I found them...........sort of........
Someone had asked me how I came up with the name Oblique House. When I went back to my archives the first week was gone. I can’t get them to re-publish, but was able to track down the first couple of posts. So I’m posting them again, just for posterity’s sake (and clarification of the noodle reference that I made the other night.)


Use your noodles...........

I probably won't have the link 'thing' figured out until tomorrow.............This has a sharper learning curve than I had expected.

So I thought I'd just go ahead and share a little 'homeschooling' hint.
This is the time of year when I usually think of packing away the pool/beach stuff, such as the 'noodles.' Those foam rods that are used for floating and other water hijinks. This year I won't even bother to put them away.
Sometime in the spring, the noodles found their way out of the garage and insinuated themselves into just about every unstructured outdoor playtime that my boys had.

The Feast of St. George was the first time I noticed the boys on the front lawn - re-enacting the day's lesson. Whacking each other with the noodles.
Then came the Battle of Agincourt. Joan of Arc. The Hundred Years' War.
And just about every chapter from Famous Men of Rome.
Study breaks turned into noodle fights.

This alarmed me at first. Being a girl with no brothers. And my first four children are girls. (Not wimpy, sedentary girls. But girls without much of an interest in pounding on each other........) I was relieved when neighbors reassured me that boys do these things. And they had always been good enough not to attack each other with the plastic swords that came with the Gladiator and Crusader outfits they just had to have.

So, I have now made peace with the noodles. (Always uttering a small prayer begging protection from corneal abrasions and other assorted worries that tend to plague the 'worst case scenario' mindset.) I won't pack the noodles away this fall. In fact, we just found some new ones. School starts soon - so much history, so much
Shakespeare, so much energy to expend..........






Why Oblique House?

Just a little play on words.
Partially a tribute to Dickens - and the Bleak House quote that I keep next to the phone:
"It is right to begin with the obligations of home, and while these are overlooked and neglected, no other duties can possibly be substituted for them."
And in tribute to my own home and family where nothing is quite parallel nor perpendicular and likewise not as bleak as it may sound.
(I also like Dizzy Spot and/or Wonder Spot, as in that marvelous tourist trap at the Wisconsin Dells, where one feels as if gravity and other rules of physics have been suspended. But I would prefer not to be sued by them, so I'll stay with Oblique House and take my chances with the proprietors of the Estate of the late Mr. Dickens.)

originally posted by Ellyn vonHuben - Thursday, August 22, 2002