Clothing

Over the course of this past  year (being that it was all four seasons) I spent approximately $100 on clothing for my three children.  Also, until a few weeks ago, did not purchase clothing or shoes for myself.
People have asked me how I managed this and I have been promising a blog post for awhile, so here it is...


Read more!

Last day of summer break

It went by too fast.
Last night we went to meet their new teachers. My oldest learned how to struggle with a locker. Old friends were seen, and last years teachers said hello to.  There was candy.

As with everything having to do with parenting, having them go back to school is bittersweet.  Summer was a blur of activity and I got nothing done that I wanted to, but the kids had a good time and I enjoyed having the time with them.  It is exciting to watch them go off into a new grade and have new challenges to take on, new friends to meet. Both boys will be playing violin in the strings orchestra, and I think I have them convinced to join the choir (they both are in that age where boys have beautiful singing voices). 

At the same time, it is watching them take on a deeper level of independence and a further realization of how short the time I have been given to parent them.  A privilege of time, really.  
So, tomorrow they go off on their new journey, and I begin the process of decluttering, repainting, cleaning carpets, and getting my house back into ship shape order.
Then next month I start back to school with a math class, philosophy of logic, and a psychology course...which will be my own adventure. 
Read more!

I miss her...

My mom and me May 2009

Read more!

The Problem...

with blogging consistently is that I don't have much to say. Summer days are filled with the rhythm of housework, keeping kids busy, many library visits, swimming, TKD lessons, cooking, avoiding cooking, gardening, keeping the chickens alive, keeping my brain alive, anticipating school starting back up and getting back into the classroom, planning fishing trips and wondering what equipment we really need, looking at my camera and thinking I need to take more pictures, trying to keep my head above water literally and figuratively. The sun feels wonderful, the heat I love more than any other year in memory.
(This post was completely gratuitous)
Read more!

The Courage to Write

"Advising writers to go ahead and ignore their anxiety and forge ahead is like telling a ten-year-old who's about to get a shot, "There's nothing to be scared of." That kid knows better. So do writers." (from The Courage to Write-How Writers Transcend Fear by Ralph Keyes)

I just started reading this book and am finding it tremendously useful. To be cliche',  writing is as essential to my life as breathing.
Even so, I love it and I hate it.
Getting the narrative out of my head and into print is freeing
Getting the narrative out of my head and into print is terrifying.


Read more!

Fireflies, photos and probable bad impressions

Last evening after getting the kids to bed I wandered outside because of the sky.

I stood and breathed and let my mind settle after a busy day. As the sun set further, the toads began to sing, then the jug-a-rum calls of the bullfrogs from the back ponds showed up. A high pitched squeaking with scrambling sounds came from the vicinity of the barn as the bats made ready for their nighttime exodus.
I stood and watched as the bats dropped out...they fall and swoop back up. Twenty one bats exited last night.


Read more!

Nighttime Adventures

Last night I went to bed late. Midnight to be precise. I was sort of ok with this, because 5 hours is the lowest amount of sleep I can get and still function semi decently. Emphasis on semi. Should I get 4 hours and 55 minutes, then it becomes semi indecently. Really, my mind just sort of implodes at that point.
Anyway, confident in a full five hours I pulled the covers up and started to drift off.
Mid-drift I heard growling, and snarling and thumping.
It came closer...
and closer...


Read more!

Without fail...

There is a phenomenon in my house that confounds me on a daily basis.  In fact, it is happening right at this very moment.
All three of my children were occupied, in separate parts of the house, everything was quiet and calm. I thought "Great! I have some ideas percolating in my mind, and I can get them out"
WRONG.

 I took my laptop into the kitchen and sat a the table, and sat down prepared to write.
The moment my finger touched the very first letter a giant fight broke out amongst the barbarians children. One wanted to do a Pokemon battle, the other one didn't. Apparently the one that didn't want to play promised yesterday that she would today.  This started a giant argument, and a third child got involved.
So now I am back to being referee, and talking to the upset child about why no one wants to play and suggesting ways that he might create an atmosphere that would be conducive to his siblings to want to play with him.

I am now clueless as to what it was I was going to write when I sat down.
Read more!

Recap...

This past week I discovered, experienced, etc....

~That things like this...

...Make my family and me laugh like lunatics.  The first time we saw it we turned around and tried to take a picture but the people who lived at the house were in their yard and staring, so I drove away.  The next day I managed to drive past again and no one was outside.  I considered taking him because I was imagining several awesome photo ops I could use him as a prop for, but I wasn't sure if he had bugs or anything so I left him.

~My 9yo ds had his brown belt test yesterday and tested really well. Afterward his instructor, who is a very intense, always happy, upbeat positive man who commands respect came over to tell me how pleased he was. His conversation went like "I am so pleased with your son's progress!! He has achieved some wonderful accomplishments and his confidence is through the roof! He maintains eye contact well and speaks loudly.." Pause his conversation and I need to say here that he is talking and standing close to me, I have a pretty large area of personal space that I am comfortable with, and he was closer than that, and making strong eye contact, because that is what they do in TKD. NOT only am I uncomfortable with people standing close to me, I have a VERY hard time with sustained eye contact.  However, I figured this was not the time to let my eyes wander around, so I stood there and thought "keep eye contact, keep eye contact" and I have no real idea what he said past the part I paused a few sentences back, because it took that much concentration from me...so I smiled and nodded and said thank you.
Awesome social skills for the win!!!

~ My kids are now old enough to handle all the furry beastie care, so I delegated tasks and chores to them, and told them that I am only taking care of my large dog, and they can take care of everyone else. They agreed and have been very diligent with their chores.

~When eating breakfast my daughter is prone to yell for me from upstairs to "come see something" I ask her to explain but she sounds panicky as she repeats herself. I go up and discover that she is brushing her teeth and whatever food she just ate is being brushed out of her teeth and this worries her.  I reassure her this is a  normal and good thing.

~ I haven't gone shopping for clothes or bought any clothes for a whole year.  Since my jeans were getting holes in them my husband suggested that I might want to buy new ones.  I went and relearned a few things.
1) If I am putting on a shirt or dress and cannot figure out which is the front then I should not even bother because chances are the shirt will look horrible.
2) If I have to struggle to pull a shirt or dress over my boobs then I shouldn't -with ridiculous determination- pull it all the way over, because it will be much harder to get off and I will wind up I with it stuck on my body while I do some weird panicked dance and debate if I should ask for help. The inevitable decision on help will be that I would rather die stuck in fabric then ask a stranger to help  me pull a shirt back over my boobs.
3) I remembered that buying a new outfit can do wonders for lifting a person out of feeling frumpy.

~I learned from my Dr. that I am  anemic which explains why I am always so tired and feel horrible and only get short bursts of energy.
I also learned that my cholesterol level is 145.  This made me super duper happy, because I remembered when I was 22 my cholesterol was 202.  My other numbers were perfect and she declared me wonderfully healthy...aside from being anemic.  (I haven't been to the Dr in over 4 years.)

~Unlimited wifi from Verizon does not REALLY mean unlimited.  Apparently, when you hit 5GB of usage they filter your usage so if you try to watch Netflix whatever you are watching will pause to reload every two minutes and a 30 minute show will take at a minimum twice as long to watch.  Now we need to ration our Netflix viewing.  Which is hard because my husband and me are completely addicted to The IT Crowd. 
Read more!

Observation

~Writing brings one's various neuroses front and center.
  ~ this can be helpful because then they can finally be used
   ~This is not helpful because they make one aware of various weird quirks they have that they enjoy
being unaware of.
Read more!

Taking a break...

From social media.
I realized that I had become dependent up on facebook for all my social needs.  Being an  introvert, I am ok with checking in on people, having a brief back and forth conversation and presto! my social needs feel fulfilled.  However, they really aren't, and it became an excuse for me to not pursue friendships on a deeper level, or to get together with people and so on.
(that hurts to admit, but it is true)

Another reason, my attention span has decreased to the  point of being more akin to the attention span one would find in a kitten on speed.  I fully blame FB. Why? Because I can log on, look at the updates of 100+ people and see all the interesting links they post which leads to a scenario like this:
(entirely loosely fictional)

Person's status- i made pork cheeks for dinner tonight
(my head thinking - what is that and where does one get it and do with it?)
go off and google pork cheeks, but while that is loading because sometimes my computer is slow, I look at someone else's update and see a link to something.
Person's status- I LOVE this site, check it out!! I love the tips on making a childhood magical and sparkly!
Me- OOOO! I should read that. So I click and look it over for a split second. Oh LOOK! beeswax crayons, I like beeswax crayons. They smell good. Then I search for those to find the best price.

Oh, gotta check my email.
Email - Lose a zillion calories with this workout!
me - Awesome! (check it out and it involves some barbaric looking exercise that I would never do)
Wait! Library!
Off to library web site. 
There was a book I wanted, what was it called? About decreased memory? Damn! What is that book?

Commence search on book about decreased memory, see a billion results
Olive oil helps memory loss. Greeks use lots of olive oil. How much is a vacation to Greece. Ok, nevermind. Does my school have Greek classes?  Look that up, and no. But they have Japanese. How much is a trip to Japan...wait, nevermind. Radiation and all that.  Radiation leads to looking up the Cold War and that leads to Russian history which leads me back to the mystagogy site about Orthodoxy.

look at time and realize family will be waking up in about 20 minutes and I just lost 1 hour to looking up nothing beneficial in the time I am supposed to be writing.
Ok, back to writing.
Sit. Stare. Blank Page. Scary Blank Page. Type something. Laugh at it because it is too lame.
click on FB icon to escape annoyance at my writing.
See an article on education.
Go to article...which talks about the effect of techonology on adolescents. Remember book about descreased memory, try to find it. Go back to library web site and reserve a bunch of Atlantic Monthly magazines.
So, by 7 am I have completely fried my brain doing nothing productive, but instead behaved in a way that makes me think of a hamster on a wheel. I have now overwhelmed myself with too much information about too many things, I am completely overstimulated and want to go back to bed.

That is why I am taking a break.
Read more!

Kid pictures

Gwen and Burrito

And for comparison- two pictures of all three kids. The top one is from their first day of school this school year and then one I took this morning of their last day. (almost last day, it is actually tomorrow)

Read more!

Any given Saturday

Took my husband’s blue French cuff shirt out of the dryer and noticed that it was too wrinkled and the collar too limp.  Out came the iron and the ironing board in the room that is supposed to be my office but has been taken over by clothes marked for donation.  The collar was curled under and stubbornly refused to straighten as a proper collar should.  After many minutes and much pressing the collar finally agreed to submit and lay pointed and true.

My husband told me one reason out of a million that he loves is that I notice things like his collar and fix them, so he doesn’t leave the house looking unkempt. 

He left for his sales calls.  I fixed the kids their cereal.

A blanket went into the washer because my son was wearing it around the house, causing it to collect dog fur.

The kids argued over who had to take the dog out, one son objected because he was only wearing boxer shorts.  The other pointed out that we don’t have next door neighbors. I pointed out the group of men working in the field adjacent to the house with their bulldozers and assorted loud machines. Oldest son said he never knew they were there.  I mentioned the smell of exhaust fumes coming in the windows, he shrugged and took out the dog.

I vacuumed the floors wondering how a small dog can drop so much hair.  I wondered about my attention span and lack of focus. I thought about the bit in a book I’m reading that addresses self doubt and her cousins talking to a writer while writing and making a mental note that they somehow appear even while cleaning-but never about cleaning.  The kitten and the dog began wrestling in line of the vacuum and I shooed them off.  My daughter began crying about an ant that could only move its antennae and not walk; I quickly picked it up in a Kleenex and flushed it.

She cried harder and told me I killed it.  I tried to explain suffering and that with insects it is better to kill them swiftly. She told me I was mean.  Later she asked me to get rid of a big hairy jumping spider on the curtain, I used the vacuum hose.  This did not make her sad.  

My son ate an apple and instead of it turning out the normal shape an apple does when eaten to the core, he ate it into a square.

I was given a note covered with infinity signs that said “This is how much I love you, your kid Gwen”

Read more!

School

I took last quarter off from school in order to focus on getting things done at home.
I didn't accomplish as much as I thought I would and I got rather uninspired. 

Over the summer I am taking a Sociology course, and then in the fall will take on a decent course load.  Between having the kids in school all day, and not taking any classes I discovered that I get MUCH more done when I have more to do. When Im not busy I get complacent. 
 
Read more!

The One Thing That Caught Our Attention....

The other night my husband and I watched "America The Beautiful"
It is a documentary on the beauty industry and various pressures women feel to conform to some ideal of what is considered beautiful.
A lot of the footage was about a 12/13 yo girl who worked as a model/runway model.  This girl was finding tons of work and designers loved her. 
Overall it was an interesting watch, but the ONE thing that really stood out to us was this girl and her padded bra issue.
Here is a girl who works in the fashion industry, where theoretically tons of pressure is applied for the girls to look a certain way, right?  The girl transfers schools and all of a sudden is crying to her mother that she NEEDS a padded bra. Her mother is arguing with her about this, and commenting on the girl using more makeup and wearing tight clothes.  It turned into a big, teenage girl crying mess.
Eventually the mom decides to homeschool her daughter.  Mom and girl go to London to find more modeling work and there is a scene with the girl going through her suitcase. She holds up the padded bra and said "now that I am homeschooled I don't need this anymore"

It really stood out to my husband that the girl who works in the fashion industry and is judged on her looks constantly felt MORE pressure to be attractive when she was in school.  He thought that was very weird. 
Read more!

Car Conversations

"Hey Mom, can you be my substitute teacher? Come into the school and tell Ms. H to take the day off and then you can teach us!"
"No, Gwen. Mom can't she needs to graduate first and would need a degree in teaching"
"Well, Mom, go do that! "
"But Gwen, she isn't going to graduate in time to teach your class."
"Yeah, she might even still be in college when we go to college!"
"And then we can go to college with MOM!!"
"Yeah!!!"
"Hey! Mom! Remember when you were super interested in Psychology and Russian Literature? And all you read was books written by Russian people and big thick books about Psychology?"
"Yeah! And Add and I told you that you should be a Russian Psychologist!"
"What does a Psychologist DO anyway? Do they make people psycho?"
"No...the opposite"
"Ohhhh...so they help people work through irrationalities and fears....like my fear of stuffed animals in museums"
"Yep"


I  just drove and listened to my 3 children talk on and on......
Read more!

Building of Habit

It is said that it takes 30 days of consistent behaviour to build a new habit.  I can definitely say that waking up between 4:30 and 5am has become a habit, it happens without my alarm some mornings now.  If I don't get up till 5:30 it feels like sleeping in. 

The next habit I am working on for myself is sticking to a daily routine.  Everyday of the staying with it means that all the jobs I do during the day take less time, which is motivating.

I have been reading Charlotte Mason again. I love what she taught on education and the personhood of children. One of her many quotes about Habits

"One last word about habit--the point of training children to have good habits is so that they'll do things without being nagged or scolded. Then the mother isn't constantly chasing them down with a barrage of commands and reminders. She can leave them alone to thrive in their own way once habit has secured a boundary for them to grow in."
volume 1, page 134

With the children I have been having them work on building one new habit a week. The first one was to turn off lights when they leave the room. My family has a tendency to leave ALL the lights on.  It took a few reminders but now I am seeing consistent results.  This week it will be to put dirty clothes in the laundry bin and not all over their bedrooms.  
Read more!

True Magic

This morning I was able to get into the garden beds and plant some seeds.  It hit me, like it does every year, how amazing and positively magical it is that from tiny seeds + dirt +water + sun, delicious, beautiful things grow. I went in search of a quote because I cannot even hope to get the words out of my head on this one..

I used to visit and revisit it a dozen times a day, and stand in deep contemplation over my vegetable progeny with a love that nobody could share or conceive of who had never taken part in the process of creation.  It was one of the most bewitching sights in the world to observe a hill of beans thrusting aside the soil, or a rose of early peas just peeping forth sufficiently to trace a line of delicate green.  ~Nathaniel Hawthorne, Mosses from and Old Manse

 

Read more!

Many Thoughts

~ My 9yo was grumbling about having to come inside soon to do homework. I see his point- it is a beautiful day outside.

~ The developers came back. My windows are open and all day I have been doing my work to the sound of big machine engines, and the scent of exhaust.  When my children came home from school they stood and watched the felled trees being loaded onto a truck. My 7yo daughter yelled at the men "STOP! STOP! STOP! You are ruining nature!!" I was worried for a moment that she was going to run into the field and form a tiny human blockade in her distress.

~ Sometimes, because I spend so much time alone I find that I have forgotten social niceties.

~ 21 days left till the kids are done with this school year.

~ 21 days to research some science options for this summer to help my 9yo regain his love of science- which school has sucked out of him.

~That modern plumbing, heat, and a/c are marvelous things

~Never turn your back on a rooster and then push one of the hens out of the way. The rooster will take great offense and attack you...which will be surprisingly painful and feel like a hammer hitting your leg. .

~ Wondering what areas of my life I need to adjust further in my attempt to get rid of unnecessary excess so I have more resources and time to give.

~Unnecessary excess also pertaining to pride, impatience, and a multitude of other things. 

~ This article by Fr. George Morelli called The Hidden Devastation of Greed, mostly these bits:

"As I have noted in previous articles, care for those who cannot help themselves is not just a Judeo-Christian teaching. The Bhagavad-Gita notes: “Hell has three gates: lust, anger, and greed.” This echoes Buddha's saying: “There is no fire like passion, there is no shark like hatred, there is no snare like folly, there is no torrent like greed.”

Our Eastern Church Spiritual Father Evagrios the Solitary warns us of the complexity of this passion. For example, it is possible that someone " pretends to be steward and a lover of the poor," but in their heart entertains "avaricious thoughts" and inflated "self-esteem." (Philokalia I). This spiritual perception underscores the need for all to be aware of the deep motives of their actions, even of those that appear to be under the guise of the virtue of generosity. As St. Isaac the Syrian (Wensinck, 1923) informs us, "...without the prudence of the heart...the godly man cannot refrain from showing his love, in the performance of manifest deed"

~
Read more!

Inner Tranquility

Our goal should be to take all that comes our way and make the best out of it for the sake of the spiritual struggle in which we are engaged.  We must strive to acquire the inner tranquility, and to this end even noise can become a good thing if it is met with the right thought.  What matters the most is handling a problem in the right way. We must face up to everything using good thoughts.  
When, in very midst of noise, you manage to reach inner tranquility, you have achieved something of great value.  If you cannot find tranquility in the midst of disturbance, you will not be able to be tranquil even in the midst of tranquility.  When inner tranquility comes to a man, everything inside him will be tranquil, and he will not be disturbed by anything.  But if he requires external tranquility in order to find inner tranquility, then, when he does find himself in such a place, he will want a cane to chase away cicadas by day and jackal by night, so they will not bother him!  In other words, he will be chasing away what in fact the devil is gathering.  What do you think the devil's job is after all?  His job is to create difficulties and to obstruct our efforts, until he has completely turned us upside down.

~Elder Paisios
Read more!