Please pass the bee barf

Tonight we had random dinner because Jon was at school, and I would rather do something other than actually make dinner. I was spreading some honey on my buttered bread, and Oliver said, "Mom, what is honey made out of." I enjoyed, immensely enjoyed explaining to him that honey is bee puke that somebody puts in a jar. I kept remarking how delicious the throw-up was while I ate the bread. I'm not sure that Oliver will ever again eat honey. He was thoroughly grossed out. :-)

Jumping Rope

This afternoon Caroline was jumping rope in the cul-de-sac. I asked for the jump rope and did some little rope tricks, etc. Nothing amazing, but the children were blown away by my jumping rope technique.

"Mom is the greatest!"Charles yelled, while Jonathan and Caroline fought for turns to try next. They failed miserably, and simply gazed in awe as I retrieved the rope and began again going through my tricks.

What can I say? On the island of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.

Saturday morning

This morning Jon and I were in the kitchen chatting and Jonathan, the brave, walked in to talk to us. "Mom, Dad, I want to tell you this funny thing that happened yesterday." Jon and I exchanged looks. "Really?Really?" Jon said with mock enthusiasm. Jonathan, being accustomed to such treatment continued.

"Yesterday, when we were playing tag, Peek--" Jonathan began. "Peek? Like peek a boo?" I interrupted. "Or peek as in peek a pack of pickle peppers?" Jon added. "So anyway, Peek realized that I was standing off to the side as if I had been tagged--" Jonathan continued his story.

"Tagged as in tag sale?" I asked and sipped my coffee. "Uh, huh, really, wow this is a really exciting story," Jon added. Jonathan kept talking as if we were silent and attentive. "Peek suddenly stopped, touched me and said, "you've been eliminated." Jonathan finished the story and stood grinning broadly. "Eliminated- that was so funny."

Jon and I stopped drinking our coffee and we both turned and looked at him in silence for a few seconds. "Oh, so eliminated is the punch line? That was really funny," I said. Then Jon and I looked at each other and I said, "one, two three--" and we burst into laughter.

Anyone who thinks home school parents aren't preparing their children for the real world are wrong. Dead wrong.

The Jan. 14th Rally

All things considered, I'd say my progress on the Jan. 14th rally is decent, and I'm currently in only a mild state of panic. It is a very scary thing to plan something of this size by oneself. It could be a complete and total bomb, or an incredible success. Of course there are the various levels in between--

My family is watching a movie; a very dumb movie. The spoof on Noah's Ark; I don't remember the title, and it isn't important for the purpose of this blog entry. I'm very tired, and could either watch the dumb movie for the sake of being with the family, or go to bed with a hot mug of tea. I'm leaning toward the latter. Besides, I'll be with the clan for an entire week!

Oh, and my 12 year anniversary is next weekend. 12 years married to my best friend. It is going by too fast. If we live to be 95 (Jon is 7 months older than me), that only leaves us 64 more years to be together, and that is not nearly long enough, especially when you realize that you never cease existing. That whole "no giving or taking in marriage" thing that Jesus mentioned in relation to heaven is a serious bummer to the very happily married.

One more thing- whoever anonymous is that said Bible- for the Bible and Spade, thank you. Bible and Spade is the greatest archeology magazine. When I'm old and gray with plenty of time for reading, I'll subscribe. I hope they'll still have low quality printing- it adds to the charm of the thing, I think.

Really, Really Gross

Last night, I sent the kids upstairs to brush their teeth. It was really cold outside, and every year when the weather gets really cold, a couple of those big crunchy wood roaches roam in looking for warmer weather. Well, one was in the bathroom. I could hear Oliver's squeals of delight along with Caroline and Charles coaching him in his effort to grab the fellow.

Suddenly, there was a blood curdling scream, followed by panicked crying. It was definitely Oliver. But what was more strange was that Charles and Caroline were laughing hard. I raced upstairs, and there stood Oliver, looking very stiff, panicked eyes, unable to communicate in words. "What happened?" I yelled at the giggling duo. They recovered themselves enough to say that when Oliver grabbed for the roach, it suddenly jumped onto his hand and ran up his sleeve.

Oliver was wearing a turtleneck, and I did not relish the thought of attempting to locate and extricate the roach from the shirt. Roaches TOTALLY gross me out. So I decided to raise the shirt a bit and flap it to see if the bug would come out. Well, the bug got moving and Oliver was shrieking in complete terror. I guess it is one thing to hold a roach, and it is quite another to have it scurrying around your body. Finally, FINALLY, the dumb thing fell to the floor, Charles immediately grasped it and threw it in the toilet, and I flushed.

Oliver looked very solemn, and a little sheepish. He sniffed in silence and I gave him a long, bear hug. Poor little chap.

A mug of hot tea and a pile of paper work

Tonight Jon is working at the dining room table on office and school work, and I'm plugging away on the backside of the house at my roll top desk with a big hot mug of Earl Grey tea, which is rather inspiring. I'd rather be inspired to sit on the sofa ten feet from here, with my feet propped up on the coffee table (which I do not own, but have picked out of the IKEA catalog. Jon said that had I not acquired a $600 cell phone bill thanks to Pro-Life Unity, I would have the coffee table. Oh, well), anyway, with my feet propped on the coffee table and reading a delightful volume of Plutarch or perhaps rereading the history of Eleanor of Aquitaine- which is also very lovely. I did discover one remnant magazine of Biblical Archeology under my bed last Friday. My favorite archeology magazine is "____ and Spade." I know that is cheesy- but I don't remember the first word. Bible and Spade, book and spade, earth and spade- it escapes me.

Instead of reading, I've been taking care of lots of little details, and I'm now supposed to write an article for the www.georgiahla.com website, but have hit a brick wall. Nothing interesting is coming forth. Thus, I'm here, "warming up" on my blog.

We have a new system around this house, after I spent three days cleaning, scrubbing and organizing last week. Here is the new motto/system: "We are too busy to have a dirty house." So once a day, I route the troops for one hour of vacuuming, dusting, mopping, folding, and de-cluttering, besides making sure that beds are made, trash taken out, and towels hung up in the morning when everyone is getting ready. The results are really inspiring. There is one completely trashed room in our house- what used to be the school room, which was for a time Grandpa's room, is now the upstairs laundry room. It is the catch all for everything, including vast quantities of clothes, ironing, mismatched socks, prolife activism stuff like fetal models, posters, back drops, brochures, etc. I am hoping to get this room tackled this coming Saturday, and then all of the house will be nice and clean.

After Oliver got up this morning and had his oatmeal, hot chocolate, and Emergen-C drink,he donned his overalls, and headed out to hunt lizards. This is becoming an increasingly time consuming task for the simple reason that the lizards are very cold and not really moving until almost noon. Oliver went out the door at 7:43am and he caught two very small lizards at 11:17. Yes, my spastic, over energetic, would be diagnosed with ADHD if I allowed that sort of thing, stayed patiently in the neighbor's bushes all that time waiting. Oliver came into the house very, VERY pleased with himself and his twin lizards. I don't know that they were twins, but they were very small, and caught at the same time. We went to go pick up Charles from school, and Oliver happily sat in the very back caressing his little creatures. He was delighted to be able to allow Charles to hold a lizard and still have a lizard to hold himself. When we returned home, Oliver returned to Bo's bushes, in the squatting position. About an hour later he came trotting across the back of the yard, came into the house, slammed the door shut, threw himself to the floor and all the while in hysterics. Apparently, he found a third lizard, and in his excitement released lizard one and two, and thus lost all three lizards. Usually, I do not allow crying over something this trivial, however, I really felt very sorry for the little chap.

Vivian has a cold. She is very cranky with her cold.

L-L-Lizard

Yesterday, Oliver was doing what he does everyday of his life. He was in Bo's bushes searching for lizards. I told him to get out of the bushes several times, but I was busy scrubbing the house down, and quite frankly, when the highlight of your life is lizard hunting, shouldn't everyone leave you alone?

Oliver caught this really big lizard. Bigger than all other big lizards ever caught by the Hodges boys. And he was a very fiesty lizard. Oliver brought the lizard to me proudly. Jonathan was so excited that he asked to hold it, Oliver handed it over, and then Jonathan panicked a bit and ended up dropping the lizard. Oliver stepped back as Jonathan attempted to catch it. Then Oliver pushed Jonathan aside, pounced and caught the lizard immediately. Highly entertaining.

That lizard was a grayish brown color in the early stages of his Oliver relationship. After dinner, when I really paid attention again, I noticed the lizard was a brilliant green. I said, "Ollie, come here and let me take a picture." Oliver trotted right over, very pleased with the prospect. As I peered through the viewer I decided to tease a bit. "Why don't you let the lizard bite you nose, and it can hang from your nose for the photo." Immediately Oliver put the lizard to his nose saying, "Come on, open your mouth and bite!"

Oliver is marine material.