homeschool

I surfed over to Sundays With Stretchy Pants today to read her latest blog entry and was in the middle of leaving a smart-assed remark (my specialty) when the marvelous phrase in the title came tumbling out of my fingertips. Eureka! It seemed to illustrate some ideas that I've been mulling over (we ENFPs and our internal processing; there's all sorts of things percolating in the dark recesses of my subconscious.) I promptly called dibs on it, and hereby lay claim to all rights and privileges thereof. As my friends at The Stranger say, "the internet is a race" and this time I won, 'cause there was no such phrase on Google. (I just checked.) You may use the phrase as long as you credit/link me. (My internal language police made me change the spelling here to reflect a Spanish adverb, but what's an 'L' between friends?)

But I digress. So, the following wasn't supposed to be part of the original vida intelectual, but a few exchanges I just had with the Boy illustrated the concept, and more importantly overcame my writer's inertia. So, I'll save the redux for another time when I have time AND can overcome inertia (aka a blue moon). There's a lengthy set-up, because that's how I write. If you want brevity, go find a paid journalist.

So the Boy is writing some sentences due to an incident last night. Perhaps the sentences themselves will be the best descriptor:

"Spitting at someone is a nasty, gross & violent thing to do. It could cause someone to do something violent and hurtful to me."

When I was 11 years & 8 months, the 6th grade classes put on a play about Rip Van Winkle from our reader. I was cast as Mrs. Van Winkle and my three strongest memories from the performance were:

1. Scooter was in it. (We went to the same grade school, with 2 classes for each grade, but were only in class together for one year, 3rd grade. Guess the faculty could see that combined, we might not always use our powers for good. They probably should have warned our junior high & high school teachers.)

2. I was encouraged to be mean and loud and bossy, the latter two talents I had (have) aplenty which were discouraged elsewhere. And I even got to hit Russ Bailey in the butt with a broom! (of course that was the most vivid memory)

3. My mom sewed a cool costume for me to wear. This was a less vivid memory, 'cause my mom sewed a lot of my clothes when I was that age, so I took it for granted. Home Ec was one of her majors and she was an excellent seamstress, a quality I learned to appreciate most after she was gone & I had to sew all the kids' costumes & pjs with my meager junior high time in the home ec sewing room.

Time passed and lots more things happened that were more memorable than the play. (see #1 italics for a good example) I forgot all about the costume until I was cleaning out the house after my mom died. I found it in a drawer with some baby clothes and socks. (My mom saved lots of things, including many photo albums & scrapbooks with newspaper clippings, old report cards, etc. including photos of the play & a picture from our smalltown newspaper.)

I am so glad to see the back end of February, despite the subfreezing temperatures and blustery entry of March. Even with our huge, northern exposure windows & full-spectrum bulbs, February always wears me down. I get through on caffeine & Dar Williams' Mortal City song February.

THIS February was made extra special by our first visit ever from the lice fairy. Of course it happened around Brigidmas so at least I could dedicate all the futile-except-for-lowering-my-squick-factor cleaning, not to mention the laundry. But the nitcombing took 2-3 hours every night for two weeks. Have you seen the Girl's hair? It's THICK and over 2 ft. in length. The Boy wriggles like an eel, and it's more difficult to comb one's own hair than one would think. (The 'Savant escaped infestation due to his curly locks, I guess. And his efforts to comb my hair would have been ruinous to our partnership had he continued.)

But it wasn't all bad. The Girl & I watched Ken Burns' "The Civil War" and had some good discussions, not all of which were related to history. I learned how to make some lice rid hair pomade with essential oils which proved to be quite beneficial to my dry scalp issues. Think it must be nearly as effective as the chemical stuff we used the first time, since I combed 6 live lice out after they had been poisoned for the 15 minutes directed. Damned bugs are gonna take over the world. I also got over thinking that lice would be the worst parasitical infestation in the world (and I have experience on this, after managing an ICF/MR, people) and moved on to thinking preventively. We're combing weekly & have invested in a RobyComb, which has kept me sane by allowing me to distinguish between itchy winter scalp & reinfestation. So, the lice fairy has done the job, and I hope, will not need to come back.

Enough about bugs. In other news, I taught a large Childbirth Education class, and by the end, the families who weren't working with us & planning a homebirth had switched to providers who would respect their choices and work hard to give them the best possible experience, whatever that might be. 7 more babies to be born gently as possible----GOAL! I also didn't get a ticket driving like a bat out of hell to Logan to (just) catch a baby, so on the midwifery front, it's all good, if busy.

Okay, so I was giving the Boy a writing diagnostic yesterday in preparation for purchasing curricula for this 'school year'. He wasn't happy at all about writing and was having quite the snit fit, so I decided I'd try to reason with him on his level:

Me: Listen, my friend, you have to be able to write to take over the world. How will you be able to issue commands to your minions if you can't write?
Him: I will have a scribe!!!!!! (emphasis his)

The medieval history class has two sewing projects back to back, so I've had little time to blog. Here's two of the kids dressed as Merovingian kings.

(Yes, the wigs are an important part; the Merovingians had a thing about long hair and virility, but they also had to fight, so they braided the hair in front into two braids, as we did, in case you can't tell from the picture.)