10 Random Things About Me

Several people tagged anyone who read it, so without a specific tag, here are my answers anyway!

  1. I once played the violin on stage at Wolf Trap. It sounds way more impressive than it was. I was in 4th grade and it was a Suzuki festival. Mostly I was lost in the crowd.
  2. I have a nephew who was unschooled from 2nd grade and he got into AZ State on a full scholarship this fall. Maybe unschooling works, or maybe he’s just smart, or maybe both. However, I like to fall back on his experiences whenever I feel nervous about homeschooling.
  3. I could eat crab legs for every meal.
  4. I’m an expert at finding things on the internet. Somehow my mind thinks in Googlese. People who need to find information will call me and ask me to help them. Too bad I can’t make a living doing that!!
  5. My father was killed in Vietnam in 1967 when he was the age I am now (42). Since I’m the youngest of 6 children (all girls), my mom was left to raise us alone. She did a fine job, but she often doubts herself. Are we ever sure that we are doing the right things with our kids?
  6. Sometimes I dream in Spanish, but if you speak Spanish to me, I’ll stare at you like you are speaking Chinese. It must be in my head somewhere (I minored in Spanish in college), but I can never seem to pull it out when I need it.
  7. Thanks to multiple choice tests, I’m overeducated and underlearned.
  8. I’m a recovering pack rat. It took me years to finally realize that that little spiral bound notebook with 20 blank pages left in it was NEVER going to get used and that there is no need to keep canceled checks from 1987.
  9. I used to have almost 100 cookbooks. Thanks to kids, a picky husband, and the internet (particularly Epicurious.com) I’m down to “only” about 40 cookbooks.
  10. I’m addicted to music and I have more CDs/MP3s than any one person should have.

That’s me in a nutshell based on my mood at this very moment (thus the title “10 Random Things” I suppose). Unfortunately, (perhaps this is item 11) I second guess myself all the time and within one minute of publishing this post, I will have thought of a dozen other things I should have said instead of the ones I chose!!

Since this one seems to have been passed around a lot the last few days, I’m only going to tag Susan, Kris and Tammi.

October 26, 2006 | Filed Under Rants, Moods and Attitude | Leave a Comment 

Throw me to the wolves!

The excitement never ends! I’m headed off on a “runaway moms” weekend to the beach on Friday. We rent a great retreat-type house and 10 of us drop everything and run. This will be our third annual trip, but three new faces are joining the crowd this year — in particular, the school office secretary, the PTA president, and the former PTA treasurer from my kids’ FORMER school. Oh joy!

So the group now consists of me, the school office secretary, the PTA president, the former PTA treasurer, the current PTA treasurer’s wife, a former public school math teacher, a current public school ESOL teacher, and three other public school moms.

So I’m thinking I need to spend the week brushing up on my bean dip strategies. What do YOU think?

Aaaaarrrrrrgh!!

Update 10/24/06

Oh my! If nothing else, it was way too short. I am the perfect mother when I’m away from my kids. I love them. I miss them. I glorify them. Then I get home and reality sets in. C’est la vie!

So it was not nearly as bad as I anticipated, but there were some moments that I felt interrogated. I’d say that over the weekend, my homeschooling came up maybe 4 times. Mostly I think people were curious. Several made the “I could never ever do THAT” face. They never came right out and challenged me (unlike my good friend did when we went out for drinks last Wednesday night — YIKES that was a nightmare!). In fact, one of the women there actually wanted to homeschool her kids (she lives a few doors up from me, was the school office secretary, has three boys close in age but older than mine, and sends them to Catholic school). Perhaps she was the only one who even vaguely “gets” me.

The biggest challenge came the morning we were leaving and we had lunch at a little cafe. Out of the blue, one of the women said, “Sooooooo, what is the plan for tomorrow when you go back to the real world? Do you have a set schedule? How do you do that anyway? Blah blah blah….” I was torn between telling the truth and lying to her (and everyone else’s) face. In the end, I just said something vague like, “Well, we don’t have a set schedule, but we usually get started after breakfast.” And some conversation ensued among the women allowing me to say that it really doesn’t take much time to get through everything. I said something like it takes about 2, maybe 3 hours (choke, spit, cough — like it even takes THAT long) to get through everything. Dead silence.

Then something came up that blew me away, but not until HOURS later when I realized what happened. I won’t be able to describe this well, but somewhere along the way, the conversation turned to kids in school vs. kids homeschooled and how they take to learning. Of course, from my perspective I took it to mean that kids who have never been to school are easier to homeschool. I said something to the group about having met people who have done it both ways, or one way or the other and that there is a definite difference. I bit into my sandwich and the woman next to me said something to clarify to the group. I was only half paying attention. It wasn’t until we were driving home several hours later, and I was rehashing the conversation in my head that I realized she had said something affirming that kids who have been to school are easier to teach because they have learned how to take instruction! GAG!!!! How did I not realize that she said this??? I went nuts trying to decide if I should call her or e-mail her to clarify or let it go? I decided to just let it go. There really is no sense in bringing up a debate on the issue. I’d rather just let them all say “what the hell is she doing to her kids!?” behind my back — because I know that they are doing this!  :)

October 14, 2006 | Filed Under Rants, Moods and Attitude, Homeschool Issues | 2 Comments 

Trying a new theme and stressing out over “deschooling”

I’m trying out this new theme. I kind of like the way it is wide in the middle. I really love my old theme “Rounded” because it put a pretty box around the entries. Perhaps I’ll go back to that one in a few days. Who knows. I’m flaky.

Blogging has taken on a low priority around here. We are so busy with activities and stuff that I just haven’t had a chance to write. Also, as a perfectionist, I keep thinking I need to have something interesting to write about. That keeps me from writing anything at all!

We’ve been homeschooling over a month now, and we have good days and bad days. The other day, I was in tears over whether or not we are accomplishing anything. I was explaining to Ward Cleaver about “deschooling” when your kids have been in public schools, and how I know that it is OK that we often do nothing overtly educational in a day.  However, I still feel like I’m failing. Ward Cleaver says I need to deschool myself. He’s right. I need to stop stressing over whether or not we are covering the right stuff or enough stuff or doing it the right way. It is so hard to let go of my educational paradigm! We will be fine. THEY will be fine.

October 8, 2006 | Filed Under Rants, Moods and Attitude, Homeschool Issues | 7 Comments