Loose Leaf Notes

1. Talking about the effects that wood firing has on clay pots, my Asheville Potter son Josh said, “It’s highly planned randomness.”

2. After a trip to the Mill Mountain Zoo in Roanoke and buying Bryce and Liam stuffed puppies that they named and used in their dramatic play as scent tracking dogs, Bryce gave Hopa Joe the “smart test.” It’s a test Bryce made up and involved him asking: what is 1+1, 2+2, 4+4, 8+8 etc, etc. He was amazed that hopa could do math in his head all the way up to the ‘100s.

3. After the “smart test” six-year-old Bryce came up with this poetic math-like problem: “What’s glove + glove,” he asked? The answer was hat!

4. Meanwhile Liam was on a roll letting his inner scientist and teacher come out at the zoo’s Discovery Center HERE. The best part that didn’t get videotaped was when he picked up a tree gall and said, “And we have no idea what this is.”

5. I call the photo above of my sons and grandsons (who are both 2 ½ years apart) “Prototypes and Prodigies.” It’s aka “Look How Love Multiplies.”

6. This week I learned the word “mollycoddle,” which means to overindulge someone.

7. On Friday, I posted a blog entry and a link on Facebook about my Asheville Potter son Josh’s 16 Hands Fall Studio Tour at my house, titled “Stop for Pots.” I made a remark about Pots and Stop being the same word with the letters moved around, and my cousin Patty commented: “My daughter’s name is Kasey and sometimes we call her Kase. When she was little my sister gave her a book for Christmas. I told her: “Say thank you for the book, Kase (case)!”

8. I like watching Dr. Phil just to catch some of his country slang, like: Don’t wrestle with a pig because you both get dirty and the pig loves it, If you drop the linen and start grinning, it’s an affair, Who licked the red off your candy? There’s something about that guy that I really can’t stand about myself, and This ain’t my first rodeo.

9. We got into Dr. Phil’s country slang over the weekend with our Australian house guests after Josh gave us some phrases that demonstrate the Aussie accent and needed to be interpreted, like “my bull fine, rise up blights, cock rash and good eye might, which translate into mobile phone, razor blades, car crash and good day, mate.

10. Sign seen on Facebook: Cream and Sugar Friday: Just say no to Black Friday and Yes to Cream and Sugar Friday! Stay in, stay warm, stay sane and sip your coffee.

11. As Josh was breaking down his 16 Hands pottery display, he made a Cyber Monday sale via Instagram.

12. You compound my interest / I’m counting the ways / I’m finding the common denominator / of you and me / and adding / the possibilities – Read the rest of “The “It Takes Two” Math Assignment HERE. 

13. “If you look at a thing 999 times, you are perfectly safe; if you look at it for the 1000th times, you are in danger of seeing it for the first time.” -G. K. Chesterton

More love multiplied above.  See some of Josh’s pots and his Australian friends who spent their first Thanksgiving ever with us HERE. __________Thirteen Thursday