In the swing of it

After four weeks of work I think we're finally finding a routine for the new school year. Yesterday I was just contemplating the different levels of maths I seem to be involved in. Mike has been exploring the units, tens and hundreds houses on Decimal Street (à la Math U See) whilst Matt has been doing online maths. One of his tasks this week was working out time problems such as: What is the time 121 hours and 12 minutes after Sunday, 7:55 PM? Just one question like that is time consuming enough for a 10 year old, but 10 questions like that in a row was just too much. Just to add to it all if you don't get 10/10 you don't get a "perfect" rating and have to do 10 questions again if you are an obsessive compulsive person about maths (like Matt). Thankfully Matt had 100% and a 'perfect' first time around.

Maybe that was why Matt objected when I asked him to resume maths after a short break yesterday. "But Mummy, I'm doing something really important at the moment." Apparently rummaging through Lego boxes to find just the right piece for a Lego project is more important than getting one's schoolwork done.

Meanwhile Lloyd has chosen to do pure maths for his senior high school years. Anika only did applied maths. Lloyd is finding the maths a little difficult so each day I'm doing the lesson with him. Yesterday we were looking at hybrid functions and working out taxi driver charges. I did a little pure maths at university but that was in the good old days before them there fancy new-fangled graphics calculators. I've named Lloyd's one "The Beast". It just turns out that the recommended text gives instructions for every calculator except The Beast which was the recommended one. It came with a 3 cm thick manual which claims to give instructions on its use. The manual may as well have been written in ancient Hittite for all the help it is. The free download tutor is little better. Thankfully we have access to a human ancient Hittite interpreter (a maths teacher at our chosen distance school of enrolment) and she is an expert. As each step is mastered I type plain English instructions into a Word document to keep for future reference.

As I looked at my less-than-perfectly clean kitchen this morning (I have a little of Matt's OCD) I reminded myself of the important things that did get done this week and of one of my favourite quotes from G K Chesterton:

When domesticity is called drudgery, all the difficulty arises from a double meaning of the word. If drudgery only means dreadfully hard work, I admit that the woman drudges in the home, as a man might drudge at the Cathedral at Amiens or drudge behind a gun at Trafalgar. But if it means that the hard work is more heavy because it is trifling, colourless and of small import to the soul, then as I say, I give it up... To be Queen Elizabeth within a definite area, deciding sales, banquets, labours and holidays; to be Whitely within a certain area, providing toys, boots, sheets, cakes, and books; to be Aristotle within a certain area, teaching morals, manners, theology, and hygiene; I can understand how this might exhaust the mind, but I cannot imagine how it could narrow it. How can it be a large career to tell other people's children about the Rule of Three, and a small career to tell one's own children about the universe? How can it be broad to be the same thing to everyone, and narrow to be everything to someone? No; a woman's function is laborious, but because it is gigantic, not because it is minute. I will pity Mrs. Jones for the hugeness of her task; I will never pity her for its smallness. (ca.,1910.) Michael Ffinch, G. K. Chesterton: A Biography (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson), 1986 p. 182

Move over Santa

For some time now Mike has been obsessed with the idea of Lego Indiana Jones. Neither he nor the other children have ever seen the movies and I have only seen the one I got taken to by some friends many years back. I think his obsession is because he's been on the Lego site and played the game where Indy zooms across the screen, sometimes on his cute Lego horse, capturing secrets, gold and Indy hats.

Mike has had to improvise with dressing up our other Lego characters as Indy but when the geniune Lego Indy came up on an auction site I used his pocket money to purchase it. Today it arrived and the "proper" Indy was immediately put to use. When Hubby arrived home an excited Mike showed him Indy. "Did you buy Indiana Jones?" enquired Hubby. "No, the postman gave it to me," was Mike's reply. Mike seems to think that the postie knows about all five year old boys and what they desire. And we never have entertained the idea of Santa - I think I mentioned in a previous post that, in answer to Anika's enquiries about who the red man was, Hubby described Santa as "John Calvin in a party suit".

Anika has been busy reading her latest French novel. She knows I like to hear about French idioms. One of my favourites is the French equivalent of "being on cloud nine" which is, apparently, to "be with the angels." So just after Mike's description of the benevolent postie Anika informed me that "to have difficulty with" something in French goes something like, "to have the sickness of a dog about" something. After seeing Lloyd's maths work today and hearing his comment about how ill he felt I think the French have something there.

If I could move mountains - a prayer request

If I could move mountains this is what I'd like to do to Australia at the moment. Ingham in North Queensland is suffering with devastating floods, whilst Victoria and New South Wales are suffering with the worst ever bushfire disaster in Australia after Melbourne had it's highest ever recorded temperature in history last Saturday (46C). 85 people have died so far this weekend in the fires and the toll is expected to climb. What is so saddening is that many of the fires were deliberately lit. It's hard to understand how people could do this, it is basically murder.

Here in south-east Queensland it is hot but not uncomfortable. A friend emailed over the weekend to say she'd been busy throwing out unwanted possessions. She made the comment that here we seem to be throwing out things constantly whereas so many have nothing. Many down south have lost all their material possessions.

I can't move mountains but the Lord knows about Australia's disasters. Please pray for the firefighters and the rescue workers and for the people who are suffering.

From one extreme to the other

Just lately I've been reading blogs and talking on the phone to friends from the USA and Canada and EVERYONE is complaining about the huge amount of snow. I also read a news article today which informed me that Europe and the UK are also experiencing large snowstorms.

Meanwhile Australia seems to be suffering the exact opposite. Last week Melbourne had temps of around 44C and a friend emailed me from rural Adelaide to say they'd had 46C. In Melbourne the trains had to stop because the rails were buckling in the heat. Thankfully south-east Queensland has only had to endure the 30s with a lot of stickiness but we're hoping it doesn't head our way.

Today in an email we got some cute pictures of a little koala who was obviously feeling the heat in the south last week. Apparently it came onto someone's back porch to seek some relief. They filled a bucket with water and this is what happened:

Poor little tyke, I don't blame it for climbing in. It must have been hot as I don't think koalas normally go for a dip.

Since I've posted this it's become a news story.