. =)

We started that year with a trip to Vancouver in January. Here are the kids at the airport, quietly doing activity books.While in Vancouver, we took them to Science World:Back home in our old homeschooling space in the kitchen (they've since outgrown that furniture and have moved into our office space).When not doing academic work, they often read books.We used to participate in a lot of field trips offered through our homeschool group. Here we are at the local newspaper company, getting a tour.Our homeschool group also holds a lot of fairs. This is one that ds#1 did on frogs (bet you couldn't guess) for the Science Fair.One time, the kids decided to build a dummy to warm up their dad's chair until the real dummy (just kidding!) came home.When the Brood X cicadas hit our town, we went over to our friends' farm to feed cicadas to their chickens. We learned a lot about periodic cicadas that year.While perusing our wonderful Farmers Market that summer, we discovered that the boys were the cover-kids for the local arts center! We had taken many class there, and they had featured the kids doing ceramics on their summer catalog.Also that summer, ds#1 tried his hand at photography. He needs a lot more practice, but has taken some rather lovely photos.More photos next time I post about homeschooling!

Ds#1 also took the CAT/5 exam again this past Friday. He'd taken the grade 7 one this past June when he was supposed to have just completed grade 7, but his scores were so off the top of the chart that we really didn't learn anything from it. So, I had him take the grade 10 test this time. Maybe that will show us areas that he could work on in the next few years before university.

"I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be." ~ Douglas Adams