Some business matters:
1. Who sent me the amazing wonderful history book? I LOVE MY BOOK. Thank you thank you so much! But my mother in law tossed the packaging before I could grab the return address. I want to say your name started with an L? But I may have made that name up.

2. THIS IS IT! The time of year when you order your horrible holiday cards that you shouldn’t mail to anyone! Except please do buy them this year. The proceeds are helping out a dear friend who has been out of work for most of this year. She is working her rear off helping me trim, fold, assemble sets, pack, promote, and ship — let’s keep her busy this week! http://www.OMGseriously.etsy.com

We are adding new designs for people who have sent out the shit together cards in the past. And and and! New cards for all sorts of occasions are in the works and will be posted there soon.

3. I hope that your Thanksgiving day was as awesome as was mine. Nicolaus asked “Is there anything I can do to help?” dozens of times and OMG I am thankful for age seven. Seven year olds are the best invention since 18 month olds.

4. I broke the screen on my phone. My kids carry it around like a rag doll all day long while I periodically shout “Be careful with my phone!” and yeah. I’m the one who busted it.

5. I have gotten close to a hundred promotional emails this week from every store I’ve ever been to. They are all telling me about the amazing sales I would find if I went to their store today. The catch is that going to the store is a horrible, soul-draining, physically, mentally and emotionally demanding experience. So Pier 1, World Market, JoAnnes, Michaels, Office Depot, Best Buy, Circuit City , Hobby Lobby, Papa Johns, Apple, Borders, Barnes & Noble, Edmund Scientific, and many others want me to go visit them and give them money. Which I’m sure they need because sending out that many emails cant be cheap! But Eff NO I am not going near a store this day I assure you.

6. Speaking of shopping! For things! I just learned how to put my entire Etsy shop on sale. Well heck, you can’t learn something like that and then not DO it so go try it out. http://electricboogaloo.etsy.com — just load up your cart and then use coupon code TURING25 for 25% off your entire purchase at checkout.

7. Kevin’s in the basement making necklaces right now. Every week Uncommon Goods is asking us for more. Very, very exciting. We are excited, but this isn’t another plug to go buy necklaces. But! If you DO or DID happen to buy one, please take a moment to leave nice feedback on the Uncommon Goods website. Unless you hate your necklace. Then you should leave not very nice feedback.

8. No takers yet on the dog. He spent a few days being absolutely charming until I had almost decided that I was overreacting and should just keep him. But yesterday he snapped at Graham and growled at Nicolaus. Dude. So uncool.

9. Is it a myth that turkey makes you sleepy? I’ve eaten a lot of turkey since yesterday and man. I could take a lot of naps right now.

10. To summarize:
I love you if you sent me a book.

I sort of love you even if you didn’t.

Buy my things.

Buy my other things at a discount.

If you bought our OTHER other things, please let Uncommon Goods know what you thought of those things.

My dog is a jerk.

Seven year olds are great.

I am sleepy.

Enough with the dog talk! It’s time for a school update, don’t you think? We have been busy covering my favorite topic: how animals change over time.

But wait, first I should tell you about my worksheets. I make my own dorky little worksheets and one day I will edit them and clean them up and post them for anyone who wants to use them but for now they’re not really anything but fun for us. Some of them are just for us to look at while we learn a new topic. Like this:

And other times they have little activities like this:

or this:

So after we learned about the universe and all of that we learned about forces and energy and then atoms and molecules and then! Molecules can be simple or complicated. This led to a week about cells and games about transcribing DNA, and that led to a lot of conversations about evolution. Last year we kept it pretty abstract, focusing on the idea that the unlucky ones don’t survive and the lucky ones do. The beans for the bean game were long ago used up in a game of scatterbeans (where you are desperate for an hour of quiet so you give your four year old a bowl of dried beans and accept whatever happens next). I kept forgetting to buy more beans so I tried to figure out how to put something like the bean game into paper form, but it didn’t quite work. We need stickers or something to do it right.

Still, it was kinda fun. Sort of like nonlinear Bingo.
So then we talked about how exactly gradual changes get passed on…

…and how those changes usually lead to more complex critters.

Here I had the boys guess a winner in a fight to the death:

Then they had to guess the outcomes of the same fights but with a little more information added about the surrounding environment:

And of course we had to talk about the moths. I showed them two versions of this picture, one where the tree bark was light and the other where it’s dark. Which moths have the advantage in each picture?

I know that a lot of this is way beyond what a kindergartner and a second grader can fully understand. A lot of it is beyond what a freshman in college can understand. But you’d be surprised at what young kids can absorb if it’s presented in a fun way in little steps like this. Even if they forget it all in a few weeks, my hope is that by laying these concepts down a little at a time, the stuff they learn later down the line will all fit into a framework. It won’t feel like magic or like something that’s beyond them because yeah, of course, that works like that because it’s made of molecules which are made of atoms which work like this. Or something! I don’t know. I’m largely winging it here.

Nicolaus has a brain that’s organized into folders that would make Martha proud, all color coded and arranged by category. I ask him to please be patient with me because there’s a lot of stuff in my brain, all shoved into a big pile. So I’ll find everything eventually, but you’ve got to give me time to dig through it all.

So that’s what I’m doing right now, digging through the pile and trying to keep track of everything. I think we might take this week off from school completely.

Here’s a little watercolor sketch of two sisters goofing around. I’ve never had sisters and I don’t live with anyone who has sisters but I assume it’s fun?

So no real post today. I’m still trying to figure out what to do with Roux, still fighting the side of me that takes every moment that he doesn’t spend biting my kid as a great, positive sign that maybe we should just give him a little more time. But that’s stupid talk. We’ve done that so many times and the thing is that he NEVER snaps at all, ever! right up until he does.

To help take my mind off of this, I’m trying to research dog breeds. But thinking about it too directly makes me crazy so then I short circuit and end up on Petfinder where I should never ever ever go OMG why am I such an idiot with the constantly wanting every pointy little cute nervous looking adorable dog??

So. Here’s my new, hopefully jackass-proof plan. When we get ready to adopt our next dog, I am going to call the shelters and rescue groups around here that do foster programs. Without asking what the dogs look like, I am going to tell them we’re looking for a family pet that can go with us to run errands without any drama or chance of the dog snapping at other dogs or kids or anything else. Not that we’ll ignore the specific breed/mix or appearance entirely but it shouldn’t be the first diamond on the flowchart, you know?

Hopefully they will know their adoptable dogs well enough to be able to let us know when/if they have any dog that is
1. Great with kids
2. Easy going
3. Mellow
4. Sweet
5. Never met a stranger
6. Not stressed by noises, new situations, traffic, dogs, kids,or anything else
7. Doesn’t generally freak out or barf in the car.

I would say must be housetrained because housetraining Roux was such a challenge but then again I did it! I made him understand! Just because Graham pees on the floor in front of the toilet doesn’t mean that you can, too. So if I was able to housetrain this dog, any other dog should be a piece of cake. Then again, we’re renters here so the less I have to rely on those enzyme cleaning sprays the better.

Blah! See? This is the beginning of the holiday rush, I am busy busy busy organizing my studio and ordering shipping supplies and my brain is buzzing with all of this.

Kevin thinks we should just get a miniature goat.

I’m not feeling writerly this week. I’m distracted and stressed and unfocused because in between all of the schoolwork and activities and sniffles and order-packing, we are trying to find a home for Roux. It sucks so much, but we can’t afford the legal tangle that would be involved with re-homing the children. So. If you know anyone who has no young kids and wants a cute little beast of a dog… you get what I’m saying? This sucks.

A year ago our trainer said that he was not a good fit for a house with young children because the way his brain is wired he’ll never be 100% trustworthy. Partly out of guilt over our previous dog (short version: Mouse’s epilepsy was made 100x worse by us having toddlers in the house. Gave him to a wonderful friend who can take better care of his health needs, sometimes still think about driving to Idaho to steal him back), I didn’t listen. This is my dog! I was stubborn and determined to make it work. We tried more training and being more careful, more socializing… but here we are a year and many snaps later.

A couple of months ago we got a new trainer and things were improving but then Monday night he snapped at Graham and actually hurt him. We just can’t keep at this any longer. It’s gone from a dog owner dilemma to a parenting decision and when I have a five year old in my lap sobbing “I just want any pet that doesn’t bite me…” well something in me goes Old Yeller.

I promise we don’t let our kids torment dogs. My friend says that we just have to stop picking out pointy little dog breeds. Damn her for being right because I do love pointy little dogs.

So! This is horrible to even ask but seriously. Would you like a dog for your very own?

Features:

• Small (a little under 15 pounds) but not tiny or fragile
• Perfectly healthy
• Neutered
• Microchipped
• Knows basic obedience and a couple of cute tricks (”What is it? Did Timmie fall down a well?!” BARK BARK)
• House trained, pees on command and (don’t laugh, this is awesome) litter box trained
• Needs very little exercise
• Comes with 10 months of unlimited visits from a professional dog trainer.
• We’re home a lot but he seems totally fine hanging out by himself at home for long stretches.
• Fun bonus!! He can detect the smell of marijuana. Know anyone who would want a built-in drug dog to keep their teens in line?
• He also lets me know with a single bark if anything in the oven is starting to burn. Handy feature for bad cooks like me.
• Oooh he is also a bug killing MACHINE. If you have roaches or spiders or anything else ever coming in your house, you won’t anymore. It’s disturbing how efficient he is at catching bugs.
• Just an all around fun, goofy guy who will play or go hiking up a mountain if you want to or will hang out on the couch if you prefer.

Okay, here are his factory defects:

• Barks at strangers coming in the house (the trainer’s working on this)
• Can’t be trusted around young children. He’s not mean and scary with them, in fact he likes older kids and will wrestle and play but if he feels at all unsafe his response is to growl and snap. (trainer believes this is fixable but we can’t keep taking the risk in the meantime)
• Nervous around bigger dogs if he is on a leash (trainer’s working on this, too). Totally fine at the dog park though, once off the leash he will play with the same dog he was afraid of five minutes ago.
• Wary of some strangers. Particularly ones who smell like the marijuana. Hey, nobody’s judging you. Nobody except this dog. And McGruff the Crime Dog. And every arcade video game made in the 1990s.

So there you go.

I hate posting about this here because we clearly suck at choosing dogs who mesh well with young kids and it’s terrible and we should be embarrassed. But you know, it’s worth it to embarrass myself if it means that Roux gets a good home. If you can think of anyone — ideally in the Atlanta area but we will work it out if you are farther — who could give him a good, child-free home, please send me an email or post a reply here.

After rolling in purple mulberries in our backyard last spring. I’d bathe him and he’d say yay! thanks! fresh canvas! And run right back out to paint himself with purple spots.

Waiting to see if we are going to do anything exciting like go for a car ride or decide to cook a pound of bacon and give it to him.

Fell asleep watching me work.

When we were moving he decided this was his bed. He put all of his toys in this box lid and squeezed himself into it.

He’s flopped against me right now, serving as an armrest while I type this and being every different kind of awesome. I really hate being a grownup sometimes.

One five year old boy dressed as a princess.

Sure he confused a few people and we got a snarky comment from a man who makes balloon animals at restaurants, but for the most part other parents were really cool with it. Which to be fair, a lot of them thought they were being accepting and cool about the fact that we named our little girl Graham and gave her a short haircut.

The final outfit was made out of a modified purple t-shirt, a no-sew skirt made of ribbon and tulle, a pink feather boa, a pair of sparkly silver leggings, pearly pink flip flops, a crown and wand scored for two bucks on clearance. The whole outfit cost less than $20 and all of the pieces will make much-loved additions to their costume dresser.

He won’t put away the bright pink flip flops. He wears them with so much brashness and confidence that no one says anything to him other than “I like your shoes.”

A few kids we’ve met have said in worried voices, “Mommy. That boy has pink shoes.” and the mommies usually just answer oh yeah, he sure does. And Graham doesn’t take offense because yep that’s right, he sure does. He’ll even tell them where to get a pair. Hobby Lobby, $1.49. Where, incidentally, you can also get quite a bargain on other things.

He still refuses to let me take off the gauzy sparkly purple bracelet that he made himself for the costume. He even showers with it. I may have to cut it off of him at some point or people will start to make fun of him, not because he’ll be a boy wearing a girly bracelet but because he’ll be a boy wearing a girly bracelet that has a mildew stink masked only slightly by his gangrenous hand which had the circulation cut off on account of his wrist grew over the years and his bracelet didn’t. But I will still love him because fetid or not, he is my son.