By 7:30 this morning, I knew delay of game was inevitable. My fantasy of an 8:30 a.m. start faded quickly as my younger and I read yet another chapter of his current favorite Avi book, one of the beloved Poppy series. My older had a late night, I mused, and he'd be a more enthused about learning after more sleep. And, after all, our schedule was light this week. Not to mention, a benefit of homeschooling is NOT being ready for the all-too-early bus.
I hit the shower by 8:00, sealing the certainty that our start would be at least a half-hour late. I woke my older after my shower, we ate breakfast together, and still we dallied. Coaxing the boys through teeth-brushing, bed-making, and dressing brought us to 9:30, although my Facebook visit probably influenced our speed for the worse.
Our start was anticlimactic, at best. No special breakfast, opening words, wishes for the new year or the like. My older helped picked a quote for our homeschool (Thoreau Academy, not that we needed a name after four years of homeschooling.). The Thoreau selection: "If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours." After deciding on that, we moved on to geometry, Latin, handwriting, and more.
No extra innings and the rain held off -- the boys move fairly quickly through their lists, with whining kept to a minimum and limited to the younger son. To him, the best part of our opening day was the delay itself. Through a snuggle and a story, he found happiness in the common hours of our first day back to homeschooling. Sounds like success to me.
Monday, August 31, 2009
Tuesday, August 11, 2009
Hair
Last March, I started growing my hair out, a process I generally despise. It's awkward, messy, annoying, and, come summer, hot. Too short to put up but too long to be on the neck when the temperature soars. Yuck.
Why bother? When, in her mid-thirties, my mother cut her hair, , she explained that she was too old for long hair, that long hair was for younger women. I digested this bit of adult-lore, grew mine out (painfully) only to cut it off a few years later, tired of all that, well, hair. I repeated the process in college, this time after a socially crippling perm-- think brunette Bozo.
After the birth of my older son, each haircut found me with less and less of the stuff. It reached its shortest at the start of 2008, right before I started the growing process for a third time. Why'd I bother if it's such a pain? Partially, it was a last-ditch attempt to save my marriage. "Grow out your hair," and, "Dress up more often," were the only concrete ideas I brought out of marriage counseling. Despite knowing neither would save the day, I tried both. And I liked the results. Sure, the hair was hot on my neck last summer, and barrettes did little to tame growing out layers that threatened to turn me part Yeti, but I liked messing with the stuff and the progress visible in the mirror. Besides, between growing hair, encouraging the holes in my ears to once again accept earrings, and trying some more feminine duds, I felt, well, attractive.
There. I said it. I'm enjoying some of the societal trappings of femininity. Skirts, dangly earrings, long hair, clothes that suggest a woman is wearing them. Girl stuff, or, more correctly, women stuff. No high heels or make-up, mind you. Comfort trumps fashion for me, and it likely always will. But the hair? I like it!
Why bother? When, in her mid-thirties, my mother cut her hair, , she explained that she was too old for long hair, that long hair was for younger women. I digested this bit of adult-lore, grew mine out (painfully) only to cut it off a few years later, tired of all that, well, hair. I repeated the process in college, this time after a socially crippling perm-- think brunette Bozo.
After the birth of my older son, each haircut found me with less and less of the stuff. It reached its shortest at the start of 2008, right before I started the growing process for a third time. Why'd I bother if it's such a pain? Partially, it was a last-ditch attempt to save my marriage. "Grow out your hair," and, "Dress up more often," were the only concrete ideas I brought out of marriage counseling. Despite knowing neither would save the day, I tried both. And I liked the results. Sure, the hair was hot on my neck last summer, and barrettes did little to tame growing out layers that threatened to turn me part Yeti, but I liked messing with the stuff and the progress visible in the mirror. Besides, between growing hair, encouraging the holes in my ears to once again accept earrings, and trying some more feminine duds, I felt, well, attractive.
There. I said it. I'm enjoying some of the societal trappings of femininity. Skirts, dangly earrings, long hair, clothes that suggest a woman is wearing them. Girl stuff, or, more correctly, women stuff. No high heels or make-up, mind you. Comfort trumps fashion for me, and it likely always will. But the hair? I like it!
Friday, August 7, 2009
The Best Laid (Lesson) Plans
I'm definitely conflicted this time of year. Despite 16 years having passed since fall meant a return to school, fall means a fresh start. New notebooks, paper, and binders. Anticipation, both enthused and anxious about new classes. And, notably, unlike the rest of life, a beginning with a definite ending in sight.
About this time every year, I find myself surrounded by scrawled lists of curriculum plans and piles of books. I've planned in notebooks, on calenders, on computer-generated planner pages, and in my head, all with moderate initial success that diminished come October or so, where recording what we actually did took the place of planning what we would do. That's fine for my younger guy, since he generally takes us further than I would have planned, but with my older at age 12 (7th grade age), it's really not enough for either of us. I need to know that a course will get finished in the span of our school year. He needs a path to follow with signposts telling him how far he's been and how far there is to go. He needs me to make a plan.
So here I am, surrounded by the papers and the books, slowly scheduling out Geometry, Latin, Biology, and more. I'm trying out some scheduling software this time around, Homeschool Tracker Plus, and (as I was warned) the learning curve has been fairly steep. It allows homeschoolers to share lesson plans with others, which can be quite the time saver, but I'm not sure that time savings will be evident this year, given the amount of work I've put in learning how to make the program work best for me and my family. I'm not one to schedule down to the hour, and that seems to be one of the program's strengths. Right now, my favorite feature is the library function. With a swipe of my neutered Cue Cat (bar code reader turned ISBN reader), I can catalogue my books. Using the resource function, I can sort these by course as well. Hooray! It's too soon to tell if this software will meet my needs, but the latent librarian in me is deeply satisfied.
About this time every year, I find myself surrounded by scrawled lists of curriculum plans and piles of books. I've planned in notebooks, on calenders, on computer-generated planner pages, and in my head, all with moderate initial success that diminished come October or so, where recording what we actually did took the place of planning what we would do. That's fine for my younger guy, since he generally takes us further than I would have planned, but with my older at age 12 (7th grade age), it's really not enough for either of us. I need to know that a course will get finished in the span of our school year. He needs a path to follow with signposts telling him how far he's been and how far there is to go. He needs me to make a plan.
So here I am, surrounded by the papers and the books, slowly scheduling out Geometry, Latin, Biology, and more. I'm trying out some scheduling software this time around, Homeschool Tracker Plus, and (as I was warned) the learning curve has been fairly steep. It allows homeschoolers to share lesson plans with others, which can be quite the time saver, but I'm not sure that time savings will be evident this year, given the amount of work I've put in learning how to make the program work best for me and my family. I'm not one to schedule down to the hour, and that seems to be one of the program's strengths. Right now, my favorite feature is the library function. With a swipe of my neutered Cue Cat (bar code reader turned ISBN reader), I can catalogue my books. Using the resource function, I can sort these by course as well. Hooray! It's too soon to tell if this software will meet my needs, but the latent librarian in me is deeply satisfied.
Thursday, August 6, 2009
Musings as the Decade Changes
I'm just days from 40 and mighty pleased about it. Really. Reaching 30 was pretty pleasing as well. I had a beautiful three-year-old, a fulfilling career at half-time status, and best of all, I finally had an excuse. Turning 30 gave me the excuse I'd been looking for since the age of 12, at which point I was beginning to realize that I didn't spin in the same direction as most of the kids around me. Age 18 and 21 didn't find me any closer to the norm, but I found plenty of others whirling with the universe in their own pattern. At 30, though, I felt free. Free to not know the names of the latest songs and their performers (never had anyway), free to continue to be puzzled by fashion trends, free to be, basically, out of it. Whew.
As 40 approaches, my rhythm no longer feels out of sync with the world but rather in sync with the beat of my heart and the song of my soul. I still can't list popular music groups or identify TV and music stars, and my wardrobe is defintely not up-to-date, but I know myself more deeply than I did at 30. In the past decade, I've nursed a child to age 4, embraced the world of homeschooling, left two faiths and found one to call home. I've found strength in mind and body through martial arts, brought compassion and knowledge to new mothers, and reveled in the friendship of others. I've fought for a crumbling marriage that was not to be saved yet retained my dignity and sense of humor. Most importantly, I've loved, laughed and learned with two free-thinking, bright, generally kind sons, the delights of my life. I'm reaching 40 and feeling fine.
As 40 approaches, my rhythm no longer feels out of sync with the world but rather in sync with the beat of my heart and the song of my soul. I still can't list popular music groups or identify TV and music stars, and my wardrobe is defintely not up-to-date, but I know myself more deeply than I did at 30. In the past decade, I've nursed a child to age 4, embraced the world of homeschooling, left two faiths and found one to call home. I've found strength in mind and body through martial arts, brought compassion and knowledge to new mothers, and reveled in the friendship of others. I've fought for a crumbling marriage that was not to be saved yet retained my dignity and sense of humor. Most importantly, I've loved, laughed and learned with two free-thinking, bright, generally kind sons, the delights of my life. I'm reaching 40 and feeling fine.
Monday, April 6, 2009
What did you learn today?
Some days I feel like we spin our wheels, making it to the end of the day intact but with little or nothing learned. This list, from a very ordinary day, is my proof for future blah days that we're all always learning.
Today, someone in the house learned:
Red cabbage juice turns magenta in the presence of an acid and blue/green in the presence of a base.
Red cabbage juice stinks.
Adding the base gradually to the acid neutralizes the acid, returning it's color to normal. More makes a basic solution (back to that blue/green!).
Sympathy to the injured child is more credible to the child when one abstains from a dissertation on the carelessness that went into obtaining the injury. Being kind again trumps being right.
To bring a gram of water from 1oo degrees C to water vapor requires 2255 J of energy, and the temperature does not change.
How to memorize more of Giga, by J.S.Bach, on piano.
How to beat the first gym leader on Pokemon Platinum.
Geysers are basically erupting pressure cookers.
"Incredulous" means full of disbelief.
Semicolons often go outside of quotation marks, unless they are within the quote itself.
Cold but not frozen shredded mozzarella can be safely warmed to room temperature in the microwave (level 2, 20 seconds).
Napoleon would not have made a good friend.
A litter box left uncleaned for 36 hours is pretty nasty.
Ruling with a five-person Directory doesn't always work, at least not in post-Revolutionary France.
It's hard to beat a Pokemon champion.
Fractions can be simplified if the denominator and numerator have a common factor.
In probability, if all outcomes are equally likely, then the probability of success is the number of successful outcomes over the number of possible outcomes.
A flame extinguishes in the water vapor from the spout of a tea kettle.
A.A. Milne felt strongly about the high quality of The Wind in the Willows, so strongly as to use appreciating it as a judge of a person's character.
Facebook comments pop up on one's homepage quite a bit before the notification occurs in one's email.
April snow in Michigan melts quickly on the pavement.
A list is an easy way to create a blog entry but feels a bit like cheating.
We're learning all the time. Whew!
Today, someone in the house learned:
Red cabbage juice turns magenta in the presence of an acid and blue/green in the presence of a base.
Red cabbage juice stinks.
Adding the base gradually to the acid neutralizes the acid, returning it's color to normal. More makes a basic solution (back to that blue/green!).
Sympathy to the injured child is more credible to the child when one abstains from a dissertation on the carelessness that went into obtaining the injury. Being kind again trumps being right.
To bring a gram of water from 1oo degrees C to water vapor requires 2255 J of energy, and the temperature does not change.
How to memorize more of Giga, by J.S.Bach, on piano.
How to beat the first gym leader on Pokemon Platinum.
Geysers are basically erupting pressure cookers.
"Incredulous" means full of disbelief.
Semicolons often go outside of quotation marks, unless they are within the quote itself.
Cold but not frozen shredded mozzarella can be safely warmed to room temperature in the microwave (level 2, 20 seconds).
Napoleon would not have made a good friend.
A litter box left uncleaned for 36 hours is pretty nasty.
Ruling with a five-person Directory doesn't always work, at least not in post-Revolutionary France.
It's hard to beat a Pokemon champion.
Fractions can be simplified if the denominator and numerator have a common factor.
In probability, if all outcomes are equally likely, then the probability of success is the number of successful outcomes over the number of possible outcomes.
A flame extinguishes in the water vapor from the spout of a tea kettle.
A.A. Milne felt strongly about the high quality of The Wind in the Willows, so strongly as to use appreciating it as a judge of a person's character.
Facebook comments pop up on one's homepage quite a bit before the notification occurs in one's email.
April snow in Michigan melts quickly on the pavement.
A list is an easy way to create a blog entry but feels a bit like cheating.
We're learning all the time. Whew!
Saturday, March 28, 2009
Jeans Fit
The hole broke through a few days back, my right knee poking though one of the last pair of intact jeans in my closet. No surprise, given their age and the floor time they see from me, but disappointing. They weren't favorites (that pair is threadbare but intact), they weren't fancy (Lands' End basics from a few years back), but they were without holes, and they fit. I've been a few years hoping jeans that fit would magically appear in my closet, but no luck. My mail-order solution of ordering a new pair each year broke down when Lands' End changed their styles to ones that must fit the rest of women in the Northern Hemisphere but don't fit me.I'm not a shopping fan. There was a point in my life when I sought opportunities to get to the mall, but no longer. A dear friend agreed to accompany me on this quest, a shopping task I ranked lower only than shopping for bathing suits and bras. After trips to Eddie Bauer (too long and wide), Ann Klein (how low can jeans go?), and The Limited (lower, I guess!), we ended up at GapKids. On the boys' side.
It's time to admit that I'm shaped like my father, straight up and down, no hips. No problems birthing babies, but no hips to hold up those low pants that fill the racks these days. I'm not looking for sympathy, but it's been a frustrating few years in the pants department for the straight-yet-female set, thus why my need for jeans has grown so acute and my desire to shop is lower than usual. The girls' department works to some degree, but I'm not the embroidered-flower-around-the-ankle-type, so the choices are limited. The clerks were helpful with sizing but somewhat bemused. I, however, was relieved to have found Jeans That Fit, my holy grail. I left with just one pair, carpenter jeans with rather cute front pockets, no holes, and a great fit. I am slightly curious whether I'll see my son's friends in identical pants(and rather certain they won't notice), and fully delighted to have found jeans that fit this hipless chick.
Tuesday, March 24, 2009
Mass Effects (Part III)
I thought I'd prepped the boys for communion, but it's a challenge to adequately prepare a seven-year-old for a ritual like that without his memory of communions past to assist him. Last summer's water communion at our UU church bore no resemblance to the Catholic Church's version!
As the priest invited up those helping serve communion, I bent toward my younger, explaining that we'd sit down while the others processed forward to receive the bread and wine.
"Why do they get bread and we don't?" my constantly hungry and fair-minded child inquired.
"Catholics believe in transubstantiation -- that the bread and wine transforms into the body and blood of Jesus. We're not Catholics, so we're not invited to join since we don't believe the same thing," was my initial response, drawing a curious look from my son. Encouraged by his interest, my whispered lesson continued,"Other Christians believe the bread and wine simply remind one of Jesus, and most will allow others outside their faith to join in communion."
He continued to search my face for more information. "Sit down, and let the others go by." This seemed to be the information he needed most. He sat, and we let others pass by into the communion line.
While I'm not sure he gave a whit about my delineation between the variations of Christian beliefs and bread, body, wine, and blood, he did learn that we were to watch, and he was okay with his role as observer rather than participant. I sat back, sang along with the congregation, and joined him as observer. Since my movement away from Catholicism through the Episcopal church and on to Unitarian Universalism, I've attended only a few other masses, and those were funeral masses. Those times, most of the congregation sat through communion, and those times, I had my grief as my focus and communion was in the background. Explaining the sacrament clarified for me how complete my movement away from Catholicism is. I no longer identify with that tradition, yet its presence in my past shapes and colors my present faith. I sense nothing lost by my conversion yet so much gained by the richness of my past.
As the priest invited up those helping serve communion, I bent toward my younger, explaining that we'd sit down while the others processed forward to receive the bread and wine.
"Why do they get bread and we don't?" my constantly hungry and fair-minded child inquired.
"Catholics believe in transubstantiation -- that the bread and wine transforms into the body and blood of Jesus. We're not Catholics, so we're not invited to join since we don't believe the same thing," was my initial response, drawing a curious look from my son. Encouraged by his interest, my whispered lesson continued,"Other Christians believe the bread and wine simply remind one of Jesus, and most will allow others outside their faith to join in communion."
He continued to search my face for more information. "Sit down, and let the others go by." This seemed to be the information he needed most. He sat, and we let others pass by into the communion line.
While I'm not sure he gave a whit about my delineation between the variations of Christian beliefs and bread, body, wine, and blood, he did learn that we were to watch, and he was okay with his role as observer rather than participant. I sat back, sang along with the congregation, and joined him as observer. Since my movement away from Catholicism through the Episcopal church and on to Unitarian Universalism, I've attended only a few other masses, and those were funeral masses. Those times, most of the congregation sat through communion, and those times, I had my grief as my focus and communion was in the background. Explaining the sacrament clarified for me how complete my movement away from Catholicism is. I no longer identify with that tradition, yet its presence in my past shapes and colors my present faith. I sense nothing lost by my conversion yet so much gained by the richness of my past.
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