Craig had been encouraging Anastasia's singing (to my mind a true work of charity), but she met me at the door telling me she had been singing scales and she claimed, "My throat is annoyed!" Took me a while to realize she meant "irritated".
We got into the car, wet from swimming, on one of the recent very hot nights. Zhenya complained that the cold air was too cold, and Sergei responded, "We have to have it on Zhen. Otherwise it is too moggy in here." I think the combination of "foggy" and "muggy" is just the word we've been needing!
We won Diana's monster give-away. I really felt that the monster ought to be Anastasia's for his therapeutic benefits, but it was Zhen who was beyond anxious to open the box. Well, wouldn't you know - a fight ensued. He may be an efficasious monster, but he was unable to manage that little difficulty. I was about to tell Zhen that Anastasia needed the monster (I'd typed out and read his benefits prior to our opening the box) but Craig, not quite with the program, weighed in before me and declared the monster was Zhen's. Sometimes nothing is easy. Fortunately, someone texted her and saved the peace.
Maxim is a fun person. He has so many interests and enthusiasms; that's why I enjoy him so much. Yesterday, he asked me to come over and film him (on my little Nikon that will make minute-long "movies") dancing to Michael Jackson music. I had so much fun experimenting with "techniques" and "camera angles"! I loved the result, actually. Plus, he's a good dancer.
I loved Essie's post about the therapeutic benefits of slamming your shopping cart into the cart rack, and perhaps was more open to consciously realizing the degree of pleasure I get from opening those refrigerator biscuit rolls by slamming them against the side of the counter - and the satisfaction of seeing them pop open!
It is only late July; I am finally "getting to" the front yard. Unfortunately, the annuals you buy in July are ugly lanky things. It's their fault, not mine, that it all looks so crummy.
Public radio is doing a story about the "cost" of not graduating from high school.... Strikes me that it isn't the "not graduating" that costs, but the underlying problems in families that create children who can't succeed or don't value education.
I am now old enough to realize that an enormous amount of "dumbing down" has been taking place in our educational system. I never completed a Masters when I might have done because I made the move from education to religious education. Now when I take Masters level classes I am a little bit amazed that they are not as rigorous or demanding as my undergraduate classes.....and when I initially took my education classes, I was distressed at some of the low standards I noticed compared to my initial undergraduate courses - though at the time I put it down to the difference between Russian Language and Elementary Education (but surely, future teachers shouldn't be allowed to hand in papers with cross-outs and white out - in this day of computers? Really?) As an undergrad, pre-computer, if I made an error in the final sentence of more letters than could be corrected by the "auto-correct" feature, I'd type that page over. Frankly, I am convinced that my BA is equal to a present-day MA. And, my mom, who only graduated from HS - my guess is that she got a stringent BA-level, cross-discipline education. But, then - in those days not everyone was expected to graduate from HS, only the intellectually motivated. My grandmother, who earned a MA from Columbia in 1915 must have been brilliant, indeed.
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