from the file marked “stuff my kids teach me”

The Epic of Gilgamesh is not something to blithely stumble into and start reading various translations of willy-nilly. I’d read some reports of “safe” and “toned down” translations on a homeschool board I frequent, but figured those moms were probably somewhat uptight and that we didn’t really need to sanitize the oldest story in the world. Um, either I found a particularly graphic translation or it can really use some toning down. Since I’m mainly reading this to Pike, who runs a degree or 20 more prudish than the rest of us, I’ll leave the sexualization of Enkidu to others and we’ll enjoy the sanitized “Gilgamesh the Hero” thank you very much.

We are trying the great MexPost experiment to see if the reports are true and they are, in fact, delivering post.  We have never used the Mexican postal service because, well, it either has not existed or simply did not work.  We got quite used to this situation and it has taken some 6 months of reading accounts of MexPost success stories to decide to try it.  I had our mail service in South Dakota send our mail a few days ago and I’m so excited to see if it will actually arrive that I’m already making lists of more books to get.  I also have a contact on my homeschooling board mail me things left at my sister’s – she’ll walk across the TJ border and then send it via Multi-Pak or Estafeta, two delivery services which thrive due, in many ways, lacking on the part of MexPost.  So!  TWO packages!  That MIGHT arrive!  It’s almost better than Christmas!  After making all these momentous decisions (when no business, not the electric company, not the water company, not the government uses MexPost, but instead hand deliver all bills, it is easy to see what a foreign concept it is to use the postal service) I found out that a temporary camper here has been innocently using MexPost to send all his mail and dive computers and wetsuits and whatever it occurs to him to order from the US without a second thought.  And he has never had a problem receiving packages.  Which just goes to show you how beautifully the ignorant are protected.

The past few months I’ve been getting more and more unhappy with the evening and nighttime schedule of the kids’.  We finally had a family meeting a couple weeks ago and addressed the issues I had.  On a typical day the girls are gone all day playing and the boys are gone once they get up.  We rarely get them home from lunch and they only return once their friends are eating dinner and, quite understandably, they are both famished and cranky beyond reason.  Once they shove food in their mouths they are off again to play.  They then come home around 9pm and settle in with a night of DVDs and computer time and lay waste to the kitchen.  Not only am I missing my kids but I am not enjoying the disaster that results from the starving children and I feel like we’re running a hotel and maid service here.  Luckilly, they care enough to listen and we hammered out a solution which should meet everyone’s needs.  We also decided to take a one week break from all DVD and computer use.  I rallied for a month; Jesse countered with 2 weeks and we ended up lasting only a week before caving.

I think everyone in the family was shocked by the results of the week-long experiment.  Everyone realized how much they missed interacting with their family members and how much fun we can have doing “nothing”.  So we had another family meeting and decided if we wanted to continue (yes), how often (we’ll try 3 times a week and see how people feel about that), and other miscellaneous needs like popcorn to eat during Family Drudgery Nights (nights with TV and computer).  So we now have Thursday, Saturday, and another day (Monday?) dubbed as Family Fun Nights.  Last night we listened to Prarie Home Companion (it had gotten to the point that only Jamie and I would listen and the kids would be on their computers or their friends computers) and wrestled and played dominoes and enacted an episode from “Smallville”.  It was a wild and crazy night.  And by 9:30 I was ready to turn on the TV.