He was up at 8:30. I went up and we then lay on the couch bed for about ten minutes. Thought he might fall back to sleep. When he was up we finished reading Shivers on the couch bed. Downstairs we blew up TNT fill commands in the Survival Trival world. It rained, and he went and watched it. He went and played piano, and was playing a cool triplet eighth notes thing, which I just caught the end of. When he played it again he threw some dissonance and randomness into it. I then had him play a jazz piece, but unfortunately it wasn’t quite the piece from last night. We did composing, composing “Triple Play”, which got pat of his triplet piece on paper, at least the basic idea of it.
I made him oatmeal and we took it upstairs. We watched a couple Seattle Symphony Morning Notrs videos (marimba, and a group), then an Osmosis video about anemia, followed by another about anemia (https://youtu.be/XWgOVjStRaY). There was then a new student, with anemia, named Owl. First in Ms. Safe’s class, then Danger’s. We did more with Val. New words were nausea and induces. He then had the idea of a student with food allergies, and named the student Alpha. Ms. Danger, of course, had a picnic with every kind of food imaginable. The rain started again and we enjoyed the thunder.
We went back downstairs and watched StressMonster, still a couple episodes behind. He learned that NVM is short for “Nevermind”. There was more thunder and rain. He’d comment on the nice smell outside. I cleaned out the freezer for lunch. He ate the last of the raviolis, with pesto. I fried up a kebab soy meat thing that was still good, and dumped the falafel, which were bad in the first place and now still had an odd taste when cooked. He would still be hungry and would have crackers with peanut butter.
He watched two episodes of Ants Canada, asking about the words Diligent, diverse, prolific, and probable. He was then asking us how to spell coronavirus and did a good job of figuring out some of the letters himself, although he thought it should end with an ‘is’, which is understandable.
For alone time he listened to the new Stories Podcast episode, “The Elephant’s Dilemma”. He asked the meaning of glamorous. We played in our survival world, returning home and I made a new XP farm. We took some extra time finishing it off and trying to get it to work. It worked a little, but not too well.
He had some crackers and peanut butter outside. A couple of police officers were looking at the garbage pile for several minutes, left, and came back again. August and I discussed what may be going on, and I mentioned the own of the lot might have complained about all the dumping. When he then asked what “a lot” means it took us a minute to figure out which “a lot” he was talking about. Finally I explained what a lot is.
At 4 we went up and he had his time with Gabi. They were talking about the feelings poster at first, then August was sending him chat messages before they moved to the tank game.
I read a little of the first Hardy Boys book, then there was a fly and we went inside and played a little Brother and Sister game. Carly came down and he played piano. I was then learning to play his favorite key: F minor. He listened to Supersonic Piano and I went for a walk.Took my raincoat and stayed closer, but the weather held fine for me and was actually sunny when I got back. When I returned he had the keyboard out and was composing in Notion. I took a shower, then he was playing Minecraft with Vivian and Colin. I made asparagus and tofu. When they were done Carly put on the documentary and they watched an episode and had popcorn. Ingenuity was a word of the day.
I did more work on adding our old blog posts to our main journal, and showed him the old blog post of us touring the Korean border, particularly the painting Carly did of us in the tunnel, and me pretending to climb the fence.
Carly took him upstairs and gave him a bath. He was quizzing her on Minecraft. He was washing himself, and I saved Carly by taking over. We said good night, and he was then asking me about governments (starting with North Korea). He asked me, “Do we have a good government?” I answered with a general yes, but talked about how government is a messy thing. Priorities was a new word.
I surprised him with some of the peppermint oil that he got for Christmas in his room and he liked the scent. In looking for a Stories Podcast episode he asked what a trilogy was. He settled on “The Celebrated Jumping Frog”, where fixture was a new word. He ate his Cheerios, then we went and brushed our teeth. He wanted to make a bet (like in the episode) and we discussed what makes a good bet, and settled on: is mama inside or outside in the morning when he gets up? I took ‘outside’ and he went with ‘inside’ after looking at the forecast. And if she’s inside he wanted a second bet, on whether he is on the couch or off of it: I took ‘off’ and he took ‘on’.
He started to listen to “Grasshopper Songs and Owl Desserts”, but didn’t. I started the idea of nonfiction time and read a few pages of a New Scientist book on consciousness, but then he had the idea of sending Carly emails about our bet and sent a series of those. He used both voice recognition and some help typing. I put on the Bruce Brubaker Time Curve album, skipping to the “Time Curve Preludes” this time, and there were a couple that we agreed we really like. There was another one after he fell asleep, one of the last two on the album, that I think he’ll really like as well. At 11 he asked, “What’s fed up mean?” He was finally asleep by 11:20.
Triplets thing he’s working on:
Triplets and dissonance:
A jazz piece:
Silly dance time:
