Living-Deliberately.com

• So we know now why David’s wings were so hot…”Insanity” is Zaxby’s highest level of heat, not medium. And after two days of payin’ for it, he’s ready to think “wings” again. In response to Sarah’s comment on the post below, he says, “we’re going to have to get in that”
• The Dell is going back for good, money to be returned. It spent all week being “worked on”, only to be returned UNFIXED. Calling Dell Support was every bit the nightmare that it was last week only this time I cut it short. NO Sir…I will NOT turn the computer back on in safe mode and mess with the settings again. I will NOT contact my cable company and tell them it’s thier fault. I was very direct, which seemed to throw him into a total tizzy. Actually, make that FIVE “hims” with all the transfering to different departments. Finally Him Number Five said I could return the computer for a refund and gave me the Customer Care number. It was a phone sex chat line!!!! Back to Dell support, through the transfer line, to the “back door” of the company. Turns out, just as the customer is leaving Dell products, you get an articulate English speaking service rep who is sympathetic and eager to actually help. Should’ve put her up front. Anyway, lesson learned. This blog averages 10k hits a month: may all my readers beware of Dell!
• excellent little find of a violin repair shop here in town! The bridge repair cost only 10 bucks, included a new string, and was ready as I waited. Constrast that with the private muscian across town I had to use in Fl, leave it there for a week, and cough up 30 bucks and I think we’ve improved :-).
• Finch Report: We have Bruce and Jane and the so-far-yet-to-be-acceptably-named. They chit chat and play and are quiet at night only I dislike how two of them shun the third and won’t let it sleep in the nest.
• The Flu continues; we are all at various stages. But thankfully Wheaton’s ear is draining properly and fevers are staying fairly low. Hope it’s over soon. Seems it’s okay that it waylaid our gardening plans for the weekend; temps are suposed to drop anyway.

Defeated:

• Last night we had an evening snack from Zaxby’s. We’re actually on the hunt for a place to get a quick fix on wing craving. Lately we’ve resorted to a frozen bag of Tyson’s Buffalo Wings but they are messy, not buttery enough, and just not “it”. Ruby Tuesday’s across the street has a nice appetizer platter but they are harder to get to when you are in your jammies and just want a late night snack. The Zaxby’s commercial came on and the mouths watered so of he took himself to the drive thru.

He got me the “wimpies” and himself the ones labled “insanity”. There were still three levels of intensity above that so he thought was being rather good to get “medium” wings. He likes them when they are hot enough to burn the sides of his mouth, to clear his sinuses, but still have alot of flavor. I like mine with alot of flavor and just enough spice to let me know they are hot.

These wimpies were perfect. Bigger than the average wing and meaty, they were lightly fried and the sauce was buttery. No nasty breading. They still had that disctinctive “Zaxby’s” season-salt flavor but that’s not always a bad thing. I dipped them in ranch dressing (blue cheese is better) and they were immenesely satisfying. Our two snacks together was right at ten bucks, so I was happy.
Poor Maynard. He cried through his. His nose ran. He went s-l-o-w-l-y, determined to finish them because he paid for them of course. Can’t waste them! His belly immediately started to burn. He says they did him in and were much hotter than Farrah’s Devastators, which had previously held the record. By morning he said it felt like he was shooting hot lava sand and sitting in rubbing alchohol. It’s going to be a long day and probably a lot longer before he gets another wing craving!

• In other news, we have a household of flu. The nasty kind: fevers, aches, congestion, ear infections, coughing. Good thing we can stay in for the next several days.
• We also are the owners of three finches! Our friend Diane brought over three birds in a big cage yesterday for the kids. Apparently her male and female mated faster than rabbits and she had a multitude of the busy little things. She recommends we don’t keep thier eggs or we’ll too have a cage full. They are cute and dainty, which is how I must think of them, lest they take on terms like “pointy and nervous” and get me thinking of Alfred Hitchcock and Stephen King’s bird movies. Their chatter is not unlike squirrels or Ewoks. The kids don’t know what gender thier bird is so we encouraged non-gender specific names. So far we have Celia’s “Jane” (she thinks Jane is a fine name for a boy too!), Andrew’s “Finchy”, and Wheaton….well, we’re still working on his. He noticed these birds like to peck, and so he wants to name his the adjective form of “to peck”….just can’t bring ourselves to let him with a straight face.

Anyway, throw in a violin bridge repair, David securing two new hose assemblies in one week, strawberry pick up from the fund raiser, and all the normal stuff and it’s turning out to be quite the week.

I’m in the midst of reading Raising Right Brained Children in a Left Brained World. Very good book! I think what I like best about it is that it doesn’t trudge through philosophy or diagnosis but spends the bulk of it’s time on stratedgy for playing up to a thinker’s strength’s and developing thier weaker connections. I’ll have lots more to say about it when I write up an actual review but I’ve already started implementing alot of the author’s suggestions and I think this is going to end up being one of my more helpful reads.

I’ve got a kindred spirit here in Tim Richardson (shout out to Tim!) www.timrichardson.com. Being that we are both creative right-brained thinkers who will wander away from a partially unloaded dishwasher because something else occurred to us that needs immediate doing, he handed me the following survey questions:

“How often do you have difficulty keeping your attention on what people say to you, even when they are speaking to you directly?”

“When you have a task that requires a lot of thought, how often do you avoid or delay getting started?” (see my I’m not a Stupid-head post!)

“How often are you distracted by noises or sound around you?”

“How often do you feel overly active and compelled to do something, as if driven by a motor?”

“How often do you find yourself overly talkative in social situations?”

That’s just a sampling of what I can answer “very often!” to, as I’m sure Tim can as well. Tim and his wife Adele (a born cheerleader and encourager if there ever was one and probably, the wind beneath his proverbial wings) are partly why we are even here, in this town. They moved here from Florida a couple of years ago and were the ones who cheered us on as we tried what most of the world would consider a cliff-jump into the unknown. Thier enthusiasm and motivation is infectious.
As I read this book I frequently think of Tim as the example in my mind of someone not hampered by being a different kind of thinker than this left-brained world. He’s creative and daring and spontaneous and successful because he’s chosen a path that requires all of that; a good example of someone who is playing their strengths even if the world is more conventional. We need right brainers!! Tim is also my son’s cubmaster and father to one of his friends, which not only makes birthday parties and pack meetings totally fun, but also helps in that my little right brained kiddos are not viewed as “problem kids” by a left brained leader. I suspect our pastor is a right brained guy as well. A newly discovered wealth of positive role models, of successful people who aren’t necessarily conventional, seems to abound.

It’s occurred to me that one of things that makes this new environment so totally healthy for our family, even as we are homesick for the known world, is that it does play to our strengths and excersize our weaknesses, with encouragement abounding as well. We’ve broken our own molds right along with the ones others had planned for us and we’re finding our new skins to be quite vibrant with potential. Who knew?

Today’s her day. I have no idea how old she is…well, I have some, give or take a year on either side, if I attempt to do the math of my age minus her age when she had me or whatever. Doesn’t matter. The point is, birthdays come once a year to us all and this day is hers. As I age myself I’m less and less concerned with actual numbers. Hmmm. Wonder why that is?

She recently did something that reminded me of how determined she can be, how patient with biding her time to accomplish something she wants, never setting aside the goal until it’s seen its fruition. In my world, I call ‘em Big Hairy Audacious Goals (bhags). What was profound about this particular one was the timing of it all and the spontaneity in which she grasped it. For the past few years life had taken on a very rythmic regularity. The same things happened every week, every year, a certain numbness set in. It affected all of us and I think we all began to grow frustrated even as we seemed unable to do anything with it. We all just got used to not trying much new; just living life as we knew it. I’m sure that in the tradition of mothers and daughters I’m too hard on her at times, I put her in a box as much as we all do with those we know well enough to expect things from. And I think we all got to a place where we didn’t expect anything to be different from how it was.
This year has seen alot of changes! We moved away, they sold thier house, bought land, and and are now starting fresh. That’s the short version. If stagnancy ruled before there certainly is not much of it left. What was unforseeable in the rythm and drive of the previous year was the whole new world that we live in now. Which brings me to the setting necessary for the culmination of this goal of Mom’s.

She used to ice skate years ago. Several states away, years away, injuries and sore joints away. She held onto those skates, packed them up in a closet, but would never get rid of them and sometimes talked about skating again one day. I have to be honest and say that eventually enough time passed and life took on such a different pattern than would allow for mom on ice skates that I figured it would never happen. I don’t know how much she believed it herself. But what is evident is that she never let go of it, sore hips and all.

Enter our move here to a climate with four seasons. And….ice rinks. Mom has a certain grand daughter that dreamed of skating like the kindred spirit she is and when the kids added thier christmas money to thier savings they realized they had enough to buy themselves ice skates. Co-inidence or predestined events led to my family all coming for a visit after christmas and an activity needing to be planned and we found ourselves promising the kids to go skating.

And Grandma decided to bring hers. “I’m gonna skate with my grandchildren” she said.

Maybe that’s not so heroic to some. Who cares? It is. Those of us who live in the sway and shadow of her business year know that this visit was right on the cusp of “Easter Rush” and Pastor’s Conference. Mom already has a bad back and bad hips. She hadn’t skated in nearly 20 years. She wasn’t sure how sharp the blades were. I feel certain my dad’s reflux and anxiety went up several notches as the trip approached. I still didn’t really believe she’d go through with it, and I had a lump in my throat as we entered the humid chill of the ice rink.

When did I know she’d do it? Once the kids found out, there was little going back I suppose. The rink was pretty crowded that Saturday; she stayed with Celia while the guy sharpened C’s skates and inspected Mom’s. She laced up, she walked the mats. And then…

She skated! She never fell. There was a calm euphoria as she glided and showed Celia some steps. It wasn’t at night, outdoors, or snowing but it was beautiful. She went round and round; my dad breathed. I think he finally exhaled fully once she sat down and unlaced. And it was with a quiet, “I’m glad I did that” checking-off-the-list that she dried her blades and talked about selling them. Big Hairy Audacious Goal accomplished and laid to rest.

If she has a wish for this coming year, I’m sure it involves a certain amount of settletude. (Is that a word? If not, call it a Tia-ism). Calm and Quiet and Routine and most definately four walls and a roof on the farm for shop and home. It’s been a tumultuous few months and there are more coming. But my hope is that they both, Mom and Dad, don’t get too much of that calmness and routine…seeing them stretch and work together and shake the dust off old dreams has been revitalizing and healthy.

So Happy Birthday and many more! I love you Mom.

(It’s painfully anti-climatic but I have great pictures of this trip and they are all loaded and ready to insert into this post. Today, for whatever cosmic reason, Photobucket has shut down for maintaince and I can’t post them. So, here’s the post in time for the day but the pictures will have to wait.)

Because lately he’s cracking me up…

• last night, as I folded Mt. Laundry, and watched Wheel of Fortune, he came running in calling his brother and sister, “Hey guys! Vanna White is on!” And here I thought they just liked the word puzzles….
• this morning he came in to get warm in our bed after David left for UPS and when we woke up he shot me with those huge blues, the first words out of his mouth being, “but why can’t we start a fortune cookie factory?!”
• He loves dot to dots and today he brought me his puzzle book. It took me a minute to figure out what he wanted though because he kept asking me to find “my polka dots”

“I am always doing what I can’t do yet in order to learn how to do it.”

~Vincent Van Gogh

Very in keeping with the environment in which I was raised!

Highlights from this Lord’s Day:

• another gorgeous warm spring day, with a soft breeze and gentle air. As I savored my puddles of hollandaise sauce on the morning’s Eggs Benedict and hot coffee, we listened to a classical writing course. Not exactly sacred but edifying nonetheless. Favorite quote: “We read to be informed but we write to think precisely.”
• the windows were open in church, letting all that breeze and air envelop us while we worshiped. It was refreshing  and natural and completely unlike the large buildings with canned air of my past. Birdsong and psalm singing is a beautiful combination.
• we were invited to lunch with an older couple in our fellowship. They have a beautiful woodland home with corners of inspiring environments all over. We had delicious wine, fantastic conversation, and whole lot of encouragement for the afternoon. One funny thing…years ago our host sold computers to the company David’s mother worked for in Mississippi! He knew all thier names and we had a quite a few chuckles over the smallness of this world!
• spring is officially ushered in with the first salad supper of the season! Greens tossed in a Thai dressing, topped with mandarin oranges, dried cranberries, tomato, and salmon. We had strawberries and grapes along with it and tall glasses of ice water with lemon. Perfect for a warm evening and such a delight after winter’s heavy food!
• As dusk settled I watered the bulbs eagerly pushing up through the ground and when I was done there was a full moon rising, the green street lamp on, and a little five year old of mine in Wylie Coyote boxers (and nothing else) up in the top of one of our trees, naked little body illuminated by moonlight.
• Rocking said little five year old on the front porch rocker, watching the moon rise, and singing lullabies… he says, huge blue eyes staring, “Hey Mom. Did you know I know what Little Boy Blue looks like?” So do I…..

I feel a little like the town crier: “It’s 8:00 and all is well”   What an oasis of a day for our week.

One of the reasons I love Netflix is that I can peruse lists and lists of movies that I otherwise would have little access too. And I’m a so-called “movie lover”…I love the powerful ability of film to communicate and I’m willing to sit through and commit to a story and characters that I”m not always sure of where they are headed, or even if I like them, in the interest of discovering  some quality of the human experience articulated well.

For the most part, our Netflix selections have been pretty good choices. Not always orthodox or mainstream but usually evidental with merit. David’s a trooper, sitting through (or at least mostly through before fallng asleep) some pretty wrenching stories. I  have a penchant for selecting films that delve into some of the tangents I’d rather not actually live through but think I can glean something from the observation of. Or, alot of times, characters will follow something through to an end I would have halted, and it’s interesting to see some of the “roads not taken” and how they play out.

Not sure about this one. Thirteen is not a “movie”. It’s not entertaining and it’s not comfortable. I’m certainly not about to recommend it to people who have very different tastes than I. I’m not going to postulate that it’s an “important” film that everyone would benefit from seeing. What it is is part social commentary, part biography, part glimpse into an area most of us would like to pretend doesn’t exist. It’s not lovely but it is true. Teen age girls not only really have a potential for this kind of experience but it was the story of one of the primary character’s actual life.

Wrenching it is. I’d heard the performances were compelling (one reason I chose it) and they are…they capture effectively the frailty of youth, the desperation for attention and where the pain of rejection can lead. I wanted several times to reach into the screen and protect these characters from thier own destructive choices, from the dangerous threats all around them, from thier own demons. As hard it was to watch (and very uncomfortable at times), I was invested in that girl’s story and I wanted to see that she’d make it through okay. Or at least better.

It was, I think, suposed to be very shocking. Yet, even to my christian homeschooler in the middle America self, it wasn’t. I see the outward manifestations of girls like that all over and even though I don’t want to really “go there” in my head of how they got to the place where they appear that way, seeing it played out didn’t shock me. And even if was 18 or so years ago now and not as extreme as what the characters went to, my own transition into the teenage years was similar enough (and shared several of the underlying themes) to be believeable.

Which led me to another reason to select this film. I’ll soon have children in this age range. And while they may not face many of the outward displays many teens today do, they may have friends who do. And then there is the whole area of parental blind spots. We see what we want to see and often see past what we don’t.

I met a very sweet lady this weekend who became pregnant with her daughter at 16. She didn’t tell her parents until she was 25 weeks along. I asked her if her parents suspected anything in all that time and this was her answer:  “They probably saw it but they didn’t want to admit it and they never would have asked so it just never came up until I was getting so big and my walk was changing.” In other words, until it was staring them in the face.

In Thirteen, the mother sees past much as well. That tongue piercing on the movie’s poster isn’t discovered for weeks. She comes home high, steals, doesn’t eat for long periods of time, lies, and cuts herself right under mom’s nose. And Mom wasn’t clueless. She was a single mom trying very, very hard to reach her daughter and yet respect her. She’d thought she’d raised a trustworthy child, one who got good grades and had nice friends and wrote nice poems. The change, to the audience, seemed to happen rapidly but it was communicated well that in the pace of life and the hope we all have that our kids will be alright, it was easy to miss signs that outsiders would think were obvious.

Seeing it all grew my compassion. It reminded me of the reality of unlovely things I’d like to pretend didn’t exist. It educated me on what probably is very realistic of at least a portion of today’s young teens. It had merit but not like some of the other films on our list of late. I’m left wondering how much I really gleaned and yet hesitant to call it a “dud”.  David was wiped out…said it really was okay if I wanted to throw in Dumb and Dumber or a Bruce Willis, you know, just for some light hearted variety.

Bumblebees….FAT ones, are buzzing around the screen. I noticed today that there are purple blossoms all over the lawn. Quick! They’re easy to see past and miss. We ran through the Greenbelt and saw the willow in bloom, the water rushing, the daffodils (yes the daffodils again!), and had a Walnut-War. Phat Baby in his first real sneakers toddled all over the place. We bumped into friends; gotta love livin’ in a small town! I need a Cummings (or Cummins) poem on wind.
Home again, home again…weekly lunch of cheesburgers, real fries, and shakes while dancing the kitchen. Happy day…. Feelin’ mellow…here are the lyrics from John Legend’s Ordinary People:

Girl im in love with you
This ain’t the honeymoon
Past the infatuation phase
Right in the thick of love
At times we get sick of love
It seems like we argue everyday

[Bridge]

I know i misbehaved
And you made your mistakes
And we both got room left to grow
And though love sometimes hurts
I still put you first
And we’ll make this thing work
But I think we should take it slow

[Chorus]

We’re just ordinary people
We don’t know which way to go
Cuz we’re ordinary people
Maybe we should take it slow (Take it slow oh oh ohh)
This time we’ll take it slow (Take it slow oh oh ohh)
This time we’ll take it slow

[Verse 2]

This ain’t a movie no
No fairy tale conclusion ya’ll
It gets more confusing everyday
Sometimes it’s heaven sent
We head back to hell again
We kiss and we make up on the way

[Bridge]

I hang up you call
We rise and we fall
And we feel just like walking away
But as our love advances
We take second chances
Though it’s not a fantasy
I Still want you to stay

[Chorus]

We’re just ordinary people
We don’t know which way to go
Cuz we’re ordinary people
Maybe we should take it slow (Take it slow oh oh ohh)
This time we’ll take it slow (Take it slow oh oh ohh)
This time we’ll take it slow

It’s touching because a it’s real love song, full of the complexity and honesty in a long term commitment. Plus, his voice is smooth with a raw touch of reality; it sounds genuine, believable.

The clothesline is raised and the boys have a new foxhole. I’d kind of like to just lie down on my porch swing in the breeze and doze….

que the super hero music…..

Six Dell reps, all who eventually disconnected me when they got tired of not being able to fix the problem. Two Dell phone operators, one who told me I had software issues that would now start costing me more money (imagine a redheaded tempest over that) and one who told me it was Charter’s fault. One call to my Charter guy and rather than call me back, he drove right over.

Got on the phone with Dell and within 5 minutes convinced them of what he thought was the problem in the first place: hardware issue with the ethernet port. They are paying postage to have it retured, fixed, and sent back within 5 business days.

So, he saved the day, in a way. The integrity of Dell products still remains to be seen; I’m willing to supose that this inicident isn’t indicitive of the whole line. We’ll see. On customer service though, I believe I’ve gotten a very fair represation of what that is like. Unreal. Absolutely unaccepatable in a field as competetive as computer products and services. Consider me a spokesperson on why, at least women who are average computer users and not techs, should never, ever, ever, ever, ever buy a Dell.

Yesterday was the most beautiful day we’ve had in months. Daffodils and flowering trees of all kinds are in full bloom. C had a mother/daughter party last night and we had a blast, girls playing Twister and putting on plays, moms chatting and connecting. I met three new women and had fantastic conversation. We did groceries together at 11 pm and got home to tuck in all our boys. Today looks gorgeous too and I won’t be stuck staring at a screen!

I am totally taking a break from this computer CARP to rant on my experience. If you are uncomfortable hearing an angry redheaded woman, I kindly suggest you skip this post.

Now! Onto the reason for my total inflammation!

As back-to-the-land as I want to be, we don’t live in that world. We live in an increasingly technological age, one where it’s not quite possible to keep up, but where following behind at a fair distance (think wandering 4 year old behind mom as she shops here) is attainable. Or at least advisable. I like blogging and I like my forums and for cryin’ out loud we’re trying to set up two internet based businesses. So while we don’t have BlackBerries or palm pilots, phones that take pictures, or nano-pods inserted into our clothing, we do try to have a running, reliable computer.

For years, as long as we didn’t require much of them, hand me downs have been adequate. But this year it became evident that we needed to pay a little more attention to speed. To reliablity. To capability. So after months of homework and receiving our tax return, we made this purchase.

Homework told us to get a MAC. Friends told us to get a MAC. Other business owners told us to get a MAC. Our bank account and family told us to stick to Windows. “Everything comes loaded”. It fit into the budget, which is something in these Dave Ramsey days, that I pay close attention to. So off to Dell.com I went, to buy a name brand new beast with warranties and support and bells and whistles. I upgraded. I bought accessories to go wireless. I did cable and DSL homework. I even dared to imagine myself working over a cup of coffee out in the wi-fi world.

Well not so fast granny. You already know that the thing sat in the box for a few weeks while I convinced myself to go through the torturous excersize of change over. Once that began, you heard about my sore fundament from sitting so long, of the obstacles and brick walls I hit trying to transfer seemingly simple things such as identical versions of Thunderbird, Juno, and Firefox, of the neglected babies and unvacuumed floors. What you haven’t heard of is the tons of minutes spent on a hot cell phone with my patient brother in law, helping me for HOURS and trying to maintain his own day at the same time. Of all the “hmmmm…that is really bizarre” puzzles we’ve run into. And like truly naive hopefulls, we dared to pin our sights on the charter guy coming today, as an answer to some of the problems.

Sike!! To use a word from by-gone days. Try this on for size: two modems, the first one that I had to buy especially for this, didn’t work. Two cables didn’t work. The ethernet port doesn’t recognize that it’s plugged in (no light). The computer wireless card (yes, the one I paid to upgrade) doesn’t work. The hard wire doesn’t work. He thinks the whole lap top needs to be returned.

Well, no way does Dell just rush out to do that. Super kind Charter Man left me with a laptop with an ethernet cable hanging from it (we couldn’t get it out) and a modem and router fully functioning, should I ever get a computer to recognize that I’m paying for this nice service. Onto Dell.com, since they no longer offer phone service.

But they have live chat right?! Well kind of. Maybe it’s my old computer, maybe it’s dial up, maybe it’s alot of things. But it was s-l-o-w. And while Dell reps might have differing levels of patience, they all seem quite arrogant.

Service rep number one: Heard my discription of the problem, told me to plug it in with the hardwire and tell him what color light came on. Well… I CANT plug it in because it’s ALREADY plugged in and there is NO light. ( I did not use caps with him). He disconnected me, “Because, Tia, you are already using broadband wireless”. I’m no computer whiz, but I know when I’m using dial up or not. I know when my laptop says, “server not found” and “media disconnected” that no, Dell-jerkface, I most certainly am not USING wireless!

Enter service rep number two: much more patient. Actually waited to perform a ping test (yes, now I know what that is!) to get confirmation that there is no IP connection before concluding that my wireless driver needs to be reinstalled. Just download it and it will fix the problem. But wait!! I’m not ON that computer. I have to download it onto this old computer (which takes forever) and then transfer it to my external hard drive, then transfer it onto the laptop, and then how to install it? Well I haven’t found out yet because Dell-jerkface number two said I was too slow to respond and disconnected me. WELL I’M SO SORRY! SPEED IS AN ISSUE FOR US AS WELL, WHICH IS WHY WE BOUGHT YOUR STUPID COMPUTER AND ORDERED HIGH SPEED SERVICE! Oh wait..sorry. Before leaving she said the whole problem just might be that Windows XP is corrupted and will have to be reinstalled. Oh…the whole operating system in the first three days out of the box. I’m so delighted.

So who to believe? Charter man who says the hardware is screwed up? Dell Doofusses who don’t really listen? My gut, who increasingly wants to box it up, return it, and go get a MAC I can’t really afford? Dear Brother in law, who is going to be wonderfully sympathetic but lives so many miles away?

While waiting on downloads, there was one good thing that happened. I had plenty of time to fantasize about a computer company for WOMEN. Girl techs who speak in normal language that even housewives can understand. Products that are guaranteed and a support staff that really listens instead of giving the idea of a bunch of pale faced gamers in cubicals joking around about “this idiot I got here who doesn’t know if her computer is online or not! Dude!”

pardon the common vernacular of a 5 year old. It is, after all, the language of those I spend most of my time with!

I was not avoiding this computer transfer because I’m scared of technology. I don’t have intelligence burn spots. I don’t think this cute little laptop (or Microsoft) is really out to get me and I don’t think computers have some kind of AI that is going to soon take over the world.

Nope. It sat in it’s box for two weeks because I was procrastinating the major obstacles I knew I’d face. I knew that my inbox and email program would be hard, yet completely necessary, to figure out. I knew that the new keyboard would make blogging slow. I knew that nothing would go as we thought it would. I knew that I’d have to spend hours upon hours giving my kids a mere fraction of me, that the house would suffer as a result, things on our to-do list would get pushed back. Worse still, other people on the outside looking in would not understand and just wonder why I was so incapable of getting my job done.
So I ignored it. I checked to make sure everything got here in one piece and then set the pretty new computer aside. I made jokes about how I was too intimidated to face it. I let other people think I was silly and clueless. I called the cable guy and secretely rejoiced when they indicated the nearest appointment was weeks away. I whinned about computer problems to my dad because that was easier to talk about than saying the truth that I miss him so badly it’s painful.
And then all at once, like a broken tooth and the dreaded dentist visit, I knew it had to be done. We have business time lines that are stagnated. I knew the problem wasn’t going to go away the longer I put it off. Ironically I get angry when I hear others parot back my own goofiness…I don’t really want to be that person I was portraying in avoidance of a frustration. I am bigger than this darned computer!
So here we go. It’s every bit as difficult as I knew it would be. I constantly wonder if the homework I did was true and that a MAC would have avoided alot of this headache. The fridge has no milk, the laundry isn’t folded, my butt’s asleep from hours in this hard chair, family members wonder why I can’t orchestrate enough contact between kids and them, my inbox lies in jeoprady of not being transfered which later becomes an organizational nightmare. Thank God the weather has been nice and the kids have been able to play outside. That we have a nice stack of library books and the kids are actually interested in them. We have some excellent puzzles that have come out this week. I can look past floors badly needing to be vacuumed if the kids are at least busy and happy. They need me and as soon as I get this techno jungle navigated I’ll be back full-time. I’ll just have to smooth out the wrinkles of everything else later.
A little son just brought me buttery daffodils from the woods. Priorities are beautiful things.

Spring is here. Hang what the calendar says: the trees are budding, some are blooming like white cotton puffs. Daffodils are everywhere in shades from butter to gold and there are purple punctuations trailing not far behind. Birds are singing, grass is bright green, and at least for today, the sky is bright blue. With the hills it sometimes looks like Candyland.

I didn’t think my allergies would be much a problem. After all, we’ve had a good year with few colds which went against what most transplants here said would be the case. Monday morning I noticed it hurt to swallow. My first thought was, “cold”, not “allergies”. Yesterday I had to make an afternoon cup of coffee just to stay awake. I happily planned an early evening run between David’s homecoming and dinner with absolutely no consideration to sinus pressure.

Should’ve thought twice. For the first half of my run things went pretty well. I’m still getting  used to running when there are other real runners out; still awkwardly wonder as we jog towards each other if I should make eye contact or not. Still wonder if they look at me and think “amature”. I am, but I’ve been running pretty much since high school, with breaks off for babies, and I think I’ve been at it enough to know it’s not a passing whim. I just wished I looked more the part.

Anyway, I noticed something didn’t feel right halfway through the run, just after my first sprint. I could feel my pulse in my teeth. I slowed for my interval walk and I felt my head spin a bit. My side stitch kicked in and I felt really flush. My heart rate wanted to keep jogging so continued at a pretty slow pace.  I was trying to match my breathing to a 3:2 pattern but that seemed fast. My eyeballs started to feel like they were bulging. Then…..I thought my head was trying to sneeze out through my molars.

Not pleasant. Hot teeth, intense pressure. It took a long time for it to go away and once I finally figured out that it was just sinus pressure I quit imagining I was having some kind of traveling clot through my head like what they show on House. Like I needed one more obstacle to actually get out there and run, but I will definately watch out for high pollen days in the future lest my fillings spontaneously combust.

I love running though because it gives me tons of time to think. Something about the rhymic pounding of my feet and my patterned breathing and that zone helps drop my thoughts into organized files when previously they were just thown in piles on the desk of my mind.

Foremost on my mind yesterday were the current waves and ripples in the world of homeschooling. I’m always a bit discouraged when I hear of mom’s who throw in the towel. Sometimes using a school system, whether it’s public or private, is a valuable tool. Regardless of how we do it, parents are the ones responsible for how thier kids are taught and no one lives in a vacuum. I get that. But often, in sharing thier change of decision or method, they will share the why that came behind it, and that’s where my heart strains.

Homeschooling and the very different education it can offer is part of a big picture. When all is said and done I hope my children are better equiped to think, to reason, to learn for life, than I was. It’s a comparison of the end product. I understand why governement systems want to evaluate along the way for “progress” but apples and oranges couldn’t be plainer. Why would my children test well on a scale formulated for children using not only different materials, but a different basic philosophy in general? Except in the case of  co-incidence and overlap, they wouldn’t. But the process creates a monster of comparison nonetheless.

The big picture, the end result, the out-of-the-box product is getting lost. Pressure to conform, to fit into someone else’s dress, eats moms up. “We didn’t get to everything today so we’ll have to make it up tomorrow.”  Tomorrow comes and the work load is burdensome. Everyone is crabby, everyone miserable. Mom shouts and yells. Kids take a passive aggressive stance. She starts to realize she can’t remember when she was “just thier mom”, reading to them, baking cookies, and smiling. Things start to feel claustrophic.
But wait. Where did that “we didn’t get to everything” come from? Who imposed the everything? Who’s system was it? Who set the calendar we live by and what the reason behind that date system? I don’t see even the weather cooperating with our little calendar system. Take it away for a moment and imagine….

Children are eternal. There is a lifetime to learn what needs to be learned. It doesn’t have to happen by next May. What is May? Well, it’s the month they released farm kids to go help with the busy time of year with thier families. Is there really any reason I need to stress myself out to fit into a time schedule that has zip to do with my life, my philosophy, my end goal?

Who said “x and y” had to be part of the everything I’m breaking myself to accomplish? Does that person know my kid? Does that curriculum creator or government overseer care about my intentions and motivations? Did they consider that when they dictated what a school day should look like?

Who said homeschooling had to mean we were together 24/7? If mom needs a break (and dad needs to get more involved) should it wreck the time line and impose more pressure on her to finish if she takes some time off? I hear it all the time. “I really need a break but that will just make us more behind”. BEHIND WHAT?!? BEHIND WHO??! Really, I”m ready to get my sword out and get swacking at these little voices that discourage and drive us into the ground, making us doubt our real convictions.

I supose it helps a bit that I’ve always been an “outside the box” thinker. I won’t let the government put me in a box and I won’t let a curriculum seller or home educatation writer do so either. But I do fall prey to the same traps. Check lists of things to do are convenient. No one wants thier kids to be “behind” in anything and our world is rather unaccustomed to watching people learn and live on different continuums. We are fond of uniformity; it helps validate our own actions and desires.

All these pressures feed into a “grass is greener on the other side” kind of desperation. It’s not really. I sometimes say, “I know the other side has problems but at least they are different ones than these I have now, which I am so tired of!” That’s true. I just hope that in changes and choices in different tools, we don’t loose sight of the big picture. That we let our kids really learn and not rely on a “fake it till you make it” abilty to blend in. It might take longer than the charts and standarized tests say. Or, the topic may not really be worthwhile in the first place. At the least, it may not be worth sacrificing human hearts and relationships over. God lets us start fresh every day, homeschoolers included.

Ten years ago I was clutching the rails on my headboard, concentrating very hard. The midwife hadn’t gotten there yet but her two very capable assistants were helping get into a good squat up on the bed. One reminded me to open my eyes; I’d want to remember what this looked like. Someone’s head was about to enter the world.

By 3:28 that entire someone was here. They put that little wiggler on my tummy and my arm cradled him. Everyone was laughing and smiling and the afternoond sunshine was streaming in through the windows; my hand reached around and felt this baby’s bum. I had a BOY!!

And what a pretty baby he was to! Perfect little man features and the prettiest peachy skin. Eight pounds, four ounces, and a light dusting of red hair. A total dream come true. I named him when I was 12; I was sure my first born son would be an Andrew, and his middle name would be his father’s, and so it was. It means Brave And Strong, Beloved of God. And….so he is.

Last night he was up late as usual. Old insecurities lead him to try to stay awake until he knows we are down for the night. Yet another example of how it’s suposed to be the other way around but never quite is. His cheeks were puffy for some odd reason and just for a second it seemed I could easily see his toddler face: little staight bangs and overalls, white t-shirt and red keds. My little buddy in the garden, always by my side. It seems more often I get a whisper of that Man-Face lurking under the boy’s. Very soon he’ll be taller than I.

This boy is a strong one. A poet. Creative thinker who is catching more than he’ll let on. He’s got one of the strongest senses of justice I’ve ever seen. He’s asked for pork chops, brussel sprouts, asparagus, and cheesecake for dinner; he’s got his momma’s taste in food. He’s gardened enough with me that I could just about send him out there on his own and he’d do just fine. When he was 3 his daddy taught him how to say, “dilapidated” and he’s been a lover of words ever since.  He can just about kill both of us in Chess. He’s still happiest out in a tree where he’s as likely to enter a fantastical world the rest of us can’t see as he is to be counting the variety of woodpeckers he spies.

Ten. How’d we get to double digits already?

Saturday, rather than fields of daffodils in Cades Cove, brought us the library instead. After getting selections for school such as our composer of the month (Hummel), artist (Reynolds), biography (Patrick Henry), and fun reads on pottery, figure skating, and Van Gogh’s Table, I also picked up Raising Right Brained Children in a Left Brained World.

But I need a little break from Relational Aggression. Mean Girls Grown Up is still a good read; better when I skim over some of the testimonials and just stick to the author’s input. My mind has shifted to analyzing almost every conversation I can observe or be a part of, and picking out where RA is present. I needed a respite.

The cookbook section is generally where I head for a such a time. Big cookbooks, the kind with food and regional chat in them, for real reading and not just cooking experiments. We had cheeseburgers and fries on our evening menu because after a day of hiking (like we’d planned) we always want a big heavy meal. What I really wanted was one of my dad’s grilled onion burgers and his perfect fries. One of those days where he’d pop off the couch and heat up the fryer, dump in some perfect potatoes and we’d sit and ponder over sci-fi if the fry makes the ketchup warm or the ketchup makes the fry cool?

John T. Edge’s little book, part of a series, called Hamburgers and Fries jumped out at me. I started it in the car and finished it while David snored on the couch.  i’d made our cheeseburgers for dinner: sauted mushroom and havarti on top, with toasted buns. And the fries: double dipped wonders made with fresh potatoes and just perfect.

Edge was thorough. What Schlosser did with Fast Food Nation and Spurlock did with SuperSize Me, he’s done with greasy-spoon burgers. He ate  alot of them. Not a McDonald’s fan, he briefly touched on gourmet burgers running over $50 apiece, topped with truffles and made with foie gras, and then spent the majority of the book on every variation possible in regional diners.

Which brings me to the mistitle of the book. Fries get a mere 1/8th of the book. He believes their high point to have not yet come, for their history is not nearly as long as the burger’s. Well, okay, but in the field of variations out there, and when he quotes one restaurant as having had worked 8 months on getting thier fry recipe “just right”, it would seem more of the book could have covered it. McDonald’s even has it’s own fry research fascility, and one could argue, built thier chain on fantastic fast food fries.

Still, his venture into the world of burgers is amazing. He goes from every region: steamers in the North East, bean burgers in the Southwest, so called “Slug” burgers in the deep south, and the real classics everywhere in between.  There are a few recipes along the way, and cooking techniques should want to try to emmulate some of these concoctions. There are also TONS of big vocabulary words and big food words, foreign words, strange words. True, I was still tongue-tied from having read a long theological article out loud to David on Friday over the phone, but I”m no food writing neophyte; it seems to me that John T. Edge likes to have his thesausus handy and that some of the launguage was every bit as pretentious as those $59 burgers stuffed with gourmet ingredients, just to prove they could do it.

My burger was great and I learned a bit about the history of the American classic to boot. “Break Time is Over” as dad would say, and today, it’s back to RA.