pescacide

You'd never know it by looking at us, but we love to kill fish. Particularly sweet, innocent, 7-for-a-dollar goldfish purchased by our eager 8 year old, proudly, and with her own money. Our neighbors would tell you we are quiet, and keep to ourselves, and that aside from our egregiously neglected landscaping, we are normal folk. They'd be aghast to know that we have been flushing corpses by the dozen. It all started when Reilly caught some minnows in that sludge, er, pond at Wallace Marine Park, and brought one home. We were forced to house this rags-to-riches fishy, and Todd bought him a sweet little condo outfitted with many accoutrements. For all the lavishing, this silvery ingrate lasted about two weeks. To soothe Rei's ever-animal-loving heart, we bought what she calls, "like these weird red minnows," who also keeled over, one by one. Well, three by three, really. Next up were scads of guppies, too many to name, which is just as well since they were a really dysfunctional lot. The way Reilly remembers it, "Well, the dad died, and the lady at the pet store said it was because the mother annoyed him to death, so I bought another dad and he also died of annoyance. That's when the babies all died." I guess the mom croaked out of loneliness. I know what you're thinking, that we were careless in our treatment of these fish. Nothing could be further from the truth. Todd is meticulous in the maintenance of the tank, the pump, the lights. Hell he probably would have given these bastards full body massages if he could have caught them. It wasn't our fault.

With every death I suggested we throw in the towel and get the fucking obtuse tank off of my counter, but Rei would invariably come bounding in with fresh hope in a baggie. This is when she changed course and bought the seven goldfish. First I was really irritated at the arbitrariness of selling seven of something for a dollar. When I finally got over that, I hoped against hope that at least some of these little guys would survive our death chamber. Rei's favorites of these were Click and Fin. They outlived their tank mates by several weeks, but alas, just last Tuesday I found Rei sitting at the counter, by the tank of death, head in arms. Upon closer inspection, I saw that she was drawing a goodbye card for Click, shown above, who had croaked in the night. With tears in her eyes, she dated it and did her best to accept that we kill every fish that swims into our lives. Even the ones we name. We have one left, her beloved Fin, and I am absolutely dreading the moment that Fin becomes Finito. You know? What did we do wrong? We did everything by the book, tried several kinds of fish, food, etc., and still no dice. Did we miss something really obvious, like fish don't thrive in manufactured homes??? Ugh. As much as it's a part of life, and part of nature (in our case, science for the year, lol), I hate seeing Rei well up every other day. She's losing faith. I'm tempted to buy her a pony just to cheer her up. (Yes, of course it would be a Shetland Pony, what with our cramped living room.) Anyway, if anyone has any ideas, p-l-e-a-s-e let me know so I can put the kibosh on this serial killing.

This is Fin, and our tank of doom.

idk, rofcrying?

I'm just going to say it: Internet lingo and text-ese are beneath me. That is to say, I am too good to speak that way. Aside from the occasional "lol," you will never get a text from me that says, "c u soon" or "plz dnt be l8." I shudder to think of just how low the bar has dropped since cell phones and computers have become so ubiquitous.

This is not to say I am not aware of this vernacular, spreading like a rash. I don't like getting "w/e" any more than the next guy, though "j/k" has brought relief from time to time. Lately though, the language seems to be escalating from abbreviations to full-on phrases, represented by a letter or sound. Adam recently showed me a series of online skits that revolved around Gen-Xers speaking solely in this fucked-up verbage, and while the grouchy grammarian in me slit its throat, I wound up laughing until I peed on their couch, shrieking, and begging for more. Amidst shouts of "first," "false," and the supremely entertaining demonstration of "roflol," my personal favorite, and the cause of the faulty bladder, we kept hearing what sounded like "poned." Being that all three of us are too good for this form of "speech," we had no recourse but to look it up. It's actually "pwnd," a derivative of "owned," which means, quite logically, to get the better of someone. So we began teasing each other with random (until it wasn't random) interjections of "pwnd!"

This charming little trend bled over into a few nights later when B and I had dinner with some friends, one of whom was our beloved Jacob, whom we "pwnd" until he became a trifle less friendly. The next morning I was instant messaging with Jacob, using my correct English in all its luster and glory. Suddenly Jacob typed, "POWNED!" I laughed so hard. Quinn walked over and totally laughed, mostly because he thinks he's the one cool enough to have an inroad into this scintillating world of broken down junk speech. He is at once endeared to my knowledge of such things, and disturbed that I think I can pull it off. Anyway, he fully appreciated that I got owned by Jacob, and walked away laughing.

Cut to this morning, in the very wee hours, when I moved Quinn to his bed after finding him on the living room floor. As I tucked his covers around him, he raised his head all wobbly-like, eyes closed like a newborn mouse, and said, "Mama? Can you please tell Jacob pwnd is spelled p-w-n-d, not p-o-w-n-e-d?" Dear God. "Okay honey, I will tell him." I mean really, does a mother laugh or cry at that? On one hand, this child, whom I struggle everyday to educate, knows about pwnd. On the flip side though, he cares that it is spelled correctly. Part of me thinks he'll benefit from being so versatile, that he'll have the best of both worlds. But truthfully, there is no "best" in that junk heap world, and I want both my children to rise above it. Jacob calls me a "Nazi bitch," which I take a compliment.

When it comes to language, I've been owned by propriety...or is it ownd?

(Adam? Can you hook us up with the link? I couldn't find it anywhere.)

yo ho homeschooling

There is always much interest surrounding the various methods of homeschooling practiced by those of us crazy enough to have chosen that path. I have friends who use Sonlight, Abeka, the Charlotte Mason approach, The Well-Trained Mind, and many many others.

The truth is, I can scarcely even say we homeschool with a straight face. So delinquent are we that even the unschoolers are on their way to my house to issue a misspelled demerit. I have a ready supply of disclaimers, depending on the skeptic with whom I am talking, but they're all bullshit. The truth is, I don't particularly relish doing lessons, and I am really lazy about them. We have spurts of shining productivity, and then droughts that resemble the great potato famine. I console myself with various lies, and some cherished truths, like, my kids are learning all kinds of things each day, whether they're doing drills or depositing money into their savings accounts. (They certainly know how to make withdrawals!) They're excellent readers, which is the most important thing to me, and they're right on target (or a little ahead) in math. Those are kind of my fundamentals, and the rest is gravy. I know, I know, I can't wait to polish my Cop-Out of the Year trophy. (Also, mmmm...gravy...)

If pressed to claim one method over the others, I'd have to go with ... the piracy method, I think. For the first two years, Brandy, goddess of all things homeschooling, tailored a curriculum specifically for my kids, and we adhered to that for dear life. That is, on the days we did anything. Her material was mostly aligned with The Well-Trained Mind, as well as her own seasonings mixed in. It suited us beautifully. My kids learned to read quickly, and the math program (Singapore) couldn't be going better. But I've grown complacent.

Hence having resorted to piracy. Since we roam the homeschooling seas with no place to call home, we dabble in a little bit of everything, and lots of nothing. If I find myself in a group of moms chirping about various successes, I make mental notes and see what of their regimen I might steal. When two of my friends happen to be reading The Secret Garden to their kids, I race to Borders to buy it too. When Brandy is tiring of her military-style routine, and wants to become all artsy in her instruction, I declare an indefinite holiday for my kids, and wait to see what the changing tide will bring. Everything intrigues me, and everything overwhelms me, so each day is a roll of the dice. We're still using B's outline as our trusted standard, though it is subject to my vigilantism. Sometimes, our lessons are folding laundry and learning how to bake biscuits, other days find us learning just how many miles we can eke out of $4.55 worth of gas, while other times we do a unit study on all six seasons of Northern Exposure. (It took 6 weeks!) And yes, for the stickler types, my kids know the parts of speech and their times tables. Reilly can count/divide/save/convert money like nobody's business, and Quinn's penmanship and spelling are virtually error-free. (And as a bonus, his hair is short again, which I know is OT but it makes me so happy to report it!)

While our lackluster attitude may seem unschooly to you, I am pretty fiercely opposed to being called an unschooler. We know and love plenty of them, but I am far too controlling, neurotic, and competitive to have a hands-off approach. But we're no beacons for homeschooling either. We're just a roving band of semi-schoolers. Some days kick our asses and some days we're kicking ass, just depends. I usually issue days off for things like rain, sunshine, wind, definitely hail, and those cozy grey days, but we've also been known to stay up until midnight finishing books, correcting math, and preparing displays for the various fairs for which B is constantly signing us up.

(I can just feel all my libra friends grinning and nodding at the dichotomy that is our education process. Except for Gail, who sets her curriculum in a stone tablet and follows it with careful precision, and by the way, was an actual teacher, so we can all feel just a trifle less inferior, lol.)

There is a modicum of guilt and shame that comes with being unaffiliated, as it were. I definitely know what we're not, I just don't know what we are. Some days it's liberating, while others find us searching for any port in the storm, you know? I assume my little buccaneers will embark upon adulthood with at least one or two marketable skills with which to earn enough doubloons, and they'll always have the warm memories of being wanted and home with me everyday. If it doesn't pan out, I guess I'll be walkin' the plank...


Blimey! We all showed up for school wearing the same thing.

bad boy bands 101 (isn't that redundant?)

Quinn and Reilly are way into You Tube. They've seen every crazy cat dancing to Old Time Rock and Roll, as well as every tactical Halo scenario played out a hundred times over. So as You Tube was left open today, following our most cacophonous and eclectic music fest at breakfast, I slid into the deejay chair and grabbed the kids for a jaunt down memory lane.

Inspired by Quinn's fondness for George Michael's Faith, I also put them through:

You've Got it (the Right Stuff)--New Kids on the Block
Step by Step--New Kids on the Block
Girl You Know it's True--Milli Vanilli

It was pretty much mutiny by this point. They had lost all faith in me, pardon the pun. Sure, yesterday Quinn was having a regular ho-down to John Denver's "Thank God I'm a Country Boy," (his very first favorite song, age 1) but he was so afraid of Milli Vanilli's shoulder pads he almost called 911. They denounced all the lyrics, dance moves, and "costumes," and accused everyone of lip-syncing. They were decidedly underwhelmed. But I made the most out of our time travel, and counted this and our subsequent dialog as our music and/or history for the day, which I think is ingenious thank you.

this spud's for you

I have famously opined that potato bugs are so ugly they will make you cry. Inexplicably, this fact came up in Quinn's therapy appointment today, and I declared, with great gusto and authority, that these insect-like demons are too awful to behold. Anthony, the therapist, looked at me with the same quizzical expression I've seen on the faces of so many native Oregonians. The reason being that Oregonians call sow bugs "potato bugs," for some mind-boggling reason, and as such, they are forever wanting to defend their endearing roly poly little critters against my vehement slander.

But a potato bug is another story my friends. The last time I saw one I was about six, and my older brother found one in the yard. It was all nestled into a hole, on its back, and when we peered at at, the gruesome fucking thing reared its head and screamed, and by God, it had its eyes trained on us! I am not kidding. So abhorrent are these beasts that even though I have often wondered if my childhood memory bore any resemblance to reality, I have refused to look them up. For 24 years. Until today. After it came up in the session, Quinn's interest was piqued and he felt a great need to see one, so I cleverly convinced myself that doing so would be our science for the day (hooray Mom!). I literally trembled as I typed the words into Google, and I quickly prayed to die as I hit go. And there they were. A whole page of these monsters, all ready to hiss, curse, and look at us. Naturally I felt them crawling all over me, and Quinn too shuddered from head to toe. But we looked. We were brave. And now we want to share them with you, if you think you can stand it. I do have to qualify this by saying that they are 1,000% uglier, meatier, and crunchier in person, when they are screeching obscenities at you. But at least this way you're safe. Can you dig it? Potato bug. Sow Bug.

it'sy bit'sy nightmare

As I mentioned, last night B and I had dinner with (K), a college professor who teaches writing locally. We revered and dissected writing and grammar (convention) every which way, over margaritas, in hopes of gleaning useful ideas for teaching our kids at home.

This meeting has inspired me to say two things.:

A) Brandy is officially debuting as "B," which I have always called her, and which she has readily accepted as an alternative to/antidote for, her long-detested Brandy. So please join me in bidding adieu to the moniker that has brought her so much loathing, and let us celebrate the uber-cool B. (I hope I haven't cheapened the hype by not knowing how to use umlauts on a computer. I should have called Adam...)

B) If I were a super hero, I would be Picky Grammar Bitch. (I know I know, I wouldn't be very popular.) I see rampant and flagrant misuse of everything from spelling, to diction, to punctuation, everywhere I look, and I just have to vent a little, lest I resort to cutting. Now, I am, by no means, an expert, but I inarguably care more about this than virtually anyone else within a hundred, er, million mile radius. I am not out to embarrass or scold anyone, I just want to spruce things up a bit, in a helpful way.

Okay, so the most pervasive problem I see is the use or non-use of an apostrophe in the words its and it's. Here's your out.: The confusion lies in the fact that its is one word that is not made possessive by an apostrophe. If one were talking about Bob, and his books, one would say Bob's books. But if one were referencing the library, and its books, there would be no apostrophe, even though it's (it is) possessive. The apostrophe is used as a contraction, not for possession. Does that make sense? Am I a bitch? Wait don't answer. They are both rhetorical.

It's rude and ego-centric of me to post this.
But that doesn't minimize its validity.
It's something I will likely regret.
And its relevance only matters to me.

Feel free to hack apart my writing and show me what a hypocrite I am.

It's only fair.

good-bye, ruby tuesday...check

Sometimes even a serial over-scheduler outdoes herself, and today is one of those days. I say is because, well, there are many ways in which to interpret 'is,' as we learned from President Clinton, but I used it because my days is still in progress. My Tuesday looks like this.:

Wake up early and not resent everything

Clean my house, including hanging 4,500 of my wet garments so they don't shrink.

Get kids up and ready without yelling.

Post a blog for Gail.

Answer four urgent emails, despite running late.

Straighten my hair (talk about tedium).

Drop the kids off with my mom, after mediating the fight over the BACK SEAT!?!?!?!

Go to the dentist for a cleaning; force them to reiterate how beautiful my teeth are.

Pick up my gym clothes.

Buy .7 cents worth of son-of-a-bitchin' gas.

Hit Old Navy in search of more of a certain kind of elusive socks for Quinn.

Drop in to B's to rifle around for some grub.

Rendezvous with my FANTABULOUS psychiatrist; confirm that I am still crazy.

Return to B's to wait for (K).

Write this blog.

Have dinner with (K), and hopefully drinks.

Have tea with Megan at Starbucks, DON'T FORGET MORE COFFEE GROUNDS for B's garden.

Drop off B's dad's birthday gift in NE Salem.

Hit the gym with B, work our guts out.

Drive B home.

Call Todd to tell him to let the kids stay up so they remember who I am.

Come home and kiss them until they push me away.

Read chapters 3 and 4 to them.

By then it will be sunrise and we'll have Wednesday's list to contend with.

don't fence me in

It must be in the air. B is tiring of her homeschooling routine, and I am once again straddling the homeschool/public school fence, and let me tell you, the fence post is, well, right up my arse. (Sorry Gail)

I go through this approximately 85 times a day, but every so often I start to lend serious thought to the notion of sending my kids to school. There are several reasons for this, not the least of which is that I spend an equal amount of days unschooling as I do teaching, and I am fundamentally NOT an unschooler. I too am bored with our lessons, and I am easily swayed off course by factors such as rainy days, sunny days, and windy days. And the first sign of sniffles entitles us to at least five days off. But there are other reasons too. My kids desire to be around other kids. We have a little co-op, and those nine kids are pretty tight, but (insert reason here), and we don't see them as often as we used to. Also, I think the structure might be good for them. I think my unpredictability renders them somewhat frazzled, and never knowing what to expect. I make up for this with Ambitious Mondays, whereupon I announce that we will be completing 105 pages of math, to compensate for my complete and utter failure.

I assuage my guilt and shame by reassuring myself that my kids are bright, and learning a vast array of things even when we're not slaving away at formal lessons. But come on. Even I know it's a cop-out.

The school my kids would go to if we went that route, is Pratum, a tiny two-room country schoolhouse with two teachers per grade, and three grades per room. So, six teachers in each room. A dear and trusted friend, whose son has attended Pratum since kindergarten, and who is also a teacher there, was just telling Todd how the kids are very close-knit, welcoming of newcomers, not prone to bullying or other loathsome public school behavior, and that she thinks Quinn and Reilly would do very well there if we opted to try it.

The post up the arse is really starting to ache now.

And, in what is both a blessing and a curse, this decision is mine alone. Todd has always entrusted me with the choice of where and how to school the kids. And while I appreciate the privilege, I am drowning in indecision and doubt. B, my most revered and trusted advisor on the subject, says to make a decision and stick with it boldly and with confidence. Sometimes I wonder if she's ever met me. It's very difficult to act with such resolve when everyone in my life, and their grandmothers, are telling me what I ought to do, and all the input is conflicting. Todd's a libra, and even though he doesn't believe in being a libra, his position is at a solid 50/50. My mom, libra. Sam, libra who knows this internal tug-of-war better than anyone. My mother-in-law never fails to espouse the virtues of public school, and wonders when, if ever, I will outgrow this phase she no doubt attributes to my wacky hippie upbringing. My beloved homeschool friends insist that we're doing fine and should stay the course (in the non-President Bush sense). And I remain adrift in the midst of all these opinions, with little hope of relief from this fence post. I just keep weighing every option, every factor, every outcome, every everything, hoping and praying that one scenario will emerge clearly enough to persuade me.

Hmmm...I must have libra rising...