Bees, viruses and numbers

I got called a "cool mom" today by a tattooed gentleman at Hardee's. Hmmmmm.

I brought David's math work with us (unfortunately the TV was a HUGE distraction to him, and I couldn't find my tv-b-gone), and we went through an exercise on tables (columns and rows), measuring perimeter, and really, really abstract subtraction. I'll remind everyone that this is Kindergarten math.

You have three dimes and one penny to spend. You buy a flower for 12 cents. How much do you have left? So you have to know the item price (12 cents), know how to pay for that with the amount you've been given at the outset (two dimes), how much change you should get back (8 cents), which you then have to add to the remainder of your money (8+11), for a final answer of not only 19 cents, but broken down into one dime and nine pennies. Sheesh! Took us three tries at the assignment, and poor David got rather discouraged. I saw him starting to flag (oh, I SO remember feeling like that!) and I covered up the worksheet with both hands and said, "I gotta tell ya, David, it's a rotten trick, and almost everyone hates it." He perked a bit and looked at me. "It's true!" I pressed on. "These silly things are called "story problems," and what they've done is this: They've taken all your rock-solid, friendly numbers, and they've hidden them in this...this mess! But really, this is just math...your friendly numbers are still in there, you just have to go in and rescue them."
He raised his eyebrows. "Numbers are friendly?" he asked in surprise.
"Well, sure," I said. "You're pretty good at math. Numbers are pretty friendly and nice to you, aren't they? All those dependable, reliable, unchanging numbers that you work so well with...they're still in there." He flashed a tiny grin at me. "But they're hidden. Watch this...what they're REALLY asking...is..."
(*scribbing on a napkin*)
"What is 31 minus 12? Now THAT'S a real math problem, isn't it?"
"Yeah."
"Yeah, but they go and ask it like THIS. So let's try this...let's use a different sheet of paper and work out whatever we need to over here, and then put our answer down when we're all done? We can do it in fourteen different ways over here, however we want and however it makes sense, and then give 'em what they want over there."
He thought this was just a brilliant idea (not to mention that he thought it just might be cheating if he did that), and we practiced reading the words, extracting the numbers, and transferring those numbers onto the page, and then using real dimes and pennies to go through the steps.

In the midst of all of this, I noticed some movement. Bumping up against the window behind us was a bee. A honeybee.

On the inside.

I pointed the bee out, and Lauren took one look at it and exclaimed, "Pollen!" She was right, the bee's legs were loaded down with pollen. Worker bee. "Can we tell the people there's a bee?" asked David.
"No," I said. "They're likely to get a fly swatter and kill it."
David was stricken. (We found a dead cricket in the garage and had to have a long discussion about how long crickets live and whether or not we smashed it and caused its death. We hadn't.)

I went up to the salsa bar and got a tiny plastic souffle cup. I gently trapped the bee underneath and slid a card over the top to keep it inside, and then quickly put the lid on top and snapped it in place. The kids wanted to see, obviously, so I set the cup down and they took turns watching the bee. The bee didn't look very healthy...it was a little woozy, it seemed. I don't know what was wrong with it, but keeping the bee locked up in a Hardee's wasn't going to fix it.

We packed up and started to leave, and we paused to let the aforementioned tattooed gentleman and his teenage son go out the door first. David was peering into the cup and I said, "Do you want to find a flower to put the bee on?" The tattooed man got interested. "You have a bee?" he asked, turning around and looking at David. "Yeah!" says David, lifting the cup up. "He was on the inside, Mommy caught him!" The man was quasi-concerned. "Now you be careful how you let him loose," he says, "You don't want him to fly back atch'a." Seems to me the bee isn't in any shape to fly at anyone, but that's neither here nor there. David promises to be careful and as we're headed over to the flowering bushes, I overhear the man mutter something to his son. I don't hear most of it, but I do hear the words "cool mom."

I unsnapped the lid from the container and tilted it sideways and slowly pushed one of the flowers inside, and the bee, with scrabbling black legs, seemed more than happy to abandon the plastic in favor of the flower. I backed the cup away and we headed for the car. I thought I saw the bee fly over to a different bush. I hope it gets better. (They're saying now, BTW, that it's a virus that's killing off the honeybees.)

Today was gorgeous weather...which was nice, since I had a bunch to catch up on. I think I'm finally getting over my cold, which also combined with an older furnace filter in order to give me a bronchitis-like attack for a few days. I switched out the filter and the hacking calmed down. And the new discovery of Aleve Cold and Sinus makes sleeping possible. Hurray!

So I ended up cleaning out the litterboxes (ooh, the joy!) and cleaning the foyer floor, sweeping off the porch and cleaning the patio furniture. The lawn needs attention again, and of course there's the inside of the house, which we probably shouldn't discuss. Ever.

David decided he was "too cold" to be outside, which was ridiculous. I popped him into a turtleneck and a pair of jeans and we went out onto the deck and played a game of "hockey" with a Swiffer, and old golf club and a can of cat food. Short game, though, as I'm still easily winded. Drat.

Oh, and the kids are outgrowing their clothes again, which means it's time for the bi-annual kid-clothes shopping trip. That means hitting the stores this weekend, mowing the lawn, cleaning the house, and getting to AAA. Did we mention we're heading to Canada soon? :-)