Month: October 2010

  • Syllabic

    “Syllabic” Girl and I worked on writing Halloween haikus today (part of the homeschooling and all).  Hers reads: Halloween Halloween darkness Boo! Ghosts and witches, Bats fly Ooo! and vampires Mine reads: Halloween Theft Dressed as a gypsy Nasty boys stole her candy I gave her my gum True story. ———————— A handful of hours […]

  • The Locals May Cover Their Arms, Legs, and Hair from Public View During the Day, but Lira to Simits That They’re Watching Chelsea Handler at Midnight

    The children don’t go to off to school. They don’t go to soccer or karate or swimming lessons. They have no friends, ergo no sleepovers, playdates, or squirt gun battles. To their everlasting credit—and with many notable hours of painful and frustrating exception—they are coping admirably. They’re taking succor in books, each other, a few […]

  • For My Next Selection, a Little Ditty Called ‘Stuffing Newspapers into My Sopping Shoes’

     There’s a door up to our rooftop which doesn’t latch properly. Last night the wind was gusty, and so the door banged and thwapped all night, even though Byron had tried to wedge it closed. This morning, he went out a couple more times to try to stop the whacking. Coming back inside, he announced, “Well, I jammed it once, […]

  • Second Grade Tour Guide

    A few weeks ago, we experienced the Black Sea area of Turkey when we took the bus from Istanbul to the town of Amasra. While there, we flew rocks into the sea, walked over an old Roman bridge, and ate fish (well, some of us not born and raised in landlocked cattle country did, anyhow). […]

  • Bus Boys

    Unless it’s wafting past the Wall of Whips in a high-end pleasure dungeon, the smell of burning rubber is never the precursor to a good time. Thus, it was unfortunate, as the bus traveling between Istanbul and the Black Sea coast chugged up a hill, that the smell of burning rubber grew in intensity. Moments […]