First day of school

Me: C has gone to school.

D: I miss her.

He later asked if he would be able to pick her up from school. C, by the way, was moderately positive about school this morning, and was talking about people she expected to see at school.

Dutch auction

It's a bit of a waste of time watching realtor.com as closely as I do, but there are rewards. A few days ago, a beautiful mansiony house in that historic neighborhood I watch dropped from 300k to 285k. Likewise, a probably neglected but historically interesting house on the rougher periphery of that neighborhood has just dropped from 99k to 89k. That house is supposed to have all sorts of fossils in the structure and I'd love to see it. Elsewhere, on trulia.com, a colonialish 2-story 1800 sq. ft. (according to zillow.com) early 1950s house on a loop deep in that neighborhood has just appeared at 165k. I have no idea what the interior looks like, but the size and the price are almost right.

We don't have a downpayment right now and I'm not yet a licensed driver, so all of these places are currently out of reach, but things are trending in the right direction. I expect that the ongoing Dutch auction will continue over the winter. It will be interesting to see when our budget and the housing market finally converge. Hopefully, we can hold onto our rental until we're in a position to buy a house.

More driving lessons

I'm supposed to do four driving lessons this week, and early this morning was my first. I had a new instructor, and she thinks that I could be ready to take the road test by Wednesday. That way, either I'll pass Wednesday and have Thursday for extra practice, or I'll retake the test Thursday.

Rod Dreher's Crunchy Cons, part III

I was re-reading the "Home" chapter in Rod Dreher's Crunchy Cons a few nights ago, and decided that I have enough material for another post.

• Rod Dreher draws his line of demarcation between pre and post-WWII US houses. "If the Mississippi River rose in my hometown and washed away all the houses, aside from the human aspect of the loss, history would mourn only a small fraction of the structures lost in the disaster--and nothing built after 1945. How come?" I think Dreher's being a bit too hard on post-war houses. "Midcentury Modern" is awfully trendy these days, and there are a lot of people out there who see real beauty in ranch houses. In fact, there's a whole magazine called Atomic Ranch, featuring funky restored and reimagined ranch houses. I agree that the exteriors of ranch houses can be depressing, but a good ranch house will have a strong indoor-outdoor connection, excellent natural light, decent storage, and be moderately sized.
• While we may idolize the exteriors of classic American homes, all too often the interiors are dark, chopped up, and have no storage at all. Also, the design of one-of-a-kind houses can be really stupid. Our post-war rental, for instance, has two baths. One can only be accessed by walking through either of the kids' rooms. The other bath can be accessed either by walking through the master bedroom or the dining room. Cozy!
• As I mentioned earlier, being a crunchy con doesn't preserve you from being materialistic. You just wind up being materialistic about different stuff. Here's one of Dreher's interview subjects: "I'll have my house paid off before McMansion owners start making principal payments, and I have lots of resources for better things, like taking the grandkids out for Bohemian Weekend. Last year, we spent a weekend at the art museum, checking out the graffiti wall and eating weird food. You can't blow a hundred bucks on Indian food, lattes, and authentic Thai if you're worrying about making a $2,400 mortgage payment."

Past tense

D is very interested in being told what the past tense of different verbs is, and my husband thinks the theoretical knowledge is helping him learn the correct forms faster.

Subtraction

Yesterday my husband set C up with a subtraction chart. She filled in the answers (including the negative answers), and then I quizzed her on her (positive) subtraction facts. She's accurate but a little slow, so we'll need to keep quizzing her periodically until her speed improves. C is interested in doing a multiplication chart.

In other news, she's read enough books to collect a prize from the Barnes and Noble summer reading program. With all the different programs she's done this summer, she's made out like a bandit. In general, I'm very comfortable with incentives for unpleasant tasks (room cleaning) or for mastering new material (phonics, math facts), but I don't like non-book incentives for reading. There is a slippery slope, and it's easy to slide on it, especially during the summer. (C got a pool trip for finishing The Hobbit, and she was also required to read chapters to earn the right to play electronic games.)

Addition table

Last night, my husband made up an addition table for C, covering all facts from 1+1 to 10+10. C filled in the answers this morning and I quizzed her on her addition facts. Her answers weren't totally automatic (in a couple cases she was obviously counting), but she is very accurate, and I think automaticity is just around the corner. Down the road, she'll also need a subtraction and a multiplication table.