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We have been having trouble with our trash service. I figured it was because we moved and I didn’t know exactly where to put the trash can so the garbage truck could find it.

When I called to start the service, the person on the phone said to put it at the driveway. But our neighbor said they wouldn’t pick it up there so I had to place it out by the main road.

I put the trash can where the company said, not where the neighbor said.

The first week, they did not pick up the trash, so I called and notified them like one is supposed to.

The second week, I emailed the company a question. “Our garbage was not picked up today. Where am I supposed to put the trash can so that it will get picked up – by the driveway or by the main road?”

By this point, I figured the neighbor was right – the garbage men wouldn’t pick up the trash at the driveway. But I wanted an official answer from the trash company. Where do I put my trash?

They replied right away.

“We are sorry for this problem. We will send someone out to get your garbage collected today.”

That’s good to know – and they did come get the garbage – but they did not answer the question.

Maybe they don’t want to go on the record.
Maybe it’s supposed to be a secret.
Or maybe they are trained to assure the customer the problem will be fixed. Any questions are secondary.

But it’s kind of annoying. I want to make sure I am doing my part correctly. How can I do that if they won’t verify what my part is?

Maybe that’s the answer…

I like my drinking water cold. Very cold.

If you were to ask me what temperature I want my water, I would say “32 degrees”. With the understanding that we’re talking in Fahrenheit.

Some people might laugh and say that I would be drinking an ice cube, since it would be frozen then.

But it would not be frozen. It would be freezing. I would drink the water at the beginning of the phase change, so it would be 32 degrees but still liquid. It’s the freezing point, not the frozen point.

I’ve been thinking of ways to lower the temperature even further so that my drink could be even more refreshing. I’ve come up with two so far.

1. Add something, so it’s not pure water. Like when you make ice cream and you add rock salt to the ice. But adding salt to the water would defeat the purpose of making the water refreshing, so skip this one.

2. Add pressure. 32 degrees is the freezing point of water at normal pressure (1 atmosphere). If we added some pressure to the water bottle, the freezing point of the water should be reduced. Unfortunately, the pressure would have to be about 2000 atmospheres to make much of a difference, so I don’t think that would be feasible. Plus we would have to pressurize the entire kitchen, so that I could open the bottle to drink the water without it freezing instantly upon depressurization.

3. Keep the water moving. It is common knowledge that moving water freezes at a lower temperature than standing water. Or sitting water. Or water that is lying down. Maybe if I get a refrigerated drinking fountain and kept the button constantly pressed, I could turn the temperature down a few degrees below the normal freezing point. The only drawback to this is that when I capture the water in my mouth, it will have stopped moving. And that may cause it to freeze up and make it hard to actually drink.

Maybe I’ll just have to be satisfied with the standard 32 degrees.

Note: In case you think this sounds familiar, this is a variation of a post I did a while back on communication between husbands and wives.

A mom’s questions can have very different meanings to her son than they do to her. Here are some examples:

Mom’s Words: “Would you like to set the table?“

Mom’s Words: “Where are you?“

Mom’s Words: “Are you wearing that?“

Those were, of course, random examples from anonymous people.

Here’s my tip for moms: Don’t ask your son a question if you want him to do (or stop doing) something. Direct commands are best.

Here’s my tip for kids: Chances are good that your mom will ask a question that requires an action, not an answer. But you still need to answer her so that she knows you got the message. But don’t answer the question as it was phrased, answer by saying what you’re going to do.

Now that school has started, here are a couple questions. One math question and one grammar question.

1. What is the value of twelveteen?
A : 120
B : 112
C : 22

2. What is the past tense of snowblow?
A : snowblew
B : snowblowed
C : snewblow

Time’s up. Pencils down.

Hand your paper to your left and we’ll being grading.

Ready?

1. Your guess is as good as mine.
2. Trick question. “Ran the snowblower” is the right answer.

One of the recurring events in a child’s life is the family photo. Sometimes it’s immediate family, sometimes it’s extended family, and sometimes it’s just the child by himself.

I had opportunities to be involved in various family photos this year, and I observed something:

Family photos are like a race.

No, not to see who can get done first. It’s like a race in that the finish line must be set – a fixed destination.

You know the drill –

“Okay, we’ll do this group.”
“Now put the grandparents in.”
“Okay, now everybody together.”

By this point, some nerves are getting frazzled.

Invariably, someone now says “You kids are doing such a good job, let’s get pictures with you and [insert family grouping here]”

But the longer the photo shoot goes on, the worse the kids get. Why?

Because you’ve moved the finish line.

The kids thought they were going to be done after the everybody-together shot. But then they weren’t done, they had a couple more poses to do.

Think about a race. You enter a race knowing the finish line is a certain distance away. You pace yourself accordingly and have just enough energy to kick it into high gear near the finish line.

How would you feel if someone saw you running at that point and said, “You are doing so well, and you look so fast right now, we are going to move the finish line another mile down the road!”? And they said it in a cheery voice to encourage you.

You would feel annoyed, betrayed, dismayed, or something along those lines. And you would not do very well for that last mile, since your racing energy was used up for the expected course.

That’s how kids feel when you just keep adding groupings to the family photo and extending the whole session.

My two recommendations for family photos:

1. Get the most important photos first. The more photos you take, the worse the kids behave. Unless you like pictures of crying and frowny kids, plan your photo priorities.

There are some cultures that believe photographs steal your soul. I don’t believe that, but I would be open to the theory that each photograph steals part of your smile. After a long photo shoot, you might not be able to smile for a time until your smile can recover.

2. Tell the kids the plan, and establish the finish line. They can pace themselves if they know where the finish line is. “We’ll take just you kids, then you kids with your cousins, then everybody together, and then we’ll be done.”

And then don’t move the finish line.

P.S. If you are worried that it was you who inspired this post – it wasn’t you, it was the other side of the family.

I have dozens of topics and ideas noted as possible blog posts, but today I am just going to phone it in, as they say, and wish everyone a happy labor day.

Happy Labor Day!

I realize that you won’t be reading this until after Labor Day, unless you wait almost a year, or unless you are in a different country and happen to not read this until that day. But whatever. I spent the day doing various house projects and spending time with the family, rather than research and write blog posts.

And we spent some time getting ready for the kids to go back to school.
And getting ready for the start of AWANA.
And getting ready for the start of BSF.
And getting ready for piano lessons to resume.
And so on.

The summer was fairly relaxed as far as schedules go. Now we switch gears and become a little more regimented.

In case you’re wondering, my next house project is finding out where the TV antenna is connected. We haven’t hooked up the TV since we moved and football season is about to start.

Summer is here, which means it is time for me to review the books I have read and let you know what I thought of them.

Here they are, approximately in the order that I read them.

• Darkmouth by Shane Hegarty
  I read this only because Alpha checked it out of the library. I previewed it at the library. I think Alpha actually handed it to me and asked if it was okay, probably because the cover art was a monster chasing an armor-clad boy. The way it was drawn was more campy than scary, but you never know these days.

  I previewed it in the library, and previewed it some more. It was good enough that I probably read about a quarter of it in the library. So we got it and I finished it at home and then let Alpha read it.

  It does have monsters – mostly the standard mythological creatures. And it has some violence in that the people are fighting the monsters. And there are some bad guys who do unkind things. Someone does die. There’s slight descriptions of gore, but mostly the fighting is done with – simplified here so as not to give away the plot – a sort of shrink ray that puts the monsters into small glass jars.

  My main problem with the book was that it is written as book one of a series, so the ending is a segue instead of an actual ending. But if you’re going to read the whole series together, that should not be a problem

  Maybe 4th or 5th grade on up.

• Masterminds by Gordon Korman
  The main problem with this book was that it is only part of a book. It is only about one-third of a book, not a whole book.

  This is the first book of the planned Masterminds Trilogy. The other books aren’t out yet, so I don’t know how the story ends. It might be one complete physical book, but it has only part of the story. The book ends as if it were a commercial break in a television program – a bit of the story has been finished, but you are left wanting the rest of it, to come to a conclusion.

  I’m not a fan of books that don’t have a solid ending.

  The other problem is that a major premise of the book is that all the kids are being lied to by all the adults. In other words, it is the kids’ job to work around the adults in order to figure out the truth. Adults are not to be trusted.

  Maybe that will get better (i.e. some non-villain adults will figure into the story) in the other books. But if you are concerned that your child is tending towards problems with authority figures, you might want to steer clear of this book.

  Apart from that, the book is well written in that it was hard to put down. I put it on the Captivating side of the scale.

• Savvy by Ingrid Law
  This was an engaging book. Borders on the feel of the old-time tall-tales genre, which adds to its charm.

  This would be fine for 2nd or 3rd grade on up, but I would suggest 5th grade on up because of the themes that are presented. Nothing objectionable, quite the opposite in fact, but why bother a 2nd grader’s mind with the first crushes and the appropriateness of tattoos and other such topics?

  The best part of the book was its small-town feel and values. Church is part of people’s lives. Bibles are common. The girl says she doesn’t want to be kissed and the boy says that he can wait. A variety of little things that aren’t the main plot but are part of the story. They all add up to make a positive book.

• As Chimney Sweepers Come to Dust by Alan Bradley
  If you like all the other Flavia de Luce books, you’ll like this one. It’s a Flavia de Luce book, but it’s not really part of the series. It stands on its own fairly well in introduction, setting, characters, and ending. As far as murder mysteries go, it’s tame. High school on up.
• The Supernaturalist: The Graphic Novel by Eoin Colfer
  We were at the library and the boys were gathering books. I glanced through the titles, as I usually try to, and this one stood out as one I should investigate.

  I ended up reading the whole thing before we checked out. Not because it was that engaging or interesting, but because it was quick.

  It was a little darker and more violent than I liked, so I took it out of the pile, told the child the reasons I didn’t like it for him, and put the book back.

  I think he found this only because he had read some other things by this author, and because he probably figured that a comic-like book couldn’t be bad.

  I’m not outright condemning this book, but there are so many better options for your child to put into his mind – don’t waste it on this.

• The Real Boy by Anne Ursu
  Has references to magic and potions and wizards. Most of it is just which herbs to use for what – there’s probably more about traditional herbal medicine than magic. I don’t know that the herbs they mentioned are effective for the treatments described, or even if the herbs are real.

  Anyway, on to my conclusion. It’s a good book. Some bullying and mild violence, plus some worse violence that happens offscreen. Or, uh, off-page since this is a book. But there’s not a lot of that.

  Overall, I found the book to be interesting. 3rd grade on up.

  P.S. – if this book is ever made into a movie, I wouldn’t trust it. It would probably end up very creepy due to the plot of spoiler prevention activated that some directors might emphasize.

Obey your leaders and submit to them, for they keep watch over your souls as those who will give an account. Let them do this with joy and not with grief, for this would be unprofitable for you.

Hebrews 13:17