air castle

Noun

1.

air castle - absentminded dreaming while awake - imaginative thoughts indulged in while awake; "he lives in a dream that has nothing to do with reality”

Yesterday Lewis stayed home from school with an upset stomach that morphed into a neck ache. He couldn’t turn his neck at all, which was probably caused by busting his ass while slip and sliding down the hall in his new socks. It’s always something, isn’t it?

He layed around and moaned a bit and wanted to watch a show and I threw a book at him instead.

A good one. I didn’t throw it too hard.

"It’s a day for reading, Senor." I said.

So he did and I joined him after a while and we read together. We’ve read it before, but he didn’t remember and it’s certainly worth several readings.

Get it today if you don’t already have it. It’s good for any age. We love it for many reasons, but we stop dead in our tracks when it comes to the descriptions of the food they ate. They ate a lot and they ate well and they ate constantly, and it’s all described in luscious detail. We stop and discuss their every meal amongst ourselves. Do NOT read on an empty stomach.

Well, we were reading along and came to the part where Almanzo, the main character, is describing the dining room. It says this...

“And over the center table hung an air-castle. Alice had made it of clean yellow wheat straws, set together airily, with bits of bright colored cloth at the corners. It swayed and quivered in the slightest breath of air, and the lamplight ran gleaming along the golden straw.”

Hold the phone. An air castle? Why haven’t I heard of this thing? I want one. At the very least, I want to try to make one. Lewis and I jumped up and googled it. Because google knows everything.

But we got nada.

Actually, we got a company in New Jersey that rents bouncy houses for birthday parties and another business that leases luxury private jets. I don’t want those things, I want a hanging straw mobile.

And then on a totally unrelated tangent I found this, which I think is bizarre. What’s the chance?

A himmeli is a Scandinavian Christmas creation made from straw or straws or other hollow some such. They are hung over the table to insure a fruitful harvest. I am putting two and two together and calling it an air castle. I’m betting Almanzo Wilder had some Finnish blood running through his veins.

thanx to elsie marley for shedding light on the subject!

Here is a tutorial on how to make them. 

Did you see the definition up above?
 air castle - absentminded dreaming while awake
I came across that, too. I like everything about these air castles.

Books. Read to your kids everyday, OK? Don’t stop doing it until they leave the house for college. The depth and breadth of knowledge that can be found in books will sustain you and fortify you with everything you could ever need.

In two weeks, on September 14th, I will share with you my darling. Our non-profit, Read Aloud Revolution, a family literacy foundation, extolling the power and joy of reading aloud as a family will become a real thing.

I am giddy.

I can’t wait to tell you all about it!

My air castle is real, you see.