It is that time of year again....

"Now it all started two Thanksgivings ago, was on - two years ago on Thanksgiving,
when my friend and I went up to visit Alice at therestaurant,
but Alice doesn't live in the restaurant, she lives in the church nearby the restaurant,
in the bell-tower, with her husband Ray andFasha the dog.
And livin' in the bell tower like that,
they got a lot of room downstairs where the pews used to be in.
Havin' all that room,seein' as how they took out all the pews,
they decided that they didn'thave to take out their garbage for a long time.

We got up there, we found all the garbage in there,
and we decided it'd bea friendly gesture for us to take the garbage down to the city dump.
So we took the half a ton of garbage, put it in the back of a red VW microbus,
took shovels and rakes and implements of destruction and headedon toward the city dump.
Well we got there and there was a big sign and a chain across across the dump saying,
"Closed on Thanksgiving."
And we had never heard of a dumpclosed on Thanksgiving before,
and with tears in our eyes we drove off into the sunset looking for another place to put the garbage."
LYRICS - Alice's Restaurant

I have never known it to be any other way. I was born on Thanksgiving Day in 1971.
So the cooking, the eating, the traveling....it's always been all about me.
We never needed to have a family birthday gathering 'cause everyone brought their gifts and well-wishes to whatever sort of Thanksgiving gathering we had.
I am the only grandchild on either side of my family. Or, at least I was when I had living grandparents.
I am also, one would deduce, an only child.
So, basically, for my entire life, the period of time from Thanksgiving through New Year's Day has always been

ALL ABOUT ME.

Nowadays, it isn't really. And a part of me gets really down about that. That inner child, I reckon.
But by creating my own family and my own family traditions, I have found some ways to make sure I still get my props....but on the DL. (that's down-low, for those of you that do not run in the hip-hop laden circles that I run in...)

A brand new Adventure begins!

Okay, So I am offically a homeschooler now.
Last Wednesday was his last day of school.
I am really excited.
I am so worried, too.
Can I really do this?
I love an alternative lifestyle, now. Boy, I'll walk 5 miles out of my way to get people to look at me funny. Seems maybe I ought to seriously consider the quiz results below.
My oh so experienced homeschooling friend sent me the link. She's gonna get tired of me.
So, we went to the Mall on Friday, the world of Coca Cola on Saturday--oh, and I made myself sick on worldly sodas. Ick.
Today we went to Imagine It! The Children's Museum of Atlanta. Cute, but small. And Expensive! We meant to go to the McWane Center in Birmingham but the weather was ugly and we got a late start. That's a 2.5 hour drive! But that place is so worth it. Wherever you live, go there. Go there now.
Alright. I have stuff to do. Like other stuff. Like I should be writing my Nano Novel that I have all but given up on. Wahhhh!




Salvador Dali Melting clocks are not a problem in
your reality. You are an unschooler. You will
tolerate a textbook, but only as a last resort.
Mud is your friend. You prefer hands-on
everything. If your school had an anthem, it
would be Dont Worry, Be Happy. Visit my blog:


What Type of Homeschooler Are You?
brought to you by Quizilla

Sorry Everbody

Sorry Everybody

Wow! I have been sucked into this site unmercifully.

This is so cool and sad. I do feel a need to apologize.

I need to apologize to the people who tried so hard to defeat bush. I didn't do enough. Next time I will. I only voted against him....oh, and I had a bumper sticker.

Nano Woes

Okay.
At 1700 words per day, by the 11thof November I should have 18700 Words. I have 8000. I like my story that has no discernable plot. I like my characters, whose physical descriptions I have almost entirely left out of my story. I love the writing. But I am bizzzzzzzzy. Arg.
And my Dad is coming in a week and although I will have an entire week off of work, I will still be bizzzzy. (note fewer z's....on purpose)
I'll catch up next week.
I Mean, how many papers did I write at the last minute in my 10 years of undergraduate studies? I can whip out 42K in a heartbeat if given the proper motivation....
Of course I can.

Obsession Du Jour; or, Revisiting an Old friend: Homeschooling

After the horrible parent-teacher conference I endured yesterday, my lovely partner cracked open the old discussion of homeschooling. Ah, our favorite daydream.

First, the Conference:
As a worker of the night shift, I have not communicated with the kid's teacher as much as my parnter has. I don't sign the notes, I don't solve the problems, as far as the teacher knows. I am the absentee parent. Let's hear it for equal rights! If only I could upgrade to emotional unavailabitly I could have all I need to survive in a man's world. I digress.

Problem #1
The kid was supposed to be there. Who ever heard of a kid at a parent-teacher conference? And that was exactly what I told my partner when he told me that the kid shouldn't ride the bus but ride home with me. (Did I mention that he's the one who talks to these people?) So he deferred to me and surmised he had mis-heard. Oh well.

Problem #2
The principal and the school counselor were there. Why? What god-forsaken transgression had he committed? He got a C. He's in the gifted program and apparently one cannot make C's and be gifted. Go figure. Anyway, he's now on probation with the gifted program. This, in his book, is not a bad thing, because he didn't want to be in there to begin with. Some threat. Anyway, I guess I shouldn't be so affronted by the fact that they are so concerned with his academic success. At least they weren't all up in arms about his tardies. Oh, wait....he doesn't have any.

"My oldest, closest friend is a guy who came to the United States from Latvia when he was fifteen, fleeing from Hitler.... And he once told me that the first thing that struck him about American schools was the fact that if he got a 'C' in a course, nobody cared, but if he came to school three minutes late he was sent to the principal's office - and that generalized. He realized that what it meant is, what's valued here is the ablity to work on an assembly line, even if it's an intellectual assembly line. The important thing is to be able to obey orders, and to do what you're told, and to be where you're supposed to be. The values are, you're going to be a factory worker somewhere - maybe they'll call it a university - but you're going to be following somebody else's orders, and just doing your work in some prescribed way. And what matters is discipline, not figuring things out for yourself, or understanding things that interest you - those are kind of marginal: just make sure you meet the requirements of a factory.
Well, that's pretty much what the schools are like, I think: they reward discipline and obedience, and they punish independence of mind. If you happen to be a little innovative, or maybe you forgot to come to school one day because you were reading a book or something, that's a tragedy, that's a crime - because you're not suppose to think; you're supposed to obey and just proceed through the material in whatever way they require.
And in fact, most of the people who make it through the education system and get into the elite universities are able to do it because they've been willing to obey a lot of stupid orders for years and years - that's the way I did it, for example." ['Understanding Power: The Indispensable Chomsky' page 236]
[I would have linked this quote, but I couldn't figure out how; it's from this page.]

Problem #3
The kid's behavior and work. He doesn't like to do work. He doesn't like to do things he doesn't enjoy. They spent their twenty minutes telling me what I know already. He doesn't complete work on time, or at all, he doesn't sit still. He doesn't have good reasons for the wacky things he does. And telling me we need more structure for him, checklists. We need checklists. We need routines. Fighting the tears welling up in my eyes, I silently begged, "Where's MY checklist? Who shall supply MY structure? What should MY routines be?" And yet I dared not speak those words aloud, lest the authorities find out that I am not who I appear to be. I am not a suburban mother, I am an imposter, an alien implant, sent to ruin the lives of the next ten generations of Americans. A terrorist.

Jugglezine - Intentional Living

Jugglezine - Intentional Living: "Just say no. While this is Time Management 101, it's difficult to master because we get a certain pleasure out of helping other people. 'But it's only one of life's pleasures,' Morgenstern explains, 'and it shouldn't monopolize your time, because you'll end up feeling depleted.' In general, there are two or three people in each of our lives that don't hesitate to spend our time to accomplish their objectives. Identify who they are and learn to say no to them. "


Well, now, this is not one of my problems in real life. Only at work does it interfere with my ability to manage time. And apparently it is only at work that I have the ability to manage time. Perhaps I can learn from this after all.
All joking aside, I know it my heart of hearts that if I did half of what I do on a daily basis intentionally, I would have some free time and I would have a sense of accomplishment. Mindfulness. Mindfulness. Here I am logging off in this moment....

What are YOU doing in November?

I'll be writing.

Time to get to work on those notes and outlines for that novel I have been meaning to write.

November is National Novel Writing Month, or NaNoWriMo. I gotta write 50,000 words of brilliant, or perhaps simply moderately coherent prose in order to be considered a winner. I have so many great...or maybe just solid....ideas that I am having a hard time keeping track of them. So I dunno. But I plan to start writing ASAP on 11/1/04. This should be fun. Prolific I can be. Witty, engaging, coherent? That remains to be seen.