The Week Rose Red's Dog Bit Me!

 He's the sweetest giant baby of a dog.

He loves me, and I feed him tidbits of bacon fat or chicken skin when he happens to be upstairs in my kitchen.

He's 80 lbs of pure muscle, and he's quite scary when he's barking at a stranger, but he's never been anything but sweet to me.

He knew I was in the room, I'd made eye contact with him and spoken to him with the baby voice I usually use with him when I entered the room.  I sat down to sew for half an hour, and then it was time to get the kids up for the day.  I spoke to him again, stood right next to him, and scratched the base of his neck.  

He flinched, snarled, and bit my hand simultaneously.

I yelled at him, and he ran into Rose Red's room.

I think he knew he'd been bad.

But I was bleeding and hurting, and I didn't want to be near him, so I went upstairs to tell Sir Walter Scott and wash the wounds with soap and water.

Stitches might have been a good idea for the deepest cut on my wrist because it is right in the place where the skin stretches the most, and butterfly bandages wouldn't even stay attached, but I've kept it covered with fresh aloe, and I've done my best to keep my hand still, and it's healing up.

I did overdo it yesterday with cooking and cleaning, and I cracked it open a little bit.

I repented of my ambition and kept still for the evening.

The bite has kept me from making final costume progress!

I need to sew two more skirts, dig out several costumes for a family that has been quite confused about the instructions we've given, and I need to glue buck taps on new shoes for Brother.

Our first show is this Thursday, and the clock is ticking!

Dress rehearsal was as bad and as good as one can expect from a dress rehearsal. :)  Our first show will be for a memory care audience who will be thrilled with us no matter how many mistakes we make, and I am grateful for that.

You can see one little Star whose daddy forgot to send her costumes with her, one whose mommy forgot her costumes, and another one who forgot her shoes--gotta love dress rehearsal!  But these Stars will charm our elderly audience to no end!

The older 4 girls headed out to one party on Halloween while the 3 older boys headed to another.  Baymax and Lola stayed home with Mom and Dad, and I sent them with Dad to the store to pick a bag of candy (a small one) to share while they watched a movie.

We all attended a Musical Revue performed by a whole bunch of our homeschool friends who belong to a co-op that's too expensive for us to join.  We love supporting them, though, and their show was a lot of fun.  

Otherwise, I  sent the kids outside as much as possible this week, convincing them to stay out by reminding them that the time change was coming, and it would be dark far earlier in the coming weeks.  The perfect autumn weather, the falling leaves, the sense of urgency, and the pure joy of using their bodies kept them outside for several hours each day.  

The high schoolers and I studied Stephen Crane this week, weeping together over the end of his short story The Open Boat.  Huck Finn made us laugh out loud when he pretended to be a girl, and my girls were a little bit nervous about what was going to happen when he was found out.  

I think Steinbeck is next in our text, but Nature Angel just finished reading his book East of Eden, and I find Steinbeck so emotionally exhausting that I don't want to read anything by him aloud.  Little Princess is a mature 15, but I told her that I'd like her to be 17 or older to read Steinbeck, not because she can't handle it intellectually, but because it might be too much emotionally for her.

I worried about Nature Angel the whole time she read East of Eden.

I was in my 40s when I read it, and it left me traumatized.

I also re-read The Grapes of Wrath sometime in the past half-dozen years, and I swore off Steinbeck forever more.

The younger kids and I finished month 2 of our Peaceful Press curriculum.  We're moving more slowly than recommended, but I'm happy with our progress.  

Grandma and Grandpa brought pizza for lunch one day, and we had fun catching up on family news and showing off all of the things the kids have learned about the constitution in our homeschool.

Baymax dropped all of his pages out of his school binder and fell apart himself.  I was so touched to see Ladybug patiently helping him organize his papers by date so they could go back into his binder.

I still need to finish and print the timeline cards for this unit, but once those are done, I can put the kids to work putting them in order, and officially close out month 2.

I did commit to a Christmas curriculum this week!  I found it here.

The kids and I finished Voyage of the Dawn Treader and started The Baseball Trick.  The copy we have is from the 70s, and it was part of my family library when I was a child.  I'm somewhat bemused as to how my kids haven't read it yet, but it's a lighthearted family read-aloud.

Ladybug gets her braces off this coming week!