2007 August « Like I Have Time For This?

Archive for August, 2007

Art project.

Published August 13, 2007 Country Living , Homeschooling 3 Comments

Over the weekend, we went to a Build-A-Birdfeeder Barbeque at a friend’s house. The girls (along with another half-dozen kids) built these nice wooden bird feeders with help from some parents and then swam, ate hotdogs, and generally had a grand old time.

This afternoon we had Great Grandma and a Great Aunt come for lunch. The girls painted their birdfeeders while we visited. They also showed Great Grandma and Great Aunt how well they could ride their bikes, and took them on a tour of our little unused farm.

Once the paint is dry, we’ll paint on a finishing coat to keep the feeders waterproof, paint the bases and poles, and then RegularDad will plant the birdfeeders outside near some windows so that the girls can birdwatch through the winter.

Now, everyone’s gone home, the girls are watching PBS Kids, the house is clean because we had company, and I don’t have to cook anything for dinner because there are lots of leftovers.

Life is good.

Accidental hobby.

Published August 12, 2007 Photos 4 Comments

Whoops. How did I start this? I haven’t knitted anything in over fifteen years. Fortunately (or unfortunately, depending on how you look at it) it’s just like riding a bike.

Not that I have time to be doing a lot of bike riding these days, either.

Sadly, I have to go to the craft store today for paint supplies. How much do you want to bet I come out of there with a whole big mess of yarn as well?

If you haven’t read this yet, you should.

Published August 11, 2007 Stuff I Think About When I Should Be Sleeping 4 Comments

I’m currently reading Sophie’s Choice by William Styron. Styron published this back in 1976, but I never got around to reading it until a friend lent it to me. It’s the (fictional) story of a Polish catholic woman who survived Auschwitz and ended up living in Brooklyn. Her story is harrowing, as are all survivor accounts, but made bearable by the narrator’s somewhat comic difficulties as a struggling writer and struggling virgin.

Here’s a memorable quote:

Sitting there in the wan light, both Sophie and I had, I think, a feeling that our nerve endings had been pulled out nearly to the snapping point by the slow accumulation of too much that was virtually unbearable. With a feeling of decisive, final negation that was almost like panic within me, I wanted to hear no more about Auschwitz, not another word. Yet a trace of the momentum of which I have spoken was still at work upon Sophie (though I realized that her spirits were bedraggled and frayed) and she kept going long enough to tell me, in one brief insistent burst, of her last leave-taking from the Commandant of Auschwitz.

I studied World War II and the Holocaust in depth in college. And there were times when it was too much, just learning about it. I know exactly what Styron meant by a negation that was almost like panic. It’s hard to read even fictional accounts of concentration camp experiences, but it’s something essential too.

Looking for something to read? Something not necessarily light and breezy? Pick up Sophie’s Choice.

WordPress problems?

Published August 10, 2007 Not Worth Categorizing 2 Comments

Hmmm….comments aren’t working very well today. I’m seeing your comments in my dashboard, but they’re not appearing when I click on the post to read them. WordPress might be doing server maintenance or having a problem. If it doesn’t self-correct by tomorrow, I’ll look into it. Sorry about that.

RegularSis jumps in…with both feet.

Published August 10, 2007 Homeschooling , Not Worth Categorizing 6 Comments

Yes, indeed, everyone. I’m proud to say that RegularSis has sent me not only a picture of her feet, but also of her GIANT FROG stuffed animal. Pretty soon, she’ll be a bad ass BLOGGIN’ homeschoolin’ mama like the rest of us. (Katherine, you should grab this picture for your feet project.)

She’s had that giant stuffed frog in my niece’s room for well over a year now. It was there all through my illustrious and most coveted Thinking About Giant Frog Heads award program last April. And she never said a word.

And then, we were up at her place having a visit in early May, right after my illustrious contest had ended, and my 6-year-old came theatrically staggering through the room where we were talking, holding on to this stuffed GIANT FROG pretending it was attacking her, and I looked at RegularSis as if to say: You gotta be kidding me! You had this thing here the whole time and you never entered my contest???

Of course, I couldn’t say any of it out loud because our mother was there, and she doesn’t know about this blog, and we’re trying to keep it that way because it makes the world nicer and sunnier for us if she doesn’t know about it, so I couldn’t say it out loud. But RegularSis knew exactly what I was thinking and so did RegularBIL and we all started laughing so hard that our mother began to suspect that something was up. Which really suits us just fine. We like to leave her hanging like that as much as possible. It almost makes up for all the shit she put us through when we were kids. Almost.

Well, it’s raining all day here, so it’s a good day for a library trip. Our books are overdue again. I run up an overdue-book bill about twice a year. It drives RegularDad crazy and I don’t blame him one bit, but that’s life when you’re homeschooling with a 4-year-old in tow.

RegularSis…this post’s for you.

Published August 9, 2007 Not Worth Categorizing 6 Comments

Unfiltered, in the rain, at the (pardon me, but I can’t resist) FOOT of the one and only GIANT FROG HEAD:

my feet.

Caterpillar Update 2

Published August 9, 2007 Country Living , Homeschooling 6 Comments

Big news, everyone. Fluffy has cocooned. It must have happened some time in the last two days.

This morning, I awoke after a terribly restless night in which both RegularDad and my 4-year-old (and thus ME as well) were unable to sleep, and I realized as I staggered into the kitchen for some coffee that we hadn’t refreshed Fluffy’s leaves in quite a few days.

After my crucial first sip of coffee, I staggered over to the pickle jar on the window sill to see if he was dead. That would have been the perfect start to the day, having to break the news to my 6-year-old that Fluffy had starved while we were busy playing on the new swingset.

But oddly enough, most of the leaves were STILL THERE. And after a bit of a search, I finally found Fluffy’s grayish mess of a cocoon tucked between two sycamore leaves:

It’s hard to see in the picture above, so here ya go:

It’s not the prettiest thing I’ve ever seen. It reminds me, in fact, of a clump of hair pulled from an old hairbrush and then accidentally dropped into the laundry basket and then the hair gets washed and dried and sticks to the corner of a bath towel and you have to pull it off, cursing all the while.

I want you to know that I reached in that jar WITH MY OWN UNGLOVED HAND and pulled that out just so I could take a picture of it for you. And I also want you to know that after I was done, I ran for the sink and scrubbed my hands till they were raw and clean enough to perform an appendectomy on someone. My mother-in-law would be impressed, but she’d also ask me if I used enough bleach and then she’d pull out that gallon of undiluted bleach she keeps in her purse for emergencies. You know…just in case.

So, we’ve progressed to the next stage of this impromptu little experiment. The kids are thrilled. But already getting teary-eyed over the fact that Fluffy will probably not want to stay and live with us forever after he emerges from the cocoon. They want to know if Fluffy will recognize us after he transforms. They want to know if Fluffy will still know his name. They want to know what to do with all the leftover poop in the bottom of the jar.

Compost, anyone?

My feet…by request.

Published August 8, 2007 Not Worth Categorizing 7 Comments

Katherine over at Our Report Card has requested a picture of my feet. I think my feet look much prettier filtered in Photoshop.

That’s as good as it’s gonna get, feetwise. It’s a bit of a slow day around here. Just sort of hanging around looking at our toes. Sometimes, that’s what you need to do.

Me…messing around in Photoshop.

Published August 7, 2007 Not Worth Categorizing , Photos 5 Comments

Before:

After:

I like that second one best. What’s your favorite?

Bordering on ridiculous.

Published August 6, 2007 Homeschooling , In the news... 7 Comments

So, police in Thailand have really come up with a winning strategy to keep junior officers from committing petty misdemeanors like littering. They’re gonna make offenders wear hot-pink arm bands with Hello Kitty cartoons on them. But only in the station in front of fellow officers who will accordingly point and laugh at them and their ridiculous arm bands. Not out in public, where the rest of the population could potentially point at them and laugh. (And then after they’re done pointing and laughing, I imagine they’d spit on the sidewalk and drop their empty styrofoam coffee cups in the street.)

Here’s the article:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070806/ap_on_fe_st/odd_hello_kitty_cops

Here’s my favorite part:

“Simple warnings [to not commit petty crimes] no longer work. This new twist is expected to make them feel guilt and shame and prevent them from repeating the offense, no matter how minor,” said Pongpat, acting chief of the Crime Suppression Division in Bangkok.

(emphasis is mine)

I suspect that whoever thought up this brilliant idea clearly must have been educated in the United States public school system. Because, let’s face it, making kids feel guilt and shame throughout their entire educations is something that most public school teachers and administrators really excel at. I think it’s a required college course: Humiliation Tactics 101.

It amazes me that people remain so blind to the epidemic of bullying and humiliation in schools, and then from there it spreads into adult workplaces, the majority of which I’m sorry to say, are fraught with emotional dysfunction. We learn in school what the pecking order is, how to humiliate simply to avoid being humiliated, and then when we graduate we take what we learned into our adult lives, our professions, our families.

And STILL, when people find out that I homeschool, the very first concern they have continues to be: But how will my kids learn proper socialization?

Fucking morons, every one of them.

« Previous Page — Next Page »

Like I Have Time For This?

Archive for August, 2007

Art project.

Accidental hobby.

If you haven’t read this yet, you should.

WordPress problems?

RegularSis jumps in…with both feet.

RegularSis…this post’s for you.

Caterpillar Update 2

My feet…by request.

Me…messing around in Photoshop.

Bordering on ridiculous.

About RegularMom

Fair Warning:

Subscribe to RegularMom

Categories

Recent Posts

Blogs I Like

Homeschooling

Home of the…

Proud recipient of…

Web Rings

Archives

The Legalaties

Follow “Like I Have Time For This?”