Seven Quick Takes, vol 27

1.  

Long week here! 

 Let's see . . .  we haven't left the house, but we've had 5 days of sickness from Turtle, a missed playdate  a cancelled baby appointment and no Atrium, a planned and replanned date night that never worked out, had two nights of fevers, a midnight nosebleed episode, three nights of kids squeezing into our too-small bed with a too-pregnant me, a evening of puking (me! ugh!) and no hockey team victories.  

*Sigh*  Hope next week is better!! 

2.   

AND Downton Abbey was a heart-breaker this week!  I was crying in sadness and disbelief.  Just add that to the list of bad stuff about this week. :(  And this is definitely worse than any of the above, hence it needs its own sad number in the Quick Takes.   I tried to describe to D., who doesn't watch Downton Abbey (or anything else remotely slow . . . or British), how tragic this episode was and failed to instill in him the sense of what this MEANS.  I don't think I've ever cared about a TV show's characters so much before!  

Anyways, if you don't watch Downton Abbey, you should, regardless of tragedies. :) Its a really great show.

3.  

On another, happier note, I watched Enchanted April one afternoon this week to distract me from the miseries around me.   I loved it!  It was an unexpected joy.  The Italian scenery is lovely and lush and the ending is so happily just as it should be.  It makes me want a month's vacation in an Italian castle!

Part of the synopsis says: 

Lottie Wilkins and Rose Arbuthnot, two married women living in 1920's London share the misery of empty relationships with their spouses and decide to rent an Italian castle for the spring to get away. In order to save money, they advertise for two other women to join them. Mrs. Fisher, an elderly widow who knew many famous authors in her youth is struggling with a lonely and regimented existence and jumps at the chance to join the vacation. Lady Caroline Dester is a gorgeous flapper who has been grabbed one too many times and is sick of men, she only wants to be left alone.

My favorite part was when Lottie says:  "I feel so happy here.  This place makes me feel flooded with love.  The important thing is to have lots of love about. I was very stingy with it back home.  I used to measure and count it out.  I had this obsession with justice, you see.  I wouldn't love [my husband] unless he loved me back exactly as much.  As he didn't, neither did I.  The emptiness of it all!"

4.

My 5 year old can make popcorn all by herself.  I love it!

She uses the electric popper, melts the butter on the stove, salts it, and shakes it between two bowls.  And presto!  Hot buttered popcorn for all.

5.

Speaking of independent kids, it was so great yesterday, when I was lying down all day in fits of stomach pain and nausea, that the girls were mostly self-sufficient.  They were like this cute little team of helpers.  They were inspired, I guess, by the rare novelty of a mommy who couldn't get out of bed, and so Turtle cooked eggs and toast for breakfast, then they cleaned the kitchen up afterward as a "surprise" for me.  (Never mind that they somehow thought it was a good idea to wash food-covered dishes in the bathroom sink and now just draining kind of slowly. :)  Rosebud made peanut butter sandwiches for lunch and then popcorn for snack.  And there was mostly amenable playing together without any serious fighting.  We did alot of couch sitting and reading later when things started to fall apart, but we made it through the day all right, in large part due to my awesome girls!  

6.

Now a gratuitous Montessori video about the Infant/Toddler program that I watched recently.  I love the row of light switches that one environment has, each attached to a light right above eye level!

7.

I randomly found this quote by Laura Ingalls Wilder today.  The girls and I have just finished reading "The Little House in the Big Woods" and my interest in Laura and her life and person as been renewed as I re-read these books from an adult perspective.  I find this quote to be a fascinating look at Laura, especially in the light of some of her stories in the first book of being disciplined as a child.  She actually relates a story about a fight between herself and Mary that is told in Little House in the Big Woods (chapter 10, Summertime).  She speaks of being whipped with a strap by her father and then has this to say about this episode's effect on her "hatred of injustice":

"It was not the pain of punishment that hurt so much as the sense of injustice, the knowledge that she  [Laura] had not been treated fairly by one from whom she had the right to expect fair treatment, and that there had been a failure to understand where she had thought a mistake impossible  . . . .
"Children have a fine sense of justice that is sometimes far truer than that of older persons, and in almost every case, if appealed to, will prove the best help in governing them.  When children are ruled through their sense of justice there are no angry thoughts left to rankle in their minds.  Then a punishment is not an injury inflicted upon them by someone who is larger and stronger but the inevitable consequences of their own acts and a child's mind will understand this much sooner than one would think.  What a help all their lives, in self control and self government this kind of a training would be!

"We are prone to put so much emphasis on the desirability of mercy that we overlook the beauties of the principle of justice.  The quality of mercy is a gracious, beautiful thing, but with more justice in the world there would be less need for mercy and exact justice is more merciful in the end.  The difficulty is that we are so likely to make mistakes we cannot trust our judgement and so must be merciful to offset our own shortcomings, but I feel sure when we are able to comprehend the workings of the principle of justice, we shall find that, instead of being opposed to each other, infallible justice and mercy are one and the same thing."

This quote is (according to Google) from section of Laura Ingalls Wilder: Farm Journalist, an edited compilation of Laura's later writings.



Happy Friday everyone!
Be sure to visit Jen for more Quick Takes.  (I laughed out loud at #4 and #6.)