What's On My Desk?

Well, you have read what was in my cart this week, so I thought you might be interested in what is on my side of the big desk in the schoolroom. Triss and I share a very long desk, and recently Javamom and I were laughing at how high the piles have gotten on my side, covered in stacks of Useful Books.

We are tremendous book-stackers at our house. We pull books off the shelves at the drop of a hat, and hardly ever reshelf until we cannot get to our tables. (Update: Okay, I just realized this is not strictly true. We reshelf once a week, on Tuesdays, when we have people coming to our house for piano lessons. I don't always include my desk in the decluttering process, though.) Someone once told me this is an organizational style, but it doesn’t feel organized to me. You should see my half of the big desk right now.

(If anyone is wondering why in the world I am hyperfocusing like this, it is because I am trying to get organized for our Term 2, which starts after Thanksgiving. I have to reorganize before each new term-- The best laid schemes o' Mice an' Men, gang aft agley, Robert Burns, you know. This post started out as a tangent I took while laying out schedule variations for the new term. There is so much noisome thought in this head o' mine, it has to come out some way!)

Just for fun, here is a list of the books on my desk, dining table and coffee table right now (Update: Oops, I decided the list would be too long if I included the books on my dining table and coffee table, so this list is just for my desk):

1. Answer keys: Latin for Children, 6th grade SF Exploring Mathematics (what’s this doing on my desk? We aren’t even using this text this year!), 3rd grade SF Exploring Mathematics, Apologia General Science solutions and tests, UCSMP’s Transition Mathematics

2. Two copies of the essay, “I, Pencil,” graciously given to us by a good friend

3. The Mystery of History Vol. 1 (Creation to the Resurrection), lent to us by the same friend

4. Dover Coloring Book on Victorian Fashions, also given to us by the same generous friend (this one is sitting here because I was impressed by my friend’s habit of making copies of the Dover coloring pages rather than letting kids color directly in the books. I would really like to do that, but we do not have a copier at our house. So the book sits on my desk, pristine and unused. I should just hand it to Mariel. She loves coloring this kind of thing.)

5. Books for Triss' Girl Scouts Thinking Day projects on Greece: Black Ships Before Troy, The Odyssey, Susan Wise Bauer’s Story of the World: Ancient Times, Age of Fable, H.A. Guerber’s The Story of the Greeks, the d’Aulaire’s Book of Greek Myths (Why these are on my side of the desk and not her side, I cannot figure out. Also, Thinking Day isn’t until after Christmas. Surely we can reshelf these for the time being and dig them out again later.)

6. My old planning notebook (I transferred my last two months of the year from this book to my new planning notebook. I think I can file this old one away now.)

7. Truthquest History’s Dark Ages guide, borrowed from our kind Spanish teacher

8. The Grammar of Poetry (Both Triss' copy, which should be with her things, and my answer key)

9. KJV Bible

10. Our Island Story (this should be on Cornflower’s shelf)

11. A lovely advance copy of a book on masterly inactivity, which I am not sure I am supposed to be talking about yet

12. The d’Aulaire’s book on Columbus (I don’t know why this is on my desk. No one is studying Columbus. I think it is something Cornflower is reading in her spare time.)

13. A friend’s copy of The Writer’s Jungle, lent to me for two weeks. I am trying to read it from cover to cover in that time, and it is thick. I definitely want to get this for teaching composition.

Well, now that I know what I have on my desk, I think I can straighten it up. Several of these books belong elsewhere. Yippee!

What's on your desk?

Okay, I'll Play

Javamom has listed the contents of her grocery cart and asked what we got at the store this week. Frugal blogs and great deals have been absorbing quite a bit of my interest lately, so I decided to post my cart contents too.

The last couple of months I have doing a big shopping at the beginning of each twice-monthly pay period, and then just buying produce and maybe some dairy mid-pay period.

I have also been playing around with different ways to save money on my groceries the past few weeks. To make my list for this trip I referenced the Kroger flyer for deals, and also used the Everyday Bargain list from Hillbilly Housewife, as well as my own Master Grocery List that I keep on my computer in Word. I shopped at Kroger for deals only, and Walmart for the rest.

Here is what I bought:

1 package romaine hearts (lettuce)
1 thing of celery
2 heads of broccoli
1-4-pack of tuna
3 jars of peanut butter (I love the stuff)
Many cans of evaporated milk (we use this in our coffee)
Several cans of tomato sauce
4 cans of frozen concentrated orange juice
1 pound of turkey lunchmeat
1 pound of beef bologna
3 loaves of 100% whole wheat bread
1 package of turkey hot dogs
2 packages of turkey ham (I don't usually purchase ham for supper, but decided to this time)
3 pounds turkey bacon
2 cans of pumpkin
1 bag of fish sticks
1 container of dried minced onion
1 container of bay leaves
1 package of instant potatoes
1 package frozen mixed vegetables
1 package frozen strawberries
1 pound of butter
4 pounds of margarine quarters
1 package chicken thighs
2 lbs carrots
1 head of iceberg lettuce
1 package of peppermint sticks
6 dozen eggs
24 packages of ramen
1 dark chocolate candy bar
1 Sunday paper
several packages of sugar free pudding mix
many cans of green beans
4 cans of chili (no beans)
2 packages of graham crackers
1 container of canola oil
1 can of pears (in pear juice)
3 packages of storebrand mac and cheese
4 avocados
1 artichoke
2 cans of peaches (in juice)
1 can of coffee
1 bag of raisins
1 box of saltine crackers
2 pounds of cheese

And, for the grand finale, I purchased two 17+lb turkeys for .37 per pound.

So there you have it.

TCOO Ch. 36

Mariel has worked especially hard on written (typed) narrations this term. She has been retelling This Country of Ours chapters on the individual colonies of the United States. Today she finished this one on New Amsterdam (New York), and I think it is her very best so far, so I promised to post it on the blog. I hope you enjoy it!

TCOO cha.36

The change of Governors was not a happy change. Stuyvesant acted as though he was a king!! He shouted commands out to the people, and they were scared of what might happen to them if they didn’t obey. Stuyvesant was a tyrant*. There was a man who even dared to write to Holland! But when Stuyvesant heard about it, he foamed at the mouth! Can you imagine? He should have been put on the next boat to Holland, or London! But with all of his faults, he was a much better governor than the last one. He was Dutch, so he soon got mixed up in the Henry Hudson river thing. The Dutch said that both sides of the river belonged to them. The Swedes just laughed and hoisted their flag and sailed down the river-and then said that they would do it again too! Then the Dutch built a fort and the Swedes tore it down! Stuyvesant then &there decided that they went too far, and he gathered 600men, the largest number of men together and he beat the Swedes! Hooray!