Is there an echo in here?...

You know you've said something a million times when you hear it coming from the mouths of your children. This is usually funny, like yesterday when Riley asked Cadence to leave her alone in the bedroom because she needed "a piece of quiet." Not so funny when I hear myself saying things my mother said, but I catch those phrases and weed them out as often as possible.

Today I accidentally deleted the recycle bin from my computer desktop. Not a completely uncommon thing, and I'm wondering why an operating system that's supposed to be so dummy-proof even allows you to do something like delete your recycle bin. I'm not a computer idiot, but I've screwed up my computer more than a couple of times with an accident. One click and your computer no longer works properly. Nice programming.

Anyway, I deleted the recycle bin and realizing what I'd done and that I wasn't sure how to fix it without looking it up, I said under my breath, "Well that was good, you dumbass." I thought I was quiet enough, but Cadence heard me and began the lecture. "You're not dumb, Mama. We don't say bad things like that about anyone, even ourselves." I don't know how many times I've said that exact thing to my kids. It was funny, but it also made me proud that my little lessons about life aren't falling on deaf ears.

10 Things My Kids Learned From Dad...

.. or "Reasons Not to Leave the Kids With a Redneck Ex-Marine Dad All Afternoon" :

1) Hogtying is an art.

2) Old bike innertubes make great slingshots.

3) Cats do not like duct tape.

4) Grubs are abundant when you dig.

5) Grubs make good bait and keep a long time in the refrigerator.

6) Napalm is easy to make.

7) Anything burns with napalm.

8) An air-powered pellet gun produces enough force to penetrate a metal car door.

9) Three sheets of 1/2 inch insulating foam board will support a child's weight in a pond.

10) Coca Cola makes the best burps.


Gotta love dad :)

While I'm in online ordering mode...

I've been hunting around online for a history/social studies curriculum for the kids. We've been ignoring the social studies books so far because they're lame and I have issues with the subject matter. The district curriculum starts in first grade with cities and road signs, then moves through the next four grades with states, government, the revolution, then the Roman Empire. Anyone else see a huge flaw in order here? I get the idea of starting with where you live and moving outward, but wouldn't it be easier to learn history chronologically?

For example, I'd rather my kids learn about government AFTER they understand why our government is structured this way. I'd rather save the revolution until they can read and comprehend the constitution. There are way too many people in America who are content to bend over and take it from the government because they don't understand in the slightest what the government's role is supposed to be. I believe we would not be where we are if more people understood how little England had to push before we told them to piss off. Most people have no idea at all the real meaning of words like "freedom" and "liberty."

Whoa, I digress. A lot. Anyway, I'm looking at chronological history. I've heard good things about Story of the World, and while we're quite capable of supplementing text with books from the library, I get the idea that's all this program is based on. Here's the general idea, now go learn about it somewhere else. Honestly if I was going to do that, I don't even need their "textbook." Since I'm really after an unschooly approach to history, it would probably be better if I did that anyway. I'm also concerned about religious material worming its way in. Religion is a big part of history and I'm okay with that, but I'd rather not have a Christian biased history. I guess I'll keep looking.

In the meantime, I'm ordering Saxon math materials for Chad next year. I'm debating on Cadence's math curriculum because I think she'd be bored and burnt out with the constant practice that Saxon demands. But right now she's using a program based mostly on manipulatives and workbook pages, which she just zips through and asks for more. She enjoys this, but I don't feel she's getting a lot from it. It takes her a bit to understand new concepts, so I'm reluctant to just move her ahead.

All this would be no problem whatsoever if I wasn't so terrified to design our own curriculum. I really want to homeschool in a relaxed and guided (rather than structured) manner, but I'm afraid I'll screw it up. I don't know everything. I'm a disorganized mess and have a lot of doubts about my ability to research the necessary stuff and present it to the kids. And I'm worried about the whole portfolio thing and how that relates to a non-text curriculum. Am I seriously supposed to list every friggin online resource, library book, workbook or project we've used the entire year? I'm afraid of the kind of organization that would require. I know I can do it, but it scares the crap out of me.

So, until I get the balls for that kind of schooling, I'll just keep looking for the right curriculum.

What I was gonna do today...

Things I was going to do today:

1) Clean off the computer desk, throw out old mail (yes, I'm one of those people), move out desk and everything on it, vacuum.

2) Go shopping for new desk, most likely the cheap kind that will fall apart in a few years, that way I'll be sure it matches everything else in the house.

3) Visit the library. It was Tuesday after all.

4) Organize my pan cupboard. The weirdest thing happens to my pans. I put them away in nice little stacks and after about a month it looks like an oversized junk drawer. Like that closet on Zaboomafoo, you open the door and tons of stuff just falls out everywhere. Ridiculous.

5) Measure the girls' room, design a bookshelf/toy cupboard, and compile a list of supplies needed. Make Vic build it.


Things I actually did today:

1) Caught a stomach bug, or something, complete with massive headache and overall ickiness.

2) Got an early visit from Aunt Flo, who was almost a week late last time. This kind of inconsistency has never happened before. Since I was 11, excluding pregnancies, I've been 28 and 1/2 days. Almost to the hour. I'm not sure what to think of it. Add some cramps and some more ickiness.

3) Lounged on the couch and whined a lot. The kids made their own dinner of pb&j and I didn't even feel guilty. I don't know what Vic ate, nor do I care much. I slept through dinner.

Now I'm awake at midnight, having slept most of the evening. Yuck. I'm hoping the stomach thing might actually be a menstrual side effect so the kids don't come down with it. I'm feeling a lot better now, after my stomach has settled and I've chased the cramps away with Merlot and about half a bottle of ibuprofen (ow! my liver!), so I'm hoping to attack all that stuff tomorrow. If all goes well, I won't have to add "Clean up kid vomit" to that list.

My seed order is in...

I just finished ordering seeds from High Mowing Seed Company. I'm excited about trying a new tomato this year and very much looking forward to the awesome lettuce I've become used to through the summer. This is the third year I've ordered from them, and have always been quite satisfied with the number of viable plants and the quality of the produce.

Well, that's not entirely true. Last year I ordered corn and was pissed when the plants only grew about 5ft tall, with about 1-1/2 inch stalks. We had a wonderfully sunny summer, which corn loves. I'd fertilized and adjusted soil pH in my terribly acidic yard. I watered every other day. We got plenty of corn, an average of 2 ears per stalk, and it tasted wonderful, but I was positive it would have been so much better if it had grown properly. When I visited their website to order my seeds this time, I intended to get a different type of corn and read each description carefully.

Turns out I'm just too used to Iowa. Most of the corn we grow here is feed corn for animals or "factory" corn for things like cornmeal, oil, syrup, etc. I was unaware that the corn I got last year was only supposed to get 5ft tall, not 6-7 like the corn around here on a good year. Not all corn grows like Jack's beanstalk and gets a whopping 3 inches thick. Who knew? So I went ahead and ordered the same stuff as last year. It did have great flavor after all.

Chad is a soil hound too, but this time he's getting his plants from Four Seasons Nursery. I'm trying to talk him out of about half his list, since they're trees or bushes and we just don't have the yard space. He's planning on getting a dwarf blueberry bush, supposedly able to live in a pot. I'm really really hoping that's true. I'm not a fan of peppers or onions (or lots of other icky crunchy vegetable-y things), so I only grow boring predictable stuff. This year I'm planting the corn of course, and slicing tomatoes, leaf lettuce, pie pumpkins and basil. I actually have tons of dried basil from two years ago, but I love the smell of flowering basil. It's a wonderful, thick smell but hangs only near the plant, so it doesn't overpower the whole yard. I plant it all along the border of my porch and along the side of the house. I also ordered some flowers for the front yard. Anyone else have a garden? What are you growing this year?

More backyard wildlife...

Last night, Chad came in the back door excitedly telling me there was a huge animal that had walked through our back yard into the nieghbor's yard. The last time he saw a "huge animal," he claimed it was a bear. No, insisted it was a bear, even though I was pretty clear about where bears live, which isn't in little towns in Iowa. Not even towns as little as ours. The last time, it was just a raccoon, and we've become pretty acquainted with them since then.

So, wondering which neighbor's dog had escaped, I took a flashlight and went out back. Nothing in our yard. Nothing in the neighbor's either. We walked around the front of the neighbors tall wooden fence and there around the corner was an animal alright. Its eyes were reflecting the light from the flashlight, but that's all I could see of it. I looked at it. It looked at me. We stood like that for a long time until I finally sent Chad in for the big Maglite. I'd probably been standing there, 20 feet from this thing for 5 minutes by the time we got a good light on him. And it wasn't a neighbor's dog.

It was a bobcat.

I backed up a bit, but not far. It was really exciting and the kids were crowding in behind me to get a better look. While bobcats aren't outwardly aggressive, I didn't want to give it any reason to feel threatened. After a few minutes, it finally got bored and walked away. I'm going to keep an eye out for it the next couple of nights. I'm hoping I can get a picture!

Four is a magic number...

There's a Bill Cosby comedy bit, I think from Himself, that describes a very long flight with a little boy named Jeffrey. Jeffrey is four years old and tells everyone on the plane, "I'm four years old." During the wedding rehearsal a few weeks ago, the adorable little ring bearer stood shyly by his mother eyeing Cadence by the snack table. Finally he mustered enough courage to approach her, but instead of introducing himself or even saying hello, he said, "You know what? I'm four."

Four is apparently a very important age. Most four year olds will tell you their age repeatedly, in case you forgot. Riley turned four yesterday and spent the entire day saying, "Now I'm four." Not, "It's my birthday," nothing about presents or cake - other than to ask when we'd have them, and only once all day - nothing about being bigger or asking when others' birthdays would be. Nope. Just, "Now I'm four." It's a big deal.

We never make a huge deal out of birthdays here. No Chuck E Cheese or rented hotel rooms or parties at the water park. The presents don't total more than $50 usually. Thankfully this time, the idea of turning four was way more important than presents anyway. Next month, I'll be 30. You can bet your ass I'll be counting on some presents. ;)

Digital cameras...

I mentioned before that I'm planning to buy a digital camera. I had one picked out, but now I'm starting to wonder if I should be more careful in my choosing. Does it matter how many megapixels it has? Is price just a matter of brand or does it reflect quality? Are there brands I should avoid for some reason? If my new computer is an HP, and the photo software I have is HP, should I get an HP camera too? This is becoming a bigger decision that I would have liked.

I really just want a stupid camera. Is there anything that fits just what I'm looking for?

-I'm not planning to submit anything to National Geographic. I just want to take pictures of my regular life.
-I don't want to email pictures the size of Canada to all my family members (Hello, family members and friends? Do you know how annoying it is to have to scroll down and over just to view pictures of your cat?), but I also don't want the picture quality to entirely suck.
-I don't want to hold the button down for 10 seconds before the camera takes the picture, and some sort of motion-correcting capabilities would be nice.
-I don't need to take thousands of pictures before I empty the memory, but it would be nice if I could take more than 50.
-I don't want to spend more money that I have to, but I also don't want something that will break by the third time I use it.
-I'd rather avoid a camera that requires a bunch of attachments to get the pictures from the camera to the computer, or anywhere else.

Any ideas?

The strangest thing happened...

We took the kids to a Des Moines restaurant called Ohana, a teppanyaki restaurant where they cook your food on a grill right at your table. You share a table with other diners unless you have a really large party - I think each table seats 10. They flip knives around and throw stuff, it's very cool. Until this time, this restaurant has been "our" place, meaning neither Vic or I have taken a date there before we were married. Silly, but sometimes silly things are still special. Finally though, our desire to share such a neat place with the kids overcame our silly possessiveness of the restaurant.

While we were waiting for our table, we sat in the lounge next to a biker-type guy with a bandanna on his head, his trashy looking female counterpart, and two young girls. When my daughters crowded around Vic for hugs and kisses, just because, this trailer park family giggled and whispered and hung all over each other saying, "Oh I LOVE you!" in mockery. I guess they thought there was something weird about parent/child affection? When they called our names, we learned we would be sharing a table with Trailer Park Family, and the mom whispered (loudly) to the biker dude, "Great, we get to share a table with the happy family with their little kids." (Hello, Bitch, I can hear you.) I centered myself and refused to let them ruin our meal, even though my first impulse was to punch her.

Vic and I had just been to this restaurant last weekend while the kids overnighted with Grandma and had been disappointed with our chef. He was kinda boring and his jokes weren't very funny and well, he was kind of a jerk. There was a drunk lady harassing him, so that may have had something to do with it. Either way, you can imagine how I felt when I saw the same chef pushing his little cart our to our table on our kids' first trip to this really neat place. Throughout the introductions and preparation of the appetizer, we learned Trailer Park Family consisted of Mom and daughters, 10 and 12, and stand-in boyfriend biker guy. The chef asked some I-really-don't-care questions about school and classes and stuff and the girls responded in the normal way: school kinda sucks, favorite "classes" are recess and lunch, not very good at any subject, etc. Then he turned to my kids and asked what grade they were in. "We homeschool," I told him. He looked uncomfortable, and I almost cringed when he said, "...Oh."

He said, "Um.. I don't want to be rude or anything, but.. well.. are you homeschooling because you don't believe in evolutionary theory?" I almost laughed. "Oh no," I said, "We're not homeschooling for religious reasons if that's what you're asking." He smiled and said, "So you homeschool because the current school system, based on an outdated institutional structure, fails to produce anything but moderately literate individuals incapable of independent thought..." he went on and on like this. I was dumbstruck. "Yeah, that's the one," I said finally. He asked my kids a thousand questions, and when Chad told him his favorite subject was science, the chef turned his cart sideways to show us a sticker that said "Talk Nerdy To Me," and rattled on about the best science magazines and books. He was delighted that we owned some Azimov and told us to look for some of his non-fiction publications because they were fascinating (which I will definitely do). Trailer Park Family squirmed a lot and chatted amongst themselves, and finally started making rude comments like, "I think I fell asleep for a second there." The Chef ignored them and continued serving food and chatting with us. He even went into significant detail about a teaching theory he'd read about, the name of the book, and the basics of the theory, finishing with, "See, I'm homeschooled too, only I'm homeschooling myself."

When we left our table, Chad and Cadence had to stop at the bathroom and Vic took Riley to get the car. I stood at the bar waiting for my older kids, and our chef was there talking to some of the other employees. He told me to keep up the good work, that what Vic and I are doing for our kids is a great thing, and that he doesn't often see such well-adjusted, intelligent kids as ours. I felt so great when we left that place. I know I'm doing the right thing for my kids. I know they're well-adjusted and intelligent. But since most of the feedback we get from family and people we come into contact with every day is negative or completely uninterested, it's great to get some compliments sometimes. We'll be returning to this restaurant with our children, and we might just ask for this chef again.

Ahhh...

Well it finally happened and my barely-hanging-on computer went caput. I was checking some blogs and mail with an old computer, but the keyboard port is broken on that one so no typing for me. Why do I have all these broken computers???

The tax return I've been waiting and waiting and waiting for finally came on Friday, so after the major bills and stuff were paid, we went computer shopping. Now I'm typing this on a brand spanking new keyboard with no missing keys, attached to a brand spanking new computer with Windows Vista. I'm having a hard time adjusting to Vista, but I think I'll live. I've never had a new computer before. Every computer I've ever owned has been either a hand-me-down from a friend or relative who replaced theirs or a discount rebuild from one of those shady rebuilt computer places. I can't even tell you how excited I am!

It's reeeally late here and I should be in bed but couldn't resist the peace and quiet of sleeping family members enabling me to type without distraction. I've been using that laptop with missing keys for so long I actually had to re-learn how to type properly. The space bar on the laptop was just a tiny plunger thingy, so I had been pushing it with an index finger - hard- for every space. It's a miracle I ever typed anything at all really. Now I'm having to train my index finger away from the space bar and teach my thumb to find it again. Funny how a few months of impairment have screwed up years of 70+ wpm.

Tomorrow I'm going shopping for a digital camera. It's like Christmas, only better since most of the new stuff is for me instead of everyone else. Hope everyone had a great weekend

Grandma's Spaghetti Sauce...

Tonight we had the rare treat of Grandma's Special Spaghetti and Meatballs. My grandmother made the best spaghetti sauce ever, and I've spent the last 10 years trying to recreate her "secret" recipe. It's still subject to some tweaking, but here's my base recipe:

2 quarts tomato juice
2 cans (14.5oz) diced tomatoes
1/2 cup chopped onions
2 cloves chopped garlic
1 tsp each- basil, oregano, salt and rosemary
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/2 lb ground beef
1/2 lb ground breakfast sausage
1 cup cracker crumbs
2 eggs
2 tbsp cooking oil

Dump the tomato juice, diced tomatoes, spices, onions, garlic and brown sugar in a large pot. Bring to a gentle boil, reduce heat and simmer (here's the kicker) 3-4 hours, stirring occasionally. When the sauce cooks down to a nice thickness, mix the ground beef, sausage, cracker crumbs and eggs in a mixing bowl (use your hands, it's more fun). Preheat a skillet with the cooking oil on medium heat. Roll meat mixture into 2 inch balls and fry, rolling around often to brown all sides, until cooked through. Drain off grease and dump meatballs into the sauce. Simmer another 15 minutes while you get your noodles together. By the time this cooks down, it's about 8 pretty generous servings. (?? I really have no clue??) We always have seconds.

I always add things every time I stir this sauce, mostly salt and brown sugar. However I'm a salt-hound, and a lover of sweet sauces, which may not apply to everyone. We scraped our leftovers into the bowl outside for the critters. Skittish was here early tonight and got the best of the offering, and let me tell you there's not much funnier than a raccoon eating spaghetti.

I'm an UNschooler...

Ok, I'm uschoolISH. Don't ask for a definition, I just don't have one. We dual-enroll, so we have books, we just don't use them much. We do book work for math and we read, read, read and we watch lots of educational programs and we learn from lots of other areas. A few weeks ago, I bitched to a local homeschool group about our reviewing teacher. When we started out, our choices were slim and I didn't know how to find a supervising teacher. An internet search brought me to the Network of Iowa Christian Home Educators, or NICHE. Great and all, but we're not Christian home educators.

I was clear with the teacher I chose that we were secular and unschool-leaning. She assured me that she'd worked for many years with many different types of homeschoolers. That first year, she suggested several religion-based homeschool textbooks, saying, "I know you're secular, but..." The second year when we decided to use the portfolio option instead of testing, she lectured me about including something that proved my son had learned grammar and sentence structure, proper writing technique, and a tape-recording of his reading. We hadn't studied sentence structure or grammar outside of the normal common-sense stuff. Most people speak with correct grammar by the time they're five, so writing this way is not difficult. Do we really need to break it down to nouns, verbs and adjectives, and discuss the proper tense? Do we really need to learn things like subject and predicate? I can honestly say in my entire adult life, I've never used the word "predicate" until this teacher required we include it in our portfolio. Chad is a reluctant writer, and pushing and forced writing activities only strengthen that reluctance. And what the hell does reading aloud prove? I can barely read Dr. Suess aloud without stumbling a bit, and saying "the" instead of "a" or something similar. He would lose points for every misread word, and he was then at the point of reading several 5th grade level books per week silently - big words and all.

So I cheated. I printed a couple stupid worksheets about parts of speech and subjects and predicates and I actually stood over my son while he did them. I briefly explained each worksheet and then asked him to answer aloud before writing the answer. If he was wrong, I simply told him the answer and we moved on. These cheated worksheets were my examples of his grammar lessons, and if he remembered any of that stuff longer than five minutes, he's doing better than most kids in public school as far as I'm concerned. Considering newspapers and the like are written at a 4th or 5th grade reading level, the fact that anything harder shows up on his reading list is a pretty good example of his reading progress. We picked a reading selection without too many multi-syllable words for him to read aloud, and I let him practice reading those two pages for almost half an hour before we recorded it. When we recorded, I let him run the machine, and if he misread or didn't like the way something sounded, he rewound and recorded again. The whole thing left me feeling icky and wrong, but it satisfied the teacher, and I was hoping once we were past all that silly grammar stuff it would not have to be repeated this year.

I was wrong. I just received a letter from our reviewing teacher, sealed with a sticker showing a sweet little boy praying and the word "Faithfulness" across the top. Ugh. The letter states her requirements for portfolio content as:

1. Results of baseline tests (this doesn't apply to us)
2. lesson plans, diary or written record of planning overview. (we don't plan, we just learn)
3. Outline of curriculum used (umm...)
4. Samples of work in each subject area: Reading, Math, Language, for grades 6+ add social studies and science (we have a reading list and math work, but language? .. I'm also concerned about next year and how the hell I'm supposed to prove he learned social studies and science? A list of videos and field trips?)
5. Any grades, assessments, written reports, test results, etc. (we do none of this)
6. A list of books read (covered)
7. A cassette tape of the child reading aloud (wtf? Why?!?)

I'm starting to think this woman doesn't understand the meaning of "unschooling," nor does she appreciate the benefits, obviously. I'm shopping for a new reviewing teacher this week for the next school year. I'll also spend the week making a fake lesson plan for the year and pretending I have a clue what days we did or did not "do school." Traditional school uses the same methods to prove learning as they do to teach. I'm not teaching my children to pass tests, I'm teaching them what they need to learn, in any way they need to learn it. So how the hell am I supposed to prove learning that isn't done simply to pass a test? I do not want to misrepresent my kids' progress and feel like a huge cheating loser for this, but I'm at a loss on a better way to handle it at this point.

The Princess and fifteen minutes of fame...

I'm late posting this because of the crazy week we've been having, and because I'm apparently too dumb to figure out how to get pictures uploaded to blogger. I think I've finally mastered it now, thank goodness, so I can finally share more than boring stories with you nice folks. I digress.

The wedding went completely without a hitch, aside from the nasty weather we had. The crazy photographer insisted on getting a few outside pictures, with the poor bride and her seven bridesmaids suffering sleeveless in 30 degree temperatures. Cadence got to wear a tiara and said, "I look just like a princess!" She was so excited and went about mothering the ring bearer, something she does with everyone smaller than herself, telling him where to stand and holding his hand right along with her basket as they walked down the aisle. We had to be at the church early to get ready for pictures, and there were some incredibly sweet shots of Cadence and the ring bearer exchanging cheek-kisses (which were quickly wiped off, of course) that I can't wait to get copies of from my friend.

Here's Cadence before the wedding:

You can't really see the pretty beading and lace on the dress because this was a disposable camera, and I'm still using my scanner, but you can believe it was gorgeous. Her hair is incredibly fine and is normally straight as a stick, so she wore about half a can of hair spray. Here she is waiting to go upstairs for "the show.":

I didn't scan any pics including the rest of the wedding party, since I have no permission to post pics of anybody but my own little family. I'm so proud of my beautiful little brown-eyed princess, and we had a wonderful time with lots of wonderful memories.

The drive home was treacherous and crazy, with sleet and snow and about 4 inches of slushy slick stuff all over the roads. This was the worst storm in several years, but we made it home ok and all got to bed on time - a blessing since the lack of sleep the night before made my kids all a little crazy (and me along with them!).

The Flower Girl and the Rehearsal...

A few weeks ago, I got a formal invitation to the rehearsal dinner following my friend's wedding rehearsal. I've been a bridesmaid in two weddings, but had never gotten an official invitation before. I was impressed.

The rehearsal took way longer than it should have, and poor Cadence was a nervous wreck wondering where to stand and when to walk and how fast. The ring bearer is four, cute as a bug, and he loved Cadence from the second he saw her. He insisted on holding her hand, even though during the actual wedding, Cadence is supposed to hold a basket.

SEVEN bridesmaids and groomsmen. Seven. There was barely room at the altar.

The whole time I felt completely out of place. I had every right to be right where my daughter was, yet I'm not part of the actual wedding party this time. This is Cadence's glory, but it's not really HER wedding. Is it ok to let her think it was her special day anyway? I've been telling her things like, "It's A's wedding, but you're gonna look like the princess and everyone will talk about how cute you are." I'm trying to psyche her up a bit. When she was asked to do this, she agreed but wasn't excited - I discovered later she just had no idea what a flower girl IS, so she didn't know how neat it was. Or how special to be asked.

The dinner was at a pretty nice restaurant and Cadence ordered a burger that was so huge it had to be smooshed to fit in her mouth. When I asked if she liked it, she said, "It's okay. Not at all like McDonalds." She didn't eat much of the burger because this alien child of mine likes salad and had filled up on her first course.

All the kids were up well past their bedtimes tonight. We're supposed to get a bunch of snow tomorrow, so I hope we can make it to pictures on time. I'm so excited for Cadence and can't wait to get some great pictures of her and the wedding tomorrow.

My wedding...

Over the summer, a friend of mine asked Cadence to be the flower girl in her wedding this spring. Cadence has been so excited, asking almost every day how many days were left until the wedding. Our part in the planning has been very minimal: we showed up at the dress shop, Cadence tried on dresses till she found one she and the bride both liked, we went home. We bought some shoes at Payless last month and they've sat on a shelf since. Easy peasy. I'm hearing the usual stuff from the bride, like messes with caterers, arguments with people, dresses and tuxes and all that. I'm telling you all this because the wedding is this weekend, and today I've been thinking of my own wedding.

Vic and I were on again off again the entire time we dated. We were currently broken up when I discovered I was pregnant, and fought for almost two months over whether we should be together. Somewhere we reconciled, and I really can't even remember the details, but I moved in with him and his parents. (About the dumbest thing I ever did.) We got engaged, mostly because that's what his parents thought we should do. We applied for a marriage license. I bought a wedding dress from a second-hand store. We bought a bridal ring set. Then we decided to wait until at least after the baby was born. What if we didn't love each other at all and just wanted to get married because we "should"? I really loved him, but with all those breakups and makeups I wasn't sure marriage was a good idea. He wasn't sure either, and by the time I was 4 months pregnant, he'd signed up for the Marines and shipped off to boot camp.

Now it might have seemed like a terrible situation doomed to fail, as many stories we've all heard. Sure, he'll marry you when he comes home. Sure, you'll wait for him. Whatever, right? He DID write a letter to an ex-girlfriend while in boot camp, saying how "confused" he was. I DID have lots of fun with my friends and very much enjoyed being away from him. But I loved him, and the longer he was away, and the more letters we exchanged, the more I missed him.

Chad was due two weeks after Vic's graduation, but decided to come early - a week and a half before he left boot camp. When I met Vic in the airport with a tiny bundle of baby, he declared he wanted to get married in his two weeks of leave before shipping off to more training. I was overwhelmed, but also completely swept away with love for him and our new son. I was 19 and immature and knew nothing of the world, but I wanted to marry this man.

That afternoon, a call to the courthouse told us our previously-applied-for marriage license expired in THREE DAYS. It was Thursday. If we reapplied, we'd have to wait two weeks for a new one, and in two weeks Vic would be flying to North Carolina. We frantically called every minister we could think of, but they were all booked. Finally we found one, a kindly older pastor who had also married both my brothers-in-law to their wives. He had church service on Sunday and a funeral on Saturday he said, "But I can do it tomorrow." "Umm.." I stumbled, "Well, that will have to do." It was 6pm. Our wedding was scheduled at 5pm the following day.

The wedding dress I'd held on to since we got engaged no longer fit, since when I bought it I wasn't planning to wear it 11 days after giving birth. I borrowed a nice white dress from my (very)soon-to-be mother in law - one of those she'd kept since she was 20 for the day she's skinny enough to wear it again. It wasn't beautiful and was slightly out of style, but it did just fine. We had no caterer. No flowers. About 50 guests we'd called that night. ("Wanna come to our wedding? It's tomorrow.") We bought Vic's wedding band from a department store. My uncle made a cake and my grandmother cleaned out her basement for the reception. (Pretty good for Betty Crocker, some food coloring, and decorations from the party supply store, eh?) We had no bridesmaids or groomsmen and Vic wore his dress uniform, convenient since he didn't own even a nice suit. Isn't he dashing?My father was out of town working, so my father-in-law walked me down the little aisle. It was windy as hell, my mother got embarassingly drunk while I - nursing a newborn - drank 7up, and it rained all the way home. There was no fun wedding night sex, since we were sharing a twin bed in my mom's house and with Chad's birth and the subsequent 6 stitches, I was in no shape for it.My friends have expressed sympathy for not having a dream wedding, but I could not have asked for anything more special. My family came together for me, preparing the reception with food and cake and plenty of champagne. The wedding gifts were numerous and fantastic, despite the short notice. Our entire wedding cost $375, not several thousand. I still got married, which was the point, and it didn't have to cost a lot. Considering the length of the average marriage, I don't know why anyone would want to spend thousands of dollars anyway. Ten years later, my $375 has been a wonderful investment.

Wildlife in our yard...

If I had that digital camera I'm jonesing for, it would be a lot easier to share pictures of our little world. For now, I'm stuck with scanning pics with my crappy printer/scanner. Bear with me on the photo quality, but I wanted to share our outdoor pets with you.

A few months ago, we spent every morning cleaning garbage up in our front yard because neighborhood animals got into our trash can. Since we couldn't get out right away to buy a garbage can with a lid, we decided to bribe them away from the can with readily available food. We placed a large plastic bowl outside the back door and started filling it with food items we'd normally throw away. Pizza crusts, melon rinds, egg shells, stale bread and crackers, etc. Not only were we helping out some animals that would normally be hard-up for food this time of year, but there was no longer food in our garbage can to tempt them into ripping into the bags. It's all in the bowl.

It took only two nights before the animals found it, and started making a nightly trek to our back door. It's a sliding glass double-door, so we get a fantastic view of the animals when they visit. Vic started putting a bowl of water out for them too. Within a week, we had a pair of opossums and a pair of raccoons visiting nightly. As is traditional for children, mine named our new "pets." The opossums are Hammer and Bob. We have no pictures of either, and they've recently stopped visiting since it's been so cold.

This is the larger raccoon, Scruff (with a nice reflection from the back door glass):



This is the smaller raccoon, Skittish:



Scruff posing for the camera:



This morning we had a new visitor, a squirrel that's missing a large amount of fur on his back. He will henceforth be known as Baldy the Squirrel. Baldy has altered many of my beliefs on squirrel diets by happily munching on rice and french fries. I'm looking forward to this summer and what new animals might find their way into my back yard.

Adventures in cooking...

I've recently become addicted to Eggs Benedict. I decided to try it a few weeks ago while out with my friends for breakfast. I can't believe I never ate eggs benedict before. I wasn't too impressed with it, but I was convinced it was the hollandaise sauce. Cheapo restaurant hollandaise comes frozen in a box and is thick and orange with very little flavor. Some people think hollandaise is a cheese sauce because the only exposure they've ever had was the thick orangey stuff. There is no cheese in hollandaise sauce. If you've never had it at an upscale restaurant or made it yourself, y'all are missing out.

I happen to make an awesome hollandaise sauce, despite the fact that I have so many cooking shortcomings. Recipes vary, but this is how I make mine:

8 Tbsp butter
1 Tbsp lemon juice
3 egg yolks, slightly beaten
dash red pepper flakes

Melt butter in a stainless steel saucepan. Add lemon juice and heat until steamy but not boiling. Remove from heat. Whisk in egg yolks in very small amounts, about a tablespoon or so at a time. Dump, whisk, dump, whisk, until all egg yolks are combined. Return to very low heat and whisk constantly until slightly thickened. You don't want it to clump because the egg yolk is what holds it all together. If the egg starts cooking and clumping, you'll end up with egg clumps and oil, instead of a smooth beautiful sauce. Serve immediately, garnished with a light sprinkling of red pepper flakes. This sauce is great on eggs of course, the traditional steamed asparagus, and just about any other vegetable.

Through my internet wanderings yesterday, I stumbled upon The Science of Cooking, where the process of emulsification is explained with this sauce. This website also has lots of other great experiments with food to explain other scientific concepts. I can see this being a great resource for us in the future.

Looking forward to a change...

Today schoolwork has been light. I must have slept in a very strange position because my neck is stiff and sore today. I find it difficult to look down to the desk or my lap, so I didn't write any lesson plans or read a single word from a book. Since the computer screen is level with the eye, I did finish some worksheets and test forms I'd been working on.

We've been dealing with a lot of tax issues lately. Somehow, the state claims they've not received taxes from us since 2002 - for the 2001 tax year. '02 and '03 we used a tax service, so they were no-brainers and unless there's a mail goblin eating mail for the last several years, I don't understand why they don't have anything. The guy I talked to on the phone was a jerk, and he suggested refiling. So we got to file 4 years of taxes. Again. Luckily, we still had our copies, but since I didn't want to send them copies of our copies, I printed the old forms from the internet and filled them out all over again.

We are expecting a rather large tax return from federal this year, which ought to cover some other past-due taxes and penalties for "not filing", and give us money left over. I hope it's not the source of an argument, but I had plans for a new computer, a digital camera and a vacuum. Vic plans on getting new tires for the car and a new window for our bathroom. He'll win, since his plans are for more important things. But I'd really really REALLY like to stop using this POS laptop that's missing three keyboard buttons.

New blog in my blogroll...

Following a lead from COD, I found Two Know It Alls blog.

They're homeschoolers, atheists, and libertarian.

I can already tell they're brilliant.

Violence in schools...

The occurrence of school violence is not at all uncommon knowledge, certainly among homeschoolers. The reaction from the parent of the public schooler is probably different than that of the homeschooling parent. While my public schooling friends would shake their heads and mumble, "What is this world coming to?", people like me shake our heads and say, "Thank goodness we homeschool."

A news report (albeit badly written, as always on this particular news website) I read this morning got me thinking. Particularly this part:

Although incidents of deadly school attacks have gotten a lot of media attention
in recent years, assaults like the one at McCombs middle school have not.
Victim advocates say they happen more often than people think.

So, what you're saying is, we hear all kinds of horrible stories about violence in public schools, but only when someone is killed? What we're not hearing are stories of thwarted murder attempts, students who are simply injured by weapons, sexual assaults and rapes in the locker rooms, or physical assaults resulting in only bruises or possibly a missing tooth or two.

So what are we really dealing with here? A deficient society that is numb to violence? A deficient school system unwilling to handle discipline issues? Maybe even a conspiracy to keep the public unaware of how bad that system has become? A combination of things?

*shakes head* Thank goodness I homeschool.