If only I would listen, everything would be perfect! The view from Thing One.

First day of the winter term. We have a schedule. Walk at 7:15. French at 9 am. Independent Study 10.

I won't go on, we're not there yet. We were running a half hour late when we left for our walk. It was cold. We had missed the gorgeous sunrise by 25 minutes at least.

The walk was good, high-spirited, a minimum of first day back blues, brought on by Thing One backing out of the offer to walk out the marsh instead of up the road. There was singing, dancing, frozen clementine hockey with walking sticks... not as simple as clementine soccer.

There were tracks in a light dusting of snow. On the return trip we talked about the cultural studies project Thing Two has proposed. She will make dioramas. We talked about marking guidelines or research criteria. I met her "I don't have a clue" with stories of starting a business and feeling the same way while spending days turning over the pages of various forms and thinking "I don't know the answer to that, or that either." Eventually one day I thought, "well this question here, where they ask for my name, I know that, I might as well start there."

So, Ancient Egypt it is, using other sources than Wikipedia, some online and some off... I have an art history book from my first sojourn at NSCAD U and I know there's an Art of Egypt book kicking around the house somewhere. The British Museum and other museum sites will have plenty of info. Time frame is important, scale is important, we got that far and then we were home with fifteen minutes to spare before breakfast and French.

Listened to Radio Canada while we ate and made up some quick exercises to do. To listen live, scroll down, its on the right hand side with a black background... and says "Écoutez le MP3" , but you knew that, of course. I listened for words that I could recognize and wrote them in the notebook as words to write sentences around. We spoke French and when Thing Two used an English word I wrote that down too, so she could find it in French and get it into a sentence. The hour ended before we could start what we intended to do, begin reading L'Odyssée miraculeuse d'Édouard Toulaine with a stack of reference books to hand.

Independent study is almost over, Thing Two is alternating between working on the French exercises and wandering into iPod land. I'm relearning what little I knew about switching between the French and English keyboard settings and being glad we've made a start.

What I learned today so far:

• Being on time starts last night.
• I need to have my clothes laid out before I go to bed.
• Getting up with the alarm set to radio isn't working for Thing Two.
• My least favourite job is waking anyone, but we already knew that.
• We are going to be fine. (more on this later.)

Waking me today wasn't the problem, my day started after 4 hours sleep at 1 am. I had my hot milk with caraway and maple sugar and I read, but the book turned out not to be boring enough. Or something, because even after thinking I was drowsy and turning out the light, I was still awake and finally came downstairs and stirred up the fire at 4 am.

Now it's time to do whatever it is I do during Independent Study, there's only 9 minutes left! Drat, its just come back to me... I was going to marinate the tofu for lunch. On to plan B.