Pardon My French

15-minute Post: bilingualism & gardening

Stinkerbella is at daycare and I have a few minutes before I am going to rush off to clean the house for the in-laws' arrival! I'm sure you can see why blogging sounds so much more tempting to do than cleaning...

After my 3-day garden rampage, I'm not at all concerned about the gigantic mystery root I hacked to pieces (though I'm sure it will have at least a little effect on the plant it was attached to) and am doing good growing dances for the radishes, tomatoes and basil that I planted. So far, the tomatoes seem to be hanging on, I think the basil is going to kick the bucket any day so I'll just start some more inside, and only time will tell about the radishes. After all the hacking and digging, I sustained some kind of weird deforming wrist injury that caused the pharmacist to recoil in horror when I showed it to him, but the magic cream he sold me seems to be helping. Unfortunately the weather has been rather crappy so my dreams of me and Stinkerbella frolicking around our property in sunhats are as of yet unrealized. But soon, perhaps!

Our TV is still out and that has been the best thing ever. During the winter it was so tempting to just collapse on the couch and not do anything productive, so the fact that our antennae thing stopped working has been a godsend. I've read, baked, cleaned, gardened, and am working on making lots of felt board stories. It's great! The only downside I can think of is that it also gives us more time to peruse the houses for sale and see how much more yard we could buy now with the money we spent on this place. But again, without the TV we hear less talk about the economic crisis and I can still putter around and be happy with what we have. Couldn't predict the future a year ago and still can't, so I'm hoping if and when we sell this place the market will have gone back up. Otherwise, we'll just call it good for the character.

I have not posted on my 'franglais' blog for ages, mainly because I'm not really teaching much these days and have no immediate plans to go back for more hours. Next year I'd like to cut out all weekend teaching completely, in fact. I like the kids, but still feel a little frustrated with feeling like I'm really not being able to make a lot of progress with the limited amount of time I have. I'd like to do more. And so obviously I have my own little language learner at home that fascinates me and motivates me, and it's easy to put more and more energy in seeing her English develop. I'm now thinking of using the 'franglais' blog as a place to ramble about our family's journey toward bilingualism, because it's so important to me that I do want to keep it somewhat separate from my other boring babbles. So that's another project on the horizon...

Today I got up early and subscribed to Multilingual Living Magazine, which you have probably already come across if you have done internet searches on bilingual families. Even though I prefer print to on-line magazines (and it's apparently going quarterly), I am pretty happy with the quality. For $12, you receive a yearly subscription along with access to all the back issues. I've had this bookmarked for ages now and am glad I finally got around to subscribing.

Well, I think that's all the procrastination I can muster for the moment. Wait -- have I checked the mail? Am I hungry? Let me think about this and I'll get back to you...