The "Dismal" Life

Glass in the grass

2010-10-23T19:23:00.023-04:00

Yesterday, Meredith, Morgan and I went to Cheekwood Botanical Gardens to see the amazing Glass sculpture work of Dale Chihuly. I have been trying to convince Morgan that he is a pirate, but to no avail. The exhibit was mostly outdoors, in the beautiful, rambling gardens and ponds, with spritely, colorful pieces of glass such as this:

placed amongst trees, shrubs and flowers like this:
Making for a very nice composition like this:

Even the Sphinx at the gate was enthralled with the display, and so we were able to sneak in without answering the customary riddle.

As Meredith is pointing out, these "Bamboo Reeds" have rings like the real bamboo.

We saw The Sun and The Moon~

And what looked to be many different planets,

Being used as marbles.

There was literally a boatload of glass there.

And there was really only one thing that could make it look prettier.

OK, well maybe two....

Of snakes and scams

2010-10-21T17:18:00.007-04:00

OK, I'm going to try to make an actual post here, with pictures and everything.

The cats like to hunt and show off their catches. Usually they consist of chipmunks, voles, birds, or portions thereof. The other day, the orange cat proudly brought me a garter snake, which was still alive and mostly unharmed, so I snatched it away and released it somewhere I thought he wouldn't notice. But about an hour later, he came strutting back with the same snake, obviously enjoying this new game. So I brought it to show Meredith and Morgan for a while before re-releasing it even further away.

The other pictures I have here are of Morgan's latest costume creation, inspired by one of her favorite cartoons, "Ed, Edd and Eddy," which is kind of like the three stooges meets the little rascals. This is "Professor Scam:"

Arrrrrrr!!!!

2010-09-19T12:17:00.002-04:00

Ahoy there scurvy dogs!
Bein' in honor of jaw like a pirate day, I, Cap'n Woodbeard, be commandeerin' this blasted vessel.
So, raise the Jolly Roger, haul the drunkards off the poop deck, and no friggin' in the riggin'!

what I've been doing

2009-09-12T18:04:00.002-04:00

Here's a quilt I've been working on, for someone who likes "facets". Good clean fun.
While I'm working on a big piece, I like to keep myself entertained with little bitty projects. Here's a little sample piece for a miniature quilt, something quaint and traditional, with pieced baskets and appliqued vine and leaf stuff, except the vines and leaves transform into these little guys:
Funny how you can't tell size from a photo. The quilt at the top is 90x102" while the other is only two inches wide.

travelling with a conservative eater

2009-09-04T08:08:00.006-04:00

While visiting family recently in New England, I came across fresh figs at the grocery store. I’ve never had a fig that wasn’t dried, or turned into paste. I was surprised at the color and intrigued by the shape and so bought a couple to try. Mo was intrigued too. She’s become more loquacious, lately, for her I mean. She’s still not in danger of talking anyone’s ear off but she liked the look of the figs and was happy to talk about them, ask some questions, and watch me eat one. Naturally, she didn’t want to try one, herself.

I say naturally because Morgan is a naturally conservative eater. I spent a good deal of time explaining that on our travels, since she doesn’t eat things most people associate with kids her age – not pizza or sandwiches or homemade mac-n-cheese. Most kids go through a conservative stage, but by 8 they’re usually coming out of it.

Mo’s a bit more sensitive to looks and textures than average, and that has a lot to do with her conservatism. She still has a fairly narrow range of foods and the tend to be light and fine: cereals and pale pastas (no whole wheat, please), tortillas and pancakes, cheese and tofu, chicken nuggets, bananas. There are a few other things, but you get the idea. Milk and juice form a big part of her diet, so we don’t cheap-out on juice, we get 100% and try new flavors whenever we can. She’s most open to experimenting where juice is concerned, but she rarely samples new fruit. Like I said, texture is an issue.

It was nice to talk with other people on my travels who have been down similar roads, either as parents or as conservative eaters, themselves. It was refreshing to hear tales from George’s mom of her passionate, strong minded children, of Liz liking things just so and George coming apart at the seams if his hotdog was cut in the wrong number of pieces. Good to know Morgan doesn’t just get it from me!

I was the proverbial picky eater. I recall there were foods I did like as a child, but most of my actual memories of dinnertime revolve around a sense of disgust as I would steal myself, over and over, to lift the fork to my mouth. I sometimes wonder how much of my vegetarianism comes down to being finally able to avoid all the foods I despise in one fell swoop. Certainly when I go to vegetarian homes and potlucks and feel a sense of nervousness at an unfamiliar dish, I can dispel most of that with a simple reminder to myself: its okay, its vegetarian. Its amazing how much that relaxes me. I don’t recall ever being disgusted by a mouthful of vegetarian food, even if the flavor didn’t appeal to me. I’m sure there must be some, but they don’t stand out in my memories.

Food is such a personal issue. Some people seem to be able to eat anything. Ray has always been able to eat foods he dislikes. He may complain about them, but he doesn’t struggle to eat them. I’ve watched Mo struggle to try a food she thought she’d like only to have the actual experience prove different than she’d hoped. I’ve seen her on the verge of tears when a food at a restaurant wasn’t what she expected. We ate out a bunch on our travels, something we rarely do at home, and I did a good bit of explaining and negotiating with wait-staff as a result. They were all very helpful, even found ways to charge me less for, say, a plate of “nachos” with none of the meat, salsa or guacamole listed in the menu. One waitress brought Mo all the popcorn she could eat at no charge at all. That was sweet.

It was wonderful to overnight at another unschooling house on the way home. I’m always nervous meeting people I only “know” via the internet, and we hadn’t really talked about food with this family. But Faith was perfectly happy to walk Morgan through their cereal collection even though we’d arrived at dinnertime, that was great. And despite eight hours in the car I was ready to do a happy-dance at the sight of real home-style vegetarian food on the stove (its okay! Its vegetarian). And its good to get back home to where Mo doesn’t have to ask if she isn’t in the mood to talk, where she knows where everything is and the microwave is conveniently located for little people. Good to get back to George’s home-style vegetarian cooking every night. Even if I can’t get fresh figs around here.

forget it

2009-08-02T08:54:00.003-04:00

I'd forgotten how loud airplanes are. On friday, Mo and I flew from Nashville to Philly to Providence, RI - two ups and two downs, next to no turbulence, just enough clouds. Great flights, especially for Morgan, who had never been on a plane before. She had a grand time, but spent the flights with her fingers stuffed in her ears. I remember that was my first impression of flying, years ago on an army plane flying to Alaska. There were no windows and it was soooooo loud. I'm glad Mo's first plane ride was more fun than that.

We were met at the airport by a sweet old lady who couldn't remember we weren't related to her - I have no idea who she was, but her daughter apologized and I reassured her it was fine. She was friendly and a decent conversationalist for someone who wasn't sure where she was or why or who I was or why we were talking. Mo and I rode the elevator with her and met up with Jane, also not related to this lady. Jane is my Fabulous Aunty, who forgets words. There's a word for that, but, well, you know... Its cute. She sticks her tongue out and taps the tip, or makes this funny gesture, like writing on her arm while I (or whoever) try to guess what she wants to say. If you're clever, this can be great fun, as Jane quickly gets distracted from what she's trying to say. I'm not clever enough, most of the time, and simply find the word, if I can remember it. Nothing like someone else being tongue tied to make me self conscious about my own lack of facility with the spoken word.

I'm terribly forgetful when I speak, not so much when I write. I think its because I think in images - even when I'm thinking words, I'm thinking of them printed, or typed. Now and then I get bogged down wondering what font my brain is using and can't remember what I'm talking about. When I write, too, I can cheat and look things up, check a thesaurus, dig up a website so I seem to know what I'm talking about. I do know what I'm talking about, I swear! I have a huge amount of information stuffed into my head, but don't always remember the sources. Lately people have been asking me about child development, and I know a ton about it, but then someone wants a source...geez. I don't know how I know this stuff.

Forgetfulness is a family trademark, it seems, on both sides. This morning George and I had breakfast with his dad, who kept saying banjo when he meant guitar, and then went back to George's mom's house, where she was wondering where the other half of her grapefruit had gone, having eaten it yesterday. Our days and lives are full of forgetfulness. I forgot I was supposed to be compiling a blog carnival, but I have an excuse for that - the whole going-out-of-town thing. My friend Lora and I were discussing forgetfulness not too long ago, about how you can walk into the other room and realize you've forgotten why. I have a whole strategy worked out for remembering in those situations, and Lora wondered why I didn't simply have a strategy for not-forgetting. I don't recall what I told her, though. George and I joke that one day we'll be a pair of old codgers living together, not remembering who this other person is, clomping around the kitchen, drinking all the coffee.

A few months back I was chatting with another parent, a school teacher and mom, who wondered how I can possibly know what my kids have learned if I don't test them. I asked her how she knows what her kids have learned a week after the test, and she conceded that it was a good point. I'd rather watch my kids forget and remember and forget again than to have the illusion that they "know" something because they remembered it long enough to spew it out on a form. I've forgotten a great deal of what I learned in school, but I remember cramming for spelling tests in grade school and then turning around and misspelling the very words I'd spelled perfectly on the test when I'd write. I recall it being a source of hilarity for my friends and frustration for my teachers.

One of my favorite quotable authors, Jeanette Winterson, has a line about forgetting... some buddah like thing about there being nothing to remember... Naturally I don't recall the details, and since I'm not home, I can't look it up. I'm pretty sure its in Sexing the Cherry, though, if you have a copy.

2009-07-17T20:40:00.005-04:00

Recently I was at the local coffee shop and a friend showed me a picture she'd taken on vacation. It was a pretty bland shot of someone standing by a car, but in the foreground, captured in the flash, it seemed, was a wonderful glowing something - something with legs and wings. I asked if it was a mosquito. It kind of looked like one, and she'd just been to Alaska, so I was ready for a "the mosquitoes were soooooo big..." story. She kind of sighed and said "some people think so" and that was the end of that. Oops. It was one of those litmus test things. How cool is Mer? Will she say "OMG, is that a Fairy?" Nope. Sorry.

Its not that I have anything against the idea of fairies - or nature spirits or communicating with the unseen world or whatever floats yer boat. But I'm not into that these days. Its the evil little buddhist in me. I don't see any need to look for magic in the world because, frankly, I find the world pretty darned magical already.

It irks me when people do things like that, try to suss out if I'm "okay" based on some willingness on my part to Believe (or not). Maybe they're just looking for connection - probably so. And I can't connect in that way. If you want to talk about how lovely is a mosquito, caught in a flash, I'm right there. Beautiful in its articulated, chitinous majesty, possessed of the glorious power of flight. That's enough magic, right there. A normal, everyday miracle.

Those miracles are overlooked, disregarded, belittled. That's a sad thing. Dirt is miraculous, even without gnomes and trolls to populate it. Its rich with smell and texture. Rainbows are marvels of chance refraction without leprechauns. Snowflakes are a wonder without Santa Clause or the Nativity. Flowers are sexy without sprites living in them, and the ocean has no need of sirens and mermaids. Life is a miracle and a mystery. No-one knows why its here. There are theories - theories of chance combinations over millennia and theories of supernatural intervention, but nobody knows, really. Why is there life or why is any one thing, bacteria, plant, person, alive right now. Lots of good reasons why things die, but none why they don't. That kind of miracle. The quiet every day kind that get ignored because they're so commonplace.

There's a great bug movie, if you like bugs and other creepy crawlies, called "Microcosmos". Its got the sexiest snails ever to hit the big screen (no shit, you should see these two go at it!) and a great final shot of an "everyday miracle" a metamorphasis from a nymph, the new adult rising out of the water in a silver halo... and then you realize its a mosquito and sort of shiver all over as it flies away with that characteristic whine. Its beautifully creepy. For the record, I'll swat the little buggers in an instant, and squish fleas and ticks, and smush spiders... but they're still more beautiful than anything I could possibly imagine.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microcosmos

waterways

2009-07-01T16:47:00.010-04:00

Summertime in Dismal is creek time! The Dismal creek isn't really big enough for swimming (its more of a brook), so we head over to Dry Creek. The pic at the header of the blog is from Dry Creek, one of the swimming holes we visit. This year, we've been exploring new swimming holes along the same creek. Its been hot, so the spring fed creek water is a welcome relief, and I've found places I can drive right down to the water and not have to lug all our snacks and floats and chairs and snorkels and knitting and books and toys....

Going to the creek is timeless. Here's a journal entry from last year that never made it as far as this blog, that meanders into some newer commentary:

Morgan is sitting and watching the creek go by. This is the child I used to call "my ninety mph kid." She's still a busy, active young person, and has become quite the chatterbox at times, besides. Lately she's had these long slow silences, though. She's not "thinking" in the sense of having some kind of internal dialog. She's "just" looking around and taking everything in.

Daydreaming is frowned upon in our culture. Its wasteful or shameful or something. I remember feeling a need to conceal my rich fantasy life as a child. Too silly, too unrealistic, or worst of all too interesting to adults - you should write that down! But if I did, of course it had to be edited and critiqued. C'mon, Mer, you're smart, you can do better than this. So I learned to write in code or not write at all. And then had to learn not to think, besides.

I remember feeling that a good class, good book, good day was one where I wasn't tempted to daydream. Now I wonder how many parents are towing kids from school to club to activity - and how many kids are going along with that, even wanting that, to avoid that very same thoughtfilledness I eschewed for so many years.

With Morgan, I have the opportunity to see different kinds of thoughtfilledness. She has long, half-vocalized conversations with her self. She doesn't appreciate being interrupted, so I've learned not to ask what they're about. They seem to range across a variety of topics, from what I can hear; puns, numbers, the motility of crawdads and fresh water fish. Sometimes her thoughts become motion, or construction, or lead her to ask a question or share a discovery. Other times these monologues taper off into one of her slow silences. The silences are another kind of thoughtfilledness - although perhaps meditation or contemplation would be better words for that. She tells me, when asked, that she's not "thinking words." She's absorbed in the movement of the creek, or the venation of a leaf, or the details of the life of Sandy Squirrel.

More recently, Morgan has been doing a lot of writing, and she spends a good bit of time actively thinking about what she want to write and how she wants to write it. She paces, composing dialog or arranging plots, tapping her finger on her chin as she does so. She has a busy internal life, filled with characters, scenes and settings. Walking down the creek with her the other day she paused at each bend to view the upcoming stretch of territory and decide "this part is peaceful" or "this is the spooky part," as though she were a cinematographer looking for a setting.

The periodic glimpses of Mo's inner world fascinate me, perhaps more so because she expresses them so tersely in person. She still doles out words like little haikus much of the time, although, as I said before, she's much chattier now than ever before.

Morgan's friend Iris, with whom we have spend many days at the creek, is far wordier than Mo. I enjoy her blatant expositions. At the creek, recently, she was delighted to inform me that she was collecting sticks to build a boat so that she and her mother could go sailing. At the same time, Mo was conducting and experiment with a plastic toy boat, releasing it at the top of a small "rapids" and dashing downstream to catch it. Over and over and over, following the boat with her eyes as it spun into backwaters or careened over stones, each trip a different story in her mind.

Creeks are magical places, lending themselves well to meditation and metaphor, in addition to their more practical values - cool and wet on our dry, hot summer days. Every trip to the creek is a hundred journeys: scientific excursions to sample flora and fauna and geology, studies of physics and fluid dynamics, fantasies of sailing, of being colorful aquatic creatures, of building magical portals or discovering a Sacred Jewel shard, picnics, swimming practice and contemplative hours.

George's mom loves to travel, and yet she regularly sends cards and postcards that she makes of her favorite "creek" (as we'd say in the south, in New England they call it a river, heathen yankees that they are), the Ponagansett in Foster RI. She goes there regularly, as we go to Dry Creek regularly. It was a childhood haunt of George, and we visit it almost every time we go East. Creeks make good touchstones, like that. They are ever changing - the banks alter with heavy rain, the wildlife comes and goes, the seasons are clear and sharper, it seems. And yet, that continual change lends them an air of stability, an eternal quality. Its no wonder that waterways have such symbolic value in literature and religion. At the same time, they send us onward and they call us home.

Pigtailed Assault Teams Storm State Park

2009-03-20T18:21:00.006-04:00

Okay, more of them had dreds than pigtails and the assault guns were loaded with soft foam projectiles, but there were teams, that's for sure! We spent this past weekend, plus a couple days, at Roan Mt State park for the semi-annual ARGH campout (that's Autodidactic Radical Gathering of Homeschoolers to the uninitiated). The theme of the weekend, for the under-12 portion of the community: Nerf Wars.

I was intrigued to see that the free form shoot-em-up quickly sorted itself into entire nation-states of children. They had grand names (my favorite being The Carrot Allegiance), cultural identities, alliances, feuds, and complex negotiations that lasted for days. At any given intersection of trails it was possible to find two opposing bands of armed Patriots shouting a conversation that might have sounded like this:

"Throw down your weapons, we have you surrounded!
"You do not! What team are you, anyway?"

"We are the Huggers and you are invading our territory."

"Well, we are the Princess Sisterhood and we do not recognize the validity of your organization."

"Hah! I got you! You're dead now!"

"I am not, I have fifty thousand hit points."

"You can't have that many. You can only have five."

"I can have as many as I want."

And on and on.

Unschooling children are great negotiators. I've seen that before, but we don't live in an area with a plethora of unschoolers, so its not something I'm used to.

That's not to say they were all little angels. There were bossy kids and whiny kids and kids who refused to acknowledge anyone else's rules. There were hurt feelings as teams formed and reformed many times over the weekend. For all that, there was little real fighting. Kids raised without rules, it seems, don't have any more trouble getting along than other kids. If anything, while many of the kids had control issues, none were actively mean. Older kids sometimes stepped in to facilitate disputes - Ray did at one point - and parents of younger children sometimes trailed along at a discrete distance in case anyone slipped in the mud and got hurt.

I confess to having spent the first day and a half fretting. I needn't have. I know my family, after all, but arriving at the ARGH gathering, I was the only family member who actually knew anyone at all (and most of those from online). I watched George and the kids lurk around the edges of groups and I fretted: surely I'd made a horrible mistake and they'd all be miserable. Silly me.

As soon as Mo settled in, she was happy to rampage through the campground with one nation-state or another, shooter in hand. Ray lurked and scoped and then all of a sudden was walking around with a group, staying up all night, exchanging email addresses. George took the longest. He didn't have alot in common with the other dads, and the kids weren't little enough to give him comfortable access to the world of moms for the most part. Eventually Mo dragged him off to a dress-up party, though, and got him settled. By evening's end he'd discovered bananagrams (have you played? its sooooo fun!) and the next day he discovered hiking trails. The pix are all from his hikes (new camera, I haven't a clue how to use it yet).

I had a fantastic time, once I stopped fretting. I knit and chatted and chatted and knit and hung out and played bananagrams (gotta get me some). I got to meet some of the wonderful people I know from online and see their kids in person. In case you are on the same lists as I but haven't had a chance yet - De (Bigwylma) is warm and personable, Faith has great hair and a wonderful smile, Kelly and Gail never stop talking! Kelli is fun and wonderful and has the most adorable curly headed boy (George was a curly headed boy, once, I'm partial), and Ren's every inch a drag queen. There were many more people than that, of course and I'm awash in names and faces (and needlework projects...love that purple scarf and its knitter... whatever your name was).

Unschooling teens are all gorgeous. I know I mentioned Kelli's (being partial to curls and also geekiness) but I was struck by the absolute beauty of the teenagers. It took me a couple days to figure out why, and I honestly believe its the unschooling. Without school to weigh them down, they have a lightness of spirit that schooled teens just plain don't. Even the quiet ones had that lightness. Even the ones dressed all in black, the freaks and the bad-asses. They weren't up all night knocking over dumpsters, they were up talking and laughing and... cuddling. Yeah, bad ass teenagers cuddling. I'm still reeling.

March Blog Carnival -video games

2009-02-26T09:34:00.008-05:00

I've fallen off the blogwagon, good grief! Its been months. Happily there's a blog carnival to inspire me.

I had an aha moment this morning, watching Morgan play. She was playing a video game while also creating one of her paper sculptures (this one looked like a robot dragon, but she said it wasn't and didn't seem interested in explaining). Its the sort of scene that runs utterly contrary to what one thinks (what I think, anyway) when someone says: playing video games - you know, the sort of rapt attention thing. Mo does that, but she also does something else, she multitasks while playing a video game. To do that, she has to keep pausing the game, but otherwise it reminds me a lot of the way she used to watch tv, back when we still had the dish. Sometimes she was all about watching, but more often, she just seemed to need the background and(here's the aha part) its not background noise she wants, its background imagery and, most of all movement. Ahhhhhhhhh.

That fits so well with the rest of her personality. When she's not making, making, making things, she's racing around at full speed - charging through the house, careening around the yard, bouncing and twisting and spinning around on the trampoline. I've heard more than once (although I've no sources for this other than "I've heard" so it may be one of those things "people say") that humans in general and kids in particular need a certain amount of movement in the visual field on a regular basis - it does something nice to our brains, its good for us, or maybe we're just wired to process a certain amount of movement and the circuitry goes wiggy when its not regularly stimulated. Whatever. There's some dispute over whether movement per se is sufficient, or movement in three dimensions is preferred (its amazing to me how much information is floating around in my head with no sources attached - where do I get this stuff?)

At any rate, whether this is something people in general need, or just something Morgan needs, she has figured out how to fill her "background" with motion while she's doing something comparatively still (the term sedentary really doesn't apply to Mo). Its interesting to see what she likes -interesting to me, anyway. She likes rapid movement, lots of changes in direction, even jerkiness is fine with her. Her favorite game, in fact, is an Ed, Edd, and Eddy game, which is excruciatingly difficult to control. "The Eds" don't walk or run so much as careen madly around the screen. I guess its familiar to Mo.

In addition to her Eds game and a few others, Morgan has been playing around with some 3d programming software called "Alice" for making simple animated movies and games. Its a free download (well, free for 40 days and then you can buy the graphics program, the Alice part is free-free) if you're interested. It works on a simple drag and drop format. The code is already pre-chunked (I don't know the technical terms) into meaningful parts like "turn left" and "take step" and there are some basic forms ready to use. No licensed characters, much to Mo's chagrin, but there are some cute furry animals, so she's made some movies with those. Unfortunately, they're in a format I can't figure out how to upload! The pic at the start is one of her game-concepts, though. That's Cat Morgan (notice the very long, sharp claws) saving the undersea world of Bikini Bottom.

redcaps and hinkypucks

2008-12-29T17:00:00.005-05:00

One of the parenting/unschooling boards I'm on just had its annual Great Santa Debate - its a board for families with younger children, obviously. This is a Big Issue for some families. At the tail end of the thread someone posted an article by Jan Hunt that suggested treating Santa like any other fictional character. Here's an excerpt:

I found this puzzle to be surprisingly difficult to resolve. But after much thought I felt that there might be a middle ground. If a child were simply told the "Santa story" about a kindly old gentleman who leaves gifts for children in his make-believe world, but who remains within the fictional world of the story, there would be no need to undo the lie that he is leaving gifts for the child in our world. Parents and children could play the "Santa game" by leaving gifts for each other, just as Santa does in the story. This allows the opportunity for children to learn the pleasure of giving to their parents and siblings, as well as gaining the knowledge and appreciation of their parents' efforts on their behalf - an opportunity that is completely missed in the traditional approach.

Interestingly, we've always told Morgan that Santa was a fictional character - always in the context of one of her favorite characters, like Clifford, that she "plays" with as a sort of imaginary friend. The trouble is, to paraphrase Sartre, there are other people in the world. Other kids wanted to know if she Believed. That threw her for a loop. So we explained more directly this time around about fiction and "the Santa game" and she didn't want anything to do with it. She was pretty offended by the idea of a game where she doesn't have any input into the rules, as well as by the fact that there's allllllll this misinformation out there, aimed at people like her.

On the actual 25th she was rather put out by the lack of snow. All the holiday propaganda shows snow! I've mentioned in the past that it didn't necessarily snow for xmas, but I could tell it was one of those things where she wasn't convinced that I was right. Like tadpoles turning into frogs or corn growing on a plant - she didn't believe either of those until she saw it, either. So this year it failed to snow on Dec 25th and Morgan was affronted. The horror! The world is full of misinformation! Gasp!

This is the part where I get to say something insightful about organic learning and opportunities and not having to teach lessons, blah blah blah. Feel free to imagine I just did that.

We've been having some lovely times. I had five days off and will have another five this weekend. I've gotten a lot of work done on my one commissioned piece, a whole lot of cleaning and scheming, and some carefully calculated lounging around. I even had a few drinks at a party on xmas itself. Ever tried Grappa? We passed some around at the fete and most of the festive gagged over it - I actually liked it! Of course, now I'm going to have to try some of the stuff when I haven't already had a glass of wine and a Cosmopolitan, but I'm sure the opportunity will present itself one day, even if I have to buy some myself.

We've really only begun to celebrate. This week we get to start spending xmas money. New linoleum...ahhhhhhhh. And I'll even have time to put it on the floor, how perfect. We're also going to get another PS2 - ours is fading, and the computer is getting crowded with Everyone wanting to post and chat and play games, too. George is talking about Trains, so we're going to look into that. Mo has enjoyed the one cheapo train set we got last xmas, and she and George need more projects they can work on together. I hope they can manage to work on the trains together, opinionated people that they are!

work-a-day mom

2008-12-02T19:51:00.004-05:00

This month's unschooling "blog carnival" is on the subject of unschooling parents engaged in gainful employment, and I thought I'd chime in:

Every morning around 430 George gets up and makes me coffee. He's sweet like that. Now that it's turned cold, he also builds up the fire in the woodstove. We sit in bed together, drinking coffee for about half an hour, and then its up and breakfast and put a lunch together and find the mp3 player and if its Monday I grab the week's laundry to leave in my locker and its out the door I go, to change into my plaster-covered work clothes in the restroom at work, before clocking in.

This is where I work, if you're interested and/or have a hankerin' for some really fancy crown moulding:

http://www.castdesignsupply.com/

George's sweetness in the mornings carries me through the first part of the day, and often the whole day. Most of my coworkers aren't terribly sweet, so the thought of dear, sweet George at home with the kids is a kind of balm when the negativity starts to peak. Its amazing to me how negative some people can be. I'm not talking about cynicism, per se. Its more of an attitude of "I just don't give a shit". About everything. Today one fellow was complaining that the preacher at his church gave a sermon on "Love" - went on and on about it. The other guys commiserated: "You shoulda walked out." I stood there thinking about George, curled up against my shoulder just that morning saying "I love you" and "Thanks for being nice to me." Sweet.

Sweet was the first compliment I ever gave George. I remember him wriggling and glowing with embarrassed pleasure. He's still sweet. He's been fretting about all the things he can't do now that he's hurt his shoulder again (did I tell you? He slipped and fell on his bad shoulder and its hurting again. Bummer!) and he's kind of fallen into a rut with the kids so I've been helping him and them think of projects and games and activities and just Things to Do Together. Especially indoor things, since its chilly and damp and its a hassle to keep both woodstoves going (house and barn). This week I've come home to sweetness and smiles. Not as many dishes are getting washed, but I'll help him catch up on the weekend. I'll take smiles over dishes.

Okay, to be utterly truthful, most of the time I'll take smiles over dishes. There are days, though, when I come home and shudder. Not that I was a picture of tidiness when I was the at-home parent! But there are days when I'm worn out with Doing - casting and cleaning and patching and cleaning and sanding and cleaning (plaster is messy!) - and the idea of coming home to wade through the detritus of an unschooling day and have to wash my own coffee cup is enough to make me shudder. Some days I sensibly take an emergency chocolate break before I go home, but sssshhhhh! don't tell on me!

I'm glad to have been on the other side, as it were - to have been the one at home. It helps me to envision the happiness that led up to the scraps of pink and yellow and blue cupcake wrappers all over the house, the pile of muddy shoes, the trail of sugar leading halfway to the stairs (or maybe from the stairs), the total absence of spoons. I'm lucky that way. I can piece together the stories from the scraps and smears and random comments.

I'm lucky, too, that I had time to absorb all the sweetness that comes from living an unschooling life. Not that every day was cupcakes. Not that I was (or am) always the sweetest person in the world. But to live in a home where sweetness is valued! To live surrounded by love, sometimes inconvenient, sometimes stuck all over with juice and cat hairs, sometimes grumpy or awkward or just plain tired, but love, nonetheless. It makes it easier for me to go to work, just knowing I'm supporting that kind of life for the kids and George.

Most of the time I enjoy my job, even if I'm not always thrilled with my coworkers. I like being on my feet most of the day, and I like creating things. So much of what I do at work comes down to attention to detail and dexterity - I love that. Its satisfying. I like the fact that so much of what I do teases at the very edge of what I already know - I'm always learning! I love that part. I love the fact that the Ops mgr runs up to me in a panic and blurts out questions like "do you think you could cast xyz in some material you've never even heard of before?" I love saying Yes! to those sorts of questions. So I have no idea what he's talking about! I'll learn!

I really like working for a small business, too. That's something I've done before and it fits my skills and lifestyle and quirky ideology all at once. I certainly can't support small local businesses by buying from them very often! The owner and ops mgr are sometimes amused and nonplussed at my starry eyed idealism. I come by it honestly, though - my parents and brother are all idealists (yeah, I'm on to you, dad) in their own ways.

I love the fact that I can go home to a family where optimism and enthusiasm are part of the daily life. I remember the homeschooling days of trying to shove Ray into learning, and the school days of homework and stress and above all, aversion to learning. That was ugly. That's the kind of attitude I run into with my coworkers! An aversion to learning and trying new things. Even when one of the guys gets excited about learning something new he has to temper it in front of the other guys - shrug and find something to complain about. Now and then one of them will share a little enthusiasm with me. They know I'm safe, in a way. I still jump up and down and clap my hands when I get to try something big and new and impossible.

I miss my days at home sometimes, but I'm fascinated by the new relationships developing between George and the kids. He's still getting his feet under him, in some ways - his troublesome shoulder combined with his guitar making keep throwing kinks in the wheels. But he's figuring out how to do what he does and be a full time Dad, too. That's exciting. In a way, its part of what makes the whole having to go to work thing more than simply a chore I'm slogging through for the sake of the family. We're all learning to do and be differently than we were before. It only looked impossible from the other side.

lovely evening

2008-12-02T18:43:00.002-05:00

When I got home from work, this evening, there was half a pan of chocolate cupcakes waiting for me, along with my smiling family (stuffed full of the other half of the cupcakes... ahhhh).

And then later, walking out to the barn I could hear the lovely sounds of Ray and George playing music together - another ahhhhhh. A brisk almost-winter night, two really bright planets next to the moon, and the sounds of my guys jamming. It just doesn't get any better than this.

Goodbye dialup, hello world!

2008-11-27T18:15:00.003-05:00

Well, we did it, we got Satellite Internet! Wooo Hooo! No more waiting a zillion years for screens to download! We can read attachments, look at pix, even listen to music. Did you know they have this thing called "You Tube"? Of course you did! I'm finally able to see what my online friends look like and watch the cute movies of their kids! Hooray Hooray!

Okay, now for the bummer: we cancelled our dish service. We're not 100% satisfied with that, but we haven't found any option we're completely satisfied with. When we finally got serious about this New! Improved! internet connection we talked about a variety of options with the kids.

We're not in a position to afford all the things we want at the same time; in this case dish service, movie rentals, and a good internet connection (no cable anything this far out, not even city water, yet). We figured out we can afford two out of those three, though, and since we've all been dissatisfied with the recent tv show selection and getting sick of commercials we decided to try dumping the dish and getting the movie rentals (Netflix) again. Its an experiment.

So far I'm thrilled to be able to look at pix and movies online, George and Ray are ecstatic that they can listen to and even download music, and Mo is utterly gaga over the Games! Oooooooh ahhhhhhhhh, Disney and Nick and OMG Lego games! Plus we're all enjoying being able to rent movies again - that was the first thing we cut back when the finances got tight, so re juggling the budget and discovering that we could have movies again is a bonus. So far, we're all agreed that this particular way of divvying up the funds gives us the most options.

George is most excited about the music options - that's what ended up fueling the whole push to better interconnectedness. It wasn't even possible to have a Myspace or Facebook page with the connection we had, much less up or download music, and music is important to George. Kinda goes with the whole guitar building thing. Here's a link to his website, where you can also hear a sample of one of his guitars being played:

http://dismalax.com/
And oh! look! well, you can't see what I'm talking about so I'll tell you, it took less than a minute for this pic to upload! It used to take several minutes and then maybe it would upload, or not. This speed stuff is really great... er, I mean online.

He has a Myspace page or something, too... actually he has two, one just for music, but I'm behind on all this stuff, so I don't have addresses. I'll get them at some point.

Its Thanksgiving, today, and I've been employed for a year, now. I'm thankful for that, and for having a paid day off and spending it gardening - I got a spectacular deal on end-of-season plants and had dozens of hostas, coral bells and hyssop to get in the ground while its still reasonably temperate. I'm so thrilled - I got to plant borders! I've never planted a border. Usually I plant a couple plants and spread them out over the next few years. Its exciting.

George and Ray have gone to the big "alternative community" Thanksgiving potluck and Mo and I have been enjoying a quiet day home. She got the Whole Day to play computer games without three other people asking "can I have a turn?" so she's pretty pleased about that. So many games! Once I'm done here I'll go make us some coco and we'll likely snuggle up with books or projects - me knitting, her with legos or scissors. We're not the coziest snugglers in the world, I'm afraid. Lots of points and sharp edges. Its nice when George is out or up late so we can take over the bed with our prickly brand of affection. I know I have new pix somewhere - looks like still in the camera - so I'll have to post some soon. Now that I have new internet powers I can do that thing that used to drive me up the wall and have Whole Posts of Nothing but Pictures. Ahhhhhh, this is why they call it a super highway... all this time I've been driving the internet equivalent of a backroad with grass poking up through the middle.

Recitation of glee!

2008-10-05T11:53:00.004-04:00

One of the yahoo groups I'm on is called "Peaceful Partnerships". Its a really lovely, inspiring board and this morning someone started a thread entitled "Recitations of Glee". I love those kinds of threads - I love reading what makes others happy in their lives and relationships and I love writing about the positives in my own life. Sure we're broke and in debt and there's a drought, but Life Is Good! I'd far rather dwell on the joys than the sorrows! So here's my own recitation, and a bit of an update after my recent blogging hiatus:

Last night I finished knitting my "gauntlets" - elbow length, striped socks for my arms, with a thumb hole so they cover my wrists. My hands and arms were so cozy all night long and didn't ache this morning. I've offered to make George a pair so he can wake up with warm, non-aching wrists, too. Just need to pick colors and measure his hands.
We're going to get rid of the darn dial-up at last! George has started exploring satellite internet options and the kids and I have been pushing around thoughts about what our wants and needs are wrt tv. We've all been craving a change for awhile, so we're all excited and optimistic about doing something different. The little bit that George needed to push him over the edge? Folk Metal. He was at Ray's mom's house, checking his Myspace and found a bunch of wacky folk metal bands from around the world - imagine guys and gals dressed like characters out of fantasy novels, playing heavy metal music with mandolins and hornpipes (as well as guitars and drums). Its like some kind of dream come true for George, but dial-up is too slow to download music and videos.
George wants to finish the kitchen this fall. Its been half finished for a few years now - two walls are still bare drywall and starting to look really ratty. No way to clean it. I suggested paint as a stopgap sort of option, and George came back with magic words like "rangehood" and "panelling" and "turquoise formica backsplash". Glee!
I've bleached my hair again and just tinted it pink, this time, in a sort of swirly pattern. I'm calling it "ludicrous fuschia mist".
I'm halfway through appliqueeing the peacocks on my winter coat. They are very saucy! I'm also mostly done insetting the skeleton in my love-and-death quilt. Its turning out to be less difficult than I expected, so I'm relieved.
Its cooler! So I'm cooking and baking this weekend. Ahhhhhhh. Coffee cake for breakfast. I dug and old crock pot out of storage and cooked up a pot of chick peas yesterday, so I'll make patties of them later today. Both kids love those, and they're handy for lunches. There's some chicken left, so I'll make some chicken nuggets for Mo, too. Today the crock pot is full of venison and veggies for George and Ray. I'm excited by the idea of cooking I can walk away from. Why haven't I done this before?
George got the big work-truck put back together and it seems like the oil leakage is stopped. Hooray! He's been renovating the water system, since we haven't had rain for almost two months. A good time to drain the lines and clean the scunge out of the tank. The big truck lets us haul water in 250 gallon loads from the fire department, so we have water for all our needs, including laundry and hair styling for me and Ray. Phew!
I'm thinking about grad school. After the show (end of this month) I'll have time to research financial aid and all that. I found a program that, for the first time since I left school (more than fifteen years ago) sounded interesting: historical preservation and restoration. Geeky and hands on with weird creative elements. I'm intrigued and excited about the possibilities.
Things have smoothed out in a big way at work. I had a conference with Tim and Alex about building team spirit in the shop and then turned around and took some of my own advice. On friday one of they guys said something sweet about my raucous laugh (okay, translated from guy language it was sweet!) and I realized how much I can set the tone in the shop just by laughing at their jokes from time to time. Alex and I are also getting close to making some molds out of silicone and I'm excited about that. Friday I ran back and forth looking at masters and deciding which we should start with.
Last weekend, at the semi annual mile-long yardsale, we scored a new microwave, and easy bake oven, an old video cam-corder, fifteen yards of flannel and assorted upholstery fabrics, some books and records for George and more, besides. It was a great sale and I think we spent less than $30 all told. At the end of it all, Mo and I walked the whole darn mile back to our car only to realize I had left the keys with George! But some kindly older lady named Martha lent us her car to go get him. That was the house where I got the fifteen yards of flannel and she and I had chatted sewing and quilting - so she knew I'd have to come back for the fabric. It was sweet and kind, though, especially since she was a very proper southern Lady and I was looking my usual eccentric self, which tends to be offputting to small townsfolk in these parts. Even more delightful, when George showed up with us to return the car, he knew her from open mike nights at the local coffee house. So it was a day of fun and loveliness all 'round.
There's lots of music going on in our lives right now. George is playing more - at the coffee house, at drum circles, at jam sessions. Ray's been going to a lot of those, too. They've been rearranging the music area in the loft - mostly the drums and recording equiptment - so the space is better laid out for everyone. Mo's been playing the drums and also on the piano. She's facinated by the short tunes in each Ladybug magazine and asks me or George to write out the "letters" for the notes, so she can pick the tunes out on the piano.
What else, what else? Its crisp-cool here in the mornings and warm in the middle of the day. I'm wearing more of my fun clothes and making more pants for Mo. She has a million tops, but few pants other than jeans, and y'know how jeans feel when you put them on cold? She wants warm clothes. So that flannel I bought will be pants for her, and for me and some sheets for her bed and mine besides. I've been digging through my stash for flannels and fleeces and velvets for Mo's wardrobe and sparking new ideas for my own. Mmmmmmm.
I've just updated my website and its much much nicer. It was a bit clunky, before. It still needs some tweaking, but overall, it looks much nicer and is easier to navigate. I want to set up a page with the items I have on-hand but may wait until after the show. I can't afford to sell anything until then, weird as that sounds.

new look for me!

2008-07-09T18:30:00.003-04:00

Tada! Boy have glasses styles changed in the last ten years! Or seven, anyway, which is how long I think its been since I bought any. Mine were a shambles. George was an absolute darling about going and helping me pick some out - I hate picking out new frames. I'm utterly incapacitated without my glasses, so choosing new ones is usually an ordeal of wondering how much I agree with the person who's advising me. But George was being his charming best - sweet and goofy and romantic at the weirdest times, so I didn't stand around wondering if I was actually going to like how I looked when it was all over.

Morgan was all excited about looking at glasses and tried on a few pairs herself. She likes the idea that some day she might "get" to wear glasses like her mommy. Very sweet. She and I have been playing a new game together - one of the Harvest Moon series, which is basically about farming. Yes, here we are living in the country playing a Video Game about raising chickens and planting vegetables. Snort!

I'm afraid its sort of a dull summer for Ray, so far. Both trucks are now on the fritz, so there's not much getting out going on. Fortunately, the Pumpkin Hollow Community has been having a weekly drum circle this summer, and he's been able to get up to that. He and George are going tonight, in fact. Ray enjoys the drumming and is participating somewhat, with a drum or with his bass. He also often takes his fire-staff...OH! did I mention he's breathing fire now? One of our friends discovered how to make a mix of hemp oil and everclear that works for that without the danger if its swallowed. That's the biggest danger of fire breathing, swallowing the fuel accidentally. So now Ray has a new fire trick.

In a few weeks he'll be heading East to visit the grandparents, which should liven things up for him a bit. And hopefully by the time the weather cools off we'll have found a new vehicle and can start taking him to the skatepark again, or some other social stuff.

Our charming neighbors will be back in the fall, too - they changed their minds about hanging around all summer, since the springs haven't recovered from last year's drought. Kind of a bummer, but we're doing okay in the water department. It got a little dry for awhile but the day before George was ready to limp one of the trucks into town to get water... it Rained! and the cistern is full again. If we can get one good rain every three weeks, we'll make it through the summer without buying water. Here's to wet weather!

gardenzilla

2008-05-26T10:51:00.005-04:00

I never knew I was such a control freak in the garden! But its true, little Ms consensual living and win-win problem solving likes it My Way Damnit! where the plants are concerned.

Okay, here's the deal, what with the 40hr gig an' all, I'd been thinking that gardening might be a little much this year. Maybe I'd get one or two veggies and a couple new perrennials, but that would be it.

It so happens, though, that my charming and lovely neighbors, Mirror and Shiloh, who usually do a good bit of travelling, have decided they probably won't do so much this year due to the price of gas. So they want to learn about gardening. They're complete newbies, utterly clueless but full of Good Intentions. They also offered to buy plants.

Right On People! Lets make a Garden!

Uh huh, so here's where it gets sticky and I'm taking deep breaths chanting "its a process, its a process". We get some plants and they, my lovely neophytes Do Everything Wrong. OMG, I've made a Gigantic mistake! They Aren't Me and don't want to be me, or even have me stand over them and tell them exactly what to do. WTF is up with that? They want smiles and back patting and thank you very much, not

What the fuck are you doing? You don't put three mints in the same tiny bed where you just planted a Rose Bush!

nor

NO! Idiots! The tansy will overwhelm the lemon balm in three weeks!

nor

What part of "they compete with the tomatoes for the same nutrients" do you not understand?!?

But, dear friends, I was Good. I smiled and thanked and back patted and managed to be sincerely grateful for their help. Even when they only weeded the beds and didn't mow the paths and borders, like they said they would.

I am sincerely grateful because they have given me the one thing I really wanted - the motivation to get in the friggin' garden.

I spent Memorial Day weekend rearranging the plants.

I am not a newbie.

I may not be the greatest vegetable gardener in the world, but I've been gettin' jiggy with perrennials for Lo! these (almost) twenty years and

I know that I can dig the little darlings up and move their photosynthetic asses somewhere sensible.

Friggin' hippies probably won't remember where they planted half of it anyway.

So check it out! Ain't it purdey? I ended up making a new bed to accomodate all the extra mints - good lord, why did we need so many mints? And six lemon balms? And four, no five! different varieties of thyme? I moved one of those to a pot - the one with the fairy - since it was so tiny it was getting lost. The other potted dainty is a lemon scented geranium (these people love lemon, we have that, lemon balm, lemon thyme and... what was the other thing? oh, two lemon thymes, one varigated. Geez.

At least all those thymes gave me something to swap with the mints that were on the verge of smothering the poor rose - that bed's up at the very top, btw, and the relocated mints are in the other pic.

Now that I have more space and motivation I've been gathering free plants - from friends and the roadside and the yard by my house. That's slowly going to shade, so I'm gradually relocating all the sun loving plants and starting to think fishpond. It might take a few more years to get there, but its coming.

absolut smugness

2008-05-23T19:36:00.003-04:00

I'm utterly tickled. Ray came home from a party yesterday... whoa up, let me set it up a little. We live about a half mile from a small intentional community, the Pumpkin Hollow Community, where George and Ray lived when I met them. One of the current residents has a son who is graduating from high school this year and he and Ray are sort of friends, so Ray was invited. He walked to the party - no reason not to, really, its not that hot, yet, and we're all used to the idea of walking up there. About an hour later Ray was back, looking disgusted.

"How was the party?"

" It sucked, it was all about beer."

George and I tried hard not to gloat. "Really?"

"Yeah, I thought someone (adult) was throwing the party for Sean, but really its just an excuse for a bunch of kids to get drunk and be stupid."

"Oh, that sucks."

"Yeah. Sucks."

So George an I are rolling in smugness that the boy who wanted a sip (or seven, or twelve) of every drink anyone had in hand is now saying that drunk and stupid sucks. Its not so much that we're geniuses, its more a matter of Ray being such a cool guy, but I just have to say it again: take That! public school. Nyeh nyeh ny' nyeh nyeh. Ptttttttbbbbbbb.

Okay enough gloating. I have my first every paid holiday ahead of me - I used to work retail so holidays meant long hours and grumpy customers. Over xmas I hadn't been with Cast Design long enough to get paid for holidays, so they were a drag of anxiety about no money to pay bills. So for the first time ever I'm going to enjoy a paid day off. So I'm feeling good about that.

And to ice the cake, "the guys" as I think of my co-workers, are going to be out of town, so I'll have the whole shop all to myself next week. Ahhhhhh. And they did a really swell job cleaning it up today, besides. Oh! Oh! another aspect of my smugness (I'm just full of it today) is that we rearranged the shop yet again, mostly the way I wanted it. We moved a whole lot of Big Stuff - molds for making fireplace mantles and domes, in particular, and at my persistent insistence, the Ops Mgr agreed to arrange them so that I can get to every mold in the darn building and move it to the casting area myself.

Over the last three weeks we've determined that I can cast Anything in the shop by myself (I just can't stop gloating, can I?) something everyone in the shop, myself included, strongly doubted those three weeks ago. But I did it, darnitall. I cast the biggest mantel we have - over three hundred pounds of gypsum cement, plus water, geez it was huge - with no assistance at all. And it looks Great - absolutely the best mantel we've cast since Tim bought the company, no exaggeration. "The guys" even complained that I was going to put them out of work if I kept casting things that needed so little patching. But it was okay, Tim went nuts and told me to cast three, while I was at it, and three of another, and this weird proto-mantel that is used to make custom designs, so there's plenty of work to be done when they get back, my fabulous casting notwithstanding.

And now that really is enough.

2008-05-11T15:07:00.004-04:00

Its been a weekend of quilt stuff for me. I came home friday to a pair of boxes on my doorstep - the return of my quilts from the Denver National Quilt Festival (http://www.quiltfest.com/activities_detail.asp?id=253) That was scary-exciting. My first big national quilt show. I managed to get a Judges Choice award for the quilt in the pic above - which happens to be called "Winners' Circle" emphasis on the apostrophe after the s. I know a few of my online unschooling pals read my blog, so This one is for Y'all!!!! Really, its inspired by all my yakking online about valuing our kids for Who They Are, and living with kids in the moment and finding win-win solutions. Hence the apostrophe.

Saturday I went up on Short Mountain to visit with Matty and Prolivia and chat about a quilt that Matty, in particular, wants me to make. That was lovely, since it involved a walk through the woods and some really fabulous Faerie storytelling. So I have another wonderful new project to start designing... something with daffodils and wildlife and dancing in a magic circle. I'll have to figure out how that all fits together quilt-wise. Fun.

And now its sunday and I'm working on a double-wedding-ring background to a quilt of Hades and Persephone sharing their pomegranate (yummmmm) and a lone-star quilt for Jane that seems to have endless borders.... geez.

So my giant cutting counter is cluttered with fabrics and templates, the iron is steaming expectantly and I'm taking a minute to update the blogs, drink coffee and think about a snack. And maybe a new neckline for a red tshirt dress - something with turquoise and silver...

Oh, and the neighbors weeded the garden, today, which doesn't have anything to do with quilts (except that they modelled for the thing with the pomegranate), but they sure looked sexy out there, all bent over and sweaty and covered in soil and bits of weeds. Ahhhhhhh spring!

In the Pink!

2008-04-25T19:57:00.007-04:00

Yup, there I am with my adorable new chairs, looking as utterly buff as only a woman with all those matronly curves can possibly look LOL! And of course the blue stripes look lovely with my hair, but then, everything goes with my hair! How could it not?

I've been in Super Massive Ditz mode, lately. I have decided that I'm possessed by the spirit of my Grandma, who made ditsiness an art form. I've lost and forgotten so many things this month its just unbelievable! but through it all I've been so buoyantly cheerful its disgusting. I'm starting to think of my pink "do" as a kind of warning label: Caution! Persistent Good Humor Ahead! (feel free to groan).

Predictably, the timid local townsfolk find my hair disturbing. Locals who know me enough to make conversation carefully avoid mentioning my hair, while strangers scowl and look away. Bless their hearts. Its energizing me to be even more Myself, though. I've started decorating my clothes with assorted leftover quilt blocks, appliqued flowers, all sorts of fun stuff. You can see some "tumbling blocks" on my jeans in the pic, there.

Apparently, all this enthusiasm is rubbing off on George - or maybe its just time... he's been throwing himself into neglected building projects around the house. He rearranged Morgan's room and my big closet so that her bed is in the closet - its that big! and there are all sorts of shelves and general storage in her room, including the clothes bar. Its all high up - the room is taller than it is wide or long - so Mo still has plenty of space. He also built a long, narrow "desk" for her in her room, which gives her more space for projects. And! he's starting to renovate our side-porch, which had sort of been turning into a junk room. Yikes.

All that and he cooks, too!

Oh, speaking of which, I've added a few new posts to the "Life of Rayan" blog - one about him cooking, hence the segue.

Hamster love!

2008-04-10T17:15:00.004-04:00

Morgan got a hamster! She and George were at the pet store getting "feeder mice" for the snake when she spotted the hamster display. She's asked for one before, but never actually right there at the pet store, so in the past we've just sort of delayed the issue until later. Suddenly, it was later. George commented that they were ten dollars each, which was more than he was ready to spend - but Mo had ten dollars of her own, carefully saved up from holiday cards, which is quite a feat for her. Its the first time she's managed to save more than a couple bucks. So George suggested they wait until they got home, talk to me about it, and try to figure out what to do about a cage first. Morgan agreed, but sadly. She really wanted that hamster!

Sitting in the car, getting ready to leave the parking lot, George relented - she did have the money, after all. They were right there at the pet store, and we have a bunch of old fish tanks picked up at yard sales over the years. Okay, lets get a hamster. It took Mo another minute or so to shift gears back from disappointment - what about the cage? what about Meredith? Meredith will surely say its fine, we should get the hamster.

So now we have one (and yes, it is fine with me). Mo decided to call him "Hamstery" and he has a lovely fish tank full of wood shavings with a wheel we had left over from having rats and a tunnel left from having a turtle. Nice to be able to re-use all this stuff. We also went out and bought a hamster ball so he can run around the house - Mo's very excited by the idea of him running around free, but in our mess, he'd be lost and most likely squished in no time.

Its kind of strange to be passing on these kinds of stories second hand, these days. I'm still not thrilled to be missing so much of the day-to-day kid stuff, but I'm glad George is able to do it and is actually enjoying doing it. Morgan is warming up to him more - she was definately in a "Mom is Best" phase and I was kind of worried that she and George would butt heads a Lot and she'd end up missing me even more as a result. But instead she's starting to feel good about spending time with George. That's good. It helps me feel good about going to work knowing my family are enjoying each other. Hooray!

happy birthday to me

2008-03-30T18:08:00.007-04:00

and George, too. We had a joint party on the 29th, which is in between our two days, and it was lovely and mellow blah blah blah. Okay, now for the good bit, I'm recovering my living room furniture! Woooo Hoooo! Thanks to my Fabulous Aunty Jane I have some delicious striped fabric for the chairs and some wonderful swirly purple fabric for the couch. I'm delirious. Its just perfect.
My living room furniture was used when I bought it, and after more than a few years of living with children, its in sorry shape. The stuffing is coming out! Its just terrible, and with our current finances I had despaired of finding fabric that was both cheap and stylish, much less finding cheap used furniture I like. My chairs, in particular, have a lovely shape to them... sort of trapezoidal, as you can see in the pic. I like that. I'd just about come around to acceptance of the fact that I might actually have to replace them with something rectilinear, when voila! the perfect fabrics at an excellent price, and happy birthday from Aunty, besides. Oh happy day.

I'm taking a page out of Morgan's book and reinforcing the "decks" of the chairs with cardboard wrapped in duct tape. Mo, of course, is the queen of paper and tape and has, from time to time, branched out into cardboard. Snort! That's like saying I'm a traditional quilter who has "branched out" into less traditional work. She can make anything with cardboard or paper or some combination thereof, provided there's enough tape in the house. George and I are careful to never run out - good heavens, can you imagine if she decided to switch to glue? No, far far safer to keep the house stocked with tape. I nearly had to defend my roll of duct tape while making new chair decks - surely that's for me, isn't it mommy? Superfast diversional tactics involving double chocolate cookies and coco with marshmallows. Whew.

Mo has been playing with the idea of Art lately. It seems that Art is something specific from her perspective. Its something that is produced on demand, for the consumer, as it were. All this glorious construction that goes on in my home all day long isn't Art. She has clearly researched the matter via that ubiquitous gallery of artwork pertaining to children, the refrigerator, both in real homes and via television. According to her research, adults (the recipients of Art) like pictures of flowers, houses, trees and cute animals. So when Morgan makes Art, that is what she makes.

This past Friday, Mo went with George to a photo shoot with our local artists group. It was decided that this year we'd get a professional photographer to shoot all our work for the brochure at once (I was able to have mine shot by the same guy a couple weeks ago, since I needed slides for a show before the group shoot). George managed to explain this all to Mo to her satisfaction, but didn't realize that she expected to have some of her work shot also. Turns out she brought a painting of a bird (adults like birds and since mommy likes red, this bird has a red tail) and was quick to speak up when things were wrapping up and she seemed to have been overlooked. The photographer, happily, was charmed - he was also shooting everything in digital, so taking a bunch of extras of a little girl with her painting didn't cost him more than an extra minute of his time.

not exactly a eulogy

2008-03-26T18:16:00.004-04:00

for my grandmother, Rita Higgins, who died on Thursday, March 20. It was the first day of spring, which is appropriate, since she loved to garden. Also appropriate, given that she was a "good little Catholic girl", she managed not to die on the Holy Weekend, which is not a football weekend in the Catholic Church, go figure. You can see already what I mean about this not being a eulogy. If it were, I'd have said what everyone was saying about Grandma at the funeral, that she was such a lady. No, it was the Catholic thing, I'm sure of it.

Not that being a "good little Catholic girl" is inherently a bad thing - it certainly served Grandma well many times, but most especially with regards to her 13 children. Many of them have left The church, but rather than disowning any of them, Grandma simply prayed to the appropriate saints for them to return. On the flip side, she really was a good little Catholic girl, especially on the subject of You Know What.

Despite having 13 children Grandma avoided any mention of You Know What - when she could get away with it that is. And she got away with it a great deal for awhile - to the extent of having her children wait at separate bus stops so "people" wouldn't know that she had had You Know What so very many times. Unfortunately for Grandma, my mother, her second child, was a very modern, feminist Catholic girl. As in: the Pope is in Rome, and I'm on the Pill.

My mother's attempts to bring the Feminist revolution home to roost centered around educating her mother and sisters on the subject of You Know What, my Aunt Jane especially, who carried on my mother's tradition of dragging Grandma into Those Kinds of conversations whenever necessary. Many family stories revolve around these conversations - feminist daughters staunchly insisting on being specific about "down there" and the ailments and happenings appertaining, and Grandma staunchly resisting. Surely, we don't need to talk about that.

Nothing like a family of strong minded women.

Its interesting what gets talked about after a death. Joys and slights dominate conversations. In a family of strong minded, passionate people, there are plenty of both. Happily, everyone managed to, if not overlook the slights, keep the ire to a tolerable level during the wake and funeral per se. Beforehand and in private are another matter entirely. Passions ran high. I spent the weekend with my aunt Jane (who has played the parts of mom and older sister to me many times) while she wept and raged and vented. Despite the outpourings of grief and spleen, during the proceedings themselves she did her mother proud and was every inch the lady.

At one point, in the midst of all the venting and ranting and raging, Jane asked me where I'd learned to be so patient. It certainly was an occasion for me to exercise my patience to the fullest, but it got me thinking. I'm not terribly patient, by nature. I'm as fiery and passionate as anyone else in that big, overheated family. Somehow, though, I've learned to channel some of that passion into a trait I think of as steadiness.

There's a concept in yoga, tapas, that means something like inner fire. Its often translated into vigilance or dedication, but it has always made sense to me, on some primal level, that in order to move into stillness, in order to be utterly steady, even in the most ridiculous of yoga postures, one needs a measure of inner fire. So in that sense, my steadiness is an expression of my passionate nature. And somehow I've learned to be steady outside of yoga. If anything, I'm better able to be steady in the midst of an emotional storm or other crisis than in the cool detachment of asana.

When and where did I learn to be steady? Some of it I learned from my own mother, for sure, who could be utterly calm in a crisis, provided she could take charge of things. And some of that comes from Grandma, who definitely had her steady and staunch moments. Several relatives referred to her as a strong person, and strength, in one form or another, has been a recurring theme in the family - in a sense, it has been the root of a good deal of the disagreement about Grandma's health and care in her later years: Ma is strong and doesn't need care -vs- Ma needs care so she can continue to be strong. Its also a root of other conflict in the family: who shall be the strongest and prevail? Strength is undoubtedly a Higgins family value, especially amongst the women.

The strength that is the trademark of the Higgins women is expressed in me as steadiness. Its one of the better expressions, but I've worked on that, too. From dabbling in zen to yoga to the weird philosophical side of radical unschooling, I've been working on this stuff for...er... at least twenty years. It hasn't been easy. Inner fire ain't always pretty when it surges to to surface.

So I spent several days being steady for Jane and (I'd like to think) in honor of my mom and grandma. My own garden, I'm sorry to say, is sadly languishing at the moment, but I hope to get to that soon. I'm intending to plant some more perrennials along the borders and stock the beds with onions and greens.

OMG I'm the Breadwinner!

2008-03-10T17:45:00.008-05:00

Its been a long few months, but things seem to be settling down. I'm certainly not anywhere near as stressed out as I was this past fall, thank goodness!

Work is going okay. Turns out no-one in the whole shop knew a blessed thing about plaster, really, so I've been turning that around, looking things up online and asking "well duh" sorts of questions like "can we have a thermometer for the Water?" The boss thinks I'm some sort of genius . Too bad he can't pay me a "genius" wage! But at least I feel like I'm helping a small business get itself together in a serious way as well as helping my family in a serious way.

There was a little friction early on with the other employees - three rednecks with chronic drug problems and an older guy who used to drive buses and has no other skills. The rednecks were a bit nonplussed at the idea of a girl doing a man's job, so I came out to them, which actually helped quite a bit. At least it gave them a different box to put me in. Going out on an installation job helped, too - they expected me to balk at the idea of going up to the top of the scaffolding, but as far as I was concerned, it was inside! Woooo hooo! I could hold on to the damn Wall even if my vertigo acted up. Compared to working on the roof of my house it was a piece of cake. So I stood up there telling stories about building a house without knowing my ass from a hole in the ground until they were laughing so hard they could barely keep their tobacco in their mouths and that was the end of the issues with them.

The bus driver is more of a problem since he was, before I came along, promoted to shop foreman. Of course, he was promoted because he can't install for love or money and the rest of the guys could fix most of his casting mistakes out in the field one way or another. So here comes Meredith, who actually seems to get the hang of this plaster thing (its soooooo not rocket science - its not even cheese making!) Around the time its starting to be clear that I can cast circles around this guy (just let me get the R9 mold) the owner of this circus finally manages to hire a new operations manager and promptly tells Busdriver he's not the foreman of anything any more. Naturally, Busdriver takes this out on me by first being a general bastard, then insulting me full volume in front of everyone else, then claiming to the boss that I harassed him. Fortunately the boss didn't buy a word of it and started sending Busdriver back out on installation jobs (just for the patching) leaving me to take over the shop however I like.

Its a moderately entertaining job, as jobs go. I get to be on my feet most of the day, which I like, and I get to make things all day long, which is also okay, even if it is mostly crown molding for people with more money than taste. The best part is that the place is kind of a shambles, so I spend a lot of time saying "I know there's a better way to do this" and then figuring it out. I'm good at the figuring it out part. Most of the time, the tools I need are actually somewhere in the shop, its just that no-one knows what *that* box of junk is for. It just seemed too important to throw away.

How did a business get into this state, you ask? Lemme tell ya! Once upon a time there was a guy named Steve who was your basic geek with his own True Love and successful small business. He got cancer and sold the thing at a loss and this other guy named Tim lucked out and got a whole business on the cheap. And I mean everything - including a bunch of illegal alien employees who he foolishly got rid of, leaving absolutely no-one who knew anything at all about plaster.

Tim isn't the sharpest tool in the box. He's a veteran of the Iraq invasion, which isn't saying anything one way or the other, but he was a low level officer in Military Intelligence. Go ahead and laugh, he fits. He went to West Point but on a - oh, wait, are you done laughing yet? put your coffee down, there's another one coming. He went on a golf scholarship. Yes. He really did. His favorite story about West Point was that he was supposed to memorize "really hard stuff" (the headlines of the New York Times) every morning before inspection but found that if he got his shoes shiny enough, no-one bothered to ask him anything. Yup. Military Intelligence. Anyway, the West Point thing gives him connections, so that's how he was able to buy a business in the first place. Its his Chance.

Tim's first operations manager (since he at least has the sense to know he's not the sharpest tool in the box) was sort of a disaster and quit just before I arrived on the scene. He had some sort of brain injury - another vet - and even though he took a course of some kind on plaster casting could neither reproduce what he'd learned or teach it to anyone else. Utter shambles. The new o.m. is much better. He's been to college but, like me, would rather work on the physical and vaguely artistic side of things. In his case, cabinetry and painting interiors. He's also done photo processing. So he knows how to use a hammer, paintbrush and a thermometer, which is good enough for me. He also has a quirky sense of humor and appreciates mine.

And that's about all there is to say about work for the moment. George is settling in to the stay at home dad thing. He's getting a lot more guitars done, that's for sure, now that he's not having to worry about paying the bills. So that's good. I've shifted my energy, in terms of quilts, to entering various quilt competitions. I've done a few small quilt shows, but I just got a bunch of slides shot so I can enter big shows. The one weird thing is they (the competitions) have themes, so I can't just send any quilt to any show. I have to find one that fits the theme. Lovely.

The crow and the pitcher, back up at the top, there, are my own personal "theme" for last year. I call it "The Nature of Abundance". Forget pessimism, throw some rocks in the cup and make it full.

getting caught up

2007-11-25T09:12:00.000-05:00

Just in case anyone has been wondering why I haven't had anything to say for a month, here's the short version: George tweaked a shoulder and our precarious financial balance of the past year fell to pieces. So I spent a few weeks racing around like a nitwit trying to find and job and/or get my sewing stuff going well enough to pay a bill or two, all the while alternating between complete panic and overwhelming optimism.

Here's a bit of an update cut and pasted from an email to Jane:

Hope you've had a great holiday! Ours has been pleasantly mellow. This weekend Ray's off working at a xmas tree farm. Funny how different things are here vs the Chicago area. Here folks wait until after T'giving to buy a tree. Up there, if you don't have your tree by the weekend after, you're up a creek. Weird.

I've fallen back to an emergency back up plan I put in motion a few weeks ago. I got a job at a local plaster casting plant - its full time and I'm at "starting pay" which is crummy, but the casting and finishing isn't hard. I actually worked two days this past week and came home perky and happy to see my family both days, so that's fine. Around the end of this coming week I'm supposed to go out on an installation job, which is the only part I'm concerned about.

We're making those fancy decorative moldings that go way up high - ceilings and the corners between the wall and ceiling if you know what I mean. They aren't particularly light, but the big concern from my part is that all the guys are at least three inches taller than I am. I notice it periodically in the shop when I have to lift something off a table and the darn thing is just a *little* farther above my center of gravity than is really comfortable. So I'm interested to see how that plays out trying to hold something above my head while standing on a scaffold with a guy who's anywhere from three inches to a foot taller. It should be fun.

The boss dude (who has more hair than sense) wants everyone at the shop to be able to do every job - in part bc he's understaffed. So the installation part is the sticky bit. Good thing I'm creative.

Anyway, I applied for this a few weeks back and the secretary told me then that the boss dude was out of town. So I knew I wouldn't hear back right away. I kind of gave myself the intervening time to see if I could pull together a better short-term option, but unfortunately nothing has panned out in that regard. One tiny sewing gig and one tiny alteration. And George's shoulder is still complaining when he tries to do heavy stuff. So this job will pay the bills in the short run and we're working on the long run.

George has been enjoying the stay-at-home dad thing. He's a better housewife than I am, for sure. The kitchen is clean, there are plenty of clean towels, and the kids are happy.

Ray, as I said, is working this weekend. He's also been bartering work with the neighbor for fire-staff lessons and supplies. Plus experimenting in the shop. Oh, and he's back to playing God of War, which really challenges his logical thinking skills. He's so cool.

Mo is currently constructing a duck and an entire habitat for it out of paper, tape and foam. I have a feeling that once she's done it will attack the Lego city that's dominating the other end of the room. Much screaming and fleeing will ensue, I'm sure. She just love the screaming and fleeing parts. She keeps asking for a movie camera.

That's life in Dismal right now.

running in circles, talking to myself

2007-10-21T10:15:00.000-04:00

Things are a little hectic around here at the moment, so I haven't had much energy for bloggin'. I won't go into too much detail, but the quick and dirty is that I'm getting ready for my annual show - which is In my studio, so I have to get that all ready, we're broke, George is injured (not bad but enough to keep him from sawing, which is where the money's coming from) and winter is coming. Oh, and there's still a drought, although we've had some rain, we've also had to haul water from town a few times. Enough ranting. Its dull. I have some old posts in the "draft" folder awaiting pix, if anyone has been looking for my description of the unschooling conference. I think the computer has a virtual std, again, its slooooowwww.

I'm still on a bunch of message boards which are helping me stay sane. Here's a bit of a post I nearly deleted as off topic, but I like the ideas and want to hang on to them. It starts off referring to a question posted on "Unschooling Basics" - the usual sort of mom worries about kids getting too much "screen time" and sort of takes off from there.

***screen time***

Just wanted to pull this phrase out and ask you to analyze it a bit more. If your kids previously read a lot of novels (for instance) are they watching shows and movies and playing games that have novel-like qualities? That was something I found *myself* doing when we first got Netflix, and then again when I discovered fantasy role-playing computer games (there aren't nearly enough of these!) I had been used to thinking that movies and shows and games were somehow "less" than reading, but when I was able to step away from that I could see how I was choosing to watch and play the same sorts of things I would choose to read.

Something I was thinking about recently (oh, boy am I off on a tangent, now, too much coffee...) is that the collections of "seasons" of shows available on DVD and the incessant re-running of popular shows create a sort of "Charles Dickens" effect. You know how he originally wrote in installments for newspapers but nowadays we read them as complete works? Series shows are like that now. We can view an entire season as a complete "work" - something that wasn't an option when I was a kid. That's changed the way series' are being written. Sure, there are still shows that are being written such that the episodes don’t run together as a series, but there are authors who write collections of short stories around the same characters or places, too.

Anyway, back to Dickens and literature in general. One of the greatest disservices I think school does to the act of reading books is ask students to read a chapter at a time but also analyze the work while they are doing that. College courses don't do that - read the whole book by Friday so we can discuss it. Its more realistic. Just like watching a movie, you have to get through the whole thing once before you can start to talk about it. Can you imagine stopping “The Pianist” partway through to discuss whether or not something was being foreshadowed? Its nuts.

The thing is, more "educated" people who poo-poo television (I used to be one) use that same sort of back-assed process to discuss the lack of meaningful content (etc) on tv shows. Its a bizarre kind of willful ignorance - the same kind you would get from openning...oh, gosh, what's a really good example... *Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man* at random. Ever tried that? Joyce is trash if read out of context.

There's a sort of transition period for people used to reading alot but *not* used to watching tv whenever they want. I went through several years of not even having a tv, and then a few more of "just movies", so I've been through this transition myself. It didn't occur to me to think about shows, in particular, in the sorts of ways I think about books I enjoy reading. In part that was out of the rather snobbish cultural meme I'd internalized about the "superiority" of print over video, but I also think some of that was pure lack of exposure. There's a difference between watching a first run series episode by episode vs watching the whole schebang on dvd that I had never really appreciated until I was able to do both - and its the same sort of difference as reading a book for the first time in chapters vs reading the whole thing through for plot (or overview) and then going back for the juicy bits. Its no wonder I though tv was trash when I was trying to analyze single episodes. I had long since learned to ignore teachers who said to only read up to a certain point but was still applying that principle to tv. Nuts.

Whew, that's all I have in me for now, although I feel like that needs some kind of wrap-up (shrug). Back to the running-in-circles part of my life. Actually, today I'll be sewing in circles - I'm making phases of the moon wall hangings, hopefully to sell at the studio tour!

travels part one - new england

2007-09-15T11:13:00.000-04:00

We arrived in Woodstock CT friday evening, smack dab in the middle of the Fair. Yikes. All my landmarks were gone in a sea of lights and rowdy teenagers and it took an extra ten minutes to find Jane and Tony's house. It wasn't too bad, all things considered, but driving Into CT the friday of Labor Day weekend isn't the best of experiences anyway - the roads are jammed with upscale New Yorkers. Not that I'm bashing New Yorkers - they drive a whole heck of a lot better than Tennesseans, that's for sure! It was just a lot of traffic at the end of a long long drive.

The good news is that we got to go to the Fair. Jane very sweetly gave me some cash and a free ticket so that Mo could ride the rides and eat Fair Food (eeeeeewwww) while she (Jane) ran around helping a friend buy a car. It made a nice break for Mo in between all the travelling and hard core adult socializing.... hmmm, that makes it sound like I was going to an orgy, not a wake. Alas, these days my life is rarely that exciting.

The day after the fair was the Novakathon, er... wake, for my grandfather. He didn't want any kind of ceremony or service so, as my dad so well put it, we had a family get together and told stories and lies to each other. It was good to connect with family and good to hang out with people who expect a child to be bouncy and bored of adult conversation. Here's Mo playing twister with one of my cousins - that's what a Novak funeral looks like LOL!

Labor day itself we spent in Foster, RI, visiting with George's mom and sister and assorted friends. George's family has been going out to stay with Betty and Dick (last names?) for years and years, so it feels very warm and homey there. A good day of running around and swimming for Mo and others, although I was too cold to get in the water - it was chilly there, compared to our sultry TN summer! Betty had a new pink kayak that she was excited to show off - the pool ladder at the edge of the water is a clever device on her part for getting out of her new toy.

After another day of serious resting (lots of tv watching!) Mo and I headed out for the Live and Learn Conference in NC. We split the drive into two days both on the way East and the way to NC. The way out I made the mistake of thinking that leaving in the evening and driving until 2am would be a good idea - in terms of driving, it was great. The trouble was getting to the hotel with a 6yo who had just spent several hours napping in the car! I think I got five hours of sleep, but they weren't consecutive. So the way to NC we drove in the day and found a lovely Motel 6 with a pool for Mo to frolic in for a couple hours before bedtime. That worked out much, much better, but if I hadn't had to squeeze so much travel into so little space, I'd have spread it out over three days at least! and camped. I think I need a bigger tent, though. Or maybe just one of those "screen rooms" for hanging out at the site. So far, Mo has enjoyed camping, and its about the only way I'm going to be able to afford to travel.

Okay, I'm rambling... on to L&L!

in memory of

2007-09-15T10:25:00.000-04:00

I finally emptied out the compost toilet - well, the "composting" side anyway. The other side is now all closed up for what I hope to be nine months of happy decomposition. The whole fly issue (for anyone who remembers the "gory details") turned out to have less to do with the compost toilet than I had feared and more to do with the health of the local cattle. Once we got the new ac and started keeping the house closed up, the flies went away pretty quickly.

Digging out the compost I had the same thought I always do, but with a new twist - I always wonder "am I going to be doing this in my 70s and 80s?" Just recently though (I have to consult a calender, but it was the wednesday before labor day) my grandfather, Henry Novak died gardening. He was nearly 90. So I spent my shovelling time thinking about Papa. He was a veteran - got the flag an' all - and an electrician, but I remember him best as a gardener. Its sort of nice to think I could be shovelling compost on my dying day.... what's that poem about being buried on the compost pile? Its romantic, in sort of a quirky way, and while I don't really know if Papa would appreciate it, I like to think my romantic streak comes through him and my dad. Oh, here it is, by Lee Hays:

In Dead Earnest

If I should die before I wake

All my bone and sinew take

Put me in the compost pile

To decompose me for a while

Worms water sun will have their way

Returning me to common clay

All that I am will feed the trees

And little fishes in the seas

When radishes and corn you munch

You may be having me for lunch

And then excrete me with a grin

Chortling "There goes Lee again"

No discussion of Novaks (or life in Dismal for that matter) is complete without a drop of irony. My grandfather's sister-in-law happened to have been named Lee and was also a gardener. They didn't get along all that well, but her name sits along his in the family tradition... Dennis Lee, Meredith Leigh, and now Morgan Lee, all Novak.

Just an added comment, in case anyone reads this interested in the nuts-and-bolts of compost toileting.... wood ash sucks as an additive. It makes the pile very dense, which I'm not sure helps the composting very much, but even more importantly from the idea of shovelling in my old age, it Heavy! I ended up referring to it as poo-crete by the time I was done. It seemed like a good idea back when we were producing more ash than sawdust or shavings, but in retrospect, yikes. Other poo-composters beware!

redecorating

2007-08-20T16:57:00.000-04:00

I've been redecorating the ol' blog, here. I'm liking the new colors and layout, but there are some old posts that are a little hard to read. I'll fix that eventually. I love having a photo at the beginning, though, and I'm sooooo happy that I figured out how to get the text to be readable over the pic (note to self: insert shape, transparency, fade edges). Ha! Now I can even do it again!

I'm slowly collecting a tag-list for the eight weird things game. I have a feeling the way I'm playing the game almost counts as a weird thing - everyone else seems to stick all their things in one post. Convenient, but it would take me all day to do something like that. I just can't resist explaining. If you've been counting and reading in chronological order, this should be number five, but I'd have to check to be sure.

Mirror and I had a conversation about weirdness just this morning. Mirror thinking I'm weird is definitely one of my weirder traits. I'll have to find a good pic of him to explain that, but in the meantime, here's a couple links to sites regarding Radical Faeries - the first is a very tame, Wikipedia link, the second is a link to pix from this past Beltane and may contain a small amount of Adult Content, if you look hard. Now you know something about Faeries, Mirror is one. I suppose I'm one, too, but there are differences of opinion to be had on that matter. I'm fine with that. I may or may not be a faerie, depending on the definition. Works for me. I stuck the wiki link over on the sidebar for future reference - I seem to use it a lot.

Anyway, the conversation wasn't about me, per se, but about Coco, who is absolutely the weirdest person I've ever met. I wonder if he has a blog? Hmmmmm. Coco is weird, in my significantly less than humble opinion, because there doesn't appear to be anything strange about him at all. Ever. He blends in seemingly effortlessly wherever he goes - if he chooses to. I mostly see him choosing to blend in. He's a Stealth Freak! But he's not so much sneaky about it as genteel.

I'm not genteel, but I don't think people look at me and think "radical faerie" either. Maybe "dyke" in the winter, when I break out the flannel, but these days I think I primarily look like a mom. Mostly Harmless. I don't really know why that would be strange, but Mir assures me I'm an utter wacko. Maybe he's trying to flatter me.

teeth

2007-08-08T11:11:00.000-04:00

Mo lost her first tooth!

It took four carefully counted days of wiggling from the time she first noticed the loose tooth. It was quite the event around here. Her latest self-portrait includes the missing tooth as a feature (as well as her name written backwards). She's thrilled. She's also nearly 6! Just a few more days, but birthdays are kind of weird in our house (hey, can I use that for one of my eight weird things? whynot!)

For the past couple years Mo hasn't wanted to do anything about her birthday. She accepts presents, of course! but has been adamant about not having a party. This year I can't even get her to talk about it. She said she would like a cake, but she always says that... I made one yesterday just for the heck of it, in fact. And she's already got one "present" - a fishing rod "just like Iris has". I didn't see any reason to wait when I finally had cash. Actually, there's a second present, but she doesn't know about that one. I got a k'nex set with some gears in it, since she keeps asking me to build this gears project in her "physics for fun" book. Ever tried to make one gear, much less a set of different sized gears that actually work? Darn book has No templates whatsoever, just says "make these gears out of cardboard". Bwahahahahahhaha!

Ahem, where was I? oh, yeah, k'nex. I probably won't even give them to her on her actual bday, although it could happen. Most likely, I'll wait for a day when she's looking for something new and exciting and then pull it out TADA!

I don't know why Mo doesn't like birthdays. She seems to enjoy Savannah's bday parties - well, who wouldn't? Savannah's mom holds the most sensible kid parties I've ever seen. Once the kids arrive, Whammo! cake, presents and then free-play until things start to wind down a little and a trip to the local pool to finish. Virtually stress free for guests, and very little work for Luan. We have been to other kids' parties that weren't so ...er... kid friendly. Lots of waiting. Adult-directed games and crafts. Totally not Mo's scene. That may be why she's not excited about parties. Or it may just be her. I don't like to make a fuss over my own birthday, either.

Its not a getting-older thing, for me or her. She's been telling people she's six since January, and now alternates between saying she's four and 10. Go figure. So many of my friends are older than I am, I've started telling people I'm "almost 40" just to fit in! So its not about age.

Reading back over that last bit...go figure. The difference between four and ten is six. Mo's six. We've had a couple conversations about that - one where she asked me, "if I'm six how many years until I'm ten?" and another, more a bit of mathematical free-association involving the numbers 4, 6 and 10 that I won't try to relate since it was kind of confusing to me. Morgan definitely thinks more, and more deeply, about numbers than I ever thought a kid her age would do. She finds patterns between numbers and shapes and ideas and words that I can sort of understand. That's not weird, though. I have a feeling that a lot of that kind of thinking is perfectly normal and it gets trained out of kids in the course of "edumacation" and the ways concepts are grouped for "educational" purposes. That was one of the things that drew me into Montessori, where the criss-crossing of different "subjects" is sort of an ideal. Too bad its an ideal that isn't often realized, but that's a whole 'nother subject.

Phew, its summer

2007-07-28T15:21:00.000-04:00

...and its hot. Bleh. The middle of the day is especially gross, so we've been staying inside or "going to the creek" to cool off. On days we stay home the house gets to looking, well, you can see the pic. It looks like that.

The good news, in terms of weather, is that it's been raining. Not enough to get the springs flowing, but we have a back-up system that catches rainwater off the roof of the barn. Yesterday the tank was full to the top and I did a bunch of laundry and took a twenty minute shower to celebrate. Last night it rained again. I haven't checked, but I expect the tank is full or nearly this morning. Yeah! Of course, that also means its muggy as all-get-out today. I think it may be a creek day.

The creek we visit is called "Dry Creek" - rather ironic this year in particular, since its one of the few that is not only flowing, but not noticeably low. Its spring-fed, and goes underground at several locations, which is where it gets its name. Long stretches of apparant dry. We go almost to the source - so its coooooold. If its the least bit cloudy, I shiver in the water. As hot as it's been, cold feels good. In six months I'll read this and roll my eyes, I'm sure.

The spot we visit belongs to some friends of ours - Lee and John. Lee's home most times and comes to hang out with us in the water. Right in front of their house is a wide section of creek where the water is about knee-deep. Just enough for me to float in and Mo to float or swim if she wants, but not so deep that I have to worry. I wouldn't take a nap or anything, but I don't feel like I have to watch her every second. Very restful for me.

A bit downstream, where J&L's property ends is another spot that's deeper. Deep enough for a little swimming for adults. Its shared with the folks who own the next bit of land, though, so the access is a bit restricted. Both parties (and since they're couples, that's all four adults) have to agree on the guest-list. Mo and I are "on", but that's all for our family, which is a bit awkward, to say the least. Recently, though, George has had a bunch of sawing jobs and Ray's been sleeping through the heat (and pollen) of the day. He's basically back to the vampire lifestyle, and longing for fall. He was sort of crowing about that the other day, actually. School starts soon around here, but since he doesn't have to go, he gets to look forward to fall and winter.

Anyway, Mo enjoys both spots, but especially enjoys the company of Charlie, the 13yo girl whose family shares the swimmin' hole. The pic shows the two of them playing in the water. Mo's been dabbling in learning to swim - casting aside her floats from time to time to tread water and do something that looks like a cross between dog paddling and the breast-stroke. She's also been starting to swim under the water, although she doesn't really like getting water in her eyes. We have a couple masks, but they don't seem to seal all that well, and she doesn't want goggles. She doesn't seem any more or less at-ease in the water overall than other kids her age who have had years of swimming lessons, so I'm glad we decided not to trouble with those.

Eight weird things

2007-06-20T10:02:00.000-04:00

I got tagged in this goofy game of blog-tag that's been going around the unschooling boards. Here's the rules- looks like I've already broken one. Whew, that's a load off my mind:

~~~Each player lists 8 facts/habits about themselves. The rules of the game are posted at the beginning before those facts/habits are listed. At the end of the post, the player then tags 8 people and posts their names, then goes to their blogs and leaves them a comment, letting them know that they have been tagged and asking them to read your blog.~~~

Someone, earlier in the game, commented that this group of bloggers is so "incestuous" as to be running out of new victims to tag. Guess someone finally found me. I enjoy checking out other blogs, so I've had fun back-tracking through other people's tag lists, but I'm afraid I may not be able to find eight whole untagged blogs. I went to check on one (Arun's) and Schuyler and Danielle had both tagged him. Figures. Maybe I'll tag Stupid Evil Bastard just for kicks.....hmmmm.

Here's the link to Schuyler's blog, which I recommend for cute kid pix and parenting wisdom:
http://waynforth.blogspot.com/2007/06/8-things-about-me.html

I've already posted two weird things in other posts, so nyeh nyeh, go find 'em if you want to know. I'm terrible about rules like that.

A third weird thing about me is I'm allergic to peaches. I'd never heard of such a thing until I started puking my guts out after eating some peach pancakes for breakfast. Did you know that virtually all northern tree-fruits are related? No wonder I gravitate toward melons, berries and tropical stuff. I also seem to have a slight reaction to rose-hips, also related. Its little enough that I need other factors to line up to actually get sick, but I've started screening all my herbal teas for rose-hips. Gives a whole new meaning to: everything's comin' up...roses.

It Rained!

2007-06-20T09:11:00.000-04:00

Its been....gosh I've lost track. Over a month. The creek's dry. The new spring held up until just before the rain, but now the water has dropped below the pipe. I made sure the rainwater catchment system was in order before the rain started, so we have some rainwater, but we'll probably be hauling water from town by the end of the summer, at this rate.

Funny how quickly one can go from being overjoyed about the rain to bitching about it. I worked for Barb at Morningside, yesterday and we pissed and moaned about mud and having to put the tarps down over the front of the loading area for the first time in I-dont-know-how-long. And I've been griping about having to put my shoes on to go outside. I've been going out in socks forever, it seems. Two years ago it rained so much we had mud in August! I'd be happy for a little more mud to complain about right about now .

I've been trying not to complain too much about hardship, these days, and realized I hadn't posted anything at all about our troubles, other than the compost toilet. It's almost a superstitious thing on my part. Like if I write about it, its more true or something. Its not vast hardship. We're broke and have had to replace two engines in two months. Its been rough, but through it all we've had people be just amazing to us with offers to help. I'm working on accepting that gracefully. I've been on the other side of that so many times - heck, just last week I was helping a mom who's living out of her car with her 5yo find a place to stay - I like helping and giving. I'm trying to remind myself that I'm giving others the opportunity to express their generosity.

George has work this week so I'm scrambling around for people to hang out with Mo while I work for Barb. Ray's home from his travels, but he and I had a little conversation yesterday, and I assured him that I would not expect him to do free childcare - or any childcare at all unless he really really wanted to do it. He was relieved. Since it rained yesterday, George was able to hang out with Mo, which means Shiloh could get things done and hang out with her today, instead. She's going out of town at the end of the week, though, so I still need to find someone for Friday. I have some ideas about that, though.

My clubs came, and I've been throwing them a little every day - still can't catch the darn things, but I'm having fun. I can catch one or two. Just enough to keep me going. I don't know about more experienced jugglers, but right now, its all about throwing. If I get the throw right, my other hand just magically catches the club. Its cool. There's this weird trust thing involved, too. I have to believe that two clubs will fit in the space (I call it "the pocket" I guess I need to learn the jargon if I'm going to talk to other jugglers) they have to move through. Intellectually, I know that they're not both going to be in the same space at the same time, but I can tell I'm not convinced. I keep throwing one "outside" the other, which means there's no way for me to catch it. Its only been a few days, though, and not even an hour a day. I think next week I'll find a day when Mo wants to watch Pokemon all day and take the clubs up into my bedroom and juggle in the AC.

I've decided that one weird thing about me is how little I swear. It is weird. I use words like dangitall and honked-off. I cuss more in person than in print, but I was kind of shocked when one of the guests was very very careful about not-swearing in front of Mo. What the heck? Oh, goshdarnit, there I go again! Geez.

I just ordered some clubs!

2007-06-14T10:31:00.000-04:00

I'm so excited. I haven't exactly been practicing juggling every day, so I'm not making a whole lot of progress, but a couple weeks ago we went to a party at IDA and I got to play with Maxzine's clubs. It was soooooo much fun! I mean, sure, I can barely even juggle two of them at this point, but even at a totally beginner leve its waaaaay more fun than balls or bean bags. They're big and colorful and they spin.

Oooooooh. Ahhhhhhhh.

It took me awhile to figure out the order form at Renegade Juggling - a process not helped by my waffling over colors. It occurred to me that I don't *have* to get all three the same color - and it certainly was helpful in learning to juggle to begin with to have my beanbags all different colors. Plus, I'm just *not* a matching-set sort of gal. So one is to be green, one orange, one pink, all with black trim, just to butch things up a bit. I'm bouncing up and down in my chair in anticipation. Its going to be a looooong 3-5 business days....

I decided to get a set of clubs *now* despite our financial destitution (getting better, but still...) because in the last two weeks George got himself a new bass-amp and an octave-mandolin. That's like a mandolin but bigger, but not as big as a mandola. Instead of telling him off for his impulse buying I smiled sweetly and asked if there was any space left on the card for me to buy clubs. He was soooooo relieved. He's really doing much better with the impulse buying thing. Last time he wanted something totally unneccessary and expensive he actually asked me first. And took it well when I suggested that it wasn't such a good time to be spending money on a fancy new tool that he really didn't *need*.

Mirror recommended Renegade Juggling as a source for fire-tape and other odds and ends for Ray to make his own fire-staff. I'm thinking we'll just buy one, but maybe Ray would rather a home-made. We'll see. That's where I got my clubs, too. I probably could have found them cheaper, used maybe, but the design-your-own-club feature sucked me in.

Ray's off visiting grandparents - George's mom for a week and then the other grandma. Amy will meet him there and, in theory, drive home with him. Last time it worked out, he had a new MP3 player from granny and was able to successfully not-communicate with his mom the whole way home, which meant he didn't have to call us from a truck stop and get us to come rescue him. Whew. He and I have fantasized about him talking granny into a Wii this time, so we're waiting on the game system until he comes back. That will go on the card too, unfortunately, but we spent the money I had saved on something pedestrian, like a week's groceries.

Okay, so I just made my first hotlink thingy. I can't figure out how to cut-n-paste the url, though, which is why there's only one and not ten thousand, like in some blogs I see. I'm sure there's a way....it may be something I have to do in HTML, though. We'll see. If I start having a gazillion hotlinks (or even just two or three in a post) you'll know I figgered it out.

As a totally random aside, I just got tagged in a game of blog-tag by Schuyler (see the comment at the end of the compost potty post). I have to come up with eight weird things about myself and tag eight other blogs. I'll probably cheat on that second bit, and as for the first, there's nothing at all weird about me. Okay, I guess that's one.

Gory details

2007-06-01T10:01:00.000-04:00

Our composting toilet is on the fritz. Its a home built system, not a commercial composting toilet, inspired by The Humanure Handbook, and this is the first major setback in five years. We've had little problems here and there that were relatively easy to resolve - smell issues, resolved by adding a ventilation fan, and fruit-fly issues that were taken care of by strictly regulating the disposal of fruit, and especially banana peels. This year the problem is the compost itself. Its not composting properly, which is resulting in the chamber filling up too quickly and a plague of houseflies.

Yuk.

Our composting system consists of two concrete chambers, filled from the top, each with an exterior clean-out hatch. Only one chamber is in use at a time. Basically, we fill side A, move the seat to side B, and while we're filling B, side A is merrily composting away. By the time B fills up and we have to shovel out the A side so we can use it again, it's compost, not poo. Just to be on the safe side, the compost is moved to an outside compost bin for a year or so before it's used on the garden.

Theoretically, with every poo wood shavings are added to the compost. Periodically I also add grass clippings and weeds to the chamber. The biodiversity seems to help the composting process. Usually it takes about nine months to fill one chamber. At some point in the process there's this almost magical effect where the in-use pile starts shrinking instead of growing, as the compost heats up, and then stabilizes. Its really wonderful, but it depends on a number of factors, and some of those factors fell apart this year in a way that is hindering the pile from getting hot.

The two big issues seem to be weather and pile management. I've been able to slack off on pile management in the past, when the weather has cooperated. This year its not cooperating. Its been dry, which has meant less mowing, and so less clippings to add. We also had a late frost, which I think really unbalanced the pile's ecosystem. It definately impacted the local insect population in general, and I think that's part of the reason we're having so many flies. They survived the frost better than some of their competitors and are now the dominent bug in the pile. Unfortunately, they aren't the best for making good compost.

The other factor that needs to be considered is Rayan - in terms of the compost, he comprises a significant increase in the quantitiy of poo added to the system without a corresponding increase in the amount of wood shavings. Figure that in with a decrease in the amount of clippings and you get a denser, and therefore less well aerated, pile.

I repeat: Yuk.

It has been less than six months since we switched chambers, and the in-use bin is almost full. That's unheard of! Especially with the outside temperature in the mid to upper 80s - it should be doing the magic trick by now. The pile should be going away. Its not. Its doing something weird and the flies are driving us nuts.

My temporary solution has been to return to the original humanure method ... the bucket. Sigh. I've set up a sketchy sort of outhouse at the back of the back yard and a compost bin for the bucket contents. I've "sealed" the chamber we were using and after just a couple days the fly population in the house has already noticably decreased. Whew. Since the summer looks like its going to be dry, I think we'll stick with the bucket system for awhile, until the usual time for me to empty the "composting" side, anyway. I'll fine tune things as necessary, but if you come to visit this summer, expect to use an outhouse of some kind. Its actually kind of pleasant to sit and listen to the birds instead of the ventilation fan.

Book links

2007-05-14T10:44:00.000-04:00

I'm needing a place to "store" a list of books on discovery based learning, so I'm putting them here. They're good books - the first two more than the third, but that one kind of rounds out the view, so to speak. Very useful for anyone trying to understand how young children, in particular, go about learning "the 3Rs" without any kind of instruction.

**********************
http://www.amazon.com/Much-More-Than-ABCs-Reading/dp/0935989900/ref=pd_sim_b_5/104-6979436-9097530?ie=UTF8&qid=1179152811&sr=1-1

Much More Than the ABC's: The Early Stages of Reading and Writing (Paperback) by Judith Schickendanz
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http://www.amazon.com/Literacy-Through-Play-Gretchen-Owocki/dp/0325001278/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/104-6979436-9097530?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1179152811&sr=1-1

Literacy Through Play (Paperback) by Gretchen Owocki
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http://www.amazon.com/More-Than-Counting-Activities-Kindergarten/dp/1884834035/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/104-6979436-9097530?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1179154065&sr=1-1

More Than Counting: Whole Math Activities for Preschool and Kindergarten (Paperback) by Sally Moomaw (Author), Brenda Hieronymus (Author)
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If I find more I'll add them later - if anyone reading this would like to suggest others, I'd appreciate that, too. I seem to get used as a resource.... that's what I get for being such a know-it-all, I suppose.

essay by Morgan

2007-05-03T11:34:00.000-04:00

What not to do at a stoplight
By Morgan

Feeding your kittens and cat
Drinking water
Dreaming that you’re karate chopping the tv
Lighting candles
Getting the mail
Calling your friends

After you have sucked the marrow from the bones of life

2007-04-26T14:28:00.000-04:00

be sure to lick your lips.

Postcards!

2007-04-14T21:07:00.000-04:00

I've joined a postcard swapping group. Even worse, I've been sucked in to moderate it. I'm kidding about the "worse" part. Its not that much of a hassle, just approving new members, but that makes number four. Six months ago I was quivering in my boots at the thought of moderating one group, now I'm the yahoo groups madame or something. Anyway, since this is an international group, some of the folks on the list seem to think Dismal, TN is an exotic location - and who can blame them? Its scenic, and the denizens have strange customs.... So I decided to make my own cards from digital photos. Took me a week to find the right paper, but I'm off, sending cards to places as close as the Carolinas and as far away as New Zealand. That gave the lady in our local post office a thrill, too, looking up rates to far off lands. It occurred to me that some of my charming relatives would like some postcards, too, so if you're charming and I have your address, look for a postcard. I'm posting a few here, while I'm at it.

Happy Bday George

2007-03-26T10:55:00.000-04:00

Sunday was George's birthday. We had a fun, mellow day.

There's a new coffee house in one of the local towns - Watertown. George and Shiloh have been playing there on Saturday nights, and then going over to a friend's house to jam afterwards. Fun stuff. We took Mo to the coffee house a few weeks back and to the jam session a week ago, with sort of mixed results. She's a little too high-energy for those kinds of environments and I'm too tired by that time of day to be very interactive with her. So its been sort of fun but sort of stressfull. Friday night George took her to a party where she was happy to play with a little plastic guitar for awhile, but then started arguing with the band about the set-list. Not so much fun, so George brought her home and she and I had an okay evening.

Friday night was essentially the start of George's bday festivities. He went to the party (up at Pumpkin Hollow) and stayed good and late. Saturday night he went to the coffee house in Watertown and stayed out late. Mo and I jumped on the trampoline, captured frogs and watched the stars come out and Ray played on the computer, so we all had a great time. Sunday Mir and Shiloh came over for a lunchtime pizza party.

After lunch we (all except Ray) hiked up to the pond. The algae and water plants I tossed in several years ago have taken over, so Mir and I chatted about ways to pretty up the area. He wants to plant some lotuses and some annuals along the banks. Mo and I want to mow around the pond and bring our tent up there. She's been wild to go camping, and I still prefer my camp to include men in high heeled shoes and tiaras. I like the idea of having a place to hang out up at the pond, though. Its really pretty up there already, pond scum notwithstanding, with a nice view of the holler. On clear days you can see the top of Short Mountain, which always makes me smile. Last year I was stressed out all summer and didn't get up to the pond at all, but this year I'm hoping to be more motivated in that regard. If Mir's going to work on the pond, that will help me have reasons to get up there.

Mo had a fabulous time playing in the mud at the pond and I found myself wishing I'd brought the camera. Next time. For now, I've included a few random pix from this winter in this post which I've been intending to post for ages. I forgot to rotate the pic of the bass, but its still a nice image. George has built a couple basses this winter - one twelve string, pix of which have been making the rounds of 12string bass message boards. That's kind of fun.

Great Big Aaaaaaaahhhhhhh

2007-03-11T15:16:00.000-04:00

I have my favorite room back!

A few years ago, George built a glorious porch on the back of the house for my b-day. Its one of those marvelous "gifts that keeps on giving" - every spring, and sometimes off and on in the winter, I get to open up my house and have one more room. And what a great room! Its 8'x20' - bigger than my living room - and until last fall the couch lived out there, plus a big slab "coffee table" and some end tables and oddball chairs. I tacked up some masonite along one side for Mo to use as an easel and strung clothesline to dry her artwork above it. Weather permitting, its our "messy project" space, and my lounging around space. Its outside, but sheltered and off the ground. I love it love it loveit!

Sitting on my porch, which is on the back of the house, I can look up through bare branches to my hill-tops in the winter. In the summer the leaves keep it shady and cool. Its on the morning side of the house, so on hot Tennessee evenings we can hang out there and eat dinner and watch the fireflies. There's a good view of the run-off creek and a tiny cleared patch I call the back yard, where I've planted asparagus and daylilies and coneflowers and various annuals.

The porch was full of junk until today.

This was one of the complications of Rayan moving into our very small house. As an every-other-weekend kid he didn't use any of the storage space in his room, so we filled it up with all the kinds of things people "normally" put in attics. The sudden change left us kind of at a loss, so we piled the stuff on the porch, which is reasonably sheltered, until we figured out a better solution.

Over the winter we've been sorting and discarding and consolidating that stuff and the heap formerly known as the dining-room table. We don't have a dining room, but we have my mother's table - a dainty cherry thing with those swoopy cabriolet legs. Heaping it with stuff wasn't optimal, but it kept Mo from climbing on it, along with providing storage. Our new family member meant we needed more "family" space, though, so we dug out the table (moved some of that stuff to the porch). We quickly discovered we didn't like eating at the table, so it went out to the barn and the couch moved in to the suddenly expanded living room. That was a good thing for the winter. Its nice having a larger living room, and we don't miss the heap...er table.

But its spring, gosh darnit! and I wanted my room back. I wanted to lounge on the back porch drinking coffee and watching the birds. It finally occurred to me that we have a whole pile of grey industrial shelving from Smithville's one coffee-shop closing (George knew the owners and got to loot - we got an old organ, lots of shelves and assorted guitar bits). With a little nudging on my part George agreed that the side porch would be a good place to put some shelves, magically creating the storage space we so desperately need. Tada! Last night and this morning he hung shelves and then he and I moved boxes and....stuff. He's on his fourth dump run, now, and I'm taking a break from my cleaning and arranging.

Once the stuff was gone, and everything swept, the lack of couch weighed heavily on me. Where would I lounge to drink coffee? I remembered the leftover lumber from my garden-fencing project. Aha! I foraged up some concrete blocks and cobbled together a rough-n-ready bench. It works. Its wider than my behind - the one significant dimension - so I can sprawl or lounge or curl up, as I choose. Phew. I tested it with a bowl of soup and Morgan cavorted around blowing bubbles and trying to catch them in her mouth.

As far as I'm concerned this is the official first of spring. Forget daffodils - the darn things start coming up in February! Moving out into my favorite room is It! I hearby declare it Spring in Dismal, TN.

much ado and other stuff

2007-03-09T15:42:00.000-05:00

Rayan has had a girlfriend since last summer - a vaguely "gothic" girl named Ciara (pronounced Sierra) who's mother dislikes and distrusts him. I haven't spoken to her yet, although George has. I get the impression she wouldn't like or trust any guy her 14 year old daughter brought home, but Rayan's too much of a "bad boy" to ever win her over.

In the past she has placed restrictions on when and how much they could talk on the phone which has, predictably, led to Ciara calling after her parents are asleep. Not really an issue for us. One of the glorious advantages of homeschooling is we don't have to fuss over going to bed at a reasonable hour. Our schedule is pretty fluid.

She also doesn't like them to spend much time together, and only under her direct supervision. Charming. I've offered to talk to her - to Rayan - but he's under the impression that she's impossible to reason with, and George pretty much agrees. I don't know how much of that is baggage and how much is accurate, but so far I've stayed out of things at Ray's request. I've talked to Ciara over the phone a couple times when Rayan's been asleep or in the shower and she's pretty invested in coercion, which makes me think her mom could be every bit as difficult as Ray and George think - tell Rayan he better call me or I'll break up with him - that sort of thing.

Okay, so this is going to sound like a tangent but it ties in - what tangled webs these mortals spin! (is that the line?) George has been fretting over the fact that we have yet to mail in the registration form for FS@H due to our lack of funds. I've had good news from Jackie on that regard, but I'm not worried in general. No-one is breathing down our necks, and the boy's happy and not in jail, which is more than the school would be able to say if they had him. George is worried though - specifically he's been worried that Ciara's mom would "make trouble for us".

Back to the main plot... apparantly, Ciara's mom has been asking her what Rayan does now that he's not in school - the usual sorts of questions and hoo-haa from people who know nothing at all about homeschool. Ciara passed the question along to Ray, who commented that it wasn't any of her mom's business. As far as I know he only said that to Ciara, but its possible he said it directly to her mom. Less than 100% tactful, if he did, but I've said worse. And really, he's right - it isn't any of her business! But she's used to the public school idea that comparing two people's learning is not only appropriate but normal and good, especially when those people are under 18. I guess you can tell what I think about that. Its probably a good thing I haven't talked to her. I don't have any idea how to say that tactfully :(

So the long and short of it is that Ciara's not allowed to speak to Rayan until he appologises to her mom. George is relieved. I guess there will be more midnight phone calls for awhile. Eventually I suspect he'll appologise - I also suspect Ciara will threaten to break up with him if he doesn't. That's within the pattern she's set already.

It wouldn't break my heart if he finally decided she's not worth the headache, but that's probably contingent on him making some friends in non-school environments. He's met a couple homeschoolers at the skatepark, but has sort of lost touch in between winter and getting the flu (I was right about that! he got really really sick for a few days and is still recovering, to some extent). It will take a while to build those relationships, anyway.

He's also met a few hs'ers online -gotta love Runescape. Its too bad we can't get World of Warcraft, though. There's a "guild" of over fifty unschoolers last I heard. Boy oh boy would I love for him to meet some other kids whose parents think staying up all night playing computer games is cool - not to mention some of those parents. But our dial-up is way too slow. I guess there are a few WoW players who have dial-up, but a "good" connection speed for us is (brace yourself) 49Kbps. No shit. DSL is a ways away out here in the hollers. Bummer.

I'm hoping to bring him to the Live and Learn Conference http://www.LiveandLearnConference.org in Sept and/or get him to Not-Back-to-School camp so he can meet some home/unschooling teens in a fun environment. I don't see Ray as wanting to spend the rest of his life in TN, much less Dismal, so in addition to making friends, I'd love to help him find reasons to travel, and making friends all across the US sounds like the sort of thing that would appeal to him. I suppose I should talk to him about that LOL! He's been trying out being a night-owl (or maybe a vampire) so I haven't seen as much of him as I'd like. I told him I've missed him, but I'm trying to be cool about that - I sooooo don't want him to feel pressured to change his schedule.

pooping toy

2007-03-05T12:52:00.000-05:00

Bwaaahhahahahhahaha! OMG, now I've seen it all! Barbie, yes that's right BARBIE has a new dog that poops! I saw this just this morning on the lousy tv we have upstairs, so I'm sure I missed details. I can't decide if I'm totally appalled or if I want one. Mo wants one - a pooping toy? Cool! I do think its nice that someone finally figured out that little girls are as fond of poo and farts as boys. Mine sure is.

Okay, okay, I'm calm, now. I'm getting ready to do some cooking - or rather, I'm in the middle of doing some cooking, this is just the "procrastination" stage ;) I did something new and different for me the other day - okay, if you know me and you're reading this put your coffee cup down and swallow what's in your mouth, alright? don't say I didn't warn you - I bought meat at the grocery store. Told ya. I'm not going to eat it, though. Its for George and Rayan.

Here's the story: George has been eating meat for a couple years (?) but mostly fishy things and easy to prepare stuff. He doesn't really know much about meat, how to buy or cook it, etc. We had been buying lots of coldcuts and meaty soups for him and Rayan, but the soups, especially, are pretty costly. Anyway, we're surrounded by enthusiastic deer hunters, so we ended up with a bunch of venison this winter. George didn't know what to do with it, but I looked in my favorite cookbook (the plaid one, of course!) and found a recipe for beef-vegetable soup. It turned out to be a great way to economize, and the guys both love it. Now we're out of venison, though, so I took my courage in hand, waited for the higher-the-hair ladies to move away from the meat counter in the store and spent a merry few minutes looking at sale prices and determining best value, blah, blah, blah. Morgan was slightly interested, but more in punching the packages than their contents.

On that note, we bought her a punching bag. Its one of those things that stands about kid-height with a weight in the base so when she hits it, it pops back up. Fun. She's just head-over-heels in love with Sandy Cheeks on Spongebob, so she's been whacking and kicking a Lot. After far too many "nos" and "stop its" I went out and got a punching bag. She picked one with a picture of Scooby Doo on it but made a drawing of the big bad fairy from Fairly Odd Parents and taped it on the other side. Lots of tv-inspired fun going on around here.

A few years ago, that would have been an issue for me. I was pretty heavily saturated with anti-tv sentiment, including the notion that art, stories and games inspired by tv shows was somehow "less" than the same inspired by, um... books, fables and classical art. Duh. Now, I really love the way Mo mixes and matches characters and ideas from different shows - and mixes them happily with stuff from "books fables and classical art" as well. The other day she was making a "Fairy Magic Playset" based on one of our computer games. She decided there was no reason not to have a Playset for something that isn't Disney or Barbie or some other major franchise. If it didn't exist, well then, she'd make her own. You go, girl.

Mo art

2007-03-01T10:00:00.000-05:00

Here are a few of Mo's drawings from this winter. She's been making lots of books, which are a little tricky to scan, but I've included one of her comic-strip type things. Sometimes these are lists or "plans" for what she wants to do or someone else, usually me! to do. Others are short stories or scenes. The pale aqua drawing with her name on it is one of her maps (just in case y'all want to come visit). There's also a drawing of a beach and, of course, Spongebob and Patrick.

I've had the flu

2007-02-28T17:27:00.000-05:00

Icky yucky yuck.
I hate being sick.
Now I'm slowly getting back to myself and I'm stiff and sore all over just from being in bed so much. Bleh. On the up side, its sort of revitalizing my yoga practice.

I stopped teaching yoga more than six months ago, and for awhile I just didn't do any at all. I had gotten pretty burned out and had lost my enthusiasm for my own practice. A couple months ago I started have the urge to do the occasional yoga pose, remembering that I used to like this stuff, not just do it "because its good for me". Getting sick seems to have really kick-started my interest again. I like the asanas. I like the way they feel and the way *I* feel doing them. Pretty sad to think that teaching made me lose sight of that for awhile.

In the mean time, I'm still stiff and sore and coughing. Yuk. Mo and George have both been sick too. Rayan hasn't *seemed* to get it, but he has gone through a phase of sleeping 15hrs a day, and I think he was fighting it off. Must be nice.

On a completely differnt note, I have a bunch of Mo-art that I want to scan in and upload, if only I can get the scanner to work! If not, I may try to take pix of some of it. She's making lots of books and comic-strip type things, and making everything she can think of out of paper. One day she went through an entire brand-new stack of computer paper and started another and I sort of flipped out - you wouldn't believe the mess in the living room. It looked like a blizzard! So I stole the rest of the paper and hid it. George teased me mercilessly until I relented and gave it back.

I have a new "mantra" for myself: unschooling is messy and inconvenient.

Snow!

2007-02-03T11:54:00.000-05:00

It snowed thursday night - something on the order of an inch, which is high excitement here in TN. I worked for Barb (Morningside) on friday. leaving George to play in the snow with Morgan, which turned out to be a really good thing. Apparantly, Mo woke up and saw snow and immediately concieved the idea to make a snowboard. George was happy to help out - he went right out and found a board that was pretty bowed and cut a length of it. At Mo's direction, he rounded one end and set some screws in it for "foot straps". She's been watching a lot of Go, Diego, Go! and seems to have made some mental notes on the subject of snowboards - she definately had very specific ideas on the subject. Well unfortunately, an inch of snow and a piece of raw wood don't make the best combination for snowboarding, so George added a tow-rope. Mo was thrilled none-the-less.

Here she is in her snow-gear, all ready for the cold!

Once she'd had enough "snowboarding" George obliged her with a snowball fight and then went inside for home made snowcones. I'm posting this on friday and have spent over an hour making still more snowcones. I've mixed some foodcoloring with sugar to make sprinkles for them. Its been fun - except for the part where she decided I needed snow shoved down the back of my shirt - wonder where she got that idea....

parallel play

2007-01-21T12:28:00.000-05:00

I was thinking about "parallel play" this morning and remembered a related article, called "Leaning on a Truck":

http://sandradodd.com/truck

This morning I was making "fried pies" - that's down home Southern cooking, if you haven't heard of them. I learned about them from my Ex (VJ), whose Granny was the epitome of Southern grandmothers. You know... when in doubt: add lard, and all that. She did have some great recipes, though (although I omit the lard, personally). Anyhow, fried pies are basically apple turnovers, but deep fried instead of baked. They're really yummy. George got a Southern Living cookbook a few years back for signing up for a Lowes card or some such thing, and there's a good recipe in there.

This is my second time making them, so I was modifying the recipe, as I am wont to do, and Mo came in and announced that she, too had a recipe to try. Oh, great, I thought, just what I need. The kitchen is a mess, I'm deep frying and Mo wants to play mad scientist. Fortunately George was floating around the house being bored so I enlisted him to keep Mo out of my way. Mostly he sat by the woodstove and helped open things, but that was enough for her to make two different kinds of goop, one (theoretically) drinkable, while I fried and fried and fried.

Anyway, what I ended up thinking about was that Mo does a lot of her learning from other people in this sort of parallel, leaning-on-a-truck style. She wanted to be in the kitchen in part because I was in the kitchen. She didn't want to watch me or help me, but she did want to be where I was, doing (essentially) what I was doing - but all her own thing. Interesting.

now we're cooking with rayan

2007-01-18T18:53:00.000-05:00

Here's a link over to the other blog about Rayan learning to cook:

http://www2.blogger.com/post-edit.g?blogID=6506289165008555690&postID=378567176047584290

Which includes some brief musings on the value of computer games. We've been playing this really fun quest type game for the PC, called Zanzarah - I bought it thinking Mo would like it. Fairies and elves and all that stuff. Turns out its a little too difficult for her to maneuver the character, there's a weird combination of mouse and arrow keys required that took even me and Ray awhile to figure out. So he and I have been playing it and having a good time. Predictably, he's better at it, but now and then I do something in a different sequence or catch a fairy he doesn't have yet. Fun stuff.

I ordered World of Warcraft, but so far we haven't been able to play it. Our computer has a "social disease" at the moment :( and we don't have the funds to get it taken care of, so its running too slowly to play something quite so elaborate. WoW is and online role playing game - more elves and trolls an' all, but since its online you get to communicate with other players all over the world. Rayan just loves that sort of thing so I thought it would be right up his alley - and some of the fabulous unschoolers I've been hangin' with online have set up a "guild" on WoW, and it would be soooooo cool if Ray could meet some of these folks. Anyway, I'm working on options, but some of those involve asking the neighbors if he can use their computer, so I'm flaking out. Bad mommy! No cake! Sunfrog is coming over this weekend to watch football, though, so I'm going to try to bring it up then.

Another thing I've been considering, wrt games, is getting one of those game systems that plug into the tv - Ray thinks maybe Game Cube, since that's what he had before. That has the advantage of freeing up the computer somewhat, but it doesn't have the social feature on online gaming.

Okay, so what's with the games, you may ask? When did Mer drink the kool-aid? George blames "the unschoolers" warping my mind with stories of all the valuble things their kids have learned while playing computer games. Could be. Playing the simpler, treasure-hunt style games with Morgan also helped. I found myself wanting more complicated games, but not really finding them until now. This was the perfect game to suck me in big-time! It has the light entertainment value of the trashy fantasy novels I love, and its complex enought that it takes a long time, and some planning and problem solving, to get through it. Its even (in a way) educational, but don't tell Rayan I said so. I'd rather he just enjoyed it.

Quilt pix et al

2007-01-12T10:58:00.001-05:00

Here's the latest thing I'm working on - one of them, anyway. This is a background for a "tortoise and hare" quilt. I'm doing a sort of series that I'm calling (at least in my head) "myths, fables and fairy tales" inspired by the owl and pussycat thing. I really need a set of quilts that show off what I can do now - its like building a portfolio all over again, so its kind of frustrating, from that perspective.

I need to work on updating my website, too. A friend of mine offered to do it, but she's since become very busy and flaked out on me so I'm thinking of just doing my own. After fussing around with the blog thing some I feel better able to handle that - but if anyone wants to suggest a good template or whatever, I'm open to suggestion.

Mo science

2006-12-27T11:48:00.000-05:00

Here's Morgan having a grand old time with her new "chemistry" set. Most of the "experiments" involved polymers that expanded in some fashion with the addition of water, some quickly, some slowly. The results looked like snow, jello, and less describable goos.

There was also an intriguing sand that had been treated with a water resistant coating. Rayan was interested in that one, and commented that it reminded him of the way water doesn't seem to "stick" to leaves. He probably learned more science wandering in and out of the kitchen that morning than he has all year in school.

Once we'd gone through the basic mixtures, Morgan wanted to explore some on her own. We had some of everything left over, so she had a good time making mixes of mixes and squishing everything together with her fingers. The last pic shows her trying to mold the resultant goo into shapes with an old block-sorter toy. That didn't work so well, but maybe she'd like to try it again with the new clay.

The Farm School at Home

2006-12-27T10:55:00.000-05:00

Since we are in the process of getting registered with the Farm I thought I'd post some information about homeschooling in TN in general and The Farm in particular. TN has three different ways to register as a homeschooler. The first is with the local education agency and is really the simplest. Its free if you do it on time, and there's a minimum of requirements - attendance records, not exactly a stretch. That's been the plan for Mo, but there are complications with Rayan - those being that George has no high-school diploma, and he and I aren't married, so I'm not a "legal" guardian.

Option 2 is an "umbrella school" where basically a church provides the curriculum and we would follow it. Not for us, for obvious reasons. There are no Unitarian umbrella schools in TN, about the only "acceptable" option for us.

Option 3 is a variation on the umbrella school idea, where we would sign up with a "Private Church Related School" as a "satellite campus" - basically the school agrees to "hire" us as teachers and we become part of a private school. There are two of these that don't regulate what kind of curriculum we use, one requires a statement of Faith, the other a statement of Ethics, and we would, under other circumstances, go with that for conveniece. But now we don't have to!

The Farm in Summertown has been recognized by the state of TN as a bona-fide church related (option 3) school:

TheFarm School is operated by The Church of the Farm Religious Community andaccredited by the National Coalition of Alternative Community Schools(http://www.ncacs.org).

and has set up a satellite campus program. No statement of anything, just send money. Very American of them, but don't tell them I said so ;) We were a little concerned when we saw the first-draft registration form, since it asked about the education of the parents and all that stuff we were trying to get away from! I contacted the person who is handling the satellite campus stuff and she assured me that they would sort it all out in the name of providing support for alternative families and, oh, what was the expression she used, something about alternative education, or maybe anti-authoritarian education....whatever. What happened was the board realized they wanted to do less paperwork and dropped all the educational and marital requirements for "parents" and are re-doing the form. As I said, Very American - just send money!

Anyway, here's their high-fallutin' mission statement an' all:

Vision & Mission

We envision a world where all people live in peace and harmony with each other and our planet. We are committed to helping our students become leaders towards a peaceful, just and ecologically sustainable world. We seek to help our students manifest a peaceful and harmonious world.

Educational Philosophy

At The Farm School students learn as they apply basic skills and content to real-world problems with a focus on peace, equality and sustainability. We use responsive curriculum to connect what our students learn to their and our community's needs, interests, experiences and values.

The Farm School @ Home services

The Farm School is a community school and homeschool resource center. We are very excited to be able to offer an alternative for homeschool families that, for whatever reason, are not comfortable registering with their Local Educational Agency (LEA) or with a denominational Church Related School(CRS). We require no statement of faith and are not interested in mandating curriculum or any other decisions. We believe in responsive education matched to the needs, interests and experiences of individual children. And we believe that the adults best able to negotiate curriculum with children are the adults spending time with those children on a daily basis.

It looks like this

2006-12-13T09:11:00.000-05:00

Here's a pic of Rayan carving - he added in the lettering. Lots of fun. I have set up a separate blog just for him, but I still think of this as the "family blog", so it needed a shot of Rayan doing his new thing.

Things are going well, for the most part. He's cheerful and friendly and offers to help out.... I'm hoping that as long as we can keep following his lead in terms of interests, etc, that will continue, too. I'm encouraged, in that regard, by my reading on the unschooling forums - lots of stories of teens who aren't angry and rebellious. What a concept!

First days of deschooling

2006-12-06T18:31:00.000-05:00

Monday went famously well - it can't all be this good! Rayan was thrilled to be home, slept in, hung out, ate some chocolate-chip muffins I'd made - he's missed a lot of my baked breakfasts since he was having to leave so early. I found this big box that we'd been saving to make a playhouse with Morgan, and offered to let him spray-paint it, if he wanted. Well, he was just over the moon! Emptied his can of black paint in minutes, so after lunch we made a run to the store for more. He's still so shocked when I tell him I'll pay for things (buget willing). We also picked up some poster board for stencils.

Once we got back he added some red and blue details to the box - must get a pic of this for y'all - and then decided it was time to paint his skateboard. That's what he wanted stencils for. I'm used to making stencils for quilt stuff, so I showed him how I do it and how I use the copier to make things different sizes. What do they teach in these schools? I helped him cut the stencils and tape them to the board. Loads of fun.

It was so exciting to see him motivated - he's usually so passive. It gave me a great big surge of hope. He really can do things when he wants to - its just that school has left him wanting to do so little. He kept talking about all sorts of other things he could paint - clothes, the old fridge in the barn. He wants to paint the fence around the garden, but I think I'd like to see a design for that first. With the fence, the garden felt like an extra room to the house this year, so I'm leary of having it spray-painted just yet.

One of the things that made Monday work out so smoothly was Morgan. She watched movies in bed all morning and then got really involved in a project of her own as soon as we got home from the store, so I could give Rayan all the attention he needed. He's still pretty needy and uncertain in alot of ways. Morgan's much more autonomous.

Tuesday she came downstairs pretty early, so I had to do more "juggling" of kid needs and energy. Tricky stuff - the differences in the two kids make it easy to sort of overlook her, and I don't want to do that, for sure. At the same time, I don't want Rayan to feel like he's the "second best" kid, since he's the "step". Good thing I've been practicing juggling all summer.

Wednesday I worked at Barb's so George got to take the kids to the park and hang out with the homeschoolers. Everyone had fun - and Rayan learned to carve! That's a skateboarding term, folks! Its when you go around the sides of the bowl - okay, darnit, I'm going to have to figure out how to make hyperlinks so y'all can read about it in wikipedia or something, I'm not defining all these words for y'all!

I've set up another blog just for stuff about Rayan - mostly to provide some kind of documentation for his mom at this point, but if she mellows out, maybe it will even be interesting. We'll see about that.

Up to date at last!

2006-12-04T21:12:00.000-05:00

Sorry for the string of copied posts from the message boards, folks! It's just been too overwhelming to try to keep track of things in more than one place at a time.

Good news! Amy said we could go ahead and homeschool and she would "step back from that". She did offer transportation to the Y, etc. So today (Monday) was our first official day of homeschooling. There are still some paperwork details to take care of - The Farm has its homeschool program set up, but haven't got their forms sorted out yet (dang hippies!). Jacki, who's coordinating the middle TN area says not to worry, we can always back-date the darn things. So that's fine.

Today was fabulous all 'round. I have a kind of long description of it, hand written, but I'm too tired, I'll post it tomorrow.

I'm planning on putting the blog address "out there" more in the unschooling community, since they've all been letting me cry on their shoulders, as it were, and now seem to want to keep up with details.

Nov 30

2006-12-04T21:05:00.000-05:00

Re: Blended families - adding a step child to your family
--- In AlwaysUnschooled@yahoogroups.com, "Melynda Laurent" wrote:
>> Has anyone added a step child who comes from a rigid, authoritarian
> home to their unschooing family? Or does anyone have any thoughts on
> how do do it?

Well, my stepson (13) started living with us...um its all a haze...three weeks ago? We're in the position of negotiating with mom about homeschooling *still*. Rayan's mom doesn't so much support him being here as "can't control him anymore" - so, yes, I guess you could say he's been in "an overly controlling family". We don't have the option of diving head-first into unschooling, but the current plan is to "take a break from school" the moment mom gives the go signal, and hopefully just stay on vacation. In the meantime we're trying to unschool everything but school, iykwim.

Since we already are unschooling Morgan, part of the way we're explaining things to Ray is to say "well, she gets to do it,why not you?" which seems to be blowing his mind a little, but he can totally see the logic there. We haven't sat him down and explained unschooling, though. We're just trying to say "Yes" as often as possible, and make the same kinds of friendly offers we do with Mo.

> I am wondering if we should
> throw him staight into the unschooling life style or should we keep
> him in school and let him norm to our family first?

We kind of thought that Ray being in school *might* make the transition easier. Now we're not so sure about that. Its not just that dealing with school is such a major hassle, its that Ray's not*here* so he's not really learning how our family really *is*. Last week was T'giving and before that he was suspended - so he was home for ten days straight. It was really great. Okay, sure, there were ups and downs, but with him here all day long it was sooooomuch easier for him to get a feel for the rhythem of the day. He started figuring out how to move in and out of Mo's very busy lifestyle. I started figuring out what he ate and how much and when to offer him things. We had some good conversations and I felt likeI was just starting to have some vague idea of what kinds of things he might be into. Then BLAMMO back to school again, and we never see him except when he's tired and PO'd.

How old is your dss? Does he want to stay in school or come homeright away? Does his mom support y'all's home/unschooling?
> he lives with his
> mom and step dad who do not even allow him to make his own toast

Expect to have to do a lot of offerring and reassuring as though for a much younger child: "do you want to get your own or would you rather I did it?" "would you like some help with that?" "Oh, yes,I'm happy to get that - you know you can get your own, if you want,too, you don't *have* to ask". I have to keep reminding myself that Ray doesn't necessarily have the skills Mo has (boiling water, using the microwave) and also that it may be overwhelming to expect him to learn those things right away.

Consider letting him have a "stash" of treats just for him - Ray really likes this, especially since he "gets" to keep it in his room (ooooooh aaaaaaah! food in the bedroom! next she'll say its okay to eat in front of the tv...) and/or doing some other nice, friendly,unschooly things to "welcome him to the family".Congratulations!

And later:

> having him with all the needs he will
> bring, beginning unschooling and a new baby seem really overwhelming
> and honestly, unfair to OUR family

One of the things I've been working on, personally, is thinking about Rayan as a member of my family. He's been a visitor for so long. This goes much deeper than remembering to make twice as much spaghetti or strew opportunities for an older, very different personality. I'm having to *learn* to think of my whole family differently - as Ray's family.

I can hear an earlier part of my process in your post - what's this going to do to *us*? I realized that Rayan moving in wasn't just a matter of giving him bedspace, I had to stop thinking of an Us that didn't include Him. That's hard. But its essential. If this *isn't* Rayan's family as much as Mo's then he is a second-class citizen in this house. He'll know that and it will create resentment.

OTOH, once I started working on thinking of Rayan as a part of "us",a big load of resentment fell away - on my part. He's not an interloper or a visitor. His wants and needs are just as much a part of my consideration as mine, Mo's, George's. I don't know how to *meet* them all, yet! but I can at least acknowledge, validate, and be open to possibilities.

> Thanks Meredith. You have some good insights into this.

I don't know how good they are, but they're fresh!

just a little snapshot of our lives - Nov 29

2006-12-04T20:59:00.000-05:00

Re: Need Help -Principles/Rules and Sibling Rivalry
--- In AlwaysUnschooled@yahoogroups.com, Amanda wrote:
>> Most days I realize that if I'd have said less, the day would've
>been better.

Sigh. I know what you mean. Last night, lying in bed sick, I had the chance to listen to my family and close friends interracting from the *outside* as it were. It was interesting to have that different perspective, completely separate from the emotional hoo-haa of five people trying to get along in a Very small space, four of them tired and hungry, one in the middle of her daily "energy spike". From the outside, it was easy to predict what was going to happen -uh oh, here it comes - ow! hey! no hitting! But I've been in the middle of that scene before and know how hard it is to be there and be concious of what's going on with Mo and help her negotiate the complexities of the moment when I'm tired and hungry and just as overwhelmed by the crowd in the kitchen as she is.

I'm proud of my family (friends included) though. No-one over-reacted, yelled, or tried to lecture Mo. George managed to coax her into the far corner of the living room to cool down (without turning it into a time-out) and then helped her get a snack and choose a computer game to play while the big people had dinner. It wasn't the "perfect" unschooling/ consensual-living scenario where everything gets worked out *before* someone is too overwhelmed - but it did get worked out and smoothed over.

I think one of the things that helped Alot was George treating the hitting as Mo's attempt to communicate her needs and responding to those needs, rather than focussing on the hitting itself. Once those needs were being recognized (even if not all of them were being met) she was able to start using her other tools to communicate.

arrival

2006-12-04T08:21:00.000-05:00

Sunday, Nov 5

Well, he's here. I have two kids.There's still lots of, um, stuff to work through with his mom, so right now, unfortunately, he's staying in school. On the up side, he's happy to be here and we're happy to have him. He has also given me permission to mention him by name [on message boards]- he says he trusts me "not to say anything bad" about him. Poor guy. So welcome to my home: Rayan age 13. Loves skateboarding, computer games and heavy metal music.---Meredith (Mo 5, Rayan 13)

Nov 11
Re: arrival
--- In AlwaysUnschooled@yahoogroups.com, Danielle Conger wrote:>
>>> How are things adjusting?

Well, the Good News is I've caught snippets of his phone conversations with his girlfriend where he's saying how much "better" it is to be at his dad's house - no yelling is the big selling point. Hooray! The less good news relates to his mom - she's out of town for a few weeks so we can't really communicate with her, but for now she wants him in school and his grades "kept up" or "she won't let us keep him". Nice. So we've been hassling with the darn school, which has included scrambling to find clothes, since his mom refused to send any with him. This could turn into a rant pretty quickly, so that's all I'll say on the subject.

On the unschooling side, I've been reminding George to "say yes" at every opportunity and suggesting that maybe we don't really need rules about the phone and computer. We have dial-up and just one line, so the two are directly related. There was one night of confusion with George saying "five more minutes on the phone!" and me asking "why?"but he quickly agreed that as long as we were all communicating our needs we could juggle in one more "user" without making arbitrary rules.

At the moment that means *we* are communicating *our* needs*to* him and trying to remember to ask him what his needs are. He's not used to have his needs be a factor in decision making.We're also trying to work him into the family logistics. Its pretty confusing at the moment - he's used to having no control at all, so we're discovering that (for now, at least) we have to be more proactive with him than we do with Morgan - asking him well in advance what his needs are in terms of food, clothing, supplies, personal hygeine.... I didn't realize teenage boys had such a love of hygeine products :0 I guess I've always hung out with a different kind of guy.

I guess the main thing for now is figuring out how to communicate with someone who has been dictated to - and is still being dictated to eight hours a day. Yuk. I told Jane (Powell) in a private email that I feel like the inverse of an "academic unschooler" - instead of unschooling*only* academics we're trying to unschool everything but.But he says he's happier. And really, its not like there have been any disasters. Just regular snafus, which I'm confident will smooth out with time.

I'm posting more over at CL about specific issues, since they aren't really unschooling related. If anyone knows of a board they think would be a "good fit" for someone with my quirky situation I'll be grateful - or if anyone wants to email me off-list on this topic,that's fine, too.In the meantime, Y'all are my lifeline for the moments when I go into full-scale Catastrophic Thinking Mode - blaaaaahhhh his mom's going to abduct him and we'll never see him again and he'll turn into a serial killer and ufo's will land on our barn and steal the sawmill!!!!Okay, I feel better now.

---Meredith (they would have to be small ufos to land on our barn, so they couldn't fit the sawmill in their cargo area - the drill press,sure....)

Same day, another list:
A sort of ticklish subject has come up with my dss and I'm wondering if anyone has experience or input to offer. Dss injured his knee recently- not badly, but he's been limping. This evening when he came home from school he mentioned that a friend of his had kicked him in his hurt knee. I asked if they had been "horsing around" - Rayan's a pretty active guy and rough trade is pretty normal for him.
"Sort of. I'm N's personal punching bag." I wasn't quite sure how to take that.
"Are you okay with that?"
"Its okay, he's a big guy."
"Well, okay, but are you okay with it - you don't have to get hit if you don't want to."
He started explaining just "how big" the other guy was and I got the impression he was "excusing" the behavior. I didn't really push (I don't think) just reiterated that it was okay to play rough and even hit, as long as it was consensual. I was really trying not to over-react. His mom has a history of abusive relationships and has always "excused" abusive behavior right up to the point when she feels her life is actively threatened. So I'm concerned, but I don't know how to talk about this in a way that is respectful all around. Any thoughts?---Meredith (Mo 5, dss Ray 13)

Replies:

Re: talking about abuse
> Some schools are very good about looking for (workable) solutions to
> bullying,
> and some just make the problem worse.

Oops, I should have been clearer about this. Its not happening at school, but at the other kid's house. This is why I'm expecially concerned - they are friends and I'm afraid that from Ray's perspective this is "normal behavior" between friends, to excuse non-consensual violence. As far as school is concerned, Ray is a "problem kid". I'm not sure they'd believe he was being victimized even if it happened on school property. We're planning on negotiating with his mom to remove him from school, but right now she still has custody so its her decision.

> If your son seems frightened about it you can even let him know
>that in the 'adult' world what is being done to him is illegal and
>that you can help him make it stop if he wants you to. Knowing he
>has backup might go a long way towards helping him feel it is
>something he can handle.

More fear from me, here. The father of his mom's second son hit him a couple times in ways that left bruises. Mom always blamed Ray -blamed him to the point that he believed it and describe the incident to *us* as though he was totally at fault. We offered to call the police on his behalf and he panicked - he's been told over and over that the police are Evil and will Take Him Away and force him to live with "Nasty Christians" (sorry, that's his mom's language).

> So I would ask my son "If you asked him to stop __fill in the
>blank__, would he stop?"

I like this phrasing. Its basically what I'm trying to find out. My impression at this point is that he's putting up with the behavior in order to retain the friend. I don't know what to do about that. I'm soooooo glad he's out of his mom's house and is getting a chance to see people who don't hit each other, scream at each other, verbally abuse each other as a matter of course.

I know Ican't "fix" Ray - that makes me sad sometimes, but I try to keep in mind that just seeing the way George and Mo and I all interact gives him another view of the world.He's feeling the difference already - I've overheard snippits in his evening phone-conversations with his girlfriend and he's telling her its *much* better at his dad's house. No yelling - that's a big deal to him. No fault-finding. He hasn't mentioned the lack of insults, but I'm sure that helps, too.---Meredith (Mo 5, dss Ray 13)

Big changes here!

2006-12-04T08:11:00.000-05:00

Well, everything is topsy-turvey, here, for now. Rayan moved in with us the first week in November, which has meant a ton of shifts and adjustments. Rather than simply write about it here, I'm going to copy some of my posts from my favorite email lists. They give a pretty good idea of what has been going on. Note that these posts are all to unschooling boards, so there's going to be a particular "slant" to the them.

Here's the first post I wrote, way back when:

My stepson is coming to live with us. He's 13 and has been living with his mom for the past five years,visiting us alternate weekends, going to public school. Before that he lived and homeschooled with us four days a week - we weren't unschoolers, then. His mom is pretty controlling, and has decided she can't control him any longer, so he's "our problem". We've asked her to let him stay at her house for another week so we can get ready, but he may come as soon as Monday, if that's what she decides. We haven't even started talking about school/homeschool/unschooling. Its a big transition, and I'm more than a little nervous, to say the least! Its a big change for my family. My biggest fear is that his mom may decide to "involve herself" in our family to a much greater extent and/or demand that we provide some sort of ongoing proof of dss's "education".

Okay, I'm not going to go into "what if" mode.... I'm going to breathe and make yet another list of things that we really want to get done before our itty-bitty house suddenly has a teenager living in it full time. Just to complicate everything further, I have a quilt-show this weekend, in my studio, so our emergency backup plan(move him into my studio) can't be put in motion until After the show.Still breathing.Send me lots of calm energy, y'all. I'm needing it!

Mo's xmas list

2006-11-08T17:00:00.000-05:00

These are things Mo has either asked for directly or enjoyed playing with at someone's house:

Microscope including blank slides
Any kind of "how it works" or "what's inside" book
Marble mazes, especially the ones with gears
Tempera paints (we already have the no-spill cups)
Art supplies in general, but especially paint brushes and paper
Sculpey clay or equivalent
A fishing pole
A dragon costume

I'll update this as she mentions things - last update Nov 9.

Studio tour snippet

2006-11-02T09:37:00.000-05:00

The studio tour is over and went well.

Okay, I'm sort of stressing over everything else in the world, but I really should take a moment to elaborate on that.

The tour went fabulously well. I had another artist sharing my studio - Brianna, a feltworker, who is also considering homeschooling. We got along famously and it was such a relief to have that gigantic space of mine Full! Wheew! In addition, Mirror set up a display table down in the barnyard with some wooden spoons and other craftwork he does. Having him down there kept "the menfolk" out of George's shop - last year we had a problem with them sneaking in to the closed shop and poking around - and gave him the opportunity to sell some stuff.

I sold a quilt that I've had sitting around for years and a handful of small things. George picked up a sawmilling job without even being here. Since I'm feeling flush, I'm going to take quilt money and go buy a trampoline. I had originally intended to use Morgan's prize money - oh, I should explain that, its kind of funny.

While we were out east we went on a "Shop Hop" with Jane - nine fabric stores in one day, if you can imagine. At each store we signed up for drawings etc - and signed Mo up, too. She was so excited! Well, Miss Thing won a sewing machine. I have to admit, my first reaction was "Morgan's Mother won a sewing machine!" but I'm happy to say I was rescued from my own avarice by the fact that its not a machine that's really all that great for quilting. Whew. So Jane offered to have Elena sell it on Ebay - and my Fabulous cousin is working on that. I planned to get a trampoline as Mo's "prize" and put the rest in savings. Now the whole schebang can go in savings (knock wood).

Anyway, the tour is over and went well. I may even do it again - it really was much less of a headache with another artist in the space and a "guard" on the shop.

what o'clock is it? and other random acts of discovery

2006-10-07T10:48:00.000-04:00

D'y'ever have moments when you're going along, just doing one of the things you do everyday, but at the same time looking at yourself from outside saying "hey, look at that!" ? I had one of those moments with Morgan the other day.

I was folding laundry and she was eating cereal. Out of the blue, she asked "what number is 5, 3, 1?" So I told her "five-hundred thirty one" and kept folding laundry.

Okay, this is one of Mo's new games, to fire off a string of numbers and have me tell her what it is. Its just something she does, almost exactly like when she was just wrapping her head around letters and sounds when she would give me strings of letters and want me to pronounce them. With the numbers, on this particular day, she started out adding digets to the end of the string "what's 5311, whats 53111?" and the little "teacher voice" in the back of my head said, okay, we're working on place value, here. Fine. I started writing the numbers down in dry-erase marker on the front of the microwave, which sits on top of the dryer (gotta love dry-erase pens!). Then she asked "what's 631, what's 731?" Okay, still working on place value, but in a different way. "What O'clock is that?" huh? I thought we were doing place value! I looked at the microwave in confusion and noticed the time: 1:37. I told her the time and she frowned at me.

I went and got the "practice clock" - its one where you move the minute hand and the hour hand moves, too. I set that to the same time as the digital on the microwave. In the past I've tried explaining that the numbers mean something different for the "big hand" but she hasn't been interested, so this time I offered to get my new watch to look at, too. Its analog and it has the minutes written in tiny little numbers around the outside (and its pink with lots of buckles, in case you wanted to know).

She looked at the watch and the clock and the microwave.
"I want to write two o'clock" she announced. I moved the laundry basket and handed her the dry-erase pen. She wrote 2 12 and then went and set the practice clock to the correct time, short hand pointing at the two, long hand to the 12.
"Well, this is how this clock will say it" it pointed to the microwave's clock and wrote 2:00 above it, saying "o'clock" as I wrote the zeros. "The dots tell us its a time."
"I want to write it again!" I handed back the pen. She wiped out all the numbers and wrote: 00:2 and next to it "too oclook" I pronounced the oclook for her so she could hear the "oo" and changed the second o to a c - which she made a joke about, but she's seen ck's plenty of times in books, and I know she's aware of that spelling convention. Her attention shifted to playing with words and sounds, another favorite game. Math lesson over.

The only thing - the only thing - at all out of the ordinary, was me having a little "moment". Mo and I were doing what we always do. I was just watching myself doing it, as if from the outside.

I've been reading about natural learning for years, now, and thought I'd "gotten" it. I thought it was all about teachable moments. But the more I actually do it, the more it seems like there really aren't any teachable moments. Mo just keeps on learning, and sometimes she involves me. I can turn that into a "teachable moment" but most of the time she actually seems to learn more, or derive a better understanding, if I don't try to do that. Offer up another tool or another tidbit of information, sure, but if she's not interested, let it alone. She'll come to it in her own way.

I've been rereading the section on "strewing" over at Sandra Dodd's site and came across this:
http://sandradodd.com/connections
Its about learning and cognition, from the perspective of someone committed to discovery based learning at home. It reminds me of the online montessori course I took this spring - there was an assignment about "lesson expansions" or some such thing and I kept wishing I had a gigantic piece of paper to fill with circles and arrows and webs of connectivity rather than a computer screen. Homeschooling with Morgan looks alot like one of those diagrams - she doesn't so much go off on tangents as make lots and lots of different connections, and I never know where we're going to end up. Even when she's really focussed on one thing - and she's good at that! - she'll make some comment, or start singing to herself, or something, and I'll see her putting things together in a way I hadn't expected. Is that what they call "synergy", in the business world: one and one making three? That's what Mo's process looks like most days.

administrative details

2006-10-04T22:01:00.000-04:00

Okay, I have uploaded travel pix of our trip East, but since I started that post a couple weeks ago you'll have to scroll down past my little ramble on educational theory. Just so's ya know what's what. Sorry for the confusion.

accomplishment and choice

2006-10-04T21:49:00.000-04:00

This is from one of the message boards I'm on - its pretty much a ramble on the subject of discovery-based learning, kind of a sample of "where I'm coming from" in terms of educational theory, right now:

--- "Rob Andersen"
wrote:
>> My underlying point is that I feel that real accomplishment, that
requires
> thought, effort and perseverance in what ever field, has a great
value. That
> is: facing the possibility of failure and achieving a goal has an
impact and
> the more difficult the struggle the more profound impact on a person.

My reply:

I think you make a great point here when you bring up "the possibility
of failure". One of the differences between "school-type" learning
and "natural learning" that John Holt talks about is that school prioritizes
success, whereas real life learning has a lot to do with failure - not
just in the sense of "we learn from our mistakes", but that a great
deal of learning arrises out of a willingness to take risks - a
*willingness* to fail or at least acheive less than total sucess.
What's amazing about this (from the school pov) is that this process
of risking failure in order to learn is filled with joy.

I think a big factor in this is choice. Because I didn't choose to do
outdoor activities and my input was never sought or encouraged, I
really had no means of feeling a sense of accomplishment. For me,
talking my family into doing something else (even just leaving me in
the car!) gave me a feeling of success.

This is one of the things that draws me to unschooling, the idea that
individuals are given the opportunity to decide *which* obstacles they
will tackle, *which* risks to take, be they physical, social,
intellectual, whatever. That's one of the challenges (one of the
risks, if you will) of unschooling - to attempt to think *beyond* our
own understanding of what is valuble and see what our children value,
especially when those values differ.

> the more difficult the struggle the more profound impact on a person.

I'm not disagreeing with the statement, just noting that choice is the
key issue. I'm in the process of designing and piecing quilts made of
curved shapes. Its the most challenging type of piecing - most
quilters don't try curves. They're just too dang hard. I love it. Love
the challenge of drawing something and then figuring out how to
actually make the impossible thing I've imagined.

This past week at the skate park I saw my kid do something she rarely
does - she "shushed" another kid. The other kid wanted to play. Mo
wanted to skate. She wanted to go down every ramp in the park, over
and over until she could do it without falling. I don't skate, but I
could relate to the passion, and the willingness to fall on her ass,
over and over, and the joy that came from doing it.

---Meredith (Mo 5)

Travel Pix

2006-09-24T14:40:00.000-04:00

Well, its taken a little time to get them all uploaded, but here are a few of the pix from our travels to CT and RI. Aunty and Grandma Jan should both be pleased to learn that I have deleted the candids Mo took of y'all's backsides! The evidence is gone forever. Of course, I didn't even have the camera with me for the Really fun photo-op: Mo "teaching yoga" to Liz and Lynn - what a hoot that was! Thanks for being so accomodating!

Learning to Juggle

2006-08-24T14:45:00.000-04:00

Okay, so I'm learning to juggle. Never done it before. I've tried and gotten to the 2ball thing but haven't been able to transition to 3. Mirror, at the Hollow, has taught juggling in the past and agreed to help me out. Okay, fine. I'm learning to juggle. My kid, of course, is going me one better and learning to pass clubs. Yeah. Here is the Mo Method for learing how to juggle:

Step one: locate professional juggler. Between the three faerie comms and visitors, this is the easy part. We are crawling with them.

Step two: when the juggler starts juggling (and they always do), run up with an abundance of excitement and jump up and down to get his/her attention. The juggler will throw something at you - jugglers find excited children totally irresitstable and -unless s/he is juggling something dangerous- will invariably toss an object to the child.

Step two and a half (optional): catch it

Step three: throw it back. Jugglers love this. They even seem to enjoy the fact that young, excited children aren't very acurate (like my spelling). They will play this game over and over and over.

That's it. The basic Mo Method. Its just a matter of her learning to catch, and she'll be passing balls and clubs. She'll probably be passing sickles and torches before she's done. Now we're talking about putting up a slack-line somewhere, so with that, juggling, and the trapeze (did I tell you we've been offered trapeze lessons this fall?) she'll be ready to go to circus camp in a couple years.

Seriously, though, my so-called "shy kid" astonished me at a party this summer by getting a juggler to pass clubs to her. She was out of her regular space and he was a complete stranger (and male, besides) - all things that generally will cause her to refuse to even make eye-contact. But There She Was! Talking happily to a wild hooligan with a bunch of clubs.

Not 5, no way.

2006-08-19T10:16:00.000-04:00

We didn't have a birthday party for Morgan. She was adamant that she didn't want a birthday, doesn't want to be 5 at all. She'll just wait another year and then turn 6. George says she's 4 and 2/2. Okay.

We went to a general August bday party up on Short Mountain, and that was fine. One of the guys got a pink unicorn stick-pony that he offered to Mo. She was delighted and has been composing a thank you/ bday card for him. It amazes me how many words she can spell on her own, now.

I've uploaded the pic of the Owl and Pussycat quilt. I'm really happy with it and am working on more in a similar style. I was sooooo reluctant to do the competition thing at all, but doing this quilt has really sparked some ideas for me. For some reason it hadn't occurred to me to use fairy tales, fables and myths as subject matter. Go figure. Anyway, right now I'm working on a piece with a heron and frogs (looking for the fable, its here somewhere), the Crow and Pitcher, and the Tortoise and Hare. Plus the big green thing with the three kids and the bubbles. I've given up any expectation of having finished pieces for sale at the Studio Tour - if I can have a bunch of really exciting things in progress that will be fine. Especially if I can get some decent commissions.

Oh, I also had this wild idea the other day of a use for one of the partially finished quilt tops I have on hand. I thought, well, I can quilt it really simply - just a grid or something - and then slash through the middle, tack the cut ends back and have Another quilt underneath. Maybe even "wrapping" onto the backs of the folded-back bits - as if one quilt were sort of exploding out of another. I'll have to think hard about this one. It sounds like a lot of fun or a royal pain in the ass. Maybe both. Hmmmmm.

We're starting to get ready to go out of town again - this time East! I'm looking forward to seeing Jane and Jan, in particular. Morgan got so excited about the idea the other night she packed her suitcase. I'm still at the doing laudry and making lists stage.

The heat is really doing a number on me this year. I sort of fell apart at one point. Stressing out over money doesn't help either. The new AC is helping alot. Interestingly, the other thing that is helping is for me to take a vitamin before going to bed. I usually take them in the morning, but I've been so lethargic this summer! The worst has been falling into bed early and then sleeping late - I kept missing the cool parts of the day. But if I take a vitamin at night I wake up by 6 and can get stuff done in the cool. Its just the opposite of what I'd always been told about vitamins - which is that they don't do any good at all if taken at night. So much for expert advice.

Speaking of.... I've been hanging out alot on some of the unschooling message boards, and thinking about archiving some of my better posts here. I've been a little nervous about that - y'all are getting used to the idea of us homeschooling (I think) but some of the unschooling stuff is pretty radical. OTOH, most of my "better posts" include anecdotes about Morgan. We'll see. I'm going to go through my files and see what I have saved, anyway.

2006-07-24T19:12:00.000-04:00

My goodness, I've fallen behind, haven't I? We've been such social butterflies, lately, I hardly recognize us. Parties and gatherings and get-togethers.... Well, really the big thing is Mo and I have been spending more time than ever up at the Pumpkin Hollow community. Its been sooooooo hot, and they have the pool - so we have gone up every day and some days twice! to play in the water and cool off. They have more shade over their house, too, which means even hanging out on the porch is better than being in our own house. Phew!

We've all (Mo, George and I) gotten a lot closer to two of the residents there: Shiloh and Mirror. George has been enjoying playing music with them (mostly Shiloh, pictured above - dangitall I forgot to rotate it, but you get the idea) and we've been cooking dinner for each other. Its nice to have regular company at our house - I actually have some motivation to clean, and even managed to get rid of the huge pile of junk that had taken over our dining table. "So this must be the dining room...."

The pix above are both inside the new shop extension - its really coming along nicely. Now we're fantasizing about a house extension. Morgan has started sleeping downstairs by herself off and on. She really wants to keep one of the kittens, and I think George is sweet on the idea, too. He's pretty cuddley - the kitten, I mean, although George is pretty dang cuddley himself. That means only the two black kittens to get rid of - Morgan has finally agreed that that's a good idea. We'd better get on the ball while they're still little and cute. I should also get on the ball about cleaning out Morgan's room upstairs. It kind of got to the "disaster" point in terms of cleanliness (or rather, lack thereof) and I just haven't had the Oomph to deal with it. It has a lot of wasps and spiders - those fat juicy spiders that the wasps just love. Yes, its that time of year, again, when you don't want to startle the wasps - not for fear of a sting, but b/c they drop the icky anaesthetized spider on the floor, bed, pizza, whatever they happen to be flying over. Yummy.

Morgan's galpal, Savannah, turned six a couple weeks ago so her mom and I have been chatting alot about legal stuff in regards to homeschooling. Six is when you have to start reporting to the state, in TN. There's a law that kids attending public school can't go straight into first grade - kindergarden is now mandetory. Considering that only K teachers need any more than a bare-bones teaching certificate, that's probably the best year of education a lot of kids will get in this state. Anyway, we have both been wondering if that meant we had to sign up our six year olds (I'm not reporting until next year) as gradeK the first year. Lots of homeschoolers do this anyway as a way of dealing with the mandatory testing issue - kids basically get an extra year to get ready. Then, if you really want to buck the system, you can also have your kids "skip" a grade - say, 5th grade, when the testing is done. Very popular. Don't know if we'll go there or not. Mo's reading at approximately a first grade level already, so I'm not exacty worried. If I get so PO'd at the state of TN that I don't want Mo tested at all (at this point I'm not sure what the harm would be, at least she'd get experience with standardized testing) I'll do what Luann is doing and use an "Umbrella School". No testing at all if you go that route. Just fill out their attendence forms instead of the state's. Incidentally, we discovered the law only applies to public school, not private or home. Its only an issue if you try to enroll a kid in public school for first grade - if you try to enroll directly into second they'll test the kid, but not for first. Dontcha love bureaucracy?

Mo Artwork

2006-07-04T00:22:00.000-04:00

I couldn't resist putting up some of Mo's latest - she seems to be having an explosion of artistry. This house is one of my favorites - she's drawn an entire "village" worth - all very colorful and fun. I'm tempted to use them as patterns for quilt blocks. We'll see how that goes. The other is a Shopping list, carefully detailing the colors of gumballs she would like to buy. You can see where she has written the words: red, purple, blue, pink, orange. She needed help spelling purple and orange, but the rest was all on her own.

art with animals

2006-06-30T12:02:00.000-04:00

Morgan has been enjoying reading to the kittens and also photographing them - both areas where kitten cooperation is not always guaranteed! So far no kittens have been (seriously) harmed in the process. Here's one of her pix, and also one of her reading - the amorphous black mass on the chair is a pile of kittens.

Today Mo made play-dough, basically by herself, although I prompted her a little with reading the recipe. This evening, there not being enough to make a giraffe (she got the head, neck and body, but only three legs) she decided to sculpt a kitten. They are much smaller, she explained to me, so there would be enough "clay". Its so humid that even though we had a decent consistency dough this am by evening it was nearly the consistency of pudding. Not the best material for sculpture, but she did manage to create a reasonable kitten before it melted. We'll try again tomorrow.

Our other animal art adventure this evening involved salamanders. I'm not sure what promted this - oh, I am informed that one of Mo's coloring books has a salamander and she wanted to know what color they are. George offered to look the subject up on the computer, and found a site with lots of pix of different kinds of salamanders, Mo selected one to use as a template. Once she had the critter colored in - George was still browsing the site, it was nearly dinner time, after all - she wanted to look at more, and found this guy with the black polka-dots on a red suit.

Cute, eh? Definately an outfit I would wear. So she snatched up pencil and paper and proceeded to draw - I just had to share.

She needed help coloring in some of the leaves - there are so many! - but otherwise its a Mo original. I love both the mid-ribs on the leaves and the smile on the salamander.

Beautiful day in the holler

2006-06-25T18:04:00.000-04:00

Summer solstice was this week so our merry neighbors, the Pumpkin Hollow Community, had their annual celebration starting mid week and lasting through the weekend. Lots of fun fun fun! Actually, this was also my work-week at the Morningside food buying club, so I wasn't able to really "attend" in the sense of hanging out there all the darn time. That worked well for me, none-the-less. I burn out on parties pretty quickly. So I alternated working and fest-ting.

Highlights of the fun included a swimming trip to a local state rec area, where Mo had an absolutely wonderful time swimming and playing in the lake with a bunch of people she didn't know or barely knew. That was exciting for me to see. One of the neighborly Pumpkins, Shiloh, has been building a nice little friendship with Mo. About a month ago we were up there helping clear out their spring and the two hit it off big time. Shiloh is fairly quiet, not in-yer-face at all, which is just right for Morgan, and they were soon neck deep in the (empty) old catch-basin, scrubbing slime off the walls together - a perfect job for a little kid - and having a blast. Since then they have captured fireflies together, played "monster" and generally hung out. So, once I pooped out at the lake Shiloh was into paddling around after Mo and they ended up across the water from me with a group of festies, two of them kids but mostly adults, singing and playing together. Very nice to see.

Other fun stuff: the ubiquitous mud bath, for which one of our local potters donated some old clay, so my skin and hair are feeling really soft today, much singing of Shiloh's new songs, drinking various home-brews ala Mirror, Viva's Indian dinner, and various adults-only activities in the barn....

Today I'm home doing catch-up housekeeping and Laundry! Phew. It hasn't rained for awhile so we had started to conserve water by not doing laundry at home, but it poured something fierce the other day (boy am I glad I wasn't camping) and our tank is overflowing, so awashing we will go! I'm caught up on necessaries and onto odds and ends - like winter stuff that can get packed away as soon as its washed.

And of course, drinking white wine - this summer's favorite is Pinot Grigiot. The wine class I took voted it "easy to drink too much of". Goes great with housework, blogging and fried summer squash. Yummm.

Trip to WI

2006-06-19T17:11:00.000-04:00

Wouldn't ya know, I go away for a week and it takes me a week to recover. Well, I did have some catching up to do, I suppose. Some of the Pumkin Hollow Comm neighbors came down and kept my garden tidy for me, which was a good thing. The weeds outside the garden are pretty fierce already. Onions and garlic were ready to harvest, though, and lots of peas. Just starting to have basil and summer squash. No tomatoes yet. I've got my eye on those. First fried green tomatoes of the season should be coming soon! Yummmmmm.

Y'all can see a bit of what Morgan was up to on this trip. Lora and Mike have a great big yard that was perfect for kid-play. No sandbox, but some nice dirt and freshly mown grass to play in. Fun, fun, fun. Mo took a liking to Mike right away - pretty unusual for her - and they got to play together a couple times, although he had to work for the most part. Lora's unemployed right now, which meant we got to hang out all week long. Woooo Hooooo! I just love hanging out with Lora. Morgan enjoyed playing with her, too, mostly with the help of feathered cat toys. I hope the cats had a good time.

We kept things pretty low-key, for the most part. Did some shopping - Lora took me to a place called "Dig-n-save". Ooooooh. Aaaaaaahh. It was wonderful. Among other things I found an old-fashioned scooter for Mo - the wheels on the new ones are so tiny I've been afraid they'd just stick on our half-step-up-from-gravel road. This one has larger, bike-style wheels. Needs new tires, but hopefully that won't be a problem. Mike and Lora picked up a bike for Mo at a yardsale before we got there, so she was able to learn to pedal it around on their patio (she's really struggled doing it on our yicky little road) which was a big thrill. That came home, too. I'm so glad we took the truck! Boy, was it packed coming home. We made a dressform, too, Lora and I. Which is to say, she made the dress form. I stood still while she wrapped me in duct-tape. It seems to have survived the trip home okay.

Starting to think about the trip East, now. I'm still kicking around different ideas - like maybe coming after Labor day instead of in August. I'm also considering making some stops on the way to visit friends I've made online. We'll see about that. Anyone have a preference for beginning of Aug vs September? I'm really leaning toward September, the more I think about it. Kids will be back in school by then, but the weather will still be good enough for some fun trips - Mo has a request for a beach, and maybe a zoo and it would be nice to not have to fight the summer crowds. Lemme know what you think, Grandma Jan and Aunty Jane!

Glad to be home for now.

on the road

2006-06-03T19:08:00.000-04:00

We drove from Dismal to Michigan City, IN yesterday. Not too bad a trip - it took us about 9 hours all told. Mo's a fabulous road-tripper. We bought a bunch of new coloring books, mazes, and dot-to-dots for the trip, and I packed a whole bunch of her books - pretty much anything I've seen her reading on her own, so she could read in the truck. She was cool with that, and driving the truck (a late decision, the fuel injector on the car is being weird) let her sit next to me and be able to reach all her books and snacks by herself. Made for a fairly smooth trip.

We had one little rough spot where I hit some traffic and she wanted me to look at something. I snarled and snapped and Mo proceeded (once she'd cooled off a little) to draw a picture of herself with a big frown on her face and a giant red X. Pretty clear message, there. Lately Mo and George have been talking about anger-management, which is very interesting. He had kind of a blow-up with his saw mill several weeks ago and did a lot of yelling before he cooled off, and apparantly it caught Mo's attention in a big way, so that she actually asked him about it. So they've been chatting on the subject of how they can deal with anger and frustration. There was a small incident last week where Mo was frustrated with a computer game and went and pet the kittens for awhile to calm herself down before going and turning the computer off. Its just fascinating to watch her working on this.

We're taking a day to chill out at my dad's house before heading up to WI and my friend Lora's house. It's been nice and mellow for the most part. There are two other kids here, Jake and Aaron - I'm not sure their exact ages, but Jake's a couple years older and Aaron a couple years younger than Mo, I believe. The kids have gotten along really well (for the most part). They've all been pretty wired to have a new kid to play with - in Mo's case two!

My fabulous dad (hi!) got a portable dvd player for us! Wooo Hooo! I'm very excited. If necessary I can tuck Mo out of the way at Lora's house with a movie while we all hang out being weird grown-ups, plus it will be handy in the car, plus other travel adventures... And! it will be handy for visiting up at the Pumpkin Hollow community. We've started going up there for dinner on a more regular basis, but I've been reluctant to bring Mo too terribly often as adult dinners can be long, dull affairs from her perspective. Now I have more options. Thanks, Dad.

cat pix

2006-05-29T09:33:00.000-04:00

Here are some pix. My phone-hook-up is not cooperating well enough for more:
So, for starters we have the pix of "Mama Lumpy-Shiver," as she is now called, having her kittens with Mo and George in attendence. Mama was a stray kitten Mo and I brought home about a year ago who just loves Morgan to bits, despite Mo's attempts to love her to bits (ahem!). Anyway, Mama was just thrilled to have her humans on hand - even came running to check on Mo when she tripped on the way to the bathroom and cried a little. It was cute. The cat let Mo and George handle the babies as soon as they had dried off. Mo was thrilled. I think George was, too.

Ever since, Mo has been vigilant about making sure Mama Lumpy is spending plenty of "quality time" with her babies. She likes to hunt out the poor cat whenever she sneaks away to have a little down-time and plunk her right back in the cardboard box with the kittens. It was driving me nuts at first, but I have since seen George do the exact same thing, so I'm letting it go.

Thanks to all this feeding, the kittens are growing and George and I have been trading some rough humor about how big they need to be to feed to Killian (our charming corn snake) and whether it might not be the most cost-effective way to keep him fed. He's in his somewhat frantic spring mode, right at the moment, so I'm not sure he'll eat anything at all.
Naturally, Morgan has drawn endless pictures of cat with kittens ever since the big event. Somewhere I have one that says "one cat and four kittens makes five". Great. Now they are math-manipulatives. I hope this doesn't mean we need 100 of them! Counting to 100 is her latest passion - with occasional forays into the thousands just for fun, it seems.

new links

2006-05-29T09:19:00.000-04:00

Lots of new posts this weekend!

I'm learning more about this blog-thingy every day, it seems. One thing I have just learned is that if I post something I've been working on as a draft for awhile it posts based on the date I started it - hasn't really been an issue, yet, but I'll have to keep an eye out for that in the future - I have a few things floating around as drafts right now. If something ends up posting "out of order" as it were, I'll try to let y'all know. I'm definately going to have to try it once a couple months go by and there are "archives" just to see how that works.Hmmmmm.

Anyway, I've also figured out how to add links. For starters I put up some basic homeschool stuff in case anyone is interested. I should probably put my website there, but it hasn't been updated in over a year, and I don't really know what to do about that. Hmmm. If y'all want me to link to any of y'all's personal blogs or websites, let me know.

running in circles, as usual

2006-05-28T22:00:00.000-04:00

Morgan's cat had kittens a week ago (sunday)! Four little cuties. I've been trying to get pix up all week to no avail. *&^%@! computers!
As soon as I get the darn things to load, I will tell more cute kid and kitten stories.

I've been running in circles all week, it seems. Nothing has gone 100% right unless it has been something completely spontaneous. All planned activities have gone awry. Just one of those weeks.

I'm starting to get ready to go up to WI with Mo next week, stopping to visit my dad on the way up. I'm looking forward to it, but I'm nervous, too. We didn't go anywhere last year so I feel like I'm out of practice travelling and visiting and all. I ordered a bunch of books for Mo for the trip - mazes and hidden pictures and several coloring books. I've been fantasizing about getting a portable DVD player, but I don't think the budget will support that even with my tax return. I still want to go out east later in the summer - probably the beginning of August. I've been trying to get my gf, Luann, to schedule her trip to Maine at the same time so I can ride with her and share the driving, but she's not sure she'll have the money to go anywhere - her house and camper got totally smashed by baseball-size hail a month ago and the insurance isn't wanting to pay as much as she would like. We'll see. Maybe I can find a nice Faerie with a driver's liscence who doesn't feel like hitchhiking.....

Okay, I'm rambling. Its past my bedtime.

five love langs links

2006-05-26T14:52:00.000-04:00

Just for fun, I'm posting a link to a short test for these.
http://www.fpgwebs.com/fivelovelang_profile.asp
It doesn't give an overview of the languages, though.

This one gives a brief overview as pertains to children (same one I posted elsewhere):
http://www.mc.maricopa.edu/dept/d46/psy/dev/Spring99/schoolage/love.html

Here's one pertaining to adult relationships/marriage:
http://www.herald-of-hope.org/fivelove.html

Just thought I'd put it all in one place.----Meredith

montessori stuff: socialization w/o punishment

2006-05-26T14:45:00.000-04:00

Dealing with Mo in social situations has really forced me to think about rewards and punishments from a different angle. Generally, when adults speak to Mo she looks away, hides her face and refuses to answer. The usual responses to this kind of behavior have always seemed very punitive to me - I was "the shy kid", and I definately felt punished, shamed, by the condescending "oh, she's just shy" comments. Even worse were the attempts to "draw me out" - those were like some kind of torture. On top of it all, the constant reinforcement of my in-ability prevented me from actually learning social skills. It was only living in community that I discovered that I was not "socially backward" and started to grow. So when Mo started showing signs of the same sorts of tendency, I struggled to find a different way of reacting.
The first time I read The Montessori Method I knew I had found what I was looking for. Scanning my marginal notes in chapter 5 I find a big YES! scrawled next to this passage:
The child, because of the peculiar characteristics of helplessness with which he is born, and because of his qualities as a social individual is circumscribed by bonds which limit his activity.
An educational method that shall have liberty as its basis must intervene to help the child to a conquest of these various obstacles. In other words, his training must be such as shall help him to diminish, in a rational manner, the social bonds which limit his activity.
Little by little, as the child grows in such an atmosphere, his spontaneous manifestations will become more clear, with the clearness of truth, revealing his nature. For all these reasons, the first form of educational intervention must tend to lead the child toward independence.
From: The Montessori Method (1912) by Maria Montessori, translated by Anne Everett George. New York: Frederick A. Stokes Company, 1912. pp.95.
http://digital.library.upenn.edu/women/montessori/method/method-V.html
This describes so well my experience. With Mo I have been working to do as Dr Montessori suggests - to lead her toward independence, rather than demanding performance and shackling her with "social bonds". Below are a couple of anecdotes that I hope will demonstrate how this looks in real life.
The other day our new neighbor came by to introduce himself and while chatting he asked Morgan a question. I don't recall the precise question, only that it was atypically respectful for an adult speaking to a young child - for example, "how do you like living here?" as opposed to "how old are you?". Morgan looked away and didn't answer. Generally in this sort of situation I would wait a moment -long enough for her to answer if she chose, but not too long - and then return to the conversation or change the subject. No explanation to the other adult - because I remember what those explanations "felt like" hearing them as a child. What impressed me about this gentleman was his reaction: he imediately appologized to Mo in the most natural way possible, saying: "I didn't mean to put you on the spot there, you don't have to answer me." It was exactly the kind of thing one would say to another adult if one suddenly realized one had asked a rather inappropriate question. We (adults) returned to our conversation. Less than five minutes later Morgan had become a part of the conversation, too, in such a seamless and natural way that I can't even remember the details. She joined the conversation the way anyone would - a word here, a comment there, until we were all chatting away merrily. Given the liberty to behave normally, rather than being shamed for how "abnormal" her reaction was, she was able to express a "spontaneous manifestation" of the propper social forms.
A few days later an incident occured in the library that sharply contrasted, for me, the difference between the Montessori ideal and "traditional" education.
Morgan was sitting in the young-childrens' section of the library looking at books when another child approached. This girl was perhaps a year or two older, and clearly a school-child. What struck me most was her furtiveness. She practically snuck up to Mo, glanced at her out of the corner of her eyes but sat down within touching distance. Mo imediately looked up and said "Hi, my name is Morgan. Would you like to look at some books with me?" Picture-perfect friendly social behavior (and in the appropriate low tones for a library, this mom was very impressed!). The other girl responded tentatively and with a minute the two were chatting quietly about books and characters, reading passages to each other - you couldn't have imagined a better example of how we would all like children to behave with regard to reading.
Suddenly the girl's mother swooped down: "What are you doing here? These books are for babies! Stop talking and go pick out a book from the big-kid section!" The child slunk away, head down, her joy in the library diminished. It was shocking. I'm sure the other mom had the best intentions in the world, but she had not observed the girls' interaction and saw only misbehavior, which she corrected sharply.
It got me thinking about the word homeschoolers usually flinch at: socialization. The girl was being "socialized" by certain standards. She had been told to pick out a book, so spontaneous social activity was inadmissible. It didn't matter that she was socializing about literature - probably the other parent would not have believed such a thing possible. Children socialize about games and toys, not books and reading - they have to be "taught" to discuss literature, they certainly don't do it spontaneously (the common wisdom). Since Morgan is not being socialized in this manner she is Free to develop genuine relationships on a wide variety of topics. Because she was surrounded by books, it was natural for her to engage in a discussion of childrens' literature with another person. It would not have occurred to her to discuss her favorite toy in such an environment - to her it would have seemed inappropriate.
Morgan has the libery to behave spontaneously in social situations, and as Montessori describes above, I am slowly seeing her social behavior become "clear, with the clearness of truth." She is increasingly aware of social forms and conventions, as I hope these examples also show, but she is unhampered by restrictions or punishments. Its inspiring just watching her sometimes!
---Meredith (Morgan 4.5)

Kittens!

2006-05-22T20:08:00.000-04:00

This past Sunday, Morgan's cat "Lumpy-Shiver" had four kittens. It was a day of high excitement for Mo, as you can imagine! The day began with the cat trailing around after Morgan, meowing for no apparent reason. She would let Mo pick her up and cuddle her for a minute, then want to get down and wander around the house for awhile, then she'd be back meowing... George and I finally decided she was in labor and he bustled around in proper daddy-fashion finding a cardboard box while Mo went and pillaged the rag collection for bedding. The cat got the idea immediately - apparently cats are genetically wired to have their babies in cardboard boxes, because she climbed right in and got down to business. Morgan and George spent the day with Lumpy, watching the kitties being born. They were both delighted.

Anyone need a cat?

Today (Monday) Morgan has been ever-so-solicitous of "Mamma Lumpy" and her babies, reading them stories, writing and singing little songs to them and scolding Lumpy whenever the babies cry and she doesn't immediately come running. This has all been going on in the "guest room" (actually, I think it would be better termed a "guest closet", but I don't want to scare y'all away). The weather has been icky (still), so I'm glad Mo has something to occupy her, but she has been getting a bit antsy. George had a few errands to run today and took her along, but I can tell she needs to do some running and climbing. Hopefully the rain will abate for a day or two and she can work off some energy.

What that kid is up to

2006-05-15T16:47:00.000-04:00

Here are some of Morgan's recent projects. This is "A happy mommy turtle full of eggs," according to Mo. She has been very interested in eggs and things that lay them. A couple weeks ago the creek was full of frogs, first singing (Loudly! spring is NOT quiet in the country, let me tell ya!) and then stacked one on top of the other -which makes them much easier for a curious little person to catch! So naturally we have been observing the frog life-cycle. Right now we have a fish-tank full of tadpoles that she checks several times a day to see if they have grown legs yet. Today our turtle (Rex, alive and well after three winters!) is swimming in their tank and we are wondering if he eats tadpoles. There are certainly plenty, if he does.

The map is another of Mo's creations - she periodically draws maps of things, usually when we are getting ready to go somewere. She drew a long map of "the way to the pet store" on a roll of clear contact paper - unfortunately she used a "dry erase" pen, and it.... well, erased when she rolled it up! But this map is in magic marker on a very large sheet of paper - its Pumpkin Hollow Road, of course! Mo and I are standing next to our house (I don't know where George was, that day). At one end of the road is the all-important Trampoline. Almost at the other end is something right in the middle of the road itself - that's a trailer that got stuck one day, blocking the entire road and part of the creek for hours. I guess it made an impression on her.

She's a big fan of goats in general and this story in particular and decided to write the title on her chalkboard. She's terribly self-motivated. I use a Montessori technique when she wants to know how to write a word - writing it out on a slip of paper for her. She's pretty "aware" of phonics - for a long time she loved to write "nonsense" words and ask us to pronounce them for her (still does, but now she corrects our pronounciation!), which I think was her private method for learning about letters and sounds. I haven't pushed it, don't ask her to "sound things out" or anything, although I will pronounce words very clearly when writing them for her and comment on irregularities. This week she started writing short phrases with a mix of words she asked me to write and words she remembered - oh! I finally get to be "Mom" if only on paper! "Meredith", I have been told, has too many letters. Fine by me. The dot-things in between the letters are deliberate - a pretty common technique some young kids use to indicate spaces. Mostly she seems to use them if the words are very close together.

I got this dress form when the fabric store I was working at closed (the Big cutting counter in the background, too) - its more for display than actual sewing, but it has a nice cloth cover that Mo likes to sew things onto. Another of my little Montessori-isms is to give her "real tools" - for sewing projects I let her use my scissors and real needles. She's very careful and serious when she sews - measuring things before cutting them and holding both the needle and scissors correctly. Occasionally we sew together on the machine, too, with her pushing the pedal and me doing the "feeding". She's good at anticipating when to slow down and stop, but doesn't feel up to handling the fabric as well as the pedal, yet. She has a hammer and saw, too, but also has George's tendency to just leave things wherever (I, of course, would never do such a thing!)*g*.

I've been studying a lot of Montessori theory, lately, some of which is pretty radical. I had assumed Monessori was just for pre-school, but it goes right on up through high-school. Not very many of those around - you're lucky to find an elemetary school. Its pretty impressive, all based around the idea of kids as autonomous learners, working in collaboration with others (kids and adults). Fun stuff. I'm taking a course on-line at the moment and have been amazed at how much of her research (from over 100 yrs ago!) into learning is being validated by modern brain research. Of course, unlike Piaget (don't get me started!) she had a decent sample space - hundreds of kids from a wide variety of backgrounds.

I've also been happy to discover that a lot of the "materials" associated with Montessori learning are designed to allow a classroom to mimic an enriched home environment - not a problem for me. The science stuff, especially, is something we do almost entirely hands-on - like our froggy friends, but also periodic "experiments". I found a site called "How to Teach Science" which has a lot of interesting ideas for implementing math and science learning into the early years. Mostly stuff I have been doing already, but I did put up a Periodic Table (next to our 100s chart) for reference. We've even used it a few times already.

We don't register for homeschool until next year, but I definately feel like we're "doing it" already. Mo's reading more and more on her own, writing, counting to 1000, basic operations (add, subtract, fractions) up to about 12, general science, practical life, grace and courtesy (more Montessori stuff). Homeschool group meets fridays at the park, play-date with her buddy Savannah (another hs'er, and one that's definately Morgan's speed) on saturdays, regular visits to the guys at Morningwood Farm, which wants her to design some letterhead for them.... we keep busy, that's for sure.

I know eveyone worries about the "socialization" thing, but I've been researching this subject for almost six years now, and even the NEA is starting to admit that homeschooled kids are Not behind socially and actually seem to have comparable to better self-esteem. Frankly, having met more hs'ers and watching the differences between hs and ps kids (that's homeschool and public school) I have been noticing that hs kids are more willing to accept new kids into a group and are also better at introducing themselves to new people, tend to be more polite, and seem better at sharing and group problem solving- skills I'm definately interested in promoting in Morgan. She's really very good with other kids - very socially ept, that is, and also with adults who treat her like a person. Adults who speak in that silly "poodle voice" or start off by demanding personal information (how old are you!) she doesn't speak to, and that's fine with me.

Woops, got off on a rant, there. With big age 5 coming up we're starting to get that question, and of course everyone has to say something about socialization until I just want to scream. If any of Y'all actually want to do some research of your own, fine by me. Here's a place to start:

http://homeschooling.gomilpitas.com/

Great big site with a zillion links and resources.

A note about "comments" before I go, since there has been some confusion (by me as well): to post a comment, click the word "comments" at the end of this post. I believe it is in green and has a number next to it. Apparently the "invitation" I sent out was to be able to post on the blog, so those of you who have figured that out will be deleted (well, really, all of you will be deleted, but only 2 of you are likely to notice anything). When you post a "comment" I get an email telling me what you said, and it gets recorded here on the blog. If you want to read others' comments, click that little green word. Tha's all fer now!

Sneaking into the new millenium

2006-05-11T13:08:00.000-04:00

I keep meaning to send mail, send pictures, send artwork, send cards - you wouldn't believe the number of cards Mo and I have bought, written in and never sent! Yikes. So I'm going to try this blog thing. Can't be too hard, right? We'll see.

Well, I see several problems, right away. Sigh. I'll get it right eventually.

I've set this up so all y'all can see what we're up to and chat about it without all the hassle of trying to figure out who's awake when and what phone to use, so please let me know (via comments) that you've stopped by. I'll get an email telling me someone commented. If this thing won't let you make a comment, let me know so I can add you to the list - I'm not interested in the free world commenting on my life, but supposedly I get to have some control over this, so only "invitees" get to make comments.

Looks like this is going to be a little rough at first, especially figuring out how to do the pix the way I want. Somehow I'm going to set this up so George can post, too - we'll see how that goes - you can see what he's been doing up at the top there (the middle pic). He's doing it right now, in fact: sawmilling. This pic is from the logyard where he buys logs and sometimes sets up and saws - its a sweet deal. He gets space to work without having to bring logs home - sometimes they even load them on the mill for him. He also gets free advertising of the very best kind around here - "hey, look, there's a guy with a sawmill!" And - "oh, yeah, I know a guy with a sawmill." Very good. He also added a "saw port" to one of our outbuildings so he can saw here (its not as loud as the table-saw, good for me), which has its up-side, too, although I had to put a fence around the garden to keep the lumber out.

Mo and I have been visiting the Pumpkin Hollow Community trampoline when the weather permits. I sit and knit or read - its been a great place to work on "assignments" for the online Montessori course I'm taking. I get on and jump for a little while, but I don't have the energy of a 4.5 year old, so I wear out pretty quickly! I was hoping to be able to scan some of her stories and artwork into the computer and upload them, but the computer and scanner aren't speaking at the moment, and I haven't figured that out, yet. Isn't technology wonderful? I just love the way it makes our lives easier! Another time, then.

Well, that's all for today. The rain has cleared up, the sun is out - time to get out of the darn house! I'm looking forward to hearing from all y'all!