Seven Quick Takes on What’s in my Medicine Cabinet, Read Aloud Selections, Music, and MORE!

:: 1 ::

Last week, I came to the realization that we are entering a new era of reading aloud. For years, we have always had two titles going. One was for the children and me, the other was all of us plus my husband. We read one while my husband is out or at work, and the other when he is with us. This has worked well.

Now that we’ve entered the teen years, I find we have need for a third title. This one is for when my oldest is out and about. He’s gone two evenings per week these days, and the younger children were saying we couldn’t read the other books aloud because he wasn’t home. True enough, but the idea of never being able to read aloud two evenings per week, if not more, was sort of horrifying.

Needless to say, we added this third title: Adam of the Road. It’s a book I read aloud years ago — which we loved — but the younger children can’t remember it. Seems like a good choice, then.

:: 2 ::

I added something new to my medicine cabinet this month: calendula gel. I had heard good things about it before, but I thought my old standby, aloe vera leaf gel {from the actual plant growing in my garden}, was good enough. Then came the morning when I gave myself a slight chemical burn. It was such a dumb mistake, but I managed to make it anyhow. I accidentally knocked an entire bottle of peppermint essential oil to the ground, and it was all over the bathroom floor. Unthinkingly, I cleaned it up without putting on gloves.

Um. Skin is permeable, you know?

I never want to see peppermint oil again. I was only tolerating its presence in the house because my husband seems to be fond of it.

By the time I was done, my hands felt like they were on fire. I googled around online {instead of going to church with my family, which is what I was supposed to be doing}, and discovered a couple solutions that helped immensely. But they didn’t completely solve the problem, and I was a bit miserable all day.

That night, our small group from church had a meeting, and the lovely Hayley was there. Her purse is like Mary Poppins’ bag — she’s always got something perfect in it. She handed me some of this calendula gel and told me to put it on the burn.

Problem solved. Seriously! It was so cooling and wonderful.

It’s an add-on on Amazon and so I had to build an order in order to get mine, but I finally did that, and I’m already enjoying it. I am a bit burn-prone, and with big burns, it’s a bit hard to go out and harvest an aloe leaf, you know?

:: 3 ::

This week’s links collection:

• Getting Clean, the Tudor Way from New Republic
  • The takeaway? If you have to choose, laundry comes before bathing.
• A Message to Our Customers from Apple
  • I think it’s important to read this, even if you don’t own a single Apple device — because it’s about government intervention.

:: 4 ::

This month in 2012:

A friend inspired me to try out a new parenting trick. {Is it wrong to call it a trick?}

:: 5 ::

Last week, I listened to not one but two podcast episodes on the topic of whether or not Christians ought to listen to secular music. As a person who really enjoys certain types of secular music, I appreciated the answers give by both episodes, and so I thought I’d share, in case it’s something you’ve been thinking about:

• Why Does the Devil Have All the Good Music? from Mortification of Spin
• Should Christians Listen to Secular Music? from The Straight Stick

:: 6 ::

I made a major change to the post I published on Wednesday, but it was after the emails had already gone out, so I want to explain why. In the first version of the post, I used a Scripture passage as my example. I don’t remember if this exact passage was used in the curriculum I referenced, but many like it were definitely used in this way. And then Kelly left this comment:

I like this exercise and your explanation of it is great, but I wouldn’t have a child do this with a Bible passage — not without at least changing the wording from “cross out any detail that is not important,” to something like, “cross out any detail that is not the main point of the passage,” but even that makes me a bit nervous. I know you know that theologically speaking there aren’t any irrelevant details in the Scripture, but remember The Abolition of Man, how a well-meaning school lesson can have unintended consequences of a serious nature.

Oh my heck.

I couldn’t believe I hadn’t noticed that — I mean, years ago I had my child do multiple exercises like this, and I never picked up on the danger. I mean, yes, there was a literary goal. We are not saying that part of the Bible isn’t instructive.

And yet.

I think Kelly is correct — that another, more subtle message could be sent in which part of Scripture is deemed disposable.

All of that to say that I repented and changed the example entirely, using part of a chapter from Our Island Story instead.

:: 7 ::

Coming up next week, we have two guest posts.  I’m pretty excited about both of them! The first is from Kathy Wickward. When I heard her say she went ahead and had her daughter read Westward Ho! I was a little surprised because Kathy is Catholic and Westward Ho! is notoriously anti-Catholic. I had been pondering writing about the need to expose our children to views other than our own because I’ve noticed a trend of protecting children up into {and even throughout} their teen years that concerns me, so I can’t wait to read it!

The second, of course, is from Dawn. This will be the next of her monthly posts concerning all things physical education and it’s going to be great! 🙂

In other news, Ravi Jain is going to be on the Scholé Sisters podcast next month. Pam and I are going to interrogate interview him. Do you have anything you want us to ask him? I’m not making promises, but I am writing down suggestions.