Wet and rainy

It's a wet day today. Our gardening co-op is cancelled because it's simply too wet to be out in the garden. Phoebe would like to go outside to play. 

"Please can we go out and play in the rain?" she begs. "We won't get struck by lightning! We promise!"

We've only just come in from walking the neighbour's dog. 

It was drizzly and we came home wet—but the way the rain is coming down now offers us a real opportunity to get soaked. Why would we want to miss that?

Math whiz?

We were talking about how to calculate one's h-index the other day in my post qual class—ironic because the very idea of measuring and tracking one's productivity in that manner seems rather against everything poststructuralism stands for. But, nonetheless, that's what we were talking about. 

The h-index was imagined into existence by Jorge Hirsch in 2005 and it claims to be a measure—or somehow representative—of productivity. Calculating one's h-index is pretty simple, at least in my opinion. You simply find the highest number of papers that have been cited that same number of times. And that's your h-index. 

So, for example, I have two published articles, one of which has been cited twice. My h-index is, therefore, 1 because one article has been cited at least one time. 

Andrew has an h-index of 16, which means sixteen of his articles have been cited at least sixteen times. 

Michel Foucault has an h-index of 309. That mean 309 of his articles have been cited at least 309 times. 

My classmates seemed baffled by this idea, however, so I explained it quickly to them and they got it and then someone asked, "Are you some kind of math whiz?"

Which...if you know me...is a very funny question because a math whiz I am not. 

I have never once claimed math as a strong suit. Not once.

In elementary school, I completed one timed multiplication quiz...ever... So I learned early that I was not a whiz when it came to math. I was a math...opposite of whiz...

A math slug? 

I will brag that I scored in the 95th percentile on the GRE...on the verbal reasoning section.

On the quantitative section?

On chilly mornings

In the winter when it's especially chilly, you can often find the cat sitting under the IKEA workbench on one of the only two heater vents situated on the floor in our house. Here she is earlier in the month when we were experiencing all our little ice storms:

Giardia...hangover...

It finally snowed in Utah. They have been having such a dry year!

Here we made sure to send Rachel with boots and gloves and...it's been such a warm/dry winter that she hasn't really needed them! But it did finally snow last week.

Rachel and her roommate Hailey made "snow cream" to celebrate the occasion. 

It's somewhat of a southern tradition, I believe, where mix, like, sweetened condensed milk into a big ol' bowlful of fresh snow. Fresh being the key word there. 

Rachel and Hailey waited until the day after it snowed to collect their snow for snow cream.

Gross. 

They offered some to their other roommates, who all refused. One is a wildlife sciences major and she was like, "Umm...no thanks. I know what's in snow...so..."

Rachel and Hailey were pretty grossed out themselves when they left it on the counter to melt and saw all the...fun stuff...the snow was harbouring. 

The whole time Rachel was telling us this story we were interjecting with, "Rachel!!" and "Rachel—noooo!" just about every sentence.

Finally she goes, "Hey! We could be drinking, okay? But we're not!"

"Giardia...hangover...giardia...hangover..." Andrew said, as if weighing options. 

Gotta experiment with something, I guess... 

Arabic ramblings

We frequently bring up and laugh about the fact that one of the first words introduced in the Arabic curriculum Al-Kitaab is United Nations (الأمم المتحدة). Granted, the curriculum was developed somewhat specifically to train foreign service officers of varying capacity—to read the news, to act in diplomatic capacity, and so forth. So it makes sense. It really does. 

But it's also hilarious. 

You learn things like "hello" and "my name is" and "how are you?" and..."United Nations"...in like the first week! It's...hilarious. 

We aren't into Al-Kitaab at our house yet. We're still slowly chipping our way through the alphabet in Alif-Baa. But we're encountering some of these seeming incongruences. 

Today we worked on "faa" and "qaf." 

The kids were saying words that they knew, like elephant (فيل), that begin with "faa." Butterfly also begins with "faa" (فراشة) and we actually know all the letters for that word! But the book suggested with just write the name Farid. 

Here's a little "faa"-shaped elephant (فيل) that Zoë made (the dot is the sun above its head):

Chaos Theory

This afternoon while I was getting lunch ready for Phoebe I opened the drawer to our kitchen work bench to grab something and she...grabbed the drawer and swung on it like a little monkey. 

She does enjoy swinging from things—and we have an entire jungle gym for her just out the back door!—but I'm constantly having to remind her not to swing on things like door handles and towel racks and drawers (apparently) because they're not meant to hold the weight of a human child. 

Phoebe has lived a rather privileged life as a rather tiny human child her whole entire life, and thus far nothing tragic has happened...which has only fueled her desire to swing from...everything. 

"What do you mean it can't hold the weight of a human child? Here it is...holding the weight of a human child—see?"

Unfortunately, Phoebe is such a tiny human child that she is still in the phase of life where she is getting larger every single moment of every single day (it seems). So she may have swung seemingly without consequence from any number of things any number of times...ultimately I was correct the entire time. 

And today is the day she broke our kitchen work bench thingy. 

Lucky me. 

Andrew was out doing the grocery shopping and running Zoë to and from a birthday party, so Benjamin and I figured out how to fix it (good thing IKEA instruction manuals are so easy to find). Here it is disassembled (it looks worse than it is):

Busy evenings

I attended the Children's Literature Assembly conference on Friday. I also presented my research (and chaired a session). Grandpa is practicing being retired, so he's no longer working on Fridays. While he's plenty busy getting ready for his and Darla's mission, he came over to take the kids to the park in the afternoon. The house was nice and quiet while I was in my session—and the kids got ice cream as well as park time so they came home very happy. 

Darla came over for dinner and then they both stayed to keep the kids company while Andrew and I went to the temple. When we came home they had the youngest three in their pyjamas and everything!

Here they are playing Swoop:

Hope you ham a lovely day

My sister Josie has been dabbling in linocut printmaking recently (an adventure I may or may not have advised her to embark on). She did some amazing work in the last few weeks—she made five different cuts and made prints for our whole family, her colleagues at work, some of my mom's friends...probably some other people... 

She even got pink ink to delight and astonish Phoebe!

If April be dripping...

I grew up saying "April showers bring May flowers."

I don't know who decided on that timeline because it hasn't always felt very relevant to my location.

One early reference to the poem is found in Tusser's (1580/1557) Five Hundred Points of Good Husbandrie and after diving in a bit, I don't see why this isn't required reading for everyone...good gardening tips set in lovely little couplets (with, at the very end, a cliffsnotes sonnet for the whole year, and an acrostic of Thomas Tusser's name). I see nothing to complain about here:

Swéete April showers,

Doo spring Maie flowers.

....

If April be dripping, then doo I not hate,

(for him that hath little) his fallowing late,

Else otherwise fallowing timelie is best,

for sauing of cattel, of plough and the rest.

April doo be dripping...usually...so that means I can be a little late on my fallowing without being the target of Tusser's horticultural ire. I love any excuse for some wiggle room when it comes to deadlines!

Mystery mark

Reading is a funny thing because just when you think you've figured everything out...you encounter a new font...or learn about upper/lower case...or the existence of cursive script...or... 

Phoebe was reading a book to herself the other day.

Hallelujah! We've reached the glorious part of childhood where they've finally learned the value of personal reading time! 

I mean, did I read her, like, ten books this morning? Absolutely. 

Does she fall asleep listening to me read a chapter book in the hallway? Yes siree.

Are we still chipping away at reading lessons together? Also yes.

So she's still being read to plenty. But she also has started grabbing books off the shelf to read by herself and that is a beautiful thing. 

Anyway, she had pulled a book off the shelf and was reading it when she encountered a question mark that didn't look the way she was used to question marks looking—new font for her, probably. 

So she brought the book to me, pointed at the question mark, and said, "Mom, is this a mystery mark?"

And I don't know where she got that phrasing, but I'm here for it.