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Anyone crazy enough to read my blog occassionally knows I have been trying to introduce the kids to some music besides classical, so I had the kids dance around to that old song. Of course they love it because it's nonsense... and we listened to Yellow Submarine too. Actually, we had a really nice school day inspite of us all having colds. The kids' coughing has died down pretty much on its own. I woke up headachy, with a runny nose and sore throat. So I took some TheraFlu Warming Liquid-- and boy was I drugged into a stupor! My cold symptoms were gone, it's true, but I just stared at the wall with my eyes unfocused for a while... Eventually, I snapped out of it, and my symptoms came back! The kids covered the basic subjects: math, English, Spanish, and geography for my 9 year old and math, penmanship and phonics for my 5 year old, then we did our piano lessons. After that, I read to them from The Mouse and the Motorcycle by Beverly Cleary. While I read, they worked on patterns for Lego Mosaics. I had thought the Lego Mosaics were really neat, but man those things are expensive! Then when I was shopping for my 5 year old's birthday (tomorrow!) at Kmart, they had some boxes marked down from $19.99 to $5.00, on clearance! I bought two boxes. The kids are going to be working the patterns while I read aloud this week, instead of doing any puppet show rehearsals. This past Saturday we video taped our last one, The Tortoise and the Hare. We've also done, in the past, The Frog Prince and Little Red Riding Hood. We do puppet shows on weeks when I'm not in the mood to read aloud to them from a novel. Right now the kids are outside playing. I'm worried that they're going to crush the few daffodils I have blooming on our hillside! But at least I have some peace and quiet for a bit. Later today, my mom is driving my 9 year old to his karate lesson. I'm glad she's taking him and not me. With this medicine in me I'm in no condition to drive, that's for sure! |
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I caught my baby daughter outside feeding my 9 year old son's Pokemon cards to the goat. People always think of goats as eating tin cans, then 4H types and farm people will tell you that's just not true, that goats just explore things with their mouths but don't really eat junk in the yard. Well, those farm people are WRONG. Goats WILL eat anything, and my 2 year old girl knows it and gets a kick out of it...
Anyway, the room is sparkling fresh now and ready for photographing in House Beautiful! |
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We start school at 8 am, sharp, and it's quarter 'til so I have to keep this short! I am expecting some curriculum books from Amazon, and nothing has come since the mailbox bashing incident. So I called our local post office and asked if they are holding our mail. The man said, "Why? Do you live on XXXX-XXXXX Road?" I knew right off that meant yes. He told me that 42 mailboxes were destroyed on our 10-mile long road Tuesday night, so mail service to this road is only partial at the moment! I don't get the whole destruction thing. I was a pretty out-of-control teenager myself, and I never saw any appeal in vandalism. I still don't. I find the mailbox-bashing mentality hard to understand.... Also, MY BOOKS ARE LATE! It looks like another wonderful, sunny day today. It was warm enough for us to sleep with the windows open last night (in February!) California is wonderful... |
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I'm blogging while the dinner cooks. We're having Tuna Helper. The kids are gonna hate me... They despise Tuna Helper. I don't know why, I actually think its pretty good! Bad things that happened today: On his way to work, my husband noticed our mailbox, which was less than a week old, had been bashed to pieces. Probably some dumb teenager with a baseball bat; that happens a lot out here on these rural roads. He actually chose this plastic one so that it wouldn't get all dented up like our old metal one, which was destroyed the same way. In retrospect, "dented up" is better than spread all over the ground in pieces... Worse, my teenage stepson fell at school today and broke his thumb. I have no more information than that yet... Good things that happened today: I got a couple of errands done, I spent some extra time cleaning up around the house... uh, well, that's it. Not much, I guess, but still, the sun was shining so it was a pretty good day overall! Technology is really a pain sometimes. While I was in WalMart today trying to figure out which ink cartridge our printer takes (I ought to know this by heart already) my husband called to see what we were doing, and I told him we were just picking up a few basics at WalMart. On the way out into the parking lot, my cell phone rings again, and my husband says "You spent $107 on basics?" He had already seen the charge posted when he was balancing our checking account online! I thought I'd have more time to explain myself... My kids whine and moan when I tell them to go to the henhouse (that's "el gallinero" in Spanish-- we were doing foreign language today!) because they say the chickens attack them when they try to get the eggs. I've been pooh-poohing them about it: "What, you're scared of chickens? What does that make you?" Today I got the eggs myself, and they went nuts, trying to peck at me! They're completely docile birds the rest of the time. They're R.I. Reds, they aren't supposed to be broody. Our Black S*x-Link Hens never cared... What is up with these hens? It's like they've been watching Alfred Hitchcock movies. |
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My kindergartener read "Max's Dragon Shirt" by Rosemary Wells today. That is such a cute book. I love Rosemary Wells. Right now he's doing his handwriting worksheets while my 4th grader watches cartoons with my toddler... Things have gotten better since Sunday. For one thing, the sun has come out. The kids were cooped up last weekend on account of the rain. I gave my 9 year old an assignment to write 10 adjectives which describe him. Here is the list he came up with: blond, tall, thin, smart, blue-eyed, kind, strong, friendly, playful, honest. What a great list! (And we didn't even go the “government school” route and teach him an entire curriculum on self-esteem!) I am so irritated that we missed the lunar eclipse last week! It was a nice sunny day, and that afternoon clouds started to gather.... you guessed it! By the time the eclipse was due to start, it was completely overcast. Why does it seem like every eclipse, meteor shower, and reentry of the space shuttle the sky is too cloudy to see a darn thing? Very frustrating. Well, that's it. Our family is staying home for today, just doing the usual schoolwork. I hope everyone has a lovely day too!
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I know from browsing blogs that most of you ladies feel differently, but I hate Sundays. I always wish I could go to bed Saturday night and wake up Monday. First, there is trying to get everyone out the door for church. Church is the only place everyone goes together, so we aren't very good at getting people dressed and ready on time. Once we've finally survived the ordeal and everyone is piled into the van, then church starts, which isn't really church, because I can't go to the sermon. The closest I come to hearing about the Lord is some kiddie music Bible songs on the stereo. I stay in the nursery with the toddlers because I refuse to leave my daughter there, on account of it being really understaffed. My son sits with my husband in the sermon and squirms, on account of my son refusing to go to his class. His class was UNDERSTAFFED and as a result he's had problems with a hyper, grabby kid making him miserable. Then, once we're home, the real fun begins. Monday through Friday, I work hard to keep the kids productively entertained. It's a not stop round of lessons, crafts, puppet shows, cooking together, educational software, play-doh... you ladies know how it is, you all do the same. There's a schedule and discipline. Then comes Saturday, when I'm off grocery shopping and running errands, and my husband is home with the older ones who finally get to play their Playstation2 games (all day!) so relative calm reigns. Then Sunday... after church, the kids are directionless. They wander around the house, whining about being bored, begging for video games and junk food, and fighting. I am resentful because I want to relax, but the kids are making their misery felt by the rest of us, and the only time they manage to entertain themselves, they're doing it by throwing popcorn around the living room, or dissolving toilet paper in the bathroom sink. My husband is in a horrible mood because our 2 year old daughter has an endless day of screaming and tantrums in an effort to get the attention she wants from him (I think she's punishing him for going to work the other days of the week and not being with her.) So my husband's angry, I'm frustrated, and we spend the day sniping at each other. The only prayer I seem to have time for is the one which always gets answered: Please end this day and make it Monday! It always is Monday the next day of course, when peace and calm returns like some miracle. Except I don't feel at all refreshed, just relieved it's over. |
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I can't believe what I did today! (Okay, I can. It's actually pretty typical of me...) I had a panic attack. Although we are progressing in Spanish, my 9 year old knows no Latin. I read something two days ago about how many kids who take the S.A.T.s and achieve the perfect score have studied Latin. (It's a significant number.) I keep thinking, what if I'm letting him down? Maybe his S.A.T. performance is hanging in the balance! So off I go and spend $200 on a complete Latin curriculum, because all I keep thinking is, what if those scores make the difference between a full ride to Harvard and working his way through the local community college? HIS WHOLE LIFE COULD DEPEND ON IT! So off I go and buy something to relieve the anxiety... My wonderful husband holds my hand and says, if it will help me feel better, spend that money, just no debt! (No overdraft fees, no credit cards. That's the rule.) He also allowed me to do something similar last week and the week before, so now I'm on a spending moratorium for the rest of February and all of March. Hey, that's fair. I can't complain. We aren't rich people, but homeschooling can just suck up all your money if you let it (and I have no will-power...) So our 9 year old studies karate, plays piano, speaks Spanish, reads at a l2th grade level, is two years ahead in math, and STILL I can't relax. What does that say about me? |
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Okay, I must admit that liberal-bashing is a pet-peeve of mine. As a conservative, I find people that consistantly badmouth "liberals" to be generally short on true understanding of the nature of political dialog; jingoistic, narrow-minded twits. Esspescially since some of the things they accuse liberals of are just as true of conservatives! Take politically correct euphemisms, for example. We've all heard the funny ones: the dead become the "living-impaired," the short are now the "vertically-challenged." As the mother of a "visually-impaired child"-- that's a blind kid-- I appreciate the effort to spare the feelings of the people being labeled. But why do conservaties think they are immune from using the same type of language? Homeschoolers can be just as silly. (Disclaimer: I'm about to go on one of my famous rants. Part of the reason I decided to blog was to spare my friends and relatives from my soap-box tirades...) I'm thinking of this whole silly "multiple intelligences" nonsense. I believe it was Howard Gardiner who came up with this idea? (I'm pulling that from memory, so I might be confusing him with someone else.) Besides the fact that no impircal studies have upheld his conclusions, homeschoolers, WHO SHOULD BE SMARTER THAN THE AVERAGE BEAR AND KNOW BETTER, fall for this goobledygook hook, line and sinker. Some people find traditional pencil and paper academic work challenging. But now, in our enlightened age, that is no longer an area of weakness to be corrected, it is an alternative kind of intelligence! "He's not a visual-learner," we say, "he has more of a bodily-kinesthetic style." PLEASE GIVE ME A BREAK. A friend of mine (I'm not naming names, on the 1 in 1 million chance that someone who knows of whom I speak-- besides my husband-- will read this) once told me her son has problems in school because his style of learning is more hands on. Book learning isn't his "thing." I actually was stupid-enough to point out that as we mature intellectually, human beings are supposed to be able to move from the concrete (hands-on, infront of your face) to the conceptual (print on a page.) That not being able to generalize from reading is, in a person of normal intelligence, probably from lack of applied effort and practice. This mother shot back, "The school said he is a different kind of learner. Besides, reading doesn't prove anything. I haven't read a book since highschool, and I graduated from cosmetology school." (Okay, I'll be caught if anyone who knows our family reads this.) Now that I've lost any potential for friends at HSB and am about to recieve a deluge of hate-posts from liberal bashers and mothers of "intrapersonally gifted learners," I might as well list some other fun euphemisms. Drug addicts are now substance abusers, indoctrination is now called conciousness-raising, feminism is now called gender-equity, taxes are called revenue-enhancement, firing your employees is known as downsizing, and dumbing down your curriculum so that the smart kids wait for the slowest to catch up is called outcome-based education. My very favorite, though, I picked up from a news segment on the possibility of a bird-flu outbreak. The reporter asked the CDC guy if the government would impose quarantines in the case of an epidemic. The CDC guy dismissed the idea as midieval, and insisted we would instead be "practicing social distancing." Isn't that a good one? |
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We do a lot of music education at our house. We have daily piano lessons, and I also give them a music appreciation lesson every day. We bought that Classical Magic curriculum which was featured in TOS a while back, and I really love it and use it a lot. But I was thinking today, how my kids(ages 5 and 9) can tell Haydn from Handel, and Bach from Boccerini, but they don't know anything about the music I grew up with. Who has time to play the stereo around the house? A lot of it was terrible, true, (is anyone out there willing to confess to big hair and spandex pants?) but I hope I've gained enough wisdom to sort through and expose them to the good stuff, and of course a lot of it is really worth knowing. How could anyone say they "know" music without being able to play at least a little Paul McCartney? Not that he was from my time, of course... I'm not that old. But the good stuff is TIMELESS. Besides, when people talk like Elvis Presley, my kids don't even "get it." So it's time to bring them up to speed a little. So today, we got out my old Don Henley's Greatest Hits CD and the kids heard Boys of Summer, Heart of the Matter, All She Wants to Do Is Dance, and Not Enough Love in the World. It was worth it just to see my toddler daughter dancing around, rockin' out! (Okay, some of those are a bit slow for rockin' out...) I wish I had taken a picture... Tomorrow I plan on digging out another CD from the good old days! |
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Does anyone out there in HSB world know how to add a picture to the sidebar of your template? I'd like to add a little permanent family photo or something. Anyway, wasn't she the cutest? I just dumped the images off my digital camera, and it has been so long since I had done that, that I found some pictures like this one. Now my daughter is much older, as you can tell from the zoo field trip picture I put below. This picture is probably from last spring.
I can't wait until her hair grows longer! She is going to have really thick red hair, like my mom did (before she went grey.) I just had to have it cut really, and I mean REALLY short in the back because it was such a mess. Every time she got out of the car seat it was all mussed up in the back, like she had just rolled out of bed. It looked awful and snarled all the time. When it grows back in, her big-girl hair should replace that wispy baby hair. Here's a pic from the zoo trip yesterday. The kids are dressed like penguins, at the penguin exhibit:
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Our family had a nice weekend, nothing terribly out of the ordinary to write about, though. We found a bluebelly (that's a lizard) in our kitchen on Friday and kept it for observation for two days. Saturday, I stayed home and went through the children's closets, cleaning and sorting out clothes for Goodwill. Sunday was church, then after church my mother and I drove to a large, discount grocery store several towns away for a big, stocking-up shopping trip. That evening I was supposed to go to the Ladies' Friendship Tea at our church, but as usual I flaked out. I always do. I get invited to activities, don't go, then complain that I have no friends at church. It's a rut I'm stuck in at the moment.
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Today, after a shortened school day (I cut out music lessons and puppet show rehearsals), I ran errands in town with the two middle boys. We took a bag of canned goods to the church before our church food closet started distributing, which it does on Wednesdays. (How can there be so many hungry people way out here in the sticks?) Then we took a box of stuff to the Goodwill (and bought some stuff, too-- but we bought less than we donated, and it is the net gain/loss of stuff that really matters!), went grocery shopping, and put gas in the van, among other things.
At least her last day on Earth was a beautiful, sunny, mild one! Goodbye, Siskyou Rose. You were a sweet goat! |
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My mom bought a wardrobe at a used junk store. I'm talking about a piece of furniture here-- an “armoire” if you want to sound cultured. There is just something about a wardrobe... they are fascinating. Especially this one. For one thing, it is HUGE. Eight feet high, half again as wide. I have been considering using it as a spare bedroom! (Possibly a slight exaggeration..) It is done in a very unusual style, sort of “Victorian meets Middle Earth.” That was my comment at the store, actually. My mother asked me what I thought of it, and I said, “Straight from Lord of the Rings.” The store clerk rolled his eyes at me, but I stand by my opinion. (I have since learned this is an example of the 1970s "Spanish Medieval" revival...) Anyway, I have just been thinking about why C. S. Lewis decided to have his adventures begin in a wardrobe. There is something about bringing a new door into your house, a door that certainly leads into a box that of course goes no where, but at the same time, who knows what was in that place before? It is the ultimate in liminal space, a sort of in-between place. The Romans were so fascinated by doors and thresholds that they invented a god to rule over them. A wardrobe is sort of like a threshold with more possibilities... Well, this particular wardobe turns out to be too large to fit into our house, and too heavy to be unloaded by one man, even if that one man is my husband who at one time single-handedly lifted a piano into and out of our jacked-up, redneck pick-up truck. I should have foreseen that, as it took six men to get it in to the truck. So now, the wardrobe is at a furniture restorer's shop, where it was properly unloaded by some sort of machine. It turns out this particular wardrobe was, according to the best guess of the carpenter, made in Spain in the 1970/80s. The really cool thing is that the wood the wardrobe was made from was much older, salvaged from antique pieces of furniture, and full of worm holes! Talk about fuel for the imagination! My mother saw it in the junk store, was fascinated with it, and bought it on a whim. Now that leaves us with the problem of where to put it. Of course, my mother loved it and had to have it, but knew she had no place for it, so she decided it would go to our house! (Not that I'm complaining.) Where to put it once it returns from the furniture shop is going to be a MAJOR problem. That will be Part II of the Saga of the Wardrobe. I threw this together at dinner last night and my pickiest eater (he's 5) ate it right up: Take refrigerated crescent roll dough (I used the reduced fat type) and spread it out on a greased cookie sheet very thin. Put inside each triangle of dough: 1/2 a frozen meatball, 1/2 tablespoon of canned pizza sauce, and a sprinkle of low-fat mozzarella cheese. Then wrap the dough up over it and bake for 15 minutes. I also made a vegetarian version with 1 tablespoon diced tomatoes (no pizza sauce) with the cheese as the filling. My kids really ate this up! |
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I decided to name my blog “Dirt Roads and Shakespeare” because those are two things I think about regularly, and I liked how seemingly incongruous they are: Rednecks like us live on dirt roads, and they aren't supposed to be the Shakespeare reading type. Anyhow, I'm BackwoodsMom for the purpose of this blog, a married, church-going, homeschooling mother of 4 who is approaching 40 faster than she ever imagined possible. My hobbies, back when I had the time, were reading, genealogy, watching Jeopardy!, embroidery and gardening. My current hobbies are changing diapers, breaking up fights, making excuses to avoid working out, and grading math papers. |