Aubrey Lively

Chick-Fil-A

2012-01-24T14:09:00.000-08:00

"The Chick-fil-A Classics. Still Tasty After All These Years."

I guess the CFA marketing gurus haven't read any of these articles. Hint: agelessness is not the same as enduring quality.

No Other Gods

2012-01-23T07:59:00.001-08:00

Okay, I can't resist.

I visited a ladies' Bible study last night. The theme of the 8-week class is "No other gods." Then they passed the calendar around, to remind everyone that there would be no class on Super Bowl Sunday.

ABCs of Homeschooling

2012-01-09T01:21:00.000-08:00

Amazon, and especially Amazon Mom.
Books. Lots of them.
Cuddling by the fire on a school day.
Dirty–science experiments with earthworms and plants and owl pellets, or Dishes piled up in the kitchen sink.
Explaining–why we homeschool, how to add, who speaks Latin, where the International Dateline is, when the Thirty Years War actually ended.
“Fort School” under the table and Filing.
Games of Monopoly for "math class" every night over dinner with Daddy.
Heart of the Matter Online (to read the rest)

The Logic of Hope

2011-12-31T02:38:00.000-08:00

I am a pessimist in day-to-day life. I am not surprised when I find that we are out of bread at lunch time, out of diapers when I don't have the car, that the jelly side always hits the floor.

But I am a fierce optimist when it comes to the bigger things. For so long now, life has continued on a downward spiral for my family, but every year, I find myself not just *hoping* but *believing* that things. will. get. better.

It's gotten to be funny--to me, if no one else. I grew up quite poor and determined not to be that way again. My brother thought college was ridiculous; my sister got tired of it and graduated with a general studies degree, which she followed up randomly with sociology. I knew better. I got a real degree from a real school and while I dreamed of things like writing, art, and architecture, I followed my real degree up with something practical: a master's in teaching. They're both doing better than I am.

In college, my husband and I knew all sorts of people: art majors, drug addicts, homeless men, and mentally ill women. They've all made better lives for themselves than we've managed.

Since then, we've seen people make terrible mistakes: marriages that didn't work, careers that didn't work, lifestyles that didn't work. They've all picked up the pieces and gone on to be more successful than we've managed so far.

As far as we go, I figured my husband's salary based on the price of gas recently. In 1995, I was making minimum wage. In an hour, I could buy four gallons of gas. Today? One hour will buy around three gallons, but we've also got student loans and five children.

It bothers me a lot. Sometimes I'm sure things will always be like this, or that they're actually going to get worse. Sometimes I see all the things we've failed to do for our children, all the time that's slipped by while we've been failing so miserably, and I get horribly depressed.

But most of the time? I'm certain that things will be better soon. If when I am old, I am going to walk upon the beach in white flannel trousers with the bottoms of my trousers rolled, this path must lead somehow to that one and the beach house where I will stand and look at the ocean and write beautiful things and paint poetry.

I am not oblivious, though, and I am more naturally a pessimist than an optimist. I have noticed that things do not always work out for everyone, and despite the success of those around me now, I have seen failure, loss, and death.

So why do I still believe things will get better? It had gotten funny to me, like a mental illness is funny, like you laugh when you watch your house burn down once your children are out but nothing else can be saved. Last year, we actually celebrated New Year's by making a hope chain that listed all the good things we expected or hoped for the new year. This year? I'm keeping my mouth shut, but the audacious, ridiculous voice inside me that won't. shut. up. keeps at it--this year. This year will be better.

Something occurred to me tonight. As things get worse, odds of them continuing to get worse must decrease at a proportionate rate of velocity. I mean, at some point, the "worse" options become one in a million because you've already been through most of them. How many times can you crash your car with an airplane? Or give birth to a ten pound baby AND end up in NICU?

So maybe hope is logical after all. That silly Hope part of me? It's cheering at the thought: OF COURSE things are going to get better. All the stories worth telling have happy endings, after all.

The pessimist part of me isn't all that useful anyway, figured he'd lose the argument, doesn't really have anything to gain by winning, so what he thinks is immaterial.

If nothing else, hope is more tenacious than despair. After all, if hope fails, despair will always be there tomorrow.

The Rationality of Religion

2011-12-31T02:09:00.000-08:00

I have spent the last year writing a history curriculum for the ancient time period. Reading about the faith of ancient people had never interested or offended me before. Greek mythology was barely interesting, and Egyptian mythology was even less captivating. The Romans were frauds, and the Babylonians were just the bad guys in the Bible.

But reading something to teach it is different from reading it because you have to read it to get your three credits which will help you get to the total required to earn the expensive piece of paper. I have been struck over the past year by how similar we are, across faiths and centuries and millenia. We want the same things: love, health, bread, shelter. We lack the same things: power, control over death and disease. And so we pray. We make sacrifices. We honor the gods. Sometimes things work out, and we point to that as evidence to sustain our faith. Sometimes things don't work out, and we are smitten by the gods, by the devils, by our own shortcomings and sin.

For a while now, the more I read, the smaller my prayers sounded--a single note in a cosmic symphony of human prayers. Yes, I believed my God was true and real...just like so many, many others throughout time have believed. Others who were ridiculous for believing the silly stories...like gods who die and return to life again...

I found myself stopping my own train of thought. I have children. I am too old now to question my faith, because the salvation and upbringing of others depends on it (to some extent). But, of course, what is faith if it requires the death of reason? And so I continued to read, to see the similarities, to find issues in the Bible to which I objected but had been able to blissfully ignore since I outgrew my childhood Sunday School classes.

Two things happened. First, I realized that I believe in the Christian God and that that faith is not something to be logically defended. It simply is, like the love I feel for my husband and children. For better or worse, I live by it, act on it, and choose to continue doing so. Even when it doesn't make sense to me; even when they leave messes in the kitchen, don't change the toilet paper roll, leave laundry everywhere, and talk back. It just is.

Second, I quite suddenly saw the similarities in faith from another angle: religion is something we share. Across faiths, across nationalities, race, and time, we look beyond ourselves for help and guidance. Animals do not do that. It is the peculiar habit of rational creatures to look beyond themselves, to imagine gods, to dream of a Creator.

We may not agree on who He is or that He is, but the fact that we (almost?) universally consider the possibility, *look* with our hearts or minds or spirits is itself a suggestion of the possibility, the hope that we are not alone in a free fall of biological happenstance, that the human habit of religion is rational.

2011-12-22T14:16:00.000-08:00

While waiting on a kid to finish some Latin so I can maniacally grade it as it is finished, I read an article on Yahoo about a ball falling from space into a field in Namibia. Apparently, this has been happening in Australia and Africa for about twenty years, but we don't know what these things are. So why am I writing about it?

The comments below were funny and relatively intelligent in their humor--not the most common thing for the comments section of an internet article. But then something struck me in the camaraderie of the geeky humor I so enjoy: the comments section serves as more than a sense of community, more than a forum for airing opinions--it's hard evidence that we still have a reason to hope in the human race. I realize that's more than a dubious assessment of the comments section on most articles, but on THIS one, I realized some important things:

1. People are still reading. Whew. THAT in itself is reason to hope.

2. People will even read articles about space. And geography. Maybe I'm setting the bar pretty low, since Namibia was peripheral to the article and the topic was technically space balls, inciting junior high laughter from the best of us, but still--there was some almost technical stuff in that article. Kudos to those of us outside the professional field who took the time to read it.

3. So maybe the humor in the comments section was based primarily on Transformers and The X-Files, and maybe that's not exactly a measure of intelligence, BUT--applying information and experiences across fields IS a measure of intelligence, and since there was more of that than the bathroom humor that came to mind first when we read "space balls," I'm all tingly with hope and joy and faith that human nature has not become as depraved as other articles suggested. Maybe those are just isolated incidents. Or maybe I've had too much eggnog.

4. Mainly, people are still reading.

Tiny Miracles

2011-12-19T11:21:00.000-08:00

Sitting on the sofa this morning (with a new book of Latin answers, a tiny miracle in itself), I was watching the light dusting of snow across the neighborhood like powdered sugar finishing off a holiday cake, holding the baby, and thinking as I was tempted to turn away from the snow to the Latin--I hope I never get used to this. I hope I never shrug & say--"Meh, it's just an inch." I hope the snow always dazzles me like it does now. I love anything that has the power to make me stand still and watch.

And I looked down at my new baby, who is six weeks old today and remembered how many times I've thought the same thing about him. Smelling his baby-smell is like cramming for a test, trying to memorize every detail because I know they're all so fleeting. (He's already wearing size 3-6mos.) I look at my bigger kids, and the scarce fragments of memory that are left of their newborn days serve as a grim reminder of how frail this human memory is, & I work against its finitude all the harder.

That's when I began counting. How many snowfalls have I seen since we've been here? How many days have I held this baby, followed him down the halls of NICU, carried him up the stairs at home, changed diapers--and really--we don't experience babies in days but in hours, neckaches, sniffs of babiness. And I wondered--is he too old yet for me to calculate his age in hours?

Six weeks times seven days times 24 hours. He won't be completely six weeks old until this evening. And sure enough, as I sat there sniffing his head and calculating, he turned 1001 hours old in my arms. It's enough time to fall in love. It's time to learn the quiet song of baby breath and snorting. It's enough time to outgrow clothes and diapers, to learn cries and smiles and coos. 1000 hours is time enough to change your life forever and be glad it's been changed, but I hope for thousands more, and like the snow, I pray that I'll never acclamate, never shrug off a moment of this miracle because of the generosity of the Giver of Moments, whose hand holds out such precious blessings.

Home

2011-11-10T23:54:00.001-08:00

We think of fireplaces, Thanksgiving, something from childhood.

After two nights in NICU, I will always think of it as a Miracle.

The Red Sea

2011-11-02T15:37:00.000-07:00

Sometimes we do our own thing, & that usually works out. Nothing big, just life.

Sometimes we do our own thing, & that doesn't work out. No one to blame, necessarily. Again, just life.

Sometimes we HEAR God. We follow, or try to follow. And sometimes that works out. Those times feel supercharged with the shiny, shook-out foil feeling Gerard Manley Hopkins describes, the presence of God, his will and direction and hand.

Sometimes we HEAR God. We follow, or try to follow. And it doesn't work out. Not the way we'd imagined or when we'd imagined. And we wonder...did we misunderstand? imagine the Voice? sin beyond redemption? But standing there between the wilderness and the Red Sea with an angry army approaching, there are no answers. There is only the wondering, "Where is God?"

I stood there this summer, more clearly than ever before in my life. I looked back and saw what I could not return to. I looked forward and saw where I could not go. And meanwhile, an army of new problems bore down on me.

It was the middle of a desperate night that I saw it--the Israelites standing where I stood, no question as to Who had led them there, wondering if he had brought them to this place just to destroy them.

Seeing them standing there where my footprints were gave me sudden peace. The Bible doesn't say they THOUGHT the Lord wanted them to go this way: He explicitly led them there.

And then I knew how it would end, I knew I was not trapped, abandoned, or being punished. Through friends and strangers, God began to work, to provide a crossing that I could have neither seen nor imagined. The waters are still parting now.

It's a long way across that sea, and it's easy to look sideways and be afraid, but seeing the waters divide, seeing the pillar of cloud and the pillar of fire and knowing that they are not of my making, not the results of my faith, I turn my gaze instead to Him. I walk through the Valley of the Shadow of Death, and I have less fear.

Sure, "no fear" would have been more poetic, but I'm not here for poetry.

The Red Sea is an illusion. Like the spoon in the Matrix, except the Red Sea is real, but God CAN bend it. Nothing is impossible for him.

To all of my friends who have helped to bend back the sea, thank you.

The Military Vs Education

2011-10-19T17:29:00.000-07:00

So we all pretty much agree that the state of education stinks right now. And that's where the agreement ends. I encountered a person a while back who suggested that the failure of the education system lies largely on the shoulders of teachers--THEY are failing. He suggested that the education system should be run like the military, where they police themselves rather than sticking together to defend failing practices.

This individual was incapable of understanding that teachers do not have the kind of sway over their classrooms that they perhaps once did. They do not choose their curriculum, their students, or their class sizes. They do not choose school policies.

Besides that, how would teachers "police themselves"? Abandon the 40 students in her own classroom, storm another teacher's classroom, and then demand that the teacher she's observing, if she deems that person inadequate, turn over her teacher guide and leave the building? The consequence is that the teacher who does the evicting now has 80 students and has to teach both American Literature and Algebra I.

But the military doesn't "police themselves" in the way that this speaker was suggesting. No soldier would ever leave a post to go see what another guy was doing and relieve the other one of his gun.

The soldier in the field merely obeys orders, so when the speaker suggested that teachers "police their own," what he failed to realize is that, to match the military, this would have to be done from the top down--not on a peer level. To that end, administrators would be "policing" teachers (as they already do), getting rid of all the bad apples and, as per the speaker's wishes, rewarding the good ones.

First of all, this already happens. Teachers who are deemed to be failing are put on improvement plans, have contracts that do not renew, or are given the dregs of the student body, the worst classrooms, terrible schedules. Occasionally, they are even fired. The good ones are rewarded with more planning periods, higher pay and stipends, better students, and smaller class sizes. The problem? The process is political, as with many things. There are good and bad teachers who get "rewarded." There are good and bad teachers stuck in the "dungeon" with the large class sizes and poor ventilation.

We haven't managed to fix the political system, so I'm not sure how we're supposed to use political power to fix the politics that go on in the education system, but--let's try it anyway! The ideas floating around now involve monetary rewards for high-performing teachers (and schools) and consequences for the "failing" ones.

I'd like to think about how that would play out in the military. Imagine the soldier who is paid based on the number of bad guys he shoots. Doesn't really seem like a good measure of success, does it?

But since teachers can't shoot their students, this isn't a fair comparison. Students aren't even the enemy, someone will point out. Of course, not everyone who gets killed in a military conflict is the enemy, either, but I digress. The "bad guys" are the OBJECT of the soldier's work as students are the OBJECT of the teacher's work. Teachers aren't allowed to defend themselves on any level, or they're out of a job.

So imagine soldiers being sent into a war without equipment, and the measure of their success is how much they change the hearts and minds of the opposition they encounter. Based on THAT, their pay, performance, and job stability are determined.

It's actually a good idea, if you think about it. A Ghandi-vision of world peace.

Occupy Wall Street

2011-10-19T13:52:00.000-07:00

I really want someone to talk to about this, but most of the people I know in real life tend to lean pretty far one direction, politically speaking. They seem to think that this movement is a liberal ploy to shut down the economy. I *think* that's the gist of this cartoon.

But doesn't that suggest that the economy is actually working? I mean...I don't see much for them TO shut down at this point. The economy hasn't been "working" for years. And if one assumes (which I realize is not always wise) that OWS is a response to the actions of those in power...how can this be seen as a liberal movement?

But I also hate to bring it up. I haven't read *extensively* about it, & what I have read has been...a little too vague to help me form conclusions. All of that adds up to looking stupid if I try to argue with friends that this is not likely a sinister liberal plot. Hence my desire to find some place with intelligent people where I can just...eavesdrop a little. ;)

My *feeling*--not exactly a well-informed opinion--is that while the media is saying there is no cohesive cause or goal being represented, it's there, plain for anybody who's LIVED in America for the last four years or so. The cohesion is in the voice of the people--not WHAT they're saying, but the NEED to say something, the desperation. It reminds me, in a vague sort of way, of other revolutions: the French, the Russian--there were different causes there, too, but they came together when things reached that boiling point. Unemployment, housing, poverty, student loans--maybe it sounds like a motley cacophony, but what I hear is a mob of peasants crying out, "Give us bread!"

Whose fault is it that a person can't find a job today? Four years crosses party lines, so really--it's hard for me to imagine that this is a partisan political issue. I think that would make the whole thing less volatile because at least then we'd all know where we stand, where the lines are drawn.

I see the jobless pointing at the rich, the rich pointing at the poor, the middle class pointing fingers at each other out of fear for themselves. After all, if you've weathered the last few years with little more than tax hikes, it would be easy to believe that jobs are as available as they were in the nineties. Every store has help wanted signs, Career Builder is a booming website, and there are articles in the paper lamenting the lack of agricultural workers available here in the states. It *looks* like work is available.

Until you try to find it.

From the sidelines, I thought OWS was about the people rising up against government bailouts for the rich, golden parachutes for the crooked, back room lobbying that is costing the people their health and their stability. I'd assumed (again) that, whether or not one felt compelled to JOIN, there would be no motive to oppose it other than actually being one of the lobbyists, government officials, or executives who are being decried by it. I also thought that the outcome, if we were lucky, might be something like finding common ground. Because if we don't find that soon, I'm afraid this is only the beginning of the chaos.

What can I do to change my life TODAY?

2011-10-11T16:54:00.000-07:00

The last few months have been difficult. That's all I'll say about that.

Today I was disappointed in someone, so badly that nearly 12 hours later, it still physically hurts. I'm 9mos pregnant, due in a little over 2 weeks, and that doesn't make me MORE rational. I find myself thinking dark thoughts...

I'm good at fresh starts, though, good at reframing bad situations, finding silver linings, fresh hope. That may be part of why today has been so hard--12 hours is a long time for me to go without a fresh look at a bad situation.

And once things are bad in one area of life, it tends to seep over. It's easier to notice other problems, remember overdue library books, see the dishes that have needed washing for days, get short-tempered with the kids. And then it snowballs, and the big problem looks bigger, too.

A short temper too easily turns into despair for me, and I think dark, giving-up kinds of thoughts. Today, I'm disappointed in people. My kids who won't change the roll of toilet paper. My husband who forgets important phone calls. Small things, big things. Other drivers on the road who want to drive 45 in a 55 until I try to pass them and then want to go 70. But they're all magnified by the Big Problems, which are Real but also not things I can control.

Normally, when I get overwhelmed with life, I pull back and try to see what I can control: clean the house, make dinner. Plan my time. If I make my vision smaller and put on blinders, I can cope with a day at a time. But that's hard right now, as end-of-pregnancy pain & irrationality take over my ability to do my usual tasks or enjoy my usual hobbies.

And I think that's the problem: disappointment in people comes from expectation, which rises at times like these. So I'm doing what I can today to make my focus smaller. I'm looking at what I can do. Maybe it's the kids' job to change the toilet paper and clean the sink, and maybe the shower's difficult for me to fit inside of, much less clean, but if I expect it of myself instead of them, I've vanquished room for disappointment.

I sat on the bed this afternoon trying to think what I'd tell someone else in my situation. I wouldn't recommend the dark thoughts, of course, and I'm the type who gets frustrated with others when they won't let those thoughts go, so I made a trade. In exchange for the dark thoughts, what WOULD I recommend to me?

Take charge of what YOU can control:

Get up, even if it's 6AM, because sleeping doesn't work right now anyway and the lost time only makes you cranky in the mornings.

Go for a walk, because even though it sucks time, it alleviates the guilt, and somebody you really don't believe anyway says it releases endorphines.

Feed your family, because it's going to happen anyway, so you might as well get credit for it, avoid the whining, avoid the guilt, avoid the panic-at-dinner-time.

Pray, because you believe, and you've decided to go on believing, and because it's something YOU can do, pregnant or not, in pain or not, car or not. No waiting.

And don't look at anybody else. Until you reach the point of patience again, just ignore the chaos you can't control.

Deep breaths. You've chosen this life. (And that's not an endightment.)

The Gift Beneath the Bow

2011-07-12T11:02:00.000-07:00

I have a secret passion for gifted studies. I’ve always been fascinated by the brain and education, but standing in a Barnes & Noble one day about ten years ago, waiting for my husband who was about to meet me for lunch, I found a coffee table book about giftedness. Having grown up in gifted programs, I’ve always been drawn to books on giftedness, as if it’s evidence of a secret club I once belonged to as a kid. You see, gifted programs end with high school, sometimes before, like the tree houses that say, “No girls allowed.” So evidence that it really did exist—this haven where there were others like me—is nostalgic. It’s nice.

But what I read in that coffee table book—hardly a deep analysis of giftedness—has changed my life. I knew that giftedness meant that I went to a special class like the special needs kids. I knew I went because I was smart in some kind of off-kilter way: I’d started school early and was always bored, but I was hardly the highest achiever in the class.

Beyond that, no one ever told me what it meant, this “gift"...

Read the rest here.

2011-07-08T13:13:00.000-07:00

"To not know history is to remain forever a child." Or something like that.

The kids finally asked the question--WHY study history. I was eloquent; Landon quoted famous quotes like the one above.

8yo said, "But doesn't the Bible say to remain like a child?" Uh......

I LOVE this age!

2011-06-16T08:06:00.000-07:00

Sitting here overseeing school, explaining singular and plural in Latin and 6 blue marbles plus 4 red marbles times 5 bags and why you can't pick your nose at the table, & I overhear my little one in the background making truck noises and saying, "That will be a good idea," pronouncing "good" like it rhymes with "food."

My 4yo starts picking up, 2yo cries because she's only picking up his toys. I tell her to quit it & tell him she's sorry; she does, & I hear, "I forgive you, Abby. It's not time to pick up--that's not how we play." And the truck noises start again.

I think everyone should always have an on-the-cusp-of-3yo in their house. It's like having a beautiful garden and a song and a philosopher who helps you see what's true and what's small and what's big. It's a reminder that tears are for more than tragedy and rejoicing is for less than a new job. It's the birth of hyperbole and faith. It's never being bored or smelling quite right.

This morning, I am thanking God for these years.

The Nook: A Love Story

2011-06-15T16:50:00.000-07:00

It's been a love triangle for some time now: I got a Nook for Christmas & immediately wondered if I should have requested a Kindle instead. I've been tormented going back and forth between features this one has, features that one has, while my Nook sat languishing in my desk.

Why? I didn't want to spend money on books for one device if I'd then have to rebuy them for another. I wanted to keep it in pristine condition in case I decided to sell it in order to buy the other.

So I loaded my latest novel onto the Nook in PDF format, to reread so I could start writing again. Then I passed it to my husband to read while I turned to the laptop to write. It was pretty nifty, reading something fun on a device with buttons. Up to that point, I'd limited myself to free classics, which it turns out, I'll only read under compulsion.

It was so much fun that later, when I found myself prereading The Lightning Thief for my new history curriculum, & I saw that it was only $5 as a nookbook...I handed my paper-and-glue library copy to my husband to read (as he prefers a more traditional format) & found myself reading like I was nine years old again. With a few exceptions (Harry Potter), I haven't enjoyed reading so much since I was a kid.

I LOVE pushing buttons! *giddy*

Now I'm just crossing my fingers that all of my notes will be easily accessible when I'm ready to write up the teacher guide....

Harmony of History: Unit 2 is available!

2011-06-15T16:47:00.000-07:00

First, Unit 2 is available. Go here to buy it: http://curiosityacademypress.webs.com/apps/webstore/products/show/2259090 Or email me for a free sample (aubreylively@yahoo.com).

Second, I've started a blog specifically for HoH: http://harmonyofhistory.blogspot.com/. It will be a weekly (or more often) summary of what we've done, how we've implemented, pictures (not yet), etc. Also, that would be the perfect place to post answers to questions.

I look forward to sharing history with you guys this year!

Songs for a Mother's Heart

2011-05-27T07:55:00.000-07:00

On Having it All

You said that we could have it all, we didn’t have to lose
The job, the spouse, the babies:
Every mother has to choose.

I drop my daughter off among the twos,
Come back, and find she’s been lost among the keys.
You said that we could have it all, we didn’t have to lose.

I watch my son, he’s changing hues,
Losing himself with ease.
Every mother has to choose.

What I am missing is what this ruse
Will not let me seize
(You said that we could have it all, we didn’t have to lose):

The talk of God and death and stuff that spews
Spontaneously from these:
Every mother has to choose.

I was not prepared to pay these dues,
And these sacrifices drive me to my knees.
You said that we could have it all, we didn’t have to lose;
Every mother has to choose.

Children in My Lap

Holy, holy, holy,
My children in my lap:
I sing slowly...

Read the rest here.

Awkward Silences

2011-05-12T09:53:00.000-07:00

I've pulled out an old manuscript to work on. It was my first, actually, and I was scared to look. Partly scared because my ability to save a computer file in one place where it can later be found in-tact and in its entirety is still...in the developmental stages. Ten years ago I was still using floppy disks and random computers.

But I picked a file, and I've been reading through that, realizing that, apparently, I couldn't spell ten years ago, or be bothered to use spell check. Works doesn't offer the fun squiggly lines (which I hated back then anyway), and my quotation marks don't curl.

Those are the minor annoyances. You get past those as you follow the story's path and get lost in its darkness and details.

There are things I struggle with when writing. Action, dialogue. I like to wind my way around a point with long descriptions, with conceits. I do that well, too, but for a novel...well, my husband, being male, likes action, and as my one in-house reader, he insists that others feel the same way. More recent manuscripts reflect his influence on my writing.

But this was my first, begun even before we were married. There are no chase scenes or explosives, and the dialogue is sparse. Over and over, I find places where I have created "awkward silences."

We've all experienced these--they DO exist. But it's as if I believed I could slap the label "awkward" onto a silence and thereby get away with writing around the dialogue.

It makes me laugh because whenever possible, I do the same thing now. And who can blame me? My real life is full of awkward silences, too, of conversations that occur only in my head, of people that I can't figure out how to talk to.

Still, I'm writing my own personal creative writing course, a kind of coaching manual, crafted just for me. Chapter one is "No Awkward Silences".

In the Middle of the Battle Field

2011-04-23T20:11:00.000-07:00

You know how sometimes people who disagree with you about something seem stupid? How right and wrong sometimes seem obvious? You know how it makes you want to bang your head against a wall & maybe cuss a little when you encounter these narrow-minded nitwits who clearly haven't bothered to think outside the box that society has given them?

I was on the other end of that today. And I understand how the people who are aghast at my immorality feel--there are some things where one cannot agree to disagree. Wrong is simply wrong.

I am sad, though, because this is an issue that most people are passionate about. Violently passionate, even. And I can see both sides. Because of that, I don't know what is right with regard to certain aspects of this issue. I disagree with one side, passionately. But I have great respect for their passion, too, because I understand where it comes from. And I have deep compassion for those they represent because I am willing to put myself in their shoes & imagine their lives.

I would like to agree to disagree. I would like to be able to respect their beliefs while holding mine without either of us feeling compelled to change the others' opinion. But I'm standing in the middle of a battle field, and I'm afraid that the act of standing there is a crime worthy of death. To either side.

The Ultimate School Project

2011-04-22T18:56:00.000-07:00

I have realized a sordid thing about homeschooling: I am not the student. As much as I hated public school growing up, it has been astonishing to me to realize how much there was to enjoy…about learning, about being the one who gets to have the ideas, make the projects, choose the colors and the deeper points of study for papers and such.

Maybe that’s part of what made the early years of homeschooling so difficult: I saw homeschooling as the School Project to End All School Projects. My dioramas could fill my whole house; I could use the oven to prepare coordinated foods; I could make costumes and find music and books and art and field trips to enhance it all. I could submerge my “audience” in the richest experience of ancient Egypt ever created. Or Greece—I was up all night one night making a 3-dimensional Greek Parthenon, spent a week drawing a life-size Cyclops for a game of “Pin-the-eye-on-the-Cyclops,” and assigned bedtime readings from The Iliad to my husband.

But my audience had changed. Instead of a beaming teacher holding a straight A or a gold star, I had these little children—

Read the rest here.

Free One Week Sample

2011-04-20T16:07:00.000-07:00

You know you're curious. You've been to the website, but you can't quite wrap your head around it.

Now you can see it for free. Edit: email me (aubreylively@yahoo.com), and I'll send you a one week sample for free.

But wait. There's more. (I'm practicing for my infomercial.)

Write about that sample (or order unit 1 and write about that). Write on your blog, write on a homeschool board, just spread the word. Email me a link to your review, & I'll send you the timeline free, too.

The timeline is cool. Very cool. And free stuff is cool, but the timeline is better than free stuff even.

You write about what you love to homeschool with *anyway.* Get something for it!

(Why are you still reading this? Go! See. Blog. Get free stuff.)

ACK! I don't know what's wrong, but I'm not getting emails about your subscriptions, so instead, please email me at aubreylively@yahoo.com. Thanks!

This Moment

2011-04-18T16:38:00.000-07:00

He steals grapes. He sneaks apples. But he can only manage to get the apple on one side, so I find the Other Halves stashed...in the playroom, the sofa, my bed...

I've been promised that one day I'll miss the surprises.

It's here...

2011-04-13T10:49:00.000-07:00

Welcome to Curiosity Academy!

Harmony of History

For now, history is our only business, and Harmony of History is our only product. It is a classical, chronological history program for the logic stage--approximately grades 5-8--with more creativity than you'd expect because...well...people populate the pages of history, and people are funny, ridiculous, inspiring, and...creative!

I learned more geography from playing Risk than I did in 6th grade geography, in which I remember little beyond carefully coloring around tiny islands lest I flood them. Playing Axis and Allies taught me more about the warfare and politics of WWII than any of my college classes did. As my children have gotten old enough to participate in this favorite hobby of my husband and mine, the potential for learning history and geography through games has surprised me.

Read the rest here

WARNING

2011-04-05T11:11:00.000-07:00

You get these emails. The last one I received told me not to accept dollar coins: "In God we trust" has been removed.

Now you'd think the person pressing the "forward" button would be too embarrassed to admit that they hadn't actually *looked* at a dollar coin. But I think it goes the other way, too: they're embarrassed to admit that they hadn't noticed the beloved phrase missing.

Me? I figure I haven't noticed because we don't have any dollar coins laying around. We don't have many *dollars* laying around, lol! At the same time, though...I think I've seen this email before...years ago.

So I check Snopes for the facts. Not true.

Which brings me to my point: when was the last time you received a WARNING email that was *true*?

Coloring the Whole World

2011-03-31T19:42:00.000-07:00

I taped a bunch of printer paper to the wall a week ago, got an overhead projector off of Craig's List (months ago), & made my own giant world map.

It would have been made faster if it hadn't gotten bumped by a very ethnocentric little boy, shouting, "AMERICAN! IT'S AMERICAN!" (In my defense, he also thinks I'm the tzar.)

It would have also gone faster if the map I was projecting had been new instead of 40c on Amazon. Some of my rivers may actually be scratches on the film. But I digress.

Now I'm trying to free-hand all of the biomes of the world onto my homemade world map. Crazy hard. Then color-code. Of course deserts should be yellow and mountains brown, but what about boreal forests? And how different are those, really, from the three or four other kinds of forests my biome book says to label?

More importantly, what do I do about the need for so many shades of green?

It's the kind of thing, though, where you can get lost in thought and a rainbow of pencils. I find myself thinking about the cold of my brown-pencil mountains, about Russian and German soldiers and Jews hiding in closets as frosty winds blow fighting back and forth, deciding fate, freezing calamity.

The colored pencils have cooled as I have marched them toward Russia. Only yesterday there were red rainforests and yellow deserts and green grasslands. Now only cold boreal forests expand beyond the pencil in every direction, dotted by flat brown circles of mountain and the whisper, the promise, the tundra beyond.

On Division in the Body

2011-03-26T05:46:00.000-07:00

And the disciples came and said to Him, "Why do You speak to them in parables?"

He answered and said to them, "Because it has been given to you to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven, but to them it has not been given. For whoever has, to him more will be given, and he will have abundance; but whoever does not have, even what he has will be taken away from him. Therefore I speak to them in parables, because seeing they do not see, and hearing they do not hear, nor do they understand. And in them the prophecy of Isaiah is fulfilled, which says:

'Hearing you will hear and shall not understand,
And seeing you will see and not perceive;
For the hearts of this people have grown dull,
Their ears are hard of hearing,
And their eyes have closed,
Lest they should see with their eyes and hear with their ears,
Lest they should understand with their hearts and turn,
So that I should heal them.'

Matthew 13:10-15

This is a passage that has always aggravated me: WHY would God prevent people from hearing or understanding Him? (Or choose not to *give* it to them, as the above passage specifically says.) WHY did He harden Pharaoh's heart?

I don't know the answer, but recently there has been a great division in the body. Mostly I stomped around, ranting about people who do not perceive things the way I do, but eventually I prayed. This passage came to mind.

My first reaction was the same as yours: Aha! An explanation for ignorant people who won't see reason!

But here's the thing. I could be one who has been given the chance to see and hear and understand. Or I could be one who is blind and deaf and arrogantly clinging to my own blind perceptions. If I am truly humble, I must admit that I *cannot* know.

The pharisees were certain of their interpretation of Scripture. Paul was certain that Jesus was not the Christ. Intelligence was not Paul's problem; a good education was not something he lacked. He simply had not had his eyes opened yet.

God opened Paul's eyes, revealing Himself. As I pray for the current situation, I realize that the only honest thing I can do is pray that our eyes would be opened--and realize that I may in fact be praying for myself.

A Literal Interpretation of the Bible

2011-03-21T11:08:00.000-07:00

So you believe there was literally a worldwide flood, an ark, a seven-day creation. (So do I.)

Someone else believes these stories are poems, symbols, stories.

You believe literally in the big fish (not a whale), the multiplying of the bread, the virgin birth, and the talking snake in the garden. (So do I.)

Someone else believes literally that the bread becomes flesh and the wine becomes blood.

You believe literally in the flames above the apostles’ heads, the raising of Lazarus and the emptying of graves when Jesus died.

Someone else believes in the flames of fire, speaking in tongues, raising of the dead, healing of the sick. Today. (I do.)

We all (of the above) believe that Jesus is our Savior, Redeemer, Lord.

Was there literally a sower with seeds that fell on fallow ground? Was there literally a good Samaritan? What if those stories were “parables”—stories made up to teach us something? Who decides which Bible stories are parables and which ones are literal?

When the disciples asked Jesus about the stories He told, was it their literal truth He emphasized? (No.)

But some of the someones above are smeared, criticized, sent to the Evangelicals’ Hell-in-waiting, for those who need to have God smite them, but for some reason…He hasn’t gotten around to it yet.

No, wait. We are his hands and feet. WE should smite them, right? Mouth, too—so we simply need to preach the *ahem* “Good News” that these people are evil, workers of the Devil, etc. That’s why God gave us the internet: so the world could know us by our “love.”

Eschewing Obfuscation in Academia via Kinesthetic Jargon-Elimination...

2011-03-04T09:26:00.001-08:00

or "Learning Vocabulary"...

Sometimes when I’m writing lesson plans, I have an epiphany, and I realize that my kids’ attention spans are no longer or deeper than my own. If I have not managed to retain the definitions of stomata, xylem, and chloroplasts from our reading…they probably haven’t, either. And if a review of the terms simply makes my eyes glaze over…then I know that their “study skills” leave something to be desired, too.

Science vocabulary in particular has always eluded me: it seems an obnoxious way to weed people out who might very well understand concepts but get tongue-tied when it comes to names. I’m the same way with meeting people at church, reducing them to layman’s terms: “Talking Man” and “Meat Sandwich.” (The latter was the unfortunate result of a lady trying in vain to help people remember her name: she’s the wife of a guy named Pat, and in Sunday School, she’d sit next to a girl named Pat. She said she was the middle of a “Pat Sandwich.” She also said her name, but I forget that part. I do know it wasn’t Pat.)

Looking again at the mysterious vocabulary, I began to work to make the mental pictures that allow me to remember faces, if not names. I pretended to care, and the result was the following lesson plan:

Read the rest here.

My First Give-Away

2011-02-11T08:14:00.000-08:00

I've created a guide to Film History, and you can have the first volume for free!

Vol. 1 covers film, literature, tv, radio, food, and common household inventions from 1890 to 1919. Included are links to video and audio sources of public domain pieces, so you have everything at your fingertips. (TV and radio are not actually included in vol. 1 but begin to be represented in vol. 2.)

All you have to do is post a comment to any of my blog posts (um, not this one). Be sure to mention that you want a free copy of Entertainment History 1890 to 1919.

This offer is good through 2/28/2011, so grab your popcorn!

Hey--make sure to give me your email address!

What do you do for guys for Valentine's Day?

2011-02-10T17:24:00.001-08:00

My husband and I had planned an anti-Valentine's Day game of Risk the Valentines before we got engaged. Mysteriously, everyone backed out, & we were left to ourselves. That was the night I met his parents.

We didn't date before we got engaged, the Wednesday before that Valentine's Day, so the romantic holiday came upon us as most things in life have since: by surprise. He showed up at church that morning with a box of orange tea & a "not-rose." Roses were sold-out, he said, & that was the only flower he knew.

We have called carnations "not-roses" ever since, but his knowledge of flowers has expanded. He knows that daisies and tulips are my favorites, & he has spent time learning about their care, since I am all black thumbs.

We've been married for more than 10 years now, and Valentine's Day is still mostly a mystery to us. Just last year, I realized I DON'T CARE if it's "Hallmark Holiday"--we have each other, so we should ENJOY it. He was surprised; it's the first time I'd told him I *like* a holiday made up of pink and red.

But we still don't know what to do, & wheeling the kids through the Valentines bedecked grocery store the other night, I realized, I'm somewhat baffled because of the girlie nature of it all. He can bring flowers or chocolates or bright pink coffee cups, & I'm thrilled. My husband, for himself, has a profound problem with pink, is allergic to chocolate, &...I've never brought a guy flowers, but it does seem like it would come off strangely.

He told me this Christmas, though, that it's only in the winter, under the Christmas tree, that he misses chocolate. Peanut butter cups were a holiday stocking tradition when he was a kid. So I thought I might dip little balls of peanut butter in some melted butterscotch--which he loves--& he'll know I thought of him.

It's not just my husband, though--I've got 2 sons also. I remember my mom would greet us Valentine's morning with something small. A heart-covered pencil & some candy--just enough that we felt the day was special. I've long planned to do something similar for my kids, but I haven't managed anything more than heart-shaped pancakes yet, & that was only once. But if I did get it together in time, what on earth would I do for my 10-year-old son? Sure, candy's acceptable to all children, but we're still dealing with fall-out from Halloween! And I don't think he'd be too excited about a page of pink stickers or a pink bunny. (Wait. Maybe I'm mixing Easter & Valentine's...?)

So I can't help noticing as I glance over the grocery ad for this week how much easier the guys have it on Valentine's Day. Is it supposed to be a girls-only holiday? (And I'm sure my kids would be *thrilled* with that disparity!)

What do YOU do for your guys?

Should School be Fun?

2011-02-03T09:53:00.000-08:00

Some homeschooling friends are debating this question right now, vacillating between guilt that their kids aren’t having enough “fun” homeschooling and conviction that too much fun in the early years will lead to an inability to concentrate and work hard later on.

I did what any responsible educator would do: I asked my kids.

Should school be fun? “Of course,” they agreed. “Why wouldn’t it be?” So I told them that some teachers thought that might not be a good idea, and their jaws dropped.

First, they think fun is good. They suggested that school is often as fun as playing. I think the key here, though, is not necessarily offering chocolate chips for every worksheet completed, as my nine-year-old suggested, but in teaching kids to enjoy learning. Instead of making up games to make reading seem fun and broccoli taste good, we should be finding good books and great recipes....

Read the rest here.

Ashes, part 2

2011-01-27T18:15:00.000-08:00

I don't think there are *really* any spoilers, but I've gotten some email asking for the details of why I loved this book, & since I'm dying to talk about it more, here goes

[Stop reading if you want to finish the book first but haven't. Stop reading if your name is Landon.]

Ok, you've been warned.

A friend described this book as "ok" without any extraordinary plot twists. Although I enjoyed the plot, my friend is right--the beauty of Ashes is not primarily in the plot.

First, it was the voice. Gabriella genuinely sounded like a 13yo girl at the outset, & her gushing commentary on actresses & movies of the time had an unusual combination of genuine 13yo girl & really having grown up during the first run of those movies--at the very least, I believed that the author had spent *weeks* watching & rewatching period films to try to see what 13yo girls would have seen at the time.

Then there was the description of Einstein. At first, I was a little put out by it. I mean, it's kind-of fun for him to turn up as a minor character, but…he was so undeveloped in his first fleeting appearance, that it seemed kind-of gimmicky. But his mannerisms…were actually quite vivid. His lack of development early on made sense, too, when I thought of him as a colleague of the main character’s father—not someone she’d pay that much attention to. As the book progresses…there were a lot of little things that added up to a strong supporting character. My favorite? Einstein almost stepping on her as he crossed the lawn, both coming to visit her father and going home later that night.

These impressed me, kept me reading, made me enjoy the process. The perspective added a lot, too: I haven’t seen anything (that I can think of) written about this period (PRE-WWII) or from this point of view (non-Jewish). A fresh look at something is always intriguing to me.

Finally, what took my breath away in a time-slowing surreal sort of way was the book burning. Of course it’s bad to burn books. We all know that. But I’ve never thought about the experience of a book burning, of being surrounded by people who madly cheer the process.

It was the scent of the Linden trees being overcome by the scent of burning paper that made everything stop for me. Who but a first-hand observer would know of something as minute as the scent of a Linden tree? And who but a writer would pause to notice?

It was this combination of details that are indiscernible by research and clarity that cannot be captured by a witness that captivated me. How did she know, I found myself wondering. How could she? I calculated and recalculated Lasky’s possible age, knowing this could not be a first-hand account but unable to accept that research could be so seamless, so authentic, so thorough.

She explains in an afterword as she thanks the people who contributed to the authenticity of the work. From German phrases threaded in and out of conversations—as if that language were more natural than English—to the names of shops and breads and stars, I believe in Gabriella. I believe in her world, her shame, her voice. And for the first time, I have a glimpse of the Germany she did not want to leave behind.

Ashes, Kathryn Lasky

2011-01-22T07:46:00.000-08:00

I didn't know that my heart had breath until it stopped breathing. I feel like a kid who's just read his first chapter book & is breathless with the exhilaration of the freedom that comes with reading.

That first taste of freedom is quickly drowned by a gluttony of books, & he begins to discover that all books are not written equally. The feel of the wind rushing up under his wings is forgotten as he stares at walls & walls of books with the dour pessimism that can only be embodied by a young reader: I've read everything good. There's nothing left.

I have just been reminded of that feeling, though, & I am long past my first experience with a book. I have beside me Ashes by Kathryn Lasky. It's the library's copy, & I tell myself that it's much cheaper to buy my own than to keep this one, but like my husband and my children, this is a...voice...I cannot part with. Not ever.

Ashes is a young adult historical fiction set in pre-WWII Germany. Within that period, I've read many fiction and non-fiction books; this one is the first that I can think of that is not specifically about the Holocaust. It tells another story of the Nazi tragedy that is haunting because we all know so well what came after.

I enjoy historical fiction, but it almost seems unfair to classify this book: it rises above genre. It's a coming-of-age story, & it's a human story. Post-WWI Germany is just its tumultuous setting, although "just" is hardly an appropriate adjective. When we define something as a "setting," there seems to be the implication that it's distinctly less relevant than plot or characterization. But of course, none of us can really separate the setting of our lives from the plot, & it is often as much our setting as anything that gives us character, makes us who we are. Lasky writes as if she understands this deeply.

It's not due back until the end of January, so I have some time to get to a bookstore. My real concern, of course, is how many copies to buy & how to get them autographed. When I return the book to the library, I'm thinking of returning it with a donation, in honor of my gratitude to a system that stocks such great literature so soon after its publication date (2010). And for being brave enough to share it with me.

I feel as if I have never read a good book before, as if I'd just this week learned to enjoy reading. Actually, based on my previous posts...you might agree.

Ashes is as fun to read as mind-candy & perhaps it is that that makes its beauty all the more stunning. Several times, I had to stop reading--just to breathe. It's not a breathless adventure novel; it's just that its...authenticity...takes you that much by surprise. In retrospect, I don't think I've ever read a truer book, on either side of the library.

Ashes is not a style I've ever been particularly drawn to. It's relatively traditional (with the exception of the preface through chapter 3), but the tightness of the writing & the authenticity of the voice, the texture with which Lasky weaves the story--are all revolutionary in their excellence.

I want to give you examples, but my husband has asked that I don't. He wants to keep the experience pure for himself as he reads, to be as surprised by the skillfulness of the author & the detail of the story as I was. For his sake, I'll at least hold off on examples. But I do have advice for you before you run out to get your own copy:

1. Do not read the dust jacket. It's a good book, so you don't need a preview (although I enjoyed reading the back cover first), & I think the dust jacket gives just a little too much away. Not anything plot-changing, but more fun as a surprise.

2. If you've ever read anything else by Kathryn Lasky, assume nothing about this novel. I read The Night Journey to the kids the week before I read Ashes. Thirty years have passed between the publication of the two books, & it shows. Lasky's skill has developed so incredibly in those intervening years that she is almost unrecognizable from one book to another. Ashes reads as if it were a story she'd been wanting to tell her whole life & finally, she's pulled together the words & the images, & the result is a masterpiece, a life's work.

A Spy Code for Math

2011-01-20T08:02:00.000-08:00

Some numbers don’t belong. Write the the ones that don’t belong on the line below. (You're looking for a number pattern.)
24 4 8 12 3 16 20 66 24 28 15 32 36 3 40 44 48 48 52 27 56 15 60 9 64 15 68 45 18 72 9 54 76 24 80 54 84 88 92 27 96 57 100 104 60 108 39 112 116 120 3 57 124 128 132 9 136 3 140 144 148 42 152 12 156 160 75
__ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __

Then you'll need the cipher. Or maybe you can figure that out, too. It's another number pattern, matched up to the alphabet. Can you figure out the message?

Answer in post dated 1/1/01.

2011-01-18T08:14:00.000-08:00

Turning on classical music when your 4th grader's math makes you want to bang your head against a wall: GOOD IDEA.

Tchaikovsky: BAD IDEA.

The Value of a Frozen Pizza

2011-01-03T08:20:00.000-08:00

For the last several months, I have disappeared. We’ve gotten most of our schoolwork done, but everything else from cooking to cleaning and sometimes answering the phone, has dropped off my radar.

I’ve been reading. I’m an odd bird when it comes to reading. Although I’d never say so in front of my children, I don’t like to read. I’m a literature major, for heaven’s sake! But I like writing more than reading, and I have found that books too often disappoint me. The writing is weak, or the climax is less than I’d imagined. No matter what, a book requires tedious hours of sitting still and waiting. I don’t wait well. I peek at the last pages, I shake the boxes under the Christmas tree when everyone’s sleeping, and—don’t tell—sometimes I read the Spark Notes or watch the movie. The disappointment of a bad book is so easily replaced with the thrill of getting away with not reading it.

So now you understand, and most of you have probably stopped reading in disgust. To make things worse, I’m a classical homeschooler who likes to teach through literature. I just don’t like to read. Read-alouds here take anywhere from six weeks to a year. My oldest two learned to read because they gave up on me sitting down with them.

But wait. It gets worse. Read the rest here.

My Homeschool Story

2010-12-28T12:55:00.000-08:00

2010-12-15T21:30:00.000-08:00

I'm sitting here tonight with a fever, & I've spent the afternoon throwing up, but I'm not sick: I'm heart broken.

A fellow writer at HOTM lost a child this week. She's a lady I've never met, never spoken with online, whose last name I don't even know, & she lost a child. There are virtual hugs and a group effort to process the tragedy. Women have come together to tell their own stories of near losses, so that others can hold their babies close and be ever vigilant, & I can't breathe.

We should bolt our bookshelves down & cover our outlets & put child-proof locks on windows and doors and medicine. There are hundreds of ways to protect our children, & yet these stories still come, and the tragedy still strikes, & I can't breathe.

We put the L-brackets for the bookshelves on the to-do list, & most of them get clamped down. But we forget the one in the bedroom, or we have to move one to fix an outlet. The smoke detector won't stop buzzing, & there's not a fire, & we forget after pulling it out of the wall in the middle of the night. A stray grocery bag gets left in a far corner of the kitchen or gets swept into the hallway.

Most of the time, nothing happens. Occasionally, we have a near-miss. And then there are the other times, the times that seem only theoretical & unreal until someone is holding a phone with a 911 operator on the other end.

I can't forget that it is Christmas. I can't stop thinking about the pain of a family burying a child, of the dreams and images that will be with them the rest of their lives. I imagine losing one of mine, & then I imagine watching the siblings grieve, & the weeping starts again, & I can't breathe. I imagine these children grown up, when the pain has dulled, & I know that a stocking will still hang on the mantle for their little brother. I know that they'll think of his absence on their wedding days.

It's Christmas. I know that his presents have already been bought. They will stay in the back of the closet for years to come, & every time his mother goes to get dressed, she'll feel her knees buckle under her with the weight of the pain. My hands shake to think of it, & the weeping begins again, & I can't breathe.

I hear the encouraging words we're supposed to say to each other, the words that we all know do not really comfort the bereaved: our children are gifts, on loan from God. They're not ours. Our time with them may be brief. We must love them while we can--

And all I feel is angry. All I feel is this bone-wracking ache for this child & his mother. I don't want to live in a world where children can be lost. And there are so many opportunities to lose them.

I have a two-year-old & a three-year-old, & they were napping when I read Dana's story. I was glad that I'd have time to start breathing again before they came crying for snacks & a hundred other things that plague their days. I also wanted to tear their bedroom doors open & pull them to me, to make sure they were alright. But when they got up, they would not be held. One sucked his thumb while the other demanded food "for her heart." They cried to go potty & cried for the light on & cried that they could do it themselves but needed help, & there was no time for me to cry any more.

I took them to church & sat in the parking lot & cried, though.

Then we came home, & I watched numbly as my husband put them to bed. Every syllable they mispronounce breaks my heart for the mother who has lost her baby's song, & I weep, & I know I have to start breathing again. My head aches, & I can't eat or think, & my babies are all safely tucked into bed, & I feel like I'm violating the very core of motherhood by stealing someone else's grief, but I can't help it. My throat is closing, & any effort to forget feels like betrayal, like admitting defeat. If only I can keep my mind on this little boy, then maybe it's not true, maybe he will live. If only I can hold up the universe with my thoughts, maybe the other children whose mamas have loved them will live, too. And my only stray thoughts are of the other children I've known who've been lost too soon, & I can't breathe, & it's too hot in here.

My nine-year-old likes to take his pillow & blanket down from his bed & sleep on the floor beside his two-year-old brother. The older boy hates to sleep on the floor, so this is especially sweet. I hear him at night sometimes singing to the little one, long after bedtime, & I smile & try to hold these memories in my heart.

Tonight as I walked past, I thought I heard the older one singing, but then I heard the younger one, too, & I realized they were talking & playing, so I went in to sternly put them back to bed.

When I walked in, the little one said, "The crickets are singin to me, Mama!"

"Did John tell you that?"

"Yes," he said, sticking his thumb back in his mouth after a big grin.

I laid down between them, & the three of us listened to "the cricket & frog songs" for a while. There in that silence, in the softness of their ears and their breathing and soggy thumbs and awkward limbs, I felt it--the pieces of my heart, willing to heal. As I ran my hands over the soft baby hair and the coarser big kid hair, knowing that I could lose them at any time, knowing that life is so fragile & uncertain & that all my love & all my mental gymnastics cannot keep my children safe, I was comforted by their wide eyes & warm breathing.

This is now. It's all I can hold, & if tragedy strikes, it's all I will have. I must embrace the now.

It's hard on those nights to stand up, turn around, & walk away. You sense the loss. Even if we sidestep fate & see our children grow up, this night cannot be captured, & once we turn out the lights & close the doors, it is a memory. How do we ever walk away? But we do. We must.

And the only weapon we have against regret is to embrace the now, to be fully there, in the moment with the delicious sounds of temper tantrums & the awful smell of life & the rosy cheeks & scrapes & joys & sorrows they bring us.

The little one brought home a present from his teacher at church. He held it all the way home, calling it a "party" with a "Christmas" on top--the bow. We told him to put it under the tree, & he ran enthusiastically to do so, but when his feet hit the carpet, something in him stopped, & he looked at his "party." He tore just a *little* piece of the paper away & looked at the tree. I saw his feet wiggle, as if they really wanted to go & obey, but he looked at the "party" again, & peeled away another tiny piece of paper, watching it float to the ground.

He unwrapped the whole party, which turned out to be a puzzle, which to a two-year-old is just another party waiting to be unwrapped.

I watched those little pieces of paper float to the ground with him tonight. I didn't stop his fiendish entrancement with the mystery. I let him be my mystery, & I watched as a tiny piece of something separating us floated to the ground so that for a moment, I could see the party through his eyes, the wonder of it, the mystery that overpowers like the last twenty pages of a great book you can't put down. I reveled in his discovery like I was watching an old home movie of something I can no longer touch, & I rejoiced in being able to reach through the film of grief that enveloped me to touch him.

Oh my heavy heart. If only all this weeping meant that another's pain were softened, but there is no sense to any of it. Only hurting & *now* the only balm.

A "Victorian" Christmas Tree

2010-12-13T09:46:00.000-08:00

A picture wouldn't really do our tree justice, so here's a story:

When we moved to that little seminary apartment a few years ago, I gave away our non-sentimental ornaments & gave the sentimental ones to my sister. I made a felt tree to hang on the wall, ala Dr. Seuss.

In this house, there's not wall space for our Seuss tree (or any tree, really), but tree prices have fallen enough that we went with a real one. Our ornaments are mostly felt that we've made in the last couple of years & some tiny white embroidered pillow ornaments my mom made when we were kids.

We couldn't find the pillow ornaments right away, & while we were still looking for them, the big kids started cutting out construction paper ornaments & stringing popcorn. 7yo made a lovely angel, & my more serious 9yo made various parts of a manger scene to hang on the tree.

3yo wanted to make an ornament, too, so she cut out some pink construction paper & glued popcorn on it. "It's a bat with popcorn on it," she said, & when Daddy tried to put a hole in it, so she could hang it on the tree, she objected. "Bats hang upside down," she said, & so Daddy turned the bat upside down & gave it a hook.

Since then, Landon has cut out a paper star for the topper, & somebody has added cut-out snowflakes. 3yo put a hairclip on one branch, & 2yo stuck some silk flowers here & there, along with a purse that he needs when he "goes to work." There's also a string of foil candy canes, stuck in a wad in one corner.

Overall, I'd say it's a "Victorian" style tree, as the pillow ornaments are quite lacey. (Maybe a picture *is* in order!)

My Homeschool Story

2010-12-10T06:55:00.000-08:00

I was homeschooled as a child. My mother taught me to read, count, and add. She got a copy of the school district’s kindergarten goals and dutifully worked through the list with me, insisting on finger painting even when both of us preferred our fingers to be clean.

I remember this time with my mother sweetly, although I did not love all of her lesson plans. Outlining the continents with a straight pin until I knew them turned out to be as futile as it felt. Memorizing my math facts was something I couldn’t understand: I thought it was about “performance” instead of quick recall of facts.
But we stood in the kitchen together, stirring pots, baking brownies, saying Scriptures, and chasing after Tuesday, the one day of the week I could never seem to remember. I had been in daycare before this, and it was wonderful to be at home at last, with someone who understood me because on some level, her mind worked like mine did. And when it didn’t? She had a level of respect for letting me work things out in my own way, like being given space to be myself.

I started public school when I was five,already done with kindergarten. Red tape and bureaucracy were the highlights of that year, being tested, being sent back and forth between school, home, first grade, kindergarten, and the principal’s office.
It was 1985, and the homeschooling laws were fuzzy at best. Mom caved to pressure from the school district, and I went to first grade, where we were learning to read, then to second grade which was deemed a “review year,” and on to third, in which I was graded on the number of math problems I fit into a row instead of the results of the math problems.

One could easily doubt the significance of the few months of official homeschooling that I’d experienced. After all, most children learn something from their parents before attending school. Those few months, though, set the tone for the rest of my educational experiences....

Read the rest here.

First Poem

2010-11-30T22:44:00.000-08:00

My 2yo composed his first poem today:

"Oh Blanky!
"You the most wonderful Blanky in the world!"

After the Open House (How it Went)

2010-11-30T12:52:00.001-08:00

Other than the fact that my husband announced the morning of open house (& Halloween) that he wanted to let the kids carve pumpkins *right then,* it was a brilliant success. (And luckily, there was a bad pumpkin crop this yr, so the pumpkin carving was nixed.)

My kids have the best grandparents in the world. I'm sorry for everybody else! My father-in-law sat with the littles the entire time he was here, playing "Trot Little Horsey" & spinning them in my spinning desk chair until 2yo announced that he couldn't take it any more & was going to bed. In the middle of a *loud* party.

My mother-in-law & her sister walked around the room, reading every word of everything, asking questions, commenting on *everything,* & completely filling the kids' hearts up w/ the feeling that somebody is immeasurably interested in each of them.

Even my husband commented later that this was the first time he's really gotten to see the full picture of what the kids are doing & their enthusiasm, etc. At the dinner table, he asks what they're learning, & they shrug--we all know how that goes!

My daughter read her book about immigration, & my mother-in-law & Aunt Pat told her about their grandmother coming over to America when she was 19.

My grandmother told them about her uncles & brothers in WW I & II, her experiences seeing Eleanor Roosevelt on newsreels at the theater as a child.

My only regret is that we didn't have them over one at a time, so the kids could have heard more of their stories. And that my dad & granddad didn't live to tell their stories that day.

For *me,* this was a truly meaningful & memorable experience. I am so grateful to mine and my husband's families for making it so.

Homeschool Open House

2010-11-30T12:49:00.000-08:00

On Sunday, my family will be hosting our first Homeschool Open House. Grandparents, aunts, uncles, and even great-grandparents will be coming to see this year’s school work on display in a format that they’re used to seeing in public schools but in a much homier environment and with better cookies.

There’s an indoor garden at one end of the school table with a terrarium and lemon seeds that we tried growing from real lemons. Fresh herbs are in most of our meals these days, right from our school garden.

Next to that, there’s a “Dancing Octopus” to demonstrate Thomas Edison’s work with static electricity. Granny can rub a balloon on her head and then hold the charged balloon to the octopus’ tissue paper “legs” to see them dance. There’s a poster explaining the experiment and a model of a copy machine that works off of the same technology right beside the octopus.

Thanks to the Phonics of Drawing, we’ve got a gallery of interesting artwork hanging beneath our cursive alphabet, and combined with the brave writer lifestyle, each piece of art has its own poem to go with it. My favorite is the one describing a page full of squares: Black squares dancing around a big one. I think of the big square as the big and mighty leader or the old wise one. (Grace, 7)

My husband’s parents are kind people who thrive off of supporting others. They like to attend events and cheer in the bleachers, and homeschooling has left them at somewhat of a loss, wanting a place to cheer but not sure where or how to find that. On Sunday, they will get to see the covered wagon the kids built out of a shoe box for the journey westward on the Oregon Trail, the journey that Granny and Grand Dad assisted with by telephone.

The kids have also built a log cabin out of craft sticks. It was supposed to be Lincoln’s cabin, but it never got furnished, so now it’s being converted to a three-dimensional literary report on Little House on the Prairie.....

I need a favor

2010-11-17T11:16:00.000-08:00

I've never asked y'all for a favor before!

So here it is: please go buy Steve Sheinkin's history books. There are only 3 (not including the bio of Benadict Arnold that recently came out), so this is not an overwhelming task. They are among the best books ever written, so neither is it an odious task. (Sorry; I just finished reading a Jane Austen novel, & some of her language stuck to me.)

[UPDATE: I've looked at the sample of the Benadict Arnold book, & it looks like it's meant to be part of the same series. The quiry humor is the same, and I'm betting it would be perfect for ages something like 6 to maybe 99? My dad and grand dad would have LOVED these books!]

King George: What Was His Problem, Two Miserable Presidents, and Which Way to the Wild West. With the recent Amazon controversy, I'll decline to link the books & leave the venue of their acquirement to you.

If you love history, like to read non-fiction, I'll assume you've already raced over to order your copies of these books or that you already own them. The rest of this post is directed at everybody else: I do not read nonfiction for fun. If I want information on a topic, I either do without, ask my husband, or search the internet. However, for the sake of my children, I have been loathe to reveal this weakness in myself. (Darn the Austen!)

As I was saying, as a homeschooling mama, I have been pretty good at hiding the fact that nonfiction is not my first choice of reading material. And sharing a good book can really make up for its lack of plot, theme, character development, etc.

There's another problem, though. I don't like to read much. Before you put me into your filtering system so that my blog is forever blocked, though, please! Let me explain! My husband says that my problem is that no book will ever meet my expectations. (As a writing teacher, that's really unfortunate for my students, lol!) Honestly? He's kind-of right. I have a really hard time sifting through pedantic style. I don't like when things are written in a high-brow way for the mere purpose of being off-putting, of making experts feel self-congratulatory & novices feel dumb. I don't like it when history is biased or fiction is predictable. I don't want creepiness for its own sake, but sunshine & roses & "sweetness" make me want to puke.

So when I am reading something, every car ride my husband and I share is filled with my complaints. I begin, "I'm reading _____," & it's gotten to where I honestly think I can hear him groan. When I accuse him of such, he just laughs.

But sure enough, I've noticed, my next sentence is *always*--"Well, it's not very well written, BUT..." And that's if I *love* it. Usually, the car rides are filled with me ranting about how such tripe gets published. (I'm much nicer than that in...no, actually, I'm not. Never mind.)

So upon the recommendation of some homeschooling friends, I got Two Miserable Presidents from the library. Even that is a big step for me, because I don't usually put much stock into recommended books, either. It just gives me that much more disappointment in the book itself, & then there's the added disappointment of the person who recommended it. I don't know, honestly, why this time was different.

(At this point, I sound like such a snob. I'm SO sorry. Really. I think I'm only a snob about books, & I've never admitted this publicly before. I try to at least *seem* friendly! But now you know one of the many reasons I have to be a hermit. If I *do* venture to talk to people...well...it can get ugly, if we talk about books.)

So back to Two Miserable Presidents: I had to recheck it from the library a couple of times, because we actually read it. Aloud. Cover-to-cover, word-for-word, some of it more than once. My husband is a history major, & he loved the book so much, sometimes I saved it to read in the evenings, so he could listen in, too.

I'll write a separate review later, but for now--I LOVED the book. When we moved on to the next period in history, it occurred to me that the author (Steve Sheinkin) might have written something else, so I looked him up. Sure enough, there were two more books.

I requested Which Way to the Wild West? from the library, thinking it would be great. It was fabulous. When books are that good, I get to where it makes my skin crawl to read the library's copy. Not because I'm a germophobe or anything: I just can't stand the thought of returning a good book until I have my own copy, safely tucked into my shelves & catalogued. (For someone who's so picky about books, I own & love an awful lot of them!)

About 2/3 of the way through WWWW, I couldn't take it any more. I ordered everything Sheinkin has written. I've never done that with another author, unless you count owning ONE book that contains the complete works of TS Eliot. Well, I have Shakespeare in 2 vols, too. He writes well. And ee cummings--I love his stuff & have the complete works. And Wallace Stevens.

I own a lot of Faulkner, even multiple copies of The Sound & the Fury, but let's face it: he's not light reading. He's not *fun.* And so, since finishing school, although I do *buy* Faulkner's books, I don't actually read them.

Sheinkin is in a class of his own. (Well, not entirely. He's with Shakespeare. Although, technically, I have Shakespeare in the 800s & Sheinkin in the 900s.) I cannot express the brilliance, beauty, hilarity of his books. I'm not usually a gusher, & here I am. Gushing.

Still, though--if I love his books & own them, why should I care if *you* buy them? I sent Mr. Sheinkin the following email:

Mr. Sheinkin,

My husband teases me that he's going to open a bottle of champagne when I find a book I like--he thinks my standards are unachievably high.

I don't just like your books--I think they are brilliant. (I guess we'll see if my husband was serious about the champagne, huh?)

I haven't been able to find much about your current projects through a google search, but I'll be honest--your writing is so good, I don't think you should do anything else. I'd offer to bring you sandwiches if that would help things to go faster.

Here's the thing: we need a good history of the United States. I'm a homeschooler, & the absolute vacuum in this area is astonishing. Apart from [an outdated & controversial book], the only thing I've seen in print is an encyclopedia by DK that devotes more time to Monica Lewinsky than African-Americans. (Great children's reading, huh?)

My first choice solution to this problem is to feed you sandwiches while you write a brilliant history of the United States. You could use the stuff from your other books, & you'd be nearly half-way done already.

My second choice is more complicated. I'm a writer, & my husband has a degree in history, so we could theoretically work together to write something if you're too busy (or if you don't like sandwiches). You could work as a consultant. Or I could change my name to Sheinken, & maybe a bleary-eyed publisher would think he'd hit a gold mine.

Mostly, I wanted to tell you what an awesome job I think you've done & how grateful I am--I've never been able to keep the names, dates, & battles of the Civil War straight, but half way through Two Miserable Presidents, when you mentioned Little Mac running for president, I nearly fell out of my chair laughing. (And the fact that I didn't have to look up his name just now speaks volumes, too--I can't even remember people's names in real life!)

He replied. HE REPLIED! I called my husband at work in the middle of the night, & since I have two full manuscripts out on query right now, my excitement may have been somewhat misleading. "No, not the agent, sweetie--I'd forgotten about that! Ok, 2nd best email! Guess who???"

So he didn't guess, but that's fine. The next morning, I called everybody else I knew. I think I've convinced my mother & little brother that all they could possibly want for Christmas is Steve Sheinkin's complete works.

I called my family because it's insanely cool to hear from one of your favorite authors, especially if, like me, you don't actually make very good sandwiches. I'm posting all of this craziness here, though, because of his reply.

Mr. Sheinkin does want to write more history books. His publishing company, though, is waiting to see if there's demand. I need these books out of his head & on paper for the sake of homeschooling my kids, for the sake of the genius of the books themselves, for the sake of all that is good & right in the world. I'd like for you all to help me convey that message to Mr. Sheinkin's publishing company.

Thank you for listening. (And for not filtering me out!)

My Midwife's Arms

2010-11-13T01:37:00.000-08:00

There's a picture of my midwife weighing one of my babies that has been on my mind lately. Actually, I think we have the same picture from each birth. She's holding a stork-shaped sling as high over her head as she can--I'm not sure she's 5' tall--& you can barely see her face behind the bag.

There's a baby in the bag, & she's weighing it. No easy task, since my children have averaged 9lb at birth. All you can see of the baby is little toes sticking out of the weighing-sack. All you can see of my midwife is her arms holding up the sling.

It's her arms that I've been thinking about. She's a tiny lady with a lovely figure, a warm British accent, & happy, happy curls. She calls me "Obrey" with a long O instead of "Aubrey," & she's held every one of my children in her arms.

In these pictures, you really notice those arms, disproportionately large, surprisingly strong. The strength in those two arms stood out to me suddenly, & for the first time, I thought about the work of her job.

I love these photos. I love those arms.

"When the Rubber Meets the Road"

2010-11-12T12:55:00.000-08:00

I recently got an email from a reader, & I wanted to go ahead & address it here, for everybody. So first the email:

"I just read your article in TOS and I really liked it...liked how you were honest about the things you learned, but not always being able to embrace them. I think too often we don't want others to see our weak spots, so we gloss over them and hope no one notices. Thanks for being transparent and through that, giving encouragement to so many, especially me!

I do have one question. You mentioned that one of your children would not easily succeed in a classroom because she "...is fiercely independent but has a gentle side when her independence is met with understanding." Can you tell me a little about what that looks like where the rubber meets the road? I have a child like that and sometimes the constant struggles just wear me down, so I don't always respond to him in the right way. What ways have you found to meet your daughters independence with understanding?

Thanks for any insight you might be able to give,

Trina"

First of all, my daughter. She reminds me of Norah Jones. She's got long, long black hair w/ red hilights that show up only in a certain light. She's got big, deep brown eyes, & even before she was born, I imagined her standing on a cliff in Ireland, overlooking the ocean, with an electric guitar slung over her back, black curls waving in the wind.

And that's exactly who she is. A fierce, woman-warrior who does everything w/ 110% of herself. Once when I told her I could eat her up, her dark eyes flashed with fury like a storm on the ocean that's come out of nowhere. "Good mamas don't eat their children," she said. She was two.

From almost the time she was born, my baby cried. Constantly. Once she figured out how to scream, she screamed. She climbed into the trash can & the toilet, & she climbed her big siblings' loft beds. Most people didn't know it, though, because she is also incredibly outgoing & has a smile that fills up her whole marshmallow face (when she decides to use it).

Since she could talk, she's been my child who will march up to strangers on the playground & say, "My Mama won't push me in the swing. Will you?" And worse, she'll ask some men, "Are YOU my Daddy?" (It's a game she plays, from the book, Are You My Mother?, but I'm always afraid it will sound...much worse than that!)

Most people have at least one kid who has the independent streak. We laugh when we say that, & we groan, but I believe there may be more going on with my daughter. In the past year, I've begun to read about sensory disorders, allergies, and other symptoms of the child who's a shade more "off" than simply "independent."

Now that you understand to a degree what I'm talking about, you should also know my parenting background. Before getting married (at 19), I thought A LOT about parenting philosophies. I have no idea why. I thought about homeschooling a lot, too. It was like a scientific experiment for me--I wanted to see if my ideas of parenting & education could produce the "perfect" children.

In thinking about parenting, though, I leaned VERY conservative. My mother attended a Growing Kids God's Way conference, & compared to Bob Gothard, who had previously been a strong influence in our lives, GKGW was a breath of fresh air. The approach to parenting outlined in this course & in the companion Baby Wise were so much more logical than anything I'd heard before.

Bear with me. I know this is controversial. I did not know that at the time.

When I was pregnant with my first child, I went to visit my mother, & I occupied some of the time that I was there with reading her copy of GKGW, specifically the section on spanking, something I had always thought that any decent parent would do, something I thought qualified as criminal negligence NOT to do. (Remember kids tend to be very concrete, black & white, & up to this point, I'd really still been a kid.)

While I was pregnant, though, something in me started to nag a little. It wasn't that I believed in spanking any less, but...I really wanted to see a good argument for it in print. My brain works well that way.

The chapter on spanking was extremely disconcerting for me, though. The author took on a very condescending tone, offered no logical support of the practice, & continued to deride anyone who failed to spank their children. This made me question the practice further, *greatly* upsetting some of my family, who retorted, "Not everyone can be an English major like you!" Another logical fallacy that left me questioning the logic of spanking.

The baby came, despite my lack of confidence about spanking or not spanking, immunizing or not immunizing, etc. I did what most mothers do: I fed my baby, rocked him, cared for him in the best way that I could. Although I had been philosophically staunch about many things, I've always been more middle-of-the-road in practice, & age has softened my philosophies with experience.

My oldest has a mild personality, very reasonable. The spanking issue was one my husband and I went back and forth on, & we settled on reserving it for emergency situations, to get a child's attention. Unbuckling his carseat while we're driving, running out in the street--spankings. Everything else, we wanted to try to deal with differently.

Sometimes we did. Sometimes we didn't. We did ok, I think, but I was never able to regain my youthful confidence that spanking was really great. Our second child came, & she was more compliant than the first, actually applying all of her sibling rivalry toward being better behaved than her brother. Our children were scary, they were so good. We still hadn't resolved our feelings about spanking with ourselves, but it was not a crisis. We were well-able to train our children with or without spankings, we felt, & we understood both sides of the argument.

Then our 3rd child came. She's the one who is so fundamentally different. Very early on, I came to the conclusion that we could *not* spank this child. The fierceness of her soul is almost indescribable. Even now, I'm imagining flint, honed down into a spear, & that's my baby. She told me once, with that snap in her eyes, that "The cat has sin." The cat had scratched her, & she wasn't just sad or angry. She had a calculated scale for the injustice of the world.

I told my husband that I'm afraid that if we get in her way, she will see us as the enemy, & we will be the object of her calculated scales, her fierce desire for justice. She is a rock, a flint spear, a cliff, & she has the determination and fortitude to accomplish anything.

I began when she was one to work *beside* her instead of opposite her--the easier approach to parenting I had taken with my first two--thinking of myself like water & her like a canyon. I could not shape her into the person she needed to become with anything less than dynamite, & dynamite would crush the spirit that made her great. I would lose my relationship with her, & I knew that a relationship with one like this could be fragile. I believe that once it is secured, though, it is secure, because her loyalty is as fierce as her judgment; her joy as fierce as her anger. Water, in a canyon, is intricately part of the landscape, gently carving out beauty in an almost symbiotic relationship.

Lovely, you say, but what does that even mean?

I try to avoid anger with this daughter. (Not that I don't with the others, but I saw an even greater need for it with her, & this extra effort has filtered over into making me a better mother for the others as well. At least, I hope!) I try not to yell. I try to understand. All things that I have always done, but making a greater effort to set aside my point of view and understand hers.

I have always taken a child who is crying for a cookie, asked him to calm down, asked him to use his words, repeated his words back to him, & then explained why the answer is no. (If the answer is no.) I have found that repeating a child's words BACK to them helps them to know you understand what they're saying--a very big deal for toddlers who really aren't always sure that they're being understood.

This one needs longer listening, more stretch to the imagination. More patience. Her mood swings can be crazy, especially when she's tired, but despite that, she needs less sleep. I fought that with my oldest; with this one, I have accepted her quirky hours better. She still naps, but she naps because I've explained the logic of it to her:

You have a Cranky Monster that lives inside you. You've also got robots inside you to tie him up, but they can only work when you're sleeping (white blood cells, for the scientifically-minded). When your Cranky Monster breaks free, he makes you cry & gets you in trouble... By then, she's put herself to bed (a miracle in itself), grinning, because she has the power to defeat the "Cranky Monster."

I let her wear mismatched clothes. I let her choose her pink shoes or her gray ones. And when she gets uncontrollable, when days go by w/out an ounce of obedience, I stop. I pull her up in my lap, & I read her a story. I tell her all the reasons I love her. I tell her what she has done well. I work to pour myself into her, literally.

I rely more on redirection than I did with the others. I work to remind myself how tender she is, even when it's not immediately obvious. Really, it's this last point that I was trying to get at in the article quoted at the beginning. This little one needs to be cared for by someone who has something invested in her future, or she will wear the caretaker down to nothing, & the result would likely be spirit-crushing for her. She can take people being angry with her, but it feeds the rock. I'm the opposite: I'm overly-sensitive, & other people's disappointment & anger just crushes me. I've come to believe that this daughter, in being a polar opposite, is actually the same as me. She *can* take disappointment, but...I don't know how to say it. It gets converted into negative energy.

And it's like magic. Today she saw me washing dishes, & she pulled up a stool, got out a dishcloth, & began drying. She offered her little brother one of the trains she was playing with when he cried, & she went on to explain to him, "These are God's toys. But He shares them with us. God is Love."

My little mountain is slowly, gently becoming a beautiful canyon, but I'm no longer certain whether I am the river or the rock, because I'm becoming so much more beautiful by her presence in my life as well.

Note: My kids are 9, 7, 3, & 2 at the time of this post.

Ralph II

2010-11-10T06:36:00.000-08:00

We had a wasp problem a couple of weeks ago, & you know what they say about lemonade...We decided to adopt a pet wasp...

We found the little guy crawling on the carpet, & by some divine stroke of personality-changing miracle-potion-ness, I caught him instead of killing him.

Even killing wasps is so far outside my comfort zone, I think my genes must have done that splicey thing where you get super powers. Obviously, since I then went completely round the bend.

We watched as "Ralph" sat beside us on the carpet, trying to sting his jar--isn't that cute, we sighed. My oldest watched the new friend like a fish in a tank.

A professional bug service came the day we adopted Ralph, to take care of our wasp problem. I didn't have time to move Ralph, so I was faced with the awkward problem of trying to explain our new pet.

"I caught one," I said..."um...we're homeschoolers, see...and...I don't *really* like bugs, at all..."

"No problem," he says, "lots of folks do that, to show us what kind they've got."

Well lots of folks are CRAZY.

I took the kids & ran away. (But had to come back for my glasses. And then again for cash. But then we RAN.)

At last, I came home to a note that said: "I sprayed the one in the jar. Be sure to wash the jar."

RIP, Ralph. I mean, metaphorically speaking, because let's face it: we all know where wasps are going. No peace there.

On a brighter note, we'd been home to the smell of bug spray for less than 5 min, & I'd already had the adrenaline-boosting opportunit to kill ANOTHER wasp. That was #4 for me that day. Too bad the bug guy didn't leave us a tally, so we could combine scores.

Eventually, the bug guy had to come back. My husband tried a fire in the fireplace (aka Wasp Hallow). We were lucky. We did not have angry balls of wasp fire chasing us & our dear children through the house. They were not on fire. And they were a little dazed from the smoke. Otherwise, yes, there were wasps to protect the homeland.

It was my 9yo who finally found the source of the wasps in the house (as opposed to the cute colony swarming outside the house, despite the genocidal attempts of the bug guy to wipe out the innocent population).

It's been a good two weeks now, & only yesterday did we begin to be blessed with the supernatural presence of those adrenaline-boosting beings. For some crazy reason, they were crawling across the floor en masse.

*sigh* I guess I missed Ralph. I grabbed a jar. (If you've ever met me, you think this whole thing is a fairy tale--goblin tale, rather--& you don't believe me anyway. It's true, though, so you might as well let the strangers in blogosphere be in awe of my crazy courage. I just hide it in real life. Don't test me on this, though. Sometimes I forget the safe code to get the courage thingy out.)

We were out of wasp spray, so I was armed with shower spray in one hand (I guess it would make them slippery while crawling, but...I'm guessing the flying would work fine. And sadly, I've been kind-of into green cleaning lately, but on a brighter note, this shower spray is 10 years old. Do YOU clean YOUR shower? Nevermind, then. So if it hasn't lost its potency, well. It should at least still be slippery.

And besides. I have a jar in the other hand. And, to start off with, there was only the one. The rest of them came crawling out, hunting in creepy zombie formation for the one I got, *after* my husband got home. And I don't know about courage, but he fought the wasps with a broom. That just seems crazy to me.

So back to the one wasp, the jar, & the old shower spray. I guess it was because the jar was in my right hand, which is dominant. Maybe it was really the longing for Ralph. Something overcame my natural instincts (to run) *again,* & the jar went over the angry yellow insect who for some reason wouldn't fly. My heart warmed. Ralph!

And so we named him Ralph II. And so began the First Wasp Dynasty.

Ralph II isn't as smart as Ralph I. He, too, tries to sting his jar, & now that he's in it, he does fly, but when my 7yo accidentally knocked it over, the figure head refused to leave his throne, & all I had to do was tip it back on the ground.

Ralph II also has some temperance problems. My husband offered him a drink, & the poor guy died of alcohol poisoning. It's ok, though. We're a preserving kingdom, so he'll get his place on a poster, & we might even give him a trip through the Magnifying Styx River.

Ah, Ralph. And Ralph. We have loved thee...well...not all that well, actually. Perhaps we will make up for it in sonnet, & at least your name shall live on. And all your progeny shall share the blessed name.

The End.

Shake, File, and Move

2010-10-29T15:20:00.000-07:00

Moving with kids is a little bit of a nightmare–in my case, a recurrent nightmare. We have moved five times in the last three years. Our latest move happened three weeks ago.

The usual advice for homeschooling moms on the move is to take time off from school. If you move as much as me, though, that time off can really stack up. In six years of homeschooling, we’ve moved six times, lost three relatives, welcomed two new babies, and remodeled a house. For this move, I was determined that school would not be derailed by chaos.

The chaos came. A car broke down, overtime had to be worked, a child drank hydrogen peroxide and threw up. Then by the day of the move, no one had responded to our ad for help, so we got an extra dolly, broke a bookshelf and the coffee pot (on accident), and lost all of somebody’s underwear. (I won’t say whose.) Eventually there were tears, delirious laughter, blood, and bruises. (Bookshelves fight back.)

School has continued through it all, thanks to a filing system introduced to me by Melanie Blair, a mom on the Well-Trained Mind boards. Knowing how easily we get side-tracked in the nitty-gritty endless days, knowing how toddlers like to play in toilets and babies like to be fed, knowing the temptation to let them sneak off and play while I hide under the bed, knowing that we were likely moving again, the Container Store version of homeschooling got my attention.

Read the rest here.

7th Grade Bug Project

2010-10-08T08:59:00.000-07:00

Seventh grade was torture. We dissected worms. And by "we," I mean the guys in my group because I quickly assured them that I had the best handwriting & should therefore be the note-taker. Anything to not slice into a gooey dead worm.

Then there was the shark dissection. We were supposed to bring money and order either small, medium, or large-with-a-baby sharks. I found the loophole in that one, though, & simply did not order a shark. Boy was my teacher mad the day that the room was filled with the scent of formaldahyde and my precocious answer to her, "Where's your shark, Aubrey?" Like I'd brought one from home or hidden it in my backpack.

The bug project was not so easily side-stepped, though. We had to collect fifty bugs. 50 Oh, excuse me, not bugs, but insects. So spiders don't count. I lived in an apartment at the time, and despite their buggy reputation, we had little other than cockroaches and spiders. Sure, roaches count, but only once, and only if you had the guts to catch them in the first place.

Besides hunting down fifty different species of insect, we also had to kill them in such a way as to preserve their color & shape. (No squishing, vacuuming, or bug-spraying.) Then we were supposed to pin them to a board & label them. Labeling's fine with me, but piercing the hard shell of an icky dead bug was not. I figured I'd cross that bridge when I came to it.

I'd collected 5 bugs when my ratty box of insects disappeared. We were all keeping them on the back table of our science class, and until now, I'd always assumed that a custodian had thrown mine out. Considering everyone else's bugs were still there, though...I bet somebody nabbed mine & added them to their own collection!

Either way, those five bugs represented everything I'd done, much pain, sweat, and tears, and the project was almost due. I did the only thing I could: I went to my teacher. She was relentless. I'd have to start over. I should have taken better care of my bugs.

I negotiated: what if I did a more in-depth project, detailed drawings of each bug? What if I did 100 like this? What if I wrote reports? Anything. Just don't make me go after more bugs.

She would not negotiate. I worried for a little while, and then I realized: I'm not doing this. Period. It's yucky. I've tried to be reasonable.

So I failed that 6 weeks of science. It was the first time I'd ever failed anything.

My mom was furious. When she heard what had happened, she decided the best consequence would be to make me collect & label bugs for her. She was always a homeschooler at heart. I cried over the torture of it for about a week. By then, she'd had to take me out looking for bugs one Saturday. She liked bugs about as much as I did, so when she stopped mentioning it, so did I.

Until last week, I'd caught 5 bugs in my life, all of them for 7th grade science. I'm 30-something now, and my kids have mysteriously fallen in love with the hobby of catching grasshoppers in the backyard. For a recent science project, they were bringing in leaves for us to identify, press, and label, but one had a bug on it.

It was a pretty cool bug. A yellow-striped beetle looking thing. I happen to have mason jars sitting around, one of the few things that have been unpacked since we moved last month. I looked up how to kill bugs for collecting, but it turns out, you don't need the freaky cotton ball soaked in stinky stuff. (I can't remember what we used in 7th grade.) You just throw the mason jar in the freezer for a couple of days, & voila! Dead bug.

So yesterday when my 3yo began crying about a bug in the hallway...well...it was pretty easy to scoop him into a mason jar. So he's in my freezer now, too. Just an average ugly black beetle. Maybe a click beetle.

Today we caught a moth. It was trying to get out the window & scaring the kids, so it really needed to be dealt with somehow. So what if he's in the freezer?

It's funny how life comes back on you like this. I guess I could say homeschooling is its own punishment? Or curiosity breeds courage? But I haven't had to go after one cockroack, and nobody's stealing my collection. Plus, it's a group project. If I get too wigged out, I've got a 9yo boy. He thinks icky bugs are pretty awesome. He's hoping for a dissection. ICK!

Learning By Hand

2010-10-05T12:52:00.000-07:00

I managed a garden this summer, for the first time in my life. Well…I should clarify…I helped the kids plant some seeds indoors and then transplant them outside. Since then, I have allowed (and sometimes reminded) them to go and water the plants. They have weeded, nursed, and made friends with the zucchini, squash, potatoes, corn, tomatoes, peppers, and other living things out in the triple digit Texas heat.

But I’ll take credit.

I’ve also started cooking more from scratch in the past year and a half. My husband has a mild wheat allergy and a more serious milk allergy, and we finally pulled all of those things from his diet, which for me, meant learning to cook all over again. Or…for the first time, maybe.

There are things in life that we learn from books, like math and reading and history. There are things, though, that can only be really learned from other people. Recipes are printed out of order, with ingredients lined up at the top, as if they were to be plopped right in the bowl, only to be followed by instructions that say, “Wait.” Oops....

Read the rest here.

The Shoot-Out

2010-08-09T15:37:00.000-07:00

My husband died last week in a shoot-out with Shoshone Indians on the Oregon Trail, and while it doesn’t seem to be bothering anyone else (including my husband), I find myself brooding over the situation as I put away laundry and wash dishes.

We were approached by six Shoshone Indians on horseback. There were seven of us, and we panicked. Well, the kids did. One of them wanted to start shooting right away. The other convinced him to call their grandparents.

The reasoning was quite rational. It went like this: you can’t outrun them. You’ve got oxen and a wagon. If you try to talk to them, and they’re “fierce,” you won’t have a chance to get to your guns. So the safest, most logical thing to do was shoot. And they did....

Read the rest here.

2010-08-08T17:19:00.000-07:00

I began this table one night when Landon was out of town. Except for lacquering, it's now done. 8/8/10. Hold-ups? 1. 2yo got the paint part way through & added her own ideas. 2. Needed lacquer. 3. 2yo got a pen & redesigned again. 4. Lost the bottle of blue paint. 5. 2yo scratched the paint off, in a new pattern.

2yo is now 3. (1yo turns 2 on Tues, though.)

Prairie Adventures on the Lulu Trail

2010-07-25T20:05:00.000-07:00

I wanted to do a unit on Little House on the Prairie this summer. I spent months looking for the perfect guide for the books, and in the process bought a whole lot of other books, which expanded the unit to pioneers in general, the Oregon Trail specifically, and now we're folding in an entirely separate Native American unit.

But back to Little House on the Prairie, by which I do not mean the single book by that title, but the whole series. The kids and I started reading through Little House in the Big Woods some time back in May. I finished last week. They mock me for that. Giggling, one will say, "So, Mama...what book are you on now?"

They're on books 7 and 8. I don't even know which title goes with which book that far out, because I just finished book 1. Yay, me! (Do you hear the giggles?)

So what took me so long that a 7yo and a 9yo overtook me? Well, first of all, there was no overtaking, because they started it. Second, I, uh, have a lot of projects going. And that brings me to the real reason they read the book faster than me: I wrote a book while I was reading it. In a spiral-bound notebook (yes, the kind you can buy for 15c at Walmart right now), I made notes about the book. Copywork? You bet. Vocabulary? Sure. After spending about 2 months doing that, I spent about 8hrs typing it up. A dense, 20p literary guide. (Twenty pages is more than you think if you're sitting on this side of the computer!)

And since it's now too late for my kids to use my notes, I spent another 5hrs figuring out Lulu.com's publishing system, although "figuring out" is a loose term, since the formatting still looks...a little shifty in places.

However, for future pioneers trekking through the wilds of the Big Woods, I can now offer you an e-guide for the low, low price of $5.

Here's a sample:

“For winter was coming.” A transition moves the progression of a story from one idea to another, and this is an excellent example. Transitions are often taught as single words that get the reader’s attention that something is changing, including for, since, although, etc.

***In this case, however, Wilder has indicated a transition not merely by the single word “for” but by the rhythm of her language as well. The previous sentences were long and wordy, filled with the busyness of pioneer living, and the juxtaposition (putting side by side) of those busy, wordy sentences with this one--almost silent, like the snow, with its brevity--makes readers catch their breath.

***We can feel with the structure of this single short sentence the cold. It has crept in while they were working so hard to prepare for winter, but then there is one day, when the work is done or almost done, when they suddenly feel it. The gray of the sky deepens, and the first real snow storm is only hours away. Winter.

***It has an ominous feel on the prairie. It’s not merely getting clothes down from the attic or making a good chili. On the prairie, ‘winter’ is a word that reaches inside you with just the tiniest rush of fear. It’s not something everyone survives.

Ooooh. Just what you've been looking for. Go to Lulu and buy my e-book!

Boot Soup

2010-07-02T05:48:00.000-07:00

My kids don’t know it yet, but they’re about to freeze to death in the Cascade Mountains, and I’m thrilled because this afternoon, they laughed at me for being so insane as to load half my wagon with mule feed. Their exact words were, “No wonder you starved to death in the mountains.”

This deadly experience falls into a category of education theory called Problem-Based Learning, in which students discover facts by working through real-life problems themselves, and this one comes in a book called Easy Simulations Pioneers, a series which boasts several titles in American history, including one on the Revolutionary War. The book is intended to simulate the experience of American pioneers traveling west on the Oregon Trail. Students are supposed to form small groups of four to six, but my husband and I each took two roles and stayed up late, “lesson planning.” We spent over four hours on the trail, and on our third pioneer-life...

Read the rest here.

Drama of American History Review

2010-06-24T19:32:00.000-07:00

This series has been recommended as a good spine for American history--unbiased, engaging, well-written, & most of all, accurate. I decided to check them out before selling my soul to Amazon, since the series is both extensive & out of print.

My branch of the library only had one volume: Slavery & the Coming Civil War, a nice volatile subject to really see which way this series leans politically.

I hope you'll take the time to read the whole review, but if you need the one-line summary, this is an intelligent but liberal-leaning view of the events leading up to the Civil War. It raises great issues, is challenging, but does not fail to skip the "ignorant Southerner" diatribe.

With specifics, here goes:

****

I'm a couple of chapters in, & the text is pretty captivating. The details included are really interesting & a lot of them are things I didn't know, despite just having studied this pd w/ my dc. As far as bias, I see arguments for it going a smidge over the line...both ways. Like some kind of blockade runner or something, the writing is dangerous, & that makes it kind-of exciting.

The way the book is approaching the issues of the period is very thought-provoking. I kept dh up till the wee hrs of the morning w/ what he called "final exam essay questions." Which I think means he wanted me to stop, let him sleep, & ask later. But, for ex, I had never really realized that the N & S were colonized by two distinct groups of Englishmen. (Not that they were only English, but of the ones who were.) The book doesn't really go into this but touches on it enough that I thought to ask.

One thing I haven't liked so far: Today we find it very difficult to understand how human beings could treat other people in such a cruel fashion. We should realize that back in the 1500s and 1600s, people had less respect for human life than we do today. Masters were frequently cruel to their servants of any race or nation; harsh treatment was expected as the normal thing. But clearly, Europeans saw blacks as very different from themselves. They did not believe that blacks could reason as they did, were not as sensitive to pain, were not as capable of affection, grief, loyalty, and comradeship as whites were.

Today we understand that people of all races and ethnic groups are basically much the same in their feelings and the things that concern them. Human joys and sorrows are similar in people everywhere. But that was not so well understood in the sixteenth and seventeeth centuries. Among other things, different races and ethnic groups had far less contact with each other than they do in the United States today. Whatever the case, in that era many, if not most, Europeans were able to treat blacks with a cruelty they would rarely inflict on other whites.

I think one could argue that there's a touch of racism against Europeans, since obviously it was the *few* who were running slave ships, not the many, & since the author also goes into the cruelty slaves sufferend at the hands of other Africans, the Spanish (who I realize are Europeans but for whatever reason are often treated separately--maybe it's that big pond that separates them! hehe), Portuguese, Muslims, & S Americans.

That's not what bothers me, though. I get nervous when a text gets...can we call it time-ist? When it takes the approach that NOW we are so much smarter, more enlightened, etc. You know, I hope so. But...I think the part of us that will enslave other human beings is always there, w/ always the potential to rise to the surface, given the right circumstances. (Or wrong ones, rather.) I think we need to be careful to assume that we couldn't fall into the same kinds of blind indecency that previous centuries committed. After all, we're not *that* far removed from the 20th c, & things didn't look a *whole* lot better then. Kwim?

Overall (so far)...I think I love this book. (I've been interrupted by 2 phone calls, so if I get redundant, please forgive me.)

It's challenging, interesting, engaging. Yeah, it oversimplifies some stuff, but they tell you that up front. And it's for kids. And you could read it pretty quickly, so you had time to go deeper if you wanted. They do focus on slavery being the reason for the Civil War, but they let you know that they're *choosing* that reason to focus on. That seems relatively fair. More than I usually hope for in a book treating such a volatile topic. And I LOVE that they include quotes & comments from peripheral figures. For ex, we get the aging Jefferson's thoughts on the Missouri problem. Interesting!

****

After finishing the book, I'm less enthusiastic. I think I still like it *for me,* but I would not give it a blanket recommendation. Here are some things that bothered me, made me think, drew me into the time period & made me deal w/ the history more than other things I've read recently. (I just finished this period with my kids.)

The north & south were settled separately. I'd never noticed that. So *who* settled which? Pilgrims & Puritans in the north--who was it that characterized the south?

On the Missouri Question: WHY did states have to enter as free or slave? Wasn't this designation for the existing states more descriptive than prescriptive? So why address it at all? It's not as if this were signing a statement of political affiliation. (I do realize that that would be the consequence, but it's not like existing states were *sworn* to one side or the other.)

If 25% of 25% of white Southerners owned slaves, why did the rest *die* for the practice? Doesn't this at least imply that they were fighting for something else?

"Poor whites in the South . . . knew they could never be at the bottom as long as there were black slaves below them. Probably few of them thought this through, but they felt it all the same." p37

This *could* be true, but I believe that it is an unfair characterization to put into a history book. Historical fiction? Fine. Not here.

"...New England, where religion was strong..." p37

As opposed to the South? Where religion was what? Weak?

"The Mexican slaughter of the brave--or foolish--little band defending the Alamo inspired Texan fighters, and finally they beat a larger Mexican army."p47

Maybe you have to be from Texas to appreciate how scandalous this is, but we take the Alamo very seriously. Only a non-Texan would dare to disparage the memory of those who died at the Alamo in such a way or to call the Texan militia/army "fighters." I say this slightly tongue-in-cheek, because I really do know that you have to be Texan to feel so strongly about this issue, but these authors just lost an entire state's worth of potential customers.

"The [Texans] expected to come into the United States as one or more states. However, President Andrew Jackson . . . stalled." p47

This isn't what we learned in year after year of Texas history. Texans were actually quite set on being independent.

"[Polk] contrived an excuse to go to war with Mexico." p48

Again, not what we were taught. Mexico *invaded.* I'll grant the possibility that myths are bigger here in Tx, but I'm suspicious of this book. ;)

"Along with his almost religious belief in American democracy, Abraham Lincoln was against slavery." p66

"I will say, then, that I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races -- that I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of making voters or jurors of negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with white people; and I will say in addition to this that there is a physical difference between the white and black races from living together on terms of social and political equality. And inasmuch as they cannot so live, while they do remain together there must be the position of superior and inferior, and I as much as any other man, am in favor of having the superior position assigned to the white race."

Lincoln-Douglas Debates

My point? At the least that Lincoln's opposition to slavery is not as cut-and-dried as Collier makes it out to be. But then...I forget sometimes that this is a kids' book & part of the point is simplification. So this isn't a deal-breaker, just an eyebrow-raiser.

On the other hand, I found myself asking, If Lincoln was *not* anti-slavery, then why did the South secede in response to his election? And then I remember that he was elected w/out a single southern vote. *insert reflective pause/pondering*

"Making matters worse, Southern extremists kept drawing the line further and further out. Originally all they had claimed was that slavery was allowed under the Constitution, which was true. By the 1850s they were insisting that the Constitution allowed them to bring their slaves anywhere in the United States--in effect claiming that no state could ban slavery. This was a new interpretation of the Consitution, and one that most historians today would not agree with." p79

The bolded part seriously bothers me. At least Collier qualified this editorial statement with "most," something he drops later in the book. I'm already disturbed that he's ignored the economic reasons for the war. Maybe they're not as morally significant or interesting as the slave issue, but they were good enough for the Revolutionary War. I hate to see them simply dismissed here. Taxation without representation stinks.

Ok, off that small rant, I will say I think that the slavery issue is under-analyzed on the conservative end, and since it was obviously a huge issue, and since this is a kids' book and needs some simplification somewhere, I'm willing to accept that.

Plus, something about the way it's phrased here makes me see something I hadn't before: if the South wanted *states' rights*--how is that any different from what the North wanted--to have the freedom to keep slavery *out* of their states?

This one's long, but a doozy:
"This [Dred Scott] decision overturned the whole Missouri Compromise. Moreover, it ended the idea of popular sovereignty, under which territories could decide for themselves about slavery. This was the first time that the Supreme Court had declared a major Federal law unconstitutional. Historians today agree that Taney was not right: the Constitution did not forbid the Congress from making laws about slavery in the territories. One historian has written, 'Behind the mask of judicial propriety, the Chief Justice had become privately a fierce Southern sectionalist, seething with anger at 'Northern insult and Northern aggression.''"

Having just freshly read the Dred Scott decision, I know how awful this case was. Heart-breakingly awful. But even with that freshly embedded in my brain, I'm scandalized at this passage. How dare an intellectually honest historian say, "historians agree..." or quote one anonymously with no citations, no names? This passage smacks of editorialist fictionalization, and that's when I basically agree with the statements being made.

In the end, I think this passage probably got over-edited by accident. I can't imagine any other explanation for this lack of historical responsibility.

Will I buy the book? Maybe. It made me think in a way that few books ever have. But I'll take it with a grain of salt and a deeply discounted price. Spine? I'd say it's accurate *enough* to use that way, but that's partly because I'm biased: I prefer a text that leans the opposite direction that I do so that the leaning is visible to me. This book won't be the right one for everybody, but I think it can serve some--both conservatives and liberals--quite well.

How to Teach Writing

2010-06-24T08:03:00.000-07:00

Writing has long been one of the most feared and most hated subjects in school. Honestly? I think that’s true for public, private, AND home educators. I believe part of the reason for this is a hyper-focus on grammar & punctuation balanced by only a vague picture of what makes good writing good. Properly placed periods never made bad writing good, and good writing is only improved by such formalities. I love perfect punctuation & clear grammar, but it is no reason to make a student cry.

Writing is about two things: vivid detail and strong voice. My two older children and I finished reading Across Five Aprils today, and while we already knew the ending–that President Lincoln would be assassinated and would not in fact be the beacon of hope for the wounded nation that the main character so longed for him to be–the actual description of the loss made it so much more personal, so much more devastating, that my son and I wept for a loss we had known but never tasted. The detail was vivid.

In students’ writing, we must remind them to use all of their senses, or they will forget that the greatest beauty of homemade bread is the smell of it cooking and the way that that smell reaches inside you and grasps your heart like the hand of a loved one. They will forget that its taste is not flavor alone but texture, and remembering the airy lightness of a special bread made by Grandpa, who passed last year, can be like suddenly smelling his aftershave on the air.

To read the rest, go here.

LOST Endings

2010-05-25T20:32:00.001-07:00

1. Cinderella

Cinderella’s fairy godmother has worked magic with her dress, her pumpkin, her mice. Cinderella has danced with the prince, but the clock strikes twelve, and she realizes she’s going to be late. She turns and runs from the prince, down the palace steps, out to her waiting carriage, but just beyond the prince’s view, the magic fades. Cinderella is left with one glass slipper and the memory of a magical night.

On her way home, she sees a light coming from a small church in the woods. Creeping closer, she finds the prince standing just outside.

“Are you ready?” he asks, smiling.

“For what?” she asks.

“To leave,” he says, turning and going into the church.

She follows him, and as the doors open, there is a bright light and a few friends. Behind her, her wicked stepsisters smile and say that they’re not sure they’re ready to go into the church yet.

THE END

2. Charlotte’s Web

Charlotte has spun a clever web for her pig friend, Wilbur, but the humans are still smacking their lips and talking about what good meat will come off of such a clever pig. Wilbur is scared, but then he suddenly grows wings and flies into a forest, where Charlotte and Fern and other friends are smiling and waiting. Templeton is sitting by himself, but he smiles and tells Wilbur to go on without him. He’s not quite ready yet.

Maybe Wilbur was Christmas dinner. Maybe he lived a nice, long pig life. We don’t know, and it doesn’t matter. What matters is, he’s dead, and everybody he’s ever loved is dead, too. Now (except that there isn’t) they’re going to hug and laugh and dance through fields of wildflowers.

THE END

3. Rapunzel

Rapunzel is wandering through the desert, forever separated from her blind prince-lover, when a fairy godmother shows up.

“I told you to be home by midnight!”

“You’re a fairy godmother!”

“Of course I am!”

“What are you doing in my story?”

“The question IS—‘What are YOU doing in THIS story?’”

“I’m Rapunzel.”

“ARE you?”

“I’m Cinderella?”

The fairy godmother smiles knowingly.

“Then…where’s my glass slipper? What are we doing in the desert? What are all these people doing here?”

“Are you ready?”

THE END

4. Robin Hood (Disney version; sorry)

The castle gates come down as Robin Hood turns from saving the baby who was almost left behind.

Little John dies, but then he comes back, but he’s not really Little John, but Prince John disguised as Little John, because, of course Little John is really dead. Dastardly, tricky villain!

Robin Hood leaps away from the descending guards Robin-Hood-style just before they grab him.

And then he’s in the forest with King Richard, Maid Marian, Little John—the real, true, good guy, and all the other good animals of Sherwood forest, hugging, smiling, and singing Kumbaya. Because they’re all dead. Did Robin Hood escape the castle that day? It doesn’t matter. He’s dead now. And so is everyone he’s ever loved. Except…there is no now here. (How there’s a HERE will be left to the fairy godmother to explain.)

THE END

Chapter 1 of my WIP

2010-04-15T11:38:00.001-07:00

Holiday
The bells began like a deep, soft rumbling under the earth. First one, then another, and one or another of the artisans paused to wonder if she had heard the bells. Then again, with resonance. Then again, with the tinkling undertones of the musicians, who were always the first to respond.

Leilia flung her paintbrush behind her where it slapped a vibrant patch of orange against the back wall and slid down. She was out the door before the brush hit the floor, and for the first time in her life, she had been fast enough to meet the explosion of dancers in their procession past her door.

Holidays always began like this. Suspense grew as long days passed. The timekeeper sat in her tower above the temple, marking off the tedious days between holidays, recording warm and cool days, and ringing the bell on holiday, the first day of her cycle. Timekeeper was chosen for her 28 day regularity, imperative for keeping holiday and marking off the time of the new apprentices, but for the offspring who were not yet initiated, holidays seemed to come when no one was expecting. Each day after gained a measure of anticipation, until it happened. The bells would begin as a soft rumble that seemed to resonate beneath the earth, as though the living mother herself had swollen with possibility of life until its joy sprang forth in rich and rolling song which caught each tribeswoman up at her door and carried her away to holiday like a river drawing all droplets of water into a single, mighty current.

The musicians, with their instruments already in their laps, chimed in with the bells at first as an echo from their various parts of the village. The dancers, who remained in seclusion except for such occasions, came twirling and leaping from the furthest corner of the village with tambourines and ribbons and layered skirts of every color jumping about like a rainbow caught in a room of mirrors. As their glad procession passed each studio or hut, women would come pouring out to join them. On a holiday, everyone danced with the dancers: painter, potter, singer, and sculptor alike. The loam feet of the potter became sprightly as the sacred dust of the dancers was stirred.

Rememory herself was among her people on this day, laughing, dancing, twirling one of the smaller children as though her own head had not already grown gray. Leilia could hear the strong voice behind her. Behind. She had joined the procession even before Rememory. Although Leilia knew the old seer wanted to be amidst her people on this day and so would not choose a spot at the front of the line, the girl still felt a thrill to be surrounded by the most sacred people of her village: dancers before her and Rememory behind.

The procession spiraled past the sculptors, weavers, and tapestry-makers. The fashion-makers joined, and the quilters twirled and stretched from their hunched-over work. Dusty gardeners came running from their various fields while potters lifted heavy feet, thickened with clay; then came the jewelers, furniture-makers, and chemists of facial paint. The metallurgists were already waiting by their doors when the procession reached them, and steam rose from the fires that had just been put out at the glassblowers’ hut. Finally, the chefs were received into the swarm of moving women, and the path overflowed.

Leilia crossed under the words of dedication, “Beauty is Truth, Truth Beauty” --that is all ye know on earth, and all ye need to know,” which were carved in stone over the great wooden doors of the temple, and she kissed her finger piously and placed the kissed finger on her forehead as a sign of consecration. She entered the temple and was stunned by the beauty. Fresh flowers had sprung up everywhere as if a living paintbrush had stirred up the very essence of life. All of the golden lamp stands were lit, and light poured like honey down the walls, shimmering and casting elegant shadows throughout the room. Childhood memories flooded her: the first time she went to the temple; the glitter of the gold and the candles; misunderstanding the Knowables to also be the touchables and trying to climb the pots and planter boxes up to the top of the walls to find them.

The dancing continued with small circles of eight women spinning off from the procession line into tiny revolving daisies in every corner of the temple. Then two daisies would join together into a larger circle and a larger circle until the whole village had come together again in a slowly thumping circle of vivacity. When they stopped, the spinning seemed to go on, the spirit world spinning and rejoicing with them. This was how the women knew that they had true communion. Even when the spinning ceased, and all was quiet, there was the music that endured in their heartbeats and ears, the pounding, thumping, chiming life rhythm that was True.

When there was silence within each woman’s being as well as the temple, the entire congregation would sit on the earthen floor while the boys served them their meal, always a feast at holiday.

Today was the Feast of Artisanship, the celebration of completed womanhood for the girls, now women, who had completed their year of apprenticeship. Today they would exchange their pink robes for orange, becoming full artisans, full members of the tribe. One cycle from today, the new year would begin with the Summer of First Works, the holiday toward which Leilia had been looking her whole life.

The tribe ate in silent contemplation of the Truth and the Knowables, the apprentices sitting apart, eating their last meal separated from the tribe. Leilia chanted the Knowables dutifully to herself as she tasted the delicate cuisine of the new chefs.

Number 1: “Beauty is truth, truth beauty” --that is all ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.
Number 2: A thing of beauty is a joy forever.
Number 3: Loveliness increases and never passes into nothingness.
Number 4: If there is anything beautiful besides the Beautiful itself, it is beautiful for no other reason than that it shares in that Beautiful.
Number 5: It is through Beauty that beautiful things are made beautiful.
Number 6: An artisan is a lover of Beauty.
Number 7: The most beautiful mystery is itself the source of all true art and science.
Number 8: Artisans must be sought out to pursue the beautiful through their work.
Number 9: The artisan participates in the act of beauty and is thereby drawn closer to Beauty herself.
Number 10: Whatever is in any way beautiful hath its source of beauty in itself, and is complete in itself.

Leilia liked the practicality of the Knowables because she intensely loved the mysterious sovereignty of the Truth. The mere thought of it caused a feeling in her chest, beneath her heart, like a cave opening its mouth in a great black yawn that would swallow the whole universe. Whether it was awe or anticipation or desire, she knew not nor cared. She simply wanted to devour the thing so that she could learn it through and through.

After the meal, all the women stood to chant the Knowables as the dancers danced. The dancers were the keepers of knowledge. Not like Rememory who actually gave living memories to each new member of the tribe as she came of age but like her officers or priestesses, burning incense and keeping their bodies as a living example of the beauty to which the tribe ascribed. Upon the alter of incense at the back of the temple was inscribed their blessing: “Dancing is the loftiest, the most moving, the most beautiful of the arts, because it is no mere translation or abstraction from life; it is life itself.” All the other arts produced by the village were exported and exchanged for the dull necessities of life. Dancing alone was kept sacred, to be enjoyed by the tribe alone.

Rememory stood, and the dancers parted. She made her way to the center of the temple, to the alter, moving with a strength and confidence that demanded she not rush, demanded that she move slowly so that her power could be felt, be seen, and ultimately, be understood.

She gestured to the apprentices, and they stood. Addressing them, Rememory said, “Knowable number six: ‘An artisan is a lover of Beauty.’” She paused to let the words resonate.

“Are you ready, you few, young as you are, to devote yourselves fully to Beauty? To embrace her, follow her, to pour out your life in devotion to her? For I warn you: she is a jealous lover. She will accept no less. She will rend from you your soul, if you let her.

“But oh the sweet rewards of a life spent in her honor. Oh the resounding beauty of a maiden whose inner self is the holy sanctuary of the most beloved, the refuge of her who gives of herself to all things beautiful.

“Will you give yourselves to her?” Rememory asked, her voice barely above a whisper. Leilia loved to hear Rememory’s speeches. The woman’s own devotion to Beauty was so clear in them. She wasn’t challenging these new artisans to do anything she herself hadn’t done. In fact, her speech was hardly a challenge at all; instead, it was a tantalizing offer, a reminder that what they have is not merely an opportunity to become adults, not merely an annual ritual for which they were finally old enough; instead, these girls were being offered the rare opportunity to dwell within the bosom of Beauty herself, an opportunity not afforded to other women, other tribes, an opportunity reserved for these women, this tribe. An opportunity that certainly could be rejected but which, if accepted, should be embraced not with apathy but with joy so abandoned a grown woman might be mistaken for an offspring.

At this point, each apprentice untied her robe and cast her belt at her feet, if she chose to accept Rememory’s challenge. They all did, of course, and the dancers sprang up again, some spinning in exultation while others pulled out a great red cloth, wide enough to be spread from one side of the temple to the other. The dancers holding the cloth ran with it, separating the apprentices and Rememory from the village, creating a screen. Behind this, the apprentices changed their garb from the pink robes of childhood to the orange robes of artisanship.

At last, the dancers flung their red tarp in the air, and as it settled on the breeze, gently returning to the ground, the tribe saw the miracle that had occurred: their apprentices had become artisans. The new artisans stood now facing the tribe, not Rememory.

She presented the new members to the older ones: “Women, behold your sisters.” And the statement was meant to be heard both ways, so that both the older and the younger artisans were now fully women, fully sharing in the bonds of sisterhood. Rememory extended her hands toward the tribe, and they in turn extended their hands to their new sisters, who returned to their places within the greater circle. All were one.

The holiday drew to a close, and the tribe knelt, beholding. The dancers’ feet were silent as each of them, too, knelt, their faces buried in their bent knees, backs flat, arms tucked behind. From the midst of these, one dancer rose as if from the very bottom of the earth, slowly, but higher and higher until she was standing on the very point of her toes, and from there she very delicately, very purposefully unfurled the other leg high above her head with her arms outstretched. Like a flower blooming, Leilia thought, although this tendency of hers to put words and ideas to the dancers’ movements was an act of translation violating the immutability of the dance.

Awe filled the room, and the assembly turned its faces, too, earthward, inward. This was a time for reflecting upon the imagination and the artificial impediments set up to constrain it. One by one, the new artisans were touched on the shoulder by the dancers, and they began the slow, spiraling recession from their worship, the tribeswomen behind them and dancers before, indicating liberation and fresh creativity nourished by strong roots and by Beauty herself.

The recession was accompanied by a dirge, and each face was downcast in thought, as old ideas passed away and new ones were conceived, just as new artisans were conceived in this holiday. Their march would bring them past exemplary pieces of art from each of the new artisans, and the experience of so much fresh life and beauty was supposed to fertilize the imagination of each individual artist, cultivating greater productivity and creativity for the tribe overall.

Although the walk was always slow, to allow for contemplation, Leilia never felt that she had enough time with each piece, and she found herself constantly wishing for a notebook to jot down the plethora of thoughts that came to her. Again, though, this was to put words to art, a dark abstraction of the intrinsic nature of the tribe. Leilia closed her eyes and shuddered, then reopened them and tried to focus on the color and shape of things that were.

Wanna Be Writer #2

2010-04-15T08:45:00.000-07:00

My question: what’s your favorite WP function? Mine’s ctrl-F. This is...an Ode?

Is that character supposed to be liked at this point in the story? Trusted? I forget--who knows what about whom?

Easy. Ctrl-F.

Wait. Is that place east or west of here? I’ve got a map in my mind, but the directions seem to shift a little every time I write…

Easy! Ctrl-F.

What does this character look like? I know I wrote about her hair color…

Ctrl-F. And it’s a good thing, too, because it turns out, her hair was blonde. Then auburn. Then red. Now if only there was a ctrl-edit.

Actually, there IS!

So you named your character Sally but at some point changed it to Hannah, and you think you changed all the ‘Sally’ references, but you’re. just. not. sure.

Ctrl-F. Search for ‘Sally.’ Choose the “replace with” option. Insert ‘Hannah.’

Ctrl-F. Search for ‘Sally’s.’ Repeat. Step two is important and easily overlooked.

Generally, avoid the name ‘Sally.’ I’m not sure why, but there’s some kind of unwritten law. Ctrl-F can’t help you with those.

The Role of Literature in the Life of a Christian

2010-04-14T08:29:00.000-07:00

In reading great literature I become a thousand men and yet remain myself. Like the night sky in a Greek poem, I see with a thousand eyes, but it is still I who see. Here, as in worship, in love, in moral action, and in knowing, I transcend myself: and am never more myself than when I do. —C.S. Lewis

I try to get a night alone every week to write. I was driving home last week from an exhilarating evening with the friends who populate my stories, “characters” they are called by those who love them less, and I heard a radio broadcast about the value of great literature to the Christian.

Chuck Colson was reviewing Invitation to the Classics by Os Guinness and Louise Cowan, in which Cowan describes her conversion experience as a direct result of the Christian themes she encountered in Shakespeare, Dostoevsky, and other greats. “Not until a literary work of art awakened my imaginative faculties could the possibility of a larger context than reason alone engage my mind…I had to be transformed in the way that literature transforms—by story, image, symbol—before I could see the simple truths of the gospel.”

While my experience with faith and literature did not come in the chronology of Cowan’s experience, I find mine similarly intertwined. When Plato writes of the people sitting in the darkness of a cave turning away from the blinding, painful light above, I cannot help but see how we turn away from God. When Plato goes on to describe a person who goes down into the cave, to drag one of those blind people up and into the light, I see the sacrifice of Jesus, coming into a dark world to retrieve and to save.

Not all literature works this way, but there are distinct Christian themes in much of the western canon. When I am nearly crushed by some crazy driver who wants my space of highway, I think of Les Miserables,

Read the rest here

Mersong

2010-03-21T13:03:00.000-07:00

It was a blue watercolor dreamscape, shades of cadet and steel and midnight swallowing one another alternately, endless night. And she was blue like the waters that held her, blue like the sea above and sea below, blue like mother and father and home, forever the same shades without mercy, forever the same pressure, holding her down, holding her in, and even buoying her up.

But she had heard the sapphires, the dazzling cerulean, and oh! the turquoise. Up, up, till she’d almost broken sky, some promise of something, of light. She dared not touch it, lest it scatter her like the dingy shades of blue, into sparkling bits of something better than herself, something unimaginably other.

It haunted her, that light she longed to listen to, that light that liquid lingered in the jewels of the sea, in the depths of her own blue heart. But more…it was that she listened and loved alone, that they never spoke of the sapphire song or the turquoise harmony. Only the darkness, and then not the darkness of the deep but the darkness of the mystery that lay upon this world like a heavy body, dead, and breathing decay down into the sea.

Day after day she floated beneath the turquoise stars and wondered at the vast world beyond her, the world with other shades of blue. Then she would flutter gracefully home, leaving a wake of cloudy blue behind her.

When she reached her blue home, the door was ajar, the effects of a younger sistser, and deep in thought, forgetting her mersong, she slipped in and up to her room. By dinnertime, she heard her family congregating and swam slowly down, melancholy, and forever blue.

They did not speak to her, and she served a plate and sat down in her place in silence, picking at scallops and frowning at seaweed. At last one of them asked of her, whether her younger sister had heard from her. And then her older brother. The conversation continued between her worried parents as if she were not there, and they did not sing to each other as they sang. They sang at her as if she were empty chair only.

She felt as if the blue had swallowed her at last: body unbearably blue, she had become completely camouflaged by her surroundings, nothing but blue at last. And she began to cry quiet blue tears that were swallowed by the vast blue sea, but when she sniffled them back, her mother gasped, her father listened to her with wide, glassy blue eyes, her sister let out a squeal, and her brother beside her jumped back, knocking his chair to the woven seaweed floor.

“Valleria?”

“Daddy?” she answered from her blueness.

“Have you been there the whole time? Where is your mersong?” he demanded.

“Daddy, couldn’t you hear me? I’ve been right here in front of you--”

“How can I hear a silent mermaid?”

“But…I hear you, Daddy, always. When you wake in the mornings and swim down--”

“Because I sing!” he bellowed.

“Not until you reach the kitchen,” she answered. “And Mama in the garden--”

“I sing in the garden!”

“Sometimes you get lost in the anemones and forget, and there is only the memory of your song.”

“You imagine it! No one can hear a silent merman,” her father objected as her mother wept.

“With your other ears, of course you can,” she answered in surprise.

“Other ears?” Her father’s face turned toward her mother, but his gaze missed her by a head. He rose then, and swam over to his daughter, and put his hands a the sides of her head.

“Two ears. As I remembered. No more of this nonsense now. Mersong at all times, child, or you’ll be kept to your room, so we’ll know where you are!”

“No, Daddy, not those ears,” she reached for his hands and moved them to her face. “These,” she sang softly.

She closed her face as he felt those other ears. Then he moved his hands to his own face, and at last, softly, “Daughter, these are not ears. These are dead orifices for tears. Mermen do not hear sadness; their tears become one with the sea.”

She thought of the other blue, the mystery and shattered gems. She heard them only with these ears, she realized. Perhaps they were tears then, the bright blue baubles that contrasted with the boiling sea. Perhaps they were being drawn up and out, sadness swallowed so that the mersong would go on.

But they did not sound like sadness to she who could hear them, and so she took her brother with her to hear the sapphires sing like silver bells, for his curiosity was piqued by the ears in his face.

But the other blues did not sing for him. There was mersong for him only, for him only endless blue.

“These are not ears,” he concluded, “for mine do not hear.”

“But it is a different kind of hearing,” she said, closing her face-ears to try to explain, but when she closed them, the song was gone. The sapphires and azure illuminations did not just stop their song, they stopped altogether. They were not. There was only deepest, saddest blue, and that without tone or melody. No steel, no cadet. Only midnight forever. Only endless eve.

She opened them again and listened to her brother--not his mersong only, but his blue fins streaked with violet, his strong blue form, his lavender hair flowing behind him. She heard it in his fins, just a snatch of the turquoise melody, just when he swam near the surface song. As if a piece of heaven, a bright star were buried there in him. She looked at her own fins and saw the same: cerulean sparkles that did not belong to this blue world.

“Open your ears!” she cried, swimming toward the surface at last without fear, for she was made of the stuff above, and as she swam she realized the great blue tragedy of her people: they who sang the mersong were deaf.

Wanna Be Writer #1

2010-03-16T20:32:00.000-07:00

Thanks to Robin, I came across this Wanna Be Writers Meme, & it looks like fun! I tend to be very solitary in my writing, am shy about discussing it, & don't pass it around to even my best friends until it's finished. I've been thinking of getting out of the cave, & this seems like a good place to test the waters.

Who am I as a writer? I'm currently working on a young adult trilogy that is probably the truest work I've ever written, the most me. But I'm also working on a sci fi trilogy that's FUN, interesting, all the things that good fiction should be. I love what the Matrix should have been (don't quite understand what it is), & I am always drawn into thought-provoking works in the vein of 1984, I, Robot, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, etc. I'm also working on a series of fairy tale rewrites, a Bible study on faith, & I keep poetry going to rotate through everything. Ideas are never short around here.

Where I am in the writing process: I've been writing since 1989. I was 10 years old & finally *got* it. Writing was nothing more than a drawn out description held together by a plot. I'd never been able to do description before because I had this idea that it had to fit into a paragraph. Actually describing everything in real detail was overwhelming, but when I finally let myself go & tried it, the words just poured out. I became a weapon of mass destruction with my ability to gross my husband out. No, that came much later. I was very lady-like with my powers until I met him.

I have long wanted to be a writer & have been pretty steady in writing over the years, but I had this idea that to BE a writer, I needed someone else's say-so. I think I'm mostly past that, but I've also started writing smaller things to help with that self-image, & I've started actively sending out my mss. Okay, it hasn't actually been active lately, but that's because I've had another idea....

My current problems: I've decided that the books in my YA trilogy don't stand alone, so I'm smashing them together into one great big work that I intend to begin sending out (again) as soon as I'm done w/ the polished version of book 3. I'd finished book 1 & started sending it out while I worked on other things, but this epiphany has brought me back to finishing (comletely) this set of books. I'm very, very happy with how they are turning out.

My question(s) this week: I guess my question is about consistency and/or staying connected in the real world. It seems like I can do one or the other well but not both. In other words, my head is in my fictional place, & I'm getting a good bit of writing done consistently, or my head is in homeschooling my four kids, keeping house, tutoring, & being in this world, & then I'm *not* writing consistently. The worst seems to happen when I'm between projects, & I have to wrap my head around starting (or transitioning back to) something new (or simply other).

Forest Fires

2010-03-05T19:57:00.000-08:00

Have you ever noticed how difficult it is to see the big picture when you’re living in the middle of it? One problem crops up, and it gets your full attention, like a little spark in the forest. Then another and another, and pretty soon, all you see is smoke.

The last month and a half has been like that for me: a fog of sickness and small disasters here in my home. We spent the last half of January with sick kids, but not the gravely ill kind, not even the pathetic-pull-at-your-heartstrings kind. They were just sick enough to be picky, grumpy, and difficult. Then Landon and I got picky, grumpy, and difficult. We could barely drag ourselves out of bed for a week.

I remember measuring time by the smoke detector, which began going off randomly at the same time. Wearing bathrobes and old pajamas, we hit at it with a broom handle, changed the batteries twice, and yelled at it eloquently. Nothing worked, and along with the sneezing, coughing, and shivering, we soon found ourselves twitching. Did I mention tempers were short?

One morning while we were sick and the smoke alarm was making its unimpressive complaints, two-year-old Abby announced that she had to go potty and without warning, she sat down on a load of clean clothes. It was 6AM, and when our oldest came running to tell us, Landon told him to go ahead and put the clothes in the washer and start it, hoping that I would never find out.

A half hour later when I woke Landon up with, “What’s that noise?” it was too late...

Read the rest here

Chasing Sunshine

2010-02-20T20:29:00.000-08:00

A few months ago, we upended our entire house in order to flip-flop our bedroom with the homeschool room. The homeschool room was at the back of the house in the NW corner with poor circulation, and while we had frozen in the winter, the summer fried us.

So the idea was that since my husband and I would only really be in our bedroom in the evening, sleeping, we could stand the extreme temperatures better than the kids and I could stand them during the day.

We took apart our queen-sized bed, moved it, & reassembled it. We took apart the dining table, moved it, & reassembled it. We even took apart one of the kids' loft beds, moved it, & reassembled it. We moved bookshelves, which is the bane of my husband's existence.

Then we cleaned up and started back to school. We loved the new room, so small and cozy, full of light. It was just a bedroom, barely more than 10x10, but it was in the NE corner of the house, and it felt very cheery.

In the back, the summer was a test for my husband and me, but we plugged in fans & stuck it out. The winter has been excruciatingly cold, but we've piled on extra blankets, nearly lost fingers and toes to frostbite, and stayed in the dark room we jokingly call "the cave."

But as winter has set in and Christmas has disrupted our schedule, followed by sickness and snow and other life events, the kids and I have migrated again. First to the living room (SE corner) for stories and such. Then to the dining room (SW corner) from sheer exhaustion. When lunch is done and we're all already there around the table, it's much easier to plunk out a book than it is to risk losing them on the trek to the schoolroom.

But it's something else. I've found myself avoiding the schoolroom altogether, and finally, we flip-flopped the house again. We moved the living room to the bedroom, turned the living room into a preschool/coffee shop/game room, & made space for our school stuff to just stay in the dining room.

I move furniture a lot, and my husband has come to a place of acceptance, but still, I feel so guilty when I can see what turmoil I go through--put the family through. I used to tell myself, "This is it. NOW we're going to leave it where it is."

Now I know better, though, & I try to tell myself that at least I don't have many dust bunnies under the furniture--nothing ever stays anywhere long enough!

Sitting at the dining table with the kids the other day, looking out the windows that surround the dining room, I finally realized--this compulsion I have follows the sunshine around the house.

So I'm recharacterizing my quirky, maniacal, furniture-moving personality--I'm not crazy. I'm just chasing sunshine.

On Hope

2010-02-20T20:09:00.000-08:00

I read a book review recently which concluded, "Books like [this] make you laugh and cry and ultimately leave you feeling happy and hopeful."

You know that nice, warm, after-a-movie feeling when the world is almost-right and you can do anything. You even look like the heroine of the film until you get to the bathroom and have to stand under the garish movie theater bathroom lighting.

We call that "hope." We like that feeling, fleeting as it is, and sometimes we chase it like an exotic butterfly because we're so desperate to feel hope.

I do not want to feel hopeful. I do not want to be full of hope--not in the emotional sense of the word. Not in the synonym-for-optimism sense. Feelings are far too fickle for me, and like a drug, I find that they leave me feeling emptier when they're gone.

I am a confirmed pessimist. I lose fights in my dreams, but worse, I lose them in my imagination, when I'm fully awake and fully in control. Give me a few minutes to discuss your problems, and while I can encourage, I can really discourage. I can suck the optimism from an entire room with the precision of a government-designed weapon.

Not that I've ever tried.

But if I'm going to deal in hope, it's not going to be trite. It's not going to be sticky stuff that comes from a tree. Hope is not the ephemeral sense that "everything will work out."

I'm discouraging partly because I'm so hard to encourage.

The problem with this kind of hope is simple, though. It's a feeling. Real hope--the kind that is the marrow of the human race--is not an emotion. It is a tool. It is an engine, a generator that spurs the human heart onward when all else has failed.

Sometimes it's only an oar, and you have to pick it up and push back the sea with all your strength until you want to weep with exhaustion. For the sake of survival, though, you pick up the oar, you choose to hope, and you press on with all the determination and fortitude you can muster.

Hope is a powerful force--one to be wielded, not merely felt, not merely enjoyed at the end of a good book. Hope is a lifeboat, and when your boat sinks, it will get you to that distant shore.

Keep it close. Use it well.

Snow Day

2010-02-11T14:01:00.000-08:00

I imagine it's Spring Cleaning in heaven. You can feel the peace coming quietly down with the snow, which must be bits of angels' wings. It's so hard to watch everything turning quietly white and imagine that it's actually wet and cold.

We've done the snowy things you do. We made snow-cream at lunchtime, and the kids are outside now with dad, building the biggest snowman ever. Baby is standing stock-still, crying, "NOOOOOO!" Which actually means "snow," but he refuses to walk in it. Until dad moved him, he simply stood in the doorway, where he got dragged out with everyone else. Now he's sitting happily on a dry porch chair, swigging hot tea from a sippy cup & watching everyone else roll, flop, & fall in the mysterious stuff he happily licked out of his bowl earlier.

On a day so full of good will toward men and peace on earth, how can there still be so much angst, even in my own household?

We've been sick for a week, and the house shows it. We've got that cooped-up feeling going, and the remainders of head colds that can bring short tempers. But it's something more.

It never snows in Texas--maybe an inch every three years here in DFW. We've got close to 4" today. It's the most snow I've seen in Texas in my life, and I've been here the whole time. A neighbor walked by, full of the joy of the miracle, and grinning, he told the kids, "Better enjoy it today! Because it won't come around again any time soon!"

I think that's exactly it. It's the pressure of a once-in-a-lifetime snow. It's the same pressure that we get raising kids. How many times have you heard, "They grow up fast--before you know it, they'll be gone!"

And I have taken the advice so seriously, that in trying not to miss anything, sometimes I miss everything. The pressure of tomorrow, of today being gone, becomes so much that I miss today as much as the person who forgot to look at all.

Sometimes a snow day needs to be just a snow day. Maybe it will be the only one like it in our lifetimes, but that is food for reflection on another day. Today is for snowball fights and strangely shaped snowmen and the icy, crunchy, shapey feel of snow and its limitless possibilities.

Life's Not Fair

2010-02-06T19:05:00.000-08:00

We say so many things to our kids that would never fly if someone used it on us. Imagine if the guy who does accounts receivable was always 5-10 min late to work, & finally, your boss said, "That's it. I'm cutting everybody's pay by 2% because of Jimmy here, who can't seem to get to work on time."

The idea behind this kind of discipline is that group peer pressure will work better on Jimmy than pressure from the boss. But, really, what legal thing are you going to do to Jimmy? And if this were really school, Jimmy would be some cool kid who was untouchable anyway.

While such an approach to discipline would *never* fly with adults, I hear this refrain from parents and educators often, as an excuse for their approach to discipline. Those who promote this view say that the sooner kids learn this lesson, the better off they will be. I think it's a lazy approach, a shirking of responsibility.

I'm a grown up. I know life's not fair. Shoot, I knew it when I was a kid. What I don't want is to perpetrate that unfairness in my own home. Life may not be fair, but to the best of my abilities, I will be. You can count on it.

Ipads & Kindles & e-readers, oh my!

2010-02-06T18:44:00.000-08:00

I'm a technological orphan. We didn't have a microwave or a dishwasher in my house until I was in jr. high, and one could argue that I married my husband for his computer.

Riding the coattails of my husband's technological finesse, I learned all kinds of things. He won a digital camera back in the days when everybody didn't have one. I completed my master's degree online & taught myself HTML code.

In the process, though, we had children, bought cars, a house, and began homeschooling. The crest of our wave--i.e., our buying power--fell. We still have a microwave & a computer, but no dishwasher. I've never used an MP3 player, and we still use tape cassettes and a VCR. I have become the old lady who doesn't adapt well to new formats.

And now there are people in the world who want me to give up my books, my beautiful, bound library of ideas, risking the conspiracy of the geeks, & trusting my philosophy to a little piece of equipment that is supposed to hold a library in the palm of my hand (or my purse).

Sure, there are bookmarks, if you can figure out how to use them. I write books, & I have a hard enough time finding what I'm looking for in my own novels. If I could afford to print them out whenever I wanted, that would be so. much. better.

So digital reader? Hmmm. I doubt it.

But a piece on NPR about a week ago had me rethinking my position on the whole thing. The commentator was talking about the pros & cons of the Ipad, & one of the best things about the new gadget was how much it's like a book. You can turn it sideways & view two pages at a time. It's got a flip-the-page function.

I couldn't help but notice how funny it is that we're going out of our way to make this new technology as much like the old as possible, to make the conversion more comfortable. I wonder if Gutenberg encountered the same resistance:

What? You want us to cut. our. scrolls. APART??? Why--we wouldn't be able to see what came before & after what we're reading! We wouldn't be able to leave it rolled up where we left off!

Just think how much easier progress would have been if we could have skipped right past the printing press & gone from scrolls to e-readers. Everybody would be happy. Well, except the out-of-work scribes, but with the carpal tunnel those guys had going on, maybe even them.

She Didn't Do it Alone

2010-01-25T10:36:00.000-08:00

Lately I’ve been thinking about the Virtuous Woman. People tend to focus on her super-human abilities and her saintly blessedness. I have a talent, though, for seeing the mundane despite the sublime. I know that staying up late to finish a sewing project, for example, doesn’t necessarily feel virtuous. Sometimes it feels a little devious, like if there were anyone awake to tell you to go to bed, then you might be doing the virtuous thing.

In the past, I’ve used this passage in Proverbs as a kind of checklist, not unlike the man who approached Jesus, claiming to have followed the Law his whole life. “What more do I lack?” the man asked, and most preachers argue that he was looking for a pat on the back, someone to say, “Wow. You ARE righteous!” Of course, we know that’s not what he got.

As I’ve worked my way down the list of talents a virtuous woman is supposed to have claim to, I haven’t gotten that pat on the back, either. If anything, the more you can do, the more people give you to do! What I’ve noticed, though, is that there is a longing within for a sense of…completion, perhaps. A sense of having arrived at the place of responsible adulthood....

Read the rest here

On the third day of Christmas...

2009-12-14T20:14:00.000-08:00

Santa gave to me...

construction paper and ginger ale.

Today was a card-making theme. I wrapped up a package of construction paper from our supply closet (aka laundry room) and printed instructions for pop-up Christmas cards, which the kids thought were really great. I added more glitter, shiny tape that we've had around since I was a kid (because I hated to waste stuff), and more glue.

They also got a package of red hots, ginger ale, and instructions for making Red Hot Apple Cider, which we never got around to, partly because someone--*ahem*--forgot the apple cider itself. Oops.

They spent hours making cards and went to bed with happy pink glows. That may have been from the 75 degree weather and playing in the early evening at the park, though?

On the Second Day of Christmas...

2009-12-14T20:08:00.000-08:00

Santa gave to me...

snowflakes and detergent for the laundry!

Today's theme was snowflakes, and the packages we opened contained white scrapbooking paper, glitter, glue, blue paint, pipe cleaners in white, pink, and blue, and a box of borax laundry detergent.

We cut paper snowflakes, but we never got around to sprinkling them with glitter or sponging blue paint on them. (We almost never do!)

Then we made snowflake shapes out of pipe cleaners and hung them overnight in a pot of boiling water that was super-saturated with Borax. Well...we didn't leave the pot boiling overnight. By the next morning, the water had cooled and the extra Borax had risen through the water, forming crystals on our pipe cleaners. They look like sugar crystals, and my goodness if I don't want to reach over and lick them myself! So this project, is, ah, not for...kids under...well, or adults without the ability to...yeah, this is a way cool project.

Hmmm...I should post pictures.

For now, though, instructions can be found here.

On the First Day of Christmas...

2009-12-14T19:58:00.000-08:00

Santa gave to me...

decorations and a Christmas tree!

We wanted to surprise the kids on the first morning of our twelve day theme with a *real* Christmas tree set up in the living room. The gifts to be opened that day would be our Christmas decorations from storage that *we* hadn't had time to go get yet.

But my husband got news that he'd be losing his job at the end of the month, and without something else lined up, even the tree seemed too extravagant. I'd made a felt tree for the wall, though, to save space when we were living in the apartment, and it was designed in the style of Dr. Seuss. Once it was on the wall, with its crazy angles and floppy top, it was hard to be disappointed.

So the kids came home from church Sunday afternoon to the first day of our experiment--the tree was hung on the wall, & piles of presents lay beneath it. They opened the box for that day and squealed with delight when they found all of our Christmas decorations. They laughed at the elvish misdeeds, even though they're big enough to know better.

We spent the afternoon decorating the tree and the evening basking in the glow of tiny colored lights that somehow spark soft memories and bright hopes with their 2-watt bulbs.

How I Celebrate Christmas

2009-12-14T19:54:00.000-08:00

Playing Santa Claus is a special game for me, of honoring my Dad’s mystery and my mom’s generosity. Through so many meager years, she eked out a Christmas for us, by wrapping everything, down to the mundane toothbrushes that filled our stockings, and by making a little seem like more. She made us sit Christmas morning and look at the tree, filled with gifts from Santa, as we ate our hasty breakfast. She made us stand in our pajamas and look on Christmas Eve, at the empty tree waiting for Santa’s magic touch.

There was magic in our lives, but we only saw it when my mother made us be still and look. There was magic in our lives, and we saw it with our imagination and with our parents’ selfless effort.

I want my children to see the magic before them, that’s fleeting as they grow, as logic replaces imagination. I want them to have some fairy dust left in their pockets to give to their children, and so I play Santa. I keep the secret while I can, and play the game long after the gig’s up, so they can catch the joy of giving that my parents passed to me.

Some years it’s hard, though. There’s the pressure of having piles of presents that come from someplace not limited by the economy or gravity. There are years when we’re facing unemployment and sickness and debt. There’s the actual clock with its unforgiving ticking and there’s laundry and errands and stress.

My mother dealt with this by buying ten cent toys, toothbrushes, and other junk to fill our stockings. By the time I was in junior high, I’d caught on, and although I loved her deeply for her efforts, I’d begun to wish she wouldn’t. By the time I had kids of my own, complete with all their kid-clutter, I’d really begun to wish that we didn’t have to add to all the unnecessary junk, just for the sake of having “stuff” under the tree at Christmas.

And finally, there has come the year that we have no money. The part of me that believes in Christmas magic wonders how to explain, how to dash my kids’ sense of the magic. The rational side looks around, though, and sees more toys than they can play with, warm clothes, good food. How can I be sad for children who have so much more than they need?

So we’ve decided to do something different this year. Santa came early, because the kids were so good, and left gifts to be opened every day for twelve days—the pile was big and magical, like my mother always managed. But the elves ran amuck while Santa was here and wrapped up so many things they shouldn’t have. Movies the kids already owned, Christmas decorations, the sofa!

Santa stopped them at the sofa, but he didn’t catch everything, and so it’s a game. Each day, the kids search through the pile of gifts and open anything labeled for that day, and each day, they find much of their own stuff, but there’s a theme. One day, there were supplies for making snowflakes. Another day, they’ll get to make cookies. By the end of it, I hope they will be filled with the spirit and traditions of Christmas without ever having missed the magic of Santa Claus.

Why I Believe in Santa

2009-12-14T19:46:00.000-08:00

When I was a kid, I had one of those neighbors—the obnoxious, bragging, rich kid who tries to outdo you at everything but who is still somehow your bosom friend. In childhood, friendship hangs so much on proximity and lack of mobility, and this girl was the one girl in the neighborhood besides my sister and me, so she was my friend.

It was love-hate. Loneliness would drive us together, and then an afternoon of watching her measure orange halves to make sure she had the bigger one and telling me she could make up rules for all the games because it was her house would leave me much more content to entertain myself.

This was a weekend when we were together, sitting on her parents gigantic sectional sofa, watching their gargantuan tv in the early 80s when this was a surreal experience, and snuggled up in the corner of that sofa overlooking the pool table in the other living room while her parents slept, she whispered to me, Your dad’s Santa Claus.

She was all the time trying to tell me things I didn’t know. Like her Aunt Mary’s birthday or the location of her private school. She was attempting to show off, my mother explained, when I asked why I would care about these things. So I rolled my eyes and figured I would certainly know better than she if my dad were the one, true Santa Claus.

But I have a vivid imagination, quite intricate and entertaining for the long days when my neighbor and I were not measuring oranges or arguing over whether to crush the crunchy autumn leaves. On my way home, I began imagining my dad, whose “uniform” was swimming trunks and flip flops except on formal occasions, when he wore his best blue jeans and cowboy boots, as Santa Claus.

Santa probably did have a secret place where he spent the year, when he wasn’t busy with the elves. There was a bassinet in my parents’ closet, from when my brother was a baby. It was filled with clothes now, but it was probably sitting on a trap door, a portal to the North Pole.

And I realized: my dad could be Santa Claus! The more I thought about it, the likelier the possibility. So after looking both ways several times and crossing that lazy island street that separated our tiny rat-infested house from the little mansion where the neighbor-girl lived, I resolved to ask my dad who he really was.

When I asked, his eyes made it clear that there was a secret here. He did that thing he does—calls you into the bedroom, gets comfortable, clears his throat. In short, he took forever to get started, his way of making a conversation “official.”

He told me the Truth about Santa that day, a Truth I was shocked to hear. Not only was he not Santa, there was no Santa. It was all just a ruse, a game he and mom and millions of other parents played—why? So they could give their children gifts without receiving anything in return. No praise, no thanks, no chores or favors.
I was in awe that such love existed. I spent the next several days slack-jawed that my parents, strict and stern as they were, had such an incredibly soft and generous side. I made a thank-you card at school, and I felt full of magic, touched by an incredible love.

And that’s about the time it hit me: whatever his exact words were, Dad had not actually denied being Santa. I snuck into their bedroom to inspect the bassinet, but I was too scared to actually move it and look under it, so I gave it a quick rock and ran.

I watched Dad’s beard grow in, in the winter and come off in the summer. I watched him put on weight. I wondered, but I never knew for sure.

An Optical Illusion

2009-11-30T23:02:00.000-08:00

Back in the days when we only had two children, my little family found itself traveling a bit—a homeschool convention here, seeing family there. We stayed in hotel rooms just enough for the two children we had to remark on how much they loved hotels. They wanted to live in one, they said, and I knew just how they felt. I loved hotels, too.

I remember standing in the middle of our room at the homeschool convention in Houston, looking around, and thinking how much money we could have saved if we’d bought a 200 square foot house instead of 1200. What is it about hotel rooms? I found myself wondering...

Read the rest of the article here

In Defense of the Comma

2009-10-21T18:33:00.000-07:00

Maybe I've been reading too much lately, but the following is also a response to an article I read. The bigger issues it addressed--the nature of good writing--have left me too shocked & emotional to presently respond. However, the author's suggestion to see if a writer sounds "smoother by omitting some of the rule-book commas" needs addressing, & I need a blood-pressure pill.

As a society, we are fairly well versed in periods. While there may be one or two trick questions in the advanced grammar books, everyday writing rarely gives even the least educated among us reason to pause over a period.

Commas, however, seem to be the grammatical equivalent of the ancient Greeks' hamartia, or inescapable fate. The more educated we are, the harder we try to get our commas just right, and in the end, the harder we fall as comma misconceptions creep in upon us in disguise.

Despite the gravity of the previous paragraph, there is hope. Comma rules can be broken down into two categories: the Really, Offensively, Unkowably Stupid and the Easy. For convenience and in honor of The Princess Bride, let's call the former ROUSs--I don't think they exist, anyway--and the latter Easy.

ROUSs are the comma rules that even the experts can't agree on. They use their degrees and experience to back their tenacious beliefs about commas and to beat dissidents over the head. These include obscure rules and obtuse exceptions such as

One must use a comma after a prepositional phrase, except when said phrase fails to reach the minimum length of four words. In such instance, the comma is acceptable but not required.

But WHY? Why four words and not three or five? Why so many exceptions when there are already so many rules? And why the fancy language? Most of us would have to spend the better part of a half hour trying to understand this rule in the first place--who remembers prepositions or prepositional phrases after Mrs. Nelson's grammar test?

And so we look up prepositions, read the examples of prepositional phrases, cross our eyes, and hold our tongues just right. In the end, we still don't know for sure where the comma goes, but we've finally figured out why English teachers are so cranky.

Easy commas, on the other hand, are quite simple, and the wonderful thing about Easy Commas is that these are the only ones anyone's sure about anyway, so if you get these right, you don't have to worry about the others.

First there are commas in a series. You get apples, oranges, and bananas from the store. For formal essays in college English, that last comma before the and is required. This can be confusing because there are exceptions, but until you are a graduate student in a very few particular disciplines, these exceptions do not matter to you. Unfortunately, many teachers teach the exceptions and the reasons for them, and the rule becomes murky or lost altogether. An entire essay could be written about that one comma, about the trials it has faced, and at last in its defense and honor. It is enough for now that you should embrace this friendly easily-placed punctuation mark.

Second there are the name & date commas. These are the ones that always follow a person's name when he's being directly addresed:

Landon, it's so sweet that you hide chocolate for your wife.

or

Landon, have you considered that if you hide the chocolate, your wife won't be able to find it?

Dates are easy, too. To punctuate, not to remember:

On June 45, 1800, I married a wonderful man.

The commas simply follow the numbers. These are the comma rules they teach in first grade because they're so beautifully unambiguous.

Finally, commas do something magical that I was not taught until college, where it was suddenly a surprisingly big deal. This last comma rule could be called the science of the comma splice, because indeed it is far more of a science than an art. One of the functions of the comma is to mark complete sentences, as we have been told only periods can do. We know to put periods at the ends of complete sentences, and we know we can combine complete sentences to create compound sentences:

Landon hid the chocolate.

Aubrey could not find it.

The comma, when combined with a conjunction (I apologize for invoking the grammatical term), lets the reader know that there's a complete sentence on BOTH sides:

Landon hid the chocolate, and Aubrey could not find it.

Leaving off this comma, then, is rather like writing a run-on sentence, and worse, placing a comma beside a conjunction (and, but, or, so--not the eye infection), except in a series, in essence creates a sentence fragment.

Since most people can't keep comma rules straight due to the fact that they were subjected to ambiguous comma instruction as children, I can hardly argue that readers depend upon these comma rules for smoother comprehension. I do believe, however, that well-punctuated literature is easier to read and comprehend than poorly punctuated material. Think about William Faulkner, after all, an dyou will realize the value of a well-placed comma.

Comma splices--or unsplices, since we are speaking of their correct placement--are easy because they are like math.

Wait--come back. Breathe into a bag while I explain. Think of an algebra problem.

Remember to breathe into the bag. I *promise* it gets better after this. Let's try an easy one:

x+4 = 2x+2

Comma unsplices are like the equal sign. We don't even have to do the math! (See, I told you it would be ok.) The equal sign is very important to the balancing of the equation, but it's the easiest part to insert. Like an actual balance, the middle doesn't move--only the stuff around it. So one complete sentence balances another. Otherwise? No comma.

For too long commas have been misrepresented as an art, a secret handshake, the mysteries of which are guarded by a hallowed few. Whether commas have been held back from the common folk out of generations of ignorance or from some sinister plot, I am not one to judge. I am simply holding open the door, teaching the secret handshake, and inviting all who would come to enter in.

;)

A Call for Logic in Christian Writing

2009-10-21T18:15:00.000-07:00

I was recently reading an article in one of my favorite magazines about the evils of public school and why Christian parents should not send their children to such a worldly institution. In general, I agree with this premise, and because of that, my husband had some difficulty understanding why the article made me so angry.

While I agreed with the basic premise of the article, the author's method of arriving at this conclusion was filled with logical fallacies, assumptions, and blanket statements, not to mention inadequate research. Presenting a reasonable conclusion via unreasonable logic is a little like going to the grocery store by driving backwards down the highway. Perhaps no one objects to your destination, but no one will ride with or follow you, either.

There seems to be an assumption that if one is writing about God, the writing does not matter. He will reveal Himself, some will argue, despite the quality of the writing. Others seem unable to see a distinction between a conclusion and its supporting arguments.

First, insufficient or illogical reasoning insults readers. Failing to do adequate research implies that an author does not respect his audience enough to expect them to recognize the failure. Poor research and logic smack of charlatanism, as if the author thinks his audience is too stupid, too uneducated to recognize his failure or to be worth greater effort.

The greater problem with such writing lies in the case of an author who has rightly evaluated his audience. Perhaps they are indeed either too naive or too uneducated to recognize the author's audacity. Then they in their ignorance repeat his fallacies and assumption, believing fully that they are spouting great wisdom and insight, relying on the fact of the author's publication for support. These unsuspecting people are then blindsided by ill-will when they find their own, less-receptive audiences much cooler toward them than they were to the weak author who began the whole mess.

The article I read actually ended with a plea to readers to go out and share this information in whatever public or private venues they could find. Through bad writing, then, an entire group can develop a bad reputation for itself, as its leaders fail to communicate ideas well and its members follow the bad example. It is like an entire caravan driving the wrong way down the highway. Some members will be so convinced of the leadership of the author that they will honk angry horns and shake outraged fists at other drivers who dare to drive in opposition. Chaos follows the group wherever it goes.

The gravest result of bad writing happens when the sweeping generalizations and faulty logic are met by those who do not embrace the conclusion--those who get hit head-on by one of these backwards drivers. The group's reputation suffers harm because they are doing real damage to those around them, not because of their beliefs, conclusions, or destination, but because of their method of delivery.

Writing, like any other sport, has rules. Sure, it's tempting to bend them, to sneak in a jab when the opponent isn't looking or to quote one's friends regarding the mission statement of an opposing group, but that would be cheating. Following the rules is what makes a sport interesting, and without them, all we would have is an embarrassing brawl.

2009-10-14T18:52:00.001-07:00

Sometimes I carry the weight of everything with me at once. Instead of worrying about today's problems today & leaving tomorrow to worry about itself, I take the entire laundry list of possible problems from now until a generation after me, & I worry.

It's like student loans. I worry about the entire 5-figure sum that my husband and I owe, as if a loan shark were after our children, threatening to take them if we don't pay the entire sum by the end of the week.

Instead of just worrying about what to teach this year, this grade level, this week, today, I worry about my kids' whole education, k-12, as if I only have this week to finish educating them. (The big ones are only in the 1st & 3rd grades.)

I worry about housework, too, as if the secret police will show up at my back door with white gloves at any moment. But the computer got a Windows-eating virus last week, the toilet backed up, the keyboard got fried, the car broke down, & I got sick. It was a bad week all around, and the house shows it. When the dishes piled up so badly that I couldn't squeeze the coffee pot under the faucet, we stopped & washed dishes. When the laundry piled up so badly, kids were forraging for socks in the dirty clothes, well... When the laundry piled up so badly, the smell nearly knocked you down, we stopped & washed clothes. And washed clothes. And washed clothes. We still haven't found the smell, & the toilet's fixed & cleaned, so I guess we'll keep washing clothes.

And now I have a new problem: the sofa's piled high with clean laundry to fold & put away. The kids ate...everywhere...while I was sick. There are pizza crusts & cheerios on the carpet in the school room, yogurt on the art table & in the doll house, & bits of ham, cheese, & bread from a rejected sandwich trailed from the dining table to the living room, I guess in case the baby forgets his way to his high chair.

But wait. This isn't supposed to be a confession. Let me start over.

Sometimes I worry about a lot of stuff all at once. These problems remind me of Jesus' words: "The poor you will have with you always." There are some problems, like student loans & laundry, that won't be solved by a silver bullet or a magic plan. They're long-term problems, & when we realize & accept that, they become a little more manageable.

Jesus might just as easily have said, "The laundry you will have with you always."

I realized this today when the odor from the laundry room forced me to pause & start a load. Walking back to the school room where the bigs were sweating over math while the baby tried to grab their pencils instead of his lunch, I saw the 2 loads piled on the sofa to be folded & put away, & I began to feel hopeless, the way I do when I look at debt or curriculum decisions. Sometimes these important tasks, like laundry & dishes, tempt me away from essential ones, the Martha in me complaining to the Mary.

Sometimes I listen to Martha. I gripe at my kids, sweep my floors, & miss all the reasons I chose this life. On those days, I look behind me, & all my work was for naught, a trail of debris following the paths I just cleared.

Sometimes I listen to Mary. My house is still a mess, but I can hear the smallness of their voices, feel their innocence, see their tooth-mottled grins--everybody in our house has teeth either coming or going. Most of all, I can hear the still, small voice, who says that this is the better part.

2009-10-13T21:25:00.000-07:00

I knocked one of my great-grandfather's paintings off the wall tonight. With a ball. Yes, a ball. I threw it. In the house. It was fun. You should try it some time.

But if you plan to *keep* the no-balls-flying-through-my-house-over-my-dead-body rule? Wait till the kids are asleep.

The Pros and Cons of Loft Beds

2009-10-13T21:11:00.000-07:00

When you fill a 900 square foot apartment with six people, you quickly begin seeking space solutions, and you begin imagining strange and unnatural uses of the ceiling. Seminary has been a lifestyle of small miracles, and one of those miracles came in the form of loft beds.

Before we got our Ikea loft beds from Craig’s List, our big kids’ room was more like a short hallway running between their bunk beds and their closet, with an awkward splash of leftover space at one end. With loft beds, we gained something better than playspace—we gained an extra room. Suddenly we could stack kids and babies instead of just toy buckets.

So with a loft over a crib and a loft over a toddler bed, we sardined our sleeping quarters and expanded our living space. We gained a homeschool room/office, and in a tiny apartment, that’s nothing short of amazing...

Read the rest here.

2009-10-06T22:26:00.000-07:00

I responded to a call for writers recently. Among the topics needing to be addressed for this publication was "homeschooling with toddlers."

I emailed the administrators, telling them that with two toddlers in the house, this was one of the subjects about which I could write. From experience, you know. Everybody loves a funny toddler story, especially with somebody *other* than oneself at the brunt of it.

A couple of weeks passed before my first article was due, and during that time, the idea sunk in: by sheer virtue of *having* a toddler (& being willing/able? to write about it), I'm an "expert" of sorts.

The thought hadn't fully dawned on me until the morning last week that I was sopping the last cup of coffee available in my house up from my keyboard, papers, etc. Holding the keyboard up, watching the coffee pour out of it, wondering wildly how I was going to make it through the day without the legal substance, not to mention the dying keyboard on a day when three articles were due, it hit me.

Other women in the coming weeks would be sopping coffee up from *their* keyboards & reading my as-yet-unwritten-article as if I know what I'm doing. As if I'm an expert.

It was a terrifying thought.

But I walked *out* of the room a little friendlier than I might have otherwise. I walked out thinking, hm--what would an EXPERT do?

I vascillate between the despairing feeling of ohmygoshwhatifI'mIT? and a friendlier, more patient persona. Why? Because ohmygoshwhatifI'mit?

Try it. Pretend you're an expert at your most challenging task. Whatever your knowledge or experience, however inadequate it seems, despite repeated failures & inadequacy, pretend for some reason, somebody's looking to you for your "expertise" in that field. See how it changes you.

And toddlerdom? I figure we're all equally expert at nailing jello to a tree, but for what it's worth, I missed an email.

I'm writing about homeschooling in tight spaces with no money.

Develop an Addiction

2009-09-28T09:40:00.000-07:00

I was feeling crazy this week, overwhelmed, & thought--wow, this is how it happens. If I thought alcohol would help *at all,* I could totally become an alcoholic right now.

But it doesn't help.

And so, in my crazy, over-organized, but sometimes illogical brain, in my moment of over-toddler-ized desperation, I thought, I need to DEVELOP an addiction!

Chocolate? Check. It's hit or miss. On the fat days, it just makes you feel worse.

Coffee? Check. It's a nice pick-me-up, but...a body can only take so much. The jitters get hard to control, lol.

And a small voice breathed a Yes. Develop an addiction to prayer.

I've been rolling that epiphany over in my calmer brain. Most mornings I lay in bed, my lips lifting deseperate prayers for the day. Another day. Another blessed 24 hours of breathing, feeding, changing, oh Lord help me, comforting, redirecting, teaching, dressing.

But I'm not addicted, you know. When my veins are popping w/ the stress, I don't lock myself in my bathroom & get down on my knees. I lock myself in my bedroom w/ the computer & chocolate or coffee or both.

What if I were addicted to prayer? What if I lived like I was counting the moments between "fixes"?

There's a verse in James, & I forget how the whole thing goes, but part of it says, "Count it all joy."

I painted that on a strip of canvas & hung it in my living room, & the phrase haunts me (in a good way).

And so a blessing:

Peace to you in the midst of the screaming.
Peace to you when the bickering sets in.
Peace to you when the tears are rolling.

May you be His hands and feet in your home.
May you be His voice in your loved ones' ears.

May you find your bread in His Word.
May you find your freedom in following Him.

2yo is done coloring: my time's up.

2009-09-25T17:44:00.000-07:00

I began writing my own writing curriculum over the summer. It's easier to do than say.

I didn't want to spend $40 on another program I wasn't going to use. I haven't found one that's actually BAD, necessarily. I just don't like them & so don't get around to using them often. They then become a source of guilt for me, & I begin seeking another program to alleviate my guilt.

It's a bad cycle. As a former writing teacher, it's really inexplicable.

I think I've told you all of this before, which is really quite embarrassing. I may have also told you that in planning my curriculum, I realized I didn't believe in copywork & dictation. Also an embarrassing realization, since I so whole-heartedly embrace the styles of school that promote those styles of writing.

Anyway, I got the first draft of my elementary I curriculum hammered out & began trying it on my guinea...*ahem!* ...kids.

Well...

see...

meh.

I mean...it's good. When we use it. We're about 6 weeks in, &...I dread it! Just like all the other programs I've used. The kids? They love it. Just like all the other programs we've used. Ok, there have been exceptions.

So what's the problem? Partly--it doesn't take long enough. That was the main problem I had with First Language Lessons, & it's a ridiculous problem to have to admit having. When it takes longer to get the book out than it does to do the lesson, some of us start slacking. The lessons pile up, & you start doing them all on Tuesdays & Thursdays. Then just on Fridays. Pretty soon...you're doing grammar & writing once a quarter, & we all know better than to try to learn a new skill--especially one like writing--by only touching it 4-5 times a year.

After a good start to the year, I've started slacking on writing. In my defense, though, I've started slacking on everything.

Except...well...we're never behind in history. We're almost never behind in *reading* for science. (Getting out all the junk for a million experiments is a whole other story.) And as long as we're in the middle of a read-aloud, we slack on our other subjects so we can keep reading. (Pre-reading really kills that joy, though.)

So while I was cleaning my bathroom tonight, avoiding my opportunity to get into my own writing, which I love once I'm in the middle of but is hard to restart after a long absence from, I was thinking about the fact that we're never behind in history.

We get behind in our narrations for history. We get behind in our supplementary reading, our review questions, etc., but not in the actual reading.

Why?

Shall we pause & pretend to discuss? Stop here, think about the answer--AN answer, for I'm not claiming that there's only one. Get a cup of tea & mull. I'll be here when you get back.

Ok, so WHY do we not get behind in our history reading?

I think it's because we get caught up in the story & the characters. Sometimes, we completely throw all propriety to the wind, blow off our schedule for the rest of the day, & go ahead & read next week's lesson.

Sometimes, when next week's lesson moves on to another king, another country, another period of development, we turn hungrily to whatever we can find on our shelves, which are organized for easy finding of history-related books & topped with encyclopedias of all kinds.

What is it about history? It's there in science, too, although a little harder to find at times. And it's in our read-alouds.

I think we, as humans, seek out Narrative. That's why we read about Napoleon & the relationship between Monopoly & WWI POWs (or was it WWII?). That's why we read about the 19lb baby, the pregnant woman who got pregnant again, & celebrity gossip. That's why we read at all.

Yes, we want information sometimes. We read road signs & menus & sometimes even bank statements. But we are *drawn* into people's stories & their lives, through books & movies & conversation.

Think about magazines. Sometimes they include recipes, which I hear some people like & use. ;) But if that were all a magazine was--just pages & pages of information, would we subscribe? Or would we simply buy a single cookbook & call it good? (I ask this from the perspective of someone who'd rather clean the bathroom than cook, so maybe I'm misled.)

I think we want to read about people & their lives. I think we want to see failure turned into success, perseverance rewarded, good ideas that have bloomed.

And so history draws us, while grammar & writing...some of us dread, despite advanced degrees. I think it was such an observation that must have birthed the origin of copywork & dictation, because suddenly, standing there in the bathroom avoiding my own writing, it made sense.

At least, it made sense that someone, recognizing our human pull toward narrative would logically come to the conclusion that teaching writing through copying other people's writing would be a good idea.

I'm still against it.

Instead, I'm thinking of converting my writing curriculum to a narrative-based story ala Life of Fred that happens to include relevant writing activities. Maybe a Choose Your Own Adventure meets Frieda, Fred's grammar-loving sister? Not that I'd impose upon Fred's copyright. We've only just met.

2009-09-25T17:41:00.000-07:00

I cleaned my bathroom today. It started with washing my face, randomly, in the early evening, which led to a meticulous teeth-brushing job, complete with flossing & mouthwash. Which led, naturally, to finally picking up all my stray bobby pins, dusting my makeup holders, & even cleaning the toothbrush holder.

The occasion? My husband offered to take care of the kids, feed them, put them to bed, so I could have time to write.

How do YOU spell avoidance?

The First Day of Autumn

2009-09-22T18:18:00.000-07:00

Today was cold—the first crisp day of autumn. Our air conditioning quit sometime yesterday, and so after a night spent at temps up to 92 in the warmest parts of the house, we opened up all the windows this morning and felt the cold front as it descended with its spicy scents and promises of the best kind of cold. In Texas, these few chilly days bring the kind of excitement that is usually only seen in children, shaking with inexpressible joy on one of their first Christmas mornings. Who knew life could be so good?

To see adults tremble with this child-like joy is magic. Our eyes sparkle. We don’t mind going up to the attic to pull out the sweaters. We stop somewhere on the way home to pick up a log for the fire & maybe even—ludicrously—leave the windows open so we can have a fire now. Tonight. While the magic promise of cinnamon is still on the air. Because soon enough, that cinnamon will freeze into delicate little snow flakes. Yes, here in Texas. Remember, this is the feel of the weather change. It’s imaginary.

So while we don’t mind going up to the attic this one time of the year, I’m not personally going up there. That’s my husband’s realm. And when there was enough of a snap to the cold in the house, I began looking for a sweater here in my own kingdom.

You know the quiet of an army laying siege? The feel inside the castle walls of something too quiet, something made of shadows slithering silently nearby? My crisp autumn day was like that. The coffee that should have tasted better on this day than any other—save Christmas, maybe—was bitter. Cold too soon when it should have offered warmth.

It was when I went for a sweater and realized that there was only one not in the attic that the darkness could be seen. I hesitated. And then I gave myself over to it. I dug through the depths of my closet, past the bags of clothes that are still too little, a year after baby was born, past forgotten gifts and mismatched shoes to the sweater I’d known was there.

It’s not really a sweater. It’s a hoodie, black once, missing the tongue to its zipper, but it still zips. One pocket torn halfway off, but both still good for warming hands. All it has really lost is its smell. The day I brought it home, it stank of sweat and sawdust and tobacco, and I buried my face in it and wept.

I haven’t worn it since that day, although I’ve held it and smelled it, but I’d worn it before, in another chilly climate that paid no heed to changing seasons, where every day was the first of autumn, crisp, and cool. That should have made it possible to plan an appropriate wardrobe, but you forget. When a place has a climate all its own, it’s easy to forget when you’re away too long, and so you pack for warmer weather and are so grateful then to find a vacant hoodie, even if it has a broken zipper.

The faded cotton jacket was vacant today. I pulled it about me, zipped it halfway up despite its missing tongue, and made hot chocolate for my kids. I want them to know the wonder of the first day of autumn, too, the smell of cinnamon, the magic and invisible sparkle of the day rich with color and promise, even if there’s something missing they can never fully know.

2009-09-21T13:58:00.001-07:00

I have been thinking about prisons lately. I'm re-reading The 79 Squares by Malcolm J. Bosse, & I'm learning about the French Revolution with my kids. We've read adaptations of The Three Musketeers and The Man in the Iron Mask, & I have been going through the library's movies set in that time.

The 79 Squares is a book about an old man and a young boy: the old man has spent the last 40 years of his life in prison, and the boy is living a life that will take him in that direction. Through a chance encounter, they develop an inexplicable relationship based around a garden and the old man's insistence that the boy learn to see the things around him. The old man explains that 40 years in a prison cell would drive a person mad if he didn't learn ways to cope.

The old man coped by learning to look, to see the details of his world, the cracks in the brick, the pattern of the floor. He spends his last summer teaching the boy to look closely, too, & unimaginably, the boy is transformed as he spends hour after hour learning to see the world of an ant, a tree, a bird, and a blade of grass. He learns the names of every insect, every plant, every animal, until he can read the changes in pressure by the flight of the birds and the shape of the clouds and the pull of the flowers.

There's the Bastille. I've got images of prisoners watching glimpses of the sun and the moon from movies made about this famous prison. I think about these wretched men learning astronomy, marking maps on their prison walls, focusing on details so they don't go crazy, so they have a reason to live, and I can't help it. The smallest piece of me is...jealous. For the opportunity to sit and see. To be still, to learn.

But my life is frenetic. Some days it's one long bellow of diapers & bumped knees & hurt feelings & pouting & ringing & knocking & chores, errands, paperwork. No time for being still. No time for gaping at a piece of the moon or learning astronomy--or Greek, as my husband would like.

How peaceful prison life sometimes sounds to my weary ears.

What kept madness at bay for the prisoners I've read about, though, was shifting their focus from the bars that held them to the very small bit of life that passed through their cells.

The wails of crying babies, the stink of overflowing trash, the never-ending hunger pangs of four growing children--these are the bars of my prison, if I can for a moment call it that. But I sometimes focus wrongly upon the bars, inviting madness in, gripping tight the iron shackles & seeing only the endlessness of my sentence: 10 years before the stove, stirring, flipping, steaming; 10 years before the washing machine, sorting, switching, folding, drying, hanging, ironing; 10 years on aching knees, bathing, changing, dressing; another 10 bending over, picking up, chasing, catching, sweeping, being chased by crumbs.

It seems an endless term sometimes. But when I remember to move my gaze, my thoughts, from the prison bars to the life that passes through my tiny cell, I see not iron bars & eternity, but a miracle & a moment that is fleeting.

9/11

2009-09-11T06:43:00.000-07:00

The date comes on my calendar every year, like any other date. People go to work, schedule meetings, roll out new movies and products. As if it were any other date.

From the end of August to the middle of September, I try to pretend it's any other date. I try to mentally skip past it, hoping to forget it like the anniversary of something insignificant. But in waves, I remember.

As the waves of other people's pain and memory rise, mine are stirred. And there are so many memories, all dark, all mingled.

9/11 was my dad's birthday. When the twin towers were attacked in NY, he had just lost his dad to an early heart attack. The last time they'd spoken was an argument, & he never got over that.

Dad's second marriage broke up that year, and we spent his next birthday together, with sadness that was palpable. He tried to be enthusiastic, and he was glad not to be alone, I could tell, but nothing really brought much joy.

Soon after that, his sister died, unexpectedly and mysteriously. She had been his best friend, only a year younger than he. They shared the same birthday. Again, though, she had been estranged from Dad since her own divorce. It was hard on him, but when the chance of reconciliation was gone, I think that's when we lost him, really.

The grief ate away at him until he collapsed with his own heart attack. He was only 48 and had never been in the hospital before, but he spent three solid months in ICU, with one complication after another.

He recovered, and walked my sister down the aisle. We thought he would be fine. His dad suffered with heart problems for 20 years before he died.

9/11 was the last time I saw my dad alive. We went out to celebrate his birthday with him again, but he was miserable. It was his first birthday completely without his sister.

Two weeks later, Dad died. The shock and the grief were so incredible, they shook my marriage, as his dad's death had dislodged his own. I felt myself slipping away, the way I'd watched my dad slip.

We'd had one of those complicated divorced-parent relationships, in which it's hard to know what's true and if you're loved. He'd said it so many times, had clearly been afraid I might not know, but in the overanalysis of what's right, I had often missed what was good.

Things had gotten better between Dad and me in the years before he died. We'd become friends, thanks to our spouses' understanding of us. It turned out we were a lot alike, and once we saw that, I think we understood each other enough better to allow space for each other. And we each had a refuge to run to, who would turn us back to each other.

We had those few years together, and we spent a half hour alone together the last night I saw him. He often dealt with grief with anger, pushing people away, but before I left that night, he sat beside me and told me how he missed his sister. He had spent most of the evening furious at everything, trying to hold it in, and blowing bits of steam through clenched teeth. I told him how I loved him. And because of that 30 minutes, my last memories of my dad are good.

I try to remember my dad in my relationships now. I try to forgive quickly, think about how I'm feeling versus how I'm acting. I try to treat people the way I'd want to remember treating them when they die, since there's no guarantee we'll see each other again.

Except in September, when I try to forget. But the flags of other people's pain, of so much sadness surrounding the date, remind me. And I wish business could go on as usual, so I could forget, so the memories would not be stirred.

The signs of healing and moving on, of meetings and birthdays and business on the date...they remind me, too. Perhaps that means I cannot forget, because I want the whole world to stop on 9/11 so I can grieve, so my loss is acknowledged. I want others to be able to stop and grieve their losses, too.

My children make the difference. Before I was pregnant with #3, I dreamed that my dad told me we were going to have a little girl and that her name would be Abigail. The name means "your father is rejoicing," and it gives me peace that at last his sadness is gone.

Abigail was born nine months later, and she is sitting in my lap now, bringing me back to the present, out of my memories, reminding me with her own fat tears and incredible smile and labored words that I'm needed and loved, and the pain of the memories softens with the mysterious blessings of the mundane.

On Bad Days...

2009-09-07T18:07:00.000-07:00

I got hit in the eye with a fried egg this morning. Not the actual eyeball, just the lid.

Then I got accidentally served last night's coffee in a dirty coffee mug. Oops.

By 5:00 it had been a bad day. The kind where you think maybe you should have crawled UNDER the bed & waited to try again tomorrow.

So I declared Christmas. That's what I do on bad days. Maybe once a year besides the actual holiday, we have need of cinnamon-flavored festivities.

We got a pizza for $6 from Little Caesar's, & the kids were told that they had the time it took us to get the pizza plus 2 min to gather gifts for whomever they could gather gifts for. The rules were no money, no art supplies (because of irrelevant art supply infractions), & no more than 2 min beyond the time spent in the van driving to the pizza place.

We all got home & raced around the house. I wiped the table & swept the floor. Landon got out the sidewalk chalk & created a rock-tossing game akin to skeeball. John got stuff to wash, rub, & slipper Landon's feet. Books were set aside to be read to Abby. And for a finishing touch, I lit some Christmas-scented candles & set papertowels on the table.

They caught fire. I grabbed them & waved them around & grew goggle-eyed as the teeny fire grew flames. The big kids & I screamed. The babies began crying. Landon was stuck on the other side of the kitchen yelling instructions from his foot bath.

When my hand got hot, I threw the papertowels on the floor & started stomping on the fire, yelling, "MY FOOT'S ON FIRE! MY FOOT'S ON FIRE!"

One gray sock & melted shoe later, the fire was out, & the doors were opened to let the smell out as we all shook out the adrenaline.

In came the wasps.

He Laid His Hands Upon Them and Healed Them...

2009-09-02T16:19:00.000-07:00

While we're reading through The Miracle of the Scarlet Thread, the kids and I are also reading the Gospel of Luke, looking at imagery & references to the Old Testament.

I was just reading through Leviticus this summer, after attending a Michael Card concert, in which he sang his way through the Bible, but apologized for skipping Leviticus because he just hadn't found a way to sing about the Law. Of course the first thing I did was go home & write a song from Leviticus--2, in fact.

One of the interesting things about the Law is the idea of cleanness & uncleanness. We read this as a symbol of sin, which is fine, as long as you're not reading Leviticus too closely because a closer read leaves you indignant. How is it fair that someone born lame or blind cannot approach God? How is it fair that women are unclean after giving birth or during their menstruation every month? How is a natural state the equivalent of sin, & how can we be judged for that?

I imagine a crowd of people, trying to please the Lord, reaching up to Him, and He says, Sit down if you are wounded. Sit down if you are blind. Sit down if you're a woman, if you have buried the dead, if you have any defect at all. Sit down if you have touched anyone who's wounded, etc. Sit down if you've touched things touched by someone who's unclean.

The point isn't that you can try to be the one man left standing holy before the Lord, if you can just dodge all these bullets. The point is that you *can't* stand. The point is that none of us are clean. He spends a whole book of the Bible trying to convince us that our righteousness is like filthy rags. Because the point of the Law is to point us to a Savior.

Instead, though, people are pushed away. Lepers live outside the city, and they're forced to cry out, "UNCLEAN! UNCLEAN!" if anyone approaches. Women became second-class citizens. And men hoped that their bodies would stay in tact, even as they knew their hearts were dark.

Then came a man who, by healing the sick, made them CLEAN. And as He healed them, He told them, "Your sins are forgiven." I'd forgotten that being sick in that society would make you untouchable, would keep you from the synagogue, would make you the subject of judgmental whispers and dirty looks.

But Jesus did something else. When He healed people, He *touched* them. I had never realized what a violation of custom that would have been. He took the sins of the world upon Himself on the cross, but He was taking our sins upon Himself each time He healed people, too.

On the Blood Covenant & Divorce

2009-09-02T16:03:00.000-07:00

The kids and I have been reading The Miracle of the Scarlet Thread & the Gospel of Luke for Bible class the last couple of weeks. MST focuses on blood covenants throughout the Bible. It very simply outlines the customs & shows examples of these in the Scripture, while continually drawing parallels between these stories & Jesus' sacrifice.

Last night, they laid a couple of paper plate liners on the floor & walked around them the way Booker explains that people walked around the two halves of the animal sacrifice in MST, exchanging imaginary robes & belts.

They giggled, and we were about to move on when G asked, "What about divorce?"

Um...what?

"Divorce," she said. "If a covenant can't be broken, how can people divorce?"

I really do love it when they ask these deep questions, because I've found that I learn more from these than I do from anything I read.

There's the pat answer, of course. God hates divorce. It's a bad thing. It's sad.

I could have said that and moved on, but a passage from MST stuck with me. The two people entering into covenant start out back-to-back between the two halves of a bloody animal. They make a figure eight around the two halves, keeping their eyes on the sacrifice, and come together again, face to face. Part of the point, Booker explains, is that they're symbolically saying, "May God do that to me and more if I ever break this covenant."

In the end, I told the kids that divorce isn't possible because a covenant can't be broken. You can try. Two people can live in different places, but it's like cutting yourself in half. The result may be two different locations, but not life. Your insides will be like the two halves of the dead chicken. (I know it's not a chicken; somehow in our example, it was.)

I guess it's like the Garden of Eden. God told Adam & Eve that they'd die if they ate the fruit of the forbidden tree. As a child, I wondered secretly that they didn't die and felt guilty for wondering. As an adult, I can see that they did, in fact, die, and that death touched them at every turn through the rest of their lives until their bodies died, too. They buried first their relationship with God, the animal He killed to clothe them, and their home in the Garden, then their son, full bellies, and peace. At last, they buried each other.

So, yeah, God hates divorce. But I think our paper plate liners that represented dead chickens that represented the sacrifice of a covenant relationship is a sobering image of the reason He's so passionate about it.

May the Lord do so to me & more, if I ever try to break my covenant.

Life Update

2009-08-31T17:56:00.000-07:00

Many of you know that Landon is in seminary. We've been here for 2 years now, & our surprise-welcome-to-seminary baby just turned 1. We spent the first year with pregnancy hormones, struggling to balance work & school, homeschooling, & hoping Landon would find a job that would pay the bills while still leaving time to study & see the kids & me.

Then we spent the second year with the same difficulties, except that we swapped the pregnancy hormones for two babies, & the utter exhaustion that comes with so many tiny hands & mischievous feet.

This summer, we thought we were done. We'd come to the end of a rope (our rope? I'm not sure whose!). Landon had been out of dependable work for several months, & health issues were making everything more difficult. I began applying for jobs, & we thought about putting the kids in school, something that violated the very core of our vision for parenting.

Through a lot of prayer & a lot of love & support from family & friends we were really embarrassed to even talk to, we began to feel hopeful again. Landon got a job. I was not hired anywhere I applied. And over the past month or two, we have felt the hand of the Lord knitting our wounds back together.

Since then, we have felt the Lord lead us to stay in seminary. We don't know what he's doing, & honestly, we're a little scared right now, but after a lot of prayer, we've both come to the decision that this is what's best for our family right now. The stress of another move would be too much. We can't afford other housing. And...we have not felt peace about leaving, even when it seemed the only choice we had.

Staying in seminary is fine & good as long as it's summer time, & Landon's between classes! He's been working a delivery job part time in the evenings after he finishes his day job, & even with this second income, we've had to go over & over the budget, trying to find places to save money. We've hung a clothes line in the back yard, borrowed cloth diapers from a friend, clipped coupons, learned to make more things from scratch, & found a world of fun at the library.

As close as things have been, the fall semester means fewer hours that Landon can work and the addition of his tuition bill, and I've been trying to think of ways to help. I'm big on ideas but low on the confidence to see them through, so I'm trying to think small & be practical. No starting my own magazine; no designing my own line of clothes, lol.

I've thought about teaching writing classes online, & I've started writing writing curriculum (lol), but all of those things stick me in front of a computer for hours on end, telling the kids to "go play nicely," and they provide solutions that are not immediately tangible.

So I've decided that I need to focus on things that can include the kids for now. I'm making aprons & things to sell on Etsy, because they love to sit & talk to me while I sew, & G is excited to learn to make things, too. Aubrey's Etsy Shop I'm restarting my Usborne business for the same reason--the kids loved to help open boxes of books, bag them, deliver them, & earn free ones for themselves. (G even tried to convince me to let her start her own business & began *writing* books herself!)

My goal is to pay Landon's tuition. If I can also make up the difference in lost income from the fewer nights he'll be able to work his delivery job, that would be great. I was inspired by an article I read on Yahoo a couple of weeks ago about a family trying to save their home by baking "mortgage cakes." I respect their efforts deeply, but what really inspired me was reading their names in the middle of the article--they turned out to be friends from years ago. Mortgage Cakes

I'm going to start my "tuition books (& aprons)" by hosting a book party. If you can come, please do. There will be prizes & cookies & nice people. If you can bring a friend, I'd be so grateful, & you won't have to apologize to your friend in the car on the way home. (At least as far as a sales party is concerned. Your driving may be another matter!) As a salesperson, I assure you, I really stink, so there will be no pressure, & I put my foot in my mouth enough to amuse.

If you'd like to host a party, it's a lot of fun, you'll earn free books, Christmas is coming up, & it would help a lot with Landon's tuition. It's fun for people with kids, people with grandkids, baby showers, & collecting books for good causes. Moms are the easiest to convince to come, but guys who hang around are often surprised at how fascinating & fun some of the science books are. When our first box came, I couldn't peel Landon out of the first one he picked up, except when he saw the internet links. LOL

If you're one of my out-of-town friends, you can still host or attend a party, via my website: Aubrey's Usborne Bookshop. If you order under someone else's party, you help that person earn free books, & I get a higher commission than if you order independently. If you set up an online party, *you* earn free books, I get the higher commission, & your friends can simply shop online. You can even have the party, make cupcakes, pass around a catalog (or if the computer's handy, leave the website open), & I'll be happy to cheer you on, provide support, answer questions, etc.

Beyond that, I earn free books, too, & the kids' favorite gifts last Christmas were the books we got from Usborne. That sounds totally canned, especially since we'd seen so many titles come through our living room in the month before Christmas, but it's true. Landon & I were speechless as all 3 of them became so absorbed in books that we could hardly get them to eat their cookies or open their other gifts. You can't really make stuff like that up.

Thank you so much for the time you've taken to read this, for your thoughts, prayers, & friendship. And I know I'm Aubrey-the-Long-Winded. Sorry.

How I Learned to Write

2009-07-29T14:09:00.001-07:00

In elem school, I hated writing. I had no idea how to think up a story, & so every other year, when we had to fill in those big blank books with our own words & pictures, I sat frozen. I ended up rewriting stories I knew--Little Bear became Little Dog, because I couldn't imagine anything else. And so I hated writing, & I floundered.

Until 5th grade, when I had this amazing teacher who actually taught us to write. We spent the year writing stories, and the other kids would beg to hear mine. I was a really, painfully shy kid, so the attention was...good. It sort-of thawed some of the fear, you know. Anyway, when we got our big blank books that year, I was thrilled with the possibilities instead of stuck.

So what did she teach me? That good story-telling comes primarily from observation, & that good observation takes more than a paragraph to tell, & that that's ok. That a good story is as long as a piece of string. That when you register by yourself at a hotel & you're a woman, you should simply use your 1st initial, so that no one knows a woman is staying there alone.

From that time on, I earned straight As in English classes, won awards for my writing, & settled into the idea that writing was what I could do well. I breezed through GT & AP English in highschool & graduated early.

Somehow, though, someone forgot to tell my Freshman Comp teacher in college. Imagine the shock when I received an F on my first paper. Through many tears, though, & talking through what she wanted, etc., I left my 2nd paper w/ her & actually hugged her. Now that I know her reputation, um, that was probably a first for her.

I failed the 2nd paper. At that point, it was obvious that it was her, not me, so I filled out the necessary paperwork to drop her class while she was administering the midterm exam for my class & dropped it by her office afterward.

She ripped it up & excused herself to go start the next class's midterm. I sat in her office in shock once again. This woman was insane. She terrified me. And she was coming back, & I was no longer armed: my drop slip was in her trash bin.

Dr. Whosit & I sat in her office that afternoon with a paper between us & in less than 30 min, she made me understand what she wanted. It was a formal essay, & I'd never had to write one before. It wasn't hard; it was just different. Sentence fragments that can be added for great effect in casual or creative writing were automatically wrong in formal essays. It took a while for me to *accept* it but not long to learn it, if that makes sense.

Since then, I have only received two Bs on papers. The rest have been As, & I've gone on to earn a BA in English & an MEd in Teaching. I've taught writing to highschool & college students--even some grad students preparing for the MBA entrance exam. I received a perfect score on the writing portion of the GRE--all because Dr. Whosit tore up my drop slip.

Since then, she's been promoted to head of the English Dept. at that college, & she's complained to me that I got my master's in Education instead of English, so she can't hire me. It's a quiet compliment, but I take it...because she still scares me a little.

So what did she teach me? Primarily that there are different kinds of writing, but also that there are things in the world such as thesis statements & comma splices. Lovely, concrete rules for grammar & punctuation that not a single teacher in all my gradeschool & highschool years taught. Some that they even taught wrong!

So you want to know about the Bs. Comp 2 is supposed to be How to Write an Argumentative Essay--for freshmen. But I had a brilliant grad student who didn't know how to water down the information for those of us who didn't already have 10 grad degrees. She also didn't know how to stop teaching. She eeked out a meager grad student existence while pouring herself into her studies & her students. She spent long, LONG hours with me, a pair of scissors, & my essays. She became a dear friend, whose company I have missed since she went on to teach FT when she'd finished her PhD.

This last teacher taught me to form an argument, & she taught me enough logic that when I enrolled in the formal class, I earned 103for the semester. She taught me to *think* clearly & be more careful & purposeful, not just with what I write in a formal essay but with what I say in day-to-day life.

Friendships have been preserved because of the lessons she taught me, & she helped me choose a good school to move to after jr college, convinced me to apply for scholarships, & helped me later when I bit off more than I could chew when I decided to do a major class project on a little poet named TS Eliot, despite having not yet studied either WW or Dante. She knew everything, & therefore was happy to be a crash course in everything. Her guided tour of the DMA was priceless.

And so, abruptly ended, is my tale. I hope someday I can be a character in someone else's history of how they learned to write. Dr. Whosit will be a fine title, thank you. ;)

The Problem of Pain

2009-07-24T10:02:00.000-07:00

I'm moving books today, trying to get them in a more effecient layout. How nice it would be if they'd all fit in piles around my feet & I never needed to leave them.

Anyway, my husband loves C. S. Lewis. He insisted a while back on buying everything written by the man...at least, everything that was available at Half Price Books that day.

So I'm moving piles of Lewis' writings, reading titles, thinking. I try to soak a lot up from titles these days, busy as I am. Actually...I've always been that way, lol, given my vivid imagination & impatience with pages upon pages before getting to the good part. Then upon getting to the good part, I'm mad that it's over. I have a sort-of love-hate relationship with books & reading.

Anyway, I came upon the title The Problem of Pain...or was it With? Anyway, I was thinking about Lewis' title, thinking about the question of a good God who allows people to suffer. (I assume that's the topic of the book; it's the topic of so much religious discourse.) I don't like this topic. Not only is it ugly & complicated, it produces so many weak answers. There are the weak defenses of suffering from those who haven't suffered, and there are the weak-minded defenses of God from those who are afraid to look hard at the question, afraid that perhaps suffering is indeed proof of God's depravity, or, perhaps worse, of his nonexistence & thus our own meaninglessness in a wide, senseless universe.

I don't like the question.

But thinking about pain, thinking about it as a problem in a philosophical sense, I began to imagine a world without pain. We would still point our fingers at God, for the absence of pain would be proof for our fragile minds that we had no need of salvation, no need of divine help of any kind. We would think sin a lie or a fable for making children mind, & sacrifice would seem a foolish waste.

Ironically, we see the presence of pain the same way. It's proof for us that God is either cruel or nonexistent. With or without pain, I think, *we* would be the same. Since pain is a natural consequence of a fallen world, though, I suppose it is more honest of him to allow suffering. If we can somehow make the connection between the pain we see & feel & have no control over & the judgement we pass, the anger we entertain, the arrogance & self-righteousness & other kinds of lies we tell--then maybe we can begin to turn to him, begin to see the logic of sacrifice, of giving up our rights so that sin cannot breed, so that the curse cannot pass my doorstep because here the law is love, though it cost me everything.

We think that the answer is forgiveness, & that's a good answer, but I think that's an allowance for the human condition. I suspect that the goal is giveness. No 'for.' Like in Les Mis. If you give that which someone tries to take, there's no place for forgiveness, repentance, Hell's victory, for there was no sin in the first place. There's only the soul that you have saved from sullying itself. There's only the advancing of the kingdom of God on earth. There's only love.

So maybe I'll read beyond the title one of these days. For now, I've got a toddler who just ran SMACK into the foot of my bed, & so I've got my own problem of pain to handle.

On Copywork, Dictation, & Narration

2009-07-22T10:23:00.001-07:00

These two activities are the cornerstone of teaching writing in both the classical & Charlotte Mason methods. I've struggled with this for years now--from finding appropriate chunks for my kids to copy, not too long, not too short, beautifully-worded, etc., to actually *getting* them to do the work.

Every few months, I stress over teaching my kids to write. Me. A former highschool English teacher. A former college English tutor/teacher. This is the one thing I should know.

But elementary writing seems so...different. Granted, I've had students who have virtually no background in writing, but still...their life experiences are greater. Their ability to hold. a. pencil. is greater.

So once again, I was looking over the available curriculum, when my husband suggested I write my own. I laughed. If I knew what to teach them, I wouldn't be having this problem. But he convinced me to brainstorm, to research, & I spent several days locked away with the internet & stacks of grammar & writing books.

In the end, I have come to a revolutionary conclusion. I don't believe in copywork & dictation. It kills the Curiosity Pet. I thought about the fact that I, a well-educated adult who enjoys reading & who will even tolerate classics for fun, do not in any way desire to copy any portion of those classics down. How much more must my children, full of wiggling, blossoming life & imagination despise such an activity?

So I set out to write a new elementary writing curriculum, filled with the conviction of an expansive, solid education, love & appreciation for the marvels of language, & an understanding of the nature & importance of this curious inquisitiveness that resides in us & asks us to gently nourish it, lead it into an ability to digest meatier matters, & eventually, in turn, guides us.

My writing program includes the classical (& Charlotte Mason) values of observation & steady attention to detail, but it's fun. It's full of imagination. My kids, who despised anything that required them to lift a pencil, now insist that writing is their favorite subject, and it's not for a brightly-colored workbook or dancing bears. All I've got is a teacher manual--everything they've done is of their own creation.

They're writing paragraphs & pages where they used to be in tears over a mere sentence. If all goes well, they'll advance to writing the narrations described in classical & Charlotte Mason methods by the time they're in 3rd grade, but they'll be happy to do it instead of miserable.

Too often I have put method over outcome: we do copywork because we want kids who can think & learn. But kids who can think, who embrace learning because they love it, come from kids who love learning, & not from those whose love of learning was squeezed out by an iron hand trying to follow an iron method. So while this new writing curriculum is not classical in the traditional sense of the term, it does lead to that...just without the copywork or dictation.

Curiosity Pet

2009-07-21T18:26:00.000-07:00

I don't know how it came up exactly. We were reading The Wizard of Oz, and then we were talking about George Washington Carver, and then I was leaned in, telling them about this magnificent creature, this faithful friend, the first pet you ever own.

You were born with it, I tell them, but you have to feed it & care for it, or it will fall asleep, and it sleeps a deep sleep of hibernation. These creatures are very hard to awaken.

It's your curiosity pet, I told them, & you can see it ALIVE & THRIVING in little ones. We glance over at the baby, almost walking, who looks up at us with banana on his face, grinning. Not banana-that-I've-given-him, but banana-that-he's-found-&-filched-from-the-fruitbowl. Banana, peel, & all. Banana-that-he's-chewed-through.

Ok, so maybe it's not as much Curiosity as it is Hungry, but it's at least a little bit curiosity. Because when he dumped the trash out yesterday, he didn't just eat it in that moment before I could dash between him & the coffee grounds--he patted it, threw it, put his head in it, & came up with a smile that looked like a 5 o'clock shadow. So there is some curiosity there.

Then I told them what this wonderful round little ball eats--the curiosity pet, not their brother--stories, books, nature. He likes to look & read & see & try.

Learning! they said.

Sure, I agreed, but...what if you didn't have good teachers? Or a good school? What if you didn't have the bright blocks & the great curriculum? What if you were a slave?

WHO IS RESPONSIBLE FOR THE CARE & FEEDING OF YOUR PET?

Us, they said, surprised at their own answer.

Happy Ever After

2009-06-12T08:26:00.000-07:00

In a fairy tale, a bit of sorrow fades into happy-ever-after. Made-up stories are like that. Too many people grow up, though, and see the holes in the made-up stories and then give up on the whole idea of happy-ever-after. I love fairy tales, but I especially love to rewrite them, to give them some real-life flavor.

I have a particular Cinderella on my mind today. She grew up poor, with a complicated family. She had high hopes for her future most days, but sometimes the pain of her reality made those hopes hard to see, hard to work for. Sometimes she felt like she was covered in soot from her past and would never be clean and bright like the other girls she knew.

Once upon a time, a young kid met this girl and fell in love with her, but he didn't immediately realize it was love. She was beautiful and delicate, and he wanted nothing more than for her to be free from her pain. He began to pray for her, and as he did, he imagined bringing her into his family, so she would have the happy home he had.

A good fairy tale ends with the boy on his knee, asking the girl to marry him. Or perhaps with the kiss that follows "I do." This story doesn't end there, though. The boy didn't just kneel to propose marriage, he washed her feet and dried them with his coat. He didn't just say, "I do;" he said, "I will."

But he didn't always. Sometimes the boy forgot that he wanted to love the girl and be the best man for her. Sometimes the girl forgot that she was responsible for building her own happy home, that she was grown, that she was indeed free. Sometimes there was still pain.

In the midst of the darkness, though, something was born. Faithfulness, love, something that made them keep talking, keep trying. Something that softened their rough edges as the years passed, something that cleared their vision. They began to see that while all their turmoil hadn't helped them to change each other, they were themselves changing, becoming the person they wanted to be for the other one.

If they'd been looking to fairy tales, they would have been disappointed even in their happiest times. There were few days that their castle looked like a castle, fewer still that it sparkled. They did not often look like pictures for children's books. They were not rich, and life was not easy. But the older they got and the more they chose it for themselves, the happier they lived. Ever after.

Tom Jackson & Planning Yesterday

2009-06-01T08:03:00.000-07:00

Landon & I attended the Tx Christian Songwriter's Conference this weekend & got to attend Tom's workshop on...he called it "Creating Moments on the Stage," but I think I'd say it was more like editing & polishing the production of a song. Just because I shy away from things that sound hokey, & what Tom did was anything but.

It was beautiful, really. He took a young band, Planning Yesterday, & helped them pull out what was already there, so the audience could see it.

So picture this: a hard-rock band, electric guitars, intense young guys, lyrics lost in the raging of the music. Not my cup of tea, BUT--and this is huge--I could tell they were good. They'd done some rudimentary staging that didn't work, but they'd done some more sophisticated stuff, too. Think O Brother Where Art Thou & the Soggy Bottom Boys meets...somebody hard rock.

I'm a lyrics girl, & this is the kind of music that you can almost never tell what they're saying. That's ok, I think, it's supposed to be that way. But Tom comes in & tells Corey, the lead singer what a great voice he has, moves this & that around, & all of a sudden, WOW. He DOES have a great voice. And moving lyrics. And the guitar guy, they call Id? I don't know anything about guitars, but by the time Tom was done, I was convinced that he was the virtuoso everybody else said he was.

Tom's work was beautiful to watch. It was like a 3-dimensional edit of an essay, which I imagine no one else has ever said. The ideas, the feeling of both the band and the song were brought out with organization, etc., so that the art could shine. It makes me love what I do, but the idea that that could be done in so many more dimensions is tantalizing.

Oh, & the band. They're going to be at Six Flags on July 26, & they're well worth a ticket. Planning Yesterday

An Open Letter To the Bugs that like burials-at-coffee:

2009-05-07T13:15:00.001-07:00

The coffee left at the bottom of my mug still in the sink from yesterday is just as sweet & less likely to singe.

That is all.

2001-01-01T08:29:00.000-08:00

HAVE A PIECE OF CHRISTMAS CANDY.
24 3 66 15/ 3/ 48 27 15 9 15/ 45 18/ 9 24 54 27 57 60 39 3 57/ 9 3 42 12 75

The first string of numbers is a pattern: counting by 4s. The cipher for the extra numbers is counting by 3s, starting with A. So A = 3, C = 9, etc.