Mo shuile togam suas

Mo shuile togam suas --- "I will lift up mine eyes"

We got back from Ireland on June 24th. I have been busy since then with the birthday of a second son, seeing off another teenage son for football camp, and unpacking and the piles of laundry -- plus getting the house ready for possible visitors next week! not much time on the computer! but here are some pictures from our last couple of days, in Ennis, Co. Clare.

We want to go back there! Anyone up for it? : )

Quin Abbey in County Clare


Brendan got a shillelagh and Paddy got a little sword

Aidan looks like he could stay here forever.

Long view of Quin Abbey


The sanctuaryAn upper court

View from the inside to the outside


Knappogue Castle

Kieron, Sean, Aidan and Clare at the Kings' table in the banqueting hall


Our hotel lobby, at the Old Ground Hotel in Ennis, Clare -- Kieron was a bit tired but Liam and Paddy seem to be doing fine...

Back from Eire

where the skies were cloudy. the grass was green, and the air was soft with rain.

What a change to come back here to the gemlike clarity of the California sky and the greys and goldens of the granite and dried grass!

I’ll probably blog a bit more about the journey in future posts. Right now, unpacking awaits, getting through a family cold, and getting things ready for Sean to go to football camp down in Mission Viejo.

A Summer Morning Routine

	Get up
	Start Coffee
	Walk
	Email/Blogging
	Get dressed
	Bring Laundry downstairs
	Work on Hot Spots
	Start Laundry
	Make Breakfast
	Sweep/damp mop around kitchen
	Eat
	Talk to guys about day
	Go upstairs:
	Swish Toilet
	Make bed
	Aidan's meds
	Fold yesterday's laundry
	Supervise/Help guys do schoolwork/jobs
	Work with Aidan on Therapy
	Go for walk/or rake or sit outside
	Make Phone Calls if necessary
	Do any quick emails necessary
	Lunch

Sloowly I Turned, Step by Step

Sunday Six

Who would have thought that this was an old vaudeville routine? My teenage son thinks it's hilarious to say this at the most unexpected times. Yesterday after mass, for instance, when during mass we had chanced to encounter a religious educator who had put significant obstacles in the path to confirmation for my daughter. My daughter had requested a bunch of I Love Lucy shows from the library and the "slowly I turned" routine was on one of them, and that's where Sean got it -- but I guess it didn't originate with her show. She was paying tribute to an honorable tradition. You learn something every day.

Links for Sunday:

• The Writer's Block
• Steph's Fifteen Commandments for the Writer
• Wikipedia on Writer's Block.
• 18 Ways to Hack your way out of writer's block

Is there a theme here? You will think I am trying to write a book, but no, not exactly. We have revived our Story Society now that Liam is home for the summer, and UH. I can't seem to make my mind think that writing fiction is a valuable way to spend time. I can blog, yep. But my story is making my mind freeze, so that's what this Sunday Six is about.

Only five so far, even if I count the wikipedia entry about the vaudeville.

So here is National NOvel Writing Month. Mark your calendars for November now. My daughter has met this goal twice, I think. I tried it last year, but only made it to 10K words -- the goal is 50K. It did help, though. I kept telling myself, Just Make Time to Write and It Doesn't Matter if It's Bad.

Steph says it this way:

I am trying to follow the edict offered by virtually all successful writers: No matter how inadequate it is, or even downright bad, you MUST write. Luckily, there is such a thing as second, third, and fourth drafts. :-) You can't revise something until you've written it. And if there is even a scrap of something really good in that first draft, you've created something. You've made a beginning.

One of the fifteen commandments she lists is:

XV. Thou shalt not believe in writer’s block

Did you say writer's block? Slowwwly I turned, step by step....inch by inch....

(Why is all this on my House Blessings blog? Because Sunday is the day for contemplating family, faith and leisure. It is a day of rest and restoration and recreation, all those things. I've been trying to decide what to put on this blog on Sundays, should I be inspired to write here on Sundays. It doesn't seem quite right to keep on with all the daily detail stuff. So when I do write here on Sundays I'm going to try to look for things that "make my heart sing" as my old friend Cindy puts it. Things that are good in themselves, not "useful" for something else. Flylady calls it "renewing your spirit". )

My fiction-writing endeavours don't seem exactly heart-singing right now, but they have that possibility, if I can just get past that Word that Must Not Be Mentioned.

That's seven links now, maybe eight. OK, good! Off to write, maybe?

Create in me a clean heart, O Lord, and renew a right spirit within me!

Baking Day

We had some overripe strawberries in the house, so Liam made Strawberry Yogurt Scones yesterday (it is quite chilly outside here in the Sierras if you are wondering how we could stand to have the oven on).

They turned out great.

I didn't get a picture of him making them, but I did get this picture of him and Clare looking at their new digital cameras (his is an early 21st birthday present, and she bought hers with her savings so she could have her own in Ireland).

They are so cute!

I also made Calypso Pizza yesterday. Here is a recipe but the way I do it is simmer the chicken bits in BBQ sauce with a bit of hot sauce added. I use mozzarella instead of Monterey Jack and cheddar. I don't add the bell peppers and onions, but I do sprinkle some jalapenos (we like spicy in this family).

I make a garlic white sauce to go under the cheese.... like this.

This is the best picture I got -- I was experimenting with light and it didn't exactly work.

Either a very good food day -- or a BAD food day, depending on how you look at it!

One Minute Fitness?

I recently read The One Minute Manager Gets Fit ( HT: Lazy Organizer -- I read about the One Minute Manager at her site and then just browsed the library for the books they had). I couldn't decide whether to blog about the book here or at my other blog, but finally decided it fit better over here.

This was the first of three One Minute Manager books I've read. They are easy reads, all with the same "parable" format -- that is, they are told in story form, with narrative and dialogue. Important points are written in large form on a single page, like this:

----------------------

It's not the Stress in Your Life
But How You Deal with It That Counts

------------------------------------

(That's just an example -- I sent the book back already)

The idea in this book is that the One Minute Manager has become so successful that his work/life balance has become disrupted. (The new version of the book is called The One Minute Manager Balances Work and Life). He has gained 50 pounds and isn't getting enough exercise, and isn't spending enough time with his family.

He is in danger of burnout. Burnout results when stress produces strain. Stress in life isn't the problem -- there can be good stress. That's why in the stress checklists, good things like a new baby or personal success count as stresses too. If you don't have enough stress, you are in danger of "rustout". The OMM defines "strain" as the negative effects of stressors.

There are four moderators to stress according to the book:

• Autonomy : Control over your life, choices.
• Connectedness : Your support system and family/community ties, feeling of being a valued member
• Perspective: Your understanding of the "big picture" in your life; direction, purpose, passion.
• Tone: How you feel about your physical appearance, your energy level and general personal habits.

The book focuses on the Tone part, but makes the point that there is a domino effect -- if you aren't taking care of yourself, you won't feel good about how you look and behave. This will negatively affect your autonomy -- your sense of control over your life; and possibly throw your sense of connectedness and perspective out of whack too. (here are some Mental Health ideas to cope with stress)

To help you decide if you have a healthy lifestyle or not, there is a "Professor's Dozen" checklist that looks a bit like this Executive Health one (without all the details about doctors' visits).

Oh, here's one of those one page messages in the book:
----------------------
More than ever before,
Health is the Outcome
of the Way You Choose to Live Your Life
---------------------------
(you get the picture)

Once the One Minute Manager realizes that his personal life has taken a backseat to his work life, he resolves to get fit. This is how he does it:

• He makes goals -- to lose that 50 pounds -- and to exercise for 45 minutes, 5 times a week.
• He also sets median goals -- wayposts along the way, like the 20 pound goal.
• He decides upon a way to measure his progress -- exercise and weight loss charts.
• He gets his family/support system involved.

He also attends a session where there are some group activities to illustrate the concepts that:

• CHANGE is difficult and feels awkward at first.
• It's easy to return to default mode when the goals are met (so you have to plan a maintenance system for the future)
• It's smart to make yourself aware of how you will perceive the disadvantages of the changes, and also focus on the advantages. For example, exercising might take time and planning and an initial output of energy. ... those would be the disadvantages. But it will improve energy in the longterm, and burn calories -- and might be fun -- those would be the advantages.
  

The levels of change are:

• Knowledge (finding out the facts -- this is usually the easiest part -- you just read a book or article or find out that X eating habit is unhealthy)
• Attitude (how you feel about the knowledge -- many people know smoking is bad for them but don't want to quit because the disadvantages are felt more strongly than the advantages).
• Behavior (what you do as a result of how you feel)

(This reminds me a lot of the traditional Catholic divisions of intellect, emotion and will. Prudence is the decision and action of the will as a result of knowledge. Charlotte Mason also talks about this extensively).

In light of these facts, it is important to:

• Acknowledge the difficulties,
• Visualize the advantages
  
• Make a personal commitment,
• Rally your support system,
• Set goals, and then of course,
• Carry them out. Also,
• Celebrate/Affirm your progress along the way.

The rest of the book details how the One Minute Manager does this in his own life circumstances.

My Thoughts:

The book only took about an hour or so for me to read. The reading level is simple and the narrative/dialogue style makes it easy to remember the key points. In fact, to me it evoked another book I've been reading, called Memorize the Faith (see my sidebar) which uses the medieval "locus" system to consolidate facts in your mind. The parable form the OMM books use has somewhat the same function; you follow the storyline and take in the ideas at the same time as the main character does, and share his sense of discovery. I would not call the story scintillating, but it is cheerful and smoothly written and serves the purpose for which it is written.

You can see from my notes that the ideas are based on common sense and conventional wisdom -- nothing complex or esoteric or marginal.

Other books he referenced:

Positive Addiction
Getting Physical

Walking Lessons

Today I was going to take it easy on my early morning walk. It was cold outside here in the California Sierras (as I write this I can still hardly move my chilled fingers) and I was getting over a cold. Yesterday I didn't even walk at all.

Well, the wildflowers were so delicately vivid on the trail, and the cool air so exhilarating, that I took a new bend in the trail, ended up in some mystery location, and had to retrace my steps to get back to my own territory. I hiked almost 40 minutes on rough hilly ground, which is quite a step up from my usual 20 minute walk.

While I was walking, half-enjoying the adventure and half fretting to get home again so I could have time to blog, um, rest before my littlies were awake, I remembered how I used to read runners' magazines when I was a university student in Eugene Oregon (along with Boulder Colorado, it's one of the runner's capitols in the west).

That was where I first heard about varying the workout for best results. You can do it within a workout too -- I guess this is called interval training.

The next place I ran across this concept of varying intensity was, strangely, in Sonlight curriculum. Poring over their catalog, I noticed that they had a pattern of literature-reading -- some books would be challenging for that grade level, some would be rather simple for that grade level. Thinking this over, I realized it made a lot of sense. It reminded me of what Ruth Beechick said about allowing young readers just gaining fluency to read "easy" books. She said that too often, parents insist that their kids read only books on their grade level or above; when in fact, reading books below their level builds staying power, fosters confidence and enjoyment, and teaches all kinds of lessons that the child can't learn as well if he's struggling for comprehension.

I also noticed it in the Saxon math program (and in many other math programs too). You see a series of difficult, challenging exercises and then the book will move to something that's more easy and relaxing, like measurements, in order to give the child a more low-key way to practice the same concepts. It's gotten so I predict this to the children when they are wrestling with a math chapter, or sometimes, I even "make it so" by doing half-lessons or some review when they've come across something that is barely within their reach right then. The easier interludes give them time to rally their forces and lets their brain work under the surface to consolidate the new information.

With curriculum as in distance running, you can vary the intensity within a lesson or day, too. Charlotte Mason recommends interspersing more focused, intense "short lessons" with more expansive or mechanical or routine lessons, so that the kind and degree of intellectual work is varied in the course of the day. The Ignatian lesson plan calls for a variety of intensity within a lesson -- a warm-up time at the beginning, then a teacher's guiding and demonstration time, then some repetition, and a chance to independently study before demonstrating the results of the study.

I wish I had internalized this "vary the workout" idea earlier. When I first started homeschooling, I followed this pattern:

• Jump into something full force
• Plan to maintain or even increase it.
• Exhaust myself
• Get discouraged and wonder why I couldn't stick to anything
• Give up, lapse back into default, until next time.

This even happened with unschooling and "real learning" and unit studies, so it wasn't just a matter of following an overly structured, school at home type curriculum. It was my approach, not the style used (so I would feel even worse when I read about how "easy" and "restorative" this or that method would be, because it wasn't for me!)

I did it with my kids too, expecting them to head upwards at a steady progression, rather than leap forward and fall back a bit, which is a much more natural pattern for growing children (you see it all the time with their developmental progress, where they will reach a milestone and then regress in that area or some other area).

I think that in our society, where the Dynamo is the symbol for efficiency, we think of "order" and "progress" in machinery-type terms. As a steady perpetual thing, where pause or slow-down means breakdown. But in God's system, it is not so. The seasonal year, the liturgical year, the course of the day, the seven days of the week, all have pauses and intervals and even shutdowns built in.

So my "walking lesson" for today, which I am half writing out to remind myself and half to help anyone else who has my melancholic perfectionist tendencies, is: When you are trying to reach a goal, whether it is to lose weight, get fit, educate your children, or finally get your house under control, consider building some rhythm and variety into the steps to reach your goal. As easy reading does for the child, it builds staying power, fosters enjoyment and confidence, and consolidates your progress and learning.

Thrift Store Finds

There is a Carnival of Everyday Summer Skirts and Dresses over at Gladdest Hours.

I didn't get a chance to get someone to take a picture of me for it but my daughter and I went to a thrift store the other day and I got 2 nice skirts and 3 tops:


I love the colors. Now, with my last thrift store finds, I'm all set for summer and fall.

My daughter got four tops. All in near-new condition, good labels; the price tag for all of it was under $30, even though they charged me $5 for the denim skirt.

I also bought these clogs, new. They were $20. Don't tell me if you think they look dorky; I love them. I have loved clogs since I went to high school in Switzerland where everyone wore them, even the boys, and then spending months at the hospital where everyone wore them, including the men. And these ones even have linings. My feet are always cold!

I almost didn't buy them because 20$ is more than I've ever spent for shoes for myself since my college years. I felt so guilty! But I could not resist, and REALITY CHECK -- 20 dollars is not THAT bad a price tag. I think they will last a bit longer than the $12 shoes I bought a couple of years ago. Those ones, I now use for gardening and housekeeping type work since they got pretty stained over time.


I didn't realize they had 1-inch lifts until I put them on and suddenly became taller. In our family, all the teens and adults are close to the same size -- the females are 5 '8" and the males are between 5'10" and 6'0" once they get their full height. My daughter felt unusually short in her stocking feet yesterday : ).

For my next Thursday Thrift, I will try to talk about something else besides CLOTHES.

(By the way, a lot of sites recommend rewarding yourself for successful weight loss with something *besides food*. Buying a new or recycled-new outfit might be one way of providing incentive for success. Also, donating the money you saved on food might be another incentive. I'm trying to think of other incentives -- any ideas? I also DO start letting up on the food restrictions as I get more into good habits. This time I cut out sweets and simple carbs and even fruits at the beginning, but then started letting them in one at a time as I progressed. That's not rewarding myself with food, but thinking ahead to maintenance -- or so I will say).

Good Friends and Google

Thank you dear Karen E for mentioning this

Very cool. And so easy.

Ditto what you say:

I just added about five new entries -- posts I'm sure I'll get back to over here in the main column, but in the meantime, "Shared Items" can act as my reminder, my planner and my linky-ness.

Google is just getting better all the time.

Now to go make waffles.

June is for Living Geography

I just realized it is now June, which means time to decide on my next Learning Goal. Since we are going to be doing some travelling in June, both local and far-flung, it makes sense to devote this month to Living Geography. (See the Ireland resource list)

Looking ahead a bit, July can be devoted to Recitation(Memory). Several years ago I spenta summer having the older kids work on memorizing prayers and Scriptures. It was one of those things that worked really well. We designed incentives to motivate them. A couple of them went on towards a longterm, self-motivated pattern of memorizing. I would like to try it again now that the younger kids are getting older.

And August will be a good time to focus on Habits -- Moral and Intellectual. HABITS is a huge area. In August, I will devote the time to ponder the philosophical side of habit-forming, and consider some of the habits listed by Charlotte Mason and some Catholic thinkers. Then, SINCE "Habits" is such a big area, I'll probably try to focus on one specific habit per month during the rest of the year. Now that I've already been doing these Learning Goals for six months, I doubt that adding a new element will derail me.

I updated the learning goals list to include links to the monthly focuses (foci?) so far. Hope that is helpful to anyone who has been following along.

Also, because the 2007 Learning Goals have been working so well for me -- "pegging" my ideas into a temporal sequence -- temporal sequence is a weak area for me! I started a similar Heart of Home Goal list on my other blog. Since the focus there is on considering different areas of my house, it is more practical and so it hopefully shouldn't distract from the learning goal list. Hopefully. Stay tuned.