05.18.08
Posted in The nuts and bolts of it at 6:53 pm by Meg
Hubby took Girl and one of her friends to a Panic at the Disco concert this evening. (She just about flipped when he offered to take them) and Boy is working on a section of Calculus (he has 5 left to finish in the next week and I suggested that getting one done this weekend would be a good idea).
So I’m sitting here trying to avoid installing new faucets in the hall bath. I bought the faucets yesterday and I want them installed before my in-laws get here and we have a houseful for Boy’s graduation party, but actually getting them in - well maybe later.
I need to do it though. The hall bath has a double sink which has been real nice since we’d had the left-hand one taped off since Girl’s birthday party. It drips - badly - I’ve changed the canister about 4 times in the last 9 years that we’ve been in here and the last time I changed it was only about 6 months ago. I’m thinking that it’s time to replace the faucet.
Now the drip is annoying but it does have a sweet spot that will make it nearly stop, but the other problem is something in the drain stopper mechanism. We’re constantly working on getting this sink to drain out fully. So…. if you don’t put the dripping faucet in the sweet spot, the drain will back up and the sink could overflow. Not a great combination with a house full of guests - hence why we taped it off for the party and now I’m going to fix it. Yeah, me - I do most of the household type repairs around here.
Anyway, since I’m avoiding a task that could be straightforward or could keep me frustrated for a few hours, I thought I’d look ahead to what we are planning for next year.
For Boy - NOTHING - what a strange feeling. He needs to be in San Antonio on August 22 - I have that date memorized!
For Girl - she’ll be a freshman, amazing.
Languages - her favorites -
- French - We’ve finished the third, and last, book in the program that we’ve been doing. I thinking that for next year we’ll work on reading French novels. We’ve been picking some up and it will help her improve further and keep it fresh.
- Japanese - We’ll be ready to start the second book, so we’ll just keep going.
- Spanish - She now had two tastes of Spanish - a class in New Mexico as part of a formal homeschool co-op and then last year with our local group (much more informal co-op). The first teacher spoke Spanish as a fluent second language and the teacher this past year is an immigrant from Colombia. But between a bunch of different things, she’s decided to take Spanish at the local high school. They allow one class for homeschoolers and while her first choice was Latin, the time that was available (10:45 - 12:45 with a lunch break in the middle) was not practical. Spanish is first period of the day, UGH - but less impact on our day.
History - She wants something focusing on Japanese history. We may try to make it into a more World History overview, but then take most of the year for Japan - Or we may try to do both. Haven’t really wrapped my brain around this one.
English - Pretty much more of the same. Read good books, read from an anthology so she’ll get introduced to authors that she might not find otherwise, write papers, and do a little grammar. The heavy focus on grammar and spelling will be gone.
Math - I think she’ll be heading into geometry next, but I know she and Hubby haven’t finished their C++ book and so I expect she’ll continue working on that as well.
Science - Biology with labs - not too much surprising here. We’ll basically follow the same lab sequence (scroll down to the science section) that I did with her brother. I have invited a few kids to join us for labs because it’s more fun with friends to share and it will help to keep me on schedule - otherwise it’s too easy to bump lab time to the end of the day.
Extras - At this point, I’m not sure.
- One of the other high school parents is talking about holding a weekly workshop group focused on World Issues. Girl isn’t so thrilled with the idea, but C did a Government workshop this year that everyone tells me was great, and it will be a chance for Girl to hang out with friends, so I may have her try it.
- Music - She’ll probably continue with the flute/piano lessons
- Martial arts - She will continue taking these classes
- Drama - Some of the kids want me to do another play. I’m fully on the fence and don’t plan on making any decision until October or so.
- Volunteering - We have a local children’s museum that she has indicated that she wants to volunteer at, but it’s taken weeks for her to ask the three people she needs for references and now she needs to turn in the application.
Not too shabby. For purchases we’re looking at the Japanese book, whatever Japanese history comes down to, and restocking biology supplies (including dissection specimens). Hopefully that means it will be a lite cost year.
And Boy’s now done with Calculus, so I better get to work.
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05.15.08
Posted in Life, the Universe and All that Jazz at 4:20 pm by Meg
Some people might say I can’t and other’s will tell you it’s my natural state.
The Thinking homeschoolers’ self-service carnival topic is suppose to be about a sound, smell, or taste that you find comforting.
I’ve been wracking my brain for a topic and then finally realized that it isn’t a sound, smell, or taste that I find comforting. I mean, I love the smell that comes from working on a horse, or the sound/smells of walking into a barn full of horses on a cold day and it’s toasty warm from the body heat they are giving off.
But it’s a sight I find comforting. It’s the sight of trees, lots and lots of trees, and colors, either all the shades of green that they take on in the spring or the rainbow that comes in the fall.
The first time I realized how comforting the sight is was when we’d come back to the north-east after living in California. I enjoyed the sand-colored hills of California with their dark clumps on trees down in the cracks between them, but I have very clear memories of driving back across country and seeing the heavy, GREEN, trees everywhere and just feeling much much more at home. It just felt right.
And even now, having left California 9 years ago, I watch the trees leaf out through the spring and love it. A drive through the woods or a walk through the woods just clears my head and makes me feel centered and at peace.
It probably goes back to growing up where I did. We owned about 100 acres on the side of a hill and there were two ways to get there. The “main” route was over a neighboring hill and as you crested that hill, you could see the horses’ pasture spread out - half wooded and half open fields. Seeing that spread out when I’d come home from first college and then life, was always the point at which I’d be “home.”
Hubby will tell you that I still love woods and hills.
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Posted in Meme at 3:30 pm by Meg
and I’ve certainly been writing up a storm.
So, I thought it might be time … stolen from Carrie we have 2 word meme…
1. Where is your cell phone? leather purse
2. Where is your significant other? office - working
3. Your hair? brown, short
4. Your mother? amazing, creative
5. Your father? hardworking, opinionated
6. Your favorite thing? family together
7. Your dream last night? don’t remember
8. Your favorite drink? cold coke
9. Your dream/goal? unsure, unclear
10. The room you’re in? long room
11. Your hobby? leatherwork, reading
12. Your fear? hurt child
13. Where you want to be in 6 years? working, traveling
14. Where were you last night? homeschool dinner
15. What you’re not? outgoing, social
16. Muffins? chocolate chip
17. One of your wish list items? paint livingroom
18. Where you grew up? southern tier
19. The last thing you did? dropped kids
20. What are you wearing? jeans, sweatshirt
21. Your TV? mostly off
22. Your pets? sleeping, hairy
23. Your computer? always on
24. Your life? busy, full
25. Your mood? copacetic, peaceful
26. Missing someone? not now
27. Your car? Toyota Sienna
28. Something you’re not wearing? earrings, necklace
29. Favorite store? Barnes/Noble
30. Your summer? busy, travel
31. Like someone? Hubby, kids
32. Your favorite color? always blue
33. When is the last time you laughed? last night
34. Last time you cried? don’t remember
Anyone can tag themselves, but let me know if you decide to do it.
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05.13.08
Posted in Life, the Universe and All that Jazz at 7:47 am by Meg
If you’ve missed it, Jo is back!
I’ve been talking to her irregularly over the last few months and she’s had some major medical stuff going on, but she’s on an upswing and trying to get back to posting regularly.
YEAH!!!
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05.12.08
Posted in Life, the Universe and All that Jazz at 12:16 am by Meg
It’s May 11 - Why am I having to choose between a house with an inside temperature in the mid to low 60s, or turning on my heat???
Is it ever going to warm up and stay warm?
Summer - summer is suppose to be 3 long months where Hubby is working at home, the kids are involved with whatever, and everyone gets to recharge.
June usually gets a little lost between all the 4H stuff, but that’s fine. The kids want to do it and really until the last week, it’s not overwhelming.
July starts with fair week, but then there’s time to lay back, swim, and enjoy summer.
August is when we usually see a bit a family before we get going again with seatwork and Hubby has to go into the office.
This year the calendar is already getting filled up.
Boy has two 4H trips planned - one in June and another in August, plus a long weekend in Buffalo for a June martial arts seminar, plus Gen-Con in August - before he leaves in August - Trinity wants him there on August 22.
He had hoped to get a summer job to save some money for next year - How does this sound? “I can start June 2, but I’ll need two weeks off in June, and I won’t be able to work past Aug 1.” Right, you’d hire him, wouldn’t you?
Well, he was talking about volunteering again at the library and maybe doing something for the democratic party and both of those can be flexible.
Girl goes nuts for fair, so most of her time in June will be filled with project details. But she’ll be helping me with my leather workshops and she wants to work with the reading intervention program that the library runs. She’s done it for the last 2 years and has a lot of fun. They meet twice a week with the same kids and help them. So Monday and Wednesday (either morning or afternoons) needs to be blocked off for that. Plus she’ll do other volunteering there and wants to start volunteering at the Children’s Museum in town.
She and I started looking over a calendar to figure out when she was free and I was available to get her places - there weren’t many open days.
She’ll need me to drive her, because Hubby is having knee surgery in a couple of weeks and I don’t think he’ll be able to drive until at least July.
Once she gets past Fair, Girl’s schedule will slow down, but I know we were talking about a trip to see friends (from Albuquerque who moved) in Ithaca, NY and trying to fit that in - yeah.
And the family was talking about a “last” family trip in July since we didn’t go with Hubby to one of his conferences this year. I guess that will fit in the last two weeks of July….
So June has Boy traveling, both of them volunteering all over the place, and me driving all of us around.
July will be Fair, both of them volunteering, and a family trip somewhere.
August will have Boy busy as can be, a possible trip for Girl and I, and generally getting Boy out the door.
And then summer is gone….
And it’s only the beginning of MAY!
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05.11.08
Posted in Life, the Universe and All that Jazz at 2:31 pm by Meg
I got the picture off of Boy’s camera
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Posted in Life, the Universe and All that Jazz at 10:28 am by Meg
Mothers’ Day Proclamation: Julia Ward Howe, Boston, 1870
Mother’s Day was originally started after the Civil War, as a protest to the carnage of that war, by women who had lost their
sons. Here is the original Mother’s Day Proclamation from 1870, followed by a bit of history:
………………………………..
Arise, then, women of this day! Arise all women who have hearts,
whether our baptism be that of water or of fears!
Say firmly: “We will not have great questions decided by
irrelevant agencies. Our husbands shall not come to us, reeking
with carnage, for caresses and applause. Our sons shall not be
taken from us to unlearn all that we have been able to teach
them of charity, mercy and patience.
We women of one country will be too tender of those of another
country to allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs. From
the bosom of the devastated earth a voice goes up with our own.
It says “Disarm, Disarm! The sword of murder is not the balance
of justice.”
Blood does not wipe our dishonor nor violence indicate possession.
As men have often forsaken the plow and the anvil at the summons
of war, let women now leave all that may be left of home for a
great and earnest day of counsel. Let them meet first, as women,
to bewail and commemorate the dead.
Let them then solemnly take counsel with each other as to the
means whereby the great human family can live in peace, each
bearing after their own time the sacred impress, not of Caesar,
but of God.
In the name of womanhood and of humanity, I earnestly ask that a
general congress of women without limit of nationality may be
appointed and held at some place deemed most convenient and at
the earliest period consistent with its objects, to promote the
alliance of the different nationalities, the amicable settlement
of international questions, the great and general interests of
peace.
Julia Ward Howe
Boston
1870
*************************************************************
Mother’s Day for Peace - by Ruth Rosen.
Honor Mother with Rallies in the Streets.The holiday
began in activism; it needs rescuing from commercialism
and platitudes.
Every year, people snipe at the shallow commercialism of Mother’s Day. But to
ignore your mother on this holy holiday is unthinkable. And if you are a
mother, you’ll be devastated if your ingrates fail to honor you at least one
day of the year.
Mother’s Day wasn’t always like this. The women who conceived Mother’s Day
would be bewildered by the ubiquitous ads that hound us to find that “perfect
gift for Mom.” They would expect women to be marching in the streets, not
eating with their families in restaurants. This is because Mother’s Day began
as a holiday that commemorated women’s public activism, not as a celebration
of a mother’s devotion to her family.
The story begins in 1858 when a community activist named Anna Reeves Jarvis
organized Mothers’ Works Days in West Virginia. Her immediate goal was to
improve sanitation in Appalachian communities. During the Civil War, Jarvis
pried women from their families to care for the wounded on both sides.
Afterward she convened meetings to persuale men to lay aside their
hostilities.
In 1872, Juulia Ward Howe, author of the “Battle Hymn of the Republic”,
proposed an annual Mother’s Day for Peace. Committed to abolishing war, Howe
wrote: “Our husbands shall not come to us reeking with carnage… Our sons
shall not be taken from us to unlearn all that we have been able to teach them
of charity, mercy and patience. We women of one country will be too tender of
those of another country to allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs”.
For the next 30 years, Americans celebrated Mothers’ Day for Peace on June 2.
Many middle-class women in the 19th century believed that they bore a special
responsibility as actual or potential mothers to care for the casualties of
society and to turn America into a more civilized nation. They played a
leading role in the abolitionist movement to end slavery. In the following
decades, they launched successful campaigns against lynching and consumer
fraud and battled for improved working conditions for women and protection for
children, public health services and social welfare assistance to the poor.
To the activists, the connection between motherhood and the fight for social
and economic justice seemed self-evident.
In 1913, Congress declared the second Sunday in May to be Mother’s Day. By
then, the growing consumer culture had successfully redefined women as
consumers for their families. Politicians and businessmen eagerly enbraced
the idea of celebrating the private sacrifices made by individual mothers. As
the Florists’ Review, the industry’s trade jounal, bluntly put it, “This was a
holiday that could be exploited.”
The new advertising industry quickly taught Americans how to honor their
mothers - by buying flowers. Outraged by florists who were seling carnations
for the exorbitant price of $1 apeice, Anna Jarvis’ duaghter undertook a
campaging against those who “would undermine Mother’s Day with their greed.”
But she fought a losing battle. Within a few years, the Florists’ Review
triumphantly announced that it was “Miss Jarvis who was completely squelched.”
Since then, Mother’s Day has ballooned into a billion-dollar industry.
Americans may revere the idea of motherhood and love their own mothers, but
not all mothers. Poor, unemployed rmothers may enjoy flowers, but they also
need child care, job training, health care, a higher minimum wage and paid
parental leave. Working mothers may enjoy breakfast in bed, but they also
need the kind of governmental assistance provided by every other
industrialized society.
With a little imagination, we could restore Mother’s Day as a holiday that
celebrates women’s political engagement in society. During the 1980’s, some
peace groups gathered at nuclear test sites on Mother’s Day to protest the
arms race. Today, our greatest threat is not from missilies but from our
indifference toward human welfare and the health of our planet. Imagine, if
you can, an annual Million Mother March in the nation’s capital. Imagine a
Mother’s Day filled with voices demanding social and economic justice and a
sustainable future, rather than speeches studded with syrupy platitudes.
Some will think it insulting to alter our current way of celebrating Mother’s
Day. But public activism does not preclude private expressions of love and
gratitude. (Nor does it prevent people from expressing their appreciation all
year round.)
Nineteenth century women dared to dream of a day that honored women’s civil
activism. We can do no less. We should honor their vision with civic
activism.
Ruth Rosen is a professor emerita of history at UC Davis.
Reprinted with permission
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05.10.08
Posted in Life, the Universe and All that Jazz at 11:02 pm by Meg
This is neat. I saw it on Sandra Dodd’s blog.
It’s out of book called Zoom
click on the picture and it will take you to another page with the same picture. When you click on it again, it will change to another view.
And then you continue clicking.
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