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Archive for June, 2007
Diversity? Didn’t we give that up for Lent? Wait…is Lent over already?
Published June 15, 2007 Homeschooling , Stuff I Think About When I Should Be Sleeping 17 CommentsI live with a 4-year-old.
So, you can well imagine that there’s not a whole lot of diversity happening in my day-to-day existence right now.
We eat the same foods at the same times every day. We read the same story books over and over again at bedtime. We listen (God help me) to the soundtrack of Spirit, Stallion of the Cimmarron every freekin’ day during rest time, and not the whole album, mind you. Just two of the songs, over and over and OVER again. (And a very special thanks goes out to RegularDad for finding that CD on eBay last year. My life just wasn’t complete until I had the chance to listen to Bryan Adams wail and moan all afternoon long.)
So, when someone said to me, hey there’s a carnival coming up and the topic is diversity, my mind went completely and utterly blank.
Diversity?… Huh?… Wha?… Didn’t we give that up for Lent?
I felt lost and old and uncomfortable, because I used to know all about diversity. I used to sit around college apartments drinking bad coffee and smoking cigarettes and holding forth on such topics with my oh-so-diverse set of friends. And now, I spend my days picking up the same toys, washing the same clothes and the same dishes, and answering the same questions over and over again.
And really, I’m okay with all of that. This is, after all, just one season of parenting. And because I homeschool, I’ll have the chance to educate my kids properly regarding such subjects as diversity when it becomes appropriate and necessary. I’ll be able to place them in this diverse world and teach them how to participate in it. In fact, I am doing this already. We habitually wander in to supermarkets, parks, libraries and museums where there are scores of people who are nothing like us whatsoever. GASP!!! And nothing bad seems to come of it. I didn’t even have to buy any curriculum. Sweet!
I’m hoping that if I keep doing this sort of thing, my kids won’t have to wait until they’re forced to attend some cheesy corporate-sponsored workshop in which people throw Nerf balls at each other while standing in circles to learn about diversity. I’m hoping, in fact, that they never have to attend such a cheesy corporate workshop at all. Because if there was ever a bigger waste of time in this world than the Corporate-Sponsored Diversity Training Workshop, I don’t know what that might be. I simply can’t recall ever emerging from one of those things and hearing some bigot say to his buddies, “Gee, that was such an eye-opener for me! I can’t believe what a racist jerk I’ve been all these years! I’m really going to start treating people differently!”
But, I digress.
I look forward to the days when I’ll be able to discuss with my daughters some of the deeper elements of diversity, such as Jesus of Nazareth’s ethnicity, and the real reasons we fought the Civil War, and the natural occurances of normal homosexual behavior in the animal kingdom, and the unarguable diversity of the universe itself and the spiritual significance thereof.
And because I’m not just a homeschooler, but I’m also a relatively new homeschooler, I naively imagined that all other homeschoolers felt this same way. (Ah, there’s the rub…imagining everyone feels the same way as I do.)
But, they don’t.
Just recently I listened to another homeschooler bemoan the fact that she just couldn’t find friends who shared the exact same values as she did. She found fault with just about everyone, it seems. Either their brand of religion wasn’t exactly the same as hers, or their kids watched too much TV compared to hers, or they ate too much sugar, or they didn’t homeschool the same way she did…it went on and on.
It was a bit discouraging to realize how many homeschoolers are out there that are doing this to keep their kids AWAY from diversity. Because, after all, diversity might be contagious. It might be fatal. Or if not fatal, it might actually lead to independent thinking, which might be worse.
But my discouragement was short lived because the truth is, the homeschooling community is an incredibly diverse population. If you look hard enough, you’ll find the the ones that don’t fit that stereotypical image you’ve got in your head right now when you think about us. There are quite a few homeschoolers out there who are just regular old non-religious-nuts (and who have never owned a denim jumper, ever) who simply decided that school sucks, and we’re not gonna do that to our kids if we don’t have to.
We’re around. And each day more of us are becoming more vocal, which is a good thing. It’s time to balance out the scales a bit, time to trash that stereotype, because it ain’t workin’ no more.
And if you’re thinking about homeschooling, and you’re worried that you can’t do it because you’ll never find any friends that are JUST LIKE YOU, then I’m here to tell you that you’re probably right. Chances are, you really won’t find people just like you.
Because you’re not supposed to.
Just wanted to let you all know that as of this past Monday, June 11th, my husband celebrated one whole year nicotine-free!
Yep, that’s right! He quit that chewin’ tobacco last summer, and this time it’s for good!
Can we all give him a rousing good cheer? Send in some comments and tell him how excellent he is!
Seriously, hon….GREAT JOB! You’re the best!
Had to run out to Target today.
I went mostly for the new Richard Bachman novel, Blaze, which came out today. Look…with an introduction by Stephen King. How cute. Still, it’s nice to have this to hold me over until the new Harry Potter comes out. And there’s always more mainstream fiction out there, lots of which I get from the library. But it’s not the same as an anticipated new release, ya know?
I also needed to get my 6-year-old her first address book. (It’s there, buried under the little heart-covered notepads. Those notepads are for my 4-year-old, who dearly loves scribbling in notepads.) But my 6-year-old actually needs an address book. We’ve gotten to the point where she’s ready to write letters and she loves this so much that she requested an address book. Getting her an address book was also recommended in her grammar text, First Language Lessons for the Well Trained Mind. We’ve been memorizing our address and telephone number in our lessons lately, and writing things down is part of that.
My 6-year-old is enthralled with the concept of her own address book, and also I suspect with the realization that she’s someone who communicates via the written word. She’s been VERY BUSY since we got home, writing down her personal information in the front pages, and deciding who she will write to next. I so remember how fun this was when I was young.
The rest of the stuff is pretty self-explanatory. Batteries…always seem to need those. More Terro. The ants are making a come-back. But not for long. Swiffer stuff, because I left my Swiffer stuff behind when we moved, and it’s getting downright dusty in here and the kids love to Swiffer, so I can make them happy while getting rid of dust at the same time. Which is why I love Swiffer.
How much do you want to bet that the next letter my daughter writes will be to Grandma, and it’ll tell all about the super-cool new Swiffer we bought at Target and all the fighting that ensued over who got to use it first?
Wow, we really know how to live it up out here in the country, don’t we?
I’m not gonna post any photos just in case some of you are a bit squeamish, but I just have to say, some of the spiders that live in this house are…well…impressive.
We’ve got some interesting specimens in the basement. Trap-door spiders, I think they’re called. They like to come out and wave hello to me when I’m doing laundry. They’re enormous. If I were to come upon one or two helping fold some of my towels, I wouldn’t be surprised. They’re THAT big.
We’ve got lots of smaller spiders living in the windows corners, too. There’s a pair that lives in the top left corner of the kitchen window (between the glass and the screen) right above my kitchen sink. They work together every evening, repairing webbing, and snaring a whole host of gnats and moths and strange little black beetles that are drawn to the light above my sink. It’s probably the best corner in the house, if you’re a spider. I like to watch them work while I’m doing dishes, which is a frequent occurance for me, so I’m really getting to know these two quite well. They’re small and not much to look at, but they’re growing on me. I’m almost ready to name them.
But those trap-door spiders that live in my laundry area? BLEAH!!! I hate those! I always wear shoes down to the basement and I stomp on those spiders if I can. I hate doing it because I can feel them crunch. It’s awful.
You’d think the crunch is the worst part, but it isn’t.
The worst part is that the next morning, after you’ve stepped on one of those large spiders, the body is gone. Which might indicate that there’s something larger down there that comes out late at night and drags off the bodies of the already-large spiders I’m crushing.
There’s a cheery thought for you on a Monday morning.
I came across this little sketch yesterday afternoon and my immediate thought was (of course): WILSON!!!
Later on, I showed it to my husband and said, “Quick! What’s the FIRST thing you think of when you see this?” And he said:
“Shut up, Spalding!”
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Note: None of the above will make any sense unless you’ve seen Cast Away, and then after that, you’ve seen Madagascar. If it doesn’t make sense, go rent those movies, in that order, and then come back. You’ll see what I mean.
It’s not what’s in the box…. It’s what’s wrapped around what’s in the box that really matters.
Is there anything more satisfying than a couple of large sheets of packing bubbles? Especially when the package that arrived wasn’t really for you, it was for your dad? And in the end, it wasn’t even what he ordered in the first place so he’s just gonna send it back?
There’s been a whole lot of snap, crackle, and pop going on around here since yesterday afternoon.
Here’s an interesting shot:
This is my 4-year-old zooming joyfully by with a handful of packing bubbles on her way to the livingroom where she can snap, crackle, and pop to her heart’s content.
Yeah, it showcases my utter lack of ability in terms of photography, but it also shows my daughter’s essential hummingbird-like state of being.
Someday, when she asks me what she was like when she was little, I’ll show this picture to her, and then I’ll give her a hug. If I can catch her.
Regarding False Forwarding
Published June 7, 2007 Stuff I Think About When I Should Be Sleeping 8 CommentsI got one of THOSE forwards today. You know the ones I mean. The missing kids. The predators waiting just around every corner. The money Bill Gates wants to give me.
Yeah, one of those. Today’s was a missing child alert: some kid named Flores, missing from Philadelphia. I checked it at Snopes, and it’s crap. Of course. So, I’ve deleted it and moved on with my life.
And you should do the same. If you ever get an email that has some sort of scare, or unrealistic prize, or anything that sounds REMOTELY too good (or too bad) to be true, please… I BEG OF YOU WITH EVERY FIBER OF MY BEING… check it with Snopes before you send it to me. Because…
(and I’m just gonna come right out and say it)
sending false forwards is really the equivalent of walking into a formal dinner party with a big giant booger hanging out of your nose.
I’m serious. That’s exactly what it’s like.
Now, we’ve all been there. We’ve all at least once in our lives had to duck beneath a linen table cloth to wipe our noses, and we’ve all been guilty of forwarding an email that was nothing but pure and utter bullshit. There’s no shame in it, okay? We can admit it and move on with our lives.
The last false forward I sent happened about 2 years ago. It was one of the missing child alerts. Some little boy or other. I forget his name, and it doesn’t matter anyway because he wasn’t real. It was a scam. But I saw “missing child - please forward” and that gut-instinct that makes you want to help a missing child kicked right in and I forwarded the message to Everyone In My Address Book within 90 seconds.
Ten minutes later, I received an email back from one of the recipients of my false forward, advising that the missing child message was a scam that had been circulating the Internet for well over a year, and advising me to check out Snopes for more information.
I was mortified. Not just because I’d been duped by a stupid email forward, but also because the man who’d informed me of my stupidity had felt it necessary to click “Reply To All” when he sent me that correction, thereby chastising me for my stupidity in front of everyone else I knew. (Because he’s that kind of asshole, basically.) This was the equivalent of me walking into a dinner party wearing my best gown and diamond earrings and having someone shout from across the room for all to hear: “Good God in Heaven, what the hell is that green glob dangling from your nose!?!?!?”
So, I took my public email-forwarding-humiliation in the best stride I knew how, which was primarily to LEARN from the experience and never send a suspicious forward out again. Which, I have not. Now, I check Snopes faithfully, and she never steers me wrong. I also vowed to be the kind of person who would NOT shout at others publicly when they made similar mistakes. If my good friend walked into a dinner party with something unsavory emerging from a nostril, not only would I tell her immediately, I would tell her PRIVATELY so that No One Else Would Ever Know. Because I’m that kind of nice person, basically.
So, from that point on, whenever I received a suspicious email, I would check it with Snopes, and then reply Only To The Original Sender and let her know that it was quite possible that that particular email was not true, and tell her about this interesting website where things like that were being tracked. It worked well for a while, until one day about a year ago, I got a forward from someone who was really a friend of a friend. An acquaintence, at best. She sent me the one with the Nine Safety Tips for Women. You know…the one where there are various ways in which a potential rapist could try to snag you and ways to avoid it, the one where number 9 is the trick in which the attacker will play a tape recording of a crying baby outside the front door so that you’ll open the door to look for the distressed baby and he can get you. (Uh, that’s crap too, according to Snopes. So, don’t worry.)
Anyway, she sent that to me and about 600 of her closest email buddies, and I did my usual thing. Replied only to her, and told her as gently as possible that the email alert was a scam and directed her to Snopes. And that’s when I discovered that some people don’t like it when you tell them about the boogers hanging out of their nose. Some people get really angry.
She sent me this unbelievable reply that I wish I had saved. Here’s a paraphrase of what she said (in the iciest, frostiest, most nasty tone an email could ever hope to contain), as best I can remember:
“Dear _______”
“Thanks for the link. But I just want to tell you that the reason I sent that email to everyone in my list was that I don’t always get a chance to send email to everyone and sometimes I want to let people know that I’m thinking about them, so I forward emails to them.”
Now, let’s just think about that for a minute. First of all, to complete my booger-analogy, her response is basically the equivalent of: “Yes, I know there’s a giant booger sticking out of my nose. I left if there just because I was thinking of you. How do you like it?”
Second of all, I think we all need to pause and consider what kind of friend it is that sends you an email that warns of the imminent danger of rape and/or murder, because she was thinking about you. Because if you’re a friend of mine, and you’re thinking of me, I’d really prefer you send me something from Hallmark. Maybe something with flowers on it, or even a GIANT FROG HEAD. Or Hoops & Yoyo. Anything Hoops & Yoyo would be fine. Not some DIRE FALSE WARNING of the imminent, omnipresent danger of mortal attack.
But, for those of you who think that there’s nothing wrong with it, I’d like to suggest the following possible new greeting card line:
It’s got possibilities. But I still prefer Hoops & Yoyo.
Me to 4-year-old (as she returns to the dinner table after a quick trip to the bathroom): “Did you flush?”
4-year-old: “Yup.”
Me: “Did you wash your hands?”
4-year-old: “Uh…no.”
Me: “Go back and wash your hands.”
4-year-old: “I don’t need to, Mommy. I didn’t get any on my hands.”
Me: “How do you know that?”
4-year-old: “Because I didn’t wipe.”
