Summerstay Christmas letter 2011
Daniel turned 9 in October and is in 4th grade. He started Cello in band at Yellow Springs Elementary. He’s still taking piano lessons and in Chess club. I slipped on black ice in January and got a concussion. I was in and out of the hospital for a month in March after a spinal fluid test went wrong and caused an internal leak of spinal fluid in my back. Attempts to fix it caused blood to flow into my spinal cord, which is a bad thing. When my spinal cord was finally fixed, and my pressure finally went up to my normal, overly-high level, it seemed to go even higher. I also found out I can’t get surgery to correct the narrow veins in my brain because of a slight collagen disorder, because I would be at high risk for the stent to poke through the vein. But I am trying a new drug to bring down my cerebral pressure. The drug has its ups and downs, but seems to help. -Lesli I am still in school, ABD. Lesli made a book of her ancestors’ photos and I finished my book about creative machines.- Doug
(search for Machinamenta on amazon.com)
Noticing Personality traits
After showing up dressed for pack meeting to officiate—and it was the wrong week:
Doug- I hate being stupid.
Daniel- You're not stupid, you're something else–I can't think what it's called.
Doug- Absent minded?
Daniel- That's it.
Daniel- Can I meet someone with multiple personality disorder?
Lesli- No.
Doug- What I want to meet is a whole group of people who have single personality disorder.
We were talking about our different strengths and weaknesses in intelligence (Doug and I) and Daniel said to me, ‘Well you have a talent of being able to sleep a lot and whenever you want.’ -Lesli
Lesli [to Doug]- Daniel's so disorganized, and I'm not doing anything to help him, so you need to teach him how to be organized.
(Those who know what I was like as a kid will find this funny. -Doug)
Lesli- Try not to be too grouchy tomorrow even though you’re going to bed so late. You will be very tired. It’s 10 o’clock.
Daniel- I wonder if I would punch someone if I went to bed at 12 o’clock.
Doug- Yeah, if you went to bed at 2 o’clock you’d be a mass murderer.
Daniel’s interesting ideas
Daniel was taking a standardized vocabulary test to determine how many words he knew. For words he didn't know, he was guessing the definition.
barnacle- a monocle you have to wear in a barn
bugbear- a tiny bear that looks like a bug
manacle- a thing you wear on your eye but they spelled it wrong
streamline- a line of streams
Daniel- Every odd number plus an odd number so far equals an even number.
Daniel- about two weeks ago Poppy and I were working on my homework. It was on prefixes that meant numbers that weren't shapes and we were looking them up on the internet and for 11 we found hendecasyllabic.
Today we were playing a game where each person had to play a word one letter longer than the word before them and the person who gave up lost. For the last word I said hendecasyllabic and Poppy lost.
Doug- I learned today that birds may have an analogous structure to the prefrontal cortex in a different location.
Daniel: What does that do?
Doug: It's the part of the brain that lets us imagine what might happen in the future.
Daniel: Oh, so the parrots might think that after all the humans are dead, that they wouldn't speak English words anymore.
(I had recently read After Man with him, a book that imagines how animals might evolve after people were gone. Daniel pictured the parrots coming up with a similar concept—parrots imagining what would happen after people are gone.)
Lego
Daniel- Look, I made a Swiss Guard out of Lego’s! You know, from the Vatican.
[about a Lego generator Daniel made]
Doug- So when did you see a generator?
Daniel- I didn't. I just threw a bunch of greeblies together and called it a generator. Because it’s very complicated like a generator.
Daniel was showing me his Lego people: This one is a judge, this one is a knight sculpture, this one has lobster claws for hands. I asked about the woman standing in the center scowling, raising a hand and wearing a fancy dress. ‘This one is Amelia Bronson. She's trying to attract all the attention she can. She was like the ultimate suffragist.’
Jokes we made up
Daniel- What kind of glider does the Avatar use? An Aang glider!
Daniel- What do you call something that's really good at getting honey, and goes around on a barge?
Doug- Water bears? Like, tardigrades?
Daniel- Jabba the Pooh.
Doug and Daniel wrote this limerick:
There was a young lady from Cybertron
who tried to put her pajamas on,
but they just wouldn’t fit,
so she sighed for a bit,
and ordered replacements from Amazon.
Doug- How would you like your steak, Wendy?
Talking Wendy doll (from Bob the Builder)- Well done!
Religion
[After a scratch from one cat and a cuddle with another]
Kathryn's daughter Elena [4 yrs]- Do you know what we need to do to be like Jesus?
Doug- What?
Elena- Be tame.
Daniel-How come God has more than 15 houses all over the earth?
Doug- Look—if you were as rich as God, wouldn’t you have a house in every state?
Doug asked Daniel about paper cutouts showing the plan of salvation ( the spirit world, the degrees of glory, etc.) on the wall at church- Do you know what that is?
Daniel- Yes, it's the chain of life—first you're a person, then you're a skeleton, then you're a ghost.
Doug- what happened to Genevieve?
Lesli (joking)- I think she became a nun.
Daniel- That's what I want to be when I grow up. In my book a nun is one of the choices for what you want to be when you grow up and I circled it.
I asked Daniel his favorite scripture. He opened right to it. (He had it bookmarked):
Jeremiah 8:17 For, behold, I will send serpents, cockatrices, among you, which will not be charmed, and they shall bite you, saith the LORD.
Lesli- I told him to put that game [Bible Trivia] away a long time ago and now the pieces are scattered all over the room.
And now he's probably lost his crown of glory.
Daniel- Oh, there's lots of crowns of glory.
(Daniel and I were looking up the word prig)
prig–noun - a person who displays or demands of others pointlessly precise conformity, fussiness about trivialities, or exaggerated propriety, especially in a self-righteous or irritating manner.
Daniel- It doesn't say anything about—
Lesli [interrupting]- It doesn't say anything about mormons.
Observations
Lesli- How was the amusement park?
Daniel- We went on a roller coaster that was wooden. It was very scary.
Lesli- Was it too scary?
Daniel- Not too scary—just about the exact maximum.
We went down two water slides in a race that had a lot of drops.
Lesli- Was that too scary for you?
Daniel- No, but I think it was for my stomach.
There was a swimming pool with a wave.
Lesli- Was that too scary for you?
Daniel- No! It was below the minimum.
Daniel- Tabitha is very good at catching rodents—except capybaras. But there are no capybaras in North America.
Daniel and Merrick, trying to find the smallest and the biggest house as they ride in the car:
Daniel- That house is so big it’s as big as the biggest elephant in the world.
That house is so small it’s as small as 3 porta-potties stuck together.
Daniel- Did you know Bethany has a toy car that you put dead people in?
Lesli [shocked, and then light dawning]-Oh, you mean a toy hearse?
I quoted this to Doug, ‘A rich man is nothing but a poor man with money.’ -W. C. Fields
He replied, ‘That's silly. A naked man is nothing but a regular man without clothes.’
Then Daniel said, ‘A regular man is nothing but a baby grown up.’
Doug said, ‘A banana split is nothing but a peanut butter and banana sandwich without peanut butter or bread. Plus ice cream.
Superman is nothing but a regular man with super powers.’
Daniel- What would you rather be killed with—a sword or a gun?
Lesli- I don’t know. I’d rather not be killed with either.
Daniel- I’d rather be killed with a gun because it would be a quicker death.
[My visiting teachers and I were talking about not agreeing with leaders, and the issue of blind obedience etc.]
Beth- you don't like to be herded.
Lesli- I don't think anyone could herd me.
Caroline- Or any of you Summers. If someone tried to herd you, you'd all scatter in different directions.
Later- Lesli to Doug [about above entry]- Did you think it was funny?
Doug- It mostly just seemed kind of accurate.
Books
Daniel read Carry on Jeeves by P.G. Wodehouse as a bedtime book and now he’s reading The Inimitable Jeeves as a bedtime book. I find this very funny. He’s reading it right now. He’s sleeping on a mattress on the floor in our bedroom tonight as a treat since it’s his birthday, and he’s got the covers over his head with a book light on. I think he got the idea of reading these books because he likes the British TV show Jeeves and Wooster with Hugh Laurie. [Daniel says, indignantly, after reading this one, ‘I don’t read these books only because of the TV show. I read ’em because you read ’em and you were always laughing, so I decided to read ’em, and I liked ’em.’] -Lesli
Lesli- Is ‘Sonny Boy’ even a real song?
Doug- Sure it is—it's this sad Irish song . . .
Daniel- You're thinking of ‘Danny Boy.’ ‘Sonny Boy’ is all about angels feeling lonely and what not. (from Jeeves and Wooster)
[After reading Harry Potter 3, which he read completely on his own]
Daniel- I don't want to read books anymore because they make me depressed.
Lesli- why?
Daniel- Because I always want to be in the book but I can't.
Elena (4 yrs) came up to me while I was visiting John and Kathryn's house. “I have a book for you!” she said. “Follow me and I'll show you.” So I followed her into the living room where there are several bookshelves. “You can choose any book you like,” she said. So I picked up some hardcover fantasy novel. “That's a good choice!” she said. “Now come sit over here and you can read it quietly.” She led me to the table, where I sat down and opened the book. Then she ran off to her mom and said, “I helped Uncle Doug like a good Librarier! That was a good job I did!” -Doug
Movies and TV
Lesli [to Daniel]- Stay off the ottoman.
Doug- Every time I hear the word 'ottoman' I think 'empire.'
Lesli- Didn't you have an ottoman as a child?
Doug- No, but we did watch a show called 'Automan.' It was awesome. It was like the opposite of Tron.
Daniel- Do you mean a person came out of the computer?
Doug- Yes, exactly.
Lesli [to Daniel]- How did you figure that out? I was trying to imagine those motorcycle things driving backwards and sucking up their walls.
Daniel was playing a ‘Clone Wars’ videogame, and the intro had Obi-Wan explaining how if you got tired of saving the universe, you could click on the ‘games’ button in the corner of the screen to play mini-games. He was not impressed. “Real Jedi would never say something like that,” he insisted.
Daniel’s idea for an advertisement for the TV show Monk (written by Daniel)
Monk- (this isn’t a real advertisement)
Some guy- I’m going to murder you because you won’t buy Monk.
(Monk finds out who the murderer is.)
Monk (skip to the end)
Monk- they won’t arrest you because you did it to advertise my show.
Daniel- How come criminals always wear cool outfits? Always.
Food
Daniel- “Why are people so much smarter than other animals?”
I gave him a few reasons, including theological and scientific (our brain sizes are larger; possibly because it enabled cooperation and tool use among early hominids; etc...) Somehow we got onto the topic of people eating other animals. He said he wanted to be a vegetarian so he didn't eat other animals. I pointed out that this would be pretty easy, since it would just involve stopping eating chicken nuggets, which he is getting pretty sick of. But I also pointed out that he would first have to learn to cook his own meals, since his meal choices right now are pretty much the intersection of the small set of foods ‘absurdly easy to make’ with the tiny set ‘Daniel is willing to force it down his throat.’
Lesli- I hate dark chocolate. The only thing I hate worse than dark chocolate is having no chocolate.
I was helping Elena (4 yr old niece) walk down our front steps and she slipped slightly and spilled her chocolate milk on my flower bed. She looked at the chocolate milk all over the plants and then asked anxiously, “Will they grow with that?”
I said, “I think so. They prefer water, but they'll do fine with chocolate milk. They'll be fine.”
Reassured, Elena addressed the plants, “Don't worry plants. It's chocolaty. I like it. I'm sure you will too.”
-Lesli
Misunderstandings
Doug [trying to explain to Daniel what quadriplegic means]- He can move everything above the neck.
Daniel- Can he move his hair?
Daniel [holding his hands out palms up, thumbs out]- They tell you to do this and it tells you which is your left hand, but it doesn't work.
We asked Lisa’s girls, Theresa and Bethany, if they wanted to go swimming today, November 26th. They politely declined. While warm for the time of year, it is 52 degrees today. (Now that they know it’s indoor swimming, they’re excited to go.)
Lesli- I need to pass these flyers out to everyone on the street so they will help prevent the development on the resource conservation land.
Daniel- Oh, so you're a protist?
Doug- I think you mean protestor. A protist is a type of single-celled organism.
Daniel- I wonder if you burped into a car a lot of times, if the car would run.
Lesli [reading a groupon advertisement]- 56 percent off a facial in Maryland.
Daniel - You mean you can grow a beard for 56 percent off? Or a mustache?
Daniel’s 3rd grade class earned enough money to buy a bull for someone through Heifer International.
Daniel- But why would someone want a bull sent to their house anyway?
I mean, imagine if a bull was sent to your house, and you opened up the package and a bull went out rampaging your yard and almost killing you.
I don’t even know what.
Daniel is getting oral surgery tomorrow—his molar didn’t erupt.
Lesli- Anything you want to drink, drink it now because you can’t drink anything after midnight.
Daniel- Can I pee anything after midnight?
Doug—I just had the worst nightmare.
Lesli- What was it?
Doug- I dreamed I was teaching high school again.
Daniel- Where does Santa Claus get the money to buy the materials for all the toys he gives away?
Doug- He hits parents up for donations.
[Lesli- I was asking Heidi for pictures of Jeff as a child for their wedding reception. Jeff was saying he wasn't sure if he had any.]
Heidi - Oh, come on, there's the one on the wall at your parents house.
Jeff- Well, it may not actually be me.
(Jeff is an identical twin.)
Our credit union called to warn us about fraud on our account. Lesli was reading the man on the phone our debit card number. I said to her, “If he's really calling from the bank, he should already have that information.” Lesli then asked him (shocked), “Are you fraudulent?”
-the end-
Daniel decided to make lego figures of us so Doug thought we should dress up to match. We weren't going to use them as our Christmas photos, but I was too tired to take more, so there you have it. -Lesli
