Schola Classical Academy's Insane Field Trip

Grice and her Young Republican friend, J -- who had overheard our plans on the way home one afternoon and was beyond excited to join us and Keep Fear Alive, 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.   Good-byes were said, a last minute iPod auxiliary player was located and borrowed, the car fueled, it was 2:30 PM and we (Sarabelle, her roommate A, Elle, and I) were on our way. 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

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.

Update

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.

2009 Read-Alouds

The Annotated Alice

Coraline

Mary Poppins

The Golden Compass

Mary Poppins Comes Back

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

Humbug

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.

The Great Beyond

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!

Gearing Up

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.

Camp Reports

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...

The Wait Is Over

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!

Charter

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...

Cleaning Up

I've been on a mad cleaning jag since we got back. Bags and bags of clothing, toys, and nicknacks have been donated and loads of other useless junk trashed. My goal is minimalism, with only one place for necessities (as opposed to looking for pens in either the junk drawer by the phone, the art cabinet in the garage, or among the office supplies in my bedroom closet) and necessities in their logical place.

There has been a big bonus to this reorganization, aside from the peace of mind simpler living brings, and that is the discovery of gift cards. Some of the people I try to reason with before December's holiday asset exchange actually either pay attention to our replies for gift suggestions or out of pure frustration at not knowing what to give shower us with gift cards. And since I despise hanging around in stores, unless there is an online option for purchasing items or a some specific object I need immediately, sometimes I put them away and forget to use them.

Yesterday we treated ourselves to a stop at Einstein Bros. Bagels (a rarity here on the west coast which meant a trip up to Sarasota after Sarabelle's almost-in-Sarasota dental appointment) and stocked up courtesy of an '07 Christmas present. Two old Books-A-Million cards warranted a stop there too.

A funny thing about BAM, and maybe it's less a fault of that corporation than the local store management, or possibly just indicative of the status quo, but there were forty sections of books classified either Christian Living or Bibles versus two sections for Philosophy. The Science and Social Issues shelves were noticeably scanty as well. After much searching I did manage to dig up two books from my wish list, Christopher Hitchen's Thomas Jefferson: Author of America and Susan Jacoby's The Age of American Unreason (which serendipitously opens with Jefferson's quote, "If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be."). Elle, starter of so many chapter books of late including Nancy Drew's The Bungalow Mystery and The Mystery at Lilac Inn; Poppy; Little House in the Big Woods; A Series of Unfortunate Events The Bad Beginning; and many more, found a book she could not put down and will most likely finish, Diary of a Wimpy Kid. Not great literature, not a classic, not even close, but I will take what I can get at this point. Sarabelle snagged the latest issue of Vanity Fair, I got my educator's discount card updated and we were off. But not before thoughtfully reorganizing some of the shelves, relocating The Nude Bible from the paltry Art section to its proper place among those other forty sections of Bibles.

On the way home we spied this monstrosity and along with the fistful of play money Sarabelle picked out as a prize for her good behavior at the dentist (at the behest of Elle) we documented life in America for our Aussie friends.

Free Ranging It

Came across this excellent website after poking around at O'Donnell Web and BoingBoing.

It is encouraging to know so many other parents still have some good old fashioned common sense and are teaching their children how to really live. Lenore Skenazy, you might remember, is the mother raked across the coals for letting her then fourth grade son navigate his own way home on a NYC subway from a department store. Her blog is evolving from being a clearinghouse for stories and tips to spearheading a rights movement, supporting the rights' of children to actively participate in the real world and of parents to let them without fearing charges of neglect.

When I see people like my parents, who were surely free-range kids in their own time and who let my brothers and I range freely (even after a friend and I were nearly abducted), with their elaborate home security system beeping and booping and announcing various level alerts, and who first carve up the carton from their new gigantic flat-screen HDTV and dispose of it in pieces over a period of weeks to avoid the notice of roving gangs of garbage-gawking thieves (not that leaving the old 32" monster on the curb isn't already a pretty good indicator a better model is now on the premises), and who peel address labels off magazines before disposing of them; or kids so cowed by their parents they avoid speaking to strangers or making eye contact with them, even if the 'stangers' are merely less oft seen relatives, I blame the media: the twenty-four hour cable news networks, the tabloids, the whole lot of fear-mongering, paranoia-inducing, sensational sources of crap. The influence of the media has turned most of us into insecure quivering piles of jelly. It's a culture of fear.

How many times have I worried about being the lead story on the local evening news? Plenty. But that won't stop me from letting the kids have the opportunity to learn new skills and develop responsibility, independence, and good judgment. The focus of our never-ending search for a home has always been finding a place where the kids could be kids.

So far I've raised three kids on a boat-only island, allowed them to swim and explore pretty much at will frequently unattended and never forcibly encumbered by flotation devices. They've played with fire, driven the powerboat and taken their own rowboats out on adventures, and been left alone for short periods of time. In Australia they drove cars, rode bikes without helmets, jumped on horses and went off sightseeing, fished, swam, and snorkled in waters inhabited by crocs, sharks, stingrays, and box jellyfish, swam in creeks and rivers without adult supervision, swung off rope swings, camped in cattle yards with dingoes about, prepared meals from scratch, slicing and dicing included, and cooked them with gas appliances, walked unchaperoned around town. I even let Sarabelle go bungee jumping with a group of friends and another parent. They rarely wore shoes. They played in the rain. Back here in Florida they have gone for bike rides around the neighborhood out of our sight and walked about three-quarters of a mile to the supermarket for various items.

There have been a few misadventures among their pursuits, but we are learning to face our fears and they are learning to judiciously experience the world.

Ready to call the authorities over my seemingly laissez-faire parenting? Don't. I understand the difference between possibilities and probabilities. Is it possible for one particular bad thing to occur? Of course. But, how likely is it to actually occur? Not very. Most people don't understand that crucial difference. We do our kids a huge disservice protecting them from every potential bad thing.

Those parents who would bubblewrap their children in their gated 'communities' and attend only structured liability-conscious activities have only a false sense of security. Their child is in more danger given the fact they are dependent and grossly unprepared for the risks of real life where they will sink or swim without mommy and daddy and their water wings.

Fellow free-ranger, Becky, has a tremendous collection of posts and links on her Farm School blog under the header "Courting Danger". Kick the kids outside and have a look.

What dangerous things have your children done? What dangerous things will you allow them to do?

Have an exciting, adventurous new year.

Surreptitious Supplemental Homeschooling (SSH!)

With Sarabelle and Grice on spring break since last Friday, I have begun sneaking some home learning into the educational void.

Though the girls initially groaned when I told them I had rented the documentary Jesus Camp through iTunes, they were fascinated and watched it three whole times. We simultaneously experienced revulsion, disbelief, pity, fear, and more than a few belly laughs. Great conversation ensued.

To balance out the serious, I also downloaded 10 Things I Hate About You, which, as you probably know, is a modern remake of Shakespeare's Taming of the Shrew. That one too has been watched more than once including a shared viewing with a friend during a sleepover. The girls happily pointed out all the Shakespearean inside jokes to their friend. I plan to slip a little more of The Bard in soon with the Leonardo DiCaprio/Claire Danes version of Romeo and Juliet, a movie I have been waiting to see for some time now.

This past Sunday, visiting our juice stand friends at the markets, we were reminded that the Duyfken ("Little Dove") was in port for the day and open for tours. With a little persuading the girls agreed it might be interesting to see this replica of a Dutch ship that explored Australia back in 1606, and actually came away with some additional knowledge of Australian history. Today they will help me review my study of Aussie history and civics as I prepare to take my citizenship test tomorrow. They might inadvertently learn something.

We've discussed the economy and laughed ourselves silly over the Ben Bernanke video from the guys who brought us the Potter Puppet Pals (and now cannot get the original song out of heads) and took in some early American history as well with their Learn About Governor Bradford! video.

Both girls continue to enjoy The Onion's Our Dumb World which Sarabelle received for a birthday gift last month, and which enjoys a prominent position on either the coffee table or the bathroom counter.

So, even if your kids currently enjoy being locked in a public school system where the education is adequate from a general standpoint, though not up to your standards, have no fear. Opportunities exist everywhere to slide in a little homeschooling. Just don't tell them.

What's Next?

Once again it's time for another post wherein I make plans for our future and feel compelled to disclose those plans if only to change them later and show you just how fickle and unstable I am.

Christmas. That's when we should be back. That's when we've been telling friends and family we may be back. The economy continues to conspire against us (although the Aussie dollar has dipped dramatically in our favor) and Jorge and I agree it would be wise to build up another reserve in case of financial hardship. Our monthly expenses here are roughly equivalent to two mortgage payments back there.

But, and there's always one of those, Sarabelle is strongly resisting and has begged, pleaded, and finally, threatened to remain in Australia for Grade 11, in other words, one more year. I considered letting her board with good friends of ours, however, those good friends are now heading to New Zealand, and so I'm contemplating a consultation with another friend, Senior Constable Mick, for back-up and legal advice. A little "Scared Straight" if you know what I mean. She wants to stay at least for the biennial Japanese field trip. I would like to accommodate her, I really would, and have even offered to fly her to Japan to meet up with her mates at the appointed time (provided she homeschools Japanese back in Florida) but that is not good enough. She has given me her solemn word that should she be allowed to stay that long she would then return peaceably to the States.

In a serendipitous turn of events we have made arrangements to move into our exiting friends' old digs at least until the Christmas/summer school holiday, without posting any additional bond, provided we check on retired nuclear physicist landlord on a daily basis to be sure he's still in the land of the living, and have the option to stay on indefinitely. This will reduce our rent expense by $300 per month, provide us with fresh eggs and fruit, and Witness Friend has even offered to let me borrow one of her dairy cows that's about to calve, but Jorge doesn't believe this will make a significant difference in our economic situation and is rather adamant I stick to the Christmas return plan. We would finally have our little farm, and really, what better place to ride out any recession/depression/Armageddon (the last being Witness friend's preferred term)?

I am being torn in half. I know what's best for my kids and am afraid I have hit the wall of "Irreconcilable Differences" with my husband.

U-turn

Time for a post, I'd say, maybe even one slightly relating to home education.

I've spent most of this week -- when I'm not off visiting or cashing in gift cards or making returns or just enjoying the heck out of my big comfy bed -- reorganizing my bookshelves. Many books have been culled. Many books have been added. Many books had been pulled and packed in anticipation of our return to Australia. Oh, but it is not quite so easy as that, because plans, they are a-changing.

After a homeschool friend years ago recommended I read Eckhart Tolle, and after placing him on my To Be Read list, and then promptly misplacing the list, another friend actually put his book in my hands last week and today I should be finished with it. One of the lessons reaffirmed from this book is to accept what is; do not fight it, do not worry about it, just accept it.

Therefore, I have come to realize that the situation we find ourselves in, with Jorge now planning to stay and work in Florida indefinitely, and me and the girls planning to return to Australia to continue on with our lives for at least another year, will only be a fight. We are totally resisting the reality of what is: A 60% depreciation of property values in our (FL) area, the estimated two years it may still take for our market to bottom out, the expense of maintaining a third residence (when we have two perfectly fine ones to begin with) in a country with a strong economy and where everything costs more, with a weakening US dollar and a strengthening Australian dollar.

Dealing with hardship we can do, but this is no unforeseen adversity, this is us making our lives more, and unnecessarily, complicated. Keeping the girls in school over there and enjoying the safety and stability of the area was my priority, and though it is certainly worth sacrificing for, and I know military families live with long separations all the time, it will do nothing but make poor Jorge's life more difficult. He's willing and able to accept the challenge, but it's not fair. The girls and I need to accept what is.

We have our five year visas, we can ride this out. Jorge, fortunately, has more work available to him than he can handle in an economy that has most other builders singing the blues. We still have our idyllic little island house as well as a land base, that until this trip was always referred to as The Green House (or, The Duck Poop Green House, if you are Elle) and functioned purely as a sleep-in warehouse for the stuff that didn't fit out on the island, but is now simply called Home.

This will be another learning experience for the girls, dealing with sometimes unpleasant reality and realizing it's not "all about me." We are considering Sarabelle's options, possible early admission to the local community college or homeschool with participation in the high school's sports and music extracurriculars or getting her tested "gifted" to attend the gifted school (with Grice, in that case.) Grice, assuming Sarabelle has no interest in attending the gifted school, and Elle will resume homeschooling.

To buffer the disappointment and fill in the time until the new terms begin, we are seriously considering a Grand Tour intermezzo. Friends, beloved and sorely missed homeschool buddies, are already potentially easing the adjustment (still as yet unknown to Sarabelle and Grice) by taking the girls on nature hikes, farm tours, and craft classes, and tonight, weather permitting, a visit to the observatory for stargazing. One has even given Sarabelle the book to study for her driving learner's permit.

In case Bee's mom reads this before I have a chance to speak to her on the phone, let me just say:

Don't worry, Em, we are returning with your daughter!

But the plan at this point looks like we will be back only as long as it takes to wrap up loose ends, sell vehicles, ship books and clothes, say farewell to friends, and fly me, the girls, and Lulu back to Florida.

So, blame it on the comfort of the sanctum sanctorum that is my bedroom and library, or Tolle, or the economy. Or don't. Just accept it. And don't worry about finding room to pack all those extra books.

2007 Read-alouds

A Child's History of the World
The Amber Spyglass
The Subtle Knife
The Golden Compass
Mr. Popper's Penguins
The Australian History Collection
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
Little Women
The Secret Garden
The Phantom Tollbooth
The Jungle Books
Just So Stories
The Wind in the Willows

A Day In The Life

After Dad has had his shower and headed out for the day, the fight for the bathroom ensues. Sarabelle gets the most mirror time, Grice has to be forced in there at some point in between her grumbling and stumbling up and down the hall, and Elle must have her shower. She developed this habit when, after too many days with a horribly cranky baby, Jorge magically discovered sitting her under the water for a few minutes seemed to wash all the cranky right off. Her day always starts with a shower and one of these days she will probably ask for a cup of coffee too, just like her father, who as a toddler was famous for beginning his day with a request for "a fresh shirt and a cup of coffee, please." The soundtrack to all this is Sarabelle's morning radio with its annoying pop songs and inane DJ chatter, adding elevated noise levels to our general chaos.

Loose ends are rounded up, books, bookbags, instruments, hair brushes, and lunch, and then the fight for the front seat begins. The rule is that whoever gets the front seat, on a first-come, first-served basis must also be the one to do the gate. Then off we go.

In the car at the elementary school during the twenty minutes between Sarabelle catching her bus and Grice being allowed into the schoolyard, we usually read, either aloud from Elle's current book or independently from whatever books hold our interests at the moment. Sometimes it’s just an old issue of National Geographic rediscovered under a seat.

We arrive back home, and after a little hemming and hawing and washing breakfast dishes and repeated requests to please, please, PLEASE watch her kids’ shows, and my flat refusal, Elle is instructed to pull out her books. She usually chooses Latin first.

Morning tea time, and Elle needs to burn off some energy, so she either takes off outside on her bike at full speed trying to outrun the dog or stays indoors and practices her aikido rolls down the hallway looking and sounding like a square bowling ball. I try to check email and blogs at this time or make my international calls to family and when she is finally done with her physical outburst she'll sit down and begin an art project of some kind. This is my cue to get going and pull out the next subject or find a few household tasks for her to help me with.

Back to the books. Her math program is a disaster, so if we cannot find a page that looks reasonable in either of the two remaining workbooks, we printout a drill sheet and she gets busy trying to shave some time off her last effort. Then she usually begs me to print off a couple more worksheets, ones she considers fun. I never argue. Sometimes she sorts and counts coins from her dad’s change jar hoping to find enough for an ice cream if we are headed into town.

Lunch is a non-event. She makes herself something when she feels like it. It’s not neglect, it’s character building. Sometimes we’ll actually have a cup of tea, and while that’s going on I work in our grammar lessons, have her recite poems she has memorized, and do some more reading.

(If this had been one of those days where a steady stream of requests from my husband or prior commitments demanded more time be spent in the car, we would have orally reviewed whatever Latin vocabulary we could recall trying to stump each other and yelling out miscellaneous phrases like Quo vadis? or Veni, vidi, vici! whenever possible, or gone over past grammar lessons and poems. Identifying road kills is another option. Elle is a motor-mouth, the radio in the car does not work, and a trip anywhere is long, so there is plenty of time for good conversation and the answering of many, many questions. This is a trait, incidentally, she inherited from both her mother, called "Chatty Cathy" as a child and her father, who on long family drives was often swapped between cars to save the drivers' sanity.)

After lunch she’s off again tearing around on her bike chasing kangaroos or trying to catch geckos or befriending magpies or digging into a termite mound or building a fort or making and playing a didgeridoo. Before we go to pick up her sisters she sometimes gets to take the car out for a spin on the runway. She’s very good about using her turn signals.

Depending on the day, there are either tennis or aikido lessons, or tennis practice after school hours and by the time we finally make it back to the house, Dad is usually home and dinner started. In the meantime, squabbling over computer time occurrs until 6:00 PM when the girls get to watch their one and only TV show, The Simpsons, and the remainder of the activities center on getting everybody ready to do it all over again the next morning. Sarabelle puts herself to bed and is sound asleep by 8:00 PM, Grice pushes the boundaries of good parenting by being allowed to stay up and read way later than she should (probably the cause of much morning grumbling and stumbling) then loudly requests I drag my poor tired self out of bed to turn off her light, and Elle snuggles in with me. There is always time for one more read-aloud before bedtime.

Interference

It's no secret we've been in a tough position for the past year and a half with a depressed real estate market there and a booming market here along with the ever-strengthening Australian dollar. My love/hate relationship with the place -- love the country, hate the government -- is also no secret. Jorge has never been able to get his skills properly recognized, though they were enough to allow us entry initially, and has had to make do with a number of blue collar jobs which barely pay the rent here plus two mortgages, taxes, and insurance back in Florida. It's been incredibly frustrating, but when you can't control your destiny, you make the best of it and go on.

The kids, even though they are back in school, and loving it, much to my chagrin, are doing well, excelling at their studies and participating in all kinds of enriching projects. Unlike in the States, extracurricular activities here are really meant to benefit the child, not just pad a college application, and I am confident that at this rate, my girls could easily attain whatever goals they set for themselves without fierce competition for limited spots in the best colleges. See, the thing is, here the graduating classes are substantially smaller than the incoming grade, and not because they are dropping out, but because vocational options are introduced early on and many students choose that path, becoming skilled workers able to earn relatively high wages. The students who make it all the way through Grade 12 are committed to academics, given a broad range of subjects to pursue, and have some fantastic opportunities available to them. The student leaders, a good proportion of the class, really are an impressive lot. We saw this last year and again this year at the high school's annual presentation night (where Sarabelle performed with the orchestra, and received a merit award for the second year in a row.) Being in a small school, we also saw a real bond between the entire student body, for the most part, a truly good group of kids. The advantage is with fewer classmates there is far less competition, and for those that are interested the sky's the limit. Considering my girls' present careers interests (which change wildly from week to week), if we were back in Florida they would have a long, hard road ahead of them, and then may never even come close to realizing their plans with huge number of challengers. Here they have real opportunity.

And that's primarily why we made this move. For the kids' future. We haven't achieved our goal of living on a farm and learning to feed ourselves yet, but we have at least been able to control our destiny to the point that we achieved our goal of providing a safer, cleaner, simpler lifestyle and environment for them.

Jorge is going to have to go back to Florida again. For how long we don't know exactly, but long enough at least to make some good money and try to force some activity on our properties, long enough to get us into a position where we can control our destiny again. He leaves in a week. We have tentatively agreed on a return date for me and the girls around the middle of the next school year because to get everything wrapped up here by Christmas holiday is too much; that seemed like the most logical and realistic break. I'm not happy with that. I'm hoping something will change within that time allowing him to come back and resume life here.

I remember being pulled out of my huge South Florida high school a third of the way through Junior year (for my own good) and then being pulled away from my very small Massachusetts girls' school immediately after graduation without being able to say goodbye or even exchange addresses with my close-knit classmates. I haven't forgiven my parents for that after all these years. My number one goal as a mother was not to suffer the relationship I had with my mother. Sarabelle, though she agrees in her head that we need to due what's necessary, will resent it deeply in her heart. Jorge doesn't seem to think it will be much of a problem but then he does not have my experience. And when I saw the Grade 12 kids up there the other night, I was really sad, because Sarabelle will miss out not only on that bond and experience with her classmates, but on a bright, easily attainable future.

It does not help then to hear that family members are implying that Jorge should "be a man" and bring his family home, or suggest it was a foolish decision to drag our family to the other side of the planet without any money or security. Going back to Florida may be a necessity but how insulting, infuriating, and mean-spirited that their desires should come before my children's best interests. Poor Jorge is caught in the middle and just wants us to agree to support him no matter what decision he makes. He knows this will be a tough one.

I am able but not willing.

More Trickery

I said it below. If the ends justify the means...

Check this out:

Chore Wars

My kids are racing each other to get to the chores first and begging me for more work to do!

Big HT to Stephanie!

Random Stuff

The government's homeschool office newsletter stated that out of the 300 or so home educators invited to express interest in participating on a statewide advisory committee, only eight replied in the affirmative. My odds are pretty good, I'd say, and I'm boning up on my Holt just in case.

Before we left on our mini-vacation last week, we had the opportunity to drop in and have coffee and cocoa with the master of the teachable moment over at Home Schooling Aspergers. The girls and I had an enjoyable visit and are looking forward to getting together with Megan and her son real soon. While Sarabelle isn't keen on missing school, I may be able to convince her to wag a day or two so we can maybe meet them for a picnic here.

I spoke to my mother briefly yesterday. During the conversation she asked whether Elle was doing her school work yet. No, she was busy coloring and making Play-Doh sculptures. What about math? Nah. What about science? Not today. Well, coloring and Play-Doh just weren't enough for retired early childhood specialist Nana, even though I insisted that she might well be doing as much in school. After she quickly ended the conversation, I sent her a list of recommended reading material including selections from Holt, Gatto, and Oliver Van de Mille. She will not read any of them.

Today Jorge, Elle, and I ran into Cairns to get new tires for my car and planned to pop into the circus, but alas, today's performance was scheduled for 7:00 PM. When asked what she wanted to do for a few hours, Elle requested we go to the library. After a quick walk down the Esplanade we spent an hour at the gorgeous Cairns City Library then stopped in for lunch at a sushi place where the food passes by on a conveyor belt and picked up dessert for our friends' dinner party tonight from their favorite bakery, Beethoven's. Meanwhile Grice rode up to Cooktown with her best friend, the friend's stepdad, and her teacher (who has Fridays off when the principal manages the class) to attend a talk given by several Australians of the Year, including Tim Flannery, author of climate change book, The Weather Makers. Skipping school is not such a bad thing. If we could only convince Sarabelle...