How to Play Bug House Chess

The Anpanman twins and their friends are demonstrating how to play Bug House chess. It's a team game. One teammate will play white, and the other black. It's pretty much a regular chess game, except if you take a piece from your opponent, you can give it to your teammate to use during his next turn! Here, we're demonstrating how Anpanman got a black queen from his teammate and has placed it on the board. Now, mind you, you can't place a pawn in the promotion row or anything like that. When the other team is checkmated, you win! More detailed rules here. We're going to play in a friendly Bug House tournament tonight ourselves. Enjoy!

Tornadoes.

In the summer, it's tornado season. A friend of mine had no idea about tornado sirens! I thought everyone had those, but maybe not. So I'm posting some pics of our closest one and chatting a little bit about our "season" so far.

When the siren goes off, it means to get into your basement or best cover right now. It could be the result of a county-wide warning, or it could be specific to where you are. Just get into the basement and tune in to your radio from there to see what's up.

 The siren goes off every Wednesday at the same time. Eeeven though it was a Wednesday yesterday, I knew it was a for real siren. It was turned super loud as if to tell everyone that people, this is not a drill. And it went on for I'm thinking an hour and a half or so.

Emperor was already freaked out about Joplin. He understands. He is very, very afraid. I distracted him by making him match my huuuuuge collection of single socks. I mean, why not. I told him I would give him a nickel for every pair he folded together. I'm tremendously bad about matching socks with this size of a family. PLUS, there is the fact that G has until recently only worn one sock at a time, being in a cast/boot and all. (BTW, he is still in a brace. So... not done yet.)

Emperor was very nervous and upset but the job helped a bit. When he was done it was eeeeerie quiet, odd whistly outside and he sat with me. Little tears in his eyes.

"Momma, if I live, you owe me 70 cents," he whispered as he got in my arms. I held him close and even Woodjie and Rose sat and were suddenly still next to me for a minute. They have no clue, but they were still a bit. I don't know what could have caused it because usually they don't stop and crouch like that even when there is shouting and upset in the house. They remained down a good ten minutes. Was it a tornado nearby? I still don't know.

After a long time, it didn't sound eerie or even angry outside any more and the sirens stopped. Emperor had a hard time being coaxed out of the basement. Poor guy.

There is some photographic evidence on a major news channel of a funnel cloud about a half a mile from our house yesterday. One neighbour of mine (who is not given to hysterical fits of exaggeration) reports that the tornado passed OVER our houses. Why she went outdoors to look, I could not in a million years tell you.

If you are interested,  here is a YouTube video of a tornado siren in action. Promise it is louder in real life.

"Me Happy"

Sometimes I'm surprised at the times Rose tells me this. Often it is when things are quiet and not much is going on. You'd also be surprised at the things that make children UNhappy. Recently there was a very big fight about "My sun!/ No, MY sun!/ No MYYY SUUUN!" going on between Rose and Woodjie. I kept trying to break it up but I swear off and on it lasted an hour. Notice: the sun now belongs to MOM, but she shares it sometimes because she is NICE. :)

The Happy Elf

I don't get it. Elf LOVES school. The school people are nice to him. Here he is in his "1st Class of Oak Tree Elementary ALUMNI" shirt that was distributed at school. Elf's name is printed on the back under Mr. McC's class column with the other students. Aww! Why couldn't we have had this wonderful experience when Elf was in school before? Ah, well, I have been *very blessed* to have him home all this time... though I must say, I was scared to death and upset about the very idea of this "school" thing for a while there. So was Elf. But now he has a friend he is meeting at recess to discuss existential questions such as, "What if there were no recess?" Might as well. Poor kid is not allowed on the equipment for a good while; the orthopaedist has dealt with G and his shenannigans and doesn't want to take a chance on Elf being silly and injuring himself. That means he stays home from the BIG FUN fieldtrip on Monday. A full day of PE/climbing and jumping activities. Fittingly, we will stay home and make cookies. And eat them.

BABY Robins!

There are at least three in the nest, but this one in front is the pushiest. I don't know how this little thing could STAND for a second and get a raw worm from its mom. It has eyes shut, I think, and is fluffy. Aside from the beak, it doesn't really look like a robin at all.

How We Work at Home

Woodjie has a little drawer full of coloured plastic animals, flash cards, his Game Boy, and a Boggle timer. As you can see, his worksheet is a laminated picture of him with five velcro buttons. There are real buttons with sticky velcro on them we use as tokens. When the board is full, Woodjie gets to play with his Game Boy until the timer runs out.

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I have flash cards from school that I laminated (smiley face = "happy," or we have "heart" and other common words). I show some of these to him and after I feel he's done enough to earn a token, I give him a button. There really are no rules as to how many he must answer correctly. Sometimes I give out buttons when I see he was frustrated but did a good job on a card. Other times he's zooooming through his cards and perhaps I give him a button when he finally pauses for breath!

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The girl is usually nearby doing her own activity (today it was stringing plastic beads). Woodjie is very proud of his work and is showing his sister his game on the Game Boy in the last picture.

The Retirement Party

"Guess who's retiring, Elf?" I asked.

"DAD?" Elf said in amazement. No, not Dad. It was his first grade teacher, Mrs. Old. Mrs. Old probably is an excellent teacher of complaint little girls, but of autistic elves? Not so much.

Elf was OVERJOYED to hear that Mrs. Old would be retiring. "Can we make a cake to celebrate??" he asked. He said this was a great day for *all* the little children. I don't think a politician could make a more declarative statement. His pudgy little face just beamed.

Actually, Elf, Merriwether and William Elementary is having a BIG PARTY and the public is invited to celebrate Mrs. Old's retirement on Tuesday night.

"If they knew she was that bad a teacher that they had to have a party because she is leaving, they should have gotten rid of her a long time ago," he told me sternly. Well, that's sort of one of those things people do... they have parties when someone retires. (Come to think of it, why do we do that?)

"Can we go to the party?" he asked. "We can say that we are very *happy* she is going away. And we can eat cake."

That doesn't sound very nice, Elf. Nevermind that it's chess club night. You're supposed to say nice things about the person retiring at these parties. OK? OK, ok, ok, he said. Here are some ideas he's come up with for the card he wants to make:

* Happy Retirement.

(And Mom, just saying that isn't bad. Hoping she has a happy time. I will draw happy children on the front of the card and it will look nice.) And on the inside of the card it should say, "Hope your retirement is so happy that you realize this is something you should have done long ago."

Another idea for a card:

*Don't worry about things getting worse when you leave!

What, none of these work? How about a "congratulations" card to the first graders at Merriwether and William Elementary? No?

Well, I had *hoped* that hearing of her retirement would be a mildly interesting tidbit and perhaps bring a smile to his face. Not jubilant Munchkin dancing and requests for Mrs. Old's address and a stamp. I think Mrs. Old is going to enjoy her retirement. I know this because she was counting down the years and days since G was her student many years ago...