Every day we make new dirty clothes. Every single day the members of this household churn out dirty clothes like they’re going out of style. So while I might be able to get a lot of the clothes clean I will never, ever get all of the laundry done. Still, I can dream, right? I can hold on to the hope that one day all of the laundry will be clean. That someday I will be able to close the washing machine forever and buy laundry detergent no more. That one day I will be able to throw my laundry baskets away or at least decided to use them for toy boxes or some such. On that day, that glorious day, we will apparently all be running around naked because that is the only way it is ever gonna happen.

Hmmm, kinda puts doing the laundry into a new perspective. I’m thinking I’ll stick with doing the laundry because that there alternative is just horrifying. Still, I’m thankful for clean laundry. It’s a good thing.

So today I’m going to help Crystal set up a haunted house in the Breakfast Room. Then we’re going to make a gazillion pizzas that will all fit together into one huge pizza. Some fruit salad, some punch, a big ice cream cake and we’ll be all set. And Isaac will feel special and loved. I bet it’ll be totally worth it all.

So I drew up Epiguy who has exacidoptysis (spitting out acid) and anamyomegaly (excessive enlargement of the muscles) and other like conditions. After a week of finding medical descriptions somewhat upsetting, I sat there coloring in a superhero and I thought, “I like crayons. This is fun. Why don’t I do this more often?”

It reminded me of Ana in Stranger Than Fiction who quit law school to save the world with cookies. And as the girl who spent large portions of childhood recreationally reading the Medical Book and the Doctor’s Guide to Home Remedies, I’m now having a bit of identity crisis…

I realized today that I am an intelligent person. Hey, stop laughing. Yes, you, I know who you are, and you know it’s true that somewhere under my occasionally ditzy exterior I’m pretty smart. This is something I already knew, but it was called to my attention today at class.

I was looking over my test scores so far in Medical Terminology, and figured up that with extra credit work, my average so far is slightly over 100%. At break time I walked out feeling pretty good about this. I was really happy with this whole ‘extra credit’ concept, because it meant that I had a decent shot at a 100% average for the whole class, even with one early test score of 92% when I was still getting the hang of things.

Suddenly I found myself in a discussion with classmates who were pretty sure they were flunking, and I realized that some of them were desperately hanging on to the hope of extra credit work to just give them a passing score.

Now, these are people who are undoubtedly taking a full class load, and in some cases had extenuating circumstances that cause them to miss class. I’m *NOT* saying that I’m more intelligent than they are, because I really don’t know that, or honestly, care.

And I’m not extraordinarily intelligent. Thankfully, I have a circle of friends who are generally even more intelligent than I am, so I don’t forget this.

But if I can maintain a 100% grade average on one college course, while maintaining an actual life outside the classroom, then I need to make sure I do something with this ability. Whether I go for X-Ray Technician after this or not, I need to make sure I’m using my brain for something productive on a regular basis, and that really needs to go beyond ‘What did this gray mush in the back of the fridge used to be?’ when at all possible.

I don’t regret having stayed out of the college classroom for this long. Generally, life, which is say, God, has thrown plenty into my path to occupy my brainspace and have to deal with. But it’s too easy get lazy and stop challenging my brain, and when that happens my brainspace tends to fill with lots of unhelpful daydreams and worries as my brain tries to occupy itself.

So, note to self: Whatever I plan to do next needs to include some kind of mental challenge. We’ll see if that turns out to be X-Ray Technician studies or not.

It’s that last bit that I was to focus on. Dragon eggs are food stuffs of such ingenuity that I believe everyone should know about them. Sadly, not everyone does which is why I have taken it upon myself to write this post. No, no, thanks are not needed; I’m just doing my bit to make the world a better place.

So first make some doughnut dough. Very good. Now take an Oreo (we prefer double stuffed, but any kind will do) and wrap it in a portion of the doughnut dough. It is very important that you seal all the edges completely. Let it rise again just a tad and then, here’s my favorite part, deep fry it. While it’s still hot coat it in powdered sugar. It’s like an Oreo filled doughnut. I’ve heard people say that you can’t improve on an Oreo, but I believe that this recipe does just that.

Man, now I want a dragon egg. Guess I’m just gonna have to make some.

I think I must be a homeschooler.

It was just the basics so I never felt overwhelmed with trying to explain something I barely understood. We would have a short lesson, just one body part or concept at a time, and a bunch of review so I never got bored and I never lost the children’s interest. I got to translate bodily functions and bits into a language I thought the children would understand and had to find examples and illustrations they would resonate with. We talked about bones and joints and muscles and I discovered that I really like teaching.

When I took the Strengths Finder test way back when one of my top five strengths was Developer. This means that I am good at and enjoy seeing people take get better at things in small steps and increments. At the time the made sense to me and I was cool with it, but I wasn’t really sure what to do with this strength. Short of turning into a cheesy inspirational sticker (Great Job! You Can Do It! I Believe In You!!) around people who were working on a project I didn’t see the practical application of this strength. And since I’m really not that big on getting punched in the face repeatedly when other people are working on a project I tried to make sure I didn’t consciously practice this strength.

But I’m figuring out that it’s not something I necessarily have to go out and do. It’s something I like and I’m good at; I’ll just do it naturally. Which brings us back to teaching. When I first started flashcards with the little boys they didn’t know one letter from another. They didn’t really know their colors or what their heel was. And now they do. We blitz through the alphabet and I’ve started introducing sound combinations. The older children and I finished our study of the body and we’ve moved on to the animal kingdoms. After that is plants. They’re learning about this spinning earth bit by bit and I get to watch them do it. All I need is popcorn and it would make for a great evening.

My search for people as crazy as I am turned up, as you might guess, Jeremy D. (To give full credit, Seth also qualifies for being sufficiently crazy to do this project, but was distracted by the whole Crystal-going-into-labor thing.) In the ensuing two days I also managed to rope in Gabrielle and Moriah, send a flurry of e-mails planning the project, write a script, plan out camera shots, learn the basic of shooting video (with a borrowed camera), and for once, actually take Seth’s advice about not stressing out about the fact that it wouldn’t be perfect. Did I mention that I’d never worked on a film project before?

Actually shooting of the video was concetrated craziness, as I managed to direct and film our video in an unused Sunday School room while we all should have been eating supper. We had less than an hour of shooting time, and none of us knew what we were doing, but we had a lot of fun doing it. I wish I’d left the camera running more in between takes because we could have put together an amazing blooper reel.

After hymn sing, I went home to edit the video for the contest (before midnight!), and ran into road block after road block, eventually finding that Windows Movie Maker locked up every time I tried to import video. I ended up down at the Ben-Ezras, watching the clock tick down towards midnight while Seth tried to find patches for the problems on the editing software and Crystal sat timing her contractions. In the end, it simply refused to work, and I didn’t get it in for the contest.

By Monday my software had spontaneously started working again, so I went ahead and put together the video. For me, at least, the whole thing was completely worth it, even we didn’t get to enter it in the contest. We had a ridiculous amount of fun, and we all realized that we’d like to do this again. Though maybe with a little more advance planning…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lTI5SoN2QvY

I used to hate raking. There was one day a year that my parents would get us all together and declare that it was Raking Day. I’ve tried to peel away my impressions and remember if, objectively, there had been a lot of leaves because it felt like all the trees in the Tri-County area dumped in our backyard. I know there weren’t that many, but I can say that there really were a lot of leaves in our yard. We had front steps and fences strategically placed to catch any leaves blowing by and hold them for us. Plus, we raked the yards of two elderly neighbors across the street. It was a grand day with grumbling at the start, a Snickers break in the middle, blisters at the end and lots and lots of leaves throughout.

What we did today is nowhere close to the grandeur of Raking Day, but I enjoyed it and it made me feel good. I pulled brown, rotting leaves off of the ground and now we can see the green underneath. We’ve peeled off last year and now this year can start. The leaves lay on the ground through the winter while it rested and slept, but now it’s time to wake up. The covers are off and the sun is up. It’s time to get a move on.

So today I got hit in the back with a rotting pear. I got hit because I was shaking the tree to get off all the pears that we couldn’t reach. And they fell to the ground all around me (some trying to go through me) like a rain of manna.

Crystal has really been wanting to do a bunch of canning. The idea of taking raw materials and turning them into food that will keep for a while is just thrilling to her. The only problem is that she doesn’t have a space for “Canning” in the budget. There just isn’t money for it. So Crystal has been praying that God would provide food that we could can. Specifically, she was praying that He wold provide free food that we could can.

Crystal had to do some rabbit stuffs (did I mention she’s raising rabbits?) which involved getting in touch with the woman she bought some rabbits from to do a rabbity switch or something. While they were talking the woman mentioned that she had some fruit trees if we wanted any fruit. Well, yes, we would love to have some fruit. So we headed out to her farm. On the way, we got a call from a woman at Providence who’s in-laws have apple trees. She said they were out picking apples and that we were welcome to some if we could look around for some jars for her. They live out in the country so it’s harder for her to get into town to poke around in the thrift stores. Crystal thought it was a sweet deal so now we were on the lookout for jars. We get out to the rabbit farm and Crystal did the rabbit thing while the kids and I picked pears and apples. We picked seven buckets full of fruit (this is where I get hit with the pear, by the way). We get everything all packed up when Crystal mentions canning to the rabbit woman. She says that she has a bunch of jars and canning stuff she doesn’t use anymore. Would we like it?

Well, yeah, that’s kinda no-brainer. So we packed the van full of boxes of jars and lids and free fruit. Tuesday we’re going to our friend’s house and having a big apple canning party. There’s a good chance we don’t have quite enough jars, but I’m sure God’ll take care of it. He rained down free fruit and jars like manna from Heaven; it was just in a non-painful way. That pear on the other hand….