Great girl teamwork!

I had promised L. yesterday that we would work on one of the projects that came in her latest monthly craft kit. I had not looked at what the project entailed when I committed to it. Bad, bad mistake. Tonight after I got the post-dinner kitchen cleanup done, we started the project from hell. It consisted of 42 punched out pieces that had to be layered on top of one another, using dimensional foam tape (tiny little squares and rectangles) stacked from 1 to 8 pieces thick. My fingers may never uncramp again after peeling the backing off both sides over 300 tiny pieces of double stick foam. We've been enjoying her little projects from this club, but shit. They could have sent us a block of wood and a fingernail file, and I could have whittled the whole fracking thing. It would have been less painful than this process. The upside was that we had a nice, long time of working together, and she is absolutely enchanted with the finished product. It did turn out nicely. It's too bad that the layers and the dimensions of the finished product don't show in a photo. It looks great up on her new white bookcase! It was definitely all worth it--she proudly called me into her room so I could see how she had it displayed on her bookcase, and turned around putting her hand up for a high five, and said, "Great girl teamwork, Mom!"

I'm sure I will be picking up little pieces of backing from the foam tape for weeks to come. We tried to keep it neatly in a pile, but the cats kept trying to get into the pile. I keep encountering pieces scattered about the house and have seen several of the cats walk by with little squares clinging to them.

I also caught a picture of Dej. bouncing on L's little zoingo pogo stick thing (the technical term). She had to hold the handles, so she couldn't cover her face when she saw the camera for a change.

Since the BD family (that's us) are avid readers and addicted learners, much of our time is spent reading books and the Internet and trying to acquire more knowledge and information. I have run across two new favorites in the last week, and I thought I would share them with you.

1. L and I have started reading George’s Secret Key to the Universe, by Stephen Hawking and his daughter, Lucy. While it’s written for children, it is an enjoyable read for me too. It’s a great mix of fictional adventure and accurate science information. We have not yet finished it, but both of us look forward to bedtime now, so we can read another chapter in this book. We’re having a lot of fun with it! There are even a couple of extra bonuses for us. In explaining the birth and death process of stars, the Hawkings discuss elements (as in the period table of elements). This dovetailed nicely with our chemistry studies of the elements in the table, and she was excited when she was able to correctly identify a description and picture of a helium atom. The other pleasant surprise is that George, the “star” of the story, is a vegetarian. His parents are also vegetarian, and are very “crunchy” people—even living off the grid. How cool is that! I had no idea this was the case when we ordered the book.

2. My own personal newly discovered favorite is the website, The Two Percent Company. I don’t know the people involved in the site and ran across it while following links that interest me on other sites, as I often do. From what I can gather, it’s run by a few guys, who are very intelligent and well informed. I have not yet been through the whole site, but so far everything I have read, I have loved! They are a bit more vigorous with their skepticism than I am, but we all have our differences. Beyond that, I find myself agreeing, cheering, and reading aloud to whoever is in the room with me, whenever I read their website. The site is also rife with a lifetime supply of other cool links to explore. This is copied from their “Goals”, listed on the “About” page:

Our mission at the Two Percent Company is to expose the blatant stupidity and recklessness of many individuals and groups in our world — particularly those who have acquired a great amount of power, influence, and notoriety.We plan to forge the unknown into common knowledge, to eradicate bullshit and ignorance — willful or otherwise — and, in general, to fight for truth, justice, and the use of science, reason and logic to further the progress of humankind.

I love this statement, and they are off to a great start with their goals. Like I said, I don’t agree with 100% of what they say, but probably about 97%, and I love the way they say it! They are quickly becoming my latest heroes. I have no idea who Jeff & Tom are, but I would really, really love to hang out with them.