About Not June Cleaver

I used to have a picture of myself here, but thanks to a wacko, all you get to see are my eyes now.  Maybe someday I’ll put my picture back up.

In January, I will be 45 and will officially consider myself old.  For now, I’m a fun and youthful mom of 3 boys, homeschooling and trying to raise my kids to be happy and successful (whatever that means).

We are borderline unschoolers.  I just can’t let go of some of my foolish schoolish ways, so we do have some formal curricula that we use.  We started homeschooling in Fall 2006 when I kept my boys home from kindergarten, 2nd and 4th grades.  It has been GREAT.  I only wish I had started sooner.

I love music.  I’ve played violin, trumpet, french horn, flute and piano.  The only one that really stuck was piano.  My playing stinks, but I have fun with it.  I have a really great Clavinova, and would love to compose music on it, but I’m too busy to figure out how.  I have about 3000 mp3s in my MediaMonkey database.  Now if I just had time to listen to them all (and all the ones still left to discover!).

Recently, I got a Nikon D90 camera.  I haven’t had an SLR since high school when I was an editor and photographer for the yearbook.  I adore taking pictures and am looking forward to figuring out how to make the most out of this cool camera.

I was raised Episcopalian and went to church regularly until college (and I was active in Young Life, a Christian fellowship group, in high school).  I pretty much haven’t been to church since high school.  The internet has really opened my eyes to religion, and I’m trying to figure out what, if anything, it means to me.  Religion and spirituality are very different things, so I’m comfortable with my spirituality, but not with religion.

Following is some old stuff I have posted since I started this blog in June 2006.

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(Originally posted 6/20/06 so ages and stuff are way off)

Now that public school is out for the year, I suppose that means I’m a homeschooler. We have wanted to homeschool since our oldest was entering kindergarten, but for many reasons we did not do it until now. I am the mother of three wonderful boys. Well, they are wonderful at this moment, because they are playing well together outside! They are Simon (ds 9), Alvin (ds 7) and Theodore (ds 5). No, those are not their real names, though I was quite tempted to do it! My husband, Ward Cleaver, and I have been married 13 years. Without his overwhelming support, I don’t think I would have survived the last 9 years as a mother. The journey to homeschooling was a long and difficult one, but I hope it will be as rewarding as I imagine it to be. Our homeschooling purpose is not religion. We value family and the love of learning, and we believe that the schools hinder both of those purposes. With this blog, I hope to document our journey and perhaps receive feedback and perspectives from others that I had not considered. Here are the chipmunks: The boys

10 Random Things About Me (originally posted on 10/26/06)

  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.  I have two master’s degrees, but I don’t know squat about some of the most basic stuff.
  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.

8 Facts/Habits Meme (originally posted 6/1/07):

  1. I get my morning caffeine in cold form — Diet Coke — every day. Three of them. I’m gonna die from it, I’m sure. I finally gave up this habit in April 2008. I’m off caffeine completely now!
  2. I like to study maps of all kinds. When I was a kid, my friends teased me because I knew where every street within a 5 mile radius of my house was — even little cul-de-sac streets. Google Earth is the coolest thing ever to be available to me. Now I can see aerial photos of places rather than just lines.
  3. I take off my shoes in restaurants and sit Indian style criss-cross-apple-sauce while I eat. Don’t tell my mother.
  4. When my hair gets too long and needs a trim, I mess with the dry split ends. It isn’t very attractive, but I can’t help it.
  5. I love Skittles and Neccos. Chocolate is OK, but I really prefer hard candy.
  6. Between summer 2004 and fall 2005 (for many reasons (the biggest one being Zoloft)) I gained 45 pounds. In 2006 I lost 25 of it, but I can’t seem shed the rest. Now I look like a 40 something mother of three — like I should, I guess. It’s the inside that matters, right? That’s what I tell my kids anyway.
  7. Perhaps number 6 is due to the fact that I send a monthly donation to the gym rather than actually visiting there 3-4 times a week the way I used to. I’m now faithfully working out twice a week and walking when I can. It’s working.
  8. I count things — like stairs, my steps when I’m walking alone, telephone poles, little screw holes in metal bathroom stall doors where hinges have been moved (yes, there IS a story behind that one)…

Silly Stuff

At the risk of offending anyone, I am putting this little tidbit here instead of on the main page. Obviously (for those who understand the reference) I’m a “Spinal Tap” fan. Recently I found some video clips from the movie on You Tube and copied the one referencing my blog’s title in the sidebar. On my quest to find it, I also found one of my favorite scenes from that movie:

Who Is Saint Hubbins and why do you worship him?

He’s the Patron Saint of Quality Footwear, of course! And I don’t actually worship him. Chris O’Donnell gave me that tag line ages ago and I thought it was appropriate given my lack of religion.

Since you are Not June Cleaver, why isn’t your husband Not Ward Cleaver?

While I am very obviously NOT June Cleaver, he is very much Ward Cleaver, the calm and understanding dad who disappears every morning and comes home every night.