How to Mess with Your Wife’s Head

So yesterday I was sitting on the couch between Rose and Bean. Rose was working away at her Latin, and Beanie was absorbed with an old Singapore Math workbook she found last week. It has lots of untouched pages, so she claimed it as her own. It has pictures of bunnies, you see, and pieces of candy for you to add and subtract. I mean, come on, bunnies! Black ones, white ones, and you can add them together and have lots of bunnies, or take some away and sigh wistfully over how few are left!

Jane was off writing a Plutarch narration for me, and Wonderboy was bopping around the house as he is wont to do. There might, after all, be some doors that need closing. Somewhere. A boy can hope.

The phone rang: it was Scott, calling from work. I like it better when he calls my cell phone, because then I can hear the special ringtone I assigned to his number, but this was just the boring land line.

"Put me on speaker phone," he said. Done.

His voice boomed into the room. "Bean! If you have five bunnies and you take away the three white ones, how many bunnies do you have left?"

Rose, Beanie, and I stared at the couch. How did he know? We are close, this man and I, but telepathically linked? Not so much.

Suddenly I hear a low chuckle from down the hall. The chuckle of a three-year-old who is most exceedingly pleased with himself. A three-year-old who has gotten hold of mommy’s cell phone, and has managed to dial his father, and now even his less-than-stellar hearing is picking up Daddy—in stereo.

I Stand Corrected!

Turns out dryer lint really IS valuable! Check out this comment from Jennifer (author of the wonderful homeschooling-on-a-boat blog, S/V Mari Hal-O-Jen):

You don’t save Lint for Clay???
2 Cups Dryer Lint (firmly packed) 1/3 Cup Warm Water
6 Tbsp. White Glue
1 Tbsp. Clear Liquid Dishsoap
Tear the lint up into little bits. Mix everything in a bowl and knead
until workable. Sculpt to heart’s content. Airdries in a few days.

Who knew? (Not my daughters—but perhaps they felt in their bones that it had potential.)