Garden On

I'm really ready to be done with the garden and yard. Not ready for the snow to fly, not even ready to rake leaves, but I'm yearning to break up with my reel lawn mower, pruners, and weed picker. Well, at least we need some time off from each other.

I know come February (okay, January)I'll be pining for those implements while I plan the vegetable garden whose bed will be buried under snow, but right now I'm just done. I'm sick of mowing grass that shouldn't be growing so much in September, tired of pulling the same weeds again, and saddened by pruning spent blossoms with no new blooms in the making for months.

Aside from a few beets lining the front of the garden and some volunteer cherry tomatoes that seem ripen way too slowly, there's little left but the herbs for food. The only flowers remaining are the autumn joy sedum. They're a personal favorite, with lovely succulent leaves in spring and summer and pink flowers deepening to russet as summer turns to fall. Along with the petal-free remains of the purple cone flowers and black-eyed susans, they add much-needed winter interest and landing pads for smaller birds. They also will give me hope when winter days drag on - spring will return.

My negative yard maintenance attitude abates a bit once I don my garden gloves and hit the dirt, pulling weeds, beating back the buttercups and bee balm, and removing dead day lillies. Cleaning the vegetable garden remains reminds me of the pesto I plan to make and freeze and the potatoes out of sight but still under the soil. Along with those beets and a few more carrots in my younger's garden, there's still some harvest remaining. After an hour of sweat-producing labor, my attitude about the yard is markedly brighter and my mood is lighter. Guess I'll keep the mower and garden on.

Holy Days

It's the International Day of Peace, one of the only, well, created days that I can get into. Except I forgot it this year. I saw it on the calendar when scheduling an appointment for my younger a few weeks back. It was announced from the pulpit in church yesterday, along with Eid-al-Fitr, the end of Ramadan, and Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, both actual Holy Days. The real schmeal.

Since becoming a Universalist Unitarian, I feel a bit like a woman without a Holy Day. Our church mentions all the big ones and many I'd never heard of before attending UUCF. Since our congregation's focus has been on the six sources from which we draw our living tradition, I've added Holi, Budda's birthday, and Darwin's birthday to my awareness. Since so many of these are announced at services, along with the more familiar Easter and Christmas, perhaps I'm a woman of many Holy Days.

But I'm not. Those Holy days are not mine. Not as truly holy. My boys and I celebrate Christmas with songs, a tree, and gifts. We talk about the birth of Jesus and the message of love Jesus brought to the world. At Easter, we discuss rebirth and celebrate life, but I know for both we're somewhat co-opting the days, celebrating them in a way that works for us because they're big deals in this country. We celebrate Hanukkah with my mother, a Reformed Jew, the lights of Hanukkah next to the advent candles we still use to mark the coming of Christmas. The boys know the stories of these Holy Days and many others, and while we fall prey to American Holiday Greed disease, I try to balance it with plenty of homemade giving and time with loved ones.

Still, I have my doubts. These aren't my Holy Days, and I'm loathe to misappropriate customs and practices from religions not my own, but I feel a bit short of Holy Days as a Unitarian Universalist. Perhaps this explains my draw to the International Day of Peace. I'm not taking it from anybody, it's celebrated around the world, and it's in concert with my UU belief system. Not a bad Holy Day, in my opinion. I wish I hadn't forgotten this year.

Peace be.

Getting Gauge

Knitting for gauge: Knitting a swatch with the needles and yarn you plan to use for a project to assure you are knitting the same number of stitches per inch as the pattern dictates.

I've never knit for gauge. Not once. I'm not morally opposed or inordinately lucky, just a bit lazy and not that particular. Admittedly, most of my knitting doesn't rely on gauge. Afghans and dish cloths don't need to be precisely sized, and hats and mittens can be sized by regular fitting to a convenient and somewhat-similar sized head or hand. A felted bag (a personal favorite--more on that in another post) reveals its mysteryafter a trip through the washing machine, gauge be damned, and scarves stop when they are scarf-length. Baby sweaters are likely to be grown into, which hopefully happens in season, and the one sweater knitted by me for me could be adjusted as I went. So why knit for gauge?

With this lassez-faire attitude toward knitting precisely, it seems a bit odd how much fuss I've made this year regarding curriculum planning. I spent too much time in July and August searching websites, reading reviews, and ordering books. Creating lesson plans on Homeschool Tracker Plus became my obsession as the fall approached, reducing courses into bites neither too big nor too small. With the parts determined, I attempted scheduling. I soon ditched the idea that certain subjects would happen at predictable times on particular days, instead just assigning a number of days a week for each subject with deadlines for some assignments.

Whew. I'd never attempted that level of homeschooling organization , and I must say I really hated the process. Instead of offering me peace of mind with the certainty I thought a schedule should deliver, I started dreaming about forgetting subjects (Remember those dreams from college -- going to the final exam when you'd forgotten to attend the course? That's the genre.). I woke at 2 am to ponder the necessity of daily Latin -- or of Latin at all. I was a woman possessed by the clock and the calendar, or maybe I was simply possessed.

As our first day of homeschooling for 2009/10 approached, I printed off the boys' schedules. Nice looking product but still, to my highly critical eye, full of inaccuracies. Why Tuesday to start Critical Thinking? That day was far too busy for all but the basics. What math assignment for Friday -- review or a lesson? My mind continued to race. Week two was a bit better. I made a few changes (read: simplified with assignments labeled "math" and "reading" rather than by chapter and page). Week three has been simpler yet. I've left more spots blank and allowed myself to (gasp!) cross things out that aren't happening.

A bit of slacker mom feeling nags at me, but I'm starting to relax. I can see the basic pattern of the year unfolding, but just the rough sketch. I'm altering the pattern as I go, spending longer on the factoring process my younger forgot and eliminating the Latin repetition my older doesn't need. I'm moving back to my more flexible ways, although the boys and I do like the nifty chart from the planning software, since checking off boxes is fun. However, I'm more comfortable just picking up our books and beginning with the end in mind, checking for fit along the way, making changes as we go, and delighting in the wonder of our path while keeping our eyes on our destination.

Opening Day

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.

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!

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.

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.