I'm going to regret this but...

Science is for those who learn; poetry, for those who know. ~Joseph Roux, Meditations of a Parish Priest
Every so often my Ditz likes to astonish me. She fusses & pouts & makes a great to do about nothing & just when I'm ready to dig a hole & drop her in she changes horses mid~stream.


Those who have been round for a while know that we struggled for years to get Ditz to write. She could write but she didn't like it so she fought doing it & she fought hard. I was starting to get a little wild~eyed. People were asking questions & we were getting *those* sort of comments about homeschoolers. It's one thing to know your child can do something but when she objects to proving it ....!


Anyway I got sneaky. Each year I do NaNo & I make a bit of a thing about it. [Please, no comparisons; don't you know comparisons are odious; Disraeli said so.] NaNo is my excuse for being allowed to concentrate on writing for a whole 30 days despite November being a terrible month for something so time consuming & fraught making. Ditz watched this for one November. She saw I got unlimited computer time. She saw the cute little book thing. She saw you got a friends list. The next year she was lining up to do NaNo. We fought over the computer. Ditz wrote up a storm. I think she got about 6,ooo words done. I was flabbergasted. Mind you, she now costs me a small fortune in stationary because she hasn't stopped writing since. She's discovered it's a great way to torture all the people who upset her [please, she a teen; everyone upsets her!]


I still struggle to get her to write for school but I've been privileged to see some of what she's written & she's good...& getting better. English & History are my strong areas so while we are often highly unorthodox I'm pretty secure that Ditz has got some sort of a grasp on these subjects however much she fusses about *the boring stuff.* I also know that as a visual/spatial learner she is both random & extremely lopsided with her learning & mostly I'm o.k with that. I know it evens out a bit before lopsiding in another direction. That's just Ditz. I also know that in her own mind [& her mind alone] she thinks the only thing she's good at is music & then she's only really good at singing. No~one yet has been able to convince her that all musicians must work really, really hard to be any good ~ which is why so few people become musicians.


Anyways.....I digress. I do have a point. Ditz, who has fussed at me all week [& yes I get tired of it] sidled up to me last night & said, "I'm going to regret this but..." What an opening line! My heart quailed within me. "Could you teach me how to write poetry properly?" I very properly hid my absolute delight & amusement. Yes, I can do this standing on my head. Ditz has no idea what she's just let herself in for. And why, you may very well ask, does my Ditz want to learn all about poetry? Because, Dear Readers, she has made the connection between poetry & lyrics! She sees it will help her song writing to learn the mechanics of poetry. Oh Joyous Day! Oh, Rapturous Wonder! Dancing a little jig here.


Whatever else, I can never say that life with Ditz is dull.

A poet can survive everything but a misprint. ~Oscar Wilde