Therese

My daughter has written a review of the movie Therese on her blog. St Therese of Lisieux has for a long time been our family's patron. I was born on her old feast day -- October 3rd! and Aidan received his transplant on October 1st, her new feast day. That's a whole story in itself; let it suffice that we consider her a family friend. My daughter took Therese's name for her confirmation name.

Some of Therese's writings are here. Some information about her is here.

One very good devotional book to read is I Believer in Love: A Personal Retreat Based on the Teaching of St Therese of Lisieux.

Therese, who entered the Carmelite convent at the age of fifteen and died of tuberculosis at the age of 24, and wrote one book at the request of her sister -- has been declared a Doctor of the Church.

I notice I am like my father -- who when he starts talking about something that is an influential part of his life, always ends up handing the listener a stack of books!

By the way, when I read my father's book Must We All Die? about the tuberculosis epidemic in Alaska, I was near tears when he described the progression of the disease in the 19th century patient, because it reminded me of Therese's Last Conversations -- which were recorded by her sister.

Thursday -- Thrift and Other Things

I don't really have a Thankful or Thrifty Thursday, today...

Here's a scattering of things I have done/am doing around the house.

Yesterday I spent the day on some decluttering -- the type of things that get put off because they take a lot of time to do and don't make a huge visible difference, but they are big things off my to-do list just because they did take so long.

• Here are the toys that are going to leave the house as soon as my teenager takes out the trash:

Yes, I finally sorted through that whole chest of toy parts, found everything we still needed, gave a bunch of Lego and Bionicle parts into my 11 year old's keeping (with the condition that they would go in the trash if they were found on the floor or littering the counter).

• The other thing I did was go through a box of old homeschooling magazines, tearing out the "keeper" parts in order to keep them in a homeschool inspiration folder. The rest of it went into the recycling bin.

Finally, we got our ice and water making machine fixed on our fridge(my lame thrifty tip for the day is to put off repairs for a long LONG time if you can; then you get the benefit of a working device and you are so grateful for it into the bargain) Today I had the boys empty the freezer and refrigerator contents and transfer them into the outside ones, so we can defrost and clean the inside one.

My other tiny thrifty tip for the day -- get an extra freezer if you can. Especially if you live in the mountains and the nearest Costco or Sam's and Trader Joe's is 50 miles away. Especially if you have 7 kids and four of them are teenagers or older, and 6 of them are boys. Get a refrigerator too, if you can. Especially if the nearest farmer's market is also 45 miles away.

Even if your family is smaller and/or younger, an extra fridge/freezer can be a really useful investment -- you can stock up on sales, and you can save on gas and time and money by not having to zip over to the grocery store almost every day -- or hit the fast food or take-away places when you don't have anything in the house to eat.

When our dishwasher and garage freezer broke down at close to the same time, we got the freezer replaced long before we got the new dishwasher.

What I've Read Recently

I just finished reading several books which I'm going to add to my Spring Reading Plan but in this separate post, because these were all easy quick reads that I got through too fast to put on my sidebar. Like The Bookworm, I don't seem to read so much fiction nowadays, though I want to tackle some this summer. I used to be such a fiction reader that I would spend the whole day with my nose in a book, so I cut back to reading novels only on hospital stays and during holidays. Maybe now it's time to swing back the other way, though.

Anyway -- here is the list -- these are all books I've read in May -- yikes! I get a lot of reading done on our trips to town, even though it makes me carsick. They were all fast reads in one way or another.

Final Exam: A Surgeon's Reflections on Mortality

I'm not sure how this ended up in our library request pile -- my kids don't remember requesting it (!) and nor do I -- but I picked it up while I was eating lunch one day and finished it by evening. Medical journalism is a stress-buster for me, as I suppose it is for many people, judging by the number of medical books and reality TV shows out there.

The doctor who wrote the book is a young Asian woman and she went into liver transplant surgery at UCLA. This comes close to home since Aidan is an OLTX recipient and could have gone to UCLA instead of UCSF if our insurance had been just slightly different, perhaps. We could have met her, and we did meet her distillation in the ranks and ranks of intellectually high caliber young interns and residents at the hospital.

Growing Up with NLD

This came from the library in a spiral bound edition with double-spaced type -- so Liam asked me if I was reading someone's dissertation! But I guess it must be a paperback now judging from Amazon.

It was a personal account of a woman who had NLD before it was really a diagnosis, arranged by topic. Say, the chapter was Socialization -- she would tell about her experience in that area and then list some helpful tips in that area. There was an extensive bibliography and resource section and a chapter on managing NLD, as well as an introductory chapter giving an overview of the disability.

Why was I reading this? I have a couple of kids with soft symptoms for an LD, and am a bit that way myself. Often you can find really useful tips and insights in a book like this, even if your child does not fit the whole pattern.

Relationship Development Intervention with Young Children.

I got this because I was looking for social skills information for Aidan. Now RDI has become my information project for the summer. I found the book confusing -- lots of activities based on different "Levels". I had no idea where to start actually applying anything -- not being a bottom-up thinker at all.

So I got this book
Autism Asperger's Solving the Relationship Puzzle

I am still reading this, but it is much more clear now what the other book was about. It gives the whole context with case samples and so on -- very interesting.

The idea is that social skills therapy that focuses on what the author calls "Instrumental Skills" -- ie, social rituals that are relatively fixed, like buying something in a store or saying Hello and Goodbye -- are useful but don't get to the essence of the autistic spectrum child's problem -- which is learning to relate to people in a meaningful way. Many higher functioning autistic children have already figured out instrumental modes for getting what they want -- but they have not learned to receive pleasure from spontaneous, relationship-oriented encounters. So the programs are designed to help the child learn, through mentorship, how to tolerate and get emotional rewards from interaction. Most children learn this naturally through playful affectionate interactions with their parents and caregivers, but AS children have to be taught more consciously.

Yesterday, on our extended waiting room tour, I read Relationship Rescue by Phil McGraw. Someone in our little local community gave away a slew of Dr Phil books -- at 10 cents, I couldn't resist grabbing them to read.... someday. I read his weight loss and Life Strategies ones last year before the homeschooling debacle on his show. It wasn't like I was a great fan of Dr Phil's show before -- I only watched one episode, at my mother in law's house, and didn't like it. But the homeschooling thing (a couple of friends were involved a bit in it) took a while to get over. But now I've read this Relationship Rescue one. His style is a linebacker one, but like a linebacker he usually does get where he intends to go IF it's only a few inches or feet away. Sometimes, that kind of effectiveness is a breath of fresh air, especially when he knocks aside some longterm obstacle to the goal like the myth that couples have to have to have a lot in common to work as a couple, or that men have to learn to talk like women in order to communicate well -- those irritating ninepins deserve to get knocked down.

In the same line, someone in my community gave away Loving Your Marriage Enough to Protect It and it ended up in the library 20 cent rack. This I am reading while I'm on the "relationship" roll. Its a very evangelical-pastor type book, about how to preserve a faithful marriage if you are a man. I like the idea of building "hedges" to protect things you value -- an evangelical re-statement of the Catholic "avoiding near occasion" and "custody of the eyes and heart". But the idea of hedges could have been expressed in an essay -- apparently the book started off as an essay and got so much response that he built it into a book, and now apparently Tim LaHaye is involved in the new version. I find it SO not the world I live in but then I'm SO not an evangelical husband with 2.2 children and a house in the suburbs and a job that requires working and travelling with women. If you are one of those (I doubt if very many of my readers are) then maybe this will be a helpful book. For me, it reads like an anthropological study. Fascinating in its foreignness.

Another 10 cent "treasure" I read recently was Dr Atkins New Diet Revolution. The main reason to read a diet book, in my opinion, is to gather the motivation to kick off your habit changes. It worked for that. I don't think I'll ever try that Induction thing again though, even in modified form for 2 days. It almost stopped me in my tracks. However, he is right that there is gathering evidence that moderate carb restrictions are more effective for at least some types of people than fat restrictions. Limiting the carbs moderately has made a giant difference in my blood sugar swings, and almost eliminated cravings. A relief!

I think that is all the recent reads that aren't on my sidebar. I am still chipping away slowly at the sidebar reads.

Tackle It Tuesday

For my Tackle, I am going to continue THIS!

Tackling the Toy Dragon!

Last Wednesday (not Tuesday, which made it hard to find when I looked back) -- I got a good start on it. I have all the keepers in one bin -- which needs to be sorted, but that won't be too bad. Then the discards are in another box -- and this is the tough part. What if I need something from there someday? In the comments, Shawna suggested bagging them and stuffing them in the garage. That is probably what I will end up doing. ... thanks, Shawna.

OK, that is another issue of mine -- letting things go! I notice it is not the WORK per se that causes the problem -- it is the decisions.

This Tuesday will be busy, so it's probably good that the only part of the Tackle I really have to do is physically put the clutter in a bag and physically Put. The. Bag. In. The. Garage.
----------------------------

Planning Next Tuesday's Tackle

Next Tuesday I will tackle the regular-sized toys. The ones that aren't part of a set but are complete in themselves. These can be categorized into:

• Things with Wheels.
• Stuffies.
• Realistic animals.
• Action figures.
• V-techs and similar electronic toys.
• Swords and other weapons
• Balls and other sports gear.

I am sure there are other categories, but those are the ones I can think of without actually looking.

• OH, there is the dress up box, but that one has been managed fine for years. I have a place for it and everything goes in that place. It could do with a weeding, but that is lower priority than the jumbled mess of Everything Else.
• And there is the puzzle and game shelf too -- my closest approach to Montessori right now -- that works OK too. That's because I have an active hand in that stuff.
• The construction sets, if they don't get scattered all over the house, have a bin to repose in.
  

It's the little-kid, pure-toy gear that gets in disarray. .. that gets tumbled into a chest (pictures next week)

Some Meandering Thoughts

One unique disadvantage in our house is that there is no Little-Kid bedroom. The bedrooms are divided among the five older kids, who have ongoing and OK solutions for their Stuff Storage. My part in that is to remind them to:

• tidy their rooms once a week
• organize their rooms about once a month.
• declutter seriously about twice a year (usually Advent and Lent are good times).

But the Little Kids have no such place for their stuff. This is vexing. The ideal would be to have a sort of Kindergarten set-up.... everything on shelves, organized by theme. But at present there really isn't a place in our house for that. Every surface is devoted to books.... ahem.

Well, writing this out has been encouraging. I didn't realize that there is some stuff I am already doing OK. I was focusing on the chaotic parts. Organizing from the Inside Out recommends that you look at what you are already doing OK, and building on that. This is a lesson that seems to apply to many other things too. Keep the baby, toss the dirty bathwater.

It is also Julie Morgenstern, the author of the Organizing book, that mentions the Kindergarten as the ideal organization model --- everything arranged by theme and readily accessible, but tidy, easy to restore. That will have to be my thing to ponder for this next week: If I had a space devoted to this Toy stuff, it would be easier to maintain. The challenge is that we aren't a Little-Kid house anymore -- our average age is steadily climbing and is now, believe it or not, somewhere over 20 (almost 14 if you just count the kids). So we have been inadvertently moving away from a LK-friendly environment, and it will be somewhat of a sacrifice to have all those stuffies and trucks and things out in the open instead of buried in a wood box, which is where they are now. Have to think about that....

Too Much Car Time

When we drive all day, as we did today, it knocks me out for hours afterwards. I think it was in one of Raymond Moore’s books that I read that riding in a car upsets some peoples’ vestibular systems — even if they don’t get carsick, they often have impaired concentration for some time afterwards. Impaired concentration is a way of life already; I do not need car exhaust and nausea mixed into the bargain. But this is a bit of the price tag for living way away from almost everything, especially with a medically fragile youngster — something we did not foresee when we moved here.

Stop One: Aidan’s neurology clinic. We discussed seizures and the possibility that the last two partial-onsets might be a good sign — the other parts of the brain opted not to get involved with the misfiring neurons or whatever they are.

Owl, if you are reading this, I asked the nurse practitioner if there was any reason to believe that talking a kid through a seizure helps him stay connected and even possibly avert a generalization of the seizure. As you might expect the answer was polite but made me feel as if I had asked if the alignment of the planets or the agency of the angels were involved in the outcome. You see them snap down their “Oh yeah, I’m talking to a PARENT” visor.

As you might also expect, I will continue to talk Aidan through his seizures if I get the chance; and you will probably do the same with your little one. She did say that it wouldn’t hurt and that’s enough for me ;-).

Stop Two: The on-site pharmacy to pick up his anti-rejection meds.

Stop Three: Labs for his monthly routine blood draw. A whole battery of tubes! The labs were packed and chaotic. The phlebotomist said it was because of the Monday holiday. At any rate we registered and waited over an hour, then had to leave to make it to my dental appointment. Aidan, who painstakingly prepares himself emotionally for the blood draw, was discomposed but shook it off.

Stop Four: My dental appointment. Just a checkup of my oral surgery from last month. Kevin fueled the Suburban.

Stop Five: Back to labs. It was still chaotic. Aidan struggling with composure… this is NOT the usual lab procedure. We had to wait for a while AGAIN, fearing that we would have to leave to make it to Kevin’s dental appointment at 2 pm. I bugged them a couple of times and finally got Aidan in. Then one of the not-uncommon mischances — the first vein blew and they had to poke him again, on the base of his index finger, which is quite painful. He was pretty heroic.. “I’m getting sad … I’ll be brave… just a little poke?” and so on, talking himself through it. Stickers seem like a pitiful reward, but he has learned to ask for them as a sort of symbolic affirmation of his victory. We got him Cheetos at his request at the hospital cafeteria and then booked to:

Stop Six: Kevin’s dental appointment, halfway up the mountain. We had expected this to be quick — just a crown casting. But it took two hours. The boys (Paddy and Aidan, this is) were awesome. They played with the duplos in the office and made up several fairly elaborate games. Aidan even “cooked enchiladas” in the “oven”(under the table) and served them. They made robots and football guys. Aidan browsed through a Coastal Living magazine. I retreated into my little self as much as possible, reading Dr Phil’s Relationship Rescue (10 cent library sale rack) and as many of the waiting room magazines as I could put up with. Ugh, I way overdosed on self-help. Next time I will bring Orson Scott Card.

Stop Seven: Home again. Kevin to take Advil and me to snap at the middle boys for being tactless enough to greet me at the door with “What are we having for dinner?” We left at 8 am and now it was almost 5. I had brought a couple of snacks in the morning but by no means enough to keep me and Aidan and Paddy sustained (Kevin can go forever without eating). I made a quick call to the car repair guy since the brakes are wearing out on our Suburban (another mountain-living price tag — brakes get a lot of wear and tear). But I couldn’t reach him. After I had zoned out for a while I made pizza and other junky convenience foods for dinner.

Now Clare is watching the Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem with Aidan, and Paddy is playing a flash football game.

Monday Musings

Yesterday we went to visit some of my husband's extended family at his mother's cabin a little way up the mountain from us. It was nice. My youngest got to play with his little cousin and the older kids played ping pong, badminton and chess among other things. I chatted with the relatives, and read old Ladies Home Journals and Good Housekeepings. The LHJ had some really nice pictures of "reading nooks" of different types. One was a window seat. We have three window seats-- my mother in law dressed them up beautifully when we first moved in -- she is a prizewinning artists and has the visual sense I would like to have.

For several years the older kids used them to sleep in. They liked sleeping in the loft, next to the window, rather than in their own rooms.

Now of the window seats: one, my 11 year old sleeps NEXT to -- he keeps his stuff on the window seat.

Another has become my daughter's music nook and contains 2 guitars, a keyboard, an atlas (???) and lots of musical scores.

The third is the one I'm sitting in now, and it is, YES, a computer nook but is under-utilized. I could easily make it nicer.... thinking about it, but that's for the future.

Anyone, the "reading nook" in the magazine had built in shelves under the seat. See, ours have built in cupboards... which is theoretically nice but practically, almost worthless because they weren't sealed off from the wall, and mice can get in .... yuck.

I showed my husband the shelving and he said he could do it. Hurray! I am not holding my breath though because there is a long line of DIY projects waiting ahead of this one. This will be SOMETIME, but still, it's nice to have a dream.

You are wondering why I am chattering on about window seats... YES, I am avoiding Monday Menu Plans.

I have realized this about myself. I hate meal planning. Last week -- I admit it -- I put what I had made the week BEFORE, not what we were planning to have the COMING week. I was hoping to do better this week, but it's not happening.

I haven't had any trouble with any other of my habit memes. I am doing fine so far with my Smart Habits, my fitness project, my Tackle-Its. But Menu Plan Monday brings a wall of resistance that I can almost feel.

Several years ago I wrote a meal rotation. It was one of the most useful things I ever did. The kids, who are generally fussy eaters, could look at my chart and either say: "Yay, we are having tacos tonight! That means I can save up my appetite all day and have 20 tacos for dinner!" OR "Hmm, we are having tacos. Guess I better break out the peanut butter and jelly and make sure to take some bread out of the freezer."

The kids loved the meal rotation, and it made life so much easier for me. No more 4 pm decisions. The flaw -- the reason I have never written it out on this blog -- is that I honestly have only about 6 or 7 dinners that we regularly eat around here. I have about 7 more that we eat occasionally, but wouldn't go over well if we ate them more frequently.

Why is this? I'm not an exceptionally fussy eater. I usually enjoy eating new things. But making them, dealing with those raw ingredients, PLUS eating them -- too much sensory overload.

DH likes making new things AND eating them, but has too much else going on to be the regular cook.

The kids aren't really into cooking at all. I have my one daughter and one son who will cook occasionally. Several of them will help -- the younger they are, generally, the more eager they are to help. Only one, my oldest, likes to do DIY cooking. The others prefer to make tried-and-true recipes.

Most of the kids have decided food preferences and dislikes. There is much more validation for me as cook, in making a few predictable dinners than in making a wide variety.

One solution we have tried is to make a small, interesting dish for the "adults" in the family and something boring for the rest of the kids. Say, make chile verde enchiladas for 4 and then tacos for the rest of the crew. Aidan and Paddy count as adults here. They absolutely LOVE it when I make enchiladas or lasagna or scalloped potatoes or chicken fettucine.

But it's hard to make 2 dinners in an evening, and the clean-up is a bear.

Well, enough rambling. I feel better making these confessions.

After pinpointing this heart of home issue, I think what I'll do is write out my basic menu rotation for next Monday. That is:

• Oriental on Monday,
• Mexican on Tuesday,
• crock pot or oven dish on Wednesday,
• Italian on Thursday,
• fish or meatless on Friday,
• American BBQ on Saturday,
• pizza and soup on Sunday.

See, then I can go from there and try to introduce a bit more variety.
This will have to stand in for a MPM this week.

Monday Musings

Yesterday we went to visit some of my husband's extended family at his mother's cabin a little way up the mountain from us. It was nice. My youngest got to play with his little cousin and the older kids played ping pong, badminton and chess among other things. I chatted with the relatives, and read old Ladies Home Journals and Good Housekeepings. The LHJ had some really nice pictures of "reading nooks" of different types. One was a window seat. We have three window seats-- my mother in law dressed them up beautifully when we first moved in -- she is a prizewinning artists and has the visual sense I would like to have.

For several years the older kids used them to sleep in. They liked sleeping in the loft, next to the window, rather than in their own rooms.

Now of the window seats: one, my 11 year old sleeps NEXT to -- he keeps his stuff on the window seat.

Another has become my daughter's music nook and contains 2 guitars, a keyboard, an atlas (???) and lots of musical scores.

The third is the one I'm sitting in now, and it is, YES, a computer nook but is under-utilized. I could easily make it nicer.... thinking about it, but that's for the future.

Anyone, the "reading nook" in the magazine had built in shelves under the seat. See, ours have built in cupboards... which is theoretically nice but practically, almost worthless because they weren't sealed off from the wall, and mice can get in .... yuck.

I showed my husband the shelving and he said he could do it. Hurray! I am not holding my breath though because there is a long line of DIY projects waiting ahead of this one. This will be SOMETIME, but still, it's nice to have a dream.

You are wondering why I am chattering on about window seats... YES, I am avoiding Monday Menu Plans.

I have realized this about myself. I hate meal planning. Last week -- I admit it -- I put what I had made the week BEFORE, not what we were planning to have the COMING week. I was hoping to do better this week, but it's not happening.

I haven't had any trouble with any other of my habit memes. I am doing fine so far with my Smart Habits, my fitness project, my Tackle-Its. But Menu Plan Monday brings a wall of resistance that I can almost feel.

Several years ago I wrote a meal rotation. It was one of the most useful things I ever did. The kids, who are generally fussy eaters, could look at my chart and either say: "Yay, we are having tacos tonight! That means I can save up my appetite all day and have 20 tacos for dinner!" OR "Hmm, we are having tacos. Guess I better break out the peanut butter and jelly and make sure to take some bread out of the freezer."

The kids loved the meal rotation, and it made life so much easier for me. No more 4 pm decisions. The flaw -- the reason I have never written it out on this blog -- is that I honestly have only about 6 or 7 dinners that we regularly eat around here. I have about 7 more that we eat occasionally, but wouldn't go over well if we ate them more frequently.

Why is this? I'm not an exceptionally fussy eater. I usually enjoy eating new things. But making them, dealing with those raw ingredients, PLUS eating them -- too much sensory overload.

DH likes making new things AND eating them, but has too much else going on to be the regular cook.

The kids aren't really into cooking at all. I have my one daughter and one son who will cook occasionally. Several of them will help -- the younger they are, generally, the more eager they are to help. Only one, my oldest, likes to do DIY cooking. The others prefer to make tried-and-true recipes.

Most of the kids have decided food preferences and dislikes. There is much more validation for me as cook, in making a few predictable dinners than in making a wide variety.

One solution we have tried is to make a small, interesting dish for the "adults" in the family and something boring for the rest of the kids. Say, make chile verde enchiladas for 4 and then tacos for the rest of the crew. Aidan and Paddy count as adults here. They absolutely LOVE it when I make enchiladas or lasagna or scalloped potatoes or chicken fettucine.

But it's hard to make 2 dinners in an evening, and the clean-up is a bear.

Well, enough rambling. I feel better making these confessions.

After pinpointing this heart of home issue, I think what I'll do is write out my basic menu rotation for next Monday. That is:

• Oriental on Monday,
• Mexican on Tuesday,
• crock pot or oven dish on Wednesday,
• Italian on Thursday,
• fish or meatless on Friday,
• American BBQ on Saturday,
• pizza and soup on Sunday.

See, then I can go from there and try to introduce a bit more variety.
This will have to stand in for a MPM this week.

Household Goals

I was thinking about how well my 2007 Learning Goals have been working, and wondering if I could do something similar in thinking about my household. If I divided my home into what Flylady calls Zones, I could consider one zone every month. Not just talking about deep cleaning here. ... I already have a schedule for weekly Zone cleaning.

This would be more about Seeing the View.

This month I've been focusing on the master bedroom. Here are the other areas:

• Kitchen and Pantry
• Hall and Laundry Room
• Childrens' Rooms
• Great Room
• Loft/Schoolroom
• Deck, Porch and Entryway
• Garage
• Outside
• Community -- Church, Library and Beyond

If I spent some time brainstorming about each area, I could allow myself to have a vision about what they COULD look like, even if it's years before they actually get like that. Julie Bogart calls these BHAGs. The metaphor is a bit too, um, cave-man-like for me, but it gives you the idea.

I've noticed when I take some time and thought to visualize ideas, they are more likely to happen even if I make no conscious effort to implement them. It seems weird to me, but I've noticed it several times. However, very often I get rushed and distracted and a bit stressed and forget to actually do this. I settle for "OK" -- which is OK, of course, but it's not really enough.

Please note that I'm not talking about going all out for some perfect Ideal House.. I'm just talking about the little things. The words "inspire" and "reflect" and "focus" -- etymologically, inspire referred to air, breath, spirit, and reflection referred to light bending back. Focus originally referred to a hearth or fireplace, convergence. So when I'm talking about envisioning changes in the house, I'm not talking about going out to hire an organizer or buying a bunch of fancy decorations. I'm talking about a bit of gleaming reflection here, a breath of fresh air there, a focal arrangement there. Focus, Inspiration, Reflection, -- how can I be completely geeky and finish the acronym? How about Energy? The etymology of that word refers to movement, expression, work. So there I'm talking about the living energy in a house -- what makes it flex around and enfold a family like arms. There you go -- FIRE -- warmth and light : ).

Classical Quantities and Qualities

This, from Drew Campbell's blog, reminded me of what Melanie at Wine Dark Sea said when commenting on John Holt's book. I'm quoting some of Melanie's post:

Part of the problem seems to be in Holt's definition of curriculum; indeed, in his definition of knowledge. He seems to be thinking of a series of facts crammed into a child's head. But a curriculum, properly speaking, means a course of study (it comes from the Latin word for race course). A curriculum isn't, or shouldn't be, so much a set of facts to be learned as a series of disciplines to be explored.

I do like John Holt's books very much, but Melanie puts into words one of my main complaints with his point of view.

Similarly, Drew Campbell, quoting Neil Postman's Technopoly:

In consideration of the disintegrative power of Technopoly, perhaps the most important contribution schools can make to the education of our youth is to give them a sense of coherence in their studies, a sense of purpose, meaning, and interconnectedness in what they learn. Modern secular education is failing not because it doesn't teach who Ginger Rogers, Norman Mailer, and a thousand other people are but because it has no moral, social, or intellectual center. There is no set of ideas or attitudes that permeates all parts of the curriculum. The curriculum is not, in fact, a "course of study" at all but a meaningless hodgepodge of subjects. It does not put forward a clear vision of what constitutes an educated person, unless it is a person who possesses "skills." In other words, a technocrat's ideal - a person with no commitment and no point of view but with plenty of marketable skills.

Speaking of classical education -- not that I was, at least not explicitly : ) --- Mary Daly wrote a post on the Love2Learn blog "What is a Classical Education?"

Quiddity encapsulates the answer to a similar question into a nutshell:

The fundamental shift from classical Christian thought to conventional thought is that from the qualitative to the quantitative.

Fr Stanley Jaki comments on the pursuit of quantification in The Biblical Basis of Western Science:

Nothing which is non-quantitative is the business of science. But everything which is quantitative is its business. Non-quantitative aspects of existence, such as purpose, freedom, design, honesty, cannot he handle by science because they are not quantitative propositions. But every bit of matter is quantitative and therefore the business of science. Does not the Bible say that God “disposed everything according to measure and number and weight”?

Please note that the Bible does not say that measure, number and weight, or quantities in short, are everything. But the Bible says that every thing has measure, number, and weight or quantitative properties. Wherever there is matter, quantities are present. This is what gives science its unlimited competence in everything material, whether living or dead. But this is also the reason for the radical limitation of science to what is material insofar as it can be measured.

Still talking about class ed: Classical School blog run by the owners of Eide Neurolearning has a post on Classical Education for Visual Learners.

One question raised by parents about a classical education is whether it is too "verbal" for some of their children, and the verbal demands of reading classical history or texts can't be underestimated.

But like great thinkers in all historical times, they come in many different sizes, shapes and varieties.

( I sometimes wonder if Socrates wasn't a visual/spatial thinker).

I also liked Eide Neurolearning's recent post on The Art of Exploratory Thinking, with this quote attributed to TS Eliot):

"Only those who risk going too far can possibly find out how far they can go."

They go on to say:

It's interesting to think about exploratory decision-making as a necessary step for successful decision-making in real-life. In traditional education, discovery-based learning, when it happens, is rarely strategic - or at least the teaching of strategic approaches to discovery is rarely practiced or modeled...but isn't that too bad?

For some reason that reminds me of John Keats' On First Looking Into Chapman's Homer-- doesn't Keats seem a bit like a visual/spatial thinker?:

Then felt I like some watcher of the skies

When a new planet swims into his ken;

Or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes

He star'd at the Pacific--and all his men

Look'd at each other with a wild surmise

Silent, upon a peak in Darien.

Love2Learn also discussed Catholic homeschooling yahoo groups recently, which might be the reason why several new people recently joined the Catholic Classical Education group I've been moderating for the last nine years. It is very nice to have some newcomers as well as the tried and true members who have been on there for years and watched each others' kids grow up. When I first started moderating the list, my oldest was twelve. How strange. Now my fifth child is eleven!

OK, I guess this turned into my Sunday Six : ). Or maybe it's turned into Seven, or even eight. Quantifications and qualifications before coffee; perhaps not a good idea.

Better Off ?

Better Off: Flipping the Switch on Technology

I wanted to blog about this book before I sent it off to the library. I am still thinking about the book, and haven't yet decided if or where I agree or disagree with the author's thesis. I am still in "receiving mode".

Overall, though, it was a worthwhile book to read -- reminded me a bit of Crunchy Cons, for some reason. Both young, basically urban and highly educated Catholics, who are trying to reclaim (in different ways) some kind of more organic, traditional rhythm of life, more related to the sacramentality of the nature of the material world.

This quote was interesting because he is talking about a book called The Education of Henry Adams -- as he says "it broached the subject of technological infatuation in our nation's past". He particularly refers to the chapter on The Dynamo and the Virgin -- which is interesting because I first read about this dichotomy in John Senior's book Restoration of Christian Culture. This is where I, personally, give a major hat tip to technology in the form of Google, because when I looked it up, I found an interview with Eric Brende (author of Better Off) where he explicitly acknowledges an intellectual and spiritual debt to John Senior:

I had a tremendous intellectual conversion experience when I took a couple of years off and studied at the Integrated Humanities Program at University of Kansas—which has since been dismantled, tragically. It was led by the famous professor John Senior—who served as my sponsor when I became a Catholic. He provided insights into the pitfalls of the machine society which had never dawned on me before. Most centrally, realization that if machines do everything for us, then what's left for us to do? What meaning do we have left? If we have machines to live life for us, then we don't have to live. Life eventually seems not worth the trouble of living. Have a machine do it—or spend life skimming off the frosting of experience, without including any of the substance. The social problems, the plague of depression, social disarray in our society—it's all related directly or indirectly to this takeover by technology. Ironically, our lives become less convenient as a result of our conveniences, since we're always trying to recover what technology took away from us.

Oh dear! I've written all this and not gotten to the quote yet. Brende writes about how the book had "long daunted me....."

The autobiography of John QUincy Adam's grandson and a man of letters, it had set the tone for a whole era of Americans.... and I had never been able to get past the first two pages.

Tonight, to the flicker of a kerosene lamp, I made inexplicable, rapid progress. When I got to the twenty-fifth chapter, "The Dynamo and the Virgin," I found Adams falling prostrate before the dynamo at the Great Exposition held in Paris in 1900, a huge electric generaator with a giant cranking arm. To him the slowly undulating device symbolized a new and unprecedented Force that supplanted once and for all the animate energies of nature. A narrow and inhuman power at last had vanquished Fecundity, or Reproduction, which Adams personified in the Virgin and portrayed as the source of natural bounty. But even as he wrote wistfully about her passing, he bowed before what had replaced her.

Adam's poignant shift in allegiances haunted me.....

Here are Adams' words, which John Senior quotes in his book:

Then he showed his scholar the great hall of dynamos, and explained how little he knew about electricity or force of any kind, even of his own special sun, which spouted heat in inconceivable volume, but which, as far as he knew, might spout less or more, at any time, for all the certainty he felt in it. To him, the dynamo itself was but an ingenious channel for conveying somewhere the heat latent in a few tons of poor coal hidden in a dirty engine-house carefully kept out of sight; but to Adams the dynamo became a symbol of infinity. As he grew accustomed to the great gallery of machines, he began to feel the forty-foot dynamos as a moral force, much as the early Christians felt the Cross. The planet itself seemed less impressive, in its old-fashioned, deliberate, annual or daily revolution, than this huge wheel, revolving within arm's length at some vertiginous speed, and barely murmuring -- scarcely humming an audible warning to stand a hair's-breadth further for respect of power -- while it would not wake the baby lying close against its frame. Before the end, one began to pray to it; inherited instinct taught the natural expression of man before silent and infinite force. Among the thousand symbols of ultimate energy the dynamo was not so human as some, but it was the most expressive.

Smart Habit Saturday

Smart Habits Saturday

For this Saturday, the most important habit I can think of is this one:
15 Minute Reflection before bedtime.

A nightly Examen is an old Ignatian bit of advice, of course. In fact, St Ignatius recommended several daily examens if you are trying hard to work on some particular fault or progress in some particular good habit. It would be a bonus if I could reflect on my progress several times a day, but if I don't get to it all day, still, evening is the key. Then a brief reminder in the morning gets the day started off right.

In Flylady's routine examples., she suggests a "cool down time" in the evening and this has been useful for me. Athletes spend time warming up and cooling down before and after working out. When I do something like that, it does help me not to get blindsided by events that seem to just occur. Since I'm a visual/intuitive person, it helps me to try to visualize myself going through the key moments of the next day and also to try to -- hard to explain -- but wake up my imagination and ponder the significance of those events, what I want them to be about.

Hard to explain! maybe I'll try to blog about that some other time. But if I don't do this thing that I find hard to explain, often the day slips by in a rattling film-strip sequence. I may get a lot done, but it feels like just making the moves. I think of our Blessed Mother, or St Joseph, working through the day and being conscious as they work of the significance of their ordinary, everyday hidden actions. They were affecting history through cooking, and carpentry, and companionship with their Son.

Some questions that Flylady suggests:

• What is on my list for tomorrow?
  
• What can I do this evening to make tomorrow go more smoothly?
• What did I accomplish today?
• What am I grateful for today?

Here are some beautiful meditations from Holy Experience -- Seven Daily Rungs

After you do that is a good time to read, write, draw and/or pray. As often as not I fall right to sleep though.

While I was searching the blog for the 15 minute reflection post, I found this Habit of Improvement
one which seemed to fit in with the topic. Remember that if you are a global thinker like me, having some kind of big picture view to go with your specific habit can be really helpful.

So far I've gone over and above my last week's "making bed and swishing toilet" habit. In addition, I've been successfully keeping toys, extra coffee cups and food out of my room. This keeps maintenance down considerably, and my husband is very happy not to step on crumbs when he comes into his room. Hurray!

On Jane Eyre, the movie -- my daughter's perspective

I've been asking my daughter to sign on to my blog as official movie reviewer.

And this is why --

Whether you enjoyed the recent BBC version of Jane Eyre or not, I am sure you will find her review thought-provoking.

Bravo, Mary-Therese! !

Also, her thoughts on the Maltese Falcon, of all things
Yes, the dreaded creeping colourisation.

House and Hold Goals

I was thinking about how well my 2007 Learning Goals have been working over on my other blog, and wondering if I could do something similar in thinking about my household. If I divided my home into what Flylady calls Zones, I could consider one zone every month. Not just talking about deep cleaning here. ... I already have a schedule for weekly Zone cleaning.

This would be more about Seeing the View.

This month I've been focusing on the master bedroom. Here are the other areas:

• Kitchen and Pantry
• Hall and Laundry Room
• Childrens' Rooms
• Great Room
• Loft/Schoolroom
• Deck, Porch and Entryway
• Garage
• Outside
• Community -- Church, Library and Beyond

If I spent some time brainstorming about each area, I could allow myself to have a vision about what they COULD look like, even if it's years before they actually get like that. Julie Bogart calls these BHAGs. The metaphor is a bit too, um, cave-man-like for me, but it gives you the idea.

I've noticed when I take some time and thought to visualize ideas, they are more likely to happen even if I make no conscious effort to implement them. It seems weird to me, but I've noticed it several times. However, very often I get rushed and distracted and a bit stressed and forget to actually do this. I settle for "OK" -- which is OK, of course, but it's not really enough.

Please note that I'm not talking about going all out for some perfect Ideal House.. I'm just talking about the little things. The words "inspire" and "reflect" and "focus" -- etymologically, inspire referred to air, breath, spirit, and reflection referred to light bending back. Focus originally referred to a hearth or fireplace, convergence. So when I'm talking about envisioning changes in the house, I'm not talking about going out to hire an organizer or buying a bunch of fancy decorations. I'm talking about a bit of gleaming reflection here, a breath of fresh air there, a focal arrangement there. Focus, Inspiration, Reflection, -- how can I be completely geeky and finish the acronym? How about Energy? The etymology of that word refers to movement, expression, work. So there I'm talking about the living energy in a house -- what makes it flex around and enfold a family like arms. There you go -- FIRE -- warmth and light : ).

Thankful Thursday

Today I was thinking that I am thankful that we didn't have much money coming in for a while. When Aidan was in the hospital, my dh Kevin got laid off. This resulted in him going freelance so he could continue to work at home, but for several years the income was from royalties and barely a trickle. We were living off our savings, and paying extraneous medical bills. It was a difficult time in some ways. However, we learned lots that I am so thankful for today:

• We learned that technology was a servant, not a sort of hearth god. When our dishwasher broke down, we didn't get it replaced for 3 years, and guess what? it didn't make too much of a difference. The dishes still got washed. Similarly with our dryer, which has been out of action for a year. Our one and only, trusty car has 180 thousand miles on it, a bit beat up but functional. And so on.
  
• We learned to make homemade pizza. To buy enough pizza to satisfy a family of nine (with four teenagers!) cost $21 plus even for Costco take-and-bake. At the local restaurant it takes fifty dollars. I can make 4 XL pepperoni pizzas at home for less than $10 and it has become a Sunday afternoon tradition. I even learned to make garlic chicken pizza. I'm not knocking storebought pizza! but it's nice to know we can do it ourselves.
• We learned to heat our house with our wood stove, and congregate close to the fire on particularly cold days. Another cherished tradition! Stacking 6 cords of firewood every fall is another tradition, this one not particularly cherished by the children, but I have no doubt it has built muscles, team spirit, and some fortitude in our family.
  
• I learned to wait, sometimes for a long time, before I bought something. There are dozens of things on my wish list, but I don't have to spend my time pining for them. There is a corollary to the ability to buy what you want almost immediately. The corollaries are the discovery that they are clutter in your house, and that they don't solve the essential hunger that drove you to buy them in the first place -- the hunger for the perfect homeschool solution (that's my weakness) or the hunger for status or coolness or whatever. I learned this by experience : ). Waiting helps me see what the real hunger is and if it can be met some other way or left unsatisfied for the sake of "prayer, fasting and almsgiving".

I hope I can hold on to those lessons now that our income is slowly heading back up. I am sure there will be things I can be grateful for above the poverty line, too. Marie commented on my other blog:

I hear you on the freedom/deprivation paradox. Everything from Our Lord's hand is good, even if we have favorites or wistfulness toward some of the varieties of good..

(PLUS: I realize that our "poverty" is abundance compared to 99% of the world through space and time. That's part of my point. I think it's true of Americans in general. We define a car, a TV and a flushing toilet as necessities, not to mention pizza, household machinery and a roof over our heads. I realize that my list of "deprivations" look rather like insane luxury from a different perspective. But ya gotta start somewhere, and when I say "poverty" I'm talking about what the US government considers the poverty threshold for income for families our size)

Wednesday, May 23, 2007

Weeding Out Wednesday

What can you say when you look at this except: Ohhh...

This was my solution for a truly chaotic situation. I am always finding little pieces of sets everywhere around the house.... duplos, chess pieces, little figurines, whatever. Rather than spend time I didn't have returning them whence they came, I would simply toss them into toy limbo. This is my oldest son's trunk, which he doesn't need anymore because he is generally off at college.


This worked OK -- better than having the stuff in sundry junk drawers all over the house. At least the junk had a home base. Every once in a while I would pay the fifth child to sort these into categories, and return them where they belong.

But this time I resolve.... almost resolve... RESOLVE to resolve to be ruthless and actually get rid of a lot of this, and put away the rest.

It's junk. It's junk. It's replaceable American plastic for the most part. Why am I keeping it, when I could be free of it? Because some Scottish voice in my head tells me it's wasteful to throw away things that could come in handy someday. And because some probably Scottish voice also makes me feel all sentimental about these useless relics from my childrens' past.

Plus, every once in a while I open the box and the little ones have a happy time sorting through the junk and finding the little figurines or rare useful things. But that isn't really worth the six square feet footprint and the mess that generally results.

So yesterday I sat down and made four piles:

• One for pieces from construction sets -- blocks, duplos and the like. I can easily return those to their proper storage places.
• One for little figures and manipulatives. I included the chess pieces in that. When the older kids play chess it's convenient to give the little ones the pieces from the incomplete set. I'll put those with the real chess set in a separate baggie.
• One for cars.
• One little baggie for dice.

These are the things I'll keep. The rest go into the junk pile.
I have not finished yet, but when I do, I'll take a picture.

A few weeks ago I read Organizing from the Inside Out. The idea of this book is to design " a system based on your life goals, natural habits and psychological needs". For some reason this book really clicked with me. She says something that is often repeated: find a place for everything. But this time, it sunk in a bit. I realized that if I, personally, can't manage some item or system, it doesn't belong in this house (unless of course it's something that the DH or children are taking care of by themselves).

Even if it's a wonderful resource, it doesn't belong in this house if I can't take care of it.

For some reason this ties in with Celebrating Abundance. If you take care of what you have, maybe you don't need so much. Also, Shawna at As Simple Plus Two Plus Two's toddler mantra: Keep it New, Keep it Few!

I will probably feel a pang someday when I realize I've tossed out something that we could have used.... somehow. But I can bear pangs. I feel worse every day when I clean the kitty litter. So if I can just Re-Solve to do this......

On Critical Reading

From CS Lewis An Experiment in Criticism

I have also refrained from describing the sort of reading I approve as "critical reading". The phrase, if not elliptically used, seems to me deeply misleading. I said in an earlier chapter that we can jduge any sentence or even word only by the work it does or fails to do. The effect must precede the judgement on the effect. The same is true of a whole work. Ideally, we must receive it first and then evaluate it. Otherwise, we have nothing to evaluate. ....

...In later life, we can hardly help evaluating as we go along; it has become a habit. We thus fail of that inner silence, that emptying out of ourselves, by which we ought to make room for the total reception of the work. ...

But here's the part which particularly seemed to connect with something I've written about before: how a schooly approach to literature studies can actually impede a child's approach to literature:

"All this activity impedes reception.
For this reason I am very doubtful whether criticism is a proper exercise for boys and girls. A clever schoolboy's reaction to his reading is most naturally expressed by parody or imitation. The necessary condition of all good reading is 'to get ourselves out of the way'; we do not help the young to do this by forcing them to keep on expressing opinions."

What I Carry

I found this bag meme on Elizabeth's site and thought it looked like fun, so I'm tagging myself. Here goes....

Here is my bag. It is big, and it matches everything I wear, pretty much. It's a hand me down from my mother in law, who probably picked it up at a thrift store. Just so you know that. Why buy a handbag when if you wait long enough, someone will give you one? I love it; I love the colors. Before that I had a black leather one, also a handmedown, but it fell apart.


Now the contents. First my calendars and various other notebooks. I would like to link to a description of them but homeschooljournal is down right now -- and that's where I described my planners.

Here is my oversized wallet. Old but useful. It contains keys, credit cards etc, plus a few prayer books and a small notebook. Plus a couple of odds and ends like a clean-wipe packet, a small lotion bottle, Purell, a bandaid, etc. If I am going somewhere quickly and don't need the whole big bag, I can just bring this one. Or I can easily transfer it to a different bag if I need to.

Seizure meds! I bring the meds everywhere, just in case, after a scary episode where we were in the car and Aidan went into a seizure. Hasn't happened since, but this way the meds are always at my fingertips.

We live in California -- so sunglasses, water bottle and sunscreen come with us everywhere. Neutrogena is the only sunblock we've found that our fair Celtic skin can tolerate.

And I never go anywhere without a book or two. These are the ones that were in there most recently. Usually I bring at least two, so I have a choice, and so I don't run out of things to read -- which is a phobia of mine.

I don't have reason to carry diapers anymore, sadly, but I do often bring a spare pair of little-boy clothes and a pull-up and a few diaper wipes, since I still have two little boys and it doesn't hurt to be prepared.

If I am what I carry, I guess I'm a mom with little messy kids past babyhood, with some medical stuff going on, who lives in California and carries pieces of her brain around with her. I started bringing my calendars everywhere with me since people were planning meetings and things and I am starting to forget them if I don't write them down right away. I better not lose my bag!

Tuesday Tackle -- My Room

I made up my mind to tackle my room. It usually isn't TOO bad, but it needed some deep cleaning. I spent a long time vacuuming the windows and under surfaces and mopping, so pictures wouldn't really show the difference too much. Take my word for it, though; I was working hard!

I cleared and wiped the surfaces, and got the toys out of the room, and you can at least see a bit of that.


Now, just to keep it that way. Note to myself: don't let the little ones bring food in here anymore. And make a habit of dropping the toys that creep into here, out into some sort of temporary holding spot outside the room, like this ----------->
where they can be phased back into the toy area of the house.






This is the area behind our bed (in the picture above, you can see the padded headboard my husband rigged up a few years ago; it gives us about forty square feet of horizontal storage space behind the bed, and keeps us from having to lean our heads against that sloping wall! Anyway, this is a before... yuck...





and this is the AFTER. Still pretty packed in there but a little less chaotic.




Here is a list of the other "tackles", for future Tuesdays -- but for today, sigh! I've done plenty!

• Toys -- organize and discard
• Downstairs bathroom -- deep clean and organize
  
• Garage -- organize
• Curriculum Closet -- rearrange
• Game Closet -- inventory
• Art Closet-- inventory
• Camping Equipment -- assess and complete
• Travelling luggage -- assess and complete
• College search --
• Daily schedule -- update
• Chores chart -- update
• Under bed storage -- inventory.

Little Things

My kids make me laugh. I love that about them. I am a melancholic but laughter soothes the somber soul.

Aidan (singing)

I’m a cybernetic hee–ro,
Known throughout all space

Sean

You know, when they say that the people pounded after the villain? Well, they are probably ruining their stride for good. You’re not supposed to pound your feet when you run.

Paddy and Clare (as reported by Clare)

Paddy, sighing: I wish I had a happy life.
Clare: Don’t you have a happy life? Why not?
Paddy: Because I don’t always get what I want when I want it.

A lot happened today though it was a quiet at-home day –I cleaned half the kitchen, worked out on the lot for sale with Kevin and Aidan, went for a walk to the Post Office, talked to Clare and Brendan about the movie Lord of the Rings. They made me laugh too. Oh, and exponents with Sean, and some fractions with Kieron. They worked out on the lot for a long time too.

Brendan has been so helpful recently. They seem to grow up and become, well, grown-ups, all of a sudden. And Clare has been baking breakfast every day. Today scones, tomorrow queen cakes (she bakes them and sets them on the top of the fridge so the little ones won’t eat them before the next morning).

gratuitous informal pic of Aidan and Liam.

House and Hold Goals

I was thinking about how well my 2007 Learning Goals have been working, and wondering if I could do something similar in thinking about my household. If I divided my home into what Flylady calls Zones, I could consider one zone every month. Not just talking about deep cleaning here. ... I already have a schedule for weekly Zone cleaning.

This would be more about Seeing the View.

This month I've been focusing on the master bedroom. Here are the other areas:

• Kitchen and Pantry
• Hall and Laundry Room
• Childrens' Rooms
• Great Room
• Loft/Schoolroom
• Deck, Porch and Entryway
• Garage
• Outside
• Community -- Church, Library and Beyond

If I spent some time brainstorming about each area, I could allow myself to have a vision about what they COULD look like, even if it's years before they actually get like that. Julie Bogart calls these BHAGs. The metaphor is a bit too, um, cave-man-like for me, but it gives you the idea.

I've noticed when I take some time and thought to visualize ideas, they are more likely to happen even if I make no conscious effort to implement them. It seems weird to me, but I've noticed it several times. However, very often I get rushed and distracted and a bit stressed and forget to actually do this. I settle for "OK" -- which is OK, of course, but it's not really enough.

Please note that I'm not talking about going all out for some perfect Ideal House.. I'm just talking about the little things. The words "inspire" and "reflect" and "focus" -- etymologically, inspire referred to air, breath, spirit, and reflection referred to light bending back. Focus originally referred to a hearth or fireplace, convergence. So when I'm talking about envisioning changes in the house, I'm not talking about going out to hire an organizer or buying a bunch of fancy decorations. I'm talking about a bit of gleaming reflection here, a breath of fresh air there, a focal arrangement there. Focus, Inspiration, Reflection, -- how can I be completely geeky and finish the acronym? How about Energy? The etymology of that word refers to movement, expression, work. So there I'm talking about the living energy in a house -- what makes it flex around and enfold a family like arms. There you go -- FIRE -- warmth and light : ).

Rhythms of Life right now

Homeschool Journal is down, for reasons that Andrea explains here, so my little daily journal everywakinghour is inactive. Perhaps that is just as well since I have been spending so much time doing home-blessing type stuff and blogging about it over here. I don't think I could actively maintain three blogs plus have a life.

The past couple of weeks have been busy, even aside from that. On Mother's Day we drove down to Liam's college to help him pack and bring him home. Can that really have been only 10 days ago? The following weekend was my niece's wedding -- so, LOTS of driving into town (120 mile trip) since Clare and Paddy were part of the cast of characters, and there were also relatives coming from out of town to reunite with. Clare handed out programs and Patrick was a ring-bearer along with his little cousin. I was proud of both of them.

T-ball season is over, which makes things a bit calmer; but football season is starting, and there have been a rush of specialist appointments and therapist end-of-year type meetings. Almost every day we have somewhere to go, and sometimes for half or more of the day.

On the home front, some little habits have been forming, which I hope will resolve into customs as the summer continues:

• Playing card or board games after dinner. Now that Liam is back, we have another participant, which makes it more fun. We have played chess, Touche, Swap, Hit the Deck, Monopoly, and... what else? Seems there was something.
• Daily walk -- the little ones are getting better at going longer distances, and our national forest is beautiful this time of year.
• One I just started -- getting up early to go for a walk by myself. Believe it or not, this is a first. My small children have radar. When I get up, they get up, much of the time. And until last year, Aidan and Patrick couldn't take stairs. So I was simply too cautious to leave them alone in a sleeping house even for a few minutes -- too scary to think of them wandering blindly around the house. So I am discovering our forest surroundings basically for the first time since we moved here. Now that they are older, the little ones sleep fine.
  
• As for academic things, we have phased back to Ambleside/Mater Amabilis reading twice a week, some seatwork (outlining, grammar, Latin grammar and Greek) twice a week, and daily maintenance level Latin and Math. That leaves more open time to do things in a slower paced way.
  

It's a transition time. For twenty years I always had a baby or toddler in my arms. Now I don't. I don't change diapers anymore. Aidan puts on his own night pull off and in the morning, puts it in the trash himself. For many years I had two in diapers, and now I don't have any. My youngest weaned a few months ago, so I don't have a nursing little one. That is a first too. My oldest will turn twenty-one in less than a month. He is halfway through his undergraduate years. Aidan's medical needs have telescoped into morning and nighttime medications, regular therapy and occasional specialist visits which are summed up by: "everything still looks good." The oxygen canister and the feeding pump go unused.

Everything has changed; if I had been transferred here abruptly from two years ago, I would be blinking in bewilderment. It is taking a while for my spirit to catch up with the exterior differences. It is hard for me to rejoice about the little freedoms -- no diapers, no clinging toddler, time for walks by myself, no midnight runs to the ER -- because the freedoms come by way of deprivations. There is such joy and newness in the life of a baby -- even and especially in the life of a medically challenged baby -- and we no longer have that element in our family lives. The season seemed short; even though it lasted twenty years, I could have wished it would have lasted longer.

More about Summer Planning

Summer seems to be a good shuffling time. Since it's an interim between the end of this "school year" (funny how engrained that concept is) and the start of next fall, it seems reasonable to examine what is working in our household and what isn't.

For example, our chore system. For many years now the children have helped with household work. The system gets outdated fast though. A couple of years ago I had to consolidate five lists into four, because my oldest was going off to college. This year, I am seeing that the younger set of children could contribute something. So that is one thing that is on my list of things to look at and revise.

Of course, there is also their homeschool plans. This is something I like to ponder for a while before actually setting it down in stone. I think homeschoolers fall into similar categories as writers. I used to read writing books that said to outline your writing before you started. I am sure this works fine for lots of people. However, my children and I found it interesting to read that JRR Tolkien had only a vague plot map in mind when he started writing Lord of the Rings. For example, so we hear, Strider appeared basically out of nowhere as he wrote. Tolkien had meticulously prepared his terrain and history, he wrote and rewrote many times, and his resulting opus was carefully crafted.

The idea is that though he meticulously laid out his background, and carefully revised, he left himself some openness in the details of the plot progression, and I think some homeschoolers are the same. For example, I do a lot of thinking and list-making when I am planning, yet often I don't even use the lists. They are helpful though because they make the terrain familiar. The times I've tried to write detailed plans for the year, I've ignored them and it's been largely a waste of time. Better to jot down chronology-related notes like -- by January I'd like to be halfway through on this math book. I still often ignore them, but I don't waste so much time.

Another system -- our spatial organization. There are several sub-systems that need some work. Last year it was our book collection. I spent a lot of time going through them and categorizing them, and the work paid off -- now it's easy to reshelve them and I have a strong conception of where everything is, pretty much.

This year it's toys. Toys! Too many of them, and not organized, and some are outgrown and rarely if ever played with. My goal is different than it was with the books. Rather than classify and order, I want to sort and purge. I'll be tackling this a bit at a time, but my rather breathless hope/plan/dream is to get rid of about half of them, and put the rest into clearcut categories, like: Cars. Dice. Counters. Animals. Swords. Stuffies. Old Faithfuls I can't let go yet.

Half of them! IT makes me dizzy. I don't know if I can do it. But maybe if I think in terms of starting over, it will be easier.

We already have games and puzzles fairly well in order; ditto art supplies. My task with these, should I get around to it, is to inventory them and figure out some strewing schedule for next winter so they come out of closets more frequently.

The outside of the house needs plenty of work, which is not really worth writing out here. The plan for that is to work for a half hour several days a week. What happened when I did this to our nightmarish garage was that I whittled away at it until suddenly, voila! I saw the end in sight, and I dived in and spent a half day and got it finished!

I still have to consider the flow of time in this house, and how we do things in this time -- that is another thing I ponder during the summer, but that will be for another post.

What I Carry

I found this bag meme on Elizabeth's site and thought it looked like fun, so I'm tagging myself. Here goes....

Here is my bag. It is big, and it matches everything I wear, pretty much. It's a hand me down from my mother in law, who probably picked it up at a thrift store. Just so you know that. Why buy a handbag when if you wait long enough, someone will give you one? I love it; I love the colors. Before that I had a black leather one, also a handmedown, but it fell apart.


Now the contents. First my calendars and various other notebooks. I would like to link to a description of them but homeschooljournal is down right now -- and that's where I described my planners.

Here is my oversized wallet. Old but useful. It contains keys, credit cards etc, plus a few prayer books and a small notebook. Plus a couple of odds and ends like a clean-wipe packet, a small lotion bottle, Purell, a bandaid, etc. If I am going somewhere quickly and don't need the whole big bag, I can just bring this one. Or I can easily transfer it to a different bag if I need to.

Seizure meds! I bring the meds everywhere, just in case, after a scary episode where we were in the car and Aidan went into a seizure. Hasn't happened since, but this way the meds are always at my fingertips.

We live in California -- so sunglasses, water bottle and sunscreen come with us everywhere. Neutrogena is the only sunblock we've found that our fair Celtic skin can tolerate.

And I never go anywhere without a book or two. These are the ones that were in there most recently. Usually I bring at least two, so I have a choice, and so I don't run out of things to read -- which is a phobia of mine.

I don't have reason to carry diapers anymore, sadly, but I do often bring a spare pair of little-boy clothes and a pull-up and a few diaper wipes, since I still have two little boys and it doesn't hurt to be prepared.

If I am what I carry, I guess I'm a mom with little messy kids past babyhood, with some medical stuff going on, who lives in California and carries pieces of her brain around with her. I started bringing my calendars everywhere with me since people were planning meetings and things and I am starting to forget them if I don't write them down right away. I better not lose my bag!