TODAY IT'S HER BIRTHDAY!!!

That's right, and when everybody was awake this morning Martha, my blessed and beautiful wife who is today ten years younger than a dear friend in Delray Beach, Florida and – I learned getting to work this morning – three times nine years older than Facebook, got cards from Sarah, Jeffrey and I! You do the math. Granted, the card from Sarah and Jeffrey was a Valentine's Day card (my bad, I didn't look at it before we bought it Saturday) and it was meant to come from one child and not two. I/We also got her a gift, a T-shirt from our local Gideon's Trumpet saying what a great Christian mom she is. My wife did say, since she got me nothing for my birthday two months ago that I did not have to get her something, but I KNOW that's code for “I bore your children, get me SOMETHING!”

And before school this morning, we had to go to Trinity Regional Eyecare and get Sarah's glasses fixed, the ones she got last week. Her story's that she left them on her desk in class and when she came back the right nose piece was broken off. So we went in and the glasses will have to be replaced – we traveled there in separate cars because I needed to replace my own nose piece and get a polite lecture on cleaning that green crud which builds up around my lenses' inside; the occasional soak in dish washing drops and water will keep it off. And I admit, I'm notorious about not cleaning my glasses unless I literally can't see! (Not that I can without them anyway; past a few feet everything's a smear.)

For this month, instead of reading ten or fifteen minutes a day for at least twenty days a month – which so far Sarah and Jeffrey have been excellent about doing! – all of Longfellow's kids and their families are together reading and discussing Betty G. Birney's book The World According to Humphrey, a chapter book told from a hamster's point of view. A teacher buys Humphrey at the pet store and puts him in class, and then the next teacher's not a big fan of his, and all the kids in Mrs. Brisbane's class want to be the first to take him home for the weekend … you learn a lot about another species that way. So it says in the book, anyway.

As a family we're supposed to read four chapters a week and then do some vocabulary and discussion questions. Apparently Jeffrey's class had a quiz today on ALL FOUR (which I would have expected by the end of the week) so while Martha was at McDonald's last night we read and reviewed the chapters before and during the dinner I made of burgers and fries. And the kids really got into the story; I had to remind Sarah especially that it was my turn to read – we were each reading a page at a time. And Sarah comes out after we're done with chapter four (we read two, three, and four; chapter one we were reading with Martha this weekend) with the line, “I love reading non-picture books!” I'll get her to work on some of my collection soon, I think … and the only reason that was not the title line today – in contrast to Jeffrey who wants his books with pictures, he said before bed last night

 

 

 

Was that it's Martha's very happy birthday, David