Snow Day

G-girl was the last to wake up and came sleepily into the living room.

"Whoa!" she grunted loudly from somewhere deep in her throat. Suddenly, she was not the sleepy morning girl.

Last night, I lay in bed and watched the snow fall by the light of the bright, full moon. It was beautiful. As I write this, my children have not had breakfast and are all out cavorting in their snowsuits. We all enjoy in our different ways. What a good Christmas season!

Lucky for me, P-daddy took the pictures for today's entry!

The Presley dog cometh

A snow man will be built, by George!

Snow on the Bloom. I love Christmas Roses.

D-meister's about to pound some Daddy.

GH Tree Lighting

It wasn't as cold as last year, and the lights are the new LEDs. A storm last year took out all our former lights so now we have a tree in color. At G-girl's behest, we stayed in line for 45 minutes after the tree lighting to see Santa. Yowch!

This is as close as N-man got to the Big C. He was mostly there for the candy canes.

G-girl was very business like. She even brought Santa a gift she'd drawn for him.

Bad pic, cute moment. D-meister was the only one who sat on Santa's lap.

This is as close as we got to a group "Merry Christmas" shot.

Anniversary

Four years ago today, we moved to the state of Washington. We didn't know either of these fellas:

Nor had we heard of Wall-E, which clearly has a soothing effect.

Working with Grandaddy, both of them.

I can't say that I remember being a Daddy's girl. My mother assured me that when I was a very small girl I was, but I don't recall it. After the separation and divorce, I didn't see my father again until I was an adult in college. I did have a relationship with my grandfather, though; in my estimation, when I was small, he was a big, giant teddy bear who could do and build anything. There was a period of time after the divorce when my mother wouldn't let me see that side of the family and that loss of connection was at least as devastating as the destruction of my nuclear family.

For about 6 years, if I got to see my Grandparents at all, it was a twice a year visitation kind of situation. The day I turned 18, I biked the three miles (isn't that a travesty? Only three miles!) in the Charleston June heat to my grandparents house. By the end of that summer, they were more than happy to drive me all the way to Virginia to my college dorm, to be involved with helping me set up a life. I never slept another night in my mother's home. It was a bumpy road, though, getting to know them again. I'd suffered things they didn't understand and they wanted to rewrite history, I think, or wave a wand and make our pain go away. They struggled through my angry years. I have always been a writer, and they didn't like some of the newspaper columns I sent home from college. Healing can be a nasty business.

I have written before about what my Grandparents mean to me. If I hadn't had P-daddy in my life when my Grandfather passed, I don't know what his death would have done to me. I had fully invested my identity at that point as their granddaughter. In the years since, I have gotten closer with my father and to my regret, lost all contact with my mother. It's complicated, as all families seem to be, and of course it informs how I parent my own children.

After my Grandfather passed, my Grandmother gave me all their slides and the projector. My Grandfather loved to take pictures, and for a period of time in my father's early childhood, he preferred slides. A stroke of genius, I say. Slides hold their color so perfectly. As I scan the slides, I get to see the pictures in all their integrity. One by one, I get to see these images surface on my computer screen as they were when he shot them. It's proving to be an emotional experience. I think a lot like my Grandaddy, and as I work through these slides, I find him instructing me even now; an x marks the bottom left of the image, no matter what the Kodak label says. Dates, places, categories, all there for me to decipher in a way that may make sense only to our family. That connection again, that tie to the larger web of family. It resonates within me. It aches. I am scanning these over the course of this week to preserve and deliver these images for my family-- my Grandmother, my father, my cousins. What a Christmas gift, to have family pictures from 5 decades ago resurface now, the few prints of which have been long lost.

And finally, another shocking discovery. My Grandaddy was born in Egypt, Georgia and raised in Savannah. It was no surprise to see a box marked "Ephesus," as I had already encountered "Sarasota." Assuming I would see family pictures at a farm or a picnic in the rural South, I was surprised to see Ephesus. As in Turkey. As in The Cathedral of St John and The Great Theater. My Grandaddy had never been to Europe. These were slides taken by my then-18-year-old father. My Daddy had taken these.

Only in recent years has he talked to me about his time in the service. He didn't enjoy his time as a Viet Nam war serviceman, but what little he has told me centered around his tours in Europe, and the pleasure he took in actually walking the ancient streets. I was slightly dizzy as I examined the shots. I know my father lost every photograph he had living on sailboats after the divorce. I know he doesn't have these. But we do, now. He will get them back. And my children will get to see their Grandaddy's history unfold before them while I am watching mine.

This is a good work, and I am so grateful for the chance to do it.

Tree Fairies

Our children watched an episode of Wife Swap (I know, I know) where the Washington State Mom wore fairy wings and was obsessed with tree fairies. Since then, they've been dressing up as tree fairies and taking their friends with them.

You might expect something like this:

But I suspect this might be more surprising:

CBS on homeschooling

I liked these vignettes on homeschooling. It's good to see people who want to stay home with their kids for, you know, academic benefit.

http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=4447945n

See More Herpetology

When I say my kids love science, in no way am I exaggerating. From geology to chemistry to astronomy to biology to physics... they love exploring this world and all the ways to classify that experience. That's one of the reasons we really enjoy going to Camp Seymour. As exhausting as it can be on the parents, the staff there maximize the individual experience for the children. This is our second year going and it's so worth it.




This session was Creepy Crawly Day, where they studied earthworms and reptiles. They took the earthworms from the Living Machine they have at Camp Seymour, right from the compost pile, and then replaced them as they finished. It was a great object lesson in sustainable cycles and gardening, or it could have been; when the instructor asked how many people had a compost pile at home, every child raised her hand! That may be Homeschooler Rule #14: must have compost.



We moved on to lunch, (where a large fifth grade group's handlers reminded most of us why we have our children at home), and then made our way back outside to split into our groups. On to the reptiles! After a brief lesson, each child had the opportunity to hold every reptile.

All N-man wanted was to hold that black snake, the one he held last year. All day long, that's what he looked forward to experiencing again.

Here there be dragons!

The leopard gecko's name is Maynard. He was easily the class favorite, and the only one D-meister would hold.

Sibling assistance: An escapee explored the inside of N-man's sweater.

The stream is running again

I'd like to say "No, he didn't," but he so very did.

The C-family had come over and they were all out there, stream-tending. Each child came in wearing different degrees of dirt, but this was the clear winner of the group..

A grateful week

"What manner of man will this be, this possible Negro Presidential candidate of 2000? Undoubtedly, he will be well-educated. He will be well-traveled and have a keen grasp of his country's role in the world and its relationships. He will be a dedicated internationalist with working comprehension of the intricacies of foreign aid, technical assistance and reciprocal trade. … Assuredly, though, despite his other characteristics, he will have developed the fortitude to withstand the vicious smear attacks that came his way as he fought to the top in government and politics … those in the vanguard may expect to be the targets for scurrilous attacks, as the hate mongers, in the last ditch efforts, spew their verbal and written poison."

--Jacob K. Javits, "Integration from the Top Down" printed in Esquire magazine in 1958

Happy Halloweenies!

Wherein they get the seasons right-- and the community spirit, too

We had an unexpected treat yesterday, which was a nice result of trying to do something nice for our buddies. Nikirj has moved to GH, which is a big deal for us, and I get to show her new stuff which is fun for both of us. Yesterday P-daddy kicked us out while he (delightfully) steam cleaned the wall to wall carpets in every room of our house, so I was wandering aimlessly. I stopped by the C-family's house and asked them if they wanted to go to Harbor Greens. While we were there, a lady from next door Forza asked us if we wanted to carve pumpkins. We politely declined, because that is something we usually do with P-daddy, and because we didn't really understand what they were doing.

How cool is it where we live?


Forza was giving away huge jack o'lantern sized pumpkins, scooping them out for the kids, carving the faces (or letting the big ones do it themselves) and giving the kids candles for the pumpkins. In addition, they took a picture of each kid with their jack o'lantern to email to the parents and then gave them some candy. When they were all done, they gave each child a free hot chocolate. Wow! We completely didn't expect that from a random trip to the market, but I was plenty proud to show off our adopted community to our newest resident. (And I scored some of their pumpkin scoopage for the compost pile).


Today P-daddy will take the kids like we do every year to a proper pumpkin patch to select the family Jack o'lantern; we like the family tradition of it all. We're bummed that we didn't get our pumpkins from the garden this year, but I have to admit I like to take the kids the the hay mazes and stuff. It's fun. Pictures to come.

My son has his seasons wrong

Sometimes, as a homeschooling mother, I find that I can take a midday shower in reasonable safety of having the house and children well and intact when I get out. Sometimes, however, bedlam ensues and that is just something you have to expect when you leave three clever children unattended.

After lunch, I left the kids in the schoolroom. D-meister and the lady were doing crafts together. N-man was playing runescape. I saw my chance and took it. But the shower felt good. Oh yes, it felt good to sit there with the warm water just flowing over my head.

Foolish ~L~.

I was drying off in the bedroom when I saw a yellow streak fly by. There was a gigantic bee in my (almost) fallow garden. By gigantic, I mean 3.5 year old human child sized. D-meister had found the bee costume, stripped down and put it on. He even remembered rain boots.

We know not to ask why, as parents, but there was a reason to this. As I bolted out the door to catch this on camera, I noticed my seed saving pile by the back door had been mussed. D-meister had stripped some of the purple runner beans and was outside, as a bee, planting them.

Things P-daddy Made

Or grew.Whatever.

Our veggie porn entry for the year. I knew he thought they were funny! I knew it! So, courtesy of P-daddy, a very excited tomato:

A peapod of bedbugs:

A delicious batch of dairy-free, gluten-free sunbutter cookies:

And a very pretty girl:

Art is the order of the fall

Still here. Going to the Y, helping friends move, playing hard in the school room and in the garden. Canning. Living.

As far as the kids' "work," art has been the order of the fall. We've also been studying literature, reading, math and continental drift. Somehow, those aren't as fun to photograph.

The Harry Potter Unit is fun, too, where we have made wands and potions (chemistry) and managed all kinds of mischief, but I am usually too busy, well, managing mischief, to man a camera.

Play foam is just...odd. Odd, but somehow popular.

(Yes, they henna painted themselves. Cept with marker. In Transformers shapes.)

That's a Harry Potter wand he's aiming at me. I guess that's a ball of power or something.

Tie-dying play silks was cool too. Anything that remotely smacks of mixing chemicals draws our son like a mosquito to the light:

We lost our photo-editing software when we had to replace our computer in May, so I apologize for the bright red eyes. I cannot however, apologize for the bizarre way in which my daughter has decided to model the play silks she liked best.

And from someone as "radical" as Garrison Keillor....

Palin's future, according to Garrison Keillor

GARRISON KEILLOR
SYNDICATED COLUMNIST

We are a stalwart and stouthearted people, and never more so than in hard times. People weep in the dark and arise in the morning and go to work. The waves crash on your nest egg and a chunk is swept away and you put your salami sandwich in the brown bag and get on the bus. In Philly, a woman earns $10.30/hour to care for a man brought down by cystic fibrosis. She bathes and dresses him in the morning, brings him meals, puts him to bed at night. It's hard work lifting him and she has suffered a painful hernia that, because she can't afford health insurance, she can't get fixed, but she still goes to work because he'd be helpless without her. There are a lot of people like her. I know because I'm related to some of them.

Low dishonesty and craven cynicism sometimes win the day but not inevitably. The attempt to link Barack Obama to an old radical in his neighborhood has desperation and deceit written all over it. Meanwhile, stunning acts of heroism stand out, such as the fidelity of military lawyers assigned to defend detainees at Guantanamo Bay -- uniformed officers faithful to their lawyerly duty to offer a vigorous defense even though it means exposing the injustice of military justice that is rigged for conviction and the mendacity of a commander in chief who commits war crimes. If your law school is looking for a name for its new library, instead of selling the honor to a fat cat alumnus, you should consider the names of Lt. Cmdr. Charles Swift, Lt. Col. Mark Bridges, Col. Steven David, Lt. Col. Sharon Shaffer, Lt. Cmdr. Philip Sundel and Maj. Michael Mori.

It was dishonest, cynical men who put forward a clueless young woman for national office, hoping to juice up the ticket, hoping she could skate through two months of chaperoned campaigning, but the truth emerges: The lady is talking freely about matters she has never thought about. The American people have an ear for B.S. They can tell when someone's mouth is moving and the clutch is not engaged. When she said, "One thing that Americans do at this time, also, though, is let's commit ourselves just every day, American people, Joe Six-Pack, hockey moms across the nation, I think we need to band together and say never again. Never will we be exploited and taken advantage of again by those who are managing our money and loaning us these dollars," people smelled gas.

Some Republicans adore her because they are pranksters at heart and love the consternation of grown-ups. The ne'er-do-well son of the old Republican family as president, the idea that you increase government revenue by cutting taxes, the idea that you cut social services and thereby drive the needy into the middle class, the idea that you overthrow a dictator with a show of force and achieve democracy at no cost to yourself -- one stink bomb after another, and now Governor Palin.

She is a chatty sportscaster who lacks the guile to conceal her vacuity, and she was Mr. McCain's first major decision as nominee. This troubles independent voters, and now she is a major drag on his candidacy. She will get a nice book deal from Regnery and a new career making personal appearances for forty grand a pop, and she'll become a trivia question, "What politician claimed foreign-policy expertise based on being able to see Russia from her house?" And the rest of us will have to pull ourselves out of the swamp of Republican economics.

Your broker kept saying, "Stay with the portfolio, don't jump ship," and you felt a strong urge to dump the stocks and get into the money market where at least you're not going to lose your shirt, but you didn't do it and didn't do it, and now you're holding a big bag of brown bananas. Me, too. But at least I know enough not to believe desperate people who are talking trash. Anybody who got whacked last week and still thinks McCain-Palin is going to lead us out of the swamp and not into a war with Iran is beyond persuasion in the English language. They'll need to lose their homes and be out on the street in a cold hard rain before they connect the dots.

These are dark days, my friends.

Hard to choose a party

and I am not referring to the birthday party we went to last week, or the not-back-to-school picnic we have scheduled for later this week.

I have identified as a Libertarian for years but I think I may be waning in that. I still think an adherence to the basic structure of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights would steer us well, but I also believe that the ills of a big government cannot be taken care of equitably without said governmental involvement. We can't just stop programs and social cycles that are in place without expecting huge upheavals.

So it surprises me that I lean toward [shudder] Democrat, and that I simultaneously find myself agreeing with an editor of The National Review. I know I JUST said I didn't want to write about politics here but a friend of mine overseas asked a very specific question and I thought this editorial would serve as a good answer.

From D Magazine,

A Conservative for Obama

My party has slipped its moorings. It’s time for a true pragmatist to lead the country.

Leading Off By Wick Allison, Editor In Chief

THE MORE I LISTEN TO AND READ ABOUT “the most liberal member of the U.S. Senate,” the more I like him. Barack Obama strikes a chord with me like no political figure since Ronald Reagan. To explain why, I need to explain why I am a conservative and what it means to me.



In 1964, at the age of 16, I organized the Dallas County Youth for Goldwater. My senior thesis at the University of Texas was on the conservative intellectual revival in America. Twenty years later, I was invited by William F. Buckley Jr. to join the board of National Review. I later became its publisher.


Conservatism to me is less a political philosophy than a stance, a recognition of the fallibility of man and of man’s institutions. Conservatives respect the past not for its antiquity but because it represents, as G.K. Chesterton said, the democracy of the dead; it gives the benefit of the doubt to customs and laws tried and tested in the crucible of time. Conservatives are skeptical of abstract theories and utopian schemes, doubtful that government is wiser than its citizens, and always ready to test any political program against actual results.


Liberalism always seemed to me to be a system of “oughts.” We ought to do this or that because it’s the right thing to do, regardless of whether it works or not. It is a doctrine based on intentions, not results, on feeling good rather than doing good.


But today it is so-called conservatives who are cemented to political programs when they clearly don’t work. The Bush tax cuts—a solution for which there was no real problem and which he refused to end even when the nation went to war—led to huge deficit spending and a $3 trillion growth in the federal debt. Facing this, John McCain pumps his “conservative” credentials by proposing even bigger tax cuts. Meanwhile, a movement that once fought for limited government has presided over the greatest growth of government in our history. That is not conservatism; it is profligacy using conservatism as a mask.


Today it is conservatives, not liberals, who talk with alarming bellicosity about making the world “safe for democracy.” It is John McCain who says America’s job is to “defeat evil,” a theological expansion of the nation’s mission that would make George Washington cough out his wooden teeth.


This kind of conservatism, which is not conservative at all, has produced financial mismanagement, the waste of human lives, the loss of moral authority, and the wreckage of our economy that McCain now threatens to make worse.
Barack Obama is not my ideal candidate for president. (In fact, I made the maximum donation to John McCain during the primaries, when there was still hope he might come to his senses.) But I now see that Obama is almost the ideal candidate for this moment in American history. I disagree with him on many issues. But those don’t matter as much as what Obama offers, which is a deeply conservative view of the world. Nobody can read Obama’s books (which, it is worth noting, he wrote himself) or listen to him speak without realizing that this is a thoughtful, pragmatic, and prudent man. It gives me comfort just to think that after eight years of George W. Bush we will have a president who has actually read the Federalist Papers.


Most important, Obama will be a realist. I doubt he will taunt Russia, as McCain has, at the very moment when our national interest requires it as an ally. The crucial distinction in my mind is that, unlike John McCain, I am convinced he will not impulsively take us into another war unless American national interests are directly threatened.


“Every great cause,” Eric Hoffer wrote, “begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket.” As a cause, conservatism may be dead. But as a stance, as a way of making judgments in a complex and difficult world, I believe it is very much alive in the instincts and predispositions of a liberal named Barack Obama.

Interminably boring

I have been following politics.... the economy.... so I have not been really writing here. I don't want to revisit this period when it is over so I will decline to even bother with it. The campaign is nasty, full of lies and posturing. People want Obama to bring his own "bam" in retaliation to the smoke and mirrors emanating from the McCain camp, but I am wanting candidates who can focus on what we (as a country) need. I don't have patience for anything else. Flash and vim, leave it home please. Tell me how you're going to fix it. Fix it.

I have been studying the great depression-- the causes are identical to what is happening now-- but I have been focusing on what they did to survive it, get past it, on individual family bases. I am trying to identify whether my family will just struggle, or will be Hooverville candidates. So yes, I am not writing much about that. While these things occupy my mind, my husband and I are focusing on making the children's world stay the same. The children- who are studying phonics and Egyptians and geography. Who climb rock walls, swim laps and paint pictures of giant farting dinosaurs.

How grateful am I that we practice voluntary simplicity? That we refuse to buy new cars because ours are "old?" It may not be voluntary after a while, and I am grateful we were already looking at sustainability out of principle. In many ways, that makes us prepared ahead of the curve.

We love our kids, just like everyone else. Make it. Make it. That's all it is lately with me. Make it.

The treehouse is finished!

N-man on the Trex deck. In the window of the door, you can see a sign G made: "Nature Camp"

Proud P-Daddy!

Excited D-meister

Working vinyl sash window

This is my son's way of saying he wants me to make him strawberry kefir.

Tie-dye monster!

Busted! Making off with the last of the shrimp scampi.

Am I really only three years old?

Funnies

Wrung out

If you've ever hand washed anything you know you can wring a piece of fabric until it is almost dry. I feel like I have been doing that to myself. It's been great, don't get me wrong, to live this much but I am so tired. I am ready for the moody blue of winter to come in and still us somewhat.

Canning more peaches this week.

Took the kids on a 5 hours jaunt to the zoo with the C-family, where we were treated to some funny sights. There's little more amusing to me than watching an ancient porcupine (at one show I think they said he was 12) lumbering down a sidewalk without his leash. They got to see a polar bear really showing off his tasty treat, as he kept bringing his bucket closer and closer to the window through which they peered. And finally-- the walrus. One of the walrus females hauled up to the viewing net where the kids were just hanging on, and she doused them completely through. After gazing at her handiwork for about thirty seconds, she filled her mouth with pool water again and just let fly. The viewing area was as wet as if a man had thrown a twenty gallon bucket of water onto the kids. It was FUNNY and I was so glad the kids were laughing as hard as we were.

We started "school" this week, which for us just means paying a bit better attention. I have been working on phonics with G-girl and lettering with the small one. N-man has been picking words out more and more. We did a bio-sheet on walruses after their zoo escapade, and have started talking morning walks to energize us for the day.

I've returned to a way of eating I really used to like, in part because it worked so well for me, but after two weeks at even it's strictest "setting," this plan is failing me. I am not sure what is going on but I don't think I am going to last. Despite mindful attentiveness at times, steady exercise for months and even months where I ate whatever I wanted, I have held steady at the same (fat) weight for the last year (it's September right?) and I am beginning to despair. Nothing I do for the good or bad seems to be changing my weight or appearance. SO I am just going to choose to eat for health and suck up the ugly, I guess.

Probably the most important post of my year

After much soul-searching, I have decided upon a huge course of action. It's mired in conflict and hope, in energy and forgiveness. It's the most important undertaking I have ever considered.

Just.... this is better explained here: