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It is a tribute to my character than in times of great stress, I clean. It is a tribute to my nearly stress-free existence, my house. This week I have been busy scrubbing, next week I imagine I will do things like polish the wood walls-trying to kill some energy. I have a great house, an old house, and a family house. My MIL was raised here, she married and brought up my husband and his siblings here and last year, the house was empty, so we moved back ‘home’. Now my kids spend whole afternoons digging under trees because when Granna was a girl, she buried a gold pocket watch under one of the trees and could not find it again. They play on trails once maintained by their Daddy and his dog. I love the feel of the circle living here creates.
We hooked up a LAN line between all the computers, Matt going under the house to feed the lines up through the holes his dad made 30 years ago to feed up the gas lines to his mom to catch and hold. I sift through old photos, one where there was a room built on the porch, one from before the ‘big’ bedroom was added, one of the barn when it was new or a tree that is not there any more. I wonder what my contributions will be here the next generation. The 2-foot tall maple, the sprouts of pampas grass, the treehouse…what will come and go and what will linger?
Going, growing, gone...
My kids are still little-5, 7, 9. I have years and years left, I gloat in this time, I roll in it like you would a big pile of money, I hold it up to the light like a jar of honey, I sigh, content, I feel fulfilled. I have enjoyed this time as a mommy. I have a 'borrowed' prayer, "We are thankful for the time we have had." That has become my mantra, my personal motto. I can not say I have enjoyed every minute of it, but I AM thankful for the time we have had. At the end of every day, I say it, when the kids hug me in spontaneous thrill or just for the heck of it, I think it, each time they come through a scrape or walk away from a bike wreck or come out of their check-up with a 100% clean bill of health, I feel it.
I don't waste much time worrying about what MIGHT happen or what the future may hurl my way. For tonight, we are fed, comfy, safe, clean, whole and still homeschooling and I am thankful for the time that we have had.
The year ends...
I am always a little caught off-guard by how quickly the school year comes to a close. As a child, May was the longest month, now it seems like it flies by. We spend the summer months doing nothing much at all. Loads of swimming and camping and hiking and lots more laying around avoiding the heat and catching fireflies and watching the flowers and tadpoles grow.
I spend hours reflecting on the past year, making new notes and reading over old notes, seeing what worked and what bombed. I keep a notebook all year and in the summer, I jot down places I want to go, topics to cover, ideas and plans for the next year and over the year, I make notes of what we do-trips and playdates-as well as academics.
I love homeschooling in that it stretches out childhood. Those long, magical days of summer are scattered all through the year. They have all the time in the world to figure out the way things work, why this or that happens and how it all relates to them. In our world, we play and work interchangeably. Spelling, outside time, math, making dinner, travel, geography-it all meshes until the fact that it is June and school is 'over' until September does not really affect our day-to-day. I just get to take a break from juggling and sit back and let the apples fall.
Application for Certification
"Congratulations Esther, your yard or garden space has been certified as
an official Backyard Wildlife Habitat by the National Wildlife Federation. Your
certification packet including your "Certificate of Achievement,"
should arrive within 4-6 weeks.
Your official Backyard Wildlife Habitat number is 51---.
Your attractive Backyard Wildlife Habitat sign conveying your special commitment to wildlife conservation and the environment will be arriving shortly. Your sign will arrive separately from your certificate, and may take up to six weeks to arrive. Who knows? Your sign might inspire your neighbors to turn your entire neighborhood into a "wildlife-friendly" zone!"
Well, well. Not that the yard does not qualify, or
that I am disappointed, but my application was approved the instant I purchased
the sign to go with the certificate. I paid an additional $15 beyond the $20
sign for 'application processing' thinking that was what the reader got paid
to look over the 8-pages of questions I answered to see if I indeed had a 'Backyard
Habitat'. I am not sure how I feel about the whole thing now. I was so proud
of finally getting the yard all set up-we have worked for a year making feeding
and nesting areas, planting native grasses and plants and food plants, when
apparently all I had to do was shell out the $35. Maybe I am being too cynical.
Extreme Parenting
I recently implemented 2 new policies. No more potty-talk, punishable by a dot of dish soap in the mouth and no more tattling, punishable by having to wear a long brown tail for an hour.
About 20 minutes after the new law was announced, Jake recorded the 'Flavor of the Day' on the new LeapPad game as 'pickle poop' and THEN blamed Ben. He got a drop of dish soap and the tail at the same time. He screamed and rolled around enough to convince the other 2 to clean up their act, pronto. But I think I am going to have to make the 'Tattle Tail' be worn by the two kids that are not tattling instead of the one that is. It seems to be more of a punishment to be denied the tail. *sigh* You win some you lose some.
Attack of the Killer..?
I took a bath and washed my hair today. I could hear the kids the whole time, chattering away in Chandler's room. Then the chatter got louder and turned into blood-curdling screams and thudding feet. I jumped up and grabbed a towel and Jake screamed, "SCORPION!" Ben was yelling, "It's a scorpion, run, we're all gonna die!"
So there I am, wet and dripping, freezing because the vent is blowing on me
and trying to decide what to do. The kids are running laps around the loop through
the hall and living room, screaming in terror and yelling for me to help! as
they whiz by the open bathroom door. I went into Chandler's room, where they
had it trapped under a shoebox and flipped it over, ready to do battle. Naked
and wet and cold. I figured I could kill it with my bare foot or maybe I would
just frighten it to death-I had no plan. The kids are by now huddled up behind
me, gibbering with fright.
The box falls to the side and they start screaming again and I am looking for
the scorpion. And looking. And looking. They are screeching, "There it
is, there it is!" I am thinking I am either selectively blind-an entire
alternate life plays out in my head in seconds where I am really surrounded
at all times by huge scary bugs and just can't SEE them, me as a chibi Miss
Muffet who did not get frightened away, me laying in the grass reading and not
seeing the ants walking over me, at my prom with a roach on my lapel...-or else
the children are playing a horrible trick on me OR they have all gone crazy.
I was leaning heavy on the crazy part, who knows what decongestants do to your
mind? I can't take them at all. I am inwardly cursing myself for destroying
their brains with medication and wondering if feeding them carrots would repair
some of the damage. Darn the cold season!
Ben pipes up with, "It's a BABY scorpion." Oh---well, I look closer.
My previous scans were for giant mama scorpions and I was not really paying
attention for LITTLE scorpions. I see it! It is about a quarter inch long and
is running like mad right at me! I scream, the kids scream, we all run around
and scream and I am still holding my towel and dripping. I get ready to kill
it, but I have no weapon. I send out feelers for a shoe, "Gimme a shoe,
NOW!" I am handed a My Little Pony slipper-the one the pony wears, all
of an inch of weaponry, if I can keep it on my thumb during the downswing. I
take a moment to again ponder what sort of mind-altering drugs I had taken in
my youth that would leave all three of my children ever-so-slightly warped.
I settle again on decongestants, vow to discard all of them and force chicken
broth on them instead and say, " A REAL shoe!" "Oh. Ummmm...here!"
I am given a real shoe and I stoop to smash (all 'love everything' vibes drained
at the thought of being stung to death) and see it is...an earwig. UGH!! They
don't even LOOK like a scorpion.
I blame mass hysteria and also early-onset hypothermia. We let the poor thing
go outside, I dried off and got warmed back up. The kids are playing again all
calmly, if a little stuffy, having been denied their next dose of cold medicine
in favor of the chicken noodle soup that is simmering on the stove. *sigh* I
am fluctuating between feeling let-down, I mean it would have been REALLY brave
to defend the kids to feeling relieved that for today at least, the scary things
are not really scary.
Afterthoughts
September 17
Hi iven, bi ivn.
That was the message from the kids to the storm, and the vice versa was the message from the storm to us. We had a few limbs down, the wind scattered yard toys and made racket in the trees and eaves. It rained 15 hours solid, then-it just went away.
Wednesday I worked in the yard all day, burning debris and cleaning out the storage shed. It was darn windy. Thursday, we woke up to more wind and heavy clouds. By 7 a.m. it was raining and that did not stop until late in the night. But the devastation expected did not come. South of here, it got progressively worse until you reached the impact area in Mobile Bay and Pensacola.
But I can’t help but think as bad as it got here, it is far, far worse in the islands. I have a very dear friend living on Grand Cayman and the whole island was blown away. No matter what hit Alabama, the Caribbean was hit harder and with stronger winds and more rain. Billions of dollars in damage. I cannot even fathom that. How do insurance companies cover amounts that large? Billions.
For me, it is a just matter of another day spent burning yard debris-a few limbs down here and there, some trash blown about. The sun will be out soon, the world is light gray now. No sunrise this ‘morning after’. I woke up to this message from the weather service : This will be the final statement regarding Tropical Depression Ivan. It’s over.
But elsewhere, families are homeless, loved ones are dead or missing, possessions scattered, looted, wet, gone.
I guess my whole life I have spend neutralizing the elements-umbrellas, sunscreen, air conditioning, heater, hat, coat, gloves, shorts…this is the first time I have been really aware of what weather can really do to a person, a place. There have been tornadoes and thunderstorms, but those are so local and fast. This thing took days and affected HUGE areas.
Four hurricanes in a month:
Bonnie
Charley
Frances
Ivan
Two more coming our way already:
Jeanne
Karl
This has been an amazing season. I think
Ivan changed everyone he touched, I know I will never be the same.
September 10
Folk Songs
Thinking myself doing a good thing, I dove into teach the kids folk songs. I did not realize they were tune-deaf. The oldest sings ‘Home on the Range” to the tune of “O Christmas Tree”. “Oh, home on the range, oh, home on the range…”
The girl insists she knows “Oh, Susannah!” and she does for the most part, she just leaves out the ‘oh’.
“Sue-san-nah, Sue-san-nah, don’t you cry for me! I come from Alabama with a banjo on my knee.”
They hotly debate and discuss those lyrics.
“How can it rain all night the day he leaves?” asks the boy. “He left in the afternoon and by evening, it was raining,” replies the girl. “Oh. Then why was the weather dry?” He’s sure he has stumped her this time. “It was dry, then it rained,” she says. “Oh. How’d he walk with a banjo on his knee?” “*sigh*, He was just balancing it there so he could play along with the song.” “Oh. Well how did it get so hot he froze to death?” “Because is was a STUPID BOY.” “Oh.”
I realize then that she is leaving out
the ‘oh’ because there is no revelation for her. This is all stuff
she knows.
Late Night Revelations
September 3
It is 2:10 a.m.
It is pouring rain and has been for several hours.
I am 225 miles from home.
I am in a tent.
The tent leaks.
I am wet.
There has been a break in the rain long enough for a potty run-that was good.
I have mentally packed all our stuff
back into the car, my careful order abandoned in favor of a quicker return to
shingled roofs, and cool, dry sheets.
I again marvel at people that live mostly exposed in monsoon areas and rain
forests. But I guess if I were not trying to sleep on a wet cotton pillow and
if my mat were woven instead of nylon, I might be drier.
Even though it did not start raining
until after we went to bed and even though our soaking so far has been limited
to one leaky seam and about 40 random drips, I am envisioning becoming mildewed.
I can imagine living in this tent forever, only escaping long enough to use
the toilet and grab more dried fruit and nuts from the car. There is no part
of me that can fathom actually putting the tent up WHILE it is raining.
The kids are awake. They are keeping
calm by discussing very carefully and in depth the rules and quirks of Icewind
Dale and Heart of Winter. Through sheer luck of being in the right place at
the right time, I now know how to quick-save, level up and how to access the
map and supplies menus.
I would make a terrible adventurer.
I want to go home.
I tried to rally the troops, citing bad weather and a lonely Daddy at home. But no one is taking the bait. The kids are as wet or wetter than I, yet they are convinced it will be sunny and warm tomorrow. They want to stick it out. Tubing is the lure.
Today, they spent hours rearranging the
stream and moving rocks and logs to make the best tube run possible. Who am
I to deny their desire to get wet in my desire to stay dry? Because we are all…well,
wet.
But it is more than just ‘getting wet’. It is the fact that they
have arranged nature, changed the current and altered the world-or at least
100 feet of it. They are willing to brave bad weather and damp bedding to test
out the work that they did.
I almost envy the singular and unified front they present. I am alone in my
weenie-ness.
NINETEEN THINGS
August 27
Back when the TV worked, I had this rule that when a person wanted to watch TV they first had to do three things. Put something away, make a bed, clear the table, line up the shoes, stack books, sweep, dust-just anything needing ‘doing’ around the house.
I have the same rule in place before snacking. This is mainly for myself as I tend to confuse eating with 'doing something' when I am bored.
At any rate, I decided to use the same idea in nature study. The kids slammed through the ‘3 things’ in about 3 seconds, so I thought that maybe 19 things would be better. I played it myself first, lying in my hammock.
Let us see, the cilantro is blooming, the wind is blowing west to east and the crepe myrtle needs trimming. The cottonwood is covered in snow-nuts. That is four so far. I see three different butterflies on the flowers. A tiny black kind, a medium orange and brown type and a cabbage white-one of three butterflies I can name on sight. There are about 100 of the white ones-cabbage whites- and they flutter like crazy. A move of 2 inches requires seemingly 10 or more wing beats. Yesterday, I sat here and watched one fly through a heavy rain. A fourth kind joins them, a pale yellow.
Some of the flowers have gone to seed already.
There are five titmice on the suet basket. When we first got our bird book, the husband and I went into fits of giggles over ‘titmouse’. Oh the things that will amuse the simple… These titmice are the spring babies, not nearly as shy as their parents. We have one baby woodpecker that pecks on the old basketball goal and the sound reverberates through the valley like a jackhammer. Boys and noise…Okay, nine things. Ten more things left to go.
Back to the flowers as they are barely two feet away.
I see big fat bumblebees and smaller honeybees. I feel pleased with myself for growing these flowers. Out of a packet of 10,000 seeds, I shook life. Hahaha. Maybe 2-300 actually grew. I do not know the names of a single flower out there. There are the fluffy purples, the yellow, pink, orange and red carnation-looking flowers (zinnias I have since realized) and the two unknowns, as they have not bloomed yet. One is a huge stalked thing that looms over the other flowers and one is an escaped vine that is growing up the porch posts at an alarming rate. I have visions of having to machete my way to the mailbox.
There are ants on the flowers stalk, hoards of them. Tiny black beetles, ladybugs, aphids.
I see a hawk flying across the small patch of sky I can see from my cocoon. Earlier in the year, I was convinced I had discovered a new species of bird based on sound alone. I could hear this high-pitched shriek, day after day. I would run in and try to match it at birdcall sites, read about birds of prey and I made one call to the local animal wild animal rescue and shrieked into the phone, demanding identification. After nearly a week of hearing the calls, I decided to hunt it down.
Recalling a line from The Princess Bride “he can track a falcon on a cloudy day” I imagined myself a formidable hunter. Armed with a pair of binoculars, I set out. About 5 minutes later, I was back. It turned out my bird was the kid up the road blowing a whistle. I just don’t like to be SO wrong.
Even though the sun is shining, it has
started raining. Somewhere a monkey is grinning. Or the devil is beating his
wife. That is seventeen. No rainbow yet and that is numbers eighteen. I can
hear the frogs starting to ribbit-nineteen things.