In which I, once again, pretend I am a statistician...

I'm not a statistician but I'm, you know, average at math. One thing I'm pretty good at is that whole alligator chomp thing, where you make the alligator eat the bigger number.

Like 5 > 3 or 8 < 11.

Nom, nom, nom.

So here's an exercise for you!

"Nearly 5,700 people are killed and more than 544,700 people are injured in crashes on wet pavement annually. Every year, over 3,400 people are killed and over 357,300 people are injured in crashes during rainfall," according to the US Department of Transportation. I believe the number of crashes on wet pavements includes those that occur during rainfall (ie. the 3,400 people killed during rainfall are also marked as deaths due to wet pavement), so we'll be going with 5,700 people annually, but honestly we could also go with 9,100 and my little exercise would still work.

Since March 135,822 people have died due to COVID (and, yes, I'll take "COVID-related causes" as well because, honestly, my mother-in-law died of sepsis; she had co-morbidities that made her more at risk for developing sepsis but—let's be clear—it was sepsis what did her in (her death certificate actually lists a long string of events that caused her death (I think, ultimately, it says "asphyxiation" which is also true, but only because sepsis killed her liver and kidneys and brain and heart and... It was sepsis even though she was also diabetic and she stopped breathing)).

Now, help me out. Which number would our friend Mr. Alligator chomp?

5,700 or 135,822?

Let there be light

One of the ballasts in our kitchen lights died recently and the other one was on its way out and refused to turn the lights on about 50% of the time. We decided we'd replace the ballasts, a task we've done before, but when Andrew went to do that he found that these original-to-the-house ballasts had been screwed into the light casing from the wrong side. The only way to get the ballasts out was to remove the entire light fixture so we could unscrew the ballasts from the outside of the light; it should be possible to replace the ballast without taking the light completely out but whoever assembled our house thought they built it so well that nothing would ever need replacing.

Like the blower system in our attic. Guys, I don't know that there's any way to get that old system out of there. And if we can't get it out of there how do we get a new system in there? I mean, I suppose we've survived this long without air conditioning so chances are we could keep on surviving forever. 

But...it might be nice...it might be niiiice...to be able to cool things down every once in a while.

The A/C guy came today with a part our home warranty company had ordered to try to fix the unit but...it was a literal non-starter. So we're back to the old drawing board (our home warranty company, I imagine would really prefer not to replace our system, which I get, but also I would like a system that...works). Our A/C guy can't stop talking about how sorry he feels for the bloke who has to replace that unit because how will they ever get it down from there? I don't know.

Anyway, here's Andrew working on the lights with Zoë as his helper:

You can write rhymes but you can't write mine

Alexander is our little poet; he has a surprising grasp on language for a child his age and enjoys making up songs about his life. The other day we were getting out of the shower, he and I (because we're "shower buddies"), and he said, "We are aww wet!" The he paused, dropped his jaw with shock, and said, "Mom, wisten! I wrote a poem! What duh het?! We are aww wet! What duh het?! We are aww wet! What duh het?! We are aww wet!"

The translation of that would be, "What the heck?! We are all wet!"

Which, I mean, doesn't exactly rhyme but it does exactly rhyme when he says it. I thought it was pretty clever (even if I don't love that my two-year-old throws around the phrase, "What the heck?!" (but when you have a teenager and a toddler I guess you lose a little control over the language your sweet baby is exposed to (or at least I do))).

Then today while we were talking to my mom, I prompted Alexander to tell her about watching the fireworks and he kept telling her that it was so scary and that he had to cover his ears. Then he paused briefly and said, "I am writing a song!" and came up with this:

I'm in-de-pen-dent!

For the first week of school the children researched countries whose independence/national holidays were celebrated this week. That's why Rachel has been going deep into Rwanda (we watched Hotel Rwanda with the girls, a movie we haven't watched since the summer of 2008 (with James and Uncle Jacob (and whoever else was watching) in San Diego)) and she has been reading and writing nonstop all week. Miriam, on the other hand, dove deep into Canadian history. She gave a lovely presentation about how Canada was granted independence (though I challenged her on a few points (as I am apparently wont to do), such as when she said, "Canadians were generally okay with being colonized," I said, "Which Canadians? Like, the colonists were okay with being colonists and being under the rule of the crown, perhaps. But what about the aboriginal people. What do you think happened to them? How do you think they felt about colonization?" So we'll be continuing with that bit of her education next week; but anyway...). It was a lovely report and she's in the middle of making a "fact book" about Canada, which is turning out beautifully. 

We had poutine for dinner. Without cheese curds because for some reason those are ridiculously difficult to find in the south, which is honestly rather puzzling. You'd think that would be a food the south would embrace. I mean, if they do pork rinds surely they can do cheese curds. But alas. We used some fresh mozzarella instead and it was fine.

America's Independence Day was today. We spent the first part of the day completing projects around the house (putting new lights in the kitchen, for one thing; honestly...this house...I will blog about it in a little while but, long story short, the ballasts in the kitchen lights went bad). Then Andrew grilled some burgers and hot dogs for dinner. We had watermelon and peach crisp (because I like crisps better than cobblers). And it all felt very American. 

I asked the kids to tell me their favourite part of America at the dinner table (because sometimes I need reminders about why this place is okay). Benjamin very quickly answered, "Minnesota."

"Minnesota?" we all repeated, somewhat shocked.

366 days in Georiga!

We've officially lived in our house for a year now—366 days (as our friend James pointed out when Andrew erroneously claimed 365 days (that would have been yesterday)) because it was a leap year!

Of those 366 days, we have spent 112 of those days being very much at home due to the coronavirus. That's about 30% of our time in Georgia, spent right here...at home. So that's fun. 

We moved here and attended our ward for a couple of weeks before it split off into a brand new ward and we enjoyed that ward for a several months until we were peeled off and tacked onto another stake. We met as our new ward in our new state for one week before church was cancelled (well, not cancelled so much as moved to our home). It's been weird. 

But Rachel got to "attend" the virtual camp "with" her friends from our old stake last month and this month she gets to "attend" our new stake's virtual camp "with" a bunch of girls she has never seen in her life. That will probably be really weird.

Anyway, in honour of being in our home for a full year I hung Happy and Top over the kitchen sink where they can keep our dish-doers company (yes, we're still deciding where things go). My mom texted me to say that she thought Alexander would probably enjoy looking at those birdies and he was quite happy about their addition to the kitchen.

Toilet Paper Forever

This morning I took the kids to the park so that Andrew could record some more lectures (and while there we gleefully discovered that they have re-opened the parks (I'm all for social distancing; but absolutely no one was at the park besides us so the kids had a blast playing (we haven't used a playground in literal months))). While we were on our way home a friend of mine texted to see if we wanted some toilet paper. 

A company her husband did some (computer) work for offered them a free sample of their toilet paper so she said, "Sure. Why not?" and the next thing she knows a truck is delivering a pallet of toilet paper in her driveway. They tried it out but they don't love it so she tried to give it away to various charities but no one seemed very excited about it. But, like, I'm not very picky about toilet paper. And it's septic safe. So...I said, "Sure. Why not?"

And I just can't get over how much toilet paper we have stacked in our living room right now, given how The Great Toilet Paper Shortage of 2020 is just barely in the rearview mirror. Like, I just laugh every time I walk past it. We are set.

Don't Leave Me!

I discovered the "Don't Leave Me" challenge the other day and—naturally—found it hilarious. Basically, it's a pun challenge and I'm here for that kind of thing, so today I had the kids help me write and film a few skits. It was a lot of fun to do and we got to have a good discussion on compound words (we watched some videos (here, here, here, everywhere) and identified which skits were based on compound words and which skits were just silly) so it even counted as school time!



We're so funny!

Bob Hope (and things)

I sat a little shell-shocked at my computer after I got the news that Greg Hope had died. It was rather late at night and Andrew was working. For levity's sake, here's a picture I snapped of Andrew this evening before he began filming his lecture:

Business on the top, casual on the bottom. I haven't seen him wear pants in weeks (it would be months but Benjamin's baptism last month kind of broke his streak).

Bird man

"Hoo-hoo, Mom," Alexander said, stumbling into my bedroom at 1:00 in the morning (I know it's up late; Andrew is still recording his lecture and I'm in the very bad (?) habit of staying up until he's ready to go to bed). He often stumbles into my room and says weird things. Sometimes it's just, "Hey." Sometimes it's, "Will you take me potty and then tuck me back in my own bed? Because I do want to sleep in your bed but my bed has all my toys." Sometimes, apparently, it's "Hoo-hoo."

I caught him mid-yawn, but you can see he brought one of his stuffed owls with him.

This boy and his birds!

She loves me (she loves me not)

We are reading The Ickabog right now. In fact, we're all caught up as it's being published chapter by chapter. The kids were so frightened by the end of last week's installment that when I realized new chapters apparently aren't posted on the weekend and so began reading The Trumpet of the Swan to the children they begged me not to return to the The Ickabog. It was just too scary. 

But we've gotten a few good drawings out of it. Zoë has been drawing monsters and nightmares for everyone in the family. Here are a couple she drew from me and Alexander. Alexander's picture is clearly a terrifying beast. My picture looks like a bucolic home scene...until you notice the venomous snake slithering in the grass.