In red and blue

Last year, Freddy could be seen doing everything in orange shirts, while Calvin wore a variety of costumes. This year it's a school uniform for Calvin, while Freddy is sporting mainly red shirts and always blue shorts. Did you see a boy in blue shorts and a red jacket on the front page of the newspaper yesterday? Yep, that was Freddy.

He's been learning to shoot:

climbing down steep, dangerous cliffs:

and making tools, like a saw with a bone handle, a bone that once helped support a deer as it gracefully leaped around our forest before being shot by a hunter and left to die:

And he's been spending a lot of time in the clubhouse. He's been doing his math work in there, and his scores are no better than when it's done at the kitchen table, a little better than when it's done while sprawling in the living room, and much better than when it's done in his bedroom while hanging out with Christopher.

Dinner conversation

On Saturday evening, I took the children out to dinner. Sebastien was working, and he couldn't join us. At the table next to us was a couple in their 70s. As they got up to leave, the lady came over...

70s Lady: You have wonderful, well-behaved children! It's a joy to go out to dinner and have children in the restaurant who are so well-behaved!

Susan: Thank you!

OK. This used to happen to me all the time when we were out, at restaurants, at church, at the grocery store. Now that the children are 15, 14, 12, and 9, it really doesn't happen anymore. At those ages, behaving properly should be a given. Then the man came over...

70s Man: I know that you didn't do it all alone! Dad had some part in it!

Then he slapped Calvin on the shoulder. He thought that Calvin was the father of the family. He was not in uniform either; he had on a t-shirt, a sweatshirt, and jeans. I couldn't help but laugh. He complimented us on our three wonderful children...

Susan: Actually, this is the 4th child.

70s Man: The 4th child? Hahahaha! My wife says that about me too!

Susan: He really is a child. He's 15.

70s Man (To Calvin): How old are you?

Calvin: I'm 15, sir.

70s Man: And are you involved in athletics?

Calvin: Of course, sir.

70s Man: "Of course" he says!

Calvin: It's tennis right now.

Then 70s Man went on about being a tennis player and how to put a spin on the ball and how he made $ off of other players and bought a dairy with it. Then he asked if my husband and I had a big club to keep the boys away from our girls.

It was an interesting evening.

This Saturday's fun

Our guinea coop has been sitting abandoned for years and years. Not even the possum hangs out in there anymore. Today Calvin turned it into a clubhouse for Freddy and his friends. It was a lot of work to remove the fencing and make the door bigger, but Calvin was looking for something to do.

The boys are searching the basement for old furniture to furnish it with. They have a kitchen, a table and chairs, stools, and a ladder so far.

They also have a security system. They yell, "Hold it right there, young lady!" when they see me. I thought that only the men at the nursing home called me that. They also know if one drop of water from their guns hits me, they will disappear forever and ever. The guns, that is.

For Bryan

Does an electrician need to fix this? The box has been broken due to the dirt being compacted down. The same thing happend to the telephone box to the right of it; the wires were yanked down. That's been fixed.

The tubing inside the plastic box looks fine. It doesn't budge, but I don't know if it is supposed to. We are not having any probs with our power.

The list

As you know, Freddy is a scavenger. When we started hanging around the campus of Calvin's school for hours at a time, Freddy got busy and hit the mother lode.

It's a military boarding school, so the bushes are full of things that the boys are hiding or don't want to bother carrying anymore. Or maybe something that they've swiped from someone else and thrown out the window. This is some of what Freddy's has found thus far:

6 empty chewing tobacco containers
many pens
a set of colored pencils
chips and a granola bar
a cigarette box
a combination lock
a cap
a broken name tag
shoe polish (black)
a cell phone

He had to return the cell phone. Why the chewing tobacco? It's easier to hide than cigarettes. One is able to chew tobacco in the 6 AM shower where having a smoke would be a problem.

Freddy has also found plenty of paper. One item that he found was a list...

Noises

1. heating vent
2. engine
3. birds
4. babbling creaks
5. flag pole
6. AC
7. flag
8. tractor
9. whistling wind
10. dripping pipe
11. cadets at laundry
12. bee
13. scream
14. motorcycle
15. bullfrog
16. fish
17. fire
18. grasshopper
19. wasp
20. leaves rustling on trees
21. old blue
22. cicada
23. wrapper crinkle
24. whistle
25. sports sampler
26. leaves rustling (again)
27. football
28. Major S.
29. music
30. rifles
31. Cadet M.
32. tennis
33. sneakers
34. air vent
35. heating duct
36. laundry
37. horn (car)
38. clanking
39. car driving
40. gravel

Isabelle has a twin out there, and he's fraternal. This list of annoying noises is so familiar to me. All that's missing is dog barking and people chewing.

My favorites are #4 and #9--because the boy's a future poet, #28--because I know him, and #5--because the ropes banging against a flag pole in windy weather is maddening. #s 13 and 17 have me concerned.

I've got skinny arms

What have I put up to? Oh, the usual...just puttering around my house:

Thus she chattered away, smoking her short pipe, expectorating on the top of the hot stove, but with true feminine delicacy she was careful each time to wipe her mouth on the back of her skinny arm.

--Two Little Savages by Ernest Thompson Seton

Homeschool science and art and PE

This is Freddy's science and PE area in the garage:

He has been shooting arrows with Calvin's old bow, and playing petanque with whomever will play.

The queso dip was found in the refrigerator with mold growing on it. Freddy begged to keep it and watch the mold grow. The aquariums are for his finds. The fish didn't fare well, so they and the tadpoles were removed.

Freddy set a trap in the garage and caught a mouse. When they come out of the little, humane traps, they are all sweaty. It took this guy all day to dry out and fluff up. He's sitting on the edge of his water bowl, pooping in it, while enjoying his cheese hot dog. He ended up escaping, which is pretty impressive.

Freddy's art contains a lot of these little paper men with wide 0s for mouths. They are usually meeting some kind of awful end to their little two dimensional lives.

3rd grade English

It is a momentous time in our homeschooling adventure. Today Freddy finished his English book. There is an additional unit that he will still have to do, about building vocabulary, but the main lessons are done. There were ten tests, and his average score was 98%. Amazingly high. It was only a second grade book because he spent second grade in school where he learned nothing in the way of English. Or math. He'll finish his second grade math book next week.

So, Freddy can tell you all the verbs of being. He can tell you the definitions of a noun, a verb, an adjective, and a pronoun. He can rhyme. He knows what a paragraph is. He can do lots and lots of things, but he still needs a little work in some areas, like writing, for instance.

The Wird Thing that Poopt on Us by Freddy

We saw a wird animal
it was bron and fuzzy.
we saw it wen it was pooping.
its poops were as big as uor hands
theay wer green and orng
thay wer shrivild up
we tried to cech it but it poopit on us
so we ran hom
we freeked out aer mom
we never tooc a bath.

The end.

Like I said, 98% is amazingly high. His spelling scores weren't so good though.

Just a warning

At the end of our Easter Sunday, there was a tornado warning. It was storming, and Freddy and Seb were outside enjoying it. For the first time, we heard the siren at our house. Freddy even heard the "take cover immediately" message. We've slept through that siren and that message many a time.

The girls and I hung out in the basement. I did my crossword puzzle while they giggled over photos. Calvin was already in his basement room, his safe, messy cocoon.

After Freddy dragged all his blankets and most of his pillows to the basement, he decided to laugh in the face of danger and joined Sebastien upstairs to read Calvin and Hobbes. The tornado ended up passing us by and touching down northeast of us.

Sunday evening

I knew somebody was watching me! I just couldn't figure out who it was.

Egg hunt

Doesn't Isabelle look right at home next to the Chagall? She was searching for the pinks and purples.

Freddy was searching for the golds and yellows. And probably for the Palombo family. Maybe if he lived with that family he wouldn't have a red eye from an incident with a branch and a bruised, bloody hand from an incident with a car door.

Calvin enlisted some military help for his egg search. They found the blues and greens, which I think stands for the air force and the army. After the hunt, they went out and played with a huge snapping turtle.

Is that cash?

In the photo below? Yes, it is. When Freddy was in charge of cleaning the roadside, he actually found a rolled up dollar bill. For ten years I've been cleaning that road and have never found money. I found a purse once, but the cash was gone.

After the ants had crawled out of the dollar, and it had been unrolled and dried out, we took the bits and pieces of it to the bank. Freddy was given a new dollar in exchange.

Then we went to a new junk store. When the owner heard that Freddy was "working" for his money, he said that he'd work with him on prices. That meant that everything that he asked about was two dollars, the exact amount in his pocket. Mr Junk Man also told us that a 4H group was cleaning the roadside not far from his shop, and someone found a fifty dollar bill. Jackpot.

So, we were in the junk store and I was walking the miles to the back of the store to find my boy when a little girl jumped out into the aisle. "I'm six!" she boasted. So I said, "I'm forty-one!" and walked on. Then she said to my back, "Forty-one? My mama's older than that! Way older!" Kind of like my-daddy's-stronger-than-your-daddy. I don't know that her mama would have appreciated it. Mr Junk Man, who I think is her grandfather, was amused though.

Scavenge

Freddy is a scavenger. He talked me into letting him clean up the roadside (1/4 mile) this year. I was supposed to just be supervising, but instead I helped. We filled three trash bags. And then I fell over exhausted.

He got to keep everything that he wanted. This is the good stuff, including spiced rum and cigarettes, one for him and one for his best buddy. Those roadside litterers are big smokers, big drinkers, and big fast food eaters.

Every time that we clean the road (twice a year) there is a skeleton. This year it looks like possum, and Freddy's terribly pleased with it. I think that it's in his museum now. Anyone want to stop by for burgers? We have plenty of ketchup and mustard now.