SCHOLA

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year of Homeschooling

2011-12-25T16:57:00.000-05:00

Just received an email from the charter school's administrator advising us that at the board meeting this coming Tuesday, she is going to announce her recommendation to close the school.

Disappointed. But looking forward to rejoining the homeschooling world. Working full-time but now with the added benefit of a brand new iPad, I should be way more mobile and able to let Elle participate in more of the outside physical activities she craves.

I have already had some negative feedback from family, but when has that ever stopped me?

All Apologies to Nirvana

2011-12-13T21:52:00.005-05:00

While updating my 2011 Reading list, the date of my last post sat there taunting me, so here's a quick update:

The whole Progressive Democratic public charter school thing is imploding. Parents who claimed to have been at all the introductory meetings where the unconventional aspects were explained kept wondering when their kids were going to bring home some worksheets or a report card, teaching their children a valuable lesson about the importance of listening carefully. The dissatisfied parents tried to change the school to something more to their liking, were shot down, left en masse (including all PTA officers), and made disparaging remarks to the local newspaper about the administration and daily goings-on.

A new PTA was formed and a week later there was another mass exodus after some discipline and safety concerns arose and were not resolved to the liking of many. This time several staff members pulled their kids and gave their notice.

Will the school still be there after the holiday break? Not if the charter gets revoked.

I still think it's a great idea. And we're still in for the time being. In this day of instant gratification, people are going to have to understand it doesn't happen all at once; it's going to take time and a lot of effort. But the administration is going to have to immediately address the safety concerns and disciplinary procedures. "Zero tolerance" does not mean a second or third chance.

Elle tested 12.6 (twelfth grade sixth month) in English and 3.5 (third grade fifth month) in math. Peer pressure has successfully pushed her out of the habit of being a lazy speller and without being assigned the task, she wrote and typed up a three-page essay on Kurt Cobain, in "Party" font (earning her, in her college sister's eyes, 45,972,482 cool points.)

Her old school books are still on the shelf next to my bed, taunting me...

Read me
Read me, my friend
Read me
Read me again

I am an Opportunist

2011-08-11T17:04:00.001-04:00

Just when I was liking the idea of Elle being tutored, and Elle was actually cooperating, along comes another twist. Years back, right after Hurricane Charley, Elle attended pre-K at a nearby school. Set in a beautiful rural environment, it was meant to provide the kids opportunities to garden and raise small livestock. Theoretically it was great. Practically it never came to be, and a few years later the school eventually closed.

Now, however, the county has taken the property over and is reopening a small, "progressive democratic" public charter school. The progressive part comes from the mixed age groupings, portfolio reviews versus report cards, and focus on mastery. The democratic part is that every student and teacher has an equal say in decision making. The curriculum is project based, working closely with 4-H, and will feature Florida history. All produce raised at the school will be used in the food service and any extra is to be sold to the public. There are peace studies with each family required to attend a 6-hour conflict resolution class as part of the admission process. Right now it only goes up to Grade 7 but they will bump it up each year until it ends with Grade 12. It was no surprise to hear from the director that many area homeschoolers have expressed interest in enrolling.

Elle has mentioned several times since we've been back from Australia that she really misses being on a farm. And since that's no longer part of our plans (as much as I ever really plan anything), she is thrilled with thoughts of dressage, raising a steer for the fair, and having some chickens and rabbits to care for.

And I am thrilled with thoughts of traveling and incorporating it into a school project. We didn't have the time to wander the Smithsonian the last time we were in DC, so I'm looking at building a visit around the Reason Rally in March and working it into her studies.

TAM 9!

2011-08-02T20:43:00.001-04:00

The Amazing Meeting, the James Randi Educational Foundation's celebration of science and skepticism was such a blast I can hardly wait until next year. It is hard to imagine how they will top the line-up. This year the get together, themed TAM 9 From Outer Space, featured such big names as Neil deGrasse Tyson, Richard Dawkins, Bill Nye (who, I am not too proud to say, I stalked until I got a photo), Phil Plaitt, and of course The Amazing Randi. I got to meet some of my blog heroes: PZ Myers and Hemant Mehta among others. Penn Jillette hosted and performed at his private Rock-n-Roll, Bacon, and Doughnut Party, and then offered discount tickets to Penn & Teller's magic show as a fundraiser for the JREF. Paul Provenza presented his Satiristas! comedy show where I was introduced to the adorable Jamie Kilstein. Aside from all the fantastic talks, especially a workshop on "Defending Evolution in the Classroom and Beyond" by Dr. Eugenie Scott from the National Center for Science Education, the best part had to be meeting fellow skeptics, some from Jacksonville, Gainesville, and Melbourne, Florida, and Sydney, Perth, and Melbourne Australia, and even a homeschooling mom who works for NPR in Washington DC.

For a look at the full schedule go here and for a list of all workshops click here. Then consider attending TAM X.

Me with Bill! Bill! Bill! Bill! and Dr. Eugenie Scott in the lobby of the Rio Theater after Penn & Teller.

Atheism is Entertaining!

2011-06-24T17:07:00.000-04:00

Sarabelle and I took a quick trip up to Boston to see Tim Minchin earlier this month. If you get the chance to be within range of one of his appearances, GO. Sarabelle, already a fan of his wickedly clever lyrics, spirited piano-playing, and flat-out hilarity, summed it up when she gushed, "I love him more than ever now!"

Last night Elle and I watched The Ledge. I really liked this. It's worth the download. My kids are rather squeamish about sex scenes and Elle found her notebook doodling much more interesting than the two on-screen encounters. It amuses me that some parents are more likely to censor a movie based on sexual content rather than on violence. Make love not war...?

Counting down the days until The Amazing Meeting! I decided this year, instead of reading about how informative it was and how much fun everyone had and wishing I had the chance to go, that I would go.

Stubborn

2011-06-24T09:11:00.002-04:00

The more things change...whatever.

"Homeschooling" is a thing of the past in our home. Not only due to the fact that Elle has an attention span somewhere between ten front flips on the trampoline and four consecutive episodes of iCarly and I cannot keep her engaged long enough to complete one lesson, but because I have the private school set up so we are officially "private schooling." Even that is a bit of a stretch though.

Working full-time, even from home, especially from home, while trying to manage everything else is not for me. I can chew gum and walk at the same time and can even drive and simultaneously yell at children, but that's about the extent of my multi-tasking talent. Add to this major traumatic changes in our private lives (I am still living in the same house as the last time I posted, which may come as a surprise) and it's a wonder I get anything done at all.

I had been faced with increasing pressure from grandparents and Jorge to step up Elle's education. It had been pared down to what I considered bare bones: math, grammar, and history, leaving her a lot of leeway to follow her own interests, but they were unimpressed. She needs constant attention to insure she does not wander off at the first opportunity and I am unable to provide that at this time. It was suggested that a teacher, some dominant authoritarian figure, would command more respect and focus, so I looked at the only secular private school in the area, the one Catholic school nearby (figuring she has been properly immunized), and even the local public school. No. Hell no. And over-my-dead-body no.

We limped along. And the hits just kept coming.

Then it occurred to me: In Florida, tutoring is only legal for homeschooling with a tutor properly certified in the specific subjects a tutor is requested to teach. But! Private school teachers do not have to be certified in anything! Not even teaching!

So we got ourselves a tutor.

Two hours a day, my next door neighbor/formerly-homeschooled-now-college-student/good family friend/Sarabelle's roommate/idol of Elle comes over and supervises her lessons. We even added vocabulary back in (Vocabulary From Classical Roots) after dropping Latin. It ends up costing less than half the price of the private and parochial tuitions, I retain control over the curriculum, there is room for flexibility in the schedule, and I will never get stuck having to buy and sell chocolate bars and gift wrap. Yay, me!

Where there's a will...

My 2010 Reading

2011-03-11T13:38:00.004-05:00

Infinite Jest

Left Behind

Living the Good Life: How One Family Changed Their World from Their Own Backyard

Night

Einstein's Dreams

Dude, Where's My Country?

Letters to a Young Contrarian (Art of Mentoring)
Godless: How an Evangelical Preacher Became One of America's Leading Atheists
The Blind Assassin
The Zero Calorie Diet: How to Eat Right-or Not at All
Humanism as the Next Step
Eat Pray Love
Live From New York: An Uncensored History of SNL
Jesus: Apocalyptic Prophet of the New Millennium
Scat
Tuck Everlasting
Hitch-22: A Memoir

Autobiography of Mark Twain Vol1

2010 Read-Alouds

2011-03-11T13:00:00.000-05:00

Mary Poppins Comes Back

The Mysterious Benedict Society

The Yearling

Adaptations

2011-02-08T23:36:00.000-05:00

We finished First Language Lessons Level 4, which is good since we should probably be somewhere in the vicinity of fifth grade by now. I'm moving Elle right into Easy Grammar Plus from here. It's considered junior/senior high school level, but we'll take our time, and at the rate we're going she'll be on track to complete it by the end of grade 12. Just kidding.

I hope.

I was lucky to catch a screening of Waiting for "Superman" at our local college. It's thought-provoking and well done, though it does not tell the full story. As an independent educator, I occasionally found myself snickering out of sync with the room full of pros, but everyone was pretty much in agreement: The system is not working; something has got to change. There were few dry eyes by the end of it all. It'll be out this week on DVD.

We're celebrating Darwin Day, February 12, with a visit to Dinosaur World along with the group Humanist Families - Greater Tampa Region. Coincidentally, I just happened to receive Inherit the Wind from Netflix for a nice tie-in. "Coincidentally," I say, because if your queue is anything like mine, it's frequently altered without your express written consent. I'm never quite sure what exactly will turn up in my mailbox. Our local theater company is doing a production of Inherit the Wind as well, and Elle has expressed an interest in seeing a live performance.

Happy Darwin Day!

And now a word from our sponsor...

Schola Classical Academy's Insane Field Trip

2010-11-14T17:38:00.006-05:00

Grice and her Young Republican friend, J -- who had heard of our plans on the way home one afternoon and was beyond excited to go with us and support the Keep Fear Alive march, and whose parents must be as nuts as I am to actually let him go with a virtual stranger -- were picked up when school got out at 1:45. By the time good-byes were said, a last minute iPod auxiliary player located and borrowed, and the car fueled, it was 2:30 PM and we (Sarabelle, her roommate A, Elle, and I) were on the road. With only four gas/snack/bathroom stops, we drove straight through the night and were parked in the garage at Ronald Reagan International by 6:30 AM.

After a short delay fighting with a Metro ticket machine, we finally arrived on the Mall about an hour later. We could have set up right in front of the stage, it was still that empty, but spread our blanket out a little ways back, up against a First Aid tent so nobody could crowd us.

Here's the view from our spot:

Then, while I held our ground, the kids, all armed with cell phones, headed out to find me coffee and to do a little sightseeing. And boy, was there a lot to see.

Elle wanted to see the Washington Monument and the Reflecting Pool, and when we got there she wanted to press on and see the Lincoln Memorial. It was getting close to showtime and we had already walked quite a way, but being the awesome homeschooling mom I am, how could I possibly say no? Plus, my iPhone said there was a restroom there.

We hoofed it back down the Mall to our place and that's when the drama began.

We had been fenced out of our primo location. A volunteer offered to go let my kids inside the fence know where we were, because by then, for whatever reason, there was no cell phone service. He came back to tell me there were only two kids there. Which ones? He didn't know. So I'm missing two kids. Great. And they were still not going to let us in. We waited patiently for someone to exit, "one in, one out," but nobody seemed to be leaving. Elle was with me and the others were in pairs, wherever they were, so I was not overly concerned. But I wanted my spot. The spot I had staked out at the crack of dawn. Speaking to the cops was no help. Until, after watching another mother's success, I too played the hysterical mom card. Elle and I got in and found Grice and A at our blanket. Sarabelle came wandering up a few minutes later. Alone. She and J had been waiting at another "one in, one out" gate to get back into our area, but he opted to find another way in while Sarabelle held her spot in line. J is a clever, resourceful, and highly independent kid, wants to be an admiral in the navy one day, so we knew he'd be okay, and might even end up appearing on stage as his mother warned, so I was still not too worried, just hoping his view was at least as good as ours. The opening acts were through, the announcer had begun his intro, "...and now, please welcome your host..." and suddenly J appears at our side. So while the crowd is wildly cheering the entrance of "...Jonnnnnnnn Stewarrrrrt!" we were wildly cheering the return of J.

The show was fun, funny, over the top, and I was ready to hear Jon get serious at the end. "We live now in hard times, not end times..." "If we amplify everything, we hear nothing..." Yes! But I was a bit disappointed that he claimed not to be here to ridicule the Right and people of faith, among others. That's what he does so wonderfully on his show. And since then, watching Keith Olbermann, Bill Maher, and Rachel Maddow discuss the matter of false equivalency, I'd have to agree with them, that while all the media tends to be shrill and sensationalist, one group is particularly egregious, and dangerous, and maybe Jon did miss an opportunity. But he's a satirist, not a politician after all, and he does what he does so well.

We made it out back to our car in just over an hour, which was amazing considering the crowd at the Metro, and were back home by 9:30 AM, time enough to go to breakfast, take a nap, finish costumes, and get ready for trick-or-treating.

Papa

2010-11-13T22:11:00.001-05:00

Everybody deals with death differently. My brothers and I tend to find levity in serious situations and this can be a comfort to us but discomfiting to others. And, of course, my mother tends to be one of those people we are always unintentionally offending.

She did not appreciate our sincere suggestions to dress my dad in one of his favorite Guy Harvey pocket t-shirts, khaki shorts, and boat shoes, the 'uniform' he wore nearly every day since retiring some twenty-odd years ago. The idea to use one of his hideous but treasured Garo Yepremian neck ties, since we had to go formal, was seen as a mockery. She pursed her lips at my brother's suggestion to print on the bottom of the prayer card, "Brought to you by [his company's name]" as an excuse to write it off as a business expense. Heads would have rolled if she had noticed the script printed on the ribbon of the floral spray, "Love the Grandchildrens", purchased from a local ethnic florist. But my dad would have laughed.

When assembling photos for a slide show to play in the funeral parlor lobby, the best photos, and the bulk of the ones I contributed, showed my dad hamming it up with the grandkids. My mother thought many of them disrespectful, but we gently reminded her that we too had lost someone and this is who he was to us.

The night before he died, the priest had been called. After privately taking my dad's last confession, Elle, Grice, and I, being the only ones present besides my parents, were invited in for prayers. Elle flat-out refused, Grice and I bristled but conceded. We rotely spouted the Hail Mary and the Our Father for my dad's sake, all the while I was hearing the prayers in a new way, wondering that I had never doubted the lunacy of them before. We then had to go around the very small circle and tell my dad what we loved about him and what we were grateful for. I thanked him for always sticking up for me, remembering in particular a high school situation when I got into enough trouble to be threatened with expulsion before final exams and he convinced my mom it was only a minor indiscretion, peer pressure, bad judgment, nothing to worry about, and another occasion where on the spur of the moment he jumped in a car to drive cross-country and rescue me from an abusive relationship. I thanked him for my wanderlust and then inwardly smirked that I'd praised at least one deadly sin in the presence of the priest.

The next night my brother was trying to fill the funeral Mass roles designated by Father Everyone-Must-Participate. I was chosen to do the second reading. I knew now, after performing a wedding, that I could do it if I focused intently on the material, ignored the audience, and occasionally inhaled. I could read Psalms, they were literary, poetic, I reasoned. Instead something from John had been selected, and regardless of the choice, it would have to be concluded with the line I worried I might actually choke on, This is the Word of the Lord...

My dad knew about my atheism. He was very angry about it. He publicly criticized and insulted me for it. And I still would have done the reading out of respect for him, though the majority of the people present would know of my apostasy and know I found the whole thing disgusting and some might even think me hypocritical, except that the memory of that episode, dredged up from almost exactly one year before, when he most certainly did not stick up for me, suddenly overwrote all the good memories. I could not do it. I did not want to have that memory of my father at the top of my mind. I called my brother to explain and could hardly speak for the sobbing.

As my dad was taking his last breaths, my niece reached over and put a homemade SpongeBob on his chest. Papa loved to watch SpongeBob with (and without) his granddaughters and the girls had all made him one for his birthday years ago. It sat in a place of honor on his desk. In an effort to make the scene more solemn, my mother reached over and put the crucifix they had received as a wedding gift on his chest as well. From my place at the foot of the bed I commented that it looked a little sacrilegious, SpongeBob and Jesus holding hands... We all cracked up. And that's the memory I prefer to hold on to: the sound of laughter, and the view of SpongeBob and Jesus escorting my dad out.

The Circle of Life

2010-10-23T16:09:00.001-04:00

That was last week.

My dad finally succumbed to the degenerative lung disease he’d been suffering with the past four years or so. While we knew it was coming, eventually, it still took us by surprise -- he was only home for two and half days with hospice care -- though he held on long enough to give everybody a chance to get home and say goodbye. There was a military burial. We only found out about two months prior that my dad had won a Bronze Star for valor in Korea, a war he was too young to be in (my grandmother artfully altered his birth certificate allowing him to enter the service just after his 16th birthday.) I have mixed feelings about it. Pride that he saved many troops by bravely pulling out of position and driving his landing craft through a Chinese boat armed with machine gunners attacking the shoreline camp; horror that my dad was a killer; sorrow that I obviously never knew him very well.

The day after the funeral I was on a plane to Boston for the Saturday wedding of a cousin’s son, a trip I had written off when it became clear my father was rapidly deteriorating. It was a joy to see many of my cousins and celebrate the marriage of my aunt’s eldest grandchild, a sharp, handsome kid in the State Attorney’s office, with, what I’m guessing, is a promising political career ahead of him (think JFK Jr. with better morals.) It took me by surprise each time someone would come up and say they were sorry to hear about my father.

Sunday I headed up to New Hampshire for the surprise baby shower of my high school best buddy and her wife. Only when my friend asked how Aunt B was and I explained that she was actually down in Florida keeping my mom company did a few unexpected tears come to the surface. Those were quickly brushed away so as not to dampen the cheery occasion.

And now I'm home, having come full circle, feeling a bit dead on the inside.

Road Scholas

2010-09-19T16:31:00.002-04:00

Show your children democracy in action, rather than democracy inaction: Take them to a political rally!

Perhaps rather insensibly, but with a great sense of spontaneity and duty, I've organized a road trip up to Washington, D.C. to attend Jon Stewart's Rally to Restore Sanity. Sarabelle, Grice, and another friend are all licensed drivers which will make the trip so much easier, and we still have room for one or two more.

This should be great fun. And so educational!

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart

Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c

Rally to Restore Sanity

www.thedailyshow.com

Daily Show Full Episodes

Political Humor

Tea Party

The Colbert Report

Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c

March to Keep Fear Alive

www.colbertnation.com

Colbert Report Full Episodes

2010 Election

Fox News

Grade 4 - The Plan Redux

2010-08-02T20:49:00.000-04:00

I didn't plan on it, but Elle ended up getting the summer off. I prefer going year-round so that we can slack off as needed, not according to the dictates of the county school board, but this year, with the shift to the temporary house and then the shift to the newly renovated house, it just sort of happened. It concerned me that we would fall behind. So while Elle is busy tearing around with the neighborhood public-schooled boys, I'm getting to know them, asking them how old they are and what grade they're going into, and I come to find out that Elle, if she were enrolled at our local elementary, would this year be entering fourth grade.

Did I just climb out of some space-time wormhole? Or have I just watched Donnie Darko one too many times? Didn't I do this already?

Well, then, that just makes planning this year so much easier, doesn't it?

Forget the Foster books. Elle liked it when I printed out the illustrations and she colored them, but other that that the books did not capture her fancy. And now I know why: She was too young for them. They're more middle-school level. And she's not. Lucky for me I still have The Story of the World and the activity book handy. For all my guilt about giving up our time-tested history spine, here I am, right back where I started. Last August.

We'll keep chipping away at Level 4 of First Language Lessons and when she finishes with that I've got Easy Grammar ready to go. We did a couple lessons in Write With the Best Volume I and I need to make more of an effort to include that on a regular basis. Same with Latin. Elle has shown an interest in learning French, and I'm open to that, but that will be in addition to Latin, not instead of it.

Math? Saxon. We're still in 5/4. Heh.

Gymnastics, lyrical dance, hip hop, and jazz made up her physical education for the past year. Now we have a great local county facility that offers gymnastics, swimming, taekwondo, and even fencing. Her homeschool girlfriends play soccer and softball and she is very interested in horseback riding (but not formal lessons, just Western-style, or bareback like she did in Australia) so we have plenty to keep her busy.

Wow. If planning last year was easy because it was simply a case of Do-the-Next-Thing, think how easy it will be this year when we Do-the-Same-Thing.

Ready...set...DO OVER!

Calling it Done

2010-07-17T19:39:00.001-04:00

Aside from a few odds and ends: a vent cover or four, ceiling fans, closet doors, and my whole my back bedroom and office, we're finished with the renovation and are all moved in. Here are a few before and afters. Please forgive the quality of the shots, with my iPhone so handy I hardly bother to drag my real camera out anymore:

I just cannot believe how small the living room looks in the Before...

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Seems I didn't bother taking any Befores of the two bedrooms as both were vanilla boxes with drop ceilings, though Elle's floor had been covered with the overspray from a hasty cosmetic coat of white latex, but here are some Afters.

Here's a peek in Grice's room...

(I'm particularly proud of this closet, it was my first time using power tools unsupervised.)

...and the attached one-day-to-be-shared-with-my-bedroom/office dressing area and closet space...

...and here's the room I'm currently sharing with Elle...

Not a closet door or curtain in sight. Everything on display. And like Meg, this rush to get the majority of the house done was spurred on by the appearance of house guests.

Acta est fabula. -- Caesar Augustus

Work, work, work

2010-06-19T11:32:00.001-04:00

How's the renovation going? Four purchases yesterday at Home Depot according to my online and now frightfully low checking account balance. Is God in the details or is it the devil? I'm never quite sure having heard it both ways, but I do know Ben Franklin and Andrew Jackson figure in there quite prominently.

I'll post some more photos soon. The kitchen is almost finished. According to Jorge, there is a new appliance package in our near future. First though, I have the gas guy coming to give us an estimate for converting. I'm no gourmet chef extolling the benefits of precise heat, I just want to be able to boil water the next time a frequent lightning storm or hurricane knocks out power. I was hoping we'd get our friend to custom fabricate stainless steel brackets for the open shelving, but at this late date these IKEA brackets and shelves are looking pretty good. I will need three. Say goodbye to another Franklin.

The back room, which will be my bedroom one day, had the ceiling and old insulation ripped out on a whim right before Jorge left for Nashville, and is now sealed off, unusable with its furnace-like temperatures. It will be slightly less sweltering when I can open all the windows after picking up the new screens. Ben Franklin, Ben Franklin, Ben Franklin. In the meantime I will be taking up air-conditioned residency in what is to eventually be Grice's room. I am also earning her animosity. For 15 years she has been waiting for her own room. Can you feel the angst? Good thing she's going away for a week.

The living room just needs artwork and I haven't quite decided what is going where. Generally I'm competent at hanging pictures on walls. I bang 'em up after eyeballing the space where Jorge requires building permits, tape measures, and levels, but I admit I will need help hanging some of our 36 x 48" monstrosities. My cousin is coming for a visit soon. Her husband is handy.

And what are these "curtains" people speak of? In all our 20+ years of habitation I have never familiarized myself with these items. Venetian blinds on a window or two once, maybe. Am I worried about people peeking in my windows? This is apparently a huge concern to many people as the subject comes up at least once a day. I figure if someone's made the effort to scale the walls and brave my ferocious hounds they've earned it. Even when we lived in town, right on the ground, our next door neighbors were breast-enhanced, liposucked, nipped and tucked nudists. Looking in our bedroom windows would have been a disappointment. Oh, wait, maybe these people have already seen in my windows and are suggesting curtains for their own sake. Huh.

All renovations have unforeseen situations and unexpected costs. We had a bee infestation.

See the man in the white suit? The man is removing a "medium to large" hive from a hole cut into the wall outside my soon-to-be laundry room.

DO NOT CALL

2010-06-04T10:53:00.002-04:00

Nothing very notable has been happening around here, oh, except for the pending environmental destruction of epic proportions.

When the two Jehovah's Witnesses showed up at my door the other day, blissfully oblivious of my rage and depression over the whole BP mess, and started spinning their happy end of the world scenario: Worried about where this world is headed? War! Oil spills! Isn't it wonderful? Jehovah is near!, it was a good thing I was coughing so hard I couldn't speak. I am officially going on the "Do Not Call" list.

Their idea of complacency made my blood boil. Anyone who looks forward to violent confrontation between nations or the ruination of the planet as the opening chapter of their salvation should do us all a favor and just step off the planet now. Get a headstart on their afterlife.

We've let corporations get away with murder. And the Supreme Court has gone and lifted limits on campaign contributions which just makes it worse. We know both parties are beholden to corporate graft (though one side's benefits are completely lopsided*) so quit trying to blame the current administration for what it has or has not done in response to the Deepwater disaster, place the blame with those who have allowed these greedy money machines to rule our world, and figure out how to rectify the situation.

I have been coughing for two days shy of two weeks. The wedding went well, prior to the nuptials I was in total denial about standing in front of a crowd and did not feel the least bit nervous until I was well into the second page of the ceremony when I suddenly became conscious at that point that, Hey!...I'm doing this!...I'm reading this!...I'm actually in front of a lot of people... It was at that point my left leg began to shake. But I willed it to stop and I made myself take a big breath (in case I hadn't had any lately), and didn't pass out and knock the bride into the alligator-infested river. Then the day after the wedding, without any warning, I woke up with a terrible sore throat and without a voice. Not even a croak. The timing was perfect, one day earlier and it would've been a catastrophe.

Formal studies have ground to a halt. Yes, we theoretically go year-round, but when the neighborhood kids are knocking at your door and your best friend wants you to sleep over for days at a time, calculating perimeters and area becomes less of a priority -- unless you're building a prison cell for your captives (Geneva conventions and all.) And just when I think I'm dropping the ball again, self-led learning kicks in. Elle, my reluctant reader, has surprised the heck out of me and chosen The Yearling, a hefty book I've attempted more than once due to the frustration of reading dialogue in a redneck drawl, as our next read-aloud. What really stunned me, besides that fact that she actually likes speaking in character puzzling out what the backwoods Baxters are saying, is that she has decided to read it to me, as my bedtime story. If she never finishes it I will still consider it a triumph that she even gave it a go. Last night, to hear it aloud, Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings description of Florida flora and fauna brought a little tear to my eye, not just for it's spot-on accuracy and beauty, but for what we are about to lose.

* From OpenSecrets.org:
Oil & gas industry political contributions:
2010 (to date): $11,572,527 70% Republicans, 30% Democrats
2008: $35,595,537 77% Republicans, 23% Democrats
2006: $20,364,856 82% Republicans, 18% Democrats
2004: $26,077.264 80% Republicans, 19% Democrats
2002: $25,037,766 80% Republicans, 20% Democrats
2000: $34,323,192 78% Republicans, 21% Democrats

Spill

2010-05-07T09:07:00.000-04:00

First it was 1,000 gallons. Then they upped it to 5,000. Now estimates of the oil gushing from the Deepwater Horizon well are 200,000 gallons. Per day. And as they drop the containment chamber over the biggest vent, seventeen days later, there are worries that this procedure could cause further damage by blowing out smaller adjacent leaks making it worse.

Tony Hayward, BP's CEO, seems to have magnanimously done an about-face after an infuriating interview I heard on the BBC days ago where he stated, “This was not our accident...This was not our drilling rig. This was not our equipment. It was not our people, our systems, or our processes. This was Transocean’s." Class act, Tony, blame your subcontractors, except legally, the general contractor is ultimately responsible.

How about the news that the formulas for various dispersants being employed on the surface are unknown even to the EPA? Trade secrets. Proprietary information. Bull. Shit.

Today's reports finally mentioned the presence of deep water cross-currents which may explain why only a tiny fraction of the oil has been accounted for on the surface. Much of it may be swirling around in different directions, potentially ending up in the Caribbean.

All those endangered loggerhead hatchlings we helped on their way, good luck to them.

Time to get back on the bike.

Floating along

2010-05-05T10:14:00.002-04:00

Not completely slacking, contrary to the prior post, as a little time travel through my calendar and email accounts shows that we actually have had a few quality lessons lately...

Grice had to attend and critique a live concert performance for her dual enrollment music appreciation course. Fortunately for us, our local symphony had one last show, "Classical Spice," before the end of the season, featuring Bizet's "Carmen," Ravel's "Bolero," Rodrigo's "Concierto de Aranjuez," and, what turned out to be our favorite, Gershwin's "Cuban Overture." We arrived an hour early for the pre-show lecture where we were introduced to several of the unusual horns used in "Bolero" and the 19-year old special guest harpist, Greta Ásgeirsson, whose instrument was once owned by Harpo Marx and used in the movie A Night at the Opera (Becky, I thought of you!) The best part was that our little local symphony has free admission for children with a paid adult, not one child per adult either. I took my three girls and the older two's best buddies for the price of my ticket alone, a very reasonable $30.00. I will definitely be supporting this cultural gem next season.

Another great night, and school-based event, was a picnic under the stars. The Parent Teacher Organization invited the collegiate high school students and their families to enjoy some food and games and then a telescope viewing and highly entertaining lecture from the astronomy professor at the college's observatory.

The next bit of 'accidental' learning came by way of this terrific resource, BANG! The Universe Verse Book 1. Author Jamie Dunbar explains the origins of our universe with comic book-like illustrations and Seuss-like verse and has graciously made it available for free. Anything that makes science so accessible and fun for the kids while helping science-challenged me get it as well gets two big thumbs up. I'm looking forward to enjoying Jamie's other titles.

Jorge traveled down to Haiti. I'd like to say it was for purely humanitarian reasons, but that's only if you count trying to keep our own head above water altruistic and charitable. He headed down looking for work and to try and help, stimulating the economy as he went. We've always been interested in Haitian art and he just could not refuse this strange post-earthquake canvas from the poor artist who chased him down the street. It was only later Jorge's traveling companion looked at the painting more closely and noticed the bodies. Like a tragic Highlights hidden picture, we've found three so far.

Plans were to return soon with Elle -- we both think a dose of third world reality will make her less susceptible to any princess tendencies; unlike her sisters she was too young to remember Belize -- after determining the risks involved (it is both very safe and terribly unsafe at the same time.) Instead Jorge is being redirected to Nashville where one of his brother's real estate investments is currently under the Cumberland River.

And I overcame my hesitation about gun-toting crazies and stopped in at our town's Tax Day Tea Party for a little education of my own. Because, really, who could resist rubbing elbows with the likes of these people?

The fun began with an introduction disavowing the evil left's charges of racism, an introduction met with hearty cheers and lots of flag waving (including one from the oh, so obviously not local, Culpeper militia), but as the first guest began to speak, a heavily accented Cuban immigrant campaigning for a spot on a future ticket testifying to his firsthand account of the horrors of socialism and communism, members of the group next to me murmured, "Is he even a 'Merican citizen?!" and when the second campaigner got up there, a black man from Miami, they stomped off in disgust.

Update

2010-04-27T13:41:00.000-04:00

Time for a post methinks. I surprised myself by remembering the email address and password for this account after apparently cleaning out my cookies. On the first try too! So here I am, ready or not...

School for Elle (and here, finally, I'll plug my little online umbrella school, Schola Classical Academy*) has been extraordinarily lax. Yes, even more than my usual disorganized blasé approach. (How's that for an endorsement? Come to our lazy-ass school!) In fact for the past three days she's been on the east coast doing what I like to refer to as an 'apprenticeship' with her father: Processing permits, managing a crew, playing with Post-It Notes. Tomorrow we have a big day of learning planned: Swimming at a friend's. And then dance class. I have been seriously thinking that with her high social requirements she might be better off in school, but this business with my brother beckons and being flexible enough to travel wins. For now.

Sarabelle is still up in the air about college. Currently she is considering a degree in audio engineering and putting her fine arts as a secondary pursuit to her music. She is shopping around for an upright double bass and aims to play with the local symphony. If she is still undecided about her major come July, she will be enrolled at the local state college to work on her Associates. We've got another campus tour coming up on a Sunday in May -- the day after a big wedding that I am performing.

I've never used my notary stamp once in the 10 years or so that I've had it, ever since Jorge's aunt signed me up in order to legalize her papers and then promptly changed her mind, so at an Easter picnic, when the hostess, a dear friend, asked if anyone knew a notary, I admitted I was one thinking she needed a document processed. She then announced to the crowd that she had found her officiant; I would be marrying her nephew and his fiance. I, who when forced to do a Bible reading at my grandmother's funeral, took one big breath and never stopped reading until I nearly keeled over from asphixia, I will be the one standing up in front of a whole crowd of strangers on this momentous occasion performing the ceremony. On a pier. Under a burning hot sun. You might see me on YouTube.

Grice continues to breeze through her honors classes and is nearly finished with her freshman year of high school. Wow. That was fast. I have been drafted as secretary for next year's PTO (Reason #42,620 why you should homeschool.)

Still waiting for the finishing touches on the renovation. It looks like we might be in sometime before Christmas...

* Disclaimer: The entire premise is pompous and conceited and probably offensive to anyone with a hint of religion, but it's for those of us, the loosely-structured, classical, secular homeschool devotees, who want a serious-looking, non-parochial name on a transcript without authoritarian interference. The end.

Gravity

2010-03-29T02:11:00.000-04:00

How did my great-great-grandfather, the last of many generations born on the family's Virginia tobacco plantation and later raised in staunchly southern Baltimore after the early death of his father, end up a Union naval officer in the Civil War?

How did that apple fall so far from the tree?

How did I, born to Republican Catholic FOX News-watching football-obsessed parents, end up a bleeding-heart liberal freethinking NPR-listening bookworm?

My apple was drop-kicked.

The Washington Post

2010-03-17T08:03:00.004-04:00

It's interesting having notable neighbors. Not celebrities, but Googleable, and in some cases, Wikipedia-listed personalities.

Like our current landlord/mortgage holders, a former senator and UNESCO education director and his museum director wife; and our old island next-door neighbor who is more notorious than famous for her real estate shenanigans.

And then we have our new island next-door neighbors. He being Army Corps brass and she being a, well, here are just a few highlights from her webpage:

"...architect of Heritage's 2008 national radio campaign with Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham and the 2009 partnership with Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh."

"...vice president of communications for WorldNetDaily.com"

"named one of the nation's "Top Ten Evangelical Women," and one of the 12 "Great American Conservative Women."

Oh, give me strength.

I Still Don't Know What I Want to Be When I Grow Up

2010-03-11T07:30:00.010-05:00

Sarabelle takes her second round of SATs Saturday. It's not to improve her admission applications, it's to try and boost her 75% Florida Bright Futures Scholarship to the full 100%.

Ready for a big confession? We've been downsizing further education plans. We've gone from the nearby private "Yale of Art Schools," to the not too far away State University With a Good Arts Program, to the neighborhood state college. We're thinking of a two-year Associates and a transfer to whatever art program she favors later on.

And the guilt! Oh, the guilt.

Jiminy Cricket is sitting on my shoulder chirping, "Cheapskate!" in my ear, but it's not about the money. Not entirely, anyway. It is going to be a bit of a stretch as Jorge's work is now beginning to slow down and he has clients who can't afford to pay him for work he's completed and we have real estate investments meant for such expenses that are unfortunately currently unmarketable, but we do have relatives willing to underwrite the venture and I have a fund to tap (only as a last ditch effort unless I want to go straight to ~~Hell~~ the head of the Black Sheep line. Again.) Part of it is my belief that a college education is hardly worth more than the parchment proof it's printed on. Is there even a parchment commodities exchange these days? I don't know. It's expensive, but is it valuable? I'm hearing stories from people, like the girl I used to babysit, who at 35 has nearly finished up her Masters to teach art history in connection with a museum. The debt? Is it worth it the financial and psychological stress? And the cost in terms of years lost? Let me reiterate: She's 35 and just now looking to get on with her life after graduation, finally in a position to be competitive in her job market. Life's too short, I think. I might have recommended volunteering as a docent after learning a lucrative trade. Had she asked.

Mostly, Sarabelle just isn't sure. About what she wants to do, about where she wants to go, about what she wants to study... And Jorge and I wrestle with the fact that we felt very undecided in the same situation and had no one offering us any real guidance. Do we push? Do we stand back and let her twist in the wind?

Then there are the ghosts of our ancestors, my Yale Gramper and Sarah Lawrence Grammy, and Jorge's Columbia professor Grandmother and University of Miami Law School Judge Pop, haunting me along with a whole slew of living, breathing attorney and teacher relatives and their Ivy league and almost-Ivy League prodigies, persuading me that this is the only ticket to a successful life. And let's not forget the husband who agrees with them.

Did I mention guilt?

I know everyone has their own place. I'd rather have the girls follow their passions. I'd prefer not wasting money. But there's that whole second-guessing thing going on. Am I a realist? Am I a slacker? And the clock, with its incessant infernal ticking, I hear it.

In the meantime, I'm calling her graduated after the SATs -- I might even hum a little "Pomp and Circumstance" to make it official -- and for her graduation present she is flying to New York to see the Tim Burton exhibit at the MoMA before it closes, have a quick visit with her cousins, and hang with Cool NYC Animator Uncle at his place of business.

For all you torturing yourself with similar decisions, check out the posts over at Mental Multivitamin: About College; Paying for College: A Rant of Modest Proportions; Paying for College, Revisited; and Community College.

And good luck.

US vs. Them

2010-03-04T17:37:00.005-05:00

Is it just me, or is anyone else more than a little concerned about the evidently increasing polarization of Americans, with one side willing to negotiate, progress, insure one nation with liberty and justice for all, and the other side, sure this is all a conspiracy, running apoplectic for their guns and bibles to shove their freedom down our throats and send us back to the dark ages? One side rational and the other bloody insane? Or have I just been reading too many articles like these?

Oath Keepers and the Age of Treason

Rehearsals for a Civil War

Darwin Foes Add Warming to Targets

Divide and conquer? We're making it way too easy for our enemies.

United we stand, people.

Good News, Bad News

2010-03-02T23:53:00.004-05:00

It seems like this new project of my brother's has the possibility, dare I even say it, of being not just successful, but huge. Huge as in his business cards are not even back from the printer, the website has only been up about two weeks, and he already has one very big client signed, the phone ringing off the hook with others eager to sign as soon as possible, and interest from another potential client talking about a contract worth eight figures. He is the Golden Boy after all, and this opportunity, a fluke, an afterthought really, that fell into his lap and was brushed away as a distraction to his first big project until it came back and jumped into his lap again a couple years later, may quickly supplant his first big project as the real money-maker.

I am heading over to Fort Lauderdale later this morning to be with my parents when they get my father's test results back. It's less a case of "What?" than it is of "How long?"

Before and After

2010-02-13T02:31:00.005-05:00

The wall color in the living room is more of a brownish tan rather than the peachy shade it appears. We've got plenty of artwork to cover it up anyway. If you look out the windows in this and the next set you can see some of the landscaping we uncovered. The yard initially looked lush and foresty but was really just terribly overgrown with vines.

You can really see the difference removing the drop ceiling made in the dining room (above.)

Besides the ceiling and electrical work, the kitchen got a fresh coat of paint on everything and new oak flooring. We lucked out with the floor, originally intending to cover up the old vinyl with some newer vinyl until Jorge's floor guy stumbled upon a close out at Home Depot. It's a pretty close match and cost less than vinyl.

These are taken from opposite ends of the kitchen, but you can see we ripped out the upper cabinets, took the gross tile off and removed the pieced together counter top. We're going to put open shelves and a microwave above the range and hang a dish rack on the wall to the right of the sink. The single bowl sink is being replaced with a double and the counter top will be replaced with stainless steel. Still have to get all the drawer pulls...

The bathroom is nothing fancy but the ceiling has been repaired and replaced and it's clean and neat.

This was the one alteration we made to the floor plan. On the office side (with the white tile floor) we took out a closet so small you could not hang anything in it and close the door, and then cut a doorway through to the back side of the master bath's closet so that we can access the bath from the office as well. The doorway still needs to be trimmed out, the door installed, and the remaining closet space rebuilt.

You know what I want to read?

2010-02-12T09:06:00.004-05:00

I'm feeling a little overwhelmed by the commitment I made to Infinite Jest. The writing and detail of Wallace's story are extraordinary, so much so that my brain hurts and I can only take it in small doses. And right now what I want is a book, a little dystopic apocalyptic non-fiction, that I can tear through without much thought. Something that will simultaneously creep me out and amuse me. Stephen King's latest, Under the Dome, maybe? Nah. I will get to that eventually, even though a friend, a King fan with similar book tastes, panned it. Margaret Atwood's The Year of the Flood? Defintely, just not yet. I may want to read Oryx and Crake again first.

I'm thinking Tim La Haye's Left Behind: A Novel of the Earth's Last Days.

My library will definitely have multiple copies.

Square Pegs

2010-02-08T16:38:00.003-05:00

If we were still homeschooling, as defined by our county school board, Sarabelle's high school transcript would be a breeze; whatever studies and credits I assigned would be honored. As we are now under the domain of a private school, though it is only an umbrella school, our own at that, and we continue to essentially homeschool, things are a bit more complicated.

For Sarabelle to be eligible for the Florida Bright Futures Scholarship, and this also applies to regular homeschoolers, we have to shoehorn the classes and studies she's completed into the official courses recognized by the state's department of education. It's not as easy as finding a description that basically fits, no, you have to be sure the course gives the proper credit amount in the proper category for the proper award and is currently valid. For example, I decided to describe her latest English course, the Teaching Company's Great Authors of the Western Literary Tradition as a Great Books course, the closest description available, assigning her one full credit for the two semesters' worth of study, however, the Great Books course was only considered a valid credit up until 2007, so the next best match was a World Lit Honors class which is weighted with an extra half point for grading purposes. I never intended to inflate her grades, but don't have much choice: if we designate one of her classes with course #9999999, a number used for studies which don't match offerings in the official list of designated courses, she receives no credit. The Great Authors study is probably legitimately more challenging and involved than a high school English Lit course, but I still worry about the appearance of impropriety.

Complicating the matter was the fact that while Sarabelle had valid high school credits and above average grades for grades 8, 9, and 10 in Australia, her year 11 semester grades, the ones earned on her most recent solo trip, were atrocious. In her defense, she did not get the classes she wanted and was pushed into more difficult courses. Aside from that she was there (in her eyes) primarily to socialize. I was happy to discover after several discreet inquiries, that Queensland schools do not use transcripts for university admissions, relying solely on exit exam scores and copies of report cards, and that there is no clearinghouse of student data available to college admissions officers. Fortunately for us, the school she is currently applying to will except international report cards if necessary or the grades earned there if they have been accepted and incorporated into a transcript from her current school, so we need not report the awful grade 11 marks from Australia and can use our own private school year 11 grades.

In Florida high schoolers need 24 credits to graduate. Anyone who homeschools can imagine what a joke this is. We ended up with 37 credits and to keep it from looking absolutely ridiculous I pared the number down to 33.75, downgrading several rightfully earned credits into extracurricular activities.

She needs to take her SATs one more time having scored high enough to qualify for the 75% award but a few points shy of the 100% award. Her grade point average is good and she has way more volunteer hours than necessary for the scholarship requirements. Deadline for this particular school's applications is March 1, and so far we are right on schedule.

2009 Read-Alouds

2010-01-31T14:52:00.000-05:00

Mary Poppins Comes Back

The Complete Tales and Poems of Winnie-the-Pooh
A Christmas Carol

My 2009 Reading

2010-01-31T14:42:00.000-05:00

New Moon

Eclipse

Feed

Thomas Jefferson: Author of America

The Age of American Unreason

Letter to a Christian Nation

Deer Hunting with Jesus

The Origin of Species

The Boy In the Striped Pajamas

The Catcher in the Rye

Whatever Happened to Penny Candy?

The Secret Life of Bees

The End of Faith

The Demon-Haunted World

Animal, Vegetable, Miracle

Parenting Beyond Belief

A Canticle for Leibowitz

The Geography of Nowhere

Home from Nowhere

Raising Freethinkers: A Practical Guide for Parenting Beyond Belief

The Atheist's Bible: An Illustrious Collection of Irreverent Thoughts

Misquoting Jesus (again)

Jesus, Interrupted (again)

The World Question 2010

2010-01-30T11:00:00.006-05:00

The Edge posits its annual question, How Is The Internet Changing the Way You Think?

I read this question on someone else's blog, though I cannot for the life of me now remember whose. I thought it was interesting and began composing an answer in my head and planning a post. A couple weeks elapsed during which time I became aware of additional ideas I would like to add to my still theoretical post, but whenever I sat down to put fingers to the keyboard I was eventually distracted by more pressing concerns like when was Mafia Wars finally going to open up Bangkok and how many more rounds of Farkle would it take to win back all the chips I'd lost. Wait, are they called "chips" or "points"? Let me go check that real quick...

Today, determined to finally spill my story, I began a search for the pointer-outer of this interesting article leading me on a search of the most likely bloggers' sites where I then lingered to read their newer postings. Where was I...?

In spite of how it seems, not all my time is spent online (though I'll admit to hiding my online status so you'll never know for sure), and I determined to disprove any evidence that the internet was breaking my thoughts into byte-sized chunks by picking up a book, a big fat one that would require a great deal of concentration to finish. After two weeks of plowing through -- insert name of the book after getting link from Amazon store in case anyone wants to buy it through my site and while I'm there quickly check my store credit balance and notice, dang, it's still zero, and think that a Kindle might be nice and consider checking out the new iPad for comparison later, but first add a status update that just popped into my head when I used another open window that was still running Facebook, and oh! hey, it's my nephew's birthday, just a quick b-day wish and a laugh when I read my daughter's post to him before getting back to, ummmm, oh yeah... Infinite Jest. I'm a whole -- run out to the car to find the book to check the page number and discover the bookmark fell out and futilely spend a good 15 minutes trying to figure out where I was, so for convenience sake estimate that I'm -- 100 pages in. Time for youngest daughter's dance class, time to get back in the car. Listen to "Living On Earth" and note a teaser for an interesting story I will not get to hear as it comes too late in the program and aim to look it up when I get home. Get home and forget it. Remember to try and file online paperwork for a past benefit claim and review online college application. Remind myself to update Sarabelle's transcript with corrections and additions, check Facebook and try to complete this post instead. Pride myself on the fact that while I may occasionally converse in the third person, at least I don't limit myself to 140 characters. Just learned while fact checking Twitter's limit, although apparently there are now ways to get around that. Kids interrupt to ask me to find a movie on Netflix. After searching, spend a few extra minutes adding reviews of previously viewed movies for enhanced future movie recommendations. Notice my RSS blog file has 61 updates...

Wait, what was the question again?

Decided!

2010-01-14T23:52:00.004-05:00

Okay, got that out of my system.

Tapestry of Grace is off and we will now return you to our regularly, loosely-scheduled programming. I still think Tapestry is a solid curriculum and very handy, but I prefer to use the books I have selected and collected over the years for our primary and supplementary sources rather than many of their recommendations. What's the point of using my own choices when their questions, worksheets, quizzes, etc. are all geared to their specific book choices? Not cost efficient.

So, for the time being, Larie and I will continue to slack off. There is so much else going on. I am still not even unpacked. The ceilings in the first house are redone and painted, the walls all retextured, the kitchen cabinets painted and crummy tile stripped off, two of the three bedrooms and the hall painted -- it's nearly ready to move back into. Oh, and let me set the record straight, it's not like I am doing any of the actual physical work aside from comparing thousands of paint chips and running for additional supplies, but I am supervising and analyzing a new stack of shelter magazines for kitchen design ideas and have been given the task of listing and showing our old house whenever someone wants a look (which hasn't actually happened yet, but that's good because technically my license is still inactive.)

Sarabelle and her best friend are planning to move into this place, our present location, the smaller of the twin houses, when we make the swap to the renovated one possibly in about three weeks, and experience a little taste of independence under the watchful eye of mom. They are excited to pay rent (ah, youth) and have a list of rules to be followed, number one being that neither of their fourteen year-old sisters be allowed inside. Sarabelle is considering a start at the local college her friend attends with plans to transfer either to her art college or a larger university later. She is overwhelmed with all the choices she has to make, and I am allowing her a bit of breathing room to make her decisions. College Without High School: A Teenager's Guide to Skipping High School and Going to College has been added to her reading assigments. There is a terrific section on setting, mapping, and achieving goals, and all the ideas in the book can be applied to someone interested in self-education at a higher level, skipping college altogether to continue on their chosen path. It will be interesting to see where her interests lead her.

Back in the Northern Hemisphere...

2010-01-10T21:30:00.004-05:00

...but not quite back to the books yet.

We're still settling in at the new house(s). I'm supposed to picking paint colors right now as the crew will be here bright and early to begin slathering the walls of the vacant house with color. Jorge should know better. He sprang the Tile-Guy-will-be-here-in-an-hour-go-pick-some-out on me one other time with disastrous results. I need time to muse over the 800 or so chips I've collected, time to check them out under all sorts of light sources and at different times of the day. Sarabelle says I will probably end up picking a color called Mushroom or Truffle. She is probably right, though any old fungus will not do.

My brother, The Golden Boy, had another brainstorm and found another terrific, as yet untapped, money-making enterprise. He is too wrapped up in his first venture so has approached me about taking on the second, related project. I am interested. So is Sarabelle. The opportunity to travel may present itself, and as I would like to continue homeschooling, and homeschooling would best suit a potentially erratic schedule, I have been tossing a few things around:

One is to continue our loose, bordering-on-unschooling classical approach. I have found though, that I am not good at multi-tasking. I suck at it, quite frankly. If faced with the prospects of teaching my daughter and managing some sort of a business and coordinating travel, I would probably slack off on the teaching as I would have clients holding me accountable and money as a motivator. Sounds terrible, I know, but I'm being honest here. And I do truly think simply traveling is a great education, but I get antsy without some structure.

The other option involves a curriculum I used for Sarabelle and Grace during their early American studies: Tapestry of Grace. No, it's definitely not secular with it's biblically-based Christian slant, but it is classical and was easy enough to work around leaving out or modifying anything blatantly biased. I loved that the whole thing was in one binder and could be used for children in various stages. I was impressed how everything -- lesson plans for vocabulary, geography, writing, history, arts, and hands-on activities, plus comprehension questions -- was included and coordinated to the history reading. It followed a weekly schedule and kept me, a compulsive list maker and checker-offer, happy and on track. There is no math or grammar included, I think we were using Saxon and Easy Grammar at the time, and added Latin Primer, Book 1 for foreign language study.

As for Sarabelle, now that she is back, she needs to complete a few of the courses she abandoned when she left for Australia. She has more than enough credits to be graduated by Florida standards, and nearly all of them in the right places to satisfy the Bright Futures Scholarship qualifications (excepting Economics), but I want her to beef up her science, literature, math, and history. Science will consist of reading Bill Bryson's A Short History of Nearly Everything and history will be finishing up her reading of Joy Hakim's A History of US. She will continue with The Teaching Company's Great Authors of the Western Literary Tradition and The Joy of Mathematics, and will have her choice of either watching their Economics course or reading Richard J. Maybury's Whatever Happened to Penny Candy? and completing the accompanying workbook.

After that? She may work on her art portfolio for a fall admission to her top choice college or might opt to do two years at the local state college and transfer to another university later on or join me in my new undertaking. We shall see.

Foundation Beyond Belief

2010-01-02T06:13:00.003-05:00

Procrastination

2009-12-10T10:26:00.002-05:00

Time to wrap it up. Packing to head over to my parents' for the night and then flying out tomorrow afternoon for Australia.

Or, rather, I should be packing, but with a week full of helping Grice study for early exams squeezed in after school and completing a major science fair project and remembering to shop for one or two small gifts for Santa to deliver and packing and moving more crap from our old house and Grice setting the alarm clock and inadvertently messing up the time setting so that the alarm went off this morning at 1:30 AM but told us it was 5:45 AM and we were up and dressed before we realized the error, I'm of a mind to sit here on the internet and wait for my clothes to jump in the suitcases by themselves. I'll be sure to post a clip of it on YouTube if it happens.

Going light, bringing my trusty Mac, my iPhone (which will do everything I need it to do except actually make phone calls), and a couple changes of clothes. That's more than I need for nearly a month away.

I'm planning to pick up with posts over on Road Schola while we're traveling, but in case I don't see you over there, I hope you have a wonderful, peaceful holiday.

See you next year.

Safeguarding Marriage...

2009-12-01T06:29:00.004-05:00

...From the Evils of Divorce:

RescueMarriage.org

I do?

I will!

Yes, Sir, yes, Sir...

2009-11-30T14:55:00.004-05:00

...actually, four bags full.

That was how many bags of yard trash I collected yesterday. And that was only because I wandered over to the other house late in the afternoon to look for something on the porch and got distracted by all the new vines I spotted along the way. If I'd set out earlier in the day with the intention of doing some clipping, it would have been much worse.

Chop, chop, chop. Hack, hack, hack.

My goal was merely to separate the plants that had overgrown each other. Now the landscaping between the houses looks a little barren, but that's what had to be done, the plants were killing each other, and until the spring it'll probably remain that way.

While I was removing greenery, all the neighbors on our street, even the people who are only renting to own the house we first came to see in this neighborhood, were busy draping their houses in it, putting their holiday decorations up: Boughs of holly, evergreen wreaths, lights, giant inflatable Mickey Santas... In fact the lease/option neighbors put us to shame by setting up not one, not two, but three decorated Christmas trees on their second story deck. So when I ended up at the grocery store later and saw all the poinsettias on sale, peer pressure got the better of me and I went home with the back of my Excursion full of the red and green plants.

The Day After

2009-11-28T08:04:00.004-05:00

Made it through Black Friday without a scratch. It's not something I'd ever feel the need to repeat again, that heading out at the crack of dawn, jockeying for parking spaces, fighting crowds for "doorbusters," waiting in lines, spending money. Well, maybe excepting a 5:00 AM trip to our local Home Depot a friend made for the $.99 poinsettias that she says they promote every year...that might have been worth it, but I'd rather just give her ten dollars next year and have her pick some up on my behalf.

I pulled into the parking lot of Bed, Bath and Beyond and called a friend who had posted on her Facebook page the night before looking for a shopping buddy to see where she was. She was still in bed. But she got right up when I told her where I was and met me very shortly afterward. She is a real shopper, likes to check all over, knows what and when the sales prices should be. I have my trusted favorites: Old Navy, Target, and Macy's (the trip to Bed, Bath and Beyond was a fruitless aberration and I'll never do that again), and go looking for specifics. I feel solidarity with the old men sitting around waiting for their wives outside the dressing rooms. Yesterday she stretched my comfort zone a little, making sure I checked for the twin duvets I wanted at Bells, Sears, and J.C. Penney's before Macy's, and we drifted into numerous other stores for gift ideas. I enlightened her a bit, showing her that bargains can still be had in the "fancier" stores, rivaling the deals in her "sensible" stores. Her son is into Hollister and Aeropostale so we dragged ourselves in there and discovered a great sale. I found a ridiculous hat Grice had been looking for and grabbed it. For all our hat hunting we'd never bothered going in there because along with Hollister, my older two girls can't stand their logo-emblazoned clothing. The hat was blissfully generic.

The best deal of the day though, was at the restaurant we stopped in for lunch: Free draft beer. As it was close enough to noon and we had already practically put in a full day, we felt we had earned it.

Black Friday...

2009-11-26T07:46:00.003-05:00

The fact that everybody seems to recognize this "holiday" disgusts me. I'm tired of hearing about it on the news, of people asking each other if they are going out that day, of store clerks asking each other if they have to work that day, retailers and economists discussing the possible outcomes.

Even still, I do have to pick up a few housewares, and, call me crazy, I'm thinking I might find some pretty good sales tomorrow. The thoughts of fighting crowds, though, makes my stomach hurt, and if I have to be trampled to death, I'd rather it be at a Who concert than the early morning opening of Walmart.

Tomorrow?

2009-11-25T10:13:00.003-05:00

The holiday snuck up on me. Fortunately yesterday, when I drove by a local butcher's and saw the sign advertising "Fresh Amish Turkeys," I remembered that there was more to life than cramming junk in your car and driving across the county multiple times a day. Even more fortunately, when I called the number on the sign, they still had a few left. So a fresh bird it is. An enormous too-big-for-four-people fresh bird.

Today's plan was to strip off all the couch and chair cushions and wash them -- the light in this house seems to emphasize the stains, and more importantly, we can't subject a paying tenant to furniture looking like that -- but I think I'd better first do some grocery shopping beyond what I've scabbed out of the pantry of our old house, otherwise the Thanksgiving Day menu will consist of black bean soup, basmati rice, cans of fire roasted tomatoes, and for dessert everyone can have a sip of the Dunkin' Donuts iced coffee I left in the fridge the other day.

For all the different places we've lived Thanksgiving has been pretty much the same: Watch the parade on TV while cooking (except for that one year we watched it in person), have somebody over to share our meal (except the time we ate out on the island and the years we were in Australia), stuff ourselves, and donate most of the leftovers to a homeless shelter. This year we will only see the Macy's parade if it's broadcast online as I opted to forego the cable television part of the package and just get the internet and phone service. In our house cable television, with all its educational potential, always devolves into a Nickelodeon/Disney/Cartoon Network/MTV fest (though I would never discount the value of MTV's series 16 and Pregnant.) Regular network and PBS will do, except that for now, the digital converter box is out on the island and our TV is still at the other house. We bought a dining room table a few years ago that seats 10, envisioning filling it up on holidays and other special occasions. This year Sarabelle's not here, and my parents (who I like to invite just to see their reactions to my non-traditional, ever-changing menu, "Pommes Anna? Sweet potato fritters? Didn't you make any regular goddam mashed potatoes?! And what the hell are these nuts doing in my green beans...?) have gone up north to visit my brother. Our dear local friends invited us into their homes, but with kids in town for only a few short days, we'd rather let them enjoy their precious family time uninterrupted. What will remain unchanged is that with a turkey Good Housekeeping calculates will provide 22 servings, we will be stuffed and there will be plenty for the less fortunate.

And for that I am thankful.

Back and Forth

2009-11-24T23:34:00.005-05:00

The cable guy came today and hooked us up. For the past few days I've been crossing the county hauling boxes and considering if I had the fortitude to post from my iPhone. All that thumbing, forget it.

Meg, if you're still tuning in, I'm thinking the original gray house will be the permanent home, even though I'm very happily and comfortably nestled into the beige house (in spite of it's too cheery interior paint job, ultra-touchy thermostat, uneven cooling, and critters -- I'm going with squirrels again, thinking positive) because 1) It's bigger; and 2) It's the house I fell in love with nearly a year ago when I came across it unexpectedly while checking out another house a few doors down. The historical society was having an open house there and while I was not prepared to join any tours (I had cranky kids and dogs in the car with me), I spotted a tiny "For Sale" sign and stopped to inquire. The women were packing up for the day but suggested I come on in and have a peek gratis. I was charmed, not blinded exactly, I could plainly see its faults, but I could also clearly see its potential.

A dangerous word, that.

In my younger school days, that word was bandied about frequently during parent-teacher meetings, invariably followed by a sigh and an ellipse. But not only do Jorge and I have the ability to see beyond the dreck, we have the ability to actually get it done; push it past "potential" into reality. Sometimes it takes a little longer than originally anticipated. Sometimes it takes moving out and putting it on the market because "Nobody will buy a house in this condition."

As it stands, Sarabelle suggested she move into one of the houses on her own when she gets back, as the beige house lacks a third bedroom and the gray's third bedroom is really more of a porch. A friend suggested her daughter, Sarabelle's best friend, who started college this year, join her and rent a room. An interesting proposition. Otherwise, Maureen, one of them will be a guesthouse, and I fully expect you to come for a visit.

Just to complicate things a little, because, so far things have pretty much fallen into place, the renter/possible purchaser of our previous home, the Green House, resurfaced. We had decided against renting it at this point as the house needs work ("Nobody will buy a house in this condition") and we have plans to travel down to Australia coming up very soon, but our broker is pretty sure this guy could be a serious buyer and it would be worth our while to get him in there. Too bad we already took out much of the furniture because he needs it, so we are now re-moving some of the furnishings out of the new place and back to the old.

Eh.

2009-11-20T23:44:00.003-05:00

I've got a little bit of time left to squeeze in a post before both hands are pointing straight up. I've already missed one day, so the NaNoBloMo thing is officially off.

Today was a lazy, lazy day. I might just be the laziest person you know. I'm pretty close to being the laziest person I know. Some work was accomplished, but only in two short bursts that occurred during the time I picked Grice up from school until I got home just a few minutes ago.

I'll spare you the laundry list.

Suffice to say that if I hadn't wasted the whole morning much more would have been accomplished, and I might even have an interesting story to tell. I might have finished something, instead of leaving some things half done.

I'm tired. I'm going to bed.

I'll give it another go tomorrow.

Double Trouble

2009-11-19T11:14:00.003-05:00

Here's the "twin" house...

...more of a fraternal than identical. It too was built by the railroad company in the late 20s or early 30s. The layout is similar in the main rooms though it lacks the rear addition of the other house and the details are a bit different (like the arched window over the front door and the landscaping, for starters.)

The interior of the porch is being painted the lighter color you see below and should be done by Saturday. The interior windows into the house have been removed and replaced with operational, louvered shutters making the porch part of the air-conditioned living space. The exterior window bottoms of this house have a little higher elevation and make it a bit more private.

The interior ceilings are not original, but are high enough and in good shape. This house also has a fireplace, on which the painter, in addition to putting a fresh coat of hideous minty green on the walls, decided to pick out the "I" shaped recess in the brick in dark blue. But I can worry about correcting that later. Much later.

No bookshelves, but another window seat (these windows are not original, but later awning-style replacements) in the dining room and another curious pass-through...

...into the kitchen. The kitchen is small, divided into separate cooking and eat-in areas, but has all new appliances, cabinets, and counter-tops. Plus an eye-popping palette.

Outside off the kitchen is a nice covered area with a grill, firepit, birdbath, another patio area in brick, decent landscaping, and a shed. I'll bet if I look in the shed it's probably full of tools, and if I'm lucky, a weedeater for that little bit of lawn that'll need trimming.

In the last photo can you see the ivy creeping over the brick patio? And the strangler vine climbing the palm? I have been hacking this stuff out of the other yard for days. It's horribly invasive.

It's neat and clean (except for the odd junk belonging to the painter) and ready for immediate occupancy. We should be in by Sunday.

Last Minute

2009-11-17T23:37:00.002-05:00

It's not so hard to get back on the blogging wagon. Posting everyday is fairly easy provided you do not have children bickering over who gets to do what, when, and for how long.

Tonight, as I am running out of time after the kids spent all evening finishing their work, I will take the simple way out and post some more renovation pictures:

Here is the master bedroom. The wood floor under the carpet was a nice surprise; it's in good shape and the smelly carpet is gone. Jorge decided to rip out this newer drywall ceiling even though it appeared to be in good shape and we really didn't gain much additional height. After seeing the other "improvements" made to the house around this same time, he did not trust any of the work that was done. Sure enough, you can see the last of the 2x4 joists in the ceiling, all were incorrectly installed.

There was no happy surprise under the carpet in the front bedroom. This was where the painters sprayed the louvered doors for the closets. Yup, right on the bare floor. Fortunately the floor has a good coat of varnish on it and the white flat latex paint that now covers it should come up pretty easily. Good thing we decided to take out the dropped ceiling in this room: covered up underneath the panels were old light fixtures and bulbs, still connected to the switches and still operational.

So what do you do when you need to get out of your old house quickly (because you may have a renter who could become a buyer) but your new house is nowhere near ready? Did I hear someone say, "Buy the house next door"? No? Because that would be insane, right? But that's exactly what we plan to do. The seller, the same one we are dealing with on the current project house, wanted to make us a deal on the way toward eliminating their Florida properties. I didn't seriously think it would work out, but they are making it easy. And that one is ready for immediate occupancy. Since the potential renter/possible buyer of our Green House would want the place furnished, I only have to pack up our personal effects. We will be back to living like we did in Australia, camping out on swags with bare bones housewares.

In the midst of all that chaos, here is my one quiet corner. That's all I really need.

Humbug

2009-11-16T22:35:00.003-05:00

Anyone else annoyed by school reports due in Power Point format instead of say, writing? Just because we have the technology must we use it? Is this education or job training? Isn't this just another example of dumbing down?

Maybe I'm just tired of being forced to share my laptop.

Progress?

2009-11-15T21:11:00.006-05:00

Today seemed like a rather useless day. We got off to a late start. I was distracted by a discarded chair. Kids needed to be fed. And right when I finally got into hacking the heck out of the hedges, the sun started to set and Elle had to be picked up from her friend's. I only ended up getting in about one solid hour of work.

But I also looked at several hundred paint chips, checked IKEA online for kitchen cabinets, bundled a small mountain of yard waste for the garbagemen, removed and relocated a small oak tree, and had a nice visit with friends. That's my kind of productivity!

Imagine how much I will get done tomorrow with an early start, Grice at school, Elle at the circus with friends, and Jorge over on the other coast...

Post Veterans' Day Post

2009-11-14T10:39:00.003-05:00

The Moving Wall, a half-sized traveling replica of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington D.C. is in town through the weekend, so Elle, Grice and I stopped by to see it after Grice got out of school yesterday. I regret that we didn't have time on our trip through D.C. last time to visit the permanent memorial, and after being present in 1985 for the very moving parade and dedication of the Florida memorial in Tallahassee, I wanted the girls to feel some small part of the experience.

My parents may have made a concerted effort to keep the TV turned off during that time or they may simply have preferred the newspaper to the evening news broadcast. I was in fifth grade in 1975 and never knew anything about Vietnam until high school.

At Jorge's house they sat glued to the screen, watching the draft numbers being called, hoping his older brothers' and cousin's numbers didn't come up. His brothers were lucky. Tommy wasn't. At his funeral ten years or so ago, the officiant reminded us of the two Bronze Stars he had earned and said that Vietnam had killed Tommy, it just took him longer to die.

"In memory of the men and women who served in the Vietnam War and later died as a result of their service. We honor and remember their sacrifice."

A collector presented a fascinating display of items including vehicles, weapons, uniforms, photos, and various memorabilia from our soldiers and the Viet Cong.

We saw men crying, people still reviling Jane Fonda, and so many names.

The Great Beyond

2009-11-13T08:19:00.005-05:00

Enjoying some beautiful, Florida winter weather yesterday led to a deep gratitude and wonder about the ridiculously amazing fact I am here at all, and then, naturally, to thoughts of impermanence.

I'm impermanent. I'm okay with that. I feel very fortunate to have had a turn on this planet in spite of the enormous odds against it ever happening and am enjoying the ride as much as possible during this blink-of-an-eye existence.

But who will take care of my kids when I'm gone?

Jorge and I have discussed it in the past: The older of my two brothers has been at the top of our list for years, but now, after remarrying, he and his wife have five daughters between them. Three more would be tough, though they all get along famously. We used to think Jorge's brother would be a solid choice, able to keep them in familiar surroundings, financially secure and able to wisely manage any possible assets on behalf of the girls, but he and his wife are several years older and busy with grandchildren now. My cousin, who is a lot like me with a sicker sense of humor, and her husband, Nature Boy, would be great influences. Adding three more occupants to their home would be challenging, but the possibility of finally having a house in Florida might persuade them.*

Physically, any of the above choices would suffice, but what about spiritually? Who would model morality without religion, without a god? Who would encourage them to challenge authority and blind faith, to be free and critical thinkers? Who would promote the ideas and practices of the four noble truths?

Have you dealt with this? Does it matter?

*We've never actually gotten around to asking any of them, so this may be the first they're hearing of it. Surprise!

Health Care

2009-11-12T07:37:00.004-05:00

It's been dead silent for several days on a certain Yahoo group since my last few remarks. In my typical passive-aggressive way I replied to a message, one of the increasingly irritating partisan posts, one marked "I don't usually foward to my entire mailbox but this is to [sic] important". I knew the original comment was off-topic and out-dated, being a link to a YouTube video that has made the rounds for some time already, but I channeled a little Howard Beale, stuck my neck out, and let them know, "I'm mad as hell, and I'm not going to take this anymore!"

In a nice way, of course.

Mr. Rogers's remarks are full of exaggeration, and rather than pick apart his every fabrication, acknowledging the original bill has undergone revision, I tried to make a few simple points:

The 15% of uninsured Rogers refers to includes the hardworking self-employed, not only the welfare "weak" (who, incidentally, already receive health care through Medicare and Medicaid.)

Against the idea of government subsidized health care? What about veterans, civil service employees, and anyone receiving Social Security disability payments who already benefit from various plans?

The insurance companies obviously don't want to forfeit any profits and are lobbying hard to kill any public program. Why support their greed?

Got yourself a nice 9-5 with adequate health insurance? Good for you. Why not make an affordable government public OPTION available to the remaining uninsured? Why punish the rest of us?

Maybe they're thinking about it...

Veterans' Day

2009-11-11T22:52:00.003-05:00

Found out just a little too late (like an hour ago when a friend posted pictures on her Facebook page) that there was a big opening ceremony today downtown at the harborside park for the traveling Vietnam Memorial Wall. There was a parade this past Saturday and I figured that was all the commemorating the city had planned. We were working on the house today, of course, (and that "we" is not the I-showed-Jorge-pictures-and-read-a-book-on-the-porch-while-he-slaved "we," I got filthy helping remove ceiling grids and hauling debris out, 1,000 lbs. according to the dump scale) and were treated to fly-bys from several WWII aircraft in conjunction with the Wall ceremony. You know what Larie and I will be doing tomorrow...

After visiting the display, I'm going back to work, attacking the landscaping with a machete and loppers. The stranglers and other vines are out of control and there are a couple long-neglected mango and citrus trees that need my attention. Then we'll pick Grice up from school and run up to Tampa for her follow-up appointment at Shriners'. It's going to be a long day.

Teamwork

2009-11-10T22:48:00.007-05:00

Tomorrow we go back over to the house to try and figure out what to do with the dining room/kitchen opening. Right. Exciting. I have been poring over home design magazines and have a good idea how I'd like the kitchen to turn out, but first I must speak to my contractor, who will no doubt give me his standard answer, "Sure, we can do anything you want, the money's the issue." I will then scale my idea back and come up with some equally outlandish alternative and the whole cycle repeats. Other than that, we work pretty well as a team: I am the idea man and he is the workman; the theoretical to his practical; the dreamer to his doer.

Craptacular!

2009-11-09T09:29:00.000-05:00

If you thought this was a perfectly fine bathroom...

...clean, neat, with its relatively new fixtures and recent paint job...

...then you don't know old houses.

The presence of a fresh coat of latex and a newer cheapo vanity were tip-offs that someone was trying to hide something. Stained ceiling tiles betrayed an old roof leak and removal of the panels revealed decades-old rotten wood and some pretty ridiculous attempts at patches. Before the roof was properly replaced after Hurricane Charley there had been water sitting up there for a very long time. Welcome to the home of The Black Mold.

As it was, there was only one teeny spot of mold, nothing a good blast of Clorox Clean-Up couldn't handle. You can see the new roof decking over Jorge's head. He got up there and had a good look at the rest of the roof's underside and what he saw made him very happy. The railroad company built this place right. It was the later occupants who boogered it up and left behind this mess that had to go...

Onto the living room! Ye olde mantlepiece and the dark shutters are scrapped.

And the mock heavy timbers between the dining room and kitchen...

...are stripped off. If we're lucky, there may still be a boxed-in arch underneath there, matching the arch between the living and dining room (visible in the background.)

Here's a view of the additional two ceilings hidden underneath the dropped ceiling. See the two layers of stuck-on accoustical junk?

As you can see by the following kitchen photo, the next priority is getting our electrician over here. Pronto.

Pretty amazing that all this work was completed between Friday evening and Sunday afternoon singlehandedly by my husband. It might be a few more days before he has another burst like that though.

Forever House?

2009-11-08T01:38:00.004-05:00

I finally got a phone that takes decent pictures (and video) but do you think I have the presence of mind to actually whip it out if something noteworthy occurs? And when I eventually remember I have it, I'm always worried somebody is going to mentally or verbally accuse me of being some kind of stalker, thus no photos yesterday of Asha and Lulu frolicking with Oliver, Finn, and Marley.

Since I started this blog, we've lived in the following places:

Stirling Road House (Florida)
The Island (Florida)
The Stilt House (Florida)
The Green House (Florida)
Port Douglas (Australia)
Carr Road (Australia)
Mt. Perseverance (Australia)
Yalkula Station (Australia)
Mt. Perseverance - again
The Green House - again

There were even several other properties we got involved in as we searched for what Dy calls her Forever Home, but this time we might actually have found ours...

It's not really big enough, but who needs all that stuff anyway? And it's old and needs work, but it's got a little history and character and we're contractors. Best of all, it's one-story so I will still be able to shuffle around when I'm old and feeble, because after this I am NOT MOVING AGAIN.

The deal came together pretty easily with some creative financing from the owner. We were able to additionally secure the vacant double lot behind the house, with owner financing from a separate seller, which was the key to the deal since the house sits on a tiny lot. The house's seller also owns the twin house next door and is eager to make a deal with us on that one. It's a huge stretch, but maybe we'll end up with the nice little family compound I'd always hoped to have...

I did remember to take some pictures of the property and plan to document the renovation as it goes. For starters, here are some views of the exterior and the "Before" pictures of the main interior rooms:

The house was built by the railroad company for employees; the historical society says prior to 1910, but the style is more 30s Florida Mediterranean. The courthouse burned down in 1910 and most property records were destroyed so no one knows for sure. Many streets in the historic district are still the original brick...

The double rear lot. There used to be a house here but it was destroyed in Hurricane Charley. You can barely make out the house behind Jorge's truck. The red fence and house you can easily see on the right is the rear of the "twin" house...

West half of the front porch (11' ceilings and great light)...

Living room fireplace and bookshelves. Wood floor is in great shape and recently refinished The first big project is to remove the hideous dropped ceiling. The owner prior to our sellers also owned the local Irish pub. He apparently tried to give the house a little of that flavor when he added all the dark wood trim. This mantlepiece must go along with the trim around the doorway into the kitchen...

Window seat in the dining room...

The eat-in kitchen (which we won't be eating in -- we use our dining room table -- but will probably be adding an island of some sort.) The cabinets on the right side (in the second photo) continue up past the dropped ceiling and two other older and crummier ceilings all the way to the original plaster ceiling (another 2' or so)...

View of ye olde pub decor looking from the kitchen back toward the dining and living rooms. The vinyl floor has also got to go.

Now the fun begins. All door hardware has been changed out from super shiny fake brass to a more subdued satin nickel finish and last night Jorge began ripping out the ceilings :

First the living room...

...and then the dining room...

Stay tuned.

Park Day

2009-11-07T23:19:00.003-05:00

Our homeschool park day was rescheduled from yesterday to today, Saturday, and though we were in town and working at the new house only two or three blocks away, we decided to pass. Part of it, well, probably most of it, was me being stubborn. The new leader couldn't make it, had to work, and rather than just let someone else, or no one else be in charge as we have done for the past, oh, seven years or so -- the First Friday meeting being sacrosanct -- she took it upon herself as Grand Poobah to change the date.

Elle and I took Lulu and Asha and went to the dog park instead.

And what fun we had! We met Oliver the Newfoundland, Finn the Irish Wolfhound, Marley the one-eyed Pomeranian, the lady I'd met the night before at the bookstore with her service dog, and so many more. It was a great place to get to know the neighbors, both two- and four-legged. Only three blocks from the house, it's the best park of its kind I've been to yet: separate yards for big and small dogs, plenty of trees, pavilions, clean-up stations, water fountains, tennis balls, even a pool. Lulu and Asha were a little overwhelmed and cautious (they switched off, one staying nearby me at all times to 'protect' me from all the other canines), though I'm sure they'll be plenty excited when we go next time.

Who You Gonna Call?

2009-11-06T22:50:00.007-05:00

I ambushed the crazy ex-tenant today. I lay in wait on the front porch knowing sooner or later she would come for the bait, her mail. I sprang to the curb when she pulled up and told her I realized from yesterday's conversation that she was afraid to tell me the reasons for her hasty departure for fear of a lawsuit, but I had three kids to worry about and all kinds of bizarre thoughts about what we'd find out soon enough had been running through my mind. I may have mentioned dangerous electrical work and sexual predators. I did not mention the G word.

She apologized and admitted that after she'd driven off she should have further explained the situation, though the circumstances of her vacancy had left her very angry at her landlords, because yes, my family was in danger.

I froze.

"There is something in the house," she told me. Feigning innocence I egged her on saying I'd heard something skittering around above the ceiling and figured it was at best a squirrel, or at worst a rat. "No," she replied, "it's not that..." She hesitated, "It's worse..."

Oh, holy shit, remember to breathe, send Elle up on the porch so she doesn't hear the gory details...

"It's some kind of creature, it walks around the house at night. It came in my bedroom!

Further description confirmed it was a wayward 'possum. Phew! No problem! We have dogs, they'll chase it off (though the kids would have loved to have seen the little critter waddle around one night.) The weight had lifted off my chest and she went on to detail the nastiness with the landlord's wife and the apparent plague of palmetto bugs and lizards around the house.

And just when I thought we would wrap up the conversation on a light note, her voice dropped to a whisper, "There is something else in the house..." She gave me a look, eyebrows raised, slowly nodding her head as if to say, yes, you know what I'm talking about, what I'm about to say, you've already noticed it, I'm sure.

Okay, HERE it comes, I thought, dark shapes by the bedside, doors and windows opening and closing by themselves, lights turning on and off, whispers...

"Black Mold."

My relief was so explosive I laughed in her face and suddenly heard Ray Parker Jr. singing "Moldbusters" in my head.

I ain't 'fraid of no mold!

Scooby Doo, Where Are You?

2009-11-05T21:23:00.008-05:00

I was back at the new house today ripping more vines off the landscaping (with gloves on this time) when a woman in a car pulled up. She asked if we're living here or just cleaning it up. She asked if we were renting or we bought it. She told me she was a former tenant and just had her mail delivery changed but that it might take a few days before it's completely redirected. Sure enough there were a few pieces that had come earlier that day and I went in to get them for her.

She went on to tell me she had moved down from North Carolina only four months earlier and her newest address is the third place she's been in. Said she was only in our house three days before she left.

"Why?" I asked.

"Um, I can't say, I don't want to make any trouble... Didn't [our landlord's wife] tell you that I might have to check the mailbox for a few days? She didn't mention anything...?"

"Oh, did you have a problem with [our landlord's wife]?" (Thinking her no-nonsense personality may have somehow ruffled the former renter's feathers.)

"I'm not going to talk about it, I might end up in a lawsuit. All I can say is, you'll find out soon enough..."

And with that she sped away.

A few minutes later my friend Val arrived up to check out our new place and I told her what she had just missed. We theorized about what could be wrong with the house. Squirrels in the attic? Typical old house nuisances like the old plumbing and dead electrical socket in the laundry? It couldn't be the neighbors, several are friends of friends and they speak highly of everyone else on the street. A grisly murder? Ghosts...?

We settled in and were enjoying a couple cold ones on the porch catching up. Her son just made his Confirmation and she'd had a slew of relatives in town visiting for the event. She said her son was really getting into the religion thing and I offered to give her the crucifix I'd received for my First Holy Communion and two bottles of magic juju holy water from my aunt's healer-priest friend that I'd found cleaning out my closet, figuring he might appreciate it.

Without warning, the upper sash of the double hung window I was sitting in front of came crashing down about two inches behind my head.

Val thinks I might want to reconsider my offer.

School?

2009-11-04T19:57:00.004-05:00

One of today's lessons involved measuring volume, like, How many boxes can fit on the back seat of Mom's Excursion? The answer: Not Very Many. Note I did not say in the back of Mom's vehicle, the addition of which would have made the answer: Almost Enough to be Worthy of the Drive, because the Way Back is already packed to the roof with non-household-relocating items. We schlepped a few measly cartons down to the new house, boxes that have been packed and have not seen the light of day since we planned to leave for Australia the first time, about eight years ago. Until we remove and replace the ancient, asbestosis-inducing, dropped ceiling panels, we can't really move much more in, though I plan to bring our swags and a couple towels over and camp out if Jorge drags his feet. Add a coffee maker and we're all set.

Another lesson covered identifying artists by their painting techniques, as in, Who in the world would paint double-hung windows closed rendering them inoperative and unable to capture the harbor breeze?

We broke up the schoolwork with a little fun, an olfactory treasure hunt, as we sought out the numerous chemical air-fresheners hidden throughout the house. And then we worked on a word problem: If Mom drives 45 mph for 10 miles and 55 mph for the remaining 17 miles and makes every green light, will she reach the other side of town in 45 minutes to get her daughter to her dance class on time? The answer: No, especially when she forgets class starts at 4:00, not 4:30 PM.

Another Day, Another...whatever...

2009-11-03T15:36:00.005-05:00

Elle did an internship with her father today -- that's what I'm calling it -- so I had nearly the entire day to sit at the computer and try to puzzle out the typographic problems I'm fighting on my private school website. Mostly it comes down to I am an HTML retard, and before you go getting your politically correct self in a dither, I mean that in the most tardo, tardere kind of way. Thanks, for the suggestions, Becky! My eyes are tired and I'm still only able to poke at the keyboard with four-fifths of my digits (not only are the open wounds still sore, I nearly severed a finger cutting right across the top of one of the former blisters yesterday while making dinner.) Coincidentally, four-fifths of our family will be eating left-overs tonight.

No Diving

2009-11-02T07:12:00.002-05:00

I'm ashamed to admit that I've considered letting my membership in a particular organization lapse, not just because the purportedly inclusive group has taken a particularly right-wing fundie turn, or that members repeat inane rumors without exercising the tiniest shred of critical thinking or skepticism, or that they send intolerant inflammatory emails to me, though those are certainly huge and valid reasons, but also, and mostly, because of the group members' aesthetics -- specifically, the lack thereof.

Yes. I am shallow.

And I'm no genius or such a looker myself, but at least I have a basic knowledge of grammar and all my teeth. I visibly cringed at our last meeting, held in a public place, when a member spoke before the group stating their dislike for some perceived liberal secret agenda ("We ain't supporting nuthin' like that!) I wanted desperately to explain to the two young moms sitting at the next picnic table with raised eyebrows that not all homeschoolers are wacko religious hillbillies, or at least let them know I'm not, but there was no polite way to distance myself from the ugly ignorance other than hoping they caught my extreme eye-rolling.

I thought I would stay on to help any new families negotiate the legalities and challenges of homeschooling -- I certainly don't have much to offer the current bunch -- but any potential members may attend one meeting and run screaming in the opposite direction.

NaBloWriMo

2009-11-01T21:22:00.006-05:00

A post a day, eh? Anything to kick my lazy self in gear, I suppose.

We took occupancy of our new(est) house today, though there are a few projects to accomplish before we can move in. About two weeks worth to be exact. Today in a fit of, oh, impatience maybe, I determined to pull off the vines choking the zamia and frangipani in the front yard. Without gloves. Won't ever do that again as I now have no skin on the soft, tender undersides of my index fingers. But I can still type and click.

Coming down off my chocolate buzz today, I got a heap of filing done and also took another look at my attendance records and recalculated back to the first "official" day my private school started. Elle has actually got 98 days completed so we are well on our way to fulfilling those pesky Florida statutes. I've worked out a transcript for Sarabelle so that when she returns after the Christmas break she will be on track to graduate in the spring, work on her portfolio, and apply to her school of choice for the fall term.

I'm looking forward to reading a book Chris O'Donnell recommended, College Without High School: A Teenager's Guide to Skipping High School and Going to College. With two jumping through the high school hoops, maybe the third time will be the charm...

Diversions

2009-10-14T12:24:00.002-04:00

Letters of Note: Correspondence Deserving of a Wider Audience is just fascinating and one more reason to keep me online way past the hour decent people should be in bed. For starters:

Al Franken zoos on John Ashcroft

Einstein on religion

Bobby Kennedy gets an earful on obscene lyrics

Happy reading!

And now a word from our sponsor...

2009-10-12T00:14:00.003-04:00

As part of my umbrella school website, which, shamefully, is still not yet online, I created an Amazon.com Associates Program, thinking I may earn a few free books if any of my recommendations pan out to interested readers. I just went ahead and added this website as well, so if you are considering a purchase, please consider clicking through to Amazon via my links. Thanks!

Progress

2009-10-09T09:22:00.004-04:00

I just compared the calendar to my OCD homeschool spreadsheet, and it appears that we have completed 54 days of homeschooling to my other daughter's 44 days of public schooling. So even though I feel dreadfully lax and behind (yeah, I know, behind what?), we are officially ahead!

Which is good, because things here are set to get a little crazy again if all goes according to plan.

We're moving again.

Wait, wait, wait! Before you think we've completely lost our minds, this time it is only across town. Back to the sweet little city we lived in during the catastrophic events of Friday the 13th 2004. What remained of the city has since been rebuilt and restored and a new downtown riverwalk is underway. Prices of houses left standing after Charley were at a premium as people scrambled to find lodging while rebuilding and then the real estate bubble inflated prices even higher. We had always hoped to find a reasonable house in the historic district, I have always wanted to be in a walkable, small downtown neighborhood, and now finally with the downturn in the economy we may be able to realize those dreams. This might finally be our Forever Home.

It makes it much easier for Grice's morning routine, allowing her to reach school in the time it now takes us just to get to the bus stop and eliminates the additional one hour bus ride altogether. We are three blocks from the wonderful riverside park where our homeschool group meets and close to all our best buddies.

Sarabelle has been apprised of the situation to avoid the unfortunate circumstance my father encountered when he returned from the service: His family had moved in the time he was away, letters crossed in the mail, and when he knocked on the door of his childhood home it was answered by a complete stranger.

I was going to try Meg's exercise, listing all the places I have ever lived. But then I had trouble remembering... Some places we'd bought and never lived in, some places we rented and planned to buy (sometimes twice), some places we intentionally forfeited deposits on to get out of what had become a shaky deal, some were only vacant lots, and some were vacant lots with house plans we'd developed. The list was hard to define. And long.

And maybe just got longer.

A Cold Day in Hell

2009-10-01T21:08:00.004-04:00

Two days before Hitchens and D'Souza's Great Debate I received a phone call from my mother. She wanted to chat and asked about our plans for the next few days. I tried to remain vague but it eventually came out that we were heading to Orlando for the event and would be taking the girls. She offered to drive over and keep Elle, seeing as how she might be a little young and fidgety for such a situation. Fine, I thought, that might work out well; she does get wiggly when she's tired and it was going to be a long night.

The day before the event my mother phoned back and notified me that no, she and my father would not be coming over after all. Her faith was just too important and strong for her to support something like that. Like what, a debate? An intelligent discussion of an age old question? Her side would be fairly represented... No, she insisted, she just felt too strongly about her faith.

But how strong can your faith be if it cannot stand up to any questioning?

Her logic escaped me. If it was such a dangerous intellectual atmosphere, why would she then force me back to my original plan and expose my innocent, impressionable youngest to such radical ideas? How noble of her.

The day of the debate there was an ugly message posted on my Facebook wall, querying about the "athest (sic) bullshit" and accusing me of upsetting my mother right after she had just lost her brother. It was signed, along with a little more vulgarity, by my father.

If my father knew me even just a little bit in this respect, he'd know that these ideas aren't all that new to me. They certainly predate the death of my uncle several weeks ago. In fact, his father, my beloved WASP grandfather, was the first to suggest to me, a wide-eyed nine or ten year old, that things were not all right with my family's religious beliefs when he explained the patently ridiculous idea of immaculate conception and the probable paternity of Jesus: Mary had slept with a rabbi.

(Happy belated Blasphemy Day, by the way!)

A thousand snarky replies went through my head after the initial shock and hurt at the message's tone. I was somewhat flattered. Was I so powerful that my non-belief in an afterlife had doomed my poor uncle to oblivion despite my mother's fervent prayers? Was I God? I decided to take the advice my parents seem to have forgotten about not writing things you'd be ashamed to have anyone read and left the comment displayed, unanswered, as a testament of Christian compassion and unconditional love.

My status was changed to: L____ W______ D____ has a date tonight with Christopher Hitchens.

Grice's school schedule precluded her from attending, but Elle came with us and we all had a very entertaining and informative evening from the time spent in line chucking at the girls ahead of us complaining that their teacher failed everyone in their class on the science test because he's an evolutionist!, to the devastating wit and rationality of Hitchens, to a late night Mexican dinner.

The next day the message was gone. My father not being savvy enough to know how to delete a comment, I quizzed my daughters who know my password thinking they might not have wanted anyone to see the mean-spirited comments, and my brother, who told me he had instructed my father to take it down.

Nearly two weeks passed without a word from my parents until two cards arrived in the mail yesterday, one for my each of my daughters from my mother. For no reason. With money inside. They called to thank Nana for the cards and the phone was handed to me before I could protest. My mother announced they were now ready to drive over for a visit (under the guise of a friendly get-together, but really to use our place as a launch pad for visiting west coast friends.) I insisted I wouldn't dream of asking her to compromise her values by staying with us, I know how strong her beliefs are to her. Apparently her faith is strong, but not her moral fiber; she blamed my father for the rude remarks.

One little word -- not an envelope full of money -- is all it takes.

Progress Report

2009-08-31T18:53:00.005-04:00

Getting up at 4:30 AM is not so hard. Staying up after returning from the bus stop run is. Elle stays home -- but not alone, having our trusty dogs Lulu and Asha to keep her company -- sound asleep. I get home and occupy myself on the computer, mostly with Facebook (which I'm going to defend as a great way to communicate with Sarabelle Down Unda) and catching up on email. Today my life got a little more exciting as I was invited to join some of our neighbors on their morning dog walk. I figured a little exercise couldn't hurt. Sometimes peer pressure is a good thing.

Grice's school is challenging. And the science teacher is tough. And she has him for two classes, the second one being an elective, Research and Technology. I even suggested -- are you ready for this? -- she switch her elective to Drama so as not to overburden herself. Go ahead, I can handle the criticism. I tried to justify it by saying the public speaking experience would be beneficial but Grice emphatically expressed her desire not to alter the schedule because she has finally changed her idea of what she wants to be when she grows up from Cake Decorator to Zoologist and so will need loads of science. So I'm happy. So, so happy. This change in plans is partly inspired, I'm sure, by a visit from her Australian Grade 7 teacher Will (aka "Sir") and his partner, Sarah, a zoologist, on their second swing through North America on the final leg of a six-month tour of the Americas. They stayed with us a few days in between landing in Miami and heading up to New York City and regaled us with stories and stunning photos of their incredible experiences like monkey hunting with blowdarts in the Amazon among the Huaorani and avoiding the feared "non-contact" tribe, and camping on an active lava-flowing volcano.

Jorge will be returning soon from his trip to Australia to get Sarabelle settled in. She is happy but appreciates the distance and her family just a bit more than before. She will only be down there for three months on her own (and by that I mean boarding with a trustworthy friend and her family), and we already have our travel plans for the return trip, but it is going to be high-anxiety for this generally laid-back mum.

On the spur of the moment I ordered tickets to see Christopher Hitchens debate Dinesh D’Souza in Orlando. This happens to be the night after Jorge flies back from halfway around the world. I don't know if he will be able to take another 2.5 hours trapped in transit, but I couldn't pass up a chance to see the Hitch in the flesh. I'd really like Grice to come along, but with our Christmas travel plans she is already over the limit of allowable absences for the term (something I have to remember to bring up with the guidance counselor when I go in to discuss Grice getting credit for some of the courses she took at her Australian high school.) I may have two extra tickets if you know anybody who wants to go...

Grade 4

2009-08-08T14:00:00.006-04:00

With Grice starting school Monday, and Sarabelle in Australia, Monday should be the official First Day of School for Elle.

Time to plan, I suppose.

Waiting until the last minute has its benefits. I have had plenty of time to mull over ideas for studies. There are plenty of books and curricula on my shelves, I don't need to go researching books and placing orders for more materials (If you could see the books I've dumped...) I know there are still some terrific unexamined resources out there, but I'm confident that what I need I already own. My initial Cover-Every-Topic-and-Have-a-Fun-Accompanying-Activity-and Supplemental-Reading plan has evolved into Just-Do-the-Next-Thing. That is a very satisfying feeling.

The big mental debate I'd been having about whether or not to completely drop The Story of the World has been decided in all the extra thinking time I've had. It's served me well over the years with Sarabelle and Grice and more recently with Elle, I even have the activity book for the next round which sure makes coming up with comprehension questions easy, and frankly, I'm rather fond of and sentimental about the whole series -- it was The Well-Trained Mind which got me started after all -- but I'm a little tired of the detail. As I became enamored of ideas found in Climbing Parnassus and The Latin-Centered Curriculum, I've pared things down. We're going to stick with the Western Civ basics, not studying every culture in the world. We'll leave that to our travels and any interest-led learning.

Since we had just begun to get into the explorers, I'm planning to switch over to the Genevieve Foster books, beginning with The World of Columbus and Sons. Elle has shown great interest in the timeline book sitting on the shelf, A Timeline for All Time. She had a chuckle when she realized the book begins with Adam and Eve and not the Big Bang. Language studies will be "do the next thing," First Language Lessons Level 4, the most recent release of the series that has been a good fit for Elle and me. Lessons are short but thorough. She loves diagramming and enjoys memorizing the poems. I like that it's all scripted and I don't need to do any prep work. It's part of The Well-Trained Mind collection so I don't feel as if I'm completely abandoning ship. Write With the Best Volume I will be dusted off and put to good use. Elle does not have much patience for writing I'm afraid, but the lessons in this book are fairly short and spread over two-week periods. I'm hoping her handwriting improves with constant practice, otherwise the Getty-Dubay Italic books come back out. I planned to continue her Latin studies with Latina Christiana I, a book we were slowly working our way through, but like Sarabelle's exasperation over Abeka math ("Does the number 2 always have to be about Noah and the ark?"), Elle is questioning the need to recite prayers if one doesn't believe them, despite my arguments for the familiarity and the beauty of the material. Time to pull out the Esopus Hodie perhaps, though I will still try reciting the prayers at the beginning of our lesson for memorization's sake. For math we will continue to use the workbooks she's into with some added flash card review, preparing her to move into Saxon 5/4. The rest of math studies will be everyday usage, calculating mileage and fuel, shopping, counting change, figuring tips, measuring...

So let's see, history, English, Latin, math, what else...? Oh yeah! Science! Cleaning off my shelves I found a good geology study, Lyrical Earth Science she might enjoy, and quite a few books with experiments she could do mostly on her own. That should suffice in addition to anything else that piques her fancy. We'll continue to make the most of our surroundings, like going on turtle patrol with our friend, marking new sea turtle nests and excavating hatched ones, raising tadpoles, and trying to grow something, anything, in this desert of a yard.

With Grice's very early morning schedule for motivation, I'd like to add in a little yoga before lessons and get finished with our studies relatively early in the day. Gymnastics at the YMCA should help burn off some of her extra energy, if I can coordinate lessons with Grice's afternoon bus stop schedule.

Ready...set...GO!

South Florida

2009-08-06T19:34:00.004-04:00

I met up with an old friend and her young charges visiting from Georgia after fare-thee-welling my daughter and husband off in Fort Lauderdale. With five hungry kids and two dogs in the car, and money and time being issues, friend suggested a quick lunch at Burger King. While waiting for my order I overheard this snippet:

Counter Employee pointing out other workers to Cute Customer: I'm from Jamaica, he from Jamaica, she from Jamaica... All the others is from Haiti...

Cute Girl: Where are the Cubans?

Gearing Up

2009-07-28T13:10:00.003-04:00

Sarabelle is getting ready to fly back to Australia next week with her father. After much debate we've agreed to let her finish Grade 11 down there. Jorge is going to get her settled in with the first of the two families she will be boarding with, looking after some other business down there, and then returning to Florida in a few weeks. We will all travel down together at Christmastime, the end of their school year, for a vacation and to bring Sarabelle back home. She was very keen on going initially and still is eager to see her friends again, but now realizes how far away it is and how much she will miss us... As she will finish up the year with a fourth quarter report card, on paper at least, she will have completed four full years of high school. In reality she has many more credits than necessary for graduation in Florida, but we will take one more full year for her to beef up her portfolio and insure she has enough volunteer hours logged to qualify for the Florida Bright Futures scholarship.

Grice is wrapping up her summer reading assignments and will be attending a student orientation August 6 and beginning school on the 10th. With an early start to the school day plus an hour bus ride, she will be getting up at the crack of dawn. Big adjustments there. We've already begun logging her volunteer hours, participating in turtle patrol with her best friend's mother, marking new sea turtle nests and excavating hatched nests to count eggs.

Elle is staying with me. She is the first student enrolled in Schola Classical Academy, now officially open for business, and will be resuming her studies right where we left off, in the midst of the Renaissance.

Mystery Solved!

2009-07-28T12:04:00.005-04:00

The book, Democracy and the Ethical Life: A Philosophy of Politics and Community, finally turned up. It was knocked off my bedside chest of drawers and wedged almost invisibly between the cabinet and the wall. I'm going to blame the dogs and their high-impact tail-wagging morning greetings for that one.

I decided to take a closer look at the book, democracy and ethics being two subjects I am generally interested in (but never having ever found a specific book tying them together so blatantly.) Right on the very first page were several words underlined in pen. This was clearly not one of my books. I checked reviews on Amazon.com to try and get an idea of what the author was proposing and where he was coming from and was left scratching my head.

When Jorge came home I asked him if he'd ever seen the book before. Why, yes, he had. Our nephew, the one who accused Jorge of being an evolutionist, oh, so long ago, had given it to Jorge to read after finishing a thesis for a class at his Christian college. I asked if I could add it to the next collection of books being donated but Jorge insisted on keeping it, claiming he will read it one day to indulge his nephew, though I suspect his reasons are merely sentimental.

Curious

2009-07-24T10:21:00.005-04:00

I have loads of books, I'm sure you do too. I have so many that after unpacking the boxes that finally arrived from Australia, putting two old cabinets to work housing special collections, moving cookbooks to the kitchen, loaning some to friends, giving some to friends, sorting all the remaining books and selling four cartons full at a local used curricula fair with two big piles left over for donations and online sales, I still don't have enough room to get them all onto my main bookcases. And if you're like me, even though you may be found dead in your house buried under fallen stacks of reading materials one day, you remember every single book, where it came from, who recommended it, where you were when you read it, who's borrowed it, who still has it, where it went when you finished it... So when a strange book turns up on your shelf, one on an odd subject, that you are sure you never ordered and have no recollection of anyone loaning or giving to you, that you are almost certain your housesitter didn't leave behind, one you have just plain never heard of at all, it's a little creepy.

Especially now, when I'm actually intrigued by it, imagining some Stephen King-like quality about it, and go to find it to post a link to it, with 22/25ths of my main shelves vacuumed and completely reorganized (I've been living on iced coffee these past weeks) and the remaining books lined up ready to be replaced, and it's gone. Vanished.

Everything Old Is New Again Vintage Classic Still Old

2009-07-22T23:36:00.004-04:00

Sarabelle was initially perplexed when I mentioned a strong distaste for 70s era styles; she thought they were very cool. I tried to explain how I'd already had to wear those horrible things once and would never pay for such an indignity again. We've already redone the 60s, 70s, 80s and 90s fashions -- where's the originality?

When the kids came back from camp last Friday, I had Meatballs waiting for them courtesy of Netflix. Sarabelle was less concerned with the lame story and Bill Murray's lovable goofiness than she was appalled by what she saw: Look at those ugly cut-off sweatshirts! Gross, look how high his pants are pulled up! Oh my god, none of the girls have bras on! Welcome to the 70s, honey.

Then the Pottery Barn catalogue showed up in my mailbox, loaded with retro looks. This time though, I was not so disturbed by the backward glances. Elements of the 20s, 30s and 40s, big club chairs, dark wood, curly wrought iron, old office swivel chairs, distressed paint, even a bar made to look like an old workbench... That's my house, pretty much, except our antique carpenter's bench is currently being used as a computer desk. After struggling to edit and rearrange the heaps of old furniture sitting around this place, used for the past several years primarily as a live-in storage unit, I was finally able to make some kind of comfortable sense of the odd shaped living and TV* rooms during the week I was alone, and was even complimented by my harshest critics, the children, when they returned.

The highest acclaim came today from my mother-in-law who popped in for a surprise two-day stay and announced that everything in our house is so interesting, even though it's the same old stuff we've always had.

Originality, apparently, is overrated.

*We only call it that now out of habit; the TV since having been removed to the garage where the kids can watch it while playing on the treadmill.

God Save the Queen!

2009-07-17T08:35:00.005-04:00

Awwwww, look what I got! Thanks, Rae! I will certainly be using this to my advantage when the children arrive home today from camp. To share the joy:

1. List Seven Things That Make You Awe-Summm!
2. Pass the award on to seven bloggers you read religiously.
3. Tag those seven bloggers.

Okay, first off, my awe-summmness:

1. I am flexible. Throw me into any situation, throw anything at me, and I can deal with it. I can take it or leave it. In circumstances high or low, rich or poor, better or worse, in locations big or small, near or far, I'm good. There might be a little foot-dragging, but I get over it. If something's not working, I can make it work. Our homeschooling is evidence of that.

2. My friends. I have a wide range of friends. They all inspire me in some way to do better, to be better.

3. Nerves of Steel. Medical disasters? Natural disasters? I'm the one to call. I may not be the most sympathetic person around, expecting everyone else to buck up, but I'll get the job done with no drama.

4. I am the Queen of Packing. I can take five people around the globe in four small bags. Once we even went all carry-on.

5. I give my kids a lot of leeway. I trust them to make decisions (and make mistakes) and always treat them as individuals with different, sometimes conflicting needs. I even tolerate a little backtalk for pure argument's sake.

6. Low maintenance. I can live without electricity or indoor plumbing and be comfortable. Some of the clothes in my closet have already come back in style. Most of our furniture is (at least) secondhand. I only got a pedicure because my friend Val made me.

7. I'm game. I think I'd try anything once.

Hmmm. That doesn't sound so awe-summm. Maybe because I surround myself with like-minded individuals. How about having an intimate encounter atop a Mayan temple? Never being arrested? Teaching my dogs to wipe their feet on the mat when they come in? You decide.

Seven people -- and by that I mean female people because the male bloggers I enjoy on a regular basis (HERP&ES, O'Donnell Web, Outer Life, Pharyngula, and The Meming of Life probably wouldn't appreciate it -- I regularly read:

Diary of a Mad Editor
Farm School
Get In, Hang On
Indefatigable
Mental Multivitamin
Quiet Life
The Women's Colony

And though I have touched you with my mighty scepter, feel free to play, or not. I'm flexible (see #1.)

Private School

2009-07-07T18:23:00.007-04:00

So I'm a bit of a procrastinator. It was back in early '05 I started tossing around the idea of establishing my own private school, essentially an umbrella school as allowed by the Florida State statutes, out of sheer annoyance at jumping through homeschool hoops. Sure, Florida is minimally intrusive, a letter signifying your intent to homeschool and a yearly portfolio review or submission of standardized testing results plus a letter terminating your home education program, but we moved around a lot and registering, unregistering, re-registering, hoping the newest batch of county officials wouldn't overstep their bounds, and keeping track of heaps of papers, most of which invariably ended up in storage at the bottom of an enormous stack of boxes in the garage, got to be tiresome. With the additional complications and costs involved in securing non-profit status and incorporation, and difficulties experienced by another friend attempting to set up her own umbrella school, I got discouraged. After a while, when I was confident I sorta kinda knew what I was doing as far as homeschooling went, and had standardized test scores to back me up (for all the doubters out there), as well as having the added advantage of Permanent Australian Resident status to confuse and confound the authorities, I let the idea lapse and we simply dropped off the homeschool radar entirely (at least until we got to Australia, but that's a whole 'nother story.)

Now though, with Sarabelle preparing for college, our conversations with college admissions officers over the acceptance of courses taken in a home education program have been varied and frustrating. The officer at one of her preferred schools was skeptical about the idea and indicated they would readily accept a homeschool diploma certified by the state or county board of education (no such thing in Florida) or a GED. However, in Charlotte County, any student under the age of 18 interested in taking the GED first has to obtain a special waiver, attend a career counseling meeting, and take a pre-test. Based on the results of the pre-test, tutoring may be required before the student is permitted to sit the actual GED exam. Even if the student in question plans not to drop-out but to go directly to an institution of higher learning. Idiotic. Would the prospective college have any problem accepting a student from a small, unaccredited private school? Not at all. Thus the renewed interest in the umbrella school.

I initially looked into joining my local friend's pagan unschooling group which had a low fee but has since closed, and more recently planned to sign Sarabelle and Elle up (since they've been picked up on the county radar) at Florida Unschoolers, Nance Confer's most generous free umbrella (with the best acronym around), but with both groups I felt like an imposter. As much as I love the idea of unschooling, I am too uptight to let go completely. I have been known to cast all books aside as any more interesting learning opportunity presents itself, but still prefer to rely on classical materials. My preferred methodology comes a la Ben Franklin, where students get basic instruction in reading, writing, and arithmetic but are still free to follow their interests and play and experiment, picking up those more difficult but necessary books later, at their own pace.

I was all concerned about the name once upon a time. Now, though it's terribly redundant for anyone who knows what "schola" means, it looks like it'll probably be Schola Classical Academy, the name I hastily filled in on the department of education's online form. Maybe it'll impress some admissions officer somewhere, without deterring anyone not following a hardcore classical program. And I can't wait to specify "Not Applicable" under the Denomination heading. Our motto, since every good school should have one: Cave Ab Homine Unius Libri, Beware the Man of One Book.

My special thanks to Nance, who has been helping me navigate the governmental stumbling blocks that discouraged me the last time around. I hope to have this thing off the ground shortly.

Demon-Haunted

2009-06-24T12:58:00.003-04:00

Ironic isn't it that my religious friends seem to think the world is becoming more wicked, ruled by Satan, and headed towards its ultimate demise, Armageddon, when really it seems to be an increase in ignorance, majorly perpetrated and propagated by religion, that could cause our demise?

The Tree of Knowledge, ha.

Camp Reports

2009-06-24T12:31:00.004-04:00

Sarabelle is up in the northern part of the state, or, as she first referred to it on her Facebook status, "Tallastupidhassee," at the 4-H Legislature, and here are the texts I've received so far:

Monday - We r basically at the place so tell dad ok

Monday - This is gay I want to come home loads of weirdos and nerds and I don't get what I'm supposed to be doing I haaaaaaaaaate thissssssss but yay for sat and sun don't ever make me do this again ok? Love [Sarabelle]

Tuesday - This sucks I hate it and want to come hooooome its so boring it makes me hate politics so much

Wednesday - [Upon receiving word about our given-up-for-dead cat] DID ORLANDO COME BACK??!!?? ps everything is better now I got picked to be an assistant to the secretary of senate which is what I wanted so yayayayayayayay but ya did he come back??? love [Sarabelle]

Meanwhile, Elle is at kayak camp this week with a friend. The wind was gusty Monday and Tuesday which limited their adventuring somewhat, and today's fishing trip looked promising with hardly a breeze this morning, though the wind has since picked up and we are getting some much-needed rain. Grice was able to slide out of kayak camp, her spot given to Elle's friend, as we were awaiting the results of a series of back x-rays. She's been officially diagnosed with scoliosis, how bad I don't know until we can get up to Shriner's for a more in-depth look. She's got a friend camping out at our house for a few days to keep her occupied.

Later next month, all three will be going away to Camp Cloverleaf with 4-H...

Summer Reading Lists

2009-06-24T11:30:00.006-04:00

Grice's summer reading list has yielded a few good reads for me. I devoured The Secret Life of Bees, her selection for English, and am onto her honors biology suggested selections now. Can I just try and tell you how happy I was when I saw the choices?

Only a Theory: Evoution and the Battle for America's Soul
Your Inner Fish: A Journey into the 3.5 Billion-Year History of the Human Body
The Making of the Fittest: DNA and the Ultimate Forensic Record of Evolution
The Weather Makers: How Man is Changing the Climate and What It Means for Life on Earth
The Selfish Gene
American Women of Science
Gorillas in the Mist
The Young Charles Darwin
Galileo's Daughter: A Historical Memoir of Science, Faith, and Love
The Everglades: River of Grass

Yeah, that happy!

That's just the tip of the iceberg. Any Michael Crichton novel can be read with an eye toward analyzing the science behind the fiction, and the teacher welcomed suggestions from students as well. We ran The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark by him and received his approval. Students can read and report on either two books or one book and three of NPR's Science Friday podcasts.

It looks like it's going to be a good class.

"Come with us now on a journey through time and space..."

2009-06-14T11:38:00.014-04:00

Old Form ancient Greek comedy: All male cast consisting of a handful of performers playing numerous roles; costumed chorus; the agon, or dispute between characters; the parabasis, or choral section halting the action and speaking directly to the audience; scatological and sexual references; ridiculous and surreal plot lines used as a means of discussing political and social realities; pointed satires of well-known individuals.

Sounds like The Mighty Boosh to Sarabelle and me.

Some highlights from Adult Swim:

What Are the Odds?

2009-05-31T19:57:00.003-04:00

Grice and I attended the inaugural class luncheon and tour for her new collegiate high school yesterday. I was amazed at the turnout. The group seemed to be pretty balanced between boys and girls, and minority students were fairly represented along the lines of our county's demographics. I thought it was interesting that a random draw would produce such an equitable result. My friend was more skeptical about the supposed randomness of the draw. I don't believe there was enough room for tampering, but then again, I don't know enough about statistics. If there were 100 students chosen out of only 139 applicants, is it likely for such a fair sample of students to be selected?

Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes

2009-05-22T10:39:00.003-04:00

The English IV online course Sarabelle signed on for is pretty lame. The entire first module was an investigation in choosing college, a vocation, or the military. I think by twelfth grade a student might (should? would?) have already taken this step. Or at least thought about it just a teensy little bit? There were numerous websites to visit and minimal writing assignments that were all about feelings toward the various options. Bleah. So to complete Sarabelle's English requirements for high school, I pulled out the Teaching Company's Great Authors of the Western Literary Tradition. We're watching the lectures, discussing them, and she is writing answers to the comprehension questions from the course guidebook.

She'll continue online for now with the Algebra II and should have a good part of it completed before she heads Down Under. Depending on the length of her stay, which depends on the length of time her father can devote to the trip, she may be able to work on it while she's there. Her plan is to sit in on classes at her former high school during the visit. They have been fairly accommodating with guest students in the past. An alternate, should the online teacher get picky about the work-at-your-own-pace-but-we-want-to-see-steady-progress statement, since she doesn't need the fourth math credit to meet Florida standards and has already completed Algebra I which satisfies requirements for Florida's Bright Futures Scholarship (though we probably won't be attending an in-state school, but just in case), and because most colleges look for four maths, will be to view another Teaching Company series I have on hand, Joy of Mathematics.

We're still waiting to see what the American History looks like. It's a new course that's played online. Yeah, like a video game. If it's too ridiculous, we've decided that a read-through of A History of US and a study of the foundational documents will suffice for that credit.

The 4-H Legislature will take care of that measly half credit in American government and the other missing half credit will be completed with yet another Teaching Company course from the shelves, Economics.

But wait! There's more!

Even with all her credits complete and in the right places, we're still not going to call her graduated. She is now considering art school and will need a substantial and varied portfolio for some of her top choice schools, so we're planning to reserve one more year for nothing but drawing, sculpting, and painting classes, all offered by local area artists.

The Biggest Lesson

2009-05-15T16:34:00.004-04:00

I had a great post planned out in my head this morning as I showered. Not that I think of you all when I’m showering, that would be weird (though at this point with few recent posts and dwindling readers you all could certainly fit into my bathroom -- just please don’t lean on that collapsing tile wall over there), but I’ve been researching and synthesizing vast amounts of material lately and this little posting session popped into my head during a rare relaxed and undisturbed moment and served to consolidate my thoughts. Of course, once I shut off the faucet, most of those ideas ran right down the drain with the water, but I figured I might at least try and explain my relative silence -- before I chase off the remaining few of you.

I’ve been off on a rabbit trail lately. A fascinating one that caused me to abandon the giant heap of school study-related books I’d been slowly picking away at. One that sent me off to new websites and blogs and a whole new stack of “must-reads.” One that is the apex of studies in logic, history, science, and literature; a giant detective story; a search for truth. The Truth. And one with both disturbing and comforting answers.

The only explanation to the big question that makes sense to me -- from the genesis of my revelation as a skeptical and then lapsed Catholic, to my comparative studies of and eventual distrust and dislike for all religions, to my recent earnest Bible studies -- that answers the doubts, inconsistencies, and lapses in logic without complicated twisted interpretations, is that there is simply no God. What was initially a disturbing idea to me, and I’m not just talking about self-identifying with the likes of Madalyn Murray O’Hair, a woman who simultaneously terrified and baffled me as a Catholic school girl, but losing the comfortable and unexamined ideologies I’d grown up with and stepping beyond the safety net of the fence-straddling agnostic label toward full-blown, strong atheism -- the realization there is no personally involved heavenly father, that a man named Jesus may have existed but his story is merely a continuation of the sun god myth and the legend overpowers any historical substantiation, that we are merely a happy cosmological and evolutionary accident -- has become a source of solace and strength.

This is it, folks. We’ve got one chance to get it right and enjoy the ride. We’d best not sit by and twiddle our opposable, naturally selected thumbs in denial of reality, fantasizing a shot at a better supernatural existence. I must relish every minute and make the best of my too-short time here. The depression I fought for years is now chased away with the knowledge that I don’t have time for it; every minute is precious, even the unpleasant painful ones. I’m not wasting any more of my life on this planet in anticipation of a better world yet to come, and will instead appreciate the wonders that exist and try to leave this world a better place.

For those who cannot believe as I do, I don’t dare say you are stupid, as a fundamentalist Christian friend accused, only possibly intellectually dishonest with yourselves. Perhaps you have not truly examined the evidence from the other side. It is a hard thing to do; a hard thing to let go of. But wanting something to be true just doesn’t make it so. Now that my eyes have been opened, I find it nearly impossible to imagine that anyone engaged in a scholarly study of history and science could come to any other conclusion. Now that this greatest of questions has been answered to my satisfaction, I can get on with my life.

Score!

2009-05-14T10:42:00.002-04:00

Sarabelle is in the 4-H Legislature! From the manual:

The Florida 4-H Legislature provides an opportunity for teen 4-H members to have a “learn by doing”
experience in state government each summer. When delegates participate in the Florida 4-H Legislature they have an actual experience in all three branches of Florida’s government: Executive, Legislative, and Judicial. Florida 4-H laws are considered and passed or vetoed in a model legislative session at the Florida State Capitol.

During this five-day event, 4-H’ers will serve as Florida 4-H senators, representatives, lobbyists, reporters, Lt. Governor or Governor. Lobbyists will also have the opportunity to serve as a page and/or experience being a Supreme Court Justice, lawyer or juror.

This event is a “mock” legislative experience. Proposed bills do not represent the position of the State 4-H program. 4-H’ers may defend a position just to learn how to debate and not necessarily because they would choose that position in “real life.”

The purpose of the Florida 4-H Legislature is to provide experience that prepares 4-H members for leadership in the American democratic process. Each participant learns, practices and defends the theory and process of representing citizens and making public policy.

THE FLORIDA 4-H LEGISLATURE IS DESIGNED TO HELP TEENS:
1. Learn about state government.
2. Understand formal and informal government structure.
3. Become aware of societal issues and potential solutions.
4. Apply moral and ethical valuing processes to public policy making.
5. Develop confidence in — and dedication to — the democratic process.
6. Gain communication skills.
7. Listen to varying viewpoints.
8. Respect the opinions and rights of others.
9. Learn about career opportunities in government.
10. Be prepared to return to a local community and be an active citizen.

During the week, we are fortunate to be able to use several Capitol, government and historic buildings and facilities. The Old Capitol, New Capitol, House and Senate office buildings, Supreme Court and other historic and public buildings will be used.

Meanwhile, Grice and Elle got a spot in kayak camp. The first session was full and the third session conflicts with potential travel plans, so they got the second session. It happens to be the same week Sarabelle will be away for the legislature. How perfect is that?

And So On

2009-05-13T09:27:00.002-04:00

Sarabelle has finally begun her first class, English IV, through the Florida Virtual School. We're still waiting for placement in the Algebra II and United States History. She's planning to visit Australia over the summer and the online courses will accommodate that schedule. This would leave her with only one half credit each in American government and economics to fulfill her Florida graduation requirements. She's got more than the twenty-four credits necessary, quite a few more in fact, just not in the right places. We're hoping to get her a late entry into the 4-H Legislature as one of the kids involved has had to drop out. If she gets in, I'm counting that as her American government requirement. It may not be equivalent hour per hour, but the quality blows the quantity away. The economics she can either take online or at home using the Teaching Company course I have. Let's see, SATs are out of the way... Nearly done! She is interested in art school and I am hoping she heeds the advice of Uncle Mike, a tremendously talented and successful commercial artist who wishes he had completed his associates degree along with his art and technical training.

Grice is getting a big fat vacation, at least until August 10, when she begins her new collegiate high school program.

And Elle, she's plugging away. We're trying to decide what to do to get her out of the house -- to get me out of the house -- Kayak camp? YMCA gymnastics? Ballet? Riding Lessons?

Back. Sort of.

2009-05-04T13:48:00.006-04:00

The wedding and associated trip was a success*, although I think next time I ask the universe for something I'll be more specific. The girls had been fighting their second round of respiratory illness prior to our departure and I had been repeating to myself "Don't get sick for the wedding, don't get sick for the wedding," when I should have left the qualifying prepositional phrase off entirely. The day after the wedding, Easter Sunday, I finally succumbed. Good thing the Mexican Swine Flu (sorry, H1N1 lacks color and drama; it'll always be "swine flu" to me) scare hadn't begun yet because I would have definitely been yanked off the plane and locked up in quarantine somewhere. As it is now, it wouldn't surprise me if I actually had it, but I'm not going for any blood tests. I prefer good ol' self-imposed social distancing.

*In spite of the freezing temps, six cancelled flights, lost luggage, and unexpected overnight in Atlanta on the return leg at a hotel that could have been a text book study for a CSI.

The girls had one of those Best Day of My Life^(TM) experiences when we went into New York City for the day to see Phantom. Not only was I able to get a couple of last-minute extra tickets for my nieces so they could join us instead of having to be sent back in a cab to their dad's office, and use some credit card points so it was essentially free, it actually snowed while we were in Times Square, something my girls had been fervently hoping for, but something nobody ever thought would occur. It was magical, though my initial reaction to the spectacle was that someone was spitting or throwing confetti out a window (our own tickertape parade!) The locals were not amused by the weather nor the simple southern children twirling around like Mary Richards in Minneapolis, throwing hats in the air and taking pictures of themselves on their cellphones. And the show? The best thing they had ever seen. Ever. Lunch was not my much anticipated trip to Zabar's, maybe next time, but heaps of appetizers at the Hard Rock Cafe. Way more fun with five very excited girls.

For now I'm just kicking back, drinking lots of juice and hot tea, getting a little schoolwork done, and hoping I don't become a CDC statistic.

On the Road Again

2009-03-30T12:06:00.004-04:00

This next week and a half promises to be a lot of fun. And busy.

My New Jersey brother, the one who suffered an annus horribilis with a divorce, year-long overseas estrangement from his girls, job loss, and a fire that gutted his condo awhile back, is getting remarried. I had originally planned to drive up and catch up with some friends along the way, but found airfares and a car rental comparable to the expense of driving, and it gives us a few extra days to visit. I can't wait to see my growing-up-so-fast nieces and meet my new sister-in-law and her beautiful daughters.

Before the wedding, being celebrated in Pennsylvania, we'll be popping up to Boston to visit a few cousins, and the girls and I will take a day trip into New York City with my brother to visit his office, which, because of the work he does, is always very cool, get a bite to eat (I hear Zabar's calling), and take in a performance of Phantom. After the wedding, but before my brother and his new wife fly off to a very romantic Parisian honeymoon and their happily-ever-after, there will be a visit from the Easter Bunny and an egg hunt.

See some pictures of the happy family here at Angela Purcell's Photography Blog.

The Wait Is Over

2009-03-25T13:33:00.002-04:00

We got our call this morning, Grice is in! Four of the five homeschoolers, including her best friend and her best friend's cousin who also happens to be a good friend, were accepted as well. The other buddy is on the wait list though we don't yet know where on the list of 39 she is.

Information and confirmation packages are being sent out today and then meetings between the parents, students, and principal will be scheduled. A get-together is being planned to welcome students and parents sometime in May.

Huzzah!

Change

2009-03-16T13:49:00.003-04:00

Rolling along, in a routine, and then WHAM!, something new.

Sarabelle, who has been attending the local high school and doing well with her mostly honors classes, but hates it, begged last night to return to a homeschooling program. She acknowledged this would not be the easy way out -- that would be staying in school -- and realizes she will have to work harder at home, but prefers that option now. Most of it has to do with the fact that her best friends here homeschool and she enjoys participating in the P.E. group and 4-H Cooking Club with them and misses the freedom of being able to jump in the car and go off on a field trip or just a quick trip over to the island at a moment's notice.

She has nearly all the credits Florida requires for graduation already except for American History and Government credits, so she is beginning Volume 2 of the Great Ideas Program The Development of Political Theory and Government with all its associated readings and going through Hakim's A History of US series.

I want her to tune up her writing skills and would like to have her begin either Horner's Rhetoric in the Classical Tradition or D'Angelo's Composition in the Classical Tradition. She will also benefit from an SAT prep.

Some other books on her To Read If You Can list are:

How to Read a Book
In Defense of Elitism
Amusing Ourselves to Death

As this makes plans for attending my New Jersey brother's spring wedding so much easier I am happy to comply, but it necessitates a study of my own in crafting transcripts for college.

Now to send off another letter to the county school superintendent announcing our intention (now that we are on their radar), officially withdraw her from school, and return her books...

Charter

2009-03-08T18:01:00.006-04:00

Grice is applying for admission to a new collegiate charter high school opening here in the fall. It's on our local state college campus and operated by our county school board. Because it is a county public school there is no tuition and books and travel are free. Upon graduating, students will have earned a full associates degree in addition to the usual high school diploma. They are accepting only 100 ninth grade students. All applying, and that includes two of her best homeschool buddies, should be enrolled unless applications exceed 100, in which case students will be chosen in a lottery. A week ago this past Friday, before the college closed for its spring break, her friend's package was accepted and marked #47. We will be turning her package in first thing tomorrow morning before the March 20 deadline and waiting for the announcement on April 1.

So these past couple weeks have been busy with doctor visits, shots, digging up records, and taking tests. Grice was especially unnerved by the college placement exam she was required to take and the timed essay she had to write. I tried to allay her fears by reminding her the test was meant for those who have already completed high school level work and used only as an indicator of where students are academically rather than as a qualifier for admission, and pointed out to her that an essay is merely a short piece of writing on a particular subject, in this case on your reasons for wanting to attend, and again, was not being judged for entrance but used as a sample of student's writing for the file. Learning plans will be created and customized for each student so that by the end of tenth grade all students should be on track to begin and complete the college coursework in eleventh and twelfth. She did well, 91% Reading Comprehension; 88% Sentence Structure; and 31% Math. She was horrified by the math score until I reminded her this was a test designed to be taken after completing high school and she therefore is nearly one-third of the way toward being ready to begin college level math work in two years and ready now for college level English only having graduated eighth grade. She was skeptical until her friend reported nearly identical scores. With the test out of the way she is now rather low-key about the whole thing. She's excited to go, but only if her friends get in. Otherwise, she's happy to continue homeschooling.

My big concern is that four years of staying in one location is a big commitment...

Tea

2009-02-28T11:14:00.002-05:00

Well, after spending one half an hour looking for a parking spot and then walking toward what we determined was the crowd gathered at one end of the park, we were surprised to find ourselves at an outdoor bar and grill. The only demonstration had been at the entrance to the parking lot where a group of about 100 people were carrying protest posters. One bubbly old lady thanked my kids for paying her bills which amused them. But that was it.

We enjoyed a nice walk along the Sarasota waterfront in absolutely perfect Florida winter weather and consoled ourselves with a take-out lunch from the nearby Whole Foods Market.

I was there merely as an observer. I'm inclined to think some sort of bailout may be necessary at this point, but certainly not the free-for-all currently being legislated. I'd prefer Americans just toughen up and ride out the storm. This from someone who admittedly feels no economic pinch. Yet. I think a free market is really our best option and have the sneaking suspicion we may be selling our children into slavery.

Tea Party, Anyone?

2009-02-27T08:32:00.005-05:00

I have to take Sarabelle to the doctor this afternoon at 3:30, but the kids and I are going to try to be there, at either the Fort Myers or Sarasota location. I can't believe there are three within a relatively short drive from our house.

Fill-in-the-blanks

2009-02-25T13:48:00.003-05:00

Schoolwork as usual. Nothing new to report there. What I have been keeping busy with, aside from a week-long break when my Boston cousin and her family came for a visit, is filling out forms. I'm working on Australian passports for myself, Sarabelle, and Grice, and an application for a new charter school for Grice.

Yeah, we homeschool, but we're not afraid of using the public system, or any other system for that matter, when it works for us. While we were away, Florida absorbed its community colleges into the state university system, so we now have a real state college not too far from our house here. That's where I tried to get Sarabelle in as a dual enrollment homeschool student but courses weren't any available until the spring term. This particular college is currently taking applications for a collegiate high school charter opening in the fall. One hundred ninth graders will be accepted the first year. At the end of the four year program students will not only earn their high school diploma, but will graduate with a full associates degree. Grice is interested, but only if her two best homeschool buddies get in. Right now, if there are 100 or fewer applications, everyone is admitted, and if it goes over 100, students will be selected in a lottery. My biggest concern was about transportation because though it's in our county, it's as far away as it's possible to be. But since this is a county public school, students will be bused. Yay!

Deadline for applications is March 20. Students will be notified of acceptance by April 1.

Stay tuned...

Surprised?

2009-02-25T13:45:00.001-05:00

Your morality is 0% in line with that of the bible.

Damn you heathen! Your book learnin' has done warped your mind. You shall not be invited next time I sacrifice a goat.

Do You Have Biblical Morals?
Take More Quizzes

Happy 25th

2009-02-17T10:16:00.001-05:00

Harper's Index is now free online!

Insane

2009-02-16T13:40:00.002-05:00

Via Joanne Jacobs:

Are books dangerous?

I plan to continue exposing my children to these potentially lethal items. Does this make me a criminal?

So many books...

2009-02-16T11:51:00.003-05:00

Via Meg at Get In, Hang On:

The introduction states, “apparently the BBC reckons most people will have read only 6 of the 100 books here.” Some of the list seems to come from the BBC’s Big Read list of 100 favorite books in Britain, although not completely and not in entirely the same order.

Instructions:
1) Look at the list and put an ‘x’ after those you have read.
2) Add a ‘+’ to the ones you LOVE.
3) Star (*) those you plan on reading.
4) Tally your total at the bottom.

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen X
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien *
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte X
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling X +
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee *
6 The Bible – X
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte *
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell *
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman X +
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens X
Running total: 6

11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott X
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy *
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller *
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare *
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier X +
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien X
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger *
19 The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot X
Running total: 10

21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell *
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald *
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens *
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy X
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams X +
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky *
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck X
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll X
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame X +
Running total: 15

31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy *
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens *
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis X
34 Emma - Jane Austen *
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen *
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis X
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres *
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne X +
Running total: 18

41 Animal Farm - George Orwell X +
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown X +
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery *
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood X +
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding *
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
Running total: 21

51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel X
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen *
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth *
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens X
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley *
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez *
Running total: 23

61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov *
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas X
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac *
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville *
Running total: 24

71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens *
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett X
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson *
75 Ulysses - James Joyce *
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray *
80 Possession - AS Byatt
Running total: 25

81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens *
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker X
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro *
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert *
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White X
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Alborn
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
Running total: 27

91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad *
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery *
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams *
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas X +
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl X +
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

Grand total: 29

Not so many but more than most according to the Beeb. My list of plan-to-reads is much longer, of course, and many are sitting on my shelf waiting patiently for their turn. How about you?

Blowing Sunshine

2009-02-14T09:51:00.002-05:00

From a posting on our local support group:

Governor Charlie Crist invites Florida students to participate in the Florida Sunshine Week essay contest. The essay contest is open to all Florida school students in grades 9-12, and winners will be notified the week of March 9, 2009.

The first place winner will receive a $3,500 scholarship, the second place winner will receive a $2,000 scholarship, and third place will receive a $1,500 scholarship. All winners will be invited to attend an event at the Governor's Mansion.

The essay topic is: "Describe the various public records available under Florida's open government laws and how access to these records strengthens citizens' civil rights and liberties." For more information, visit: http://www.flgov.com/og_sunshine

I guess they're not talking about the right to privacy...

Happy 200th!

2009-02-12T15:16:00.006-05:00

I never thought Darwin was such a big deal. Raised a Catholic, I knew the Adam and Eve story and after probably believing it to be absolutely true as a child, much like Santa Claus, I eventually believed it to be just another creation myth, nothing to be taken literally. I'd heard about evolution, natural selection seemed pretty obvious, and I could certainly see the resemblance between apes and man, but I never gave it much more thought.

Until one day when Jorge and I picked a nephew up from his strange little Baptist school. We asked him how his day was:

It was awesome! We listened to a recording of a dinosaur!

A story about a dinosaur?

No! An actual dinosaur! They played a tape for us. This man studied dinosaurs and had a recording of a real live one!

Maybe they were imagining what they might have sounded like...

NO! This guy found a real live dinosaur...

That's impossible, [Nephew], dinosaurs have been extinct for millions of years...
And recording devices have only been around about a hundred years...
And dinosaurs were never around when man was...

Uncle, Jorge! You're an evolutionist!

Well, I guess I am then, [Nephew].

Me too, I announced after hearing our nephew's disgusted accusation and my husband's avowal. It had never occurred to me before then that a school would teach outright lies. Or, at least if they were not intentionally misleading students, be so damned stupid. I was outraged and glad to count myself among the heathens.

Today I'm making sure that my children understand that evolution is true, and what a difficult decision Charles Darwin faced over publishing his revolutionary findings.

Out of all the books we've read and enjoyed on the subject these last couple of weeks, my favorite has been the elaborate and gorgeously illustrated The Tree of Life: Charles Darwin by Peter Sis, while Elle prefers Virginia Lee Burton's Life Story and has been eagerly taking notes chapter by chapter. To celebrate Darwin's milestone anniversary and because I realize now more than ever how important this knowledge is in the face of growing ignorance, I'm going to set aside all my other current reading in favor of Darwin's own groundbreaking classic, On the Origin of Species.

Save the words!

2009-02-09T08:35:00.002-05:00

Countless words are languishing unused and forgotten. Please consider adopting one. Take it home and make it your own.

The Truth, The Whole Truth, or Nothing Like the Truth?

2009-02-04T08:59:00.002-05:00

I've been trying to write a letter. It's a very hard letter to write. And not just because I am determined to share the recipient's dedication to elegant handwritten missives highlighted with clever and thoughtful illustrations.

How do you tell someone you think they are wrong, about everything, about the most fundamental things? How do you tell a very dear someone whose primary interest in you is saving your soul that you don't believe one single word of it, that she is the one being misled?

Do you bother to cite the plentiful evidence? Do you send her a book to read in honest enquiry of the truth knowing full well she has her own more important book and will only discredit any evidence as Satan's red herring?

Do you say nothing because your relationship has never been about small talk and without this key discourse you really have nothing to share?

Do you break someone's heart for the sake of being honest?

Monday Morning Quarterback

2009-02-02T09:03:00.007-05:00

Confession time. Although it probably comes as no surprise, I hate professional sports, the big, blown-out-of-proportion, wastes of time and money (and please, don't even get me started on people who drive around at high speeds in circles for a living), but I will admit to watching that thing last night and maybe even yelling at the television a time or two, like during that one play just prior to halftime. I watch for the commercials because my brother is head of a CGI department for a trendy Manhattan agency and often has one running (not this year, though he did tell me to keep an eye out for Coke's insects stealing the bottle ad), and for the halftime show because you never know when there could be a spectacular wardrobe malfunction (fortunately Springsteen's garb remained intact and he put on a great show, and I'm not even a fan.)

This morning I thought it time to review the post-season goings-on and critique my plays. And for your sake, the football metaphor ends here.

Sarabelle's stubborn plan to return to Australia for school has finally withered. I stood back and tried to keep my mouth shut, offering sympathy and empathy for her plight, subtly mentioning once that whatever her college plans may be, she's into her eleventh year of school and it's time to prepare. Putting it off any longer in hopes of getting back to school in Australia wasn't beneficial. With an interest in becoming a doctor, journalist, or treasure salvor, and a refusal to "be a homeschool nerd" (though she loves participating in our support group's P.E. and Park Days) and the community college's dual enrollment classes filled until spring, remaining options involved either the local public high school with AP, Honors, or dual enrollment courses, or the high priced prep school in Fort Lauderdale which would simply look good on a transcript. The public school was able to offer her a decent schedule and eliminated the necessity of living with cantankerous older relatives on the other side of the state. The guidance counselor stated it would be possible to register her as a twelfth grader because she has nearly all the credits required for graduation in Florida, but we all agreed she could use the extra year to fill in gaps and strengthen skills. She still hates being here of course, would much rather be in Oz, but has been placated with the promise of spending her summer holiday overseas and is genuinely enthusiastic about her classes (Music - Jazz band playing upright double bass; English Honors; Marine Science; Journalism; Algebra 2; and American History Honors.)

Grice grumbles about it, even though we are still waiting on her math books to arrive and she has a lighter than normal schedule, but she is generally amenable to the idea of learning at home. She participates in the homeschool P.E. and 4-H with her best Northern hemisphere buddies and is interested in the Y's gymnastics program and cotillion.

Elle is a moth to the electronic flame. For this reason, with the built-in DVD player on our TV out of commission, I'm ready to cancel the cable (basic service that doesn't include the History Channel but does have Nickelodeon and which was never desired or required but was unfortunately bundled with our long distance and DSL) and chuck the thing out. We have Netflix now and I have my laptop, that's all we need. We're attending the South Florida Renaissance Festival as an end to that period of study and will be starting soon with Story of the World Volume 3. She likes the 4-H Cooking Club, mostly because she gets to hang out with the big kids, and is also interested in gymnastics, which would be a terrific vent for her perpetually high energy.

I've been learning to take it easy and give the kids a chance to settle in and find themselves. Then back to the pushing. It's all about moderation. For now it seems to be working.

Where there's smoke...

2009-01-27T13:06:00.004-05:00

Other than sharing it with my husband I usually don't spread gossip. But sometimes it's just too juicy. Does anyone remember my encounter with the cheesy leader of a sales seminar I took at my real estate company?

She and her family recently moved from their estate property, a large house on five rural acres purchased at the the top of the market, to a much smaller but still ostentatious house in our neighborhood purchased at clearance price from the builder after their big house burned to the ground. Not only does her general character cause people to immediately be suspicious, a mutual friend confided she had lost another house in another state to another fire.

Last week she bought space in the local paper and for two days running published shrill denials of the rumors. The lady doth protest too much, methinks.