Damn Brownies

Catherine can pick a prepositional phrase out of a sentence and name the subject and verb of that sentence like nobody's business. Easy Grammar, with it's black and white pages and ever-present cloned turtle armies marching across worksheet pages, looks boring. But it's not. What it is is rigourous and thorough. So Catherine's doing well and heck, she ain't the only budding grammar diva in the house.

Grammar this morning obviously. Math Mammoth as well. Read a little bit on the tower of Babal in her bible activity book and we'll read the story from my Oxford NRSV tommorrow so we can get a better picture of it.

And then it was Brownie night tonight. I thought we were selling cookies door to door. The brownie pack leader or herd leader or whatever the title is missed giving Catherine the information last week and then I misheard the leader when she called me to let me know about the cookie sale. So I arrived expecting to have to flog cookies and found out that thankfully, I'd missed the whole thing as it was really yesterday. Phew! However, Catherine and I had a nice chat about the little brownie chant they have to do on the drive to the meeting. She hasn't memorized it yet and admitted she just faked the thing. I said I thought that was fine. Christian though I may be I squirmed when I heard the little girls promising to "love my God". On the copy we got later, 'faith' was written in in an attempt to be inclusive but, of course, not everybody believes. Some little girls don't have a faith. Nevermind the promise to, "Serve Queen and country," just so she can tape together construction paper easter baskets for an evening.

I'm not entirely comfortable with the brownies but Catherine enjoys it and has friends there. We can always talk about the icky cultish bits afterowrds.