Return!

Hello, I'm back from England and home at last. So far I've made a pillow stuffed with rosemary, ( the rosemary sweated so its actually pretty stinky) and planted some lavender. I would like to have enough lavender planted so that I could harvest and sell it. Also I started my flower garden. I cooked something that looked like caille and did not poison anybody. ( I toasted it lightly in olive oil with some fried onions, pepper, thyme, and summer savoury. Then sprinkled some salt, soya sauce, and extra pepper. The caille I used was pretty young. At least, I think it was caille.) The books I'm hooked on now are pretty much the same. Redwall, by Brian Jaques. A new one is The Lightning Thief by Rick Riordan. I really want the rest of the series. Nobody is going to believe me but I accidentally took my nephew's copy home which I will be returning soon. Soon.

Thing Two

Moments I Wish I Had Film For....

Thing Two and I are listening to the radio as we eat our fruit salad, yogurt and granola. We are about to leave the house for our first visit to a day long Gaelic immersion program which meets each Monday. The radio makes an announcement about a late bus in our area: ".... will be running a half an hour late due to mechanical problems". Without missing a beat, Thing Two chimes in, hand cupped to ear, slight smile, "and if you listen carefully, you can hear the cheering."

A conversation in which Thing Two says something funny, & Thing One tells her to blog it.

So Thing One and I were talking about impulse control. She asked me to give three sentences about impulses.

My sentences were:  Maria's first impulse was to run when she saw the bear.   Donald's first impulse was to laugh when he saw what the committee was wearing. Anne's first impulse was to stand still when she saw the strange bird.  Later we were talking about fixing ourselves before we fix other people. I said we could write a book. The title would be :

Impulse control with Thing One and Thing Two.

How to stop being such a bitch !  We did it, and you can too!

People may have doubts, but its true!  You can control your impulses!

                      

An Unexamined Life. No One is Going to Pin That One on Us.

According to Wikiquotes, Socrates, who gave us permission to navel gaze endlessly if all we happen to know is this one liner, "An unexamined life is not worth living", did not actually write the idea down. Born well before the days of blogging, Socrates instead traipsed around asking questions until he had a little band of followers. After his death, one of these followers, Plato, took on the job of creating a written record of some of the things Socrates had said.

I started thinking about that famous one liner because I'm not very satisfied with the last few posts I've made. This feeling of dissatisfaction is partly rooted in how long it takes me to spew out my ideas, or snotty questions to Thing Two, and in how little time there is in the day if I don't actually focus on doing the things which are so far in the back of my mind that they've actually fallen into the little hole filled with dustballs and important papers.

It seems important to me to keep a recorded conversation going here at Nowhere, and at the same time learn how to give the worldly important things, like filling out a bunch of long overdue tax returns, their due. Maybe I need a schedule, and more self-discipline.

I certainly need to review a lot of the information I have stored away in my brain, such as items from the collection of pithy sayings which are useful to pull out from time to time. But often I don't know much about who said them, or the context in which they were said. Luckily we now have our outboard brains. I'm sure trying to find the book of quotations which probably exists somewhere in the house, would have taken much longer than typing "an unexamined" into the top of Chrome and having the rest of the phrase pop up for my surfing pleasure.

It was interesting to take a romp round a few sites, reading up on Socrates, because so much of western culture refers back to ancient Greece and the conversations which began there. Seeing a painting of the death of Socrates, painted by one of the artists we studied in, I have to admit I'm confused by this, 19th century art history?... reminded me of how much there is to know about yesterday if the art of today is going to make sense.

Well, maybe not of today, are any rappers rapping about Socrates or Plato? Am I ready to recognize rap as art? Heck, I can't even remember if I took one art history course or two... ah, two, and Jacques Louis David would have been in 18th century, that makes more sense. Whew, the brain isn't completely mush. I will forgive myself for the confusion on the grounds that the themes and the references are so intertwined... which is part of my point on why I hope Thing Two will actually read the information I've linked to.

That's about it for examining my life for this morning. We are supposed to be at the riding stables in an hour and 35 minutes and the rider is still sleeping. I go to bed with good intentions of going walking to start the day and wake up unwilling to do battle to raise sleeping beauty, or to leave the fire unstarted. Must come up with a better plan! One that requires no enforcement!

Oh, Do Tell, Thing Two!

How very interesting!  What's the story? Who was involved in the study of these topics? What have you learned about each of the topics you list? When did you learn these things? Where did you study these skills?  Why did you choose to learn these particular skills? How did you learn each new thing? Have you studied grammar or proofreading at all?

What have you learned about schedules? Have you prepared a schedule for next week? What about for the April to June term? How are you coming along with that schedule? How's your report coming for the end of this term? What do you think you want to tell the Department of Education about your progress?

How do you evaluate your progress? If you abandoned the goals for this term that were on the original schedule, did you replace them with another goal? Maybe you did, but you didn't articulate it yet. I think that would be a bit like planning a grand journey without choosing a destination. I'm pretty familiar with that journey myself.

As for the library, what have you learned from the books you have been reading? What have you been reading? We have seen that you have provided a link to the Redwall series. Been reading anything else? What is it about the books you have been reading that has engaged you?

Are there specific books you want to find at the library, or do you just want to go fishing there?

What have you learned about gardening? Do you have an interest in gardening? Is it your own?

Okay, okay, I'll stop with the questions. I got up on the wrong side of grumpy. I worry about you. I see that you want to take the reins, it's a natural thing. And I see that we are easier in each other's company lately but I feel that you are not being well served by your time at home, we let things slide. You keep reminding me that you got expelled from home school as if that gives you leave to just wander through the days, exploring amazing things, like what good tops thumbtacks are and whether you can manipulate their path across the kitchen table by blowing on them... all good clean fun,

But, what if you need more than a wander through life? We don't even walk anymore. For me, it seems as if what you have learned about schedules is how to avoid following them! We have never discussed your being expelled and tried to resolve the issues that got us there. Time to read Summerhill, or just check out their site.

You've had cabin fever and started talking about boarding school, so of course I started thinking about it too, about what you are missing out on by being here with an adult instead of in a gang of kids. About the potential that you have ways of learning that you need to know more about, so that you can develop strategies to achieve what you want, whenever you decide what that is.

The weather is taking a break from being cold windy and damp and I'm going outside to work on cutting down the huge rose hedge, the hedge I planted. So easy it was, just drove branches in the ground from the rosebush that was getting too large below the kitchen window.

The rosebush with the sweet little white blossoms in summer that fill the air with a lovely scent for a few days each summer. The rosebush with small hips the partridge and waxwings like to lunch on. The rosebush my dear Aunt Jean gave me, as a little slip in a  coke bottle, with the words "You can't kill this."

I gave it a good try, leaving it in the coke bottle, on the kitchen windowsill for the better of the summer, while I tried to work out where to plant it. Yeah, it took me a long time to figure out the code. Beware of plants you can't kill. Habits can be invasive too. What habits do I want to change in myself? I'll think about that while I work on the rosebush project.

Learning, yes.

Hiya! Its Thing Two!  In the time that I've been homeschooling I've learned a lot about stuff that might not learned in regular school. I've learned alot about woodworking, and schedule making. I learned that starting in the middle doesn't work. Gardening and building and listening. Getting along with people. And getting a job done sooner rather than later can save you alot of work.

I've also started a small series of drawings. The Nervous Knight was inspired by some shoes, long and metal and pointy. I've drawn the knight from the front and back holding out his sword and shield. Imagine walking up to fight a dragon. Brr.

I've also got some major cabin fever, brought on by the bad weather meaning I cant go outside and nothing new to read. VOTE FOR LIBRARY! 

Connections, You Say? Invasive Weeds, Kids, and Parenting? Time to Draw the Lines!

Here's my chance to amaze you all with just how slowly I do figure things out. I've probably read everything I'm about to say in some parenting book or article at some point, and more than likely, unless you are still a young, not-yet-a-parent type person, so have you.

The key points on why invasive weeds and kids are similar:

• Recognize the innate beauty of your weeds and your children.
• Not all plants have to be roses to smell sweet.
• Not all kids have to be interested in the same things you are to be interesting.
• Appreciating the positive qualities of both weeds and children vastly improves the relationship.
• There's a lot of talk about control, cooperation is more effective. Either way, thinking is required.
• Research and observation, trial and error, practice, practice and practice some more.

So, with my tansy, the tansy of my dreams when I read the seed catalogue, it was going to be a lovely, unusual herb and we were going to be "blessed" with a lack of ants. It is not unusual anymore, at least not within about 400 feet of my house, rough guess, with some clumps appearing well down the road. Absence of ants is not a good thing, except in the sugar bowl or at a picnic. Wanting to please my mother brought about unintended results. I have been frustrated by the existence of tansy in my garden. If there is a parent out there unwilling to admit the temporary insanity of frustration with beloved children, please speak up, I want to gaze in amazement at you and your kids.

Last December when I was writing up the schedule for this term I kept asking Thing Two, so what about this, shall we do that? She kept picking up her head from whatever novel she was absorbed in, and saying some version of  "sure, sounds great!" I kept thinking about all the interesting things we would be doing and how the learning this term would set us up for the April to June term. I pictured us getting to the end of March, round about now, and being busy planning how she was going to set up her market garden business over the summer. Doing garden plans, spreadsheets, costing out seeds and working out how much time it would take to plant, maintain, harvest and take to the tailgate market in town. Looking at prices of vegetables and working out what she might expect to earn, and how much she might have to pay in costs.

Just like picturing the tansy as a plant that stayed where I put it and did what it said it would do, I pictured her researching cultures and creating dioramas and little posters and booklets and presenting these to, say a nice little group of folks we'd invite over. I pictured us beating her math demons into submission and improving my ability to read French with guidance from her demanding ear. I could go on about my imaginary three months.

The point is though, that imagination, useful as it is, does not actually move us from an idea to a finished product unless we have truly embraced the desire for that product and are willing to put in the planning and put down the distractions and haul or dance ourselves through all the steps between the glowing perfect imaginary X and the real X. I'm going to let you think about that for a while and go back to doing other real world projects. Projects that will help Thing Two be able to do the things she is interested in doing, and which I know I will enjoy as much, or more than I enjoy the feeling of great wealth I experience raking up my unexpected bounty from those few tansy seeds planted so long ago. 


May Thing Two's willingness to speak her own desires and tell her own stories increase with each passing day, and with each passing day may she realize that making decisions to please her mother, or anyone else, is sometimes a generous gift, but one which must be made with great caution, lest in her anxiety to please others,  the thread of her own great weaving become entangled in a thorn bush of confusion. For each of us, in whatever garden we live, it must be our own, and while we share its abundance and its care with others, still we must remember and ponder this: "The best fertilizer is the footsteps of the gardener."