Poetry for Pets

Mother Doesn't Want a Dog

Mother doesn't want a dog.

Mother says they smell,

And never sit when you say sit,

Or even when you yell.

And when you come home late at night

And there is ice and snow,

You have to go back out because

The dumb dog has to go.

Mother doesn't want a dog.

Mother says they shed,

And always let the strangers in

And bark at friends instead,

And do disgraceful things on rugs,

And track mud on the floor,

And flop upon your bed at night

And snort their doggy snore.

Mother doesn't want a dog.

She's making a mistake,

Because more than a dog I think

She will not want this snake.

—Judith Viorst

This is the very first poem we learned as part of our Well Trained Mind grammar stage memorization routine. Well before we seriously thought of a dog as a pet. Back then we had a stick insect, and a more useless pet I cannot imagine. Then came the leopard gecko, only slightly less useless because you could actually hold him. But not too often, and only if you washed your hands immediately after to guard against salmonella poisoning. Most of your time with a gecko is spent buying, caring for, catching, powdering with calcium dust, and cleaning up after a batch of extremely stinky crickets.

So as pets go, I have to say, dogs win hands down for being more snuggly than an insect or reptile. Sweet, playful, smarter than a gecko, sometimes naughtly, but in firm possession of all our hearts here in the suburban jungle.

I can't remember where I heard this story: A woman is in her kitchen, when she hears her husband call out from the bathroom, "Honey, can toothpaste go bad?" Turns out he had used the dog's poultry-flavoured paste by mistake. Still makes me chuckle.

Evolution of a Home

Slowly, layer by layer, we try to make our home the beautiful haven we imagine. Patience is essential. For 20 long years, I struggled to reconcile my vision of domestic bliss with the reality of too little space and money, and a difficult landlord. Now we certainly have the space, the house belongs to us, but bliss must stick to a budget. Compromise is called for, but you will never again see me buy something because it’s cheap and I need something right now!

The dining room chandelier is a Home Depot knock-off of one we saw in a fancy shop. The bowl is a very treasured part of my new dishes, Sophie Conran for Portmeiron. (In my wildest domestic fantasies, I am a Sophie Conran-type of girl.) They were relatively cheap, but much better quality than our old discoloured set from Ikea. The stripes were painted by Mr. D*S, with two shades of grey and a coating of gloss on the darker shade. Did you know that high gloss shows every little flaw in a wall? Luckily, I'm getting very good at ignoring that sort of thing. The mirrors were, in part, a gift from Panda, and we're still searching for some smaller mirrors to fill out the wall. No hurry.

For Karen & Thérèse

Mr. D*S and Moxie in June '09, on the back deck.

Also June. Please, please may I have a bite? or ten?

Panda in July '09.

Then suddenly grown up, later that month.

October '09. And now she'll kill me for this.

How to be a Latin Lover: Cambridge

One of the hallmarks of a Classical Education is the study of Latin. Our rough guide, The Well Trained Mind, recommends starting in Grade Three. Unfortunately, we wasted a lot of time with the traditional, parts-to-whole, grammar-based programs. I know that Susan Wise Bauer recommends them, but a child can be bored to tears with all the paradigm memorization and no real Latin sentences or stories. (I know I was.) Panda was totally uninspired with this method. She could chant her conjugations and declensions but they had no meaning to her and she could not read a passage to save her life. In Grade Six we switched to Cambridge Latin, a reading approach, and loved it. The stories are compelling, and lend themselves beautifully to comic strips and dramatization. The books are very attractive, the history section in each unit is fascinating, and don’t worry, they do teach the grammar, just very gradually without the memorization and chanting. And now I am motivated to learn along with Panda, which is a minor miracle.

There are four Units, each corresponding roughly to a year of teaching. Each Stage in each Unit presents Model Sentences that incorporate a new grammar concept with illustrations, four or five short stories, a Vocabulary checklist of 25 to 30 words, auxiliary vocabulary, two About the Language sections (grammar concepts explained with examples), Practicing the Language section, a more detailed look at some aspect of Roman life and a Word Study. There are illustrations and photos throughout. The first Unit follows a family in Pompeii, ending in the eruption of Vesuvius, and the Second Unit follows a son of that family in his travels to Britannia and Alexandria. Unit Three goes back to Rome. The Teacher’s Manual is actually helpful, which is sometimes not the case in home learning curricula. It explains the photos and illustrations in more detail, gives background and tips for teaching the stories, suggests grammar concepts to review, Latin mottoes and saying to learn and gives ideas for further study.

At the very least you need a Student Text and a Teacher’s Manual, but I recommend the Workbook and CDs as well. Try Chapters or Amazon for new, Alibris or Abebooks for secondhand. You can also order lots of peripherals such as extra stories (Fabulae Ancillantes), Test Crafters, etc. The North American Cambridge Classics Project also supplies games, drills, vocabulary tests, flash cards and comprehension questions in Latin, as well as pencils that say things like, “Flocci non facio!” and “Pestis! Furcifer! Mendax! Caudex!” There are terrific resources for vocabulary, history and grammar drills on the Cambridge UK website. There is also an extremely helpful Yahoo group. This group is mostly teachers with a few home learners, and some of them have Quia games posted for each stage that we use again and again.

With a little supervision, this could be used as an independent course for a home learner. That said, Panda and I do it together. I truly enjoy learning Latin. I keep a step or two ahead of her with at least an extra half hour a day and we both do the Practicing the Language exercises and one or two of the Workbook exercises. We read and translate together and quiz the vocab together. One problem with Cambridge is that although the student translates a lot from Latin to English, English to Latin is wholly lacking. As an experiment, we are starting to do some English to Latin using stories from Fabulae Ancillantes, but about a year behind, since this is new to us. A dedicated teacher in a private school might do the first two Units in a single year, but we are far more relaxed than that.

If your Latin study isn't panning out, I would wholeheartedly recommend the Cambridge Latin reading approach.

The Fall

What can be more deeply suburban than lush green lawns? Mr. D*S has developed a surprising affinity for lawn care. Who knew? We applaud his efforts, especially if it leads to this kind of fun:

(This photo was taken in '08, our first summer here.)
I am more concerned about flowers and salad, so this part of the backyard is especially mine. As a gardening novice, I am taking it slow and easy. It has filled in a little more this summer:

I never dreamed vegetables could get so out-of-control and sprawling. The cherry tomatoes, the ones we could reach, were a revelation. Arugula, tarragon, parsley, basil and radishes were terrific, the lettuce less so. Next year we hope to grow some better varieties from seed and I'll know better than to crowd everything in together like that. Also the bricks must go. They are far too tippy.

This is the very spot that I took a tumble in July, losing my balance while gathering baby arugula leaves for a salad. Annmarie next door must have heard me cursing, because she asked if I was OK. "Oh sure, fine," I gasped. "Just got the wind knocked out of me." Except that I developed the strangest case of indigestion two days later. Three days (and a lot of antacid) after that, I was so uncomfortable lying down that I had to sleep in the Lazyboy I inherited from my Dad. Finally, pain, excruciating middle-of-the-night pain, convinced me that an ambulance was in order. Several hours later, lying in the hospital corridor, I remembered the fall out of my garden. I went home 10 hours later with a diagnosis of a fractured rib and fluid in the lungs, and a prescription for antibiotics and painkillers.

Nothing Really Matters...

We Are All Connected

[deGrasse Tyson]
We are all connected;
To each other, biologically
To the earth, chemically
To the rest of the universe atomically

[Feynman]
I think nature's imagination
Is so much greater than man's
She's never going to let us relax

[Sagan]
We live in an in-between universe
Where things change all right
But according to patterns, rules,
Or as we call them, laws of nature

[Nye]
I'm this guy standing on a planet
Really I'm just a speck
Compared with a star, the planet is just another speck
To think about all of this
To think about the vast emptiness of space
There's billions and billions of stars
Billions and billions of specks

[Sagan]
The beauty of a living thing is not the atoms that go into it
But the way those atoms are put together
The cosmos is also within us
We're made of star stuff
We are a way for the cosmos to know itself

Across the sea of space
The stars are other suns
We have traveled this way before
And there is much to be learned

I find it elevating and exhilarating
To discover that we live in a universe
Which permits the evolution of molecular machines
As intricate and subtle as we

[deGrasse Tyson]
I know that the molecules in my body are traceable
To phenomena in the cosmos
That makes me want to grab people in the street
And say, have you heard this??

(Richard Feynman on hand drums and chanting)

[Feynman]
There's this tremendous mess
Of waves all over in space
Which is the light bouncing around the room
And going from one thing to the other

And it's all really there
But you gotta stop and think about it
About the complexity to really get the pleasure
And it's all really there
The inconceivable nature of nature.

Dan Pink on Motivation

My thanks to Rebecca of Ipsa Dixit for posting this:

Trudging Around My Garden

Your thermometer in your garden might be registering 23°C--and so is mine! But that's quite a different 23°, on the opposite side of zero. Shoulda taken a picture of that!

How fondly I remember February in Vancouver, with snowdrops and crocuses, pink buds of rhododendrons, birds gone wild, singing madly. The ground soggy, but green. This is the brightest spot in my Ontario garden:


Am I bitter? Never!

My mom is spending the days with us now, as she recovers from the insertion of a pacemaker to keep her heart from leaping wildly from 50 to 170 beats per minute. I'm sooo glad to be able to keep her company and help in a small way. We're reading David Copperfield aloud as a family and I think she's enjoying it.

And boy, we don't let the snow stop us from getting out into our little garden. Mr. D*S has shovelled a path around the perimeter so that we can throw the Kong around for Moxie.


All is well and we're patient.

Now get yourself over the Sheila's and see what's happening in her garden:
Greenridge Chronicles

Interiors

More than thirty years ago, I pasted this cheap and cheerful paper onto the walls of my laundry room.

I couldn't have known that 4,500 km away, someone thought it would be just perfect for the long wall in their living/dining room. After bitching about it for over 6 months, we finally rolled up our sleeves and did this:

And this:


After Mr. D*S washed and primed the wall I was truly on the hook, so I picked my colours and invited the family over to help with this:


That's my incredibly hard-working brother Bob, cheerfully finishing up that evening. Thanks also to Emil, my brother-in-law, who was volunteered for the job, and laboured like Hercules nevertheless.

How I obsessed over that colour. For months I sat in libraries scanning decorating books and mags for colour ideas, worried that I would pick something and hate it later. I wanted a calm room with light colours, but felt hamstrung by our humongous black couch. When I found Shadow Grey and Sweet Innocence by Benjamin Moore, I worried that it would be too dark. But as it turns out, it was an inspired choice: greys with just a touch of blue. The long wall is a little darker and the lighter wall colour ranges from violet to charcoal depending on the light and angle but it's hard to see in the photos.




It's just the beginning, of course. I'm just starting on freshening up the paint on the baseboards and we have plans for stripes on the end wall in the dining room. Then it's fabrics for drapes and pillows, moving up the piano, looking for art, a mirror, side tables and lamps, maybe a rug. I don't know how long it all will take, but it feels so good to finally start to make this house our own.

Wordless Wednesday

Moxie Crimefighter

The Deeply Suburban Family Grows

If you've ever taken on the task of raising, housebreaking, training, cleaning up after, entertaining, worrying about and paying for, a new puppy, you'll know I'm a little pressed for time. And stressed out. Bijou's Moxie Crimefighter lies sleeping for the moment at my feet. But not for long.

Sure, she looks sweet. But what you don't see is those razor-sharp teeth that she obsessively tries to attached to anything that passes. Your ankles. Your couch. Your down-filled ski jacket. Your snow boots. Yes, even sprayed with "Bitter Yuck," those boots are irresistible.

Did I mention ankles? And fingers? And the soft, fleshy part behind-the-knees?