Friday, November 1: me more sick, band room, VR goggles, and baby chickens

I slept in, and we got up at 7:15 together. He told me about a conveyor belt to lift up the Titanic. It uses diamond posts, robots, and nuclear fusion. He then played Minecraft and let me go up and take a shower. I went back and played with him, almost finishing the tower of the house I’m working on.

I got carrot coins. He ate those, then chose a Twizzler as his treat. He did art. He was drawing naked monsters. I said he was lucky that he was doing homeschool. A teacher might say “You can’t draw naked monsters, Augustus! No! No! No! But Augustus said…” And he finished with the line from Picasso’s Trousers: “Yes!” And he said, “But the kids would love it.”

We then watched the first two episodes of season 3 of My Little Pony, then got ready to go to school. Jonathan had invited us to the band room to play some of the instruments. We got there right at 10. He wasn’t in the room, but a woman, Noam, I think, was. We looked at the instruments a bit, and she showed August the big marimba. He was playing that when Jonathan got back. Jonathan then gave him a full tour of the percussion section, starting with the bass drum, then the gong. They then moved on to the trap set and played that together. They had also tried the cymbals, but August wasn’t a fan of smashing them together so close to his face.

He did the slide whistle, then moved on to the tympani, his favorite instrument from the concert. He liked those. They then did the mallet instruments: the marimba again, the glockenspiel, and the vibraphone, which he liked the pedal of.

Next was the theramin, which was pretty cool. Finally, I reminded August to ask him about conducting, and Jonathan took him up on the podium and showed him how to conduct.

Before we left, Jonathan showed him a couple of small shaker sort of drums and the fish sort of thing (like August’s frog). And he finished by giving August an egg shaker and showing him how to do a rhythm with it. August got it down pretty well, and was very excited about getting the shaker.

We said goodbye, and on the way out of the building we saw Airport Megan coming into the art building with her class. August told her about how Jonathan had just let him play the instruments and he showed her the egg that he’d given her.

I told August that we might be able to see the baby chicks if we waited for a while. He liked that idea, so we went over to the library. There, he told Amanda and then Ilana about Jonathan and the egg shaker. We lucked out and found both Bone volumes 6 and 7 available, so checked those out. We read a little of #6, then he was hungry. We started to head out, but then Amanda had a set of the VR goggles set up and showed him a moon mission. He played with that for 5 or 6 minutes.

We went out and sat in the lobby and had a snack. He read a lot of words off of a poster of questions about a book called Marilyn’s Monster. We saw Dudley and Mandy walking up the stairs and out the building. August called to them, “Hey Dudley! Hey Mandy!” He then suggested, to me, that Mandy should be a custodian, and rather complained about how much garbage they had picked up when they had babysat him: “I hated how much trash they picked up…I think if it was pouring she’d still be picking up trash.”

At 11:30 we walked down to see the chickens. As we walked by the preschool August made up a “Three cheers for preschool!” chant. Ben Ben saw him and I heard him say, “That‘s my friend August. He was at my birthday.” Which was doubly impressive because Ben Ben wasn’t really talking until recently.

We looked through the fence at the chickens for a bit. August was ready to go as he was hungry and wanted to go home for lunch. Then two middle school girls showed up. It was Cecilia and Yara, who are in Carly’s homeroom. They let us in and August pet one of the chicks while they held it, then pet another on the ground. We didn’t stay for long, but it was fun.

As we left he did the “Three cheers for preschool!” cheer again, and he told Andrea that the vines needed to be trimmed. As we left he told me, “Preschool’s still my favorite part of school.” As we walked out of the school we saw a group of 8th graders coming in, including a few we knew, like Lillian and Grace. August was then complaining about teenagers: “Crazy teenagers!”

We left at 12 and headed home. For lunch we had avocado, crackers, and orange. We watched Kurzgesagt videos on Consciousness and Egoistic Altruism. He then did alone time and I curled up on the couch. I’d used all the energy I had had on the outing. he told me that Jonathan should have the band do Chemical Brothers or “Pay Your Dues” from his playlist. He then left me alone and I fell asleep. He politely got my attention when the timer had actually gone to 34 minutes.

For his time he watched a Bright Side about asteroids hitting the ocean, then a Phineas Rage video. He asked, “Did you know I make educational LEGO videos?” He said he teaches science with them, but they are all made of Legos.

I recovered enough energy and we went out for a bike ride. As we went out he told me “I found a way to use numbers to make things in your mind.” And he demonstrated. As we rode around he asked what gravity was. He argued it was a thing. I argued it was more of a property. He had an analogy involving a computer simulation, vanilla, and old milk to argue otherwise. On the way he had said that he makes highway sound barriers for his job, then when we stopped at the park on Vatikim he talked about how he teaches complex math in his lab (after I mentioned how Brilliant now has a pre-algebra course). Previously he had mentioned teaching brain surgery. I commented on all his jobs and he said, “I have a lot of jobs. That’s why I have a lot of money.” We had also discussed headphones and how he wants ones that cut out the noise.

In the park we went on the merry-go-round until I didn’t feel like that any more. He then had a Brother game where Brother was working for Bar. He worked in her lab, atomizing random things into their elements. Bar was kind of a tough boss, getting annoyed with Brother when he asked questions. She said that all of her other employees already knew these things. Brother also kept asking if he could atomize things like a couch, and August would reply, “No! That’s part of the staff lounge!”

August then noticed that the toys that were missing/broken yesterday (the ball thing and motorcycle) were back. The ball thing was returned, and the motorcycle was replaced with a new horse thing. Now that’s service. He then had more Brother game, with sister going ballistic over something, only to explode in cake. It was a practical joke from Bar.

We got riding again and went up Kibuts Galyeot. We stopped to look at a few boxes of books, but nothing too interesting. He thought about getting some books for Eve so they could have them in the fort. He seemed to think that Eve could read Hebrew because she’s said a few Hebrew words she has learned at school.

We were home at 3:55. He told me, “Did you know when I was mining I found a painting by Picasso? It was one of his faces facing this way.”

When Carly got home I was going to go upstairs and rest, but he wanted to do music, and I ended up doing music with him for quite a while. We started in GarageBand, but then ended up in TableTop, where we added to a tune we had before. August then sang along with it, using the words “You understand.” He had a cool rhythm going with it, although I only got the last of it on video. We then did a second song on TableTop. We got some vocals from him recorded, but not as much as he would like. It was a good start though.

I then went up to rest. They did his evening time, and Carly eventually took him up and washed him and brushed his teeth. He then told me about his wind catcher inventions. It seems like it can collect wind, then blow it all out at the same time. He said it could blow over the Eiffel Tower (“What is that tower in Paris called?”). We read Bone 6, starting from the beginning. He was slow getting ready for bed. He said good night to Carly and I put him to sleep in the Zinnie room again. He wanted me to make up stories from my childhood. So I made up one of sliding down the bank into the Chelan River (Carly’s fear) and how I rode the rapids all the way down, and had to walk back up the road. By the time I got home I had dried out and no one believed me. And then a second was about dropping my teddy bear from a tall bridge. It went down a river to the sea (which was close) and Gramma swam out and saved it. It had a funny ending, as we were then walking back over the bridge and a bicycle ran into us and the bear fell in again. Gramma said, “Once is enough” and we kept walking.

I had the lights off at 9:15. We listened to Haydn’s String Quartet #1. He asked about conducting it again and we practiced. He then fell asleep near the end of it, at 9:35.

Music room – marimba: