Notre-Dame and notre dôme*

I'm reading Notre-Dame de Paris right now. I've never read Victor Hugo before but I figured that since Miriam read both Notre-Dame and Les Mis this year, I could probably also handle Victor Hugo...in book form. I don't think I could handle Victor Hugo in real life because he was...kind of a terrible person. Like Johnny Cash. Guys, I'm sorry, I watched Walk the Line when it came out years ago (I am not sure why because I wasn't quite sure who Johnny Cash even was) and I left that movie hating Johnny Cash. I don't know if that was the point of the movie but, uh, that was where the movie led me. Anyway, while I don't think watching a movie of Victor Hugo's life would elicit good feelings towards him, I do like his writing so far.

From "The Great Hall": 'I tell you, monsieur, it's the end of the world. The students' behaviour has never been so outrageous. It's all everything. Artillery, serpentines, bombards, and especially printing, that other plague from Germany. It's the end of manuscripts, the end of books! Printing is killing off the book trade. The end of the world is at hand!"

Spoiler: Books have survived. So rest easy, dear reader.

Silly or sorry

Over the past few weeks I put together a family history booklet for my primary kids, working on it here and there in the evenings (between trying to get my manuscript polished up and catching fireflies with the children and a few other projects). Yesterday I met a couple of other ladies from the primary at the church so we could make copies of and assemble the booklet (and make a little package for each of the kids with candy (for a game inside the booklet), and cutout leaves and a glue stick (for a make-your-own-family-tree activity inside the booklet).

Before I got out of the car, I put my mask on.

I had figured that the other woman would as well. She is from Taiwan, I reasoned racistly, so surely she will have respect for masking. But, alas...

"Oh, do we have to wear masks?" she asked. "It's just so silly."

"Well, I'm going to wear a mask," I said. "Better silly than sorry."

COVID thoughts

Last May, the Georgia Department of Public Health issued their final weekly influenza report for that the 2018–2019 flu season. Between September 30 (when the flu season began) and May 11 (when they had no reports of influenza to report), there had been 44 deaths attributed to the flu in the state of Georgia.

1 child between the ages of 0–4 died. 2 children ages 5–17. 6 people between 18–49. 10 between 50–64. 25 were 65+.

The final flu report that I can see for this year is for April 18. I'm not quite sure the flu season is over  (they just seem to stop publishing reports sometime in April/May and pick up again in September without ever really declaring anything over) and it was touted as a particularly harsh flu season (back in December and January, before we'd really even heard of the coronavirus). And by all indicators that seems to be true. There have been 93 deaths attributed to the flu this season.

3 children between the ages of 0–4. 2 children ages 5–17. 18 people between 18–49. 23 between 50–64. And 47 ages 65+.

Now do COVID-19!

Mud puddles

We have had a cool summer so far, which we're rather glad about since our air conditioner is broken. The transformer blew, I guess. We're waiting on our home warranty to decide how they want to fix it (cross your fingers they will decide soon because I don't know how long the cool weather will last). Today has been rather chilly and rainy so I'm fine upstairs right now, but when the days are leaning toward hot and humid (not that we've had many very hot days yet this year) things get pretty hot upstairs rather fast.

We've been joking that each level of the house is in its own biome: polar in the basement, subtropical on the main level, and tropical upstairs. One day it was 75°F on the main level and 85°F on the top floor. That heat felt rather heavy. Today they're about the same temperature, though.

Here's a look outside today on this wet and rainy day:

A (lockdown) date night. Finally!

Last night Andrew and I sat down together to watch a movie together. It's the first time we've sat down together on the couch to watch anything for six weeks. So ask me how online teaching is going...haha.

In his defense, he just finished up with a super intense "May-mester" course (150 minutes of class time every day for three weeks) that had been intended to be taught in person, but he suddenly found himself scrambling to get the entire course online (after scrambling to get the rest of his spring semester online). It was not fun and involved many, many late nights in a row.

But it's over now and he's teaching just a regular summer course now, which has given us some time to breathe. So, you know, we watched Just Mercy, which was actually not an easy watch and just made me feel really, really angry. Which is great because I had just watched Teach Us All the other night and that also left me feeling really, really angry.

Let's just say that I believe we could really use a systemic shift in this nation.

So much Lego

The kids destroyed their Lego village today so they can try playing something new because, as Miriam said, "We've been playing Harry Potter for four years!" Instead they've made up a medieval role-playing game, where they role dice to assign roles (king, nobility, peasant) and the catastrophes their characters have to deal with. They have it all written down, along with which die which roles get to roll. For example, if you roll yourself an illness then how sick you get depends on which die you get to roll. The king gets to roll a seven-sided die. If he gets a 1, he gets very sick and has to roll again. If he rolls a 1 again, he dies. If he rolls a 5, 6, or 7, he gets immunity. A peasant, on the other hand, gets to roll a four-sided die. So you can see his odds of getting, and staying, ill are much higher than the king's since he wouldn't have good access to doctors or medicine. 

When it comes to acquiring wealth, however, the king gets to roll the smallest die and the peasant the largest die because in that scenario the king should have a higher probability of stuffing his coffers than a peasant would. 

They've thought long and hard about medieval inequalities. 

Anyway, before they destroyed their creations I took several pictures for those interested in seeing what they've built (hi, Mom!) and Andrew took several more pictures a couple of weeks ago so I'll add those in at the end. This is the children's wizarding world...

More fireflies

Zoë was so excited to have a sunny day again so we could go on another firefly walk. She talked about it all day long and even wrote a little sign to tape to our designated firefly jar that says, "I love to cach fier fli's." She likes to go on firefly walks, that's true, but she doesn't necessarily enjoy the catching of the fireflies. She's hardly succeeded in touching one, let alone catching one. But she'll happily chase them around.

More windows

The glazing on our windows is so flaky that when I told Andrew that a wasp had flown into the house through the glass-less windows (because, you see, I had taken the glass out) and he subsequently swatted it, a chunk of glazing popped right off one of the bottom windows.

Which...is a problem...and that's why we're fixing the windows. This week was a little rainy, but Rachel and I did the top half of the window on Monday (wasp day; taller windows, taller helpers). Today the smaller kids and I did the bottom window.

Sticker motivation

Zoë was very diligent about practicing the piano all of last week. And she very diligently marked off each practice session in her piano notebook, too. If she practiced five out of seven days, you see, she would earn a sticker. Well, she practiced seven out of seven days last week and was thrilled when I brought out the folder of stickers I spent a lifetime hoarding.

For some weird reason, using stickers always stressed me out as a child. Once you stick it somewhere...that's it...it's gone. Plus, I weirdly thought, it would be nice to have some stickers for my children. So I just...saved all the stickers I ever got as a child (or the majority of them, anyway).

And isn't that so weird? Like, did I think we wouldn't have stickers in the future?

Anyway, I have some pretty cool stickers. Sparkly stars, cute baby animals, planets and insects and balloons and flowers. Stickers that say "good work!" and "nice job!" and "A+!" Stickers...stickers...stickers...

"I know just the one I want!" Zoë said and she hunted through that packet of stickers for a long time until she found...a sheet of round, pink circles. Like AVERY brand labelling dots. "This one!" she squealed, and she peeled off a round, pink circle and stuck it on her piano notebook and...I just stood there blinking for a few minutes. That one? Okay.

At least I know she's easily motivated.

(When it comes to piano practicing...)

Baptism memories and baptism music

My dear friend Diana posted a beautiful picture of her baby book where her mom had collected signatures for Diana of her parents and grandparents. It looks like kind of a fun thing to have. Names, written in their own hand. Two important things. Anyway, someone commented and said that's why she says it's important to write things down in scrap books and things—rather than type everything—so that your progeny can see your handwriting. 

So I have some handwriting samples for you this evening! For Family Night I challenged everyone to write down some memories of their baptism day (and those who had not yet been baptized were welcome to draw pictures while everyone else wrote). We reference briefly Elder Anderson's talk from the last session of conference as well as Alma 5, to emphasize the importance of writing things down. And, interestingly, when we began to share what we had written we began to remember more.