Confession

It is now 5:08.  I should be starting dinner.  How hard is it to put a few chicken breasts in the microwave to defrost, anyway.  And I should have finished the vacuuming, though I did do the basement stairs, which I always think should earn me extra points.  But the living room and upstairs still need to be done.  And, while we're at it, there are few things left that I need to read aloud to the kids from last week's work, plus I need to help Travis with a final review and then give him his Latin test, plus Katie needs help to finish her lab sheet on snails.

Instead I am here.  I really should have given up the internet for Lent, but I thought of too many reasons not to.  I puttered around on the internet quite a bit today, reading interesting discussions and following rabbit trails.  Good stuff, but I need to set myself a timer and obey it.  Or maybe just put a less comfortable chair in front of my computer.   Hmmmm.

I did finish N.T. Wright's Justification, which I've been reading on and off since last October, this morning.  It was a really interesting book, but not an easy read for me.  So now I can really get on with Susan Wise Bauer's The History of the Medieval World, with Terry Pratchett's The Color of Magic on the side to keep things fun (not that History of the Medieval World isn't fun!  The author's explanation of Constantine's use of Christianity as a tool to hold his empire together, and how the first Council of Nicaea, which produced the Nicene Creed we recite in church every week, was called for more political than religious reasons, was fascinating to me.  It is a very good book, but not a funny book (at least not so far), and I am in need of some funniness.)  But even that doesn't exactly count as being productive, does it.  No.

And now it is 5:34.  Not that I've been writing steadily for 26 minutes, just you know.  I took time out to explain to Katie that the picture she saw in her new issue of Ranger Rick wasn't, as she thought, a snake eating a chipmunk.  Because that would understandably be very upsetting to little girls.  What she didn't know was that chipmunks work as dentists for snakes, and this particular chipmunk was examining the snake's wisdom teeth, way in the back.  She was skeptical at first, but then I reminded her that she has never seen a snake waiting to see her dentist.  Actually, she is still skeptical.  What happened to that trusting little girl who used to believe every ridiculous thing I told her?

But now Ed is asking why the vacuum is still lying out (in pieces, since Travis was using the metal wand as a sword), and I know that next he will wonder what the cook is preparing for dinner, so off I go to do good things!