A lot of people have a lot of pictures on their blog. I think I'm just more of a writer than a picture-taker, or maybe I'm more of a writer than a picture-uploader. I don't always think to take pictures when I'm in the middle of something because I'm so in the middle of whatever it is that the next thing I know, it's all over.

I spent about 11 hours today baking gingerbread houses. I think I'm going to die. I have what I refer to as "The Fatigue of Death," which is that feeling that you not only need to lie down, but possibly need a blood transfusion or IV antibiotics or maybe a ventilator. I'm too tired to sleep. Too achy and miserable to even relax. Our small coop type thing (I try to avoid the C word) is going to try to launch our low-key, non-coop coop with decorating gingerbread houses, something I did last year with a few families. I was doing really well until about house #8. Then it got really old. I've gone through five bottles of molasses, pounds of sugar, an entire jar of ginger, and I'm very, very tired of gingerbread, especially this inedible kind. You can eat it, sort of, if you don't mind rock-hard, half-inch thick walls that have been overbaked to give them greater stability and staying power (one of our houses from last year just fell apart this afternoon after sitting on my bookshelf for a whole year!). And I did eat some early this afternoon, and paid for it with stomach cramps. I figured while the oven was sitting heated for an entire day, I might as well make something that tastes good that we could have now and share tomorrow, so I also made a double batch of peanut butter chocolate cookies (they look brown like a chocolate cookie, but have peanut butter instead of butter) and a single batch of cranberry oatmeal white chocolate chip cookies, but the one I had tasted a little like fish, so I'm not sure if there is something wrong with them or something wrong with me.

We are also planning to make snow globes tomorrow out of jars, water, oil, glitter, and little holiday figures and trees. Frances made me a snow globe earlier this week out of a glass jar that she had attached a Sculpey teddy to the bottom of and then filled it with water and silver tinsel that she had cut into small pieces. I hope we haven't planned too much for one day.

Last night I read a book called _By Heart_ which is a homeschooling memoir by the keynote speaker for the upcoming VaHomeschoolers conference. It came highly recommended by a friend, so I was eager to read it, and it was a quick and satisfying way to spend the evening. It wasn't quite what I had expected--I was worried that it was going to absolutely be the homeschooling book that I would write about homeschooling, and it was a relief in many ways that it wasn't (so now I can write my book!). I enjoyed her non-preachy tone, the way that she expressed doubt and uncertainty, the realism in her treatment of what their days were like, the difficulty in fully connecting with other homeschooling parents, and her anecdotes about the ideological or pedagogical pressures of those around her. The book didn't end cleanly, and by that I mean it didn't really tell us much about where she is now, how it all turned out, any final thoughts, and it was kind of a cliffhanger. The final chapter had her husband announcing, while they were sweating in their homemade sauna, that he thought the children should be back in school. It's a conversation that I could certainly see happening in my own life, and in fact is a conversation that I have initiated on my own many times in circumstances as random feeling. But I really wanted to know more--what were her days like? How did she wrestle with that? Did her oldest son go to school? Come home again? What did she learn over her years homeschooling about herself and what her children needed, and how did that bump up against the pressure from both within and outside her family to reassess what they were doing?

For me, the homeschool book that I want to see is the one that is written more for the parent who has been at it a while than for someone just considering making the choice. It would focus on the anxiety, the day to day assessment and reassessment of whether this is working, what should be changed, how to keep on going or press pause or tune out the dissonant feelings. I don't know if everyone feels this constant pushing and pulling, the continuous awareness that this is one choice among many, that I'm not homeschooling because I feel there is something fundamentally wrong about other forms of education, but because it is what is most effective for us right now and because we are happy and are enjoying it. Obviously, though, there are many days when we aren't having so much fun, where I'm riddled with some awareness that there are children who are better at writing than mine, or who have some opportunity that is not open to us or who have the benefit of peer pressure in learning to read or in math or some other area that I feel we could be doing better in if we were in another setting. I was talking to a friend a few weeks ago at art class, and she said that her husband has imposed a "two week rule" when it comes to saying that the kids are going to school. There's no rush--she has to live for two weeks with the decision before acting on it. It's a little bit of a joke, but not really. I think one of the biggest blessings and curses of having chosen to homeschool is that we are acutely aware of all of the possibilities, and so we know that all of them are a revolving door. If school isn't working out well, we know we can choose to take our children home. And if home is not working optimally, we know that we can choose a group setting. That's the type of thing that I'm still waiting to see dealt with well in a book. You hear anxieties continuously on email lists and in conversation, but most of what is in print is either highly optimistic (you can tailor your education perfectly to each of your very different children!) or all about cheerleading (homeschooling rocks for all of these reasons!) or practical (here are my top picks for curricula) or ideological (here's how real learning happens, and it doesn't look like a school) or it's just plain too happy. Homeschooling is messy. Like my kitchen right now. Sometimes it's Crisco and molasses long past the point when you're experiencing the wonder of the chemistry of baking or the math lesson of doubling a recipe or the practicality of making it yourself. And for me at least, it's not an everyday pep rally. In there is the reality of doing my best to figure out how I'm going to help my very real, not always ideal and not always idealistic children to get an education. I love reading theory and I love thinking about pedagogy, about educational models, and I am open to moving well beyond the mainstream, but I also am acutely aware of how I don't get a do-over (none of us do, no matter where our children are educated or what our parenting philosophy might be). Various alternative models of homeschooling might be appealing, but I have to constantly keep in front of me what my current view of my goals is, what is my mission statement. And that's what really keeps me up at night.

I'm off on a far tangent here, but I think a lot about what I would write, how to balance the personal with the why-would-someone-else-want-to-read-this-ness of a book I'd write. I want to write the homeschool book that Annie Dillard or Madeline L'Engle would write--that amazing balance of the personal memoir with what is meaningful to other readers. This _By Heart_ book, captivating as it is, is still not about me (and it's all about me, right!). I don't live on 40 acres. Or in Alaska. I don't chop my own firewood and heat my house with it exclusively. I live in a fairly unremarkable suburb, in a house that's a lot like the ones all around me full of children in public or private schools. I am not driven by conservative religious convictions to make this choice. And my kids are pretty 'normal' in the sense of they aren't astounding prodigies in some specific area (the world-class gymnast who must be homeschooled to maintain her practice and competition schedule, etc.), and we aren't one of those families on a bike for a year or walking across the country or on a ship for many months, or even ex-pats somewhere exotic. I don't even have goats. Not that there's anything wrong with that. But I guess like everyone, I'm looking for what speaks to my life and my motivations and helps me understand myself better and allows me to work through my own questioning.

In addition to reading, thinking, and baking, I also am within spitting distance of finishing my final knit hat. When I graduate to page two of the pattern, I know that I'm on the home stretch, since each row where I reduce cuts out five more stitches, and I feel drawn to do the math to figure out just how much time this saves me from the earlier parts of the project. I don't know if the original recipient still wants these hats, but this really doesn't matter now. I have become a much more confident knitter and have learned more than I could have imagined about solving my own problems when I make mistakes and I my accuracy in actually following the pattern has also increased. I can knit without screwing up every time or having to rip out half of what I have accomplished! This last hat, knock on wood, currently has no noticeable flaws. I counted all of the rows exactly as they were intended to be, I didn't do my stockinette rows on the wrong side at all (a feat in itself), and I've managed to solve any predicaments I've gotten myself into. There's hope for me making a sweater yet!