25 Random Things

Earlier this week, Frances was pestering me about putting hot pink streaks in her hair. I'm no hairdresser, and I don't play one on TV (though most people know I do play one in the privacy of my own home, where I give little boys crewcuts and slice off parts of their ears). We had a bit of the hair dye left from when our hairdresser 3rd cousin did our hair at our family reunion, and I had 6 foils left, so here are our results. Pretty darn good, I think!


Unfortunately, just two days later, she got a round brush stuck in her hair, all tangled right up to her scalp. It was horrible! I was sure she was going to look like G.I. Frances before I got it out, so I rushed her up to Pigtails and Crewcuts, our little kids' salon, and they had it out with a pick and some spray-in conditioner in just a few minutes. What is life, though, without a little extra excitement?


Life proceeds apace without gymnastics. I'm more bummed as the days go on. I hope soccer feels satisfying. I'm worried about giving up our Saturdays. I suppose baseball for Ollie is going to take them soon enough, though.


I generally hate doing these things, but I did it anyway. This was what I posted on Facebook, something I find precious little time to attend to in general. I wish I could say I cared..but I don't!

Anyway...

Rules: Once you've been tagged, you are supposed to write a note with 25 random things, facts, habits, or goals about you. At the end, choose 25 people to be tagged. You have to tag the person who tagged you. If I tagged you, it's because I want to know more about you.

(To do this, go to “notes” under tabs on your profile page, paste these instructions in the body of the note, type your 25 random things, tag 25 people (in the right hand corner of the app) then click publish. And if you don't want to do this, just remove your tag).
1. I have lived my entire life in Virginia. My body has left the state, but never for the purpose of permanent or semi-permanent residence elsewhere. The opportunity hasn't presented itself, and I haven't gone actively looking for it.

2. I prefer children’s books to big girl books almost all the time. And I still read aloud for several hours a day with my 10 year olds. Mostly because I want someone to share all these great books with!

3. I will freely call myself a misanthrope. Even though I have quite a few friends and lots of acquaintances. But much of the time, people freak me out. I'm also a terrible snob--I would be Libertarian, but I don't think the political philosophy would work in the real world because I think too many people are just too dumb and don't care.

4. I have only been on an airplane four times in my life. Once in a privately chartered plane when my parents weren’t allowed on a commercial airline when I was 6 months old, once in 8th grade, once in 9th, and for my honeymoon…almost 14 years ago. Mostly I’ve been too poor to be able to afford to go anywhere.

5. I am emetophobic. I fear vomit, especially me doing it, like it’s going to immediately send me to my grave and bury me six feet under. I’m better now than I used to be, and I don’t go sprinting out the door any more when one of my children is sick, but I’m not going to be snuggling them on my lap, either. I once had to call a friend to follow me as I drove home after my daughter barfed on her shirt after a physical therapy appointment because I was too terrified to drive her myself.

6. Despite this, I really had always wanted 6 or 8 children. My dh wanted 2. We compromised with 4, but if I had my way and a miracle occurred, I’d not very secretly love to have a couple more.

7. I have had a home birth. With a 9.5 pound baby. And even though it’s a lousy reason to get pregnant again, having another would be one of my motivations for having another baby. I’m really lousy at being pregnant though; just good at the birthing part.

8. I went to two different multi-week residential Shakespeare camps when I was in high school and college. And several writing camps and workshops.

9. My purchasing of office supplies borders on compulsive.

10. I have a minor in Latin. It came in handy when I read The Penderwicks and it’s coming in handy now that my boys are learning Latin. I hate the way their program pronounces things, though.

11. I noticed some white hairs on my head today. White. Not gray, but white like my grandmother’s. I am freaking out.

12. I generally cannot bear to read sci-fi or fantasy books, even award-winning ones, even pop culture ones. I’ve tried about five times to read Lord of the Rings, even one book of the trilogy, and I never get more than 30 or so pages into it before my eyes glaze over. The words "...save the universe" on the cover of a book is an instant turn-off.

13. Even though the only place out of the U.S. I’ve ever been is England, and even though I desperately want to travel more, if I could have a ticket to any single destination in the world, it would be to England again. If I won the lottery, I also would figure out some way to move to England.

14. If it wasn’t a really huge lottery, though, but we were not tied down by having to earn a paycheck in a specific place and were going to stay in the U.S., I’m not quite sure where I would go. My leading contenders are Sullivan’s Island, SC, a farmhouse in the Hudson River Valley or in the Berkshires, or on 40 acres in Roanoke County with an incredible view of the Blue Ridge Mountains.

15. Some of my favorite days of each year are the ones we spend camping at Camp Bethel in Fincastle, Virginia. It’s so peaceful and beautiful and the kids can run around wherever they want.

16. I got my nose pierced because I wanted a piece of jewelry that I could always wear that would remind me of how powerful I felt on the day that Rutledge was born. Something to help me not forget that my body is amazing and works especially well when it really needs to. It's not broken!

17. I've never broken a bone. Never had an overnight hospital stay.

18. I homeschool for a large variety of reasons, including wanting to spend lots of time with my children while they are still young, being a control freak who likes to choose curricula and resources and approaches that will best fit their current needs, being concerned about how non-traditional learners fare in a traditional classroom and on the timeframes it imposes, not always believing in the various labels that describe children as 'ahead' or 'behind' because i think that mostly children are where they themselves need to be at that time, loving all the cool trips and activities and opportunities that are open to us, not wanting to have our schedules determined by someone else, not being a morning person and liking to sleep late, knowing that my very active children need plenty of time outdoors and in the woods, wanting to leave plenty of time for subjects which may get shortchanged in the rush to meet state standards: art, music, P.E., even history, liking the people I've met since we haven't been at a school, being able to book vacations in the off season, and generally just being free to determine our own course.

19. But I also lie awake some nights with anxiety about this, that, or the other thing. Are they on track for college? What if Ollie's handwriting never improves? Should we be spending more time at home or more time taking classes or going on trips outside the house? Is it really okay that Frances isn't reading fluently at 7 and will it all come together for her later? How much do we really need a homeschool group? Is their math challenging enough?

20. I have a very addictive personality when it comes to video games, and i become obsessed with conquering certain things like Big Brain Academy on the Nintendo DS, Scrabble and Yahtzee on the iPod, and the vocabulary game on freerice.com

21. I have always wanted to be a writer, but I feel like a total loser because I haven't really done a ton about it. I make lots of excuses...like four kids and things like that. I like to write for myself, though. I just feel that I lack professional credentials that would make anyone else take me seriously.

22. I'm a very insecure person when it comes to feeling qualified to do things for other people. This is probably a side effect of not working--you know, that part when you first start working somewhere and you think, "Oh my God, someone is actually paying me to do this! Me!" At home, I can feel pretty confident, even cocky, but when I get with other people, I feel like even an ant is probably more qualified than me to do just about anything. I know how many mistakes I make!

23. It is really, really bothering me that Frances quit gymnastics. I feel really, really guilty that I feel this way. It's her life, not mine. Maybe I wish I could have been a gymnast when I was her age.

24. The master lesson I've had to learn about being a mother can be summed up thus: "They are not me."

25. I have little to no attention span for television shows with a plot; I like to have little invested and an easy exit plan. So I tend to primarily watch things on Discovery, History Channel, Military Channel, Science Channel, and things like that. This will make me sound like a mutant, but I have never been interested in cooking shows and fail to see the appeal.


So, now it's all out there for everyone to see: I've had a really boring life in general by most people's standards. I've traveled about as much as a backwoods mountain trapper who never goes more than 20 miles from his home his whole life. My life has generally lacked glamour and intrigue. I'm rather insecure. But it's a good life nonetheless. And it would be logistically difficult to change much about it at this particular time. So I'm going to have to just get on with it.

This Week at the Clendenons'

So normal, and yet so not. What's normal anyway?

Frances has officially quit gymnastics. Our official written notice was given, as well as our verbal notice to her coach and the gym owner. Everyone is sad to see her leave. We heard again what we've heard all along about her: she is a very gifted gymnast who naturally does what other girls take a great amount of work to learn. Both gyms have said that she has the most potential coming through the door that they've seen in years. Alas, she's a burnt out gymnast.

Her first and last meet. She's the very short one at the far right, the shortest person in a short-people sport. Tonight was to be her second meet, but she's not there. Waaah!


So today she was signed up for soccer, which won't start for another month or so, which gives her a nice break from too many activities. I'm not sure I'm ready for soccer--all those weekends, all those freezing practices in March and early April, the kind of boring games to watch and keep Rutledge out of trouble at. She'll be playing with the Chesterfield United club, which is one of two clubs close to our house, but not the one that Walter played for a few years ago.

She also is adding into the ballet and flamenco classes she needs in order to be up to snuff as part of the Little Company at her ballet company. She hates flamenco, so it's going to be a little battle, but flamenco is to Latin ballet what tap is to classical ballet--you generally are kind of sort of expected to be able to do at least some of it, and it's part of the basics that make up a well-rounded dancer. Plus it runs back to back with ballet, which is convenient. To top it all off, there's a woman teaching conversational Spanish to the other parents waiting, and I want to be in on it. I can passably read Spanish, but I can't speak it to save my life and can barely understand a word of it when other people speak it. This woman has a child in the class and also teaches high school Spanish, so I hope that Frances will be a flamenco girl for at least a few weeks so I can get some benefit myself.

Right now, Frances is at the river with her friend Lainey. Her goal for the weekend is to see another dolphin. She saw dolphins mating the last time she was there. Unfortunately, last time she was there she also sprouted a 104 degree fever and had to come home early. We're hoping to avoid a replay of that one.

Next weekend Frances goes with Annie and Tim for three days to see a theater production and visit with some friends she has made in Lynchburg. Busy, busy girl.

We are making our own plans for upcoming adventures. I am signed up for a tennis trip to Hilton Head at the beginning of next month, and I have been excited since the summer to go somewhere where we aren't weighed down with the stress of a huge tournament and where it's all about the clinics and the party. Then I might be going on a beach trip with some friends at the end of next month. And I'm working on setting up a long weekend in April at a friend's cabin in Southwest Virginia near Mount Rogers. In May we have booked a beach house in Hatteras, NC for a week. I can't remember correctly now, but I think we chose a different house than the one we had last time, and it might not even be quite as far down as Hatteras. I feel so fortunate that we are available pre-season, when rates are super low. We are also working on fitting in a weekend trip to Washington, DC for Kerry to do some things with his business and when I can see the Postal Museum and the Spy Museum and the various memorials, something we frequently miss on our museum trips. Then we have a lull for most of the summer--things tend to grind to a halt when swim team season begins.

I am into my 4th week now of being gluten free. So far, I'm not ready to throw in the towel, though a lovely delivered pizza does make my resolve weaken, and I'd just about kill for a really awesome sandwich. But I think it's mostly the allure of the forbidden. I have been eating fairly well, probably even better than I did before this experiment. We are having more things like chicken or hamburgers or pasta dishes for lunch. I've made some really good chocolate chip cookies--good even in comparison to regular old gluten cookies--and some pumpkin bread and muffins which don't taste gluten free to me. But mostly I've steered free of baked goods as a whole and concentrated on things naturally without gluten, and there are tons of them: fruits, vegetables, cheeses, salads, corn puffy things, meats that I make myself, Chinese foods. I made spring rolls last night, something I probably never would have attempted if I wasn't spurred on by my new diet. They were so good! And I felt rather accomplished working with the rice skins and getting a pretty and tasty result. I took the kids on a little impromptu field trip to Tan-A, the largest of the Asian markets here, and they were so enthralled by all of the stinky fish sitting out and the non-American products, like canned squid and dried jellyfish and all kinds of parts of animals that we get grossed out by. They all got candy, and Walter has nearly built a shrine to Pocky now. And I was able to stock up on many staple items for my pantry much more cheaply than if I buy them at Ukrop's or at the natural foods stores: white rice flour, sweet rice flour, tapioca starch, and rice noodles and bean threads. I know it's hard to get into the excitement that is $.90 a pound sweet rice flour, but it really is cause for gluten-free celebration! There were also a lot of little snacky things that were inexpensive that I can actually eat. Cool.


This Monday, our little learning group did another Zoom/Think! challenge. This one involved 100 pennies and stacking them into a structure that had four pennies on the bottom layer touching the ground and was at least 5 inches wide and 2 inches high. Most of the kids had some trouble with this, so I'm not sure we totally had any who achieved the original challenge, but above is one of the attempts. I'm seeing more than 4 on the bottom...

Previously we have done other challenges, including this one where teams of two had to build a "box" that would insulate an ice cube and keep it from melting at the same rate that the control cube did. The materials they had were a shoe box, newspaper, aluminum foil, tape, rubber bands, and waxed paper.


That same day we also designed these "Puff-Mobiles." The materials given were one sheet of paper, four Life-Savers, three straws, paper clips, and Scotch tape. The goal was to make a vehicle that could move 6 feet in fewer "puffs" of air than the competitors' vehicles and to make a vehicle that could move further than the competition. We did numerous heats to find winners, but all of the creations were fun to see and performed well.


Our several family history group is heavy into World War II right now. Last week the boys wrote about the Battle of the Atlantic and the Battle of Okinawa, and this week they will be talking about home front matters. I would love to see them write a little bit more, so I might slip some small assignment in on a related topic. Then next week we will have a couple come in to talk about their war experiences. A friend of one of the participants in our group was in the Battle of the Bulge, and he is going to come in to tell about his experience and answer our questions, and his wife is going to tell us what it was like at home in America while the war was going on. I think this is going to be a fabulous opportunity and am so pleased at their generosity in spending time with us. Frances and the girls will continue with an American Girl club of sorts, and I think we're going to concentrate on the roles of women in the war--women pilots, women in administrative positions, women in the military, and women working at home. We'll also probably do something related to the use of dogs in the war, the qualifications for dogs who would serve in the Army, and how the dogs were trained. Knitting went over pretty well, so if we have extra time, we might knit some more, and maybe we'll try one more ration recipe.

Tonight, in preparation for next week, we read a book about the Battle of the Bulge and came up with some questions to ask our guests. Ollie and I also read about 70 pages of a book about the Nazi occupation of Denmark called _Hitler's Canary_. It's a great book so far, though I think that there's just a lot for Ollie to grasp. Ollie, Walter, and I are also reading _Big Red_ together, and we all love it. Earlier this week, Ollie and I read the second book of the _Island_ series and the first of the _Dive_ series by Gordon Korman. Huge, huge hit. And before that, we read _Nory Ryan's Song_ and _Maggie's Door_, both fabulous books about the immigrant experience in the 19th century and the Irish potato blight and English occupation of the 1840s. It was a very productive reading week, probably because it was freezing, crazy cold this week and there was little else to take our time. I would have been happy to just sit in bed all day reading and never leave the house.

And finally, today we went rock climbing with one other friend. It was our regular homeschool group climbing day, but other obligations and probably climbing interest were taking their effect. While I would definitely say it was kind of nice to have the gym pretty much to ourselves for most of the time, it also meant a non-stop belay fest for the two adults. There was not a minute of break in there! Both boys climbed about 11 or 12 walls, so my shoulders and neck are definitely going to be feeling it tomorrow. Not a help in a week when I had to regain my bowling pro status on the Wii, which has left my back and arms less than happy.


You know how when you download your pictures from the camera onto the computer there are often some, well, unexpected ones that you know you didn't take? This one showed up on mine.


"What is this?" I exclaimed. And guess who claimed the photo? That's right. Walter. "That's Cheese Wax Man!" Cheese Wax Man. With buttons all over him and googly eyeballs. On my bedroom window.

My addled brain is at it again. This time it was this Women's Getaway Weekend with women from our new church. It's not a matter of not writing it on my calendar. My new trend is to put things on my calendar, directly from emails detailing specifics of an event, and to put it on the wrong date. I did it to this major event, and I did it to an all-day Institute for Excellence in Writing seminar and a kids' writing workshop. Thankfully I caught that one, since every time I looked a month ahead at my weekends on February, I would think, Hmm, I don't remember it being on Valentine's Day. Because, well, it isn't.

So I just returned today. It was great. I was so incredibly nervous and most definitely wondering what I had been thinking when I signed up for this thing. I was sharing a hotel room with three other women whose names I didn't even know, and I am a person who is a bit squeamish about sharing a space like that even with people in my own family or who are close friends. So this was stepping out for sure. My fears were unfounded. While I still don't feel like I'm the most inside track person there, I did get to know several people much better than I did before, and I think I learned some things about myself, uncovered some things in my life that are more worrisome or provoking than I had believed they were. The topic of the weekend was "change," and the group sessions, which were a smallish part of the weekend, were especially helpful for talking through areas that we'd like to change in our lives and the obstacles keeping us from doing so and what we might have to lose if we did open ourselves to changing. The bulk of our time, though, was spent doing things like shopping at the outlets, dancing to goofy group dance songs (that Cuban shuffle or whatever it's called, various line dances, and other annoying stomping things), and playing that game where everyone sits in a chair in a circle and one person stands in the middle and says something like, "I've had sex in my kitchen" and then everyone else that the statement applies to has to run and switch seats, and the person left standing is the one who has to come up with the next "I wear contacts" statement. It was loads of fun, and the statements got very goofy after a while. I spent way too much money on way too many clothes for everyone except Kerry. I had no idea there was a Hanna Andersson outlet there, which was just plain dangerous. I picked up a sweater and a pair of pants for myself, both $5, but I wiped the place out for the kids. Most of the stuff there is pretty basic, and most of what I got is rather bland--solid color polos, solid color t-shirts, both short and long sleeved, two pairs or shorts for Rutledge, those adorable striped short johns for Rutledge, khaki pants, some leggings for a dress Frances already had. I also bought some red corduroy pants, a sweater to match (not corduroy!), a couple of shirts, and socks. I realized on Saturday that I was wearing unmatching socks, and that kind of thing has to change....

I'm still reading Twilight, and I feel like there's something wrong with me. Intelligent people who are savvy and thoughtful readers abhor these books, and I can't get enough. It doesn't even bother me that they never have sex...in fact, it makes it all the more alluring and tense. I'm not a vampire person, not a fantasy person, so this is already out of my comfort zone by a long shot, so I'm not looking for one of those erotic vampire novels; in fact, I do my best to try to forget that he's a unnaturally quick moving, mind-reading vampire because...I hate vampire books. And the werewolf thing, well, that's just over the top. But here I still am, edgy and waiting for more.

Tomorrow is our co-op, where we are doing a WWII class for the first part and some Think! activities for the second part. I need to firm up what we're going to do. I am with the girls, and they are reading American Girl books about Molly, the girl on the home front. I roll my eyes at the commercialism and triteness of the whole AG enterprise, but it is awfully convenient, and the books are not poorly written. They do a much better job of covering material than those darn Magic Treehouse books, which obviously are written for a slightly younger audience, but could certainly weave in more facts and topical information than they do. What I especially like about the AG books are the photos at the end and the historical notes that flesh out some of the material mentioned in the narrative story. So tomorrow I think we're going to read the first Molly book, do a little more knitting, which is what we did last week after reading about the Lend-A-Hand Contest where the girls in the class knit squares to sew into a quilt, and we'll make a blue star flag. After that, we'll perhaps make another ration recipe and listen to some more 40s music. Can I say again how much I love XM? It's my understanding that the whole group is going to make miniature Victory Gardens.

I am off to read a bit more before crashing. I've been up until 2 or 2:30 two nights in a row, added on top of sleeping poorly in a hotel room.

Vampires and monsters, oh my! I'm so very deep into this Twilight saga that I'm not going to be able to keep up here until it's over.

We have been quite busy this weekend, though mostly with relaxing things happening around home and catching with friends at playdates. I feel like I've spent a lot of time in my car in some ways, but in others, it hasn't been with the harried running that we tend to get into with our regular routine. Ollie made his Hitler Powerpoint presentation for our co-op for a few hours on Saturday night. We read _All the Way Home_, a book I loved more than Ollie did. We also read _Julie's Story_ about Frances's American Girl doll, and it was surprisingly well written and engaging, much more so than I expected. We read a shorter American Girl book about Molly, who we've been following a bit with our WWII class, and Ollie and I read _Missing May_, a Newbery winner that he wasn't crazy about but that I thought was okay. What's up with all these Newbery books about poor, for lack of a better term, "white trash" cobbled together families where the parents have died or abandoned the children and the themes are all about things that are very difficult for most children to relate to: 12 Step programs, quirky kids who are almost supernaturally mature, and this one, which had a heavy component of Spiritualism and seances and mediums, including several play-on-words jokes with the terms. I find myself having to explain lots of elements that the plot hinges heavily upon, even when my children are in the target age range. This was another book that it was fairly hard to imagine a lot of middle-grade or early middle school children truly loving; it was sad and the theme is just more appealing to adults (an older man missing his dead wife; the adjustments of a girl who has experienced loss after loss in her life. Obviously I don't think these are off-limits topics, but this book falls straight into the same category and thematic zone as _Because of Winn-Dixie_ and _The Higher Power of Lucky_, who other Newbery books that all take the same kind of fringes of society and the same all-too-familiar dead parents, dead or leaving guardian characters and place them in a spare atmosphere of soulful searching for place. It's hard to believe these authors didn't all collude in writing, and that the same committee isn't choosing these winners year after year.

Frances has a funky rash over a lot of her body and a wet cough. I don't quite know what to make of it. And she's whiny. Tell me something new. This time it's about wanting a sister. Believe me, I want to give her a little sister at least as much, if not more, than she wants one. And I can relate to her longing for that tiny sibling to take care of, because I wanted that more than anything in the world when I was growing up, and like her I cried tears of non-understanding at why my parents couldn't just find us a baby brother and no, I didn't want to wait until I had a baby of my own (why do you think I started trying to get pregnant at 23?). Couldn't they "just" adopt one? That's where we were tonight. We bumped into an old neighbor who moved away two years ago, and they are in the process of adopting three little girls who are relatives. I know, I know, why can't that happen in my family? And Frances, like me, can't face the reality that there aren't just orphanages right out there in America where a loving family can walk through the door and just go "shopping" and take home a baby or a three year old or a fifteen year old that very same day. She didn't want to hear about home studies, social workers, attorneys, red tape and paperwork, notarizations, not to mention travel, long waits, big and uncertain fees, and potential disappointment. Frankly, I don't want to hear about that stuff, either. That eight year old part of myself still just wants to march on down to that Baby Sale at JC Penney and pick myself up a baby. Or just bump into some goodhearted but pregnant teenager in the Target and have her promise me that baby in her belly because, as Frances put it, "she's not able to take care of it herself." Or that I could drive over to the nearest children's home and find the one with the dark curls especially fetching and instantly go off into our happily ever after. What I ended up with instead was one very angry, frustrated, over-tired, mucousy biological child of mine sobbing loudly in the backseat of my car in outrage that I was denying her this most basic wish while we were stopped in an inexplicable line of traffic for 30 minutes on the way home from gymnastics.

It is so freaking cold. And we're going to an outdoor historical park tomorrow. I'm a little disappointed because the show is going to go on, but it's going to be all indoors, most likely, which means we'll miss some of the experience that this place is so known for. I'm sure they'll do a great job, but still...if it's not going to snow and be gratifying and lovely, I'd rather it just be seasonal or slightly better so that we can get on with life. The Farmer's Almanac lied to me! Well, may not entirely...it has been a hard winter, but mostly because it has had a lot of cold days without the prize of some cozy snow days.

Yes, Virginia

...you can make your Pinewood Derby car yourself! And we did it. The cars looked awesome. Ollie's is the "Area 51 Hybrid," a camouflaged Prius that he spray painted on the front lawn of the Science Museum this afternoon and then hid in a doughnut box behind the wheels of the van. Walter made the "Platyprius," another Prius-like vehicle with a platypus nose cut to a brush on the front. We registered them both for the race, and both had a little extra weight added once we were there, but we're prepared for tomorrow morning.

We ended up going to the Science Museum with some friends this afternoon, and I lost track of time and made Frances late to her ballet practice.

With our final free IMAX tickets, we saw "The Alps," which is now my favorite of the IMAX movies I've seen ("The Grand Canyon" is a very close second). The footage was incredible, the story a little much (I had a hard time believing that climbing the north face of the Eiger really did cleanse all the pain of his father's death), and I learned basic cultural literacy type information about the Alps, as did the kids (name two peaks in the Alps; tell me some countries the Alps go through; what rocks form the Alps? Do people really live there and how do they cross from place to place?). But it was by far the most barfilicious IMAX movie I've ever seen. They're all kind of bad, but this one took the cake for nauseating sweeping camera moves and balance-off-kiltering twists and turns and pans. I had to close my eyes about fifteen times just to keep from losing my lunch. And I had skipped lunch. And I had taken Dramamine, as I always do before these films....

At home we have done a lot of reading. Tonight was a night of finishing. We read the last three pages of _Belle Prater's Boy_, the book we had been listening to in the car and whose final CD skipped and then went dead in the last three minutes of the novel. We finished _The Midwife's Apprentice_, a great little book that we had started yesterday (part of the magic library of books to be sold that I'm keeping). And then we read a novella by Gary Paulsen called _Nightjohn_. This would be one of those instances where pre-reading a book to share with children would have been a good idea. Oops. It is a book written from the point of view of a slave with a wicked, sadistic master. A new slave comes and begins to teach her to read and write, and the beatings begin. Kerry asked me, "So, was it graphic?" Let's just say that would be an understatement. I was torn between feeling like I was going to deeply disturb Ollie and scar him for life (Walter had been listening, but thank goodness fell asleep about halfway through, so he only heard half of the horrific descriptions of torture) and feeling like it is an important story to tell. It is fiction, but based on some people's reality somewhere, and it puts into perspective why so many people were weeping at Barack Obama's inauguration, why this moment has touched the hearts of so many and has been inspiring. Since we're heading to a Civil War battlefield on Tuesday and since we live in the heart of the Confederacy and see those little rebel flags on trucks and homes every single day, I figured it doesn't hurt to hear yet again some more of the story. But really, I hope that he'll be okay....

To cleanse our minds a bit after that intensity, I let him stay up later than I should have and we started a new book, _All the Way Home_ by Patricia Riley Giff. She's currently one of my favorite writers, and we've loved all of her books. This one is set in 1941 and has gotten off to a slow and maybe intentionally confusing start. It is the story of a girl who has had polio who has been adopted by her former nurse and a boy who is staying with that nurse, who is a friend of his mother's, while his parents both find work because they have lost their farm and are in financial distress. Against this, I believe World War II is going to start. So it is a good fit with the topic we've chosen for our first co-op class, which is World War II. The boys are focusing more on generals, leaders, countries, and causes of war, where the girls are focusing more on life on the home front and daily life at home. This is yet another book filling in some of the narrative of children who lived at that time, so why not stay on a roll with this theme.

It has me wanting to find some more books about polio to read to him. I think it was _In the Shadow of Polio_ that was so moving for me--just well-written and frightening and personal. I wish every single day that I could talk with my Mom again about what her life was like when she was young. It's hard to believe that I never did, but I guess we just don't always think of those things when we still have the time to do it, and the next thing you know, it's too late. I want to know so many things--where she was in the hospital and exactly how long and what her treatments were and whether they hurt and whether she was ever in an iron lung and what relationships she made with the other patients and what her life was like after her recovery. Could her parents come see her whenever they wanted? Did she have breathing problems? Did other children around her die? And then there are just general questions about the 1930s and 40s. How did the Depression appear through her eyes? Where was her family living? What kinds of things did they have? What was she doing when Pearl Harbor was bombed? Does she remember ration stamps? Did she collect war stamps? Did her family buy war bonds? Did she collect newspapers or tin foil or scrap metal? Her brother joined the Navy when he was 16. Was she worried about him every single day? Did her parents show their stress and concern to her? Did they hang a blue star flag in their window? Did anyone she know die? Did any of her friends' brothers die? How did she get her news? Did she go to serialized movies every week? Did her family have a victory garden? I am positively devastated that I know nothing about my own family and my own mother. My children are positively dying to hear this stuff from her. And I have no one who would know. I think of my Grandma and Grandpa, who also never talked about any of these things. Compared to my life so far, what difficulties they endured as parents. First a son who dropped out of high school to go fight in the Pacific and then never returned to live at home (he married a woman he met in California after his ship returned to the States and before he was discharged), and then their daughter contracts polio weeks before her college graduation. Both of these are parental nightmares. And there was such silence about them in our family! Maybe not intentional, but it's amazing that these things never or almost never came up. I suppose it was a different generation, not so prone to talking about their anxiety, things kept hushed a bit more, emotions held close to themselves. To anyone who might be reading this: ask your questions now! Carpe diem! Gather your rosebuds while ye may! Don't sit around wondering, get those stories and histories! Because one day you'll turn around and your entire family might be dead and your opportunity will be forever lost!

In the car, we're listening to _Ella Enchanted_, which Ollie is really liking and which I can't keep my mind on to save my life. I tell you, I just can't abide novel-length stories about fairies, gnomes, elves, sorcerors, and the like. My brain goes numb and I stop paying attention. And I don't do audio books particularly well under any circumstances. What's funny is that Ollie is now thinking that this is the book he might like to pick for book club when his turn comes in about two months. I can see the looks on the other boys' faces now.... A book about a girl with a magic curse put upon her at birth. A book about a girl! I find it absolutely endearing. I'm really proud that he is so open to all books, regardless of what they might be typed by others. It reminds me that we need to get back to the Little House series. I think we're on Farmer Boy, which isn't most people's favorite.

And drumroll please...today Ollie finished Saxon 5/4! It is a banner day. We need to celebrate with a cake or something. I am proud and excited about all we have accomplished this year and how we were able to make a daily habit out of doing small amounts of schoolwork. All kinds of things used to throw us off, but now that our whole mindset has changed, we get our work done every single day, with very, very, very few exceptions, and somehow it is shoehorned in even when there's a lot of other stuff going on. For example, today. We watched a friend's children for most of the morning, and then we made plans to go to the museum with them after lunch, but between them leaving and lunchtime, we got our minimal everything done, and then we were free to have a fun-directed day from then on. There's hope yet for other changes I'd like to see happen!

Tomorrow is the Pinewood Derby, that potentially exasperating cultural phenomenon for young Cub Scouts that they cannot exactly do by themselves. I admit to not really understanding this event. Once upon a time, I suspect that boys used to labor for several weeks to make their perfect pine car, one that involved hours of coping, sanding, shaping, and painting. If our pack is any evidence of current trends, and I believe it is, this task has now been handed over to adult males, if it's done at all, with a range of results from completely square, barely painted bus to powder-coated, professionally sprayed engineering feats.

If the truth be told, my problem is that we didn't make it to any of the "Cubstruction" dates our den had this year. The first one was still within that magic zone of the New Year's holiday weekend. The second was the day of Legend of the Poinsettia. The third was last weekend, and the boys went to the river for the weekend with some friends. This meant that the task of creating a car was up to us. Cubstruction is a euphemism for these freezing cold sessions in some zealous adult male scout leader's garage where paper templates for car shapes are set out, young boys choose one and trace it onto their piece of wood, and then they get in line to have their shape cut by a $500 power-tool. When it is handed back to them, they go stand in another line to hand "their" car routed on the bottom by another male seeking to announce his manhood, and then they move to a zone where, and I kid you not here...someone is melting lead fishing weights and pouring the molten lead into the routed strip in the bottom of the car. Then they move to another line, where the car is placed on an inexpensive specialty scale, and a lengthy process of back and forth between a Dremel or other grinder and the scale to get the car within a tenth of an ounce range of the accepted limit. Yes, boys are standing around while lead, a substance proven to cause reproductive and intellectual damage by ingestion in its airborne form, is ground all over a garage and where sanding is spewing it into the air. My Christmas lights all have warnings about how the state of California acknowledges these wires contain lead, a substance known to cause brain damage, and I need to wash my hands after handling them. I am still receiving daily alarmist emails telling me that every bookstore in the company is about to go out of business because every book and toy in America is going to be imminently incinerated lest it contain lead in the printing of its cover. But the Boys Scouts of America melt it, pour it, sand it, grind it, and then hand it in a touchable form right to 6-12 year old boys so that they can fondle their adult-made pinewood derby car and admire it for posterity.

But I digress. I bucked the system. Last night, I did help with their Pinewood Derby cars. We started with a coping saw. A dull coping saw. A dangerously dull coping saw. I did much of the sawing for them because it was difficult, because we didn't have a bench with a vise that was working properly, and because the blade was indeed dangerously dull and not cutting well and a hazard to all who used it. But we marked off places to cut, I got the cuts started, and they helped. Then we all hacked at some of those cut areas with a hammer when the going got really tough (say, when the blade had no teeth left...). Then I pulled out the Dremel and we tried a lot of different attachments, determining that we preferred the barrels of sandpaper, the lower the grit the better. They ground and sanded and shaped their cars for about an hour. They practiced putting different attachments in the tool, learning the cardinal lesson that the most important thing to do it unplug before sticking your hand in the chuck. Our cars don't look like they were made by an engineering post-graduate, but they do look pretty darn awesome.

What's funny is that Walter and Ollie ended up arguing repeatedly about the copyright on their designs. Ollie decided that he was going to make a Pinewood Prius, with an Area 51 theme. We chopped the nose off the front, and he Dremeled it to give it that podular curve. While we were hacking off the front of Walter's car, we noticed that we could leave on a piece and it would look like a duck-billed platypus, so his car became The Platyprius. Ollie's kind of mad--he has the hybrid, and he wants a corner on that market. Walter thinks its a free country.

They painted them, and that was its own adventure. Nothing quite beats spray paint, so that's what we did. We put down cardboard boxes on the garage floor and they got to work. The fumes were overpowering. There was mayhem, there was panic, there were complaints of nausea. I think we'll buy some paint today at Ben Franklin.

I need to take them out to buy some weights for the bottom of the car. I'm hoping for a metal other than lead. I'm hoping for safety.

I feel like I've fallen off this writing wagon. I've been doing some other writing lately, but that doesn't help over here.

Tonight was the Member-Guest tournament at Hilary's club. I prefer to put the outcome this way: "We won one, and we lost one." Tonight we lost 6-3,6-1, which doesn't feel so good. I felt like I played so-so. Sometimes when you lose, you know that you gave it your all and there were many great points and you were just outdone by someone who has more of her life to devote to this fine sport. And sometimes you just wish that you worked out more during the winter. I felt like I came out roaring a bit, but then it...dulled. By the end of the first set, it felt like we were on a greased slide headed down fast. I wasn't entirely embarrassed by how I played, but I can tell that there's quite a bit of work to be done to get tuned up for the spring. Perhaps I'll give Ken a call and try to squeeze into this clinic at MTC that starts at 8:30 p.m. Lord knows I'm still awake and alive at that hour!

Tomorrow Hokie goes to the vet. I'm worried. I'm worried that the news won't be good about him. He's an old man. He'll be 15 next month, and he is showing it. He has fatty tumors, including a very enormous one sticking out of his side. His paw was bleeding yesterday for some reason (probably just bumping something while it was bitter cold and his skin was dry). He's sticking his feet in his ears and then licking them and rubbing his eyes and then eating the eye boogers. And he's itchy. Poor thing. I have no idea how to get his lumpy, decrepit, achy body into the car. Last time we did it, about 7 months ago, involved a creative challenge of piling up trumpet cases and computer boxes.

I probably shouldn't admit this here, but we have been enjoying the portable library that has arrived at my house. I am helping with the Used Curriculum Fair for the upcoming VaHomeschoolers conference in May, and I'm starting to get donations of items. Specifically, I picked up about 10 boxes of books from someone this week, and I've peeked inside, and there are some real winners. We are quite enjoying them, which maybe isn't what were supposed to be doing--I think we just supposed to be "storing." But nonetheless, I feel like we've been given a treasure chest. They've enjoyed some Marmaduke (I used to love this!) and Peanuts comics. Rutledge is especially fond of a very 80's and very British book about a birthday party where a clown comes and the children play games (non-fiction book). Ollie has read two Boxcar Children books from the boxes in the past two days. I read aloud a fabulous book called _Don't You Know There's a War On_, which correlates well with what I'm doing with the girls in our now-weekly group class (see, I'm not using the C word) on Mondays. The girls are listening to the American Girl book about Molly, the girl on the home front during World War II who worries about her father who is in England, has to eat rationed foods, and goes to a very orderly 1940s school where patriotism and obedience reign supreme. The same material covered in that book is what makes up the story of Avi's book, more aimed at boys. It was probably one of Ollie's favorite books ever. He thinks he might choose it for book club. And it was very endearing--about having a wild crush on a teacher (to the point of kind of stalking her!), about a special friendship during an intense time, and generally about the many emotions of growing up in a war time. Today we read _The Midwife's Apprentice_, a book that I really love. We're really enjoying that one, too, about failure, names, self-worth, learning, and identity. And before that, we finished up _The Secret of Laurel Oaks_, which was decent. It wasn't life-altering, and I still have trouble with books where supernatural things happen or with ghosts or vampires or what have you, but this had a historical element that added some interest and stimulation. Still, it was hard for me to identify well with some of the characters, and it moved a little slowly.

As for me, be still my heart. I am madly in love with Edward Cullen. I feel 17 again. I think I simply miss that crazy in love feeling where your heart nearly stops every time you look at or touch the other person. And this book has it in spades. I know it's not necessarily the deepest book and others have accused that it is "beneath me," whatever that means. But seriously, I think it is a well-written book that sweeps the reader away. The fact that I'm not looking at page numbers, something I *always* do while reading, is a giveaway to me that something is being done right. I am on the second book of the series now, and I'd rather be doing that than writing this (why don't you do it, then, Nancy?). I have to say that the Twilight series is entirely what I don't like in books--it's about vampires, for one. Not that there's anything wrong with that, I just typically cannot get into books about things that aren't real (or that I haven't seen...who knows, maybe they are real) or people or animals with supernatural powers (the fast flight, the mind reading, the ESP) or where there's a lot of new terminology or jargon. And I don't like books in series in general. And I don't like books that are too long (like 2100 pages of books about vampires...). But for some reason, and while I am bristling some when it gets a little too "fantasyish" for me, this one has sucked me in. Believe me, I've tried lots of sci-fi and fantasy books, and I never get very far. I know that the whole vampire thing is essential to the plot, but really, the only thing that would make these books better as romances would be to just have everyone be really human. I guess I'd say that I read to better understand the human condition, and for whatever reason, non-human things or non-earthly things in a book tend to undermine that for me. Anyway, Edward can kiss me with his ice-cold lips any day.

Tomorrow is the spelling bee. I'm going to attempt to be a Homeschooler Who Bucks The System by doing what parents of brilliant homeschoolers almost never do: trying to put my 5th grade children in the 2nd-3rd grade category. Trust me, their spelling skills are right there. This may make some people feel that I'm trying to give my guys an unfair advantage, but believe me when I say, this is only putting them into a situation where they'll be able to have a crack at participating in a competition. I hope all goes well.

We have generally been laying low with the cold weather. School is on a roll. Ollie will finish Saxon 5/4 Friday, and his next book should be here for Monday. He is very excited. This is the final big push on reducing fractions, least common denominator, least common multiple, improper fractions, and adding fractions with like and unlike denominators. Then its smooth sailing for a few weeks as 6/5 reviews the past few books for several weeks. Ollie is beside himself knowing that very soon, his math will only take about 10 minutes a day. I'm just going to let it go, happy that he's really happy about math now. Overall, though, I think things are going well. They both eagerly start their work as soon as they get up in the mornings, even getting themselves up earlier so they can get a leg up on it. Much of the time they have done ther independent schoolwork by 10 a.m., which leaves the rest of the day for going out or their own pursuits.

Last week we went to Pocahontas State Park for an Outdoor Skills class series that will be happening twice a month through winter and spring. We used to do a Roots and Shoots class there and went through many sequences of offerings through the park, so it is nice to be back. Frances, to my surprise, is probably the one enjoying it the most, even though I didn't sign her up. This coming week I'm going to do my best to allow her to stay the whole time, instead of having her leave with Rutledge and me. The first week they talked about the CCC, the history of the park, and ways of making observations. Next week will include a longer hike and more focused topic. Some of my fondest homeschooling memories so far are of children climbing all over the fence at Pocahontas or chasing each other in the woods with big sticks or sitting around the campfire there.

Tuesday we will be going to Pamplin Historical Park, which is a Civil War living museum. The program sounds fantastic and fits well with what we have been studying this year in history. We haven't totally made it to the Civil War in our chronological progression, though we had some interludes when we went to the Museum of the Confederacy in the fall and when we read some of our Sonlight books out of order. We just read _The Red Badge of Courage_ last week, so that also gave them a little extra background.

Yesterday we spent the early part of the day watching the inauguration coverage and talking about past presidents, large crowds, security, and who all those people were who got to be up at the podium (especially Aretha Franklin). It was very, very moving. I repeatedly find myself teary-eyed not only when I'm watching the actual event itself (over and over and over...it was on incessantly for the rest of the day), but when I hear reports on NPR or hear people talking about how much this moment means to them. It truly does feel momentous to me and a proof that democracy does work. We had read quite a bit on the NPR website and some other resources linked from the Illinois Association for Gifted Children website (not sure why I suddenly got this email, but whatever...) about things like the oath of office and where it came from and then various "firsts" that happened over the years at inaugurations (first photographed, first in Washington, DC, first made a movie of, first using a Catholic Bible, etc.), and then we have been reading a short book on fascinating stories about things that have happened in the White House and some back issues of Cobblestone Magazine about the birth of political parties and about the office of the President. I wish we somehow could have been closer. I kind of wish I had a more thrilling and perhaps memorable "Where Were You When..." story to tell. But we were holed up at home on an ice-cold day, drinking our hot chocolate, I had just been to the dentist, and we were crowded onto the ottoman watching Barack Obama repeat back the oath and all the fanfare surrounding it. I know I was far more into this than the kids, especially than Walter and Frances, but hopefully they will have some mental snapshot of the moment.

And my last little tidbit is that I am challenging myself to be gluten free until my birthday, in about 6 weeks. More on that later. But it is proceeding about as one would be expecting it to at this point--mistakes and slipups, but lots of learning about how life doesn't have to be totally upside down for this to become a new normal way of eating. There is life beyond xanthan gum and 7 different flours for every recipe. I'm sucking down an Amy's Lentil Soup as I write this, so I'm not feeling particularly deprived at the moment.