Au Contraire, SnapeADoodle

Sophie and I are playing 20 Questions.

I have been taking Logic this year (memoria press), and I absolutely love it. It makes perfect sense, is fascinating, and the teacher is funny.

Ben has occasionally wandered through when I’ve been watching the DVD.

Me: OK, I’m thinking of something.

Sophie: Ummm…animal, vegetable, or mineral?

Ben: No Soph, don’t ask that! What you ask is, How many notes does it have?

Me: …four.

Ben:  Sophie, that means it’s animated but not sentient. So it’s an animal.

I pretty much just stood there in shock. How many 13-year-olds, without studying, memorize the Poryphyian Tree?

I am proud to be his sister =)

Statues

They’re home! From South Dakota! And they came bearing many tales of adventure…such as, “And then we went to this really awesome place…it’s called Hi-Vee” and “Then Daddy was sooo embarrassing in the bookstore” and “gosh, they sure do say you bet a lot out there!”. To which I naturally replied, “You bet!”.

And they found the base of a statue…I’m not sure why it was just the base and no statue. Perhaps someone stole the statue. Or maybe the Public Works Commision ran out of money. Or they somehow forgot to put it up. Or, possibly, they just found the large squarish chunk of rock to be extremely attractive and decided to leave it the way it was.

Whatever.

Anyway, of course they had to stand on it! Which led to this picture:

It’s quite historically accurate in every detail…save perhaps the green parka. And the sneakers.

Also, I have no idea what he’s trying to be, except that it looks vaguely drum-major-ish.

Ben is exactly the type of person to have the opportunity to act like a statue and use it to pretend to be John Phillip Sousa.

This one is called, “Assistance Please!”

Dad bought a book called the Worst-Case Scenario Travel Handbook, which contains several handy hints such as how to say “Assistance please!” in a variety of languages. “Assister sil vous plait!” is one. Also, “Bitte, Hilfe!”.

This photo I do not have a name for.

But it’s pretty cute.

Ben’s Fort

There’s a new one! The old one was deemed unsafe. So Ben went to Home Depot and made me wait for about an hour while he found adequate rope and pulleys and hooks. You’d think all rope is pretty much equal, but apparently not. For example, Ben would pick up a skein of rope and go, “Well, this one is 20lb test and 1400 kilowatts and 100 feet long….but THIS one is ALSO 20lb test BUT only 1300 kilowatts AND 98 feet long…” and I was able to try on every pair of construction goggles there was, learn quite a lot about installing window screening, and play with all the little metal doohickeys, and I WAS STILL BORED. And he FINALLY found the appropriate rope, which, believe it or not, was the EXACT SAME ROPE DAD POINTED OUT IN THE FIRST PLACE!!!!

This is the new fort, complete with flag. It has a special name like “Fort Powderpuff” or something, but I don’t remember it off the top of my head. The old one was “Fort Anaconda”, I think.

This was actually supposed to be a picture of Ben in midair jumping on his fort, but I mistimed it.

Ben does yoga: The Crouching Frog Pose.

(Actually, he’s not doing yoga. I don’t know what he’s doing. Heck, I don’t even know whether the Crouching Frog Pose exists. But it sounded nice, don’t you think?)

Ben also recently built a pond, which is very cool indeed, and even has some frogs living in it. Also some pirates.

 

AND, my Taize item of the day, and one of the great mysteries of life: Why do people take photos like this?

No one ever looks good in them! It’s painful for the person who’s taking them! Especially in this case because the boys and I are sunburned! Inevitably someone’s mouth and chin get cut off! I don’t know why I’m ending every sentence with an exclamation point! But I am! My eyes look weird here. And please, please, please, no matter how bored you are, remember that photos like this never come out the way they should.

Ben Goes to Camp

Ben left yesterday morning for Scout Camp. Last year Mom closely supervised his packing, with the idea that this year he would be able to do it himself. So he packed. And according to him, he had “everything all organized”, and everything on the list was included.

So this is how it went:

He was, in his words, “all packed”. Dad queried him, “COMPLETELY TOTALLY PACKED? 100% PACKED?” Because Dad is familiar with how Ben’s mind works. Ben assured him that he had everything on the list.

This here is the list in question. Ben had indeed read it and marked it extensively.

He was, in fact, so prepared that he felt free to engage in the ancient Boy Scout Tradition of Interpretive Packing Dance.

Dad, on the other hand, was not so confident. He insisted on reading the list to Ben whilst Ben rummaged through his trunk to make certain he had the item in question. This is just a brief snippet of their conversation:

Dad: Bug spray. Do you have bug spray?

Ben: Umm…I think maybe I forgot that.

 

Dad: Well, let’s be finding some. Do you have sunscreen?

Ben: Yes.

Dad: How much?

Ben: One of those pink bottles.

Dad: Is it full?

Ben: Kinda full.

Dad: How full?

Ben: Kinda full.

Dad: Let me feel it. (feels it…) Ben, there is NOTHING IN HERE! You get some appropriate sunscreen and you get some right now!

Ben: OK.

Dad: How many shirts are you bringing?

Ben: Umm…three.

Dad: Ben, you’ll be gone for a week.

Ben: So?

 Also, Ben is a fan of the Throw It In There method of packing, which made it pretty much impossible to find anything at all.

He does not subscribe to ordinary reason such as, Put Your Sleeping Bag on Top So You Can Find It When You Get There.

He also neglected to pack any shoes until Dad reminded him.

 

And the saga continues….

So.

I am supposed to be doing AP British Lit this summer. So far I have failed miserably. I have done precisely three days worth of questions, rather than three weeks. I also need to blog every day. I’m wondering how soon Mom will let me plead trip preparation and get out of it. Um, and I also have an essay to write and poetry to study.

I’m supposed to be memorizing some sonnet that begins, “Having been tenant long to a rich lord, I (archaic equivelant of sucked it up goes here) and resolved to be bold, and something about a new lease unto him to afford, forge a new contract and cancel the old. There at his mansion I him sought….blah blah…” and at the end of the poem he dies. It’s exceedingly depressing.

So instead of focusing on that today, I decided to play with my pretty new camera (it’s pink!) and take photos of Ben, which I would then condense into a blog post titled, “A Day in The Life of Ben”. Clever huh?

 

This is how it turned out:

2:12 pm: Ben sits on bathroom counter. “This is ma territory” he proclaims.

2:13 pm: Ben goes in Olivia’s room to mess with her stuff. “Hey! It ain’t movin!” is what he said.

2:14 pm: Ben goes to his own room…

… and chooses a book.

He lies down and begins to read.

He reads.

And reads.

I get bored and take semi artsy photos of him reading.

2:20 pm: What the heck, I’ll just do this.

Why You Should Not Let a 12 year Old Boy Have Free Reign With a Digital Camera

or, “Whose Eyeball is This?”

Ben had a photography class a few years ago at co-op, and our camera card has never been the same since. He delights in finding the strange and unusual and artsy photos you’re about to see. <relatively mild sarcasm for Olivia> His motto is, “Why make it simple when you can use settings?” I personally am more in the “There is a reason God had someone invent the ‘automatic’ setting” school of thought.

He takes hours setting up a shot.

“OK, now let’s try indoor portrait with children and fireworks blah blah megapixel blah blah blah more to the left blah blah blah awesome.” is a typical example of Ben’s photography. That is why when I needed a portrait of myself for the Pray for Taize bookmark Mom did it. He also has this annoying habit of putting the camera on video and then forgetting about it so we have numerous videos of Dad’s voice trying to figure out what’s going on and why he isn’t getting a picture.

So here’s Ben’s first ever public appearance as an artsy photographer. World, get ready.

This is a relatively nice shot of our pew at church.

This is a Campbell’s Soup Label Official Deposit Box. Speaking of which, The Campbells Are Coming is one of the only songs I can still play on the piano anymore.

The Campbells are coming ho ho, ho ho, the Campbells are coming ho ho, ho ho, to bonnie Loch Levin, ho ho….

This is an absolutely horrible shot of the audience/Dad’s chin/a wall taken at my last orchestra concert.

Yes Ben, seeing a photo of the auditorium wall and people I don’t know really brings back the fond memories.

Ben climbed a tree, with the camera, and took this attractive shot of himself acting like a goofball.

This is a shot taken at the same time, of the view from the tree of the swingset. Notice Ben’s foot. REAL ARTISTS use their feet.

It’s artist’s code.

Speaking of which, has anyone seen those t-shirts that say, “Real Men Play the Marimba”? I always thought those were cool.

This is the namesake of the subheader, because after I found this on the camera I spent a lot of time figuring out who I knew with brown eyes that would allow Ben to take a picture of them. Ben of course has taken many pictures of his own eyeballs, but our entire family has blue eyes. (although some people wrongly insist that mine are green, but that’s another post.)

The eye belongs to Jonathon.

I think those last few pictures speak for themselves.

Plus, I canoed a lot today, and I have to go to a “Service of Blessing” tomorrow, so I don’t feel like writing about them.

Sit vis vobiscum!

Ethel the Singing Cow Redux

This is a video I took of Ethel, the Singing Cow. Yesterday, I posted pictures, but apparently that is not enough to capture the true essence of the Singing Cow.

Taking a video is a long, involved process. I had to find the camera. And then I had to find my brother, because he has the best voice. And then I had to drag my brother away from the all-important task of peeling boiled eggs to help me find the right setting for video on our new camera. And then I had to send my sister to fetch Ethel from the basement, where she was learning to play dress-up. Then I told my brother what I would prefer for him to sing.

• Nothing in a foreign language
• Nothing that he made up involving everyday tasks such as passing the ketchup or applying conditioner
• And NOT It’s a Small World

He of course began humming It’s a Small World. And then he queried me as to why he couldn’t sing Psalm 33 in Hebrew. Who even knew he could sing Psalm 33 in Hebrew? So I said he could sing that if he wanted. And he asked if he could sing in Jamaican. I pointed out that he doesn’t know any songs in Jamaican so it was moot. So we decided on a chorus song. But of course he couldn’t find his folder! So we took a break and I ate a cracker.

I have food issues.

We filmed three or four different songs. This one is my favorite, but I might post the other one later, and the rest were scrapped because of technical difficulties. Orchestra people will reconize this as the extremely uneventful opening to “By Loch and Mountain”.

 

 

 

And I didn’t even mention how long it took me to upload.