Nobody Knows Anything

Welcome to Diane Patterson's eclectic blog about what strikes her fancy

And boy, are my arms tired

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I’ve spent most of what seems like the past several months but probably was just the past few days celebrating Sophia’s 7th birthday. (SEVEN? Is this fair? Is this true? Good lord!) We had the family party. We had the kids’ party. Today was the school’s party. All hail, Sophia! Seven!

(My God, the time goes fast.)

My birthday’s in August. I never had a party. Darin’s birthday is right before Christmas. He really never had a party.

Simon is tired of preschool. As in, we have a fight every day about going. Of course, when it comes time to get him at the end of the day, he doesn’t want to go home, he wants to stay and play. I’ve tried to explain that preschool is all about the playing and kindergarten (which he wants to go to NOW) is all about the school. He doesn’t believe this. Sophia has snack-recess AND lunch-recess, so clearly going to school is the best choice.

He has also taught himself to read.

We’d noticed he was picking up a few words here and there. For over a year his favorite word has been EXIT, because he could read it on signs everywhere. But lately the pace of acquisition has picked up, until finally he started reading his favorite Blue’s Clues book to me. And he isn’t reading from memorization either (he’s had several books completely memorized for a while now). Now I point to a word and he can either read it or begin to sound it out. When he hasn’t a clue he shakes his head until I help him out.

He isn’t quite so thrilled with reading that he’s doing it on his own, but he is clearly pleased with himself to have figured it out.

No wonder he wants to be in kindergarten NOW.

I still think he’s going to be surprised when it’s not all recess.

German help needed

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I used to speak German — I probably wouldn’t call myself fluent, but I did well enough to argue with another German when I was drunk, to always end up speaking German after the Germans had exhausted their English, and once, when hanging out with a bunch of other Germans, they guessed everything from Norwegian (I’d dyed my hair blonde) to Dutch to Canadian before finally guessing American. (Sadly, this says more about the state of Americans leaning the language than it does about my abilities. Still.) But I haven’t done anything in German for the past 10 years or more.

So last night I have a dream in which I’m trying to get to Berlin and I find a book entitled something like Berlin auf Fluchthaft. I looked up “fluchthaft” in Babelfish and it gave me “escapeful”; the various dictionaries on-line gave me “No such word, bucko.” However, there are several pages (via Google, natch) that use the word “fluchthaft.”

Is “escapeful” the best translation for “fluchthaft”? Or does it mean something else in slang?

ETA: My father-in-law says it means “something that keeps you from fleeing,” from Flucht=flight and Haft=arrest (or constraint). So now I am really wondering what that dream meant!

Really great compliment

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What can I say? I not only take ’em where I can get ’em, but I like to memorialize them for those times when I can’t remember anyone saying something like this.

Sophia’s class has a round-robin snack schedule, where every kid is supposed to bring in something for snack time (so that the kids aren’t bouncing off the walls by lunch, I guess). Fruit, cookies, whatever. For Sophia’s turn, I made two lemon loaves from Dorie Greenspan’s Baking: From My Home To Yours.

The teacher told Darin (who walks Sophia in to school in the mornings) that if I’m opening a tea shop or a bed-and-breakfast, she’ll invest. She loves the stuff I make.

Not that I’m planning on doing any such thing. For one thing, currently I use other people’s recipes, and wouldn’t it be kind of cheating to open a bakery using someone else’s stuff? Also, it’s a lot of work that starts around 3am, and I’m just not a 3am kinda gal.

Still: good feeling inside.