CustardApple

It being a cold food kind of day, Opal and I went and bought fruit and we had tabouleh and cucumber salad and bratwurst for dinner. (OK, the bratwurst wasn't cold, but at least it didn't require much cooking.) While we were getting salad ingredients we also got a custard apple, a casaba melon, some nectarines and some olive bread -- you know, just enough fruit to survive until the market on Sunday. Unfortunately I am not good at judging ripeness on custard apples, and this wasn't a terribly good one. Opal didn't like it. The melon, however, is luscious and perfect.

Opal did not want to help with dinner, so she played Dreambox instead. She has a talent for pushing it right to the edge of her ability, getting frustrated with the difficulty, and then employing slow strategies. So, for instance, it's trying to teach her to add 10, so that she doesn't have to think about 24 + 10 = 34. In fact, it believes that she has learned this, and is moving on to trying to teach her to add 22 by adding 10, and then 10, and then 2. Hah! She added 10 about 30 times. For three of the ones in the middle, she did it without thinking. For the rest, she counted up on her fingers. She went through the number line where you add 22 (or whatever) by successive adding of 10s. And faced with the same problems, in the same layout, given 32 + 24, where it asks 32 + 10, and then 32 + 20, and then 32 + 24, she counts up from 32 on her fingers, gets 42, sees "32 + 10 = 42. 32 + 20 = ?" and counts up from 32 on her fingers, twice. Nonetheless, she still eventually gets to 56.

Then again, this is the same kid who poured the water from the measuring cup into the glass and was happy to note that there was more in the glass. Paul carefully explained to her that the measuring cup was broader, and it was really the same amount of water. She listened patiently, content in the knowledge that she had more water.

Read to and by Opal today: She read Fast Food, Stinky Pinky Doo, Hats, Valentines Day Grump, The Berenstain Bears and the Spooky Old Tree, and I Was Born 10,000 Years Ago. I read Uncle Podger, Stinky Pinky Doo, Ty's Triple Trouble and Clifford Grows Up

The Running Book Count: 234 + 69 (last year 1170 + 121)