Learning to Juggle

Okay, so I'm learning to juggle. Never done it before. I've tried and gotten to the 2ball thing but haven't been able to transition to 3. Mirror, at the Hollow, has taught juggling in the past and agreed to help me out. Okay, fine. I'm learning to juggle. My kid, of course, is going me one better and learning to pass clubs. Yeah. Here is the Mo Method for learing how to juggle:

Step one: locate professional juggler. Between the three faerie comms and visitors, this is the easy part. We are crawling with them.

Step two: when the juggler starts juggling (and they always do), run up with an abundance of excitement and jump up and down to get his/her attention. The juggler will throw something at you - jugglers find excited children totally irresitstable and -unless s/he is juggling something dangerous- will invariably toss an object to the child.

Step two and a half (optional): catch it

Step three: throw it back. Jugglers love this. They even seem to enjoy the fact that young, excited children aren't very acurate (like my spelling). They will play this game over and over and over.

That's it. The basic Mo Method. Its just a matter of her learning to catch, and she'll be passing balls and clubs. She'll probably be passing sickles and torches before she's done. Now we're talking about putting up a slack-line somewhere, so with that, juggling, and the trapeze (did I tell you we've been offered trapeze lessons this fall?) she'll be ready to go to circus camp in a couple years.

Seriously, though, my so-called "shy kid" astonished me at a party this summer by getting a juggler to pass clubs to her. She was out of her regular space and he was a complete stranger (and male, besides) - all things that generally will cause her to refuse to even make eye-contact. But There She Was! Talking happily to a wild hooligan with a bunch of clubs.

Not 5, no way.

We didn't have a birthday party for Morgan. She was adamant that she didn't want a birthday, doesn't want to be 5 at all. She'll just wait another year and then turn 6. George says she's 4 and 2/2. Okay.

We went to a general August bday party up on Short Mountain, and that was fine. One of the guys got a pink unicorn stick-pony that he offered to Mo. She was delighted and has been composing a thank you/ bday card for him. It amazes me how many words she can spell on her own, now.

I've uploaded the pic of the Owl and Pussycat quilt. I'm really happy with it and am working on more in a similar style. I was sooooo reluctant to do the competition thing at all, but doing this quilt has really sparked some ideas for me. For some reason it hadn't occurred to me to use fairy tales, fables and myths as subject matter. Go figure. Anyway, right now I'm working on a piece with a heron and frogs (looking for the fable, its here somewhere), the Crow and Pitcher, and the Tortoise and Hare. Plus the big green thing with the three kids and the bubbles. I've given up any expectation of having finished pieces for sale at the Studio Tour - if I can have a bunch of really exciting things in progress that will be fine. Especially if I can get some decent commissions.

Oh, I also had this wild idea the other day of a use for one of the partially finished quilt tops I have on hand. I thought, well, I can quilt it really simply - just a grid or something - and then slash through the middle, tack the cut ends back and have Another quilt underneath. Maybe even "wrapping" onto the backs of the folded-back bits - as if one quilt were sort of exploding out of another. I'll have to think hard about this one. It sounds like a lot of fun or a royal pain in the ass. Maybe both. Hmmmmm.

We're starting to get ready to go out of town again - this time East! I'm looking forward to seeing Jane and Jan, in particular. Morgan got so excited about the idea the other night she packed her suitcase. I'm still at the doing laudry and making lists stage.

The heat is really doing a number on me this year. I sort of fell apart at one point. Stressing out over money doesn't help either. The new AC is helping alot. Interestingly, the other thing that is helping is for me to take a vitamin before going to bed. I usually take them in the morning, but I've been so lethargic this summer! The worst has been falling into bed early and then sleeping late - I kept missing the cool parts of the day. But if I take a vitamin at night I wake up by 6 and can get stuff done in the cool. Its just the opposite of what I'd always been told about vitamins - which is that they don't do any good at all if taken at night. So much for expert advice.

Speaking of.... I've been hanging out alot on some of the unschooling message boards, and thinking about archiving some of my better posts here. I've been a little nervous about that - y'all are getting used to the idea of us homeschooling (I think) but some of the unschooling stuff is pretty radical. OTOH, most of my "better posts" include anecdotes about Morgan. We'll see. I'm going to go through my files and see what I have saved, anyway.