A Two Day Week? What Part of Nowhere Do You Live In?

Thing One, me, reads Thing Two's post below and thinks, "How different and beautifully joyous the world is, seen with her eyes!"

My week seemed to have the usual number of working days, with a notable absence of Sunday, owing to having missed Saturday. I worked outside the home, as the survey writers like to phrase it, on Friday and Saturday. Since my paid job is a small, fairly intermittent bit of fol-de-rol, I don't have a strong routine built to accommodate the time I miss out of this life.

For those days, Thing Two went to visit her dad and got paid to stack wood. They had some laughs together, too. She was thrilled to get paid actual cash, which is not part of the ethos here for work which sustains our home. Paid work is a splendid motivator.  I wish I could find a stand-in for dollars in the "sticking to the school schedule" sweepstakes.

We also went out to a party Friday night and ran our sleep reserves into debt. Thus energy, patience and stick-to-it-ness were in somewhat short supply during the early part of the week. We declared a rain day Monday, in the hopes that trying to insert a second day of weekend into the week would improve us. The success rate on trying to pretend that house/school/life work was not piling up as the hours went by was zero.

For me the week had a downhill roll. That means I was learning a lot. Some of it was quite uncomfortable. Some of my learning had to do with how differently Thing Two and I see the basic outlines of what passes for communication between us. You may have noticed that her posts so far have my ghostly "bossy old woman" presence lurking around the edges, using words like "should" and doing things like reminding.

Meanwhile, I'm yattering on, hoping not to bore you, and knowing that what Thing Two adds has freshness and energy to satisfy our imaginary busy readers' appetites for a taste of our world. If such readers or appetites exist. (Cue music by the house band, Anxious Doubts).  My last post laid out our schedule, which you may notice, did not include writing a blog. The original hand-written copy has a little notation around lunch time that reads "day planner", a shorthand for some unrealized expectations from our first few months together, May and June of 2009.

So, I am eager to get caught up with this blog, give background and get past it, so that our posts are short and snappy and current. Thing Two, thinks I, is not the only Nowhere scholar with an imagination. In my imagination she and I take turns, more or less, recording what we are learning. Enter discomfort.

On the walk Tuesday I told her about her Dad saying she was a hard worker. That led the conversation round to entrepreneurship. Coming down the hill, I  thought we made a plan for Thing Two to write a great segue from the schedule post to the next post I was already mentally composing, by telling folks what the entry on our schedule called EntrePShip means. Sure to be funny, given her view of our current text's title:  Bookkeeping Made Simple.

What she had learned earning and spending money from working at her Dad"s was a great place to start. I even thought we had the first few opening lines of her post written. In my mind the next bit of the day was going to flow like this: while I make breakfast, Thing Two will write this tasty little appetizer and then during Independent Study I can write more about our schedule.


Transitions are vexed. Every parent knows this. Every parent wishes transitions were like the smooth glide of a figure skater from one amazing jump to the next. Even my long standing membership in the class of every parent seems never enough preparation for the transition that goes this way: the person in front of you says "watch out for the ice."  You land flat on your back and realize that seeing stars is not just an expression.


We are in the house. Thing Two is at the computer. I am making breakfast and watching the clock, wanting to be ready to listen to the news en français et commence parler français avec nos petits déjeuner. Thing Two has not sat down at the computer with a rush of enthusiasm. Wriggling and whining is taking place. I am focused on my goal, words are spoken. As I pass by the computer with dishes to ready the table, Thing Two is translating her sigh and grumble into the New Post window this way: "I'm being forced to..."  Awww, no. Hear my head hitting the pavement?