If You Don't Hate Me Yet...

...just wait and listen to this:

I read greek mythology to my girls at night.

I'm not kidding. My own knowledge of the myths, impoverished at best, led me to pick up a copy of Bullfinch's Mythology and I decided that as long I was going to make a study of it, I'd involve the girls and get them involved. Now, if you've ever read Bullfinch, you know the language is extremely antiquated; he published his mythology books in the mid-Nineteenth century. Naturally, the girls aren't going to sit through a narrative that requires interpreting roughly every third noun or verb. So the trick is to read the story before hand and then, at bedtime, transpose from olden-times, snooty Oxford Don prose to something approximating "Barbie and the Ice-Skating Puppies". Tonight's selection was The Rape of Proserpine which, although sounding a bit intense, was actually pretty tame. My problem is getting the girls to not associate Pluto with Mickey's dog.

We also read Blue's Clues and Pooh and Peter Rabbit, the standard childhood fare. I'm not a sadist (strictly speaking) and I'm actually surprised at how well they've taken to Bullfinch and learned not only the names of Gods and Goddesses but their functions.

They're going to hate me, however, when we start The Inferno.