Saturday, March 1, 2014

Saturday Commonplaces 8

/ˈkämənˌplās/ noun 1. a usual or ordinary thing.

It has been a few weeks since I've done this little newsletter. I was just browsing through my "old" posts (all from this winter) and realizing how valuable they are for capturing and remembering a bit of everyday life. Many of the things I wrote were already on their way out of my memory! This is one of the reasons I started to blog in the first place...

Some Quirky Language from JJ: 

"Afta" (After)
definition: before.
"What time is it, JJ?" I ask as I'm rudely awoken at some dark hour of the morning.
He switches on the cell phone to check. "It's six afta two afta zero." (meaning 6:20)
Or he weighs himself. "Mama, I'm three afta eight afta six." (38.6 lb)

"Eida" (Either)
definition: too
"I want to come with you eida, Mama."
or "Can I have a cookie eida, please?

JJ painted a watercolour picture yesterday.  He started in the corner of the page, and painted part of a circle. It was mostly blue, with some patches of green and brown. I asked him what it was, he said "the sound from the speakers." I had no idea what that meant, but Stephen filled me in today. When he's playing music on the stereo upstairs, there are pictures of earth from space showing on the screen. JJ had painted the earth. That paper is going in our keepsake box, along with its title.

A Good Book I Read Recently:
I first heard about Surprised by Oxford from some quotes I read on a blog. I lost no time in finding it at my library. For me, its beauty was that it was yet another illustration of how God reaches down and meets us where we are. What believer does not have a similar story of the providential leading of God as they came to faith?
I couldn't quite figure out whether this book was well-written or not. On the positive side, I finished it in two days because I just couldn't put it down. On the negative side, the language of many of the conversations is stilted and unreal. One possibility is that these "conversations" are in fact distillations of the wisdom found in several conversations over time. And the truth is, this concentrated form of conversation often results in some of the most quotable passages of the book. Overall, I highly recommend it.

And that's all for today. Have a good week!