Alice (object-oriented programming, creating animations, video games)

Lynda (wide range of tutorials)

Snake Wrangling for Kids (learning to program in Python)

Scratch (via MIT—several friends recommended this)

A few more links in this post at Family Online

Your suggestions are welcome too!

Things I did this week:

• Spring cleaning. I know, I know, I’m six months late. Or six months early: maybe that’s a better way to look at it. Besides, I once heard a chaparral expert mention that Southern California’s true spring is in November (going by plant dormancy cycles, I think, or maybe it had to do with the timing of our rainy season). At any rate, I spent the entire week attacking closets and cupboards, purging bags and bags of stuff, and it feels marvelous. Oh my. I keep opening the hall closet just to admire it and then I’ll realize I have a big dopey grin on my face.

• Had a fabulous discussion of dramatic irony in the Scottish Play with my Shakespeare Club.

• Cuddled a feverish baby. Poor glassy-eyed boy.

Jane’s turn for a babysqueeze.

Things I did not do this week:

• Sleep much. See aforementioned feverish baby.

• Spend much time online. Sorry, poor neglected blog. Even sorrier, dozens of nice people to whom I owe email.

• Finish the book I have been reading foreeeeeever. The Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson. I tore through the first two thirds, completely captivated, making mental notes (now all forgotten) of the zillion quotes and thoughts I wanted to share here. And then…what happened? The plot took a turn that dampened my enthusiasm a bit. That was part of it, but I’m still dying to know how things turn out. I guess mainly it was just that my attention turned elsewhere. Such as: I spent all last week (pre-cleaning frenzy, but undoubtedly related) reading my way through NieNie’s archives. Like Kristen and Sarah and Ellie and Lesley and Jenn and Alice (when Alice was blogging regularly, sob), NieNie writes posts that make me want to spruce up my home with color and fabric and blossom, and also to squeeze my children a lot.

A most squeezable miss.

NieNie’s posts even make me want to cook—almost. But I let Costco do most of my cooking this week. Too busy cramming miscellany into garbage bags. And (since Wednesday night) wiping noses and patting backs and dispensing cough medicine to two pitiful little boys. Because it isn’t just the baby who’s sick; Wonderboy got zapped with this thing too. Sorry, crowd of Shakespeare enthusiasts who spent the afternoon in Germ Central before we knew anyone was sick. And sorry, grandparents who are coming for a visit tomorrow…

Speaking of which,

Things I plan to do this weekend:

Briefly abandon my parents with germ-riddled children and sneak away for a meal with my husband, who has had to work some long hours this week. But not for too long, because I’ve got children to squeeze.

Still Jane’s turn. Now give him back!

HT to my hubby, as usual. He always finds the best stuff.

Me: I want a cupcake.

Him: What? Where’d that come from?

Me: This post I’m reading. See?

I point at the word. CUPCAKE. It looks somehow magical, evocative, as if it were spelled out in actual cupcakes instead of plain old letters of the alphabet.

Me: I think cupcake is one of my ten favorite words.

Him: Hmm. You know, I don’t really like cupcakes.

Pause.

Me: That’s all right, I’ll have yours.

Me: Oh, are your batteries dead?

Wonderboy: Huh?

Me: Do you need new batteries?

Wonderboy: What?

Me: Come here, let me check your hearing aids.

Wonderboy: I think my batteries got dead.

(And yes, we can communicate in sign language as well, but during this conversation I was holding a plate in one hand and a giant slice of pizza in the other. Priorities.)

Then he went out one night and got lit up.

Now, sad to say, that once sprightly youth has aged before his time. He spends his days on the porch, cantankerously frowning at passersby.

Let this be a lesson to you, children.

—from The Rescuers by Margery Sharp

The esteemed and sleek-whiskered Mouse Chairwoman is quoting from “Ballad Upon a Wedding” by Sir John Suckling, one of the English “Cavalier poets,” those  dashing, witty, and sensitive 17th-century Carpe Diem fellows who came out in support of King Charles I against Parliament and the Puritans. Suckling wrote a number of plays which I have not read (”The Goblins” sounds interesting) and a good deal of poetry, which his contemporaries seemed to enjoy quite a lot.

Here he is in a portrait by Van Dyck.

Suddenly I see where Johnny Depp found his inspiration for facial hair.

You could rock those long curly locks as well, Johnny. The off-the-shoulder cape, not so much.

“Ballad upon a Wedding” is light and a little snarky and a little bawdy, and reads a bit like a blog entry if blogs were written in meter and rhyme. Here’s the bit Madam Chairwoman liked, part of a description of a young bride:

Her feet beneath her petticoat,
Like little mice, stole in and out,
As if they feared the light:
But oh! she dances such a way
No sun upon an Easter-day
Is half so fine a sight.

And I think this is rather sweet:

O’ th’ sudden up they rise and dance;
Then sit again and sigh, and glance;
Then dance again and kiss:
Thus several ways the time did pass,
Whilst every woman wished her place,
And every man wished his.

But being sweet isn’t really Suckling’s aim in this poem; he’s much more focused on the wedding-night feeling in the air, winkwinknudgenudge, and is also mightily enjoying poking fun at the folks he’s describing—calling out the bee-sting on the bride’s chin is kind of a cheap shot.

As mouse-appreciating poems go, this one doesn’t hold a candle to the work of auld Robbie Burns. And then there’s our favorite book about a poet with a proper appreciation of mice: The Mouse of Amherst by Elizabeth Spires.

(That’s a four-year-old post and contains links to my Amazon Affiliate account, which means if you click through and purchase something I get a small referral fee. I don’t do affiliate links anymore, but I’m not going back through old posts to remove them, so here’s your disclosure notice.)

This week’s Poetry Friday roundup can be found at Wild Rose Reader.