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Nov. 11th, 2012 09:50 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kingtycoonWe've been pretty wonderful here. Just to update things.
Yesterday there was this scare - her mom called to yell and make young Agatha cry - because she'd not done her work, or was shirking it. She was upset at me, I think, because of the empathies that I'm granted, the one for frantic worry is one I do not have. "Okay, you didn't do your work, you've forgotten the assignment. Let's call your friend, let's find out what it is." So there's some doing of things, writing the research project prospectus I guess. Somehow the teacher signed off on this research project to measure plant growth as affected by human interaction to be accomplished over a weekend. I don't even... A weekend huh? Even two weeks, that's not enough time! So we wrote the whole thing down - Hypothesis, Null Hypothesis - old Balthazar on hand to offer science, as is his wont. So we wrote the research grant, if you will, all morning and lamented our breakfast and had our time.
Agatha. What a kid. Lately we've taken to not doing much, a trip to the library to find comics and books about how to make comics, she works on her characters. That's my advice there - "You can make anything, and tell any story, but if you don't have characters that someone will care about, well... Try working on a few characters and draw them over and over." She has Aquamew who is her fakemon and Vintex, another fakemon. We made up a lot of ersatz pokemon in fact, we're working on 150 of them. My favorite so far is the one that is a sandwich that evolves from having the basic pokemon that are sandwich elements - the onion and tomato pokemon etc... It is called the chaw-dog and looks like a sandwich.
We play a lot of flash games together, she wanted to learn how to make a video game and David helped us figure out some of it. We're on the path. I figured out the rudiments, showed her and left her be to do it while I wrote all day today. And bought the beans, for the science project we don't have time to do.
"When you postopone things too long, then you're rushed into doing them." This I tell her, explaining, thinking - what percent of the grade is this? Have you got the syllabus? But there isn't one. Elementary school is by fiat. Supposedly she's got straight A's. I'm told this with the sense that I should be proud - but I'm proud regardless, grades are nonsense, school is a waste of time. 7 pages of long subtraction, and addition, polynomials. At the resteraunt we play the game of boxes. You make boxes out of the points and figure out who gets the most. I point out that the grid is 8 points to a side. She says it should be 64 boxes but we count 49. She figures out why. I say - see that it's 7 to a side. What if we extended it into 3 dimensions? And she figures out the cube of 7. Still has 7 pages of 6 digit addition to do. I understand, this is when you learn to hate school and math.
In the week her mother calls, frantic. I talk young A down - she's getting sarcastic at her mother, indifferent to work. We have a long conversation that I steer back to homework, con her with persuasion into doing it. I'm sick, I'm lying in bed in the dark, medicated, sick. Let's do this problem together, I'm on the phone, we're talking, she stops crying, has an avidity, just needs to be talked to in the right way, I am ashamed of my more gallant abilities.
We spend a lot of time playing flash games together. "Here's the situation with this one, you have to have all this money, when you have a lot of money it's easier."
"That's the way it will be if Romney wins." She tells me, and I'm proud. Who wouldn't be? "Yeah, I think you're right." Discern, discern.
I take a moment and write, she's making a video game with her characters, she invented them, draws the sprites, endlessly draws them, makes comics, panels on any page, any paper she gets she lines out the panels. "You should put my art up on the internet for people to see." She tells me. For christmas I think she'll get a phone, or a camera at least - to take her own pictures and put them on her own flickr, let everyone see.
It's a good life here, that's what I'm letting you know, I wanted to speak up for my kid, because I got lucky and have a pretty great one, we do good together.
Yesterday there was this scare - her mom called to yell and make young Agatha cry - because she'd not done her work, or was shirking it. She was upset at me, I think, because of the empathies that I'm granted, the one for frantic worry is one I do not have. "Okay, you didn't do your work, you've forgotten the assignment. Let's call your friend, let's find out what it is." So there's some doing of things, writing the research project prospectus I guess. Somehow the teacher signed off on this research project to measure plant growth as affected by human interaction to be accomplished over a weekend. I don't even... A weekend huh? Even two weeks, that's not enough time! So we wrote the whole thing down - Hypothesis, Null Hypothesis - old Balthazar on hand to offer science, as is his wont. So we wrote the research grant, if you will, all morning and lamented our breakfast and had our time.
Agatha. What a kid. Lately we've taken to not doing much, a trip to the library to find comics and books about how to make comics, she works on her characters. That's my advice there - "You can make anything, and tell any story, but if you don't have characters that someone will care about, well... Try working on a few characters and draw them over and over." She has Aquamew who is her fakemon and Vintex, another fakemon. We made up a lot of ersatz pokemon in fact, we're working on 150 of them. My favorite so far is the one that is a sandwich that evolves from having the basic pokemon that are sandwich elements - the onion and tomato pokemon etc... It is called the chaw-dog and looks like a sandwich.
We play a lot of flash games together, she wanted to learn how to make a video game and David helped us figure out some of it. We're on the path. I figured out the rudiments, showed her and left her be to do it while I wrote all day today. And bought the beans, for the science project we don't have time to do.
"When you postopone things too long, then you're rushed into doing them." This I tell her, explaining, thinking - what percent of the grade is this? Have you got the syllabus? But there isn't one. Elementary school is by fiat. Supposedly she's got straight A's. I'm told this with the sense that I should be proud - but I'm proud regardless, grades are nonsense, school is a waste of time. 7 pages of long subtraction, and addition, polynomials. At the resteraunt we play the game of boxes. You make boxes out of the points and figure out who gets the most. I point out that the grid is 8 points to a side. She says it should be 64 boxes but we count 49. She figures out why. I say - see that it's 7 to a side. What if we extended it into 3 dimensions? And she figures out the cube of 7. Still has 7 pages of 6 digit addition to do. I understand, this is when you learn to hate school and math.
In the week her mother calls, frantic. I talk young A down - she's getting sarcastic at her mother, indifferent to work. We have a long conversation that I steer back to homework, con her with persuasion into doing it. I'm sick, I'm lying in bed in the dark, medicated, sick. Let's do this problem together, I'm on the phone, we're talking, she stops crying, has an avidity, just needs to be talked to in the right way, I am ashamed of my more gallant abilities.
We spend a lot of time playing flash games together. "Here's the situation with this one, you have to have all this money, when you have a lot of money it's easier."
"That's the way it will be if Romney wins." She tells me, and I'm proud. Who wouldn't be? "Yeah, I think you're right." Discern, discern.
I take a moment and write, she's making a video game with her characters, she invented them, draws the sprites, endlessly draws them, makes comics, panels on any page, any paper she gets she lines out the panels. "You should put my art up on the internet for people to see." She tells me. For christmas I think she'll get a phone, or a camera at least - to take her own pictures and put them on her own flickr, let everyone see.
It's a good life here, that's what I'm letting you know, I wanted to speak up for my kid, because I got lucky and have a pretty great one, we do good together.
no subject
Date: 2012-11-13 02:51 am (UTC)