New Blog

If there are any readers left here, a long lost blog name dangling along on your blog reader, I have started a new blog.

Living With Less...

A blog about living with less money, time, space, chemicals, etc.

I plan to use this blog (really, for realz) for my normal thoughts and daily bullshit, just to get it out of my head.  If you've stuck around through all these months and years of silence, I thank you.

My chickens

Last winter I decided I was going to take the plunge into urban chickens. Well, ok, technically they're not "urban" when we don't really live in an actual real "city," so to speak, but hey, we have neighbors a rock's throw in either direction. So it totally counts. The biggest hurdle was that the hatchery had a minimum order of 25 chicks, and there was no way in hell I just didn't need that many. Then very early in the spring, my country friend lost most of his 40+ flock to mink and hawks, so I made a deal with him = I'd order 5 Buff Orpington chicks for myself and 20 Dark Cornish for him. The box came May 1st (even though the shipping receipt said February 29th). Check out these teensy peepers:

McMurray Hatchery sent us one extra Cornish and another (Bonus! FREE RARE!!!) chick - it was a Crested Polish. If you look closely, you can see her there near the back. The blonde chicks were mine, the speckly ones are the Cornish. My friend picked his chicks up the next day, and we moved ours to a spare rodent cage, since it was still ridiculously cold outside.

In practically no time, they'd outgrown their little cage (and gotten really ugly).
Pictured: Ugly Dinosaur Chickens Eating the Xbox.

So we moved on to building the coop. I mentioned here before that we intended to use the kids' old clubhouse for a coop, with a few modifications, and that's exactly what we did. With my husband's gracious help (long, LONG story that starts with me saying to him "I don't need your f***ing help and I don't want it!", and ends with me saying, "Please help me for the love of God."), we built our ladies a nice sized coop and a little yard to scratch in. (pics of the coop later).

These pictures were taken this morning, while I fed The Ladies some grapes.

Thankfully, they've feathered out (and aren't so ugly), and their waddles (or as Riley says, "wobbles") are getting darker by the day - a sign of sexual maturity (i.e. EGGS). I'm expecting them to start laying by the middle of July or Early August.

***WARNING*** Graphic Images...

Do not scroll down if you're sensitive to the sight of blood, or images of dead things.

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Still here? Good. My son killed a deer yesterday. If you've been here lately, you'll know that means he brought home a hide for me to tan. In the book I bought, the author called the process of prepping the brains for use in the tanning process making "brain soup" .. and that was enough to make me run screaming from the whole mess. I had intended to use the brains, because it's the most natural and authentic you see, but decided on an less disgusting easier method.

This is the package that Chad brought home:

See how neat and tidy it all is? I figured it wouldn't stay that way, so I made an "apron" out of a garbage bag.

The head was included in our little gift package, but since we wouldn't be using any part of that now, I had to remove it along with the tail.

Peeling off the nasty bits.

Scraping off the rest of the nasty bits. I didn't have a proper scraping tool, so this part was a real bitch. If I do this again, I'll be looking into some better tools.

And then, into the drink. Weighed down with some rocks, it will soak in a lye solution in a plastic garbage can (outside) for the next few days, stirring occasionally, until it's spongy and the hairs are loose and easier to remove.

The most exciting part for me was that I handled this whole thing without a single gag reflex. I'm not sure if it was because it was fresh and not all that bloody, so there was very little smell. Or maybe because I wore gloves, eliminating the problems caused by my texture issues. Or maybe because I had to do it in the dark, in 40 degree weather and was more concerned with just getting-done-for-chrissake-so-we-can-get-in-the-house. It didn't bother the kids much either. As Cadence and I scraped, Riley played with the head. "Look, Mama, I closed his eye." "Look, Mama, I made his ears point up/back/sideways." **shudder**

There are harder steps ahead, as far as actual work and time spent on the hide, but the grossest part is over, and we all handled it really well. More photos and updates soon!

Who needs building plans?

The chicken coop plans that I spent a good hour on, carefully drawing and measuring, have been scrapped. The early dark (thanks, time change) and the rainy cold weather have been a big deterrent in getting the coop built this last week. But I had a backup plan, and by the looks of it, it should have been our plan in the first place.

This is the kids' clubhouse:

(This picture was taken last winter, no actual snow around here yet. The apparent tilt is the result of the camera-operator - likely me.)

When the clubhouse was new, it was a place for reading, a lookout, an advantage spot in a water gun fight, and a place to keep the toy kitchen and all the bazillions of dishes and plastic food. In the last year, it's become an ignored and empty waste of space. The kids still climb up in there, but now it's just to sit and chat for a few minutes, or stop off on the way further up the tree.

So really the only thing making the difference between a clubhouse and a chicken coop are a door and some insulating. I'll post more pictures of those, the fence, etc. as we go.

More on satisfying projects...

So, I'm getting some chickens. 25 of them to be exact, because the hatchery has a minimum order. The plan is to keep them in the kitchen for a couple of weeks, then divide those we're keeping to move outside (just three of them), and move the rest to my country friend's place for the next 4-6 weeks until they're big enough to sell (craigslist, anyone?) or eat (umm.. we might pass on that one). We've had a house chicken before, what's another couple of dozen right?

As usual, I am jumping into this with both feet. But as usual, I am researching and learning as much as I can before said jumping. Keeping chickens is much easier than it may seem, and so much information about health, potential issues, housing, etc. is available online for free - no need to even buy a book. But I still bought this one. First things first, though: My chickens need a home.

I've googled a zillion chicken coops and drawn up a design that I'm happy with. Because money is an issue, the majority of materials we'll be using are recycled scraps gathered from friends and family. This is what it looks like right now:

A pile of old fence pieces and some random boards. I'll be taking more pictures as we build. Just hoping to get done and get those chickens settled (wherever they're settled) before I have a hide to tan.

A Satisfying Life

How much do we hear, in some version or another while talking with people, "My life is so unsatisfying." People are lonely and depressed. As a culture, we are bored. We spend so much time and money; buying things, joining clubs, playing games, chatting and texting and facebooking - desperate to get some kind of enjoyment out of our lives. And one thing I am so guilty of myself: complaining about the monotony and just overall dissatisfaction. I also have heard a lot, and seen in practice, that the more you involve yourself in daily activities, the less negativity you feel, and the happier you are in life. I've always thought this was because if I'm busy all the time, I don't have time to think about how bad my life sucks. This was a depressing thought all it's own, because my life isn't any better, I'm just ignoring it. It felt like a form of denial.

But now I'm starting to understand that it's not doing things; it's the things you do. Busying yourself with unfulfilling things still leaves you feeling unfulfilled. Facebook is fun, online games are entertaining and doing those things seem like ways to enjoy my life, but all they do is take up some time - my life is not changed by them in any way, just put off. Cleaning the house for half the day makes me feel better; not because it's taken up half the day, but because my house is clean. Because I've worked diligently, and can see and enjoy the benefit of that work. If my daily activities don't change anything, benefit anything, or provide anything useful, it's not a wonder I start feeling useless and unsatisfied with my life.

When I first started knitting, I was excited about it, but I also felt more upbeat and positive - I was using my free time and talent to create something beautiful and useful for my family. After a while though, the slow, slow stitches seemed like a chore, and I thought, "Well, I was just doing it for fun, so I can quit if I want to." As soon as I started viewing it as "just for fun" it was no different than wasting an hour on the computer - unimportant, unsatisfying. But mostly I'm seeing that putting in that extra effort - like cleaning the house - really pays off in the satisfaction with the completed project. I think that effort might even be one of the most important parts of the equation. I worked for this, it benefits me/my family/the world; I did this hard thing, and it was worth it. How empowering and satisfying and rewarding!

I'm not giving up my FarmVille any time soon, nor am I willing to exhaust myself with busy things, but I am making a point to fill the gaps in my time with more useful activities, even those that require a lot of work. The more difficult projects, new skills, and even little (but still a mountain) jobs I take on, the more satisfied I feel with my life, my home, my family, myself. It is self-sacrifice, when you think of the work involved, but it doesn't feel like a sacrifice at all when you reap the joys and benefits of your hard work. Kind of like parenting, isn't it? I'm parenting my life.

Deer Season

Deer hunting season is upon us - bowhunting now, shotgun next month. Normally deer season comes and goes with me remaining oblivious to its passing, aside from the occasional gift of deer meat from friends. This year is different.

My son, all of his life, rejected his dad's offers to go hunting together. Refused to eat fresh-caught fish and said he'd sooner eat dirt than a rabbit. He told me in no uncertain terms that he could never hunt, could never even support hunting, because it was stupid to kill a wild animal when there were animals raised specifically for food. And come to think of it, he wasn't so sure he was okay with that either. I was bracing myself for a declaration of vegetarianism. I even went as far as researching vegetarian diets, variations on meals we already eat.. the whole deal.

Then something strange happened. Suddenly he was eating all the beef he could get his hands on, and a few deer burgers convinced him deer was the Best Meat Ever. He thought maybe he'd like to try hunting for NON-food animals, so my country friend took him prairie dog hunting in SD for a few days. You could almost smell the change on him when he came home. It happened one step at a time, but it felt like a flash to me. Now he's gun-crazy, scanning guns & ammo magazines, visiting the local Bass Pro and drooling over the rifles. He can't stop talking about how much meat we can get "for free" (ha! hasn't bought a hunting license lately, I see).

Then there was this crazy thing I did. I went and bought a book on brain tanning, hoping to try making buckskins. Call it a homeschool project. I bought the book before my son's drastic transformation from border-veggie to hunter-killer, and had asked several of my hunting friends, "Hey, when you get a deer, save me the hide and brains, k? And it has to be fresh, so call me right away. Cuz I'm doin this thing.." They shook their heads, because they know how weird adventurous I am, but they all promised me the hide.

Well, without me even noticing, it's Deer Season. The day of reckoning approaches. I, one who can barely handle boiling a chicken, will very likely have a large - and freshly killed by my firstborn child - animal in my back yard being cleaned (why is such a bloody messy job called "cleaning"?) I will, regardless of my son's success, have someone's deer hide with bits of .. you can imagine what.. on it, waiting for me to soak and scrape, stretch and oil. And brains?!?! What the hell was I thinking??

Please keep me in your thoughts. I have made my bed, so to speak. It would harm my pride be wrong not to lie in it. I'm just hoping I can do this with a smile.

**sniff** that's my baby

Trick or Treat!

We approached Beggar's Night this year the same as we always do, by putting off making or buying any costumes or accessories until the last minute, to ensure the highest stress level possible. Cadence remained undecided about what thing/person she intended to dress up as until 2 days before. Chad skipped this year, he's "too grown" for it I guess, but kept saying things like, "Well maybe I'll go, just for a while," and, "Well I could just do some simple costume." Riley has wanted to be a cheetah since August.



So 2 days before the big begging day, we shopped for materials and accessories. Cat ears on the list, but all they had were black and striped - no spots. Hell, I'll just make some, I thought. After an hour at Walmart, Cadence settled on "Reaper" and I figured what we couldn't make, we could do with makeup. I bought some cheetah-print material and two small makeup kits. By then, Chad was insisting I told him he wasn't allowed to go begging, and refused to do so. (Whatever?)

Of course I couldn't get to any actual sewing that night, or the next day. So there I was, on The Day Of, Googling some easy sewing instructions for a hooded robe and wondering if I could use a pajama pattern (or SOMEthing) for Riley's cheetah. That's when I found this page - it's a Jedi robe, but a robe is a robe right? The "pattern" amounted to body-tracing, no real measuring or anything. This worked so well for Cadence's robe, I repeated the process with the cheetah fabric, tracing around the legs instead of leaving it open. Stick on a tail and sew a couple triangle ears to a headband, and voila! Halloween costumes were done in less than an hour.(Cardboard scythe and candy buckets not shown)

Now, before you go thinking the whole thing came off without a hitch, this photo was taken AFTER a night of trick or treating, because, as usual, we left about a half hour late. And froze our butts off in the first 20 minutes (it was 36 degrees!!), and drove instead to a "safe, indoor trick or treat" at a local mall. And wandered the entire mall for an hour, just for 5 tootsie rolls and 3 stickers, so that whole thing was a huge disappointment. The kids only got about 1/4 of their little buckets filled during the whole night.

After we got home, Vic told me to get the kids cleaned up and into pajamas and said he'd be right back. Too tired and frozen to care where he was going, I set about taking pictures and washing off makeup. 20 minutes later, Vic came in with a grocery bag full of candy. "Wow, you kids should have taken the car trick or treating!" he told them. "I was only out a few minutes and look at how much I got!" So I still got my chocolate fix the kids still got some candy, and all is right with the world again.

The Tough Stuff...

Every month, I pick up a box of food from Angel Food Ministries. $30 for a box of bulk-purchased food that they say will feed a family of 4 for a week, but I have no problem stretching it out for my family of 5, even if some smaller people are eating more than the bigger people. It's easy to incorporate the contents of one of these boxes into our monthly meals, and makes a huge difference for our food budget. Often there is an ... interesting... package of chicken in the box. One month the was a frozen package of "chicken breast pieces" that was exactly that - pieces and bits of breasts, scraps I imagine, but all good meat. This month it was bone-in leg quarters. Usually when we get the bone-in chicken, I just fry it in whatever odd cut comes out of the package. This time I decided I'd boil it down for meat and broth.

Now, I'd never done this before, as much as I'd heard how much money can be saved by buying whole chickens or irregular cuts and boiling them. I'd never done it because I get a bit squeamish with meat, especially when bones are involved. I had the same problem last summer when we were bringing home fresh-caught catfish every week or so. After seeing the fish alive, then picking out bits of bone or skin missed in cleaning, soaking (and smelling) the fish overnight, and handling it repeatedly, I was so grossed out I'd convinced myself the fish was nasty. I couldn't make myself swallow it.

I thawed this chicken and cooked it for a couple of hours in a big pot full of water with a lid. After it had cooled for a while, I pulled the chicken out of the stock to find the meat "falling off the bone". (This term might make a lot of people's mouth water, but in my case, it makes me a bit ill to think about.) I stripped off the skin and picked the meat from the bones with my hands, and for the first several minutes I really thought I might hurl. I was a bit surprised (and not pleasantly, I can tell you) to find other stuff with the meat. Like a bit of spinal bones and a couple of unidentifiable (to me anyway) organs. When I started to feel faint, I called Vic in to help me.

The work was tedious, because I was being extremely careful not to leave any teeny bits of bone or cartilage in with the meat. But I noticed after a while that it was getting easier and easier for me to handle. I was no longer fighting my gag reflex. I realized it was because the more I focused on the job at hand and its benefits, I was thinking less about the gory details. I happily realized I had enough meat and broth for two or three meals here, instead of just the one meal of fried chicken I was used to. I was chatting with my husband, laughing even, feeding bits of skin or whatever to the desperately begging cats at my feet. Holy crap, I was actually having fun. Considering the amount of meat and broth I'd gotten out of the deal, heck.. this was easy. I should do this every time.

There is a homeschooling lesson here. A life lesson, even. If you keep your eyes open, there is always a lesson, isn't there? Because sometimes the idea of doing something you're not used to, have never done, or don't know much about, sounds horrifying. You can pretty easily become overwhelmed with the details, even if it seemed like a good idea when you started. If you focus on all the nasty bits, you become so disgusted that you completely miss the point of doing it in the first place. But when you concentrate on the job at hand, focus on the benefits, all the negatives are at least worth dealing with. If you're lucky, you'll stop seeing them as negatives at all. Just tiny details in a bigger picture - the benefits are what matter.

So now I have about 3 pounds of meat and enough broth for a few meals tucked away in my freezer. I have 3 kids growing into intelligent, wonderful people, even if raising them sometimes seems hard and homeschooling them sometimes doesn't seem worth it. I have a great marriage, even when the stress of inlaws and disagreements make it seem unbearable. The benefits are what matter. We're doing great, and it was easy.

A new way to burn down your house...

Chad has been obsessing for months over survivalism (if there is such a word). I don't know where on earth he gets his obsessive nature. ;) First he went through catalogues, sports stores, and camping websites looking for The Perfect Backpack. Then he started comparing nutritional content of different foods, trying to find The Perfect Foods to pack in his backpack in case of... alien attack or nuclear winter or something. He compared water bottles for volume, weight, and shape. Somewhere in the midst of all that, he was looking into kerosene lanterns. The biggest turnoff there was that you had to buy the kerosene. But he knew that other things burn, and we set about finding household things that would work. Cooking oils (corn, olive, canola) turned out to be the best, because it takes a pretty hot flame to start the oil itself burning, but will burn nicely for a long time when soaked into paper or cloth.

After a couple of quick internet searches, notes written down and gathering of supplies....

....he made this:

Corn oil in a beer bottle. (Yeah, it's a 40. Don't judge me.) Wick made from strands of white cotton Sugar'N Cream yarn, fed through a small hole in the metal lid. You might be able to see in the picture that the bottom of the bottle is filled with water, and oil for only the top 4 inches or so. This is to save on the amount of oil used in such a large bottle, but it also looks pretty cool. You could use any glass bottle with a screw-on lid, and if you used a clear bottle (Vodka maybe?), you could even add food coloring to the water for a pretty neat effect.

Chad spent hours and hours working out the best wick arrangement; first trying different lengths of exposed wick and settling on 1/2 inch, then timing how long it took to burn that 1/2 inch of wick and multiplying by 12 (6 inches total length). He was most satisfied with 3 strands of yarn, braided tightly, which worked out to about 15 hours of burn time.

Then he tossed everything on the counter and went online to look for a new tent. Because the one he just bought won't fit into the super-deluxe backpack he's eyeing. Gah.

*I might mention that all the above was done completely on his own, with me playing the part of Question Answerer occasionally. Who needs textbooks and lesson plans?

Food and income...

A good while back, there was a big buzz around the messageboards I was frequenting and all over the internet about the Food Stamp Challenge. Even members of Congress have taken on the challenge, painstakingly planning and shopping for meals that will fit into their "food stamp budget". I've seen this done two ways; basing your monthly shopping on the maximum allowable food stamp benefit per household ($698/month for my family of 5), or a baseline $21 per family member per week (about $420/month for my family). Way back when we were on welfare and food stamps, our monthly food stamp benefit was about $540.

I was never quite sure if the idea was to shine a light on how very little the poor folks have to eat on, to make those in higher income brackets feel humbled and thankful, or to simply make people feel better about themselves. Whatever the reason, for most people, meeting the monthly food stamp goal seemed to be damn near to impossible. I am honestly extremely confused by the difficulty. We got food stamps for a little over three months, and had so much leftover money on our food stamp card that we used it for another two months after we stopped receiving benefits. I can't even imagine how long we could have gone on the maximum allowable amount. My normal grocery store budget per week is about $100 - and this is counting the extras you get at the grocery store, like shampoo and toilet paper. Sometimes I go a couple of dollars over, but well within the $21/week guidelines. If I didn't count the non-food items, our average monthly food expense is about $350.

I've seen and heard people complain while doing the food stamp challenge, that they had to stop buying the fun foods - prepackaged snacks, chips, soda, etc. When we were on food stamps, we always had those things. People mention giving up "good meat" and switching to low quality hamburger and pork. When we were on food stamps, we ate a few steaks and good quality roasts, and on Vic's birthday we even got a live lobster (!!!). I had to eventually just stop visiting the messageboards and other forums where people discussed this challenge, because I seriously wanted to ask, "What the fuck are you people eating?? Caviar??" To their credit, there were several people who were starting to figure out it wasn't so hard to live on that amount of money for food, but they still seemed to be missing the point.

Sometime last week I was discussing this with a friend, and I mentioned that I felt the Upper Middle and above to just be clueless about food and expenses in poorer households. "Of course they are," she said, "They're getting the wrong picture. They're only hearing about the maximum benefit." The maximum allowable food stamp benefit is based on absolutely NO income, and figuring in things like medical expenses caused by disability. The more money you earn, the less your food stamp benefit. According to this chart, the maximum monthly income for a family of 5 to qualify for ANY benefit is $2687, and that's only with other expenses figured in. Even then, you might only qualify for $40 per month in food stamps. In order to qualify for a food stamp benefit large enough to pay for all your food, even when you're super-thrifty, you'd have to have a much smaller income. The income requirements are a little higher for medical benefits, but only for the children in the home - the adults can apparently do without.

And that's the heart of the problem. Those on welfare and the maximum food stamp benefit are not really struggling. With no income, you can qualify for all kinds of things: housing assistance, food stamps, medical coverage, child care expenses, transportation, even education and job placement services. But the more money you make, the less help you qualify for. "The REAL challenge," said my friend, "Would be to see if they could live on just enough income not to qualify for anything. That's where the majority of 'poor' people are. They HAVE jobs and child care and housing, and can barely afford to eat. That's the working poor."

What if your total family income was just over the required amount to qualify for aid? What if you.. I dunno.. homeschooled or something (or were a single mother whose loser ex won't pay child support, or whatever), and had only one working parent in your 5-person household? What if you had to live on $2600 a month (gross, not net), with no disabilities or other deductions - too much to qualify for food stamps, housing assistance, or medical insurance? Could you pay your rent or mortgage? Property taxes or homeowners insurance? Could you buy health insurance for your entire family? Car insurance (required in most states), and/or a car payment? Clothing for your growing children? School expenses? Child care costs for the single parent? Put gas in your car to get to work, and eat lunch while you were there? Keep your lights and heat on? What about all the conveniences you're used to, like cell phones and internet access? And don't forget the unplanned expenses, like replacing a broken washing machine or a car repair, maybe a parking ticket or two. Could you eat on what was left? If something must be cut out in order to afford food, which necessity is the least necessary, or would make the most difference when it's eliminated? Do some quick figuring of monthly expenses for the average household, and you'll start getting a clearer picture of poverty than any $21 per week food budget could give you. Then it begins to make sense why there are so many people in this country without health insurance - the *possibility* of getting sick is much less than the *inevitability* of hunger.

For more information on struggling families and food benefits:
One Dollar Diet Project
Feeding America
St. Mary's Food Bank Alliance

On cutting your budget and managing less income:
Miserly Moms
Living on Less
The Dollar Stretcher

"Young mothers"...

A rant. *

I'm 31. My oldest child is 12. If you'd rather not do the math in your head, I'll tell you that I was 18 when I was pregnant with my son, and he was born the day after my 19th birthday. This is not a confession, an excuse, or an explanation. It's simply a fact, and whenever I mention it to anyone, I present it just that way. Often, when I mention it, it's part of another conversation. Such as a discussion of whether wine is safe to drink while pregnant, and I say, "Well, I didn't drink when I was pregnant with Chad, but that's because I was only 18." Just the truth - not looking to shock everyone. But as soon as those words come out of my mouth, the conversation is no longer about whether drinking in moderation during pregnancy is okay, but about how young I was when I was pregnant, the tragedy of young motherhood, and unsettled disbelief. This is fine, really, and I know nobody is trying to offend me. In fact, they may actually be trying to offer some kind of comfort or support, and usually the only reason it gets to me is because it's changed the whole focus of the conversation to me and my parenting.

Maybe I am just overly sensitive. When Chad was a baby, I was talked down to everywhere I went. The obstetrician called me "Kiddo." When I took that long trip on the Greyhound to NC, I was repeatedly approached by strange older women I did not know, trying to take my crying, overstimulated and extremely tired baby from my arms, saying, "Let me try, Sweetie," or offering advice on what I might be doing wrong. With his first ear infection, the pediatrician explained to me in slow, careful language how to read the bottle of infant Tylenol and how to use the dropper, while I looked at her like she was insane. Acquaintances who were older than me often gave me parenting advice, forgetting I suppose that their babies were actually younger than mine. I stopped going to mommy groups and playdates after being repeatedly snubbed and ignored by groups of older moms who were fond of saying things like, "When you're older, you'll know," and, "I'm glad I finished my education before having children, because educated mothers..." Well... those particular women were just bitches, but you get the idea.

The only person that offered full support and a feeling of complete confidence in my competence as a parent was my grandmother. My grandmother was pregnant at 18. "Of course, I was married," she never neglected to add. She was 19 when her first child was born, many years ago. And here lies my point (I'm sure you're anxious for me to make it already). I hear so much about "young mothers these days" as if having a child before the age of 25 or 30 is some kind of societal tragedy. In the 40's women were trained for marriage and motherhood in high school. It was completely normal to marry your high school boyfriend the second you were graduated. And have a baby, because that's what you did. Get married, have a baby. Most women looked forward to it with gleeful anticipation. If you weren't married by the time you were 30, something was probably wrong with you. A result of a now-outdated patriarchal view of an ideal society, possibly, but there it is. It was normal, even expected, and completely acceptable.

There's not a sad and catastrophic increase of young mothers nowadays. In fact, the average age of American women having their first child has actually increased in the last 30 years. And a leaning trend toward older mothers through the decades does not magically make 18 younger than it was 50, or even 30 years ago.

People tell me I was "just a baby" when I became a mother. They say they "just can't imagine being a parent so young." They mean well, and I know that. But I fell in love with my husband when I was 16. I was still in love with him when I got pregnant at 18. I'm still in love with him now, 12 years later. Had I never gotten pregnant, I probably would have eventually married him anyway, because I loved him. Pregnancy simply moved our plans forward a bit. I don't need sympathy or pity because I "had to" get married and have a family so young. I just can't imagine spending the last 12 years of my life without the love, comfort and joy of a family, no matter what age I was when it all started.

*Certainly not meant to offend anyone, in any group, but simply for the purpose of blowing off some steam and pent-up frustration.

The S Word...

Recently, I watched a report about homeschooling from CBS Sunday Morning on Daryl's blog. The report was mostly good, and showed some non-traditional homeschooling in a very good light. Within a few days, I'd seen the same video on several other blogs (to be fair, I'm not sure who found it first, in case that matters to anyone), and almost everyone who posted it mentioned that when the topic of socialization came up, it was handled well. I really don't agree.

In just about every report or newsy article I've seen, there is some expert insisting children need to socialize. They're missing out on prom/sports/clubs, and they need that. They won't have friends, and they need them. They won't be involved in social networks, and they need those. The common way for homeschooling advocates to address these issues is to insist, as in this recent CBS report, that homeschooling support groups and social activities exist, and are used diligently within the homeschool community. You silly people, can't you see we have it covered?

Not once have I seen or heard an expert explain WHY kids absolutely and unequivocally NEED regular activities with children their age. Never have I seen or heard anyone explain why children NEED social interaction with other children at all. I know it's important for children to have social interaction with other people. I'd just like to see the evidence that suggests those people must be children. The "experts" say interaction with other children (preferably in a school setting, of course) teaches kids they can't get their own way all the time, that rules must be followed, and all about the complicated experience that is friendship. They suggest this is the only way children will learn how to interact in the "real world." And the rebuttal from the homeschool community is: they DO get social interaction with other children. They list all the recreational classes their kids take, the clubs they're involved in, and the social activities ad nauseum, even saying exasperatedly that, "we homeschool, but we're never home!" Never once do you hear a homeschooler say, "Socializing with other kids? What makes you think they need to do that?"

There are problems with defending your homeschooled kids' social development with a list of their activities. Not only does it reinforce the idea that children somehow NEED other children around them to be mentally healthy, it makes attaining that goal seem like an exhausting task. One that requires a huge amount of your time, energy, and probably money. And one that could be easily attained without all that effort just by putting your kid in public school. The seemingly overwhelming burden of meeting their kids' social needs intimidates people that might consider homeschooling otherwise. It suggests that homeschooling alone is risking social detriment. It instills guilt in homeschool parents who can't keep up, or don't want to. Because most children are involved in lots of social activities, we quickly and blindly accept that it's necessary for proper development, leaving the door open for accusations of neglect when we don't provide it. As long as homeschoolers continue to agree with the educrats on the importance of child social groups, we allow ourselves to be criticized by their standards.

I understand that children play together in ways adults can't comprehend, and that children, when playing together, reach levels of imagination unfathomable to adults. But aren't they already getting more time at imaginative play than their public school counterparts with their siblings at home? A neighbor kid or two? Can they not learn they can't always have their way from their parents? From the fact that they're all out of blueberry pancakes at the diner today? From the car repair that prevents them from going to the amusement park? LIFE doesn't let you have your own way all the time. Can they not learn about rules and how to follow them from their parents? From the "No Running" sign at the swimming pool? From watching Mom get a speeding ticket? LIFE shows you there are rules that must be followed. Interacting with other children, in school or in homeschool group playdates, does not teach kids about the real world. Interacting with the real world does.

Emotional bonds with other humans is necessary for proper mental stability. That those humans be unrelated to you is not. We homeschoolers need to stop agreeing with the experts in the necessity of socializing with justifications, explanations, and excuses. Socializing with other kids? Who the hell needs it?

Today's rant: Unhealthy foods...

More and more folks are jumping on the "Be Healthy, it's the Law" bandwagon by banning the use of trans fats in restaurants, and demanding full disclosure of caloric content, making the sale of unhealthy foods an issue of public health. It makes sense, especially when consumers are completely unaware of the ingredients... right?

Laws like this get to me because they clearly demonstrate Americans' general inability to take responsibility for themselves. This cannot possibly be the first time people were aware french fries and hot wings are bad for you. Did they really not know burgers were bad for the arteries? Were they seriously unaware eating donuts can make you fat? What really pisses me off is the suggestion that restaurants are deliberately causing obesity and heart disease. Oh, I'm sure they'd rather you didn't know precisely how fattening their foods are, but they aren't exactly cramming it down anyone's throats. Restaurant executives aren't sitting around trying to think of ways to add more calories and fat in an attempt to slowly kill their customers. Whether or not they disclose caloric content, they're not making a secret of the fact that their foods are deep-fried in grease and covered in butter and cheese.

It's the attitude in articles like this, apparently shared by the majority of Americans, that's aggravating. How dare you clog my arteries with your french fries?!? I can't believe you'd put a bunch of sugar in your smoothies!! High fructose corn syrup?? You bastards!!

Time-Life had a book series in the 80's called Healthy Home Cooking. We've known home-cooked meals were cheaper and healthier than any restaurant could offer for at least 20 years. Yet in 1998, almost half the money spent on food in America was spent in restaurants (would have liked to find something more current, but I'm pretty sure it hasn't changed much). Thank goodness lawmakers decided to step in and save us from unhealthy food. It's obvious we can't be trusted to do avoid it ourselves.

A good reason to beat up a kid...

Via Daryl: We have to protect our school children from The Gays, so we refuse to protect Those Gay Kids from being bullied. You know, for the children.

This really doesn't make any sense to me. I think they're going at this backwards. Instead of adding more details to the bullying and harassment laws, why don't they remove them all? Is bullying and harassment ever okay? For any reason? Listing specific reasons someone may not be harassed or physically abused only suggests that there are reasons not specified where bullying is acceptable. I see this being a perpetual problem in the future. Will the inclusion of tattoos and piercings be proposed next? How about "unnatural hair colors"? Will we someday have to include "artificial body parts" to the harassment laws? And what about the details of the harassment itself? Right now, it probably says something like "physical or verbal assault or threats, in person or through mail, email, phone, text, or website forum." Must we change the laws every time a new form of communication is invented?

We cannot possibly stay on top at the legal level of all the reasons a person can be harassed or bullied, nor can we keep up with the ways in which they're harassed and bullied. Wouldn't it be easier just to say "ANY form of harassment or bullying in ANY way for ANY reason is illegal"?? The bigots conservatives insist that they don't advocate hurting a child, but that the inclusion of such terms as "sexual orientation" will open the door for gays to have equal rights more gay propaganda. Eliminating all specifics in the law seems to me to serve both the fears of the paranoid bigots concerns of the conservatives, and kids who are subjected to bullying.

Sometimes, simpler is better.

Love and Hate...

You know how when you have a ferret (a beautiful ferret named Daisy, because we didn't like Sally), and you let her out to explore in the morning, and she climbs the couch and over the bookshelves and across the table to the plants to dig and throw dirt all over the place, and then you have to give her a bath where she completely freaks out, and then after you've fought the terrified creature through towel-drying, while you're draining and washing the fur out of the tub, she's back in the livingroom in the plant again? I hate that.

But that part where you're frustrated because you've bathed the ferret (Daisy, not Sally) twice, and found out that she can climb the gate you put up in the kitchen doorway and get into the dreaded under-the-sink, and she's spilled the bathroom garbage can, and you found a stash of sticky twizzlers that she's stolen and piled up in your bedroom doorway for your bare feet to step on, and you say to the ferret, "You are so naughty!".. and then your five year old says, "Mama, she's not naughty. She's a ferret. It's her nature. That's what makes her special." Well that part, I really love.

And you know how you finally get a day at the salon, when you haven't had your hair done in an honest-to-goodness salon in forever -like, years- and you find this trendy awesome place, and the hairdresser is super nice and instinctively knows exactly what will look good on you and fit your personality, and you leave looking like a supermodel? I SO love that.

Then, after spending money on expensive shampoo and something called "hair wax" at the salon and buying some more hair stuff here and there until you're afraid if you confess how much money went into your hair your husband may divorce you, you find out you can't recreate that supermodel look at home. And that blows.

And you know how Mother Nature seems to be holding a serious grudge and dumps rain on you for weeks and weeks, with a few sunny days scattered in between just long enough to clean up the yard from the last destructive storm, and you can't even burn the ever-growing brush pile because it Won't Stop Fucking Raining?? And how you're up half the night because the tornado sirens in every nearby town are roaring away, and you sit listening to the boring news guy for hours in case you need to wake everyone and hide in an "interior room without windows".. for like three nights in a row? I really, really hate that.

But then the storms stop - or actually just fade and fade until they're gone - and everything is completely still, and the flowers in the yard hang their heads with the weight of the water, and lights from the city look pink and gray in the sky, and the only sound you hear is the drip drip dripping of water from some nearby tree, and the smell of the rainwater on the thick green trees and summer flowers is just intoxicating. And then you start thinking the Deep Thoughts about rebirth and cycles of nature and human potential and the wonders of the universe and just how utterly beautiful the whole world is. I think that's about one of the best things ever.

In case you were wondering...

Some of you may have noticed a lack of homeschooling posts in the last few months. Springtime is my normal time of reflecting over our school year, reviewing what we've accomplished, and subsequently freaking out over what we haven't gotten done. But this time, I'm remarkably calm about the whole situation. We're only on chapter 36 when we should be on chapter 47, and I'm okay with that. We have this summer, right? And the kids are learning tons of stuff they wouldn't be learning otherwise if we were focusing solely on our textbooks. See? It's all good.

Right after Christmas, I started my regular freakout sessions, "We haven't done spelling since November!! AAACK!!!" With an upcoming tax refund (whenever they worked out what I owed and all that), I was planning on buying new books for next year and stuff too. So one day I'm telling the kids we're gonna skip science today (because I'm going to buy from a different company next year), and telling them watching Animal Planet or The Weather Channel, or playing with kitchen ingredients will be sufficient. And the next day I'm yelling at them, doubling up on assignments in subjects we're behind in. And threatening them! Because if they don't be quiet and do their damn Language work Right This Second, the lady that reviews our portfolio will think they're not learning, and they'll have to go to public school, and I'll probably go to jail or something.

Can you feel the crazy, people? It radiates from my body.

Then one night while I sat drinking my tea and reading some math geek book, I remembered a funny family story. See, my great aunt had a cat that was not allowed on the furniture. The story goes that the cat had a litter of kittens, and when they were big enough to get around, she got on the couch for the one and only time of her life and taught her kittens not to go on the furniture as well. She meowed and called them, and every time they jumped up, she would hiss and bat at them until they went sprawling back on the floor. After several minutes, none of the kittens were willing to jump from the floor. Lesson learned.


Then I saw that this is what I've been doing to my kids. I suddenly realized that as much as I talk about being a relaxed homeschooler, I haven't actually been one. I've baited them with the wonderful ideals found in all those books: learning should be fun, learning is a natural process, learn at your own pace, c'mon you'll love it... and then switched on them, lecturing about the importance of education and staying at "grade level", punishing them with extra work and guilt trips about laziness. (Hello? Hypocrite??) My great aunt's cat was pretty darned smart. But me? Not so much. Why this story popped into my head that night I'll never know. But my next big thought was, "Pretty soon, they'll stop trying to jump." What happens when they stop believing that learning can be fun? What happens when "school" becomes a code word for boring drudgery, or worse, forced work on the whims of a crazy lady? And *choke* how do I look to them, with this homeschool teacher schizophrenia?? How will they look back on our homeschooling experience? Holy hell.

So I've made a deliberate and pointed attempt to let go. They are learning, without my pressure. They can learn those few things I feel they need to have, but they can do it on their terms. I will no longer look at lesson numbers, or count days until the end of the year. Despite all the former attempts at this kind of calm, I don't think I ever achieved it before now. Don't get me wrong, I don't think for a second that I will feel this way every day (and I don't). But it's March, and I haven't forced double lessons or yelled about schoolwork since January. It's a step down a long, long path and I realize that. But I feel so much better about homeschooling than I ever have before. And it's all good.

Dye-no-mite...

Monday afternoon, as I sat with the kids in the lobby of the oral surgeon's office waiting to take my bleeding husband home with one less tooth than he came in with, I perused the Family Fun magazine and found this awesome idea for leaf-printing eggs. I was planning on trying egg-dying with the kids this year anyway, but this was the most fabulous thing ever and I was anxious to try it. I imagined doing them, and taking pictures, and posting them here so people could ooh and ahh and then go try it themselves. I was really excited.

After buying all the dye and eggs and stuff and promising to dye eggs this week, imagine my surprise to see that Poppins had seen the same article, and tried it with great results. Ah, well. She is the queen of fab, and one can't be first all the time.

We still did leaf print eggs, and we still had a really fun time doing them, and you can still ooh and ahh over them if you like:

This is the first time I've ever dyed eggs, and Vic had never done it either, so it was a first for everyone in my house. My leaf print was the green one in the middle, which turned out pretty cool, and Cadence's blue leaf egg and Riley's orange (top right) were neat too. But I was especially impressed with Chad's (top left) where he dipped and soaked a million times in red, green, and blue, until the contrast of the leaf print was the most dramatic. I'm so glad we tried this. It was so much fun!

Rednecks in the Snow...

Our most recent snowstorm dumped ten inches of perfectly sticky "packing snow" all over the neighborhood. A snowman builder's dream. I sent the kids out yesterday to shovel the driveway, and when they were finished, they played for at least another hour out there. When Vic got home, it was dark, and he was kind of bummed to miss out on all the snow fun. So after the kids were in bed, my husband went outside to build.



What glorious snow structures can a kid-at-heart, creative-minded redneck build? The Parthenon? The Statue of Liberty? The Great Pyramid? Nope. He built this:
A life-sized lawn tractor. Complete with wheels, blade cover, seat and steering wheel. I'm so proud.

This morning, the guy from the gas company wandered through the yard on his way to the meter. Cadence watched him from the back door and said, "Mama, he's taking a picture!" I opened the door and chatted with him a few minutes. He said he couldn't resist taking a picture. Not something you see every day I guess.

I expect it to be completely wrecked by this afternoon, but I did get lots of pictures, so it was fun while it lasted eh?

Murphy's Law...

Tuesday, my computer monitor was flashing and blinking on and off. It only happened a couple of times, and I figured the power cord must have been loose or something. I straightened all the cords and plugs, and called it good. Wednesday when I sat down for my daily dose of blogging and reading, posting and otherwise wasting hours of time on the internet, the monitor was black. Turning the monitor off and on again gave me a picture of my desktop for a few seconds before going black again, so it was clear the issue wasn't the computer itself, thankfully. So I called tech support.

The automated voice on the phone demanded I speak to it. I know I'm old and out of the technological loop at this point, but I feel like a complete jackass talking to a computer. Can I just push a button? Please? Pleasant Automated Voice asked me to speak the name of the afflicted hardware. "If you're having a software issue, say, 'software'..." Unwilling to wait any further, I said "Monitor." Automated Voice asked me to wait a moment, then said, "Please say the serial number of your... plotter... " I don't even know what a plotter is or whether I even have one, but that's not what I said. Hoping the word, "NO!" would send me back to the previous menu, I said it a few times. Automated Voice kept asking for my plotter's serial number. By now I'm pissed off and push the #0 on the phone keypad. Automated Voice now became Condescending Automated Voice and actually said, "I can understand you when you speak to me. Please say the serial number of your... plotter..." Ack. "No, bitch, you can't understand me when I speak to you, because I didn't say 'plotter'!!"

I pushed #0 about five million times and was finally transferred to India. I then spent 45 minutes talking to three different men, first doing all their suggested "fixes" like replugging and restarting, and eventually just saying I was doing them when I wasn't. My monitor is broken. I can't go into BIOS because I can't see the fucking screen. They finally agreed and said they would send me a new one, to arrive in 3-5 business days.

On Wednesday, I called around asking if anyone had a spare monitor laying around. "My kids can't do their typing," I said. "They can't do internet research." Uh.. yeah. The kids need it. My cousin offered to bring over a spare from her parent's house, but couldn't get it for me until Thursday. Ugh.

Thursday, my cousin drove out to her parent's place to pick it up for me, then clear out to my place to drop it off. I spent a good half hour looking for cords and fighting with connectors while cramped under the desk with a flashlight. Woohoo, it worked! I sat back and viewed my desktop in all its glory. Then FedEx pulled up out front with my new monitor. Figures. Laughing, I thanked my cousin for going out of her way to bring me that spare. "You know how it goes," she told me, "If I didn't have a spare for you, they wouldn't have delivered it until next week."

So I can get my internet fix the kids can do their internet research now. Blogs can be read and posted The kids can type papers. And we can return to our regularly scheduled surfing educational activities.