Stretched

I never know anymore where to put which photos/posts. Blogging has me so confused. Or maybe it’s just the way I am. I felt just as confused at DSW shoes the other day. I had a gift card (otherwise I wouldn’t have been there) and only a sleeping baby with me and no particular need for a pair of shoes and I was completely overwhelmed. I looked at the flip flops – cheap ( I could walk out of there without spending any money at all) and good for summer, but I already have two good pairs. I looked at dress shoes for work, but I recently bought a pair of nice dress shoes (the first pair I’ve bought in seven years) and they hadn’t really updated the selection. I looked at the sexy sandals and really wanted to buy a knock-out pair of platform sandals with deep brown red patent leather straps, but am I really a sexy sandal kind of gal these days? I don’t know. My dry cracked heals and unkempt toenails tell me not. The converse were really cute, but I don’t have any jeans that fit me right now, and what else would I wear them with? I finally wandered back to the clearance section and found these cute brown and pink Keen-esque sandals by J-41 and wound up buying them – mostly because I had been in the store for more than an hour and when was I ever going to get that kind of time for a shoe store again? Only to get them home and decide that they are a little too big and I have to take them back.

What was my point? oh yeah, I get confused easily and think about things too much. Here I was having an identity crisis in the DSW shoe store. Am I a Keen girl or do I really want the strappy platform sandals? Do I need practical flip-flops I can afford, or do I splurge and get the dressy work shoes? God, I don’t know. And I have no idea what in the hell we’re going to do for school around here next year. Or rather, I’m pretty sure I know what we’re doing and just can’t bring myself to say it out loud. Or in writing. Because how on earth can I mother my young kids, work a part to full time job from home (without any childcare for the baby mind you) and homeschool both older girls? I just can’t do it. Lately I have felt like I am being drawn and quartered and plagued by guilt – when I’m with the kids that I should be working and when I’m working that I should be with the kids. Aaaaaaaarrrghhhh!

On top of all that, we’ve had a really busy schedule anyway. Patrick had a fantastic show at Dulce, we had a lovely visit with first my dad

… and then Doug

Scout turned three,

and there were other birthday parties Twilight obsessions and school field trips and Mother’s Day tea’s and soldering projects and charm swaps and all sorts of other craziness that I felt like I had to fit in. Oh, and we might be buying a new house and moving this summer. Because, you know, things aren’t busy enough.

Comin’ to Jesus

D and I sat down yesterday and had a frank talk about what’s working for us and what isn’t. This is what we came up with.

Things D doesn’t like:

That we’re not doing algebra

Being forced to read

Calculadder

Current Events

History – esp. slavery

Filling out schedule

“teaching”

memorization

Things she does like:

Reading what she likes, when she likes

Math text book

Art project

Reading short snipets about artist

science projects

When I’m involved and helping

Cuisenaire rods

Having a schedule to look at (not to fill out)

taking things apart

exploring/figuring things out on her own

What I don’t like:

Being a nag (D agrees she doesn’t like that, either)

That she doesn’t do work without being nagged

Not getting enough alone/quiet time

Science projects (I don’t like the idea of them – once I’m actually involved I enjoy them)

What I like:

Reading aloud

Doing math together

Calculadder challenges

Cuisenaire rods

and, as evidenced by this post, ranDom capitAlizaTioN

Some of our goals:

Consolidate errands to one day (possibly two days) a week

Consolidate computer time to first morning e-mail check and afternoon quiet time

Start having weekly family meeting on Sundays, to be followed by board game

Plan meals weekly

Make it to the library every other week

Our agreements:

We’ll both stay off of the computer in the morning (though we may check e-mail when we first get up.)

Morning time and early afternoon will be for getting work done, both school work and house work.

Late afternoons (while Scout is napping) will be quiet time.

Calculadder stays. Memorizing poetry goes.

The schedule stays. but she doesn’t have to fill it out.

We also agreed that homeschooling is a privilege, and that we should check in with each other more frequently this semester to see what is working and what isn’t. Today was a disaster because I had to work on freelance design project all morning, and then D went with P up the coconut tree to Commerce for the afternoon, and then there was swim team, all of which left very little time for anything else. So many of our days are like that. At least I’m a little less freaked out. As friends keep reminding me, we are learning something.

Could Be

I’ve been thinking about the categories I made for “error” and “success” and the inherent untruth of labeling things that way. The best illustration of this for me is the tale of the Taoist farmer. I find myself thinking about this tale just about every day.

There once was a Taoist farmer. One day the Taoist farmer’s only horse broke out of the corral and ran away. The farmer’s neighbors, all hearing of the horse running away, came to the farmer’s house to view the corral. As they stood there, the neighbors all said, “Oh what bad luck!” The farmer replied, “Could be..”

About a week later, the horse returned, bringing with it a whole herd of wild horses, which the farmer and his son quickly corralled. The neighbors, hearing of the corralling of the horses, came to see for themselves. As they stood there looking at the corral filled with horses, the neighbors said, “Oh what good luck!” The farmer replied, “Could be..”

A couple of weeks later, the farmer’s son’s leg was badly broken when he was thrown from a horse he was trying to break. A few days later the broken leg became infected and the son became delirious with fever. The neighbors, all hearing of the incident, came to see the son. As they stood there, the neighbors said, “Oh what bad luck!” The farmer replied, “Could be..”

At that same time in China, there was a war going on between two rival warlords. The warlord of the farmer’s village was involved in this war. In need of more soldiers, he sent one of his captains to the village to conscript young men to fight in the war. When the captain came to take the farmer’s son he found a young man with a broken leg who was delirious with fever. Knowing there was no way the son could fight, the captain left him there. A few days later, the son’s fever broke. The neighbors, hearing of the son’s not being taken to fight in the war and of his return to good health, all came to see him. As they stood there, each one said, “Oh what good luck!” The farmer replied, “Could be.”

In terms of my experience, fumbling leads to success, which then feeds back into fumbling. I like celebrating the moments that feel gratifying, and for now at least I’ll keep calling them successes, but I want to start exploring different ways of talking/writing/thinking/feeling about our homeschooling experiences. We are learning by trial and error, and the error part is just as valuable as the learning part. They go hand in hand.

Do as I say

There’s a computer shortage in our household right now. We have one Mac and one crappy old PC while my powerbook is out being repaired. This is creating some tension. Daryl of course likes to work on the imac, even though the PC is in her room. She is allowed to be on the computer in the morning up until 9:30, as long as she has emptied the dishwasher first. She always starts on the imac, that is until I finish my morning chores and boot her off. This morning I was giving her the 10 and then the 5 minute warning so she could wrap up what she was doing, hoping to prevent her from playing up until the moment I was actually standing behind her, with her begging me to let her finish “one last thing.” After all, my hands-free time is so precious and *she* ought to be the one who sacrifices a minute or two (should I not be able to hop on the computer the moment she’s off) and not the other way around.

That’s when the epiphany hit. Whenever I try to tell (read “convince”) D that my time has far more constraints on it than hers does, she can’t see it. She names every obligation she has had for the last month in an effort to explain to my why her time is just as constrained. She inevitably exagerates, and I somehow find myself arguing with her about when she did what and for how long. It’s a complete waste of time and it generates a lot of bad energy. It’s pretty silly for me to want her to understand how much busier I am than she is (no matter how obvious it is to me). The busier I am; the more I approach my day as if there isn’t enough time to do the things I want; the more I talk to D as if my time is more valuable than hers, the more she reflects these behaviors/beliefs back to me. Clearly she doesn’t have nearly the demands on her time that I do, and yet she honestly believes that she does. It’s what I model to her and act out every day, and she is going to do as I do, not as I say. What a shocker.

I operate under this belief that things are different for me because I’m an adult. I can remember hearing this from my own parents. It’s a bit of the martyr. I expect my kids to understand that I have a right to complain about the amount of housework I have to do or how I never get five minutes to myself or how there isn’t enough time in the day to do everything I need to do. And though all these things are true, whenever I point out the difference to them or even just sigh, it’s teaching them martyr like behavior. And then there’s the whole double standard because I feel completely disgusted with the behavior when they mirror it back to me.

So how do I change my behavior/attitude? Obviously I’m not going to stop asking D to get off of the computer when I need it. I want to change my attitude about it though. It’s one more area where I’m acting out my belief in scarcity. It’s that dichotomy of scarcity versus abundance that punctuates everything I think/do/feel. It seems like I had some good ideas this morning about how I could approach the situation differently but it feels a little muddy now. Budgeting fit in there somewhere. I budget my time about like I budget my money, which is say not at all. Of course remembering choice helps. I choose to mop the floor because i like the way it feels under my feet. And seriously, it’s time to work out a budget.

Unlabeled

All right. So one of the reasons we abandoned the idea of unschooling – the reason that is easiest to articulate – is that D talks about wanting to go back to school next year. You can’t exactly bounce in and out of the school system when you’re unschooling. You’re in it for the long haul. Plus, somebody planted the idea in her head that if she didn’t keep up with her class this year that she would have to repeat the fifth grade next year and so now she flies into a complete state of panic whenever anything about grade levels comes up.

I’m still not exactly sure how best to keep her on track with her class while maintaining any vestige of the unschooling philosophy (and any of our sanity), but the one subject I feel pretty certain we need curriculum for is math. I looked into buying the text book that her school is using this year, but they just went to brand new math books and buying one would cost something like $120. That made no sense at all when I compared it to the $3.50 I would spend for the book they used last year. (Don’t even get me started on how much money is being wasted by school districts across the country by replacing perfectly good text books every year. I asked somebody at the district if there was any conceptual difference between the old books and the new and he said No, it was just the year to replace Math books. ugh!) Anyway, I went ahead and ordered what was labeled as the 5th grade textbook from last year.

That was about two weeks ago. I started giving her assignments from the book last week, and today she suddenly panicked, having looked through the lesson plans and discovering that there is nothing labeled as “algebra”.

“You got the wrong book!” she screams through the house, waking the baby whom I just put down.

“What?” I ask, getting up from my seat in the other room.

“You got the 4th grade book!” There’s no algebra in here! We’re supposed to be doing algebra! This book is easy! I did all this stuff last year!”

“What?” I ask again, incredulous that this is happening. Does she mean to tell me that she used this book last year and that she didn’t even recognize it? All I heard last week was how hard the work in the book is. Now suddenly it’s easy and she’s done it all before? I start looking through the book, frantically trying to find some reassurance that this is, indeed, the 5th grade book. Nothing. The book says nothing about what grade it was intended for. I turn to the Internet. Surely I can find something there, but no, I come up empty handed, except to confirm that I bought the book that is designated as Harcourt Brace’s 5th grade “Math Advantage” book on Amazon. I go back to Daryl, trying to take another tact.

“It doesn’t matter what “grade” they call this – the work is challenging you so let’s stick with it.”

“No mommy!!! It does matter. I have to be doing algebra!!! Besides, this is all too easy.”

“Bar graphs!” she says with disgust. “They’re doing bar graphs in here!”

Never mind that yesterday we were struggling with the concept of mode, mean, and median. This is probably when I visibly lost my patience. Now, of course, it seems silly – I understand why she was upset. But there is something about the urgency of her panic that really gets to me. Especially when she has a finger pointed at me for all the blame. Boy do I get defensive. I become kind of crazy and irrational, like someone who thinks it will be effective to rub an animal’s face in their own pee. I hear myself telling her that she can’t even do the work in the book we have. Nice, J. Great encouragement. Go mom! Though ironically, it seems to have worked as she is in her room right now, busily proving to me that she can breeze through the chapter reviews.

-update-
We walked up to school to get G and took the cursed math book with us. The fifth grade math teacher happened to be standing outside. I approach her with the book and ask her if she recognizes it. She doesn’t, but she’s willing to flip through it to see whether the material it covers is at the 5th grade level. “Oh yes, this is the material we’re working on.” she says. “But we did this last year” says D. “Well, a lot of what we do in the 5th grade is repeat, but we explore the concepts at a different level” she reassures her. In fact, she thought that the book we got looked a lot better than the one the school district switched to this year. And just like that, the problem is solved. Only I’m willing to bet money that, tomorrow, the next chapter in the book is going to be “soooo difficult.”