Thursdays are always very slow-starting days and that’s ok, because we tend to do have evenings where we do a lot of schooling. I wasn’t sure anyone was going to be up for much today and decided to stealth it; Béla played chess online with Joey for a long time. Claudia slept a lot in the afternoon.

Claude got this very cute miniature theater kit for Christmas, which is certainly her style, but it was a little hopeful of Santa to assume that the actual construction would also interest her. Today we announced we were commandeering it and she could have it back when we were done. “Good,” she said. So we got started figuring that out.

There are a LOT of In-Progress projects around here. We are going to hit a tipping point soon. So rather than finishing or even working on any today (it’s Thursday), we started watching Roots.

I’ve been concerned about how to approach Roots for Claude for years. I knew she was not going to love every minute of it, particularly the first episode, and she kept trying to duck out to cook or “get something”, and was furious when I would pause it and wait for her to come back.

She got through it. With interest, but not without tension. When it was over, I showed them photos of LeVar Burton from Star Trek (Béla recognized him, Claude did not) and told them about Reading Rainbow and Burton’s recent wish to find material he had copyright permission to read online during quarantine…

That was the kind of endorsement that pleased Claudia.

She also really loved the scene of the women dancing in Kunta Kinte’s village — that looks identical to part of Claudia’s real life, when life is normal.