Like I Have Time For This?

Usually after we take a week off from school work, like for Thanksgiving, the week that we start back up again is a little stint in Homeschooling Hell. Usually.

For whatever reason, this time around, re-entry has gone smoothly. The announcement that it’s time to come to the table and open up some books is met with a sing-songy “Ok-ay…be right there….”

And then, we simply breeze through the work. And my 4-year-old either finds something interesting to play in the living room, or she sits with us in the kitchen, scribbling away in her own little “workbooks” or playing with the math manipulatives just as happy as can be. The only hitch comes right at the end of grammar when my 7-year-old asks: is there any copywork today? and starts to fuss. But it’s a pretty minimal fuss, so I commiserate with her and give her the shortest sentence possible, or tell her gleefully: nope, no copywork today. And then she cheers and runs off to play.

It’s totally freaking me out.

Of course, now that I’ve blogged about it, tomorrow will be Completely Insane.

Other than that, not much to report. Things are good. But busy. I accidentally picked up some freelance web work. Whoops. But the cash might come in handy as Christmas approaches, and also as we get closer to moving into the new house and I find myself drooling in the kitchen appliance aisles at Home Depot. So, posting may be a bit lighter than usual. I’ll be spending some time dusting off my design skills and putting together a website for another homeschooling mama. Ordinarily, I avoid telling people I can design websites, because either one of two things happen:

1) they ask you to teach them DHTML… in like 10 minutes, or

2) they say they also are web designers and then immediately pull out a laptop they’ve got hidden under their denim jumper shirt and show you their one and only website they’ve ever done, and it’s drenched in cheesy animation and rainbow colors and at least 15 different font faces and you’re forced to discuss its merits when all you really want to do is bitch slap them into another profession.

But this mama is a friend, and she really could use the help. And it’s a smallish site with no commerce or databasing required, so it’s not such a big deal. And when I saw the site that’s sitting out there right now (that her brother-in-law did for her, and I’m thinking there’s not a whole lotta love there between the in-laws) I just about cried because really…anything I design will be an improvement. So, I said yes.

We’ll see how it goes.

I haven’t done freelance in almost a year. I’ve enjoyed the break, actually. But maybe it’ll be good for me.

Just as soon as I’m done reading Possible Side Effects. It’s fabulous. It’s hilarious.  I can’t put it down. If your library doesn’t have Augusten Burroughs on hand, just go buy the books. It’s worth it.

Here’s a passage that got me giggling and kept me giggling for quite some time after. Here, Augusten is on a book promotion trip to London and he has one free day to spend doing whatever he likes. So naturally, he spends the day holed up in his hotel room watching British television, only taking breaks to run out to buy junk food.

     I went out for more candy bars, forgetting all about the traffic being reversed here, so I was nearly hit by a Royal Mail truck as I crossed the street. What a Royal Mail truck was doing careening through the narrow streets of Soho at eight o’clock at night is a mystery. Shouldn’t their mail truck drivers be home by five in the evening, drunk, depressed, and homicidal, like ours?
     Shaken by the near miss, I walked into the twenty-four hour store and saw something I’d missed before. Something that instantly made both my ears become hot with need….
     Slow Roasted Lamb and Mint Potato Crisps.
     It can’t be, I thought.
     But then, it was. And there were other flavors, too. Char-Grilled Steak and Peppercorn Sauce, Oven Roasted Chicken and Thyme.
     My God, why aren’t these in America? Why did we ever split with Britian in the first place?
     I began to suffer. I could buy a bag, but I knew what would happen. I would take them back to the room and within the space of four chips, I would become addicted. And then in four days, I would be three thousand miles away from more.
     We have BBQ and Sour Cream and Onion and, wildly, Salt and Vinegar. We have “No Salt,” as though that’s an acceptable flavor.
     And these loopy, gin-soaked Brits are whooping it up with chips in a Noah’s Ark of animal flavors.
     It made me sick with envy is what it did. (p. 19)

Again, I implore you. Go get these books and read them. You will not be disappointed. And pictures of the shabby interior of my new house are coming. As soon as I’m done reading.

I’m currently working my way through all of Augusten Burroughs’s stuff. I finished Running With Scissors pretty quick and loved it so much that I rented the movie the next day, and then the day after that, I checked Dry and Possible Side Effects out of the library.

Augusten Burroughs is a man who grew up in the most bizarrely abusive circumstances, never really went to school past the elementary grades, and somehow managed to move to Manhattan and land himself a job in advertising making six figures. Then he wrote these crazy-assed, hysterically funny memoirs, and is doing quite well on the proceeds, I’m sure. All of this without the benefit of plain old public schooling. Or college. Or a nicely-defined, lovingly-executed homeschool curriculum or methodology. God bless Augusten.

If you haven’t read this guy, you should. But be aware that he’s gay and he hands out the occasional gay sex scene in his writing. If you can’t handle that, then don’t read these books. But might I also suggest that if you can’t handle that, you promptly GET OVER IT, take a good look at yourself in a mirror and tell yourself that you’re all grown up now, and go ahead and read his memoirs anyway.

But I like to think that if you come here looking for book recommendations, you are already the kind of person who is ALL GROWN UP NOW and secure in your own identity enough to handle it.

Here’s a passage from Dry that had me laughing out loud as quietly as possible so as not to wake the kids at midnight:

I do a hundred situps every day and go to the gym four times a week, as required for a Manhattan guy who is into guys. If you’re gay and live in New York and don’t go to the gym, eventually they come for you. The Gym Rats from Chelsea come in their Raymond Dragon tank tops and haul your ass into the back of a Yukon. You wake up hogtied in a bathroom stall at a Red Lobster in Paramus. A sign around your neck reads: DO NOT DRIVE ME INTO MANHATTAN UNTIL I HAVE PECS. (p. 118-119)

And from Running With Scissors:

“We’re going to make this a special Christmas. Even if your goddamn sonofabitch father can’t bring himself to do anything but raise a glass to his lips.”

She began to sing along with Angela Lansbury’s warbling about dragging out the holly and throwing up the tree before my mood crashes and I want to kill myself, or however it went. (p. 277)

Looking for something worth reading? Anything by Augusten will do.