L. K. F. part one

little known facts:

0001.  Old fashioned egg beaters make great stress relievers. Weird, I know.

0002. I'm hungry.

0003. Velociraptors are exceedingly interesting. 

{via}

{via}

This was a great book, but definitely not for younger readers.

                            0004. I really love these pot holders. So fun to play with  use.

{via} Nor my photo, unfortunately....we only have two.

0005. I really hate when people have music on their blogs. Very annoying!

0006. I wish I was more than 1/8 Scottish. Kilts, bagpipes, haggis, cool accents and sheep are oh-so-awesome. Except I don't understand Robert Burns very well.

not my picture. source unknown.

The Macfarlane (my maternal grandfather's last name) tartan.

0007. Let sleeping dogs lie.

0008. I'm hungry.

0009. If anyone has any post ideas, I would be greatly indebted if you'd leave me a comment. Inspiration is running dry.

0010.

0011. “There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”

"Alas, poor Yorick, I knew him well."

“To be, or not to be: that is the question:
Whether ‘tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them?"

HAMLET SPAM. Booyah!!!

0012.  I promise to post something better soon. 

0015. Ducks.  

~ ~ ~ finis ~ ~ ~

unexciting update

So I went ahead and changed the layout. Don't worry, I'm leaving the poll up so you can still vote  on your favorite header. I enjoy designing them, but always struggle with getting Blogger with cooperate and not make the post titles a dumb color..... *teenage eye roll* I'm a novice at this.

But not this type of novice!

Any thoughts on blog designing? Do you like the newest format? Is it too busy? I don't blog for my readers, or for money (how I wish), but I'm open to suggestions and advice!





School started today.  I read a-bunch-of-stuff. I have to ease into math and science slowly. *insert another eyeroll*


“Hope humbly then; with trembling pinions soar;
Wait the great teacher Death, and God adore.
What future bliss He gives not thee to know,
But gives that hope to be thy blessing now.
Hope springs eternal in the human breast:
Man never is, but always to be, blest.
The soul, uneasy and confin’d from home,
Rests and expatiates in a life to come.”

—	Alexander Pope, An Essay on Man

“That we should establish ourselves in a sense of GOD’s Presence, by continually conversing with Him. That it was a shameful thing to quit His conversation, to think of trifles and fooleries.”

—

Brother Lawrence And I helped stack wood.  Exciting, I know.  <---- I resisted the urge to write "third eyeroll" there.Sorry, for a lame, unexciting post......next time, I will be blogging about {CENSORED}. Ya'll (I'm not really Southern, sorry) should go check out my little sister's blog, a puppy's bone. She writes about our Lab's various escapades. With photos, even. :) *radio voice* And so, blog readers, I leave you, but not without a GIF of Yoda, in all his The Empire Strikes Back glory, and a neat WW2 poster. Yoda is so awesome. Luke: eh....not so much.

Lol!

*sigh* ah, lack-a-day...

I should be a better blogger.

i've got good news......

......and bad news.


Good news: my mother found my long-lost (long story) iPod touch! Extremely exciting!!!


Bad news: why would you care if I have my iTouch back or not? It has nothing to do with you, as I am sure you have your own set of problems to deal with. 


Thoughtful quote:


It is strangely absurd to suppose that a million of human beings collected together are not under the same moral laws which bind each of them separately.


~ Thomas Jefferson


We would all love there to be no confining, restrictive rules. And in the beginning, before sin entered the earth, there were no rules (excepting one!). But since there are natural rules, it is better to simply obey the sensible ones as a duty instead of trying to flout everything and live your own way, which is not possible on this corruptible earth, unfortunately. 
That is the foundation of the Constitution in America: working with the way men are naturally, accepting the fact that we are sinful instead of trying to make up new, Utopian and perfect rules, which are easily corrupted by inevitable megalomaniacs.  (Think the French revolution)


 ~ ~ ~ 


Having spoken of the world at large, I will commence to speak of what happens to by on my mind: breeding sheep. I am preoccupied with rams, ewes, ewe lambs, lambs, and suchlike at the moment....I have decided to breed my two ewe lambs at the age of nine months, to lamb at fourteen months old, in lateish April, just as the nutritious spring grasses come into their own. 

Sadie and Amelia at almost seven months old, currently.

Sadie and Amelia at two and a half month old.

my day

What a lovely Katahdin.

The wide, wide world is so full of so many, many things (yes, I feel it is necessary to repeat myself) and yet I haven't been able to think of a subject on which to blog.

I don't want to merely tell my readers about my life, and opinions, but would like to stimulate their minds. I also want to exorcise any discussion of 

smiley faces, crushes, "boys" in general (OMG!!!) or country music from ever be-dewing these beautiful pure white pixels.

Today for school I read a biography on George Fox, who founded the Society of Friends, known to most laymen as the Quakers.

He was in himself, judging from this short bio, a peculiar and interesting man. Obviously stubborn, and probably also blessed with that capacity some people have of being so strongly embedded in their principles they can't see anyone else's. Yet this can also be a good thing.

I also looked up modern day Quakerism and found this and this. Interesting indeed!

Excitement excepting unpleasant ones such as finding that the sheep refuse to enter their fence has been served up in limited quantities here. Several members of this household, namely my brother and mother, are ill, thus rendering them grouchy, tired and sick and altogether unfit for human consumption! Yet we shoulder on....

I have been doing a bunch of reading on my Kindle. I am reading the Emily trilogy by L.M. Montgomery, and am finding them more enjoyable than Anne of Green Gables. The Emily books are more sophisticated, darker, and Emily is interesting herself. I loved Ilse, her b.f.f., and her hilarious epithets in the first book. Lastly, I completely agree with Emily as regards to poetry: Keats is indeed TOO sweet (I found him mostly incomprehensible, excepting this poem which is great) and as for Idylls of the King by Tennyson, Arthur is too perfect, and Guinevere is stupid as "Lancelot is odious." I agree with J.R.R. Tolkien who though the King Arthur tales were immoral and Frenchified. I do like some of Tennyson's other work though, "Crossing the Bar" is a fine example.

And as for music, I have been stuck in a rut listening to Beethoven's piano concertos 4 + 5 over and over--I already knew them well, and their beauty is comforting. And you should read this essay about classical  music. Taking a cue from the list at the end of it, I listened to part of Mozart's 40th symphony on Youtube the other day--it was great!

Us classical music enthusiasts have a hard time out there in the 'real' world. If we are adult we are treated like high-society snobs, and if we are younger like myself we are just "weird". Oh well!

There is nothing particularly wonderful about being "weird (unquote) but if the weirdness is a fine, upstanding thing and nothing to be ashamed of, who cares? 

Anyway, remember Life is a Gift, so enjoy it, use it, and do not be ashamed of what other people think!!!

Today was Talk like a Pirate day. Arrghh.

rive gauche gets a makeover!

After perusing this blog, and noticing the neat, spare layout, I decided to fix up my blog a bit. I haven't found a layout that I absolutely love yet, but I think this one is pretty nice. The thing is, a plain white not-too-distracting template like I have now can get boring quickly for a personal blog unless you keep adding tons of luscious photographs to keep it interesting, and I rarely find time to take pictures. But on the other hand, maybe plain and boring is better than too much busy-ness, smiley faces and cutesy fonts.  

I like the chicken in the header! I find chickens very fascinating; they have the funniest personalities, and may I remark that roosters add a lot of excitement to a flock? 

Ronald aka Big Red, a huge and beautiful Rhode Island Red

I also finally got the gumption to post a picture of myself in the profile picture. So, now, dear readers, you can see what I actually look like, rather than reveling in the sheer beauty of Sadie the lamb's face.  


"Misery, in cold truth, is a weight less upon those who undergo it than upon the minds of those who see it; for he who is cold and starving is so busy in his efforts to obtain warmth and food that he has little time for self-pity, and endures his unhappy condition better than those who take it upon themselves to suffer for him." 
— Kenneth Roberts

If you have any comments upon the new layout, please leave a lucid and intelligible comment. (Very important criterion; please observe)

educational grouchiness

Fall is so mournful, yet so exquisitely beautiful for a short time. It always makes me feel poetic, in a pseudo-meaningful, rather aimless manner. I always feel rather tragic around the first weeks of September, because it means schoolwork, coldness, and pumpkins and mums, which aren't as showy, delicious and attractive as their summer counterparts: berries, peaches, and petunias. 
Wait. I do like apples! 


I was researching the Montessori and the Waldorf systems of education today for no legitimate reason other than I wanted to know what they were about. (I must admit I had been complaining before about the-honored-and-respected-may-she-live-forever Charlotte Mason, whose modern curriculum Ambleside Online we (meaning my honored-and-respected-may-she-live-forever female parent) use as our main schooling.


(Side note: Must I drop the fascinating and patronizing manner of using as long as possible words in every sentence, making it harder for my honored-and-respected-may-they-live-forever blog patrons to read? 


Most young female people, and indeed most males as well, write in a more Plain English, Spartan and sometimes sloppily romantic style. Nay; they can improve their vocabulary if they choose, and after all, you/they are under no obligations to read it at all. Go read something else instead--Facebook!!! Go on Facebook! Whatever!!!!)


....Returning to the obviously non-absorbing subject of education methods, I must say sometimes the starry-eyed idealism (yes, I am aware that sounds like I'm an old crank) of these individuals gets on my* frequently-easily irritated nerves. All three education methods I mentioned were written by unmarried people who produced no scions**, hence the starry-eyed-ness.


But ANYWAY, I am quickly tiring of writing from this seemingly dry and unappealing subject. No one my age ever knows what I'm talking about anyway.


*unfortunately.
**Look it up. ;)




So, saith the little (rapidly dying) optimistic portion of my brain, why don't we find a pretty picture to look at? (Actually, the optimistic portion of my brain pronounced it "pwetty pictew" but I shall over look that slur) 



SMACK to the annoying optimistic brain cells.


Now lets go look for a pretty picture and an encouraging quotation!




You have no idea what a poor opinion I have of myself and how little I deserve it. 
W.S. Gilbert 


(Not encouraging enough. Simply a bald testament to man's sickly pride.)




Nah, enough for tonight. Farewell, fellow travelers upon this carbon-based sphere!