In which I stick my foot in my mouth

We're currently reading Piecing Me Together, as I mentioned in an earlier post, and the main character is a collagist and mentioned something about how she likes taking tired/ugly materials and turning them into something new/beautiful, which is a beautiful outlook on life. 

So my kids have been making collages while I've been reading out loud to them and we've been discussing various social aspects addressed by the book.

Today we also discussed an article Aaron Miller posted on Twitter about how it's better for children to grow up thinking the world is a good place than a bad place, but I had a little bit of trouble introducing the article to the children and they were victims of a little train-of-thought introduction:

"One of Dad's professor friends shared this article on Twitter. Oh, what does he teach again? Ethics, I think... No. He can't teach ethics; he's a lawyer."

At this, Rachel lost it and just started laughing...because lawyers have certain reputations, you know.

"That is not what I meant!" I gasped. "I just meant that perhaps I remembered wrong when I thought he taught ethics because he's a lawyer first and a professor second. I didn't mean that lawyers can't be ethical. But what does he teach? I think non-profit stuff? But obviously I can't remember. Anyway, doesn't matter...let's just look at the article."

As it turns out, he teaches both ethics and non-profit stuff. So my memory is fine. I just like to second guess myself.

*******

Soon after Andrew got home from campus this afternoon, Benjamin brought the mail in.

I'll interrupt my story to say that Miriam has started taking clarinet lessons from Andrew and this morning just as the mail truck was driving by, Miriam started warming up on the clarinet. Zoë was working on some math with me. Today she was working on measuring weight; last she was measuring length.

Here's Zoë measuring out 1000 g of pinto beans this morning (it was supposed to be 1 kg but we don't have a scale that registers kg, so Zoë got to learn that 1000 g is the same thing as 1 kg):

And here's Phoebe "enjoying" last week's length unit (those are Alexander's hands; he joined in the measurement "fun"):

(picture from January 4)

Anyway, Zoë heard the combination of a car engine and the clarinet squeaking and exclaimed, "Oooh! Dad's home!"

Clearly Andrew needs to get his brakes checked. 

Eventually, though, he really did come home and soon after he did, Benjamin brought in a stack of mail and handed it to Andrew. Andrew went through things, recycled nearly everything because almost all mail is useless, and then came out to the music room and held a book out to me. 

"Here—do you want a copy of Qualitative Research Design?"

"Oh, sure!" I said. "That will be helpful for my research methodology class this semester."

"Should be, yeah," Andrew said dryly. 

"Wait. Did I order this book? Or did you?"

"You did,"

"So, like...this is the textbook I specifically ordered for my class?"

"Yup."

"Okay, then it will definitely be helpful for my class this semester. I totally thought you were just handing me a book you plucked off your shelf or something..."

"Nope. It came in the mail just now, specifically for you."

"It looks like a book Dad would recommend, honestly," Rachel said soothingly.

And it really does. But it's my book. 

Oh, boy! Oh, boy! Oh, boy!

Here comes another semester!