Wha?

I can’t see my own posts unless I go into “Edit”. Someone must be seeing at least some of them, since she’s commenting.

Tomorrow I have got to remember to get over to the dentist and have 7 cavities filled. None mine, thanks be to God! Then to the Oriental market for egg roll wrappers, to the grocery for imitation crab and cabbage, to the Post Office to mail a coupla. All on $10. Good luck.

We call it Car-schooling on days like that. By God’s grace, the texts are pretty lightweight, except for spelling. So I get the kiddos up at 7 and we do spelling first. (I didn’t sign up for weightlifting for PE this semester, thanks.)

Call me when spring thaws. I requested 4 tomes of Roman and Greek history from the libraries around Our Fair State, and they all came in this week. Good thing the kiddos can make themselves sandwiches- I may not come up for air for weeks.

Let me know there’s life out there, OK?

What Are You, an Octopus or Something?

On the one hand, I’m so thankful that we’ve only about 30 more schooldays to fulfill our required 180. On the other hand, I’m already mostly-decided about what needs to be covered over Summer School, which begins at my house June 1.

On the one hand, I’ve just learned how to set the coffeemaker to automatically start brewing a nice, hot, fresh pot at 6:30 a.m. On the other hand, I just remembered the Alarm Cat usually wakes me up for the day at 5:30.

On the one hand, I’m so thankful that we finally got the kids some medical insurance again. On the other hand, after our checkups yesterday, I’m rolling my eyes to hear that they have 7 cavities amongst them, and we’ll be returning to our dentist (whom we like a lot, thankfully) Thursday morning.

On the one hand, I’m looking forward to observing Chinese New Year again with our Home Group on Sunday. (We eat Oriental food and play games and chat. Normal Home Group Sunday nights are full of intense talk.) On the other hand, I’m afraid to spend the money and use up gas to drive over to the local Oriental market and pick up supplies for homemade egg rolls and homemade kim bop (it’s like Korean sushi).

I don’t want to be double-minded. I don’t want to see the glass as half-full or half-empty. I just want to see a cup of coffee, quick!

Show Time!

When I was in high school, everyone watched “Monty Python and the Holy Grail” and rolled with laughter. Finally I got to see it, and missed the point entirely. Parts were hard to understand because of the accents, parts had British political satire that left me unmoved.

Nevertheless, since my then-boyfriend and his two best friends spent vast amounts of time quoting long speeches from the movie, eventually I learned when to laugh. (I’m not much for David Letterman or SNL, either.) Silliness can, for me, produce a comfort that should be encouraged.

Somehow a bit of the “Bridge of Death” routine passed by my kiddos a month or so ago. This afternoon, they had some spare time and invited Mr Wonderful and I to a home-made show, “Monty Python Meets the JerseyChick Family”.

In #3’s room, the bunkbed serves as a stage, with flowered comforter as curtain. #3, on the top bunk, announces, then pulls down the curtain to reveal his sisters. OK, so the curtain stuck in one corner. He keeps trying whilst they perform. (Eventually, all that was visible of him was the, um, Southbound end.)

#2 portrays the Troll. #1 is the Crusader attempting to cross.
#2: What is your name?”
#1: #1.

#2: What is your quest?
#1: What is your quest?

#2: No, not my quest, your quest!
#1: What is your quest?

#2:Look, repeat after me. What is my quest?
#1: What is your quest?

By now, #2 is becoming shrill, scurrying on her knees back and forth around her side of the “bridge”, speaking faster and faster…

#2: Repeat after me-
#1: After me!

Mr Wonderful and I were in stitches. Vaudeville reinvented!
We especially delighted that #1 and #2 recognize what they do that irritates each other, but turned it into comedy rather than festering over it.

Did I mention what they used to designate the “bridge”? #3 had kept a 2-foot-long piece of the electrical wire that the 18-wheeler pulled down over the summer. The girls laid it across the bottom bunk to mark the chasm. Bet that never happened with Laurel and Hardy!

An Addictive Personality

OK, so this year Heirloom School is taking taxes out of paychecks for the first time.
First paycheck comes home yesterday, $300 less than usual. We don’t have a lot of spare cash lying around, but I’m not going to worry about where we’re going to find another $600 per month. Really. Reealllly. Really. Not worried, nope. nope.

Thankfully, #2 agreed to make me a cuppa. We’re almost out of the brewing kind, so I gave specific directions about where to find the instant. Let me just say that regular grounds, dumped in boiling water, smell great but do not sink to the bottom.

The first mouthful is a doozy, folks.

Skip This if You Don’t Like Maths

We’ve lost it over here at JerseyHome. #1 has taken HOURS with her maths. 25 problems per day.

So, Mr Wonderful volunteers to get up early with her. 4:30 a.m. If I set out the schoolwork the night before, he tells me she’ll be done with it by 9:30, and he’ll leave on time for work (7 a.m.).

Does anyone see a problem here? Maybe 2 or 3? For example, any lesson I verbalize that includes #1 (Spanish, Latin, History, Logic, Spelling) has to be included in that “finished by 9:30″ idea.

Now, Alarm Cat wakes me up at 5:30 every day anyway, but it won’t be easy arranging at least 3 lectures around waking up 2 other kids (whose earliest class is Aerobics at 7:30), making breakfast, and getting some exercise and a shower myself.

Second, (and certainly more important that flexing a schedule, which is just paperwork and an attitude adjustment, after all) #1 shares a room with #2. In order to be mentally up by 4:30, she should probably hit the pillow around 8, maybe 7:30.

Um, we have AWANA until 8:30 on Wednesdays, and basketball practice until 8 on Mondays. Are we dropping these, or messing with #1’s internal clock? #2’s bedtime is 9:30- or is that changing? Does #1 need to start sleeping in the spare bedroom? Is she dropping aerobics (we accompany a video) (please, with her being so overweight, please don’t say we’re dropping exercise), or playing the video for herself by 9?

There is a problem here, for sure. Mr Wonderful had yesterday off, so he worked with #1 on her math. I lectured, as usual, all 3 kiddos in the common subjects. #2 and #3 finished in good time. My nerves were calm at the end of the school day (unlike the past 2 weeks).

Surface solution: we need a 2nd teacher for #1’s math.

It’s not too hard for her, if that’s what you’re thinking. I am part of the problem- I haven’t been making her do the sample problems in each chapter, so I think she’s been skipping the explanation section of each chapter and just trying the new work on intuition. She’s big on her intuition, believes it will conquer the world.

So, in some ways, today’s math lesson is going to be very hard for her, although 90% of the material has been introduced and practiced over the past several months. If you refuse to open your brain to the lecture/chapter/demonstration, it’s going to be very hard on you later, but not due to your lack of ability in math. In our house, we call it laziness, pride, or rebellion.

Two problems rolled into one: pride and bad parenting. Must be Monday.

Pam

One of the great things about a blog is that you can argue with your mother, and win.

My cousin Pam is about 3 years older than I am. She is a single mom by choice of a fine young lady named Erin. Pam works full-time, and has for years, as a high school English teacher in a small town in Pennsylvania. In her spare time, she also cares for her neice and two nephews. (One of Pam’s brothers works lots of hours -his wife is in jail- and the other brother was killed in an auto accident last year.) Pam’s mom, my mom, and a couple of other family members of the Silver Generation live nearby, and Pam not only attends the monthly family-get-togethers, she brings a covered dish and helps clean up afterward.

Sounds like a competent, highly successful woman to me! My mom is pretty up on her, too (and I only get a “Why can’t you be more like Pam?” about once a year, bless Mom’s heart!). But my mom is also easily swayed by her sisters, and Pam’s mom has An Issue with Pam.

Housekeeping. Seems Pam doesn’t do much, compared to the Post-WWII standards of our moms. First, I’m thanking God that I live 1000 miles away, since I’m sure Pam does more than I do. Second, it astounds me that these women don’t Let It Go. Not one of them visits Pam anyway! (Visits are to be made TO Older/Grand Dame Women, BY the Younger Folks, donchaknow.)

It rubs me, since Mr Wonderful let it slip that his mom would never move in with us, not because we Don’t Do TV (when my dad moved in, we just told him he could have his own in his suite), but because “She could never live in this kind of filth”.)

Yep, there’s grease under the hood of the stove light. There’s a couple of petrified crumbs where Mr Wonderful’s hand-made kitchen bench seat doesn’t quite meet the carpet. Yep, I could take a weekend and a toothbrush and scrub the grout. Not gonna happen, though.

Here’s my deal, and I hope Pam’s, too: Everything you touch when you come to my house will be clean. Don’t look anywhere else if you don’t want your sensibilities offended. We’ve invited folks from age 60 to age 6 months over for meals, and not one has refused a second invitation. (Well, not that the 6-month-old had much choice.)

Sigh. I’m sure my mom (Flo) wonders to this day why her mom had such a problem with her (Flo) joining the Marines. I’ll wonder why my mom has such a problem with Pam’s/my lack of housekeeping. What will our daughters wonder, I wonder?

A Very, Very Bad Day

is when #1 takes 9 hours to do her math. 1 of the hours was from learning a new skill and actually practicing the book exercises.

Part of me is ready to cry and part is ready to laugh to think of PMS for myself, #1, and #2 someday happening, perhaps simultaneously.

Buy stock in Kleenex, ya’ll.

moar funny pictures

Moo

For the past several days, nothing earth-shattering has been happening. And we’ve all been very happy with that. The most effective event was watching “End of the Spear” for the first time, so Mr Wonderful could determine whether his students should see it.

(side notes: Watching at home? Bring tissues. Lots.
No, the students won’t get to see it- the boys couldn’t handle seeing the loincloths.)

However, to combat the dreary weather, we did visit a “new” library. We’ve been there once before, but only 1 kid remembered. It’s in a small town 10 miles south of us, and has a limited selection, but does include tons of classics.)

The kiddos brought home more “Hardy Boys” books. I brought home Aristotle’s “Rhetorics” and “On Poetics”. They are required reading for the anticipated Masters in Antiquities…

The first two pages blew me away. Aristotle is writing truth, which I commonly encounter at least once a week. But what I hear, Scripture, is (of course) infused with spiritual significance. Aristotle is not so infused. But receiving truth is a pleasurable thing for me, in any genre.

Happily, it got me thinking, and beginning to probe, for truths myself. Sadly, I’m not getting further in Aristotle this morning, due to the thinking and posting of thoughts. Happily, I don’t have to be anywhere until my Latin student shows up around 4.

Aristotle is exercise for my mind like aerobics videos are exercise for my body. (Scripture is exercise for my spirit.) I like the tingle of work, whether working out my mind or my body.

Now, what differentiates aerobics videos, which I like, from the horrifying drudgery of gym class? What differentiates preparing the house for cold weather, which makes me smile, from preparing a contract at the job I held 5 years ago?

There is a loose thread from that job, you see. I loved it at first. By the time I quit (2 years later), I was crying on the way to work every Monday morning. Am I simply a quitter? Well, I’ve been married to Mr Wonderful for 10+ years now, so I don’t think it’s that.

What changed? When did accomplishment become a ball and chain? How can I help my kiddos to see school, their current “job”, as accomplishment instead of drudgery? How often shall I incorporate pleasureable works into my own life?

I’m afraid the difference will be revealed as self-will, which is destructively addictive. More thinking required. Input welcome.

Oh, Thank Goodness!

I’m not crazy!

This lady is putting together an online comparison of brand sizes.

http://shopping.yahoo.com/articles/yshoppingarticles/76/what-size-are-youreally

And just last summer I was wondering why I have to put up with the Brand Confusion!
(Sound of appluase.) (Thankyouverymuch.)

Blast Again!

FEBruary! I read Feb-ru-ary on the Web site! (I even made a hardcopy, to paperclip to my calendar!)

Thankfully, the HomeSchool FieldTrip people send reminder emails 3 days before. So, Monday the 3 kiddos and I will traipse off to the Chik-Fil-A Headquarters for a tour on MONDAY. I normally have a student I tutor in Latin on Mondays. She’ll live, I’m sure, if I call to cancel…

CFA is a fun company (unlike “The Mouse”, sometimes called “The Rat” by folks down in Orlando, FL). They put on a Living Nativity and Open House at Christmas. They offer tours to schoolkids- and it’s more than looking at cubicles. They give dessert samples liberally to employees (and, since our AWANA director is an employee, it filters down to snacks provided for the Cubbies, and for Yours Truly, on occassionnn.)

Did you know CFA has a test kitchen here South of Atlanta? They put new recipes in the Employee Cafeteria for a couple of months before deciding to go public. The founder of CFA had a fondness for Western (as in cowboy) art and one for vintage cars, so there are lots (as well as motorcycles, which I like to see) on display in the Museum at CFA HQ. Can you tell I like CFA as a company? Folks rejoice when a friend gets employed there. Delta could merge with Ronald McDonald this week for all I care: Up, CFA!

At least I was smart enough to sign up for the 10:30 tour, so we can take our time getting ready.