Tuesday Teatime

Caesar aderate forte
Pompey adsum jam
Caeser sic in omnibus
Pompey sic intram

Menu: I cut the crusts off of slices of Pepperidge Farm Oatmeal bread, spread them with butter, layered some with slice cucumber and some with sliced ham. The tea was Twining's English Breakfast decaf, with sugar and lemon slices available.

Poetry: A Visit to William Blake's Inn by Nancy Willard.

I started out by telling a bit about William Blake -- where and when he lived. Then I started reading the book, beginning at the intro and showing the pictures as I read. During the second poem there was a thump and a cry -- VKid2's tea cup had just somersaulted across the table, drenching the tablecloth with hot tea. I leapt up and started taking all of the plates off. VKid1 blew out the candles, splattering hot wax all over the tablecloth. We got everything mopped up fairly quickly, and I announced it was time to go to the library. Sometimes when you spend the afternoon setting up a cool homeschool experience, and it falls to pieces within 5 minutes, the best option is to just Leave The House.

VKid2 explained that she was trying to put a slice of lemon on the rim of her tea cup. Aha. I pointed out that we typically do that to glasses of iced tea, not cups of hot tea. Also, I had sliced the lemon lengthwise for maximum squeezeability; when we put them on glass rims we slice crosswise. We thought about the structure of lemons, and why the various uses for lemon slices demand different cuts. I didn't exactly say Form Follows Function, but that was the point of the discussion.

We'll try Blake again next week.

The weird thing about the entire incident is that we left the ham sandwiches on the side table when we went to the library ... and when we returned they were still there. No cats had tried to bat them down to the floor. As soon as I picked up the plate of sandwiches, though, I had a cat trying to climb my leg to get at them.