tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-139938572024-03-07T00:56:52.121-07:00We Have Always Lived in a HomeschoolLionesshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08248105912379321811noreply@blogger.comBlogger455125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13993857.post-45606454656689453392016-05-28T22:40:00.000-07:002016-05-28T22:40:19.157-07:00Update<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
We have been extremely busy lately. The girls have started computer-based classes at Khan Academy, which eats up my computer access. More importantly, Brighteyes has taken the ACT. She got a bit confused on the math section, which lowered her grade. She only made a 34. Out of 36. Nobody's complaining. She started taking duel-enrollment classes at the community college this week. The house is so empty in the mornings now.<br />
<br />
A teacher in my husband's department died at the start of the spring semester, and the subsequent extra work load led to him being very overworked this year.<br />
<br />
<br />
Owl has started piano lessons. He may have the best ears in the family for identifying notes. Unfortunately our piano teacher seems to have retired on us.<br />
<br />
I tried to be a laid-back Mom and let them set their own pace, but they did nothing and then complained about not being able to sleep at night while they dragged themselves around all day. This spring I kicked them out of bed for morning exercises and meditation. They're sleeping better as a result. But now that schedule has to be readjusted for morning class at the college.<br />
<br />
After watching various local classes and fitness opportunities crash and burn over the years, I was shocked to find a tiny Shotokan karate class that had been going on for six months in a neighboring town. The children and I signed up, and I am verypleased with it. The teacher, whose kids are also in the class, is great with the children, who are all local homeschoolers. It's wonderful to have someone else tell my kids what to do for a change.<br />
<br />
Shotokan karate: in the early 20th Century schoolteacher and karate instructor Ginchin Funakoshi stripped karate down to something that could be taught to young children in a grade school classroom. In the process he also made it very easy for non-athletic adults to pick it up as well. It didn't catch on in Japanese schools the way he hoped it would, but it caught on like wildfire in the rest of the world. The teaching style is meant to reward and encourage youngsters, and it does a pretty good job with anxious grownups as well.<br />
<br />
The karate proved helpful with Brighteyes in a most unexpected way. When we started lessons I told my kids that learning martial arts had been on my "to-do" list for a long time, and this was the first opportunity I had had in a long time. As the date for the ACT got nearer, Brighteyes became more and more agitated, until she exploded and accused me of trying to live vicariously through her, expecting her to do all the things I had not had a chance to do. I told her I wanted no such thing. While I had put my other plans on hold to homeschool them, now that they were old enough to start seeing to themselves I was beginning to pursue those plans once again. I didn't want her to pursue my dreams, I wanted her to get out of my way so I could pursue my dreams. Surprisingly, this statement actually calmed her down quite a bit, and she even became more empathetic afterward.<br />
<br />
That's all for now. More later.</div>
Lionesshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08248105912379321811noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13993857.post-10179127501594213552015-11-16T15:12:00.001-08:002015-11-16T15:12:29.318-08:00ISIL and the Confederacy<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
It's interesting how the Obama Administration is using the Lincoln Administration's playbook to handle ISIL. Both the Obama and the Lincoln Administrations insisted that their adversaries were rebel insurgents, not a legitimate state, in spite of the fact that they held huge swathes of territory where they functioned with at least a semblance of a government. And the Obama Administration's plan for dealing with ISIL is an updated version of the Lincoln Administration's Anaconda Plan.<br />
<br />
The only thing that will defeat ISIL is the majority of Muslims rejecting conservatism. That's hard for any non-leftwing group to do. It's going to be a long war.<br /><br />
<br /></div>
Lionesshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08248105912379321811noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13993857.post-53807124855728408952015-05-11T21:05:00.000-07:002015-05-11T21:05:03.864-07:00Second Opinion<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
We had biscuits today. My helpful six-year old starts to get the butter. "We don't need it, we'll use this instead," I said, putting down a trial batch of honey butter I had just made, on the theory that old-fashioned snack food had to be healthier than modern commercial snack food.<br /><br />"What's that?"<br /><br />"It's a surprise. Try some and I'll tell you what it is."<br /><br />"I don't what that! I want the regular!"<br /><br />"Have a taste."<br /><br />He licks my finger. "I don't like that!"<br /><br />He keeps protesting as the honey butter gets further down the table and more used up. Finally he cries, "Oh, all right!", flounces to the end of the table, and gets his biscuit slathered.<br /><br />By the time he's set himself back down in his seat, the biscuit is gone. "I like that! Can we have that all the time?"<br /><br />That may be a new turnaround time for new foods. As for the rest of the family, a three-way arm-wrestling contest nearly broke out between my husband and my teenage daughters over the last drop. I think this one's a keeper.</div>
Lionesshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08248105912379321811noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13993857.post-14242750243801818092015-04-28T08:50:00.001-07:002015-04-28T08:50:37.700-07:00The Class of 1983 <div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
My husband met an old friend from high school last week in the small
Mississippi town where they'd grown up 32 years ago . They chatted
about their classmates from the white, middle class
private school they had attended. Slightly less than half of the men
had graduated from college and gone on to get jobs in business,
teaching, and civil engineering. Slightly more than half of the men had
not gone on to graduate from college. They we<span class="text_exposed_show">re
all dead, mostly from drugs or suicide. 10% of all the men in their
class had committed suicide in the last five years. His friend noted
that more men had died from their class than had died so far from his
parents' class -- and his parents had graduated at the height of the
Vietnam War. While the women had done slightly better, there had been
fewer children born to the members of their class than had been in their
class. It was a sobering experience.</span><br />
<br />
<div class="text_exposed_show">
I think we might have a problem, folks.</div>
</div>
Lionesshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08248105912379321811noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13993857.post-29734976370757102202015-03-19T20:36:00.005-07:002015-03-19T20:36:49.435-07:00Original Sin Disproven by Science<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
People really are good, and our first reactions are selfless:<br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/scientists-probe-human-nature-and-discover-we-are-good-after-all/" target="_blank">http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/scientists-probe-human-nature-and-discover-we-are-good-after-all/</a> </div>
Lionesshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08248105912379321811noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13993857.post-38889341924422281472015-02-03T20:32:00.003-08:002015-02-03T20:32:21.443-08:00Milestone<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Brighteyes finished the diagnostic tests (TABE) for the GED. At 15, she
aced every section except for writing. She's finally starting to
understand that my insistence that she write wasn't just Mommy being
mean, but a skill she needs to master as well as she has the other
skills. Yay!</div>
Lionesshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08248105912379321811noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13993857.post-50525317232217440782015-01-26T18:31:00.002-08:002015-01-26T18:31:47.364-08:00<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
At 13 and 15, we decided the girls were old enough to start watching The
Big Bang Theory this winter. They love it. (It doesn't hurt that we
know/are people like that either.) My husband wants a copy of the
Friendship Algorithm for his classroom. He says his students need the
advice. I haven't got around to mentioning exactly how often it's
re-run though. I don't want them watching it for 6.5 hours a week.</div>
Lionesshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08248105912379321811noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13993857.post-3035888791539158972015-01-25T20:48:00.004-08:002015-01-25T20:48:59.683-08:00The Invisible History of the Human Race<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
I just finished <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/20821027-the-invisible-history-of-the-human-race?from_search=true" target="_blank">The Invisible History of the Human Race: How DNA and History Shape Our Identities and Our Futures </a>by Christine Kenneally. Kenneally examines how recent advances in science have changed our understanding of history and of people. While DNA and genetic genealogy play a prominent role, they are far from the only subjects covered in this book. One topic that caught my attention was economists' Nathan Nunn and Leonard Wantchekon's research on how the <a href="http://articles.latimes.com/2009/feb/09/opinion/oe-rodriguez9" target="_blank">slave culture in Africa caused a climate of distrust </a>that had lingered for centuries and was still stifling economic development to this day. I couldn't help remembering all the times I've heard Mississippi people say they couldn't trust someone enough to go in business with them, and I wondered if a similar study had been done on how a similar culture of mistrust might be inhibiting economic development in the South.</div>
Lionesshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08248105912379321811noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13993857.post-32191446228538108812015-01-25T12:08:00.005-08:002015-01-25T12:08:54.774-08:00Lit Crit: Welty, Salinger and Lovecraft<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
My husband is continuing to catch up on his literature. He thought Welty was nice, but she waited until her very last story to say anything substantive. Salinger, while technically a better short story writer than Welty, bored both of us to tears. Like far too many Modern writers, he assumes that his "universal" experiences will continue to be so for every future reader, when in fact neither of us knew what he was talking about half the time.<br /><br />Needing a break he turned to Lovecraft's fantasies, which are flawed but more substantive than I first gave them credit for being. The very first Lovecraft story you read tends to be intriguing, but unforuntely they're all just rewrites of the same story, and only a couple stand out. There's many writers I can say that about, but Lovecraft is the only one I know where you could take entire paragraphs from one story, insert it into another story, and not even disturb the flow.<br /><br />Lovecraft's stories always made me want to give the writer a good swift kick in the shins for the way he glorified the fear of "things man was not meant to know/do". As a child growing up right after the Civil Rights Movement I heard my fill of "things man was not meant to know/do" before I learned to read. The "don't do thats" always hid a deep well of racism, sexism, homophobia, or some related form of good old identity hate. It was not worthy of the least amount of respect, let alone the histrionic levels of terror it was supposed to engender.<br /><br />But I was wrong and Lovecraft was right. Demolishing the old justifications for institutionalized hatred did indeed cause a grotesque, shambling monstrosity to crawl out of the sewers and threaten to destroy all life on Earth if we don't immediately stop all progress and worship at it's hideous feet.<br /><br />It's called the Tea Party.</div>
Lionesshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08248105912379321811noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13993857.post-33543702453591382002015-01-22T07:53:00.001-08:002015-01-22T07:53:12.854-08:00Odd Squad<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Fans of surrealist comedies like Gilligan's Island and The Addam's
Family should check out PBS's new kid show ODD SQUAD It's about a
department full of diminutive detectives who handle X-Files-style cases
with tons of surrealist humor and a dollop of math/cognitive thinking
skill. It's like a cross between the Sarah Jane Adventures, the original
Electric Company, and a 70s comedy show like Rowen & Matin's
Laugh-in or early SNL. There's plenty of jokes aimed at grownups, like a
recent 80's flashback episode featuring Agent Oprah and her partner
Agent O'Donahue (and their big hair).<br /><br />And then there's the guest
stars. Last month the Kids in the Hall showed up for a hilarious British
Manor House mystery. Yesterday Henson Studios was on hand for an
insanely funny "people turned into puppets" storyline. Just don't get
between the kids and the TV when it's time for a new episode to air.</div>
Lionesshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08248105912379321811noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13993857.post-88394272765664956802015-01-20T07:04:00.002-08:002015-01-20T07:04:51.911-08:00The Price of Questing<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
I stared angrily at the scale. Where had all my hard work gone?<br /><div class="asset-content">
<div class="asset-body">
<br />Four
years ago I started an exercise program to get my body back in shape.
Two years of steady, constant exercising later, I was feeling fit and
fine -- so fit, my subconcious deemed me able to handle a huge heap of
repressed childhood horror. The next two years were taken up with
nothing but repairing damages done to my mind and my soul. The work was
so intense I could do nothing else. Some days just making it out of
bed was all I could manage. In the process I've lost all the fitness
progress I made over the previous two years. My weight is back up and
my stamina is nonexistant. Physically I'm right back where I started.
I've got all this psychological stuff seen to but -- I know the
metaphor of life being a great big spiral but I don't need it to play
out so literally, darn it.<br /><br />At least there's nothing else hidden
in the recesses of my mind. There are still things I have trouble
talking about, and one thing I can't out of respect for the privacy of
another, but I doubt there's any more long-repressed unpleasantness
waiting to erupt.<br /><br />Unfortunately it wasn't just my body that
suffered. It was also two years out of my relationship with my
children. Now I have to sync up with them and repair that. That
hurts. Even the parts of it that aren't difficult still hurt.<br /><br />Quests of self-discovery have a higher price tag at my age.</div>
</div>
</div>
Lionesshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08248105912379321811noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13993857.post-61036427480745734372015-01-09T06:21:00.003-08:002015-01-09T06:21:54.868-08:00Lit Crit<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
My husband is catching up on Southern Literature right now. He commented on the "morose nostalgia" of most of the stories. I agreed, the glumness is one of the things that puts me off so many of them. There's an attitude not of "can do" but "shoulda done", and the "shoulda dones" usually happened long before we were born. It's easy to see why there was a tendency to experiment with magical realism even before Garcia Marquez invented it, and for the same reason; the fantastical elements (or in Faulkner's case, ornate verbiage) entertain you while the characters go to such great lengths to shoot themselves in the foot, and you later find out in flashbacks were doomed before they even got started. In too many writers it's a glumness only alleviated by "dumb redneck" jokes, and how many of them does a person want to read? A body needs a few cautionary tales to tell them what mistakes not to make, but there is a greater need for tales where problems are shown to be solvable with the right mental tool set.</div>
Lionesshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08248105912379321811noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13993857.post-77918204620596905842014-10-12T20:59:00.003-07:002014-10-12T20:59:59.742-07:00Small Fritters For Small Fry<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
The kids were pestering me for snacks while I was deboning chicken for
supper tonight, so I threw the skin in a skillet and made cracklings.
First time I've done that, but the kids liked it and it can't be less
healthy than the chemicals they put in junk food.</div>
Lionesshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08248105912379321811noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13993857.post-11723991162308813962014-06-26T16:51:00.001-07:002014-06-26T16:56:37.880-07:00Local Color<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Four years ago we moved to Scooba, MS, population 600 or so. It's in Kemper County, next to the Alabama state line. Not much has happened in Kemper County. <span id="yiv8365734525yui_3_16_0_7_1403546682647_116">It's all farmland. It used to be cotton and corn, owned by white farmers and worked by black
sharecroppers. When farm profits crashed, the white farmers sold their
land to the timber companies and moved away. The black sharecroppers
were left with no work and no way out except for a degree from the old
agricultural high school, now turned into a community college. The farm
houses were torn down and what used to be a landscape dotted with the
lights of tiny family farms is now mile after mile of blank pine
plantation, it's paved roads torn out and replaced with dirt to
discourage traffic. The buildings on Main Street are being torn down
for bricks; there's only two left intact. The rest are piles of rubble
being wrapped in plastic and shipped out.<br clear="none" /><br clear="none" />The
biggest thing that's happened locally
took place about half an hour from here, right outside Philadelphia. Fifty years ago last Saturday
night three civil rights workers were murdered in the cause of
defending state's rights against those who would help the state's
citizens register to
vote. It's hard to find the exact spot these days. There's no marker.</span><br />
<br />
<span id="yiv8365734525yui_3_16_0_7_1403546682647_116">It happened just down the road from the Neshoba County Fair, a
teeny-tiny gated vacation community for second-tier rich people out in
the middle of nowhere. It's not what you usually think of when you hear the words "county fair", more like a miniature Jackson's Hole (without the scenery) than an amusement park. You find it by looking for the tiny pastel houses enclosed in a huge, black iron fence. Sixteen years after the murders, Ronald Reagan would kick off
his first Presidential campaign with a rousing speech defending state's
rights. Not one word did he say about the blood spilled on the ground
just beyond the gates.<br clear="none" /><br clear="none" />I remember Mississippi folks being surprised, and quite a few of them disturbed, by that omission. Some people defended him, saying he was incompetent, not amoral. "He's an actor. He doesn't know the context."</span><br />
<span id="yiv8365734525yui_3_16_0_7_1403546682647_116"><br /></span>
<span id="yiv8365734525yui_3_16_0_7_1403546682647_116">It was 1980. The world did not yet know that Reagan was a supremely competent political campaigner who always knew the context.</span><br />
<span id="yiv8365734525yui_3_16_0_7_1403546682647_116"><br /></span>
<span id="yiv8365734525yui_3_16_0_7_1403546682647_116">But we would learn.</span></div>
Lionesshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08248105912379321811noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13993857.post-3975942453230248112014-06-11T07:24:00.001-07:002014-06-11T07:24:44.328-07:00Book Pushing 2<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
The girls are watching <b>Dark Shadows</b> with their father. He's using the opportunity to point out the structure and limits of the old daytime soap opera format. Also, to re-watch <b>Dark Shadows</b>.<br />
<br />
Last night they told me they were up to Victoria's witchcraft trial in the 18th Century. Seizing the opportunity, I said, "Those scenes are based on a play called <b>The Crucible</b>. It was written around the same time as <b>The Mouse That Roared</b> and was about the Salem Witch Trials. Let's read it next week when this sequence finishes so you can see how they're alike."<br />
<br />
"Yay!"<br />
<br />
Whew! I thought <b>The Crucible</b> was going to be a harder sell than that!<br />
<br />
They wanted to talk about their current book, Veblen's <b>Theory of the Leisure Class</b>. They're up to the fashion chapter, which, alas, time has provided even more glaring examples of how conspicuous waste generates ugly clothes since Veblen's death than before the book was written. We talked about the similarity of purpose between <b>Leisure Class</b> and Darwin's <b>Origin of the Species</b>. I began pitching Piketty's <b>Capital in the 21st Century</b> as the modern update.<br />
<br />
Not bad for the first part of the supper conversation. <br />
<br />
<br /></div>
Lionesshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08248105912379321811noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13993857.post-76601156551105618152014-06-10T13:11:00.003-07:002014-06-10T13:11:56.936-07:00Book Pushing<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
I found some Pyrex banana boats at an antique store (vintage kitchenwares are my therapy shopping) and served banana splits in them yesterday. The girls wanted to know why in the world there were so many kinds of dishes and utensils. It was the perfect opportunity to introduce them to one of my favorite books, Veblen's <b>Theory of the Leisure Class</b>. Today they're going around exclaiming, "Wow, that finally makes sense!" twice an hour.<br />
<br />
Last week I snuck up on them with <b>The Mouse That Roared</b>, but that one didn't need ice cream. All I had to mention was some of the sillier plot twists and they were all over me to produce a copy.</div>
Lionesshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08248105912379321811noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13993857.post-35650463165572584232014-04-08T13:03:00.000-07:002014-04-08T13:03:09.715-07:00What's Wrong With Her? She's Gifted.<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
I was adopted anonymously by parents who wanted a normal, healthy baby. For a while it looked like they'd got their wish, but by early elementary I started to show signs that something was wrong. I'd had good grades briefly, then they had crashed. I'd soon become inattentive and withdrawn.<br />
<br />
In fourth grade, around 1975, the experts went
looking for an explanation for my straight-D grades, inattentiveness,
and poor social skills in school. The suggestion that I might be gifted
was made by my reading teacher, who noted that while I didn't pay
attention in class and always had my head stuck in a book, it was <i>a different book every day</i>.<br />
<br />
Her
suggestion was met with universal derision. How could a very smart
child be such a failure? But upon reflection it was decided that I
might be retarded (the term was still used clinically at that time), and
that I should be given an IQ test to see if I qualified for Special
Education. So I was abruptly pulled out of class and sat down at a
bewildering exam the likes of which I'd never even imagined.<br />
<br />
To
the amazement of most, I barely squeaked in as "gifted". Something had
gone wrong! I had cheated, or there had been a mixup involving the
grading of the test. So I was pulled out of class and given the test
again, and the tester made to score the test on site in front of a
committee of teachers.<br />
<br />
But this time the test was not a complete
surprise to me. I had been through it once before, and knew what to
expect. This time I scored 20 points higher, over one standard deviation, easily clearing the
"highly gifted" mark.<br />
<br />
Oh, the consternation! Such hooting, hollering, and carrying on you have never heard in your life! I'm told the administration wanted to test me a third time with even more rigorous anti-cheating measures in place. "You want to see how much higher she'll score next time?" snarked the gifted ed teacher.<br />
<br />
(The answer, when another school system tested me four years later, was 30 points or 2 standard deviations higher than the <b>second</b> test.)<br />
<br />
The
testers tried to explain that only half of high-IQ students perform
well in a regular classroom. The other half become bored and
disengaged. That explanation only made the administration resent me for
not being a team player. However, with so much documentation
staring them in the face it was felt that they risked a lawsuit if they <b>didn't</b> put in me in the gifted program (they didn't know my adoptive parents very well), so I was grudgingly allowed in on probation.<br />
<br />
<br />
Of
course, once I had access to people like myself doing things that
actually interested us, school became a lot less boring and more
engaging. I paid more attention, and my grades improved.<br />
<br />
It makes me angry that regional schools no longer have gifted ed programs. Those schools have undiagnosed gifted children in them who are starving for the companionship of their peers and for an IQ-appropriate learning environment. That doesn't do them any good, and by adding to their burdens instead of lightening them we take away their ability to do our country any good.</div>
Lionesshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08248105912379321811noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13993857.post-57868517335656688692014-04-07T12:48:00.001-07:002014-04-07T12:48:24.060-07:00Running Up the White Flag<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
After almost a decade of fighting it, I finally got a <a href="https://www.facebook.com/debra.byrd.16" target="_blank">Facebook account</a>. Y'all can friend me if you like.<br />
<br />
Who knows, in another decade I might even make it to Twitter.</div>
Lionesshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08248105912379321811noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13993857.post-35722751834235783692014-04-01T11:27:00.003-07:002014-04-01T12:55:19.005-07:00First Book<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
My husband and I have begun turning the material he worked up for his
junior high and high school science classes into a curriculum. Here's
the first e-book:<br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.amazon.com/Seventh-Grade-Science-Earth-Lesson-ebook/dp/B00JE32I7C/" rel="nofollow">Earth and Space</a><br />
<br />
This
is nine weeks worth of lesson plans and quizzes. We're planning to put
out something more comprehensive at a later date, but this was what we
could get out right now.<br />
<br />
If you're interested in this sort of thing, please look it over and tell me what you think.<br />
<br />
ETA: Fixed the link. </div>
Lionesshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08248105912379321811noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13993857.post-64323603703491893522014-03-31T11:08:00.003-07:002014-03-31T11:08:46.575-07:00Progress <div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
There's
been a breakthrough on finding my biological parents. I don't want to
say anything more right now -- I'm almost afraid to breathe for fear it
will all blow away -- but progress has been made.<br /><div class="asset-content">
<div class="asset-body">
<br />Right now I've
got a whirlwind of emotions swirling around inside me. I'm trying to
process them now so they don't get in the way later on. Cry now, be
calm later.</div>
</div>
</div>
Lionesshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08248105912379321811noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13993857.post-83078660518267362852014-02-24T21:21:00.000-08:002014-02-25T06:21:01.652-08:00Late to the Party, Brought the Jello<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Among <a href="http://lionesshomeschool.blogspot.com/2014/01/comfort-foodjavascript.html" target="_blank">the foods Mom never made</a> was anything fancier than plain Jello, and that was very seldom. It made me uncomfortable to realize I was missing out on something. Years later, when I was grown and everyone thought fancy Jello was just so uncool I was too embarrassed to admit that I had no idea what they were talking about.<br />
<br />
But darn it, just because I missed out is no reason for my children to miss out. Especially since when I was moving our dry foods to the new house I came across a small mountain of Jello I had stored back "for emergencies". Time to experiment.<br />
<br />
With the bigger kitchen I'm able to store the ice cream sundae glasses inside the kitchen (instead of in a storage building) where they can be pulled out and used much more frequently. It turns out fruits and berries go down kids much easier when they're encased in Jello, topped with whipped topping mix, and presented in a sundae glass. I bought some old copper-tinted molds at flea markets and started playing around with them, although so far nothing's come out perfect.<br />
<br />
And for the first day of Spring Break, I've the makings of Blue Skies Jello set back. Things are looking a bit jiggly right now.</div>
Lionesshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08248105912379321811noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13993857.post-17452754086168391542014-02-10T15:34:00.001-08:002014-02-10T15:34:17.129-08:00House Update February 10, 2014<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
We installed the kitchen drawer pulls, drawer facings and the lower
cabinet doors. Yay, I have drawers now! There's an actual place for
cutlery, as opposed to the used plastic tubs it was dumped into. With
more room to spread things out we were able to put the dinnerware and
silverware at preschooler height, and turn over the job of setting the
table to an excited 5yo. An excited 14yo got promoted to cook's
helper/dryer, and a not-very-excited 12yo got promoted to dishwasher.<br /><br />Now
I can bring down some of our nonessential cookware, like the John
Wright decorative cast iron muffin pans and cookie molds I bought at
Service Merchandise (back when that store existed) 30 years ago. After 3
years exposure to humid Southern weather, their Victorian-era curves
were hidden under a thick layer of rust. Repairing and re-seasoning
them are giving my arms a workout.<br /><br />I don't even know where you
can get John Wright now. Someone said Williams-Sonoma, but there isn't
one around here. I went in a Williams-Sonoma store once on vacation.
It reminded me that there is a dividing line between "elitist" and
"snob". My nose doesn't tilt high enough to shop there, and they didn't
have any John Wright.<br /><br />With a bigger kitchen I can also round out my Lodge collection. Cooking just got a lot more adventurous.<br /><br />Dh
is building a table for the arts-and-crafts shop with built-in storage
for oversized art papers. After that it's on to the kitchen island.<br /><br />Update:
Today also begins the pre-spring gardening, with moving a willow
sapling that had grown up too close to a building to a boggy spot in the
backyard. </div>
Lionesshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08248105912379321811noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13993857.post-37167919603860556582014-01-26T19:20:00.001-08:002014-01-27T06:51:54.014-08:00Ulterior Motive<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
In order to understand my biological mother better I just got in a copy of <b>The Girls Who Went Away: The Hidden History of Women Who Surrendered Children For Adoption in the Decades Before <u>Roe v.Wade</u></b>. My 14yo daughter immediately asked to read it. <br />
<br />
I can't imagine a better prophylactic.</div>
Lionesshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08248105912379321811noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13993857.post-81232040522959331832014-01-16T10:11:00.000-08:002014-01-16T10:11:25.336-08:00The Dark Day Has Arrived<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Brighteyes (14) has two papers of more than one page in length due at the same time. Oh, the End Is Nigh! The weeping, the wailing, the screaming, and the gnashing of teeth went on for over two hours yesterday. (Time that could have been spent finishing both those reports.) You'd think the Apocalypse was on us.<br />
<br />
Her father was less than impressed. "I've got freshman college students just encountering that for the first time who are having the same reaction. Best to go on and get it over with now." I agree. Best get this explosion out of the way before the child is old enough to have a driver's license. </div>
Lionesshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08248105912379321811noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13993857.post-64262512429280194662014-01-12T20:29:00.000-08:002014-01-12T20:34:55.664-08:00Comfort Food<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
My emotional heart is undergoing surgery right now as ancient barbs are being moved about none too delicately and certainly not painlessly. It's led to all sorts of misadventures, such as running out of the room and collapsing on the floor crying during yesterday's episode of <b>My Little Pony</b> (409). One of the coping mechanism's that's come out is a mild obsession with comfort food. Not so much eating it (although there's some of that) as making it for my family.<br />
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My adoptive mother hated cooking. This wasn't a feminist issue (she especially hated feminists) but part of an overall loathing for any creative endeavor. She hated anything handmade. She grudgingly allowed that there might be some merit in works by people who happened to be old, white, male, extremely famous, and very, very dead; but that was it. She would sneer equally at hand-embroidered clothes, artisan jewelry, dancers, gardening, flower arranging, choirs, potluck dinners, and the paper-and-glue creations we brought home from school. In later years she would put up with our music-making or my cross-stitch, but only as long as we did what she told us to do for her and she could direct all the public credit her way. Consequently the more creative dishes in the traditional American cuisine (or any other cuisine) never darkened our table. My grandmother, the family's best cook, did the best she could to try the easier ones, but she was elderly, feeble, and had no sense of smell.<br />
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"Cooking" in my childhood home meant sprinkling seasoning salt on a piece of meat, sticking it in the oven, and heating up a can of vegetables. I knew there had to be more to it than that, but there were no cookbooks in our house, save for a children's cookbook I had bought at school when I was 7, which amounted to "Fun With Sandwiches and Pre-made Cookies". The first cookbook we had came when I was 14, boxed up with our very first microwave oven. I devoured that book. The only thing I was allowed to make out of it were microwave cheese omelets, but I made a lot of terrible cheese omelets.<br />
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My reward was a reluctance to allow me to cook anything.<br />
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I also loved to watch cooking shows on PBS, especially local boy Justin Wilson. But Mom disapproved of PBS about as much as she disapproved of cooking, and for much the same reasons.<br />
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My senior year in high school I got a job at the town's only bookstore, and I brought home every cookbook they discarded. (This was long before remainder bins.) I would bring them home and lose myself in poring over the pages, something my husband tells me I still do with cookbooks. But back then it was for a different reason. They were almost all written in some arcane dialect for which I lacked a phrase book which would help me decipher what they were saying. There was one book for absolute beginners (nicknamed the "How to Boil Water Book") that told you how to throw canned stuff together and it was invaluable as a starter, but there was nothing to bridge the chasm between it and the rest of the books.<br />
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I started practicing cooking in college and made some horrible missteps at first, although the biggest mistake I ever made was letting another girl touch my cooking. Turns out there were people out there who knew less than I did. But by trail and lots of error I could at least put together an edible pot of stew after four years.<br />
<br />
Then there were the hardware issues. The cookbooks I had didn't talk a lot about those, and I was often left floundering in the dark. When we got married the ladies who wrote took down the bridal registry were flabbergasted. They'd never had a bride who didn't ask for a Kitchen Aid stand mixer. We had no idea what they were talking about. 25 years later we've had one for over a year, and it has pride of place in our kitchen.<br />
<br />
But even as I got the technical issues sorted out there were still the cultural issues. There were often page after page of recipes for things I'd never heard of, sometimes even whole sections, and at least one entire chapter. What the heck was an "Appetizer"?<br />
<br />
It made me very uncomfortable to think of all the things I'd missed out on, and I was too embarrassed to ask anyone about. Somehow the food I didn't grow up with came to symbolize a lot of more nebulous things I didn't grow up with, and I had no clue how to talk about those issues.<br />
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I started off cooking cuisines from the most exotic places I could find a cookbook from, figuring that way I'd be just as ignorant as any other American cook. As I became more confident I started cooking more American dishes. We still eat a lot of Chinese and other "foreign" dishes though.<br />
<br />
After we'd been married nine months my family came to eat at our home. They ate every bite and licked the serving dishes clean. After a short bit of practice I was clearly the best cook in the family. But THEY NEVER WANTED TO EAT AT OUR HOME AGAIN. Although they always wanted me to cook whenever I visited them. Go figure.<br />
<br />
But for all our growing skill (and eventually, growing family) we were stuck with tiny kitchens for the first 20-odd years we were married. It was only three years ago that we got a house with a decent sized kitchen space (although in severe need of a redo), and only a few months ago that we got the countertops finished and had space to spread things out and really work. Suddenly dishes that had been out of the question before were possible.<br />
<br />
Of course with everything else working great in my life and this general "lightness of being" setting in, what should surface but a humongous load of ancient trauma? PTSD, the gift that keeps on giving.<br />
<br />
So now I have this urge to cook comfort food. Not the comfort food I grew up with, which was Campbell's chicken noodle soup, some soda crackers, and a Coke whenever I had to stay home from school. But the dishes my grandmother made on special occasions, and some things I've never or hardly ever seen in real life. I'm channeling it into increasing my range of non-starch, non-meat dishes, adding fruit salads like Waldorf and ambrosia to our meals, and doing more things with nuts. Especially toasted nuts, which don't last very long around this house.<br />
<br />
And when supper's not done and the kids are hungry <b>now</b>, I know how to put together a quick bite to hold them a little longer so they don't get cranky. <br />
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It's a little accomplishment as I try to hold my head above water in a sea of grief, but it's something.<br />
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Lionesshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08248105912379321811noreply@blogger.com1