We Have Always Lived in a Homeschool

House Update January 2012

2012-01-25T18:49:00.000-08:00

We've been concentrating on getting the kitchen cabinets completed, and the shelves are finally done. The stovepipe's in place, and the vent hood is almost ready to install. We still need to make the cabinet facings, drawers, and doors, but the hardwood's been ordered to start that. But we can use the shelves to spread our stuff out. My Christmas present, a Kitchen Aid, in unpacked and in use. Estimated completion date -- early spring.

In the den we've installed extra windows and put primer over all the walls so it looks like a room and not a dark cave. We've started laying out both the pantry and one of the built-ins. We still have to finish of those and put down flooring. Estimated completion date -- late spring.

The handyman finished putting up the trim in our bedroom, the kitchen, and the hall. He also did enough of the living and dining room that we can start moving in our furniture. When we can afford movers, that is. He took a bite out of the budget.

We painted a shed in the color scheme we're thinking of. It's okay, but needs work. It'll be a while before we can afford exterior house painting anyway.

The herb garden is going good. The tender perennials are all down for the winter, but they look like they might return come spring. The bee balm went down, but it's coming back. Everything else just slowed growing but haven't stopped.

Last year's vegetable patch was too wet. Next year we'll try it in a drier place, but I worry about how much sun it'll get.

No plants died except for a juniper that had been planted too close to its neighbors by the previous owners. The junipers on either side are so big I doubt it'll be missed once the stump is removed.

We found some old bird feeders in the back. I need to get them cleaned and out where my junior birdwatchers can see them.

I'm supposed to have some roses coming in the mail in a few weeks. I hope they do well and the deer don't eat them all. They nibbled on both the rose and the fig tree earlier, and deer have to be mighty hungry to eat fig leaves. The deer population is exploding faster than the hunters can kill them. At the rate it's growing not even a widespread cull may make a dent in their numbers. Nobody wants to think about the kind of ecological damage that will cause.

Past vs. Present

2012-01-19T08:21:00.000-08:00

I don't talk about my childhood much. It wasn't a happy time, and the further I get away from it the happier I become. I would rather not think about it, but that option hasn't been available lately.

Most of you probably already know that I was abused as a child, and that I have chronic depression and Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder as a result. I first became aware that I was what I now recognize as clinically depressed while thinking about my upcoming fourth birthday. I can't remember back to a time when I didn't have these conditions which plays havoc with my sense of normalcy.

The suicide planning started around ten. Every night when I went to bed I reviewed my options for killing myself. Every night I came to the conclusion that I couldn't be absolutely sure they would work. Then I went over my list of reasons for living. I joked to myself that the first one was finishing whatever book I was reading at the time. One night that was the only thing on the list.

I still haven't written David Brin that thank-you letter.

The runaway planning started in my teens and followed the same routine. I had no backup, no resources, and no illusions about my ability to survive on the streets. I always came back to the same conclusion -- tough it out, get a scholarship, and get out.

I say this not to garner sympathy, but perspective. You need to understand the significance of my next statement.

I was the lucky one.

I just came away with a chronic depression, PTSD, and suicidal tendencies. My little sister came away with anorexia nervosa and a slew of addictions.

One difference between us was in how we responded to our adopted* mother. Mom was a big factor in making our childhood Hell.

(*The first thing my husband-to-be said to me after meeting her was, "Thank God you told me you were adopted. If I thought you were blood kin to that woman I'd head for the hills.")

Mom was a former schoolyard bully who never emotionally matured past the age of 13. The best way I know to describe her is to describe her funeral. There were no flowers. A lot of people came to the viewing just to look in the coffin. The preacher's eulogy (no one else spoke) was a masterpiece of it's genre -- "She always had strong ideas about Heaven. I'm sure she's learned a lot since then," and "When her Sunday School class heard she was in the hospital a fight broke out among the ladies over who would go see her." Even at that the back row was ducking for cover, afraid the Lord would strike him down for lying from the pulpit on her behalf. (I always wonder why people pay good money to see black comedy. Don't they have families?) No one will repeat what she said about me and my family on her deathbed. All they'll say is to go on with my life and think no more about "that evil, selfish witch".

I got real mad at that last bit. It would have done me a world of good if somebody had had the nerve to call her that to my face back when I was a child trying to understand why the center of my universe, her, was so off-kilter.

Because if adults who didn't live with her reacted that way, then you can imagine what life with her was like for her children.

I first concluded that it was my fault and I should do everything I could to please her, but that only made things worse. Resentment was Mom's default state, so if you succeeded at anything in an attempt to please her she resented you for that success, unless she could use it against someone else. This is a woman who bragged about standing up and cheering when she heard the news of JFK's assassination. And RFK. And MLK. She never spoke an uncatty compliment except through gritted teeth.

My fallback position was to reject everything. I rebelled against everything, including the stereotypical forms of rebellion which looked like traps set up by TPTB to ensnare those who tried to escape.

Sis tried to please her longer.

Mom hated herself of course. She took that hate out on everyone else for every excuse that she ever heard. She hated Blacks, Jews, Catholics, Hispanics, et al, but most of all she hated women. She was the biggest misogynist I've ever met. She made white Southern men of the 1970s look like die-hard feminists in comparison.

Of course she hounded us to be extreme versions of stereotypical femininity: dumb, charming, graceful, completely self-negating and yet somehow accomplished. And skinny. Preferably skinnier than Twiggy.

I tried to be skinny for her sake, but I'm a) an endomorph, and b) a pragmatist. Skinny is not in my DNA. Neither is tilting at windmills. So I sat out to be a healthy, curvy girl.

That wasn't good enough for Mom of course, and I got an earful of abuse over it on every occasion. I did what worked; I labeled everything she said as garbage and rejected it. But I still heard it.

Sis is an ectomorph. It didn't take her long to develop full-blown anorexia nervosa. She got skinny enough for Mom to use her to berate me about my weight, but somehow that was never skinny enough.

(After one too many remarks from Mom about how "healthy" Sis looked in comparison to me I said, "She's two years younger than me and looks ten years older! People who knew us as children keep getting us mixed up. You can see ever bone she has; she has fur on her arms, sunken eyes, and cauliflower ears. The next stage is for her teeth to fall out!"

"Oh, she's got a good dentist. He'll take care of her teeth. You should get a good insurance plan like she has."

See what I mean about black comedy? Why do people pay for it when lines like that are for free?)

When I reached adulthood I had a lot of health issues to work on, starting (obviously) with mental health. After 25 years I've got most of the mental ones in line at least. I've accepted that they're chronic conditions, can recognize the symptoms, and know how to avoid the triggers. I've buried a lot of ghosts and come to terms with a lot that happened. That's the hardest work I've ever done in my life. I think I can safely say it's harder than many people ever attempt.

When it came to my physical health I encountered two stumbling blocks. One was the extraordinary amount of misinformation, much of it from "official" sources, about women's health issues. Sometimes it seems like as much as 99% of what our culture thinks is true about health, especially women's health, is actually false. Coming from a background involving mental illness, a field long subjected to all sorts of snake oil, only exacerbated this awareness. I doubt I need to go into detail; other people have ranted about this issue before and this post rambles enough already.

All that misinformation only got distilled and concentrated by the second stumbling block, Mom. Whenever she got the chance she did it in person, but now that she's gone her mental construct lives on in the back of my head ready to nag 24/7. This means that on those occasions when I have tried to diet I have to deal with her ghost nagging me about it. Dieting feels like I'm giving in to her, following down my sister's path of self-destruction, being sucked into one of Mom's many traps, negating all the hard work I've done to become my own person and losing myself in her hateful image issues. That sets off my well-honed anti-Mom response, overwhelming fury at whatever load of crap she was pushing this time, and I act out my rage by -- breaking my diet.

Hey, that response literally kept me out of the insane asylum. But right now it's doing nothing for my weight.

That's not to say I ignored my diet. I relabeled it. I practiced healthy eating with a menu high in protein, fresh fruit and veggies, and low in pre-packaged food. I ate only at regular, pre-planned intervals. I hardly ever ate out. I exercised -- for stamina and to control my depression. As long as I didn't think about it as weight control or do anything overtly associated with weight control (weighing often, counting calories, and so forth) I was all right. While I never got skinny I never had any health problems either.

That worked until I reached middle age and Baby #4 came along. Between taking care of him and dealing with that nonsense I had to deal with recently I gained a lot of weight. While pulling a tantrum-throwing toddler off something he shouldn't have been climbing on I injured my knee. Having to repeat that act on a regular basis hasn't helped it heal.

There's a lot of areas where I can debate anti-fat bias in medicine, but joints are not one of them. It's lose the weight or lose the knee.

Actually taking weight off comes up against some difficult physiological realities. My body type holds on to weight the hardest. Simple portion control won't do the job, I'll actually have to count calories. As far as exercise goes, a few years ago I exercised every day for two years in a balanced routine of stretching, cardio and strength training. It converted the fat into muscle so while I shrank two dress sizes I didn't lose an ounce. That would strengthen the muscles of the knee, but it's not the muscles that are the problem. That means more overt weight-loss activity than I've been successful with before, and that gets triggery.

Exercise at this point in time comes up against some practical problems. With three kids constantly underfoot it's extremely difficult to find the time, and I'm almost always exhausted. I have no TV to play my exercise DVDs. The space in front of the computer to exercise in is taken up with building supplies for the remodeling we're doing. It'll be three months before that's available, up to a year before we're ready for the TV. I did get a Wii this Christmas (an older model you can hook a dance mat up to), but it's in the closet for now.

There's no local exercise classes. We spoke to the PE instructors at the local community college about non-credit night classes, but there's no telling when or even if that will come to anything. The nearest classes are over an hour's drive away, and I have small children and no day care. That's also the problem with walking outside. So I'm dodging construction material in our unfinished den dancing and doing yoga to music CDs. Still, it's hard to stay motivated.

And then there's that damn trigger. I've been slowly working on this for a month now, easing my way into setting up an exercise area, cutting back on portion size, and starting to examine my diet, and it's already making me fretful. To my surprise I haven't done anything to give the trigger a good whack yet, but it's still there.

So here's the question, is there a place online where women gather together to motivate themselves to lose weight in a pro-feminist manner, without descending into language that self-loathing, anti-fat and anti-woman? I've measured my bones and my skeleton, with no meat on it whatsoever, is a size 14. That's as skinny as I can get unless some dress manufacturer cooks the numbers (Which has been known to happen, but that's a separate rant.) I'm never going to be a size 8. I'm always going to be what our society considers plus sized, I'm always going to look "fat" to ignorant eyes, and I'm okay with that. I just want to improve my health. But if I have to listen to other people carry on in stereotypical "dieting" language, I'm going to lose my cool.

Third-World Muslims Are Smarter Than Ric Santorum

2012-01-10T08:49:00.000-08:00

Ric Santorum doesn't believe birth control should be used under any circumstances, even to prevent the death of the mother (except when it's his wife). Contrast his attitude with that of conservative Muslim clerics in one of the world's poorest and least educated countries, Senegal.

Guardian UK:

On the poor outskirts of Dakar, Senegal, we sat before six imams in an airy mosque. They are holy men, respected community leaders, and, lately, birth control champions. "Family spacing," they called it, as they cheerfully explained why Islam supports it. "What's good for a woman is good for her family, and for her society. We want healthy societies."

Voice of America:

...more and more, families are seeking contraception to space or limit births despite the associated taboos in the country, which is more than 90 percent Muslim.

"Some people say Islam is against family planning, but life is getting more and more difficult," said Mamy Diop.

Historically, the only acceptable application of family planning has been birth spacing for the health of the mother and the child. But religious leaders increasingly are invoking the Quran's message of financial responsibility.

"Islam has discussed this," said Imam Niasse. "If resources are limited and the family size is too large, there will be problems for the family. We are already living a situation of scarcity and we should talk openly. We have many children here, but what kind of children do we have?"

'nuff said.

Translation, Please

2012-01-10T08:15:00.004-08:00

Yesterday while talking about linguistic differences between Republicans and Democrats I received a bizarre email that's so deep into Republican-speak I can't make heads or tails of it; and I'm 45 years old, born just one year past the end of the Baby Boom. To me it looks like there's so many false assumptions here it's hard to know where to start on it (Who under 50 can afford to live in a big fancy house?) but apparently it resonated with the person who sent it on. All I can tell is that there's a boatload of resentment present, and a lot of, "You damn kids get off my lawn!" Oh, and apparently they kinda forgot to give their own children a decent education along the way. They acknowledge that, then turn around and blame the kids.

Can anyone tell me what this is supposed to be saying?

They like to refer to us as senior citizens, old fogies, geezers, and in some cases dinosaurs. Some of us are "Baby Boomers" getting ready to retire. Others have been retired for some time. We walk a little slower these days and our eyes and hearing are not what they once were. We have worked hard, raised our children, worshiped our God and grown old together. Yes, we are the ones some refer to as being over the hill, and that is probably true. But before writing us off completely, there are a few things that need to be taken into consideration.

In school we studied English, history, math, and science which enabled us to lead America into the technological age. Most of us remember what outhouses were, many of us with firsthand experience. We remember the days of telephone party-lines, 25 cent gasoline, and milk and ice being delivered to our homes. For those of you who don't know what an icebox is, today they are electric and referred to as refrigerators. A few even remember when cars were started with a crank. Yes, we lived those days.

We are probably considered old fashioned and out-dated by many. But there are a few things you need to remember before completely writing us off. We won World War II, fought in Korea and Viet Nam. We can quote The Pledge of Allegiance, and know where to place our hand while doing so. We wore the uniform of our country with pride and lost many friends on the battlefield. We didn't fight for the Socialist States of America, we fought for the "Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave." We wore different uniforms but carried the same flag. We know the words to the Star Spangled Banner, America ,and America the Beautiful by heart, and you may even see some tears running down our cheeks as we sing. We have lived what many of you have only read about in history books and we feel no obligation to apologize to anyone for America.

Yes, we are old and slow these days but rest assured, we have at least one good fight left in us. We have loved this country, fought for it, and died for it, and now we are going to save it. It is our country and nobody is going to take it away from us. We took oaths to defend America against all enemies, foreign and domestic, and that is an oath we plan to keep. There are those who want to destroy this land we love but, like our founders, there is no way we are going to remain silent.

It was mostly the young people of this nation who elected Obama and the Democratic Congress. You fell for the "Hope and Change" which in reality was nothing but "Hype and Lies." You have tasted socialism and seen evil face to face, and have found you don't like it after all. You make a lot of noise, but most are all too interested in their careers or "Climbing the Social Ladder" to be involved in such mundane things as patriotism and voting. Many of those who fell for the "Great Lie" in 2008 are now having buyer's remorse. With all the education we gave you, you didn't have sense enough to see through the lies and instead drank the 'Kool-Aid.' Now you're paying the price and complaining about it. No jobs, lost mortgages, higher taxes, and less freedom. This is what you voted for and this is what you got. We entrusted you with the Torch of Liberty and you traded it for a paycheck and a fancy house.

Well, don't worry youngsters, the Grey-Haired Brigade is here, and in 2012 we are going to take back our nation. We may drive a little slower than you would like but we get where we're going, and in 2012 we're going to the polls by the millions. This land does not belong to the man in the White House nor to the likes of Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid. It belongs to "We the People" and "We the People" plan to reclaim our land and our freedom. We hope this time you will do a better job of preserving it and passing it along to our grandchildren. So the next time you have the chance to say the Pledge of Allegiance, stand up, put your hand over your heart, honor our country, and thank God for the old geezers of the "Grey-Haired Brigade."

Author, Anon. Grey-Haired Brigade Member

Footnote:
This is spot on. I may color my hair but Iâ€™m still a Gray-Haired Geezer signing on. I will circulate this to other Gray-Haired Geezers all over this once great county. Can you feel the ground shaking??? It's not an earthquake, it is a STAMPEDE.

Have a Blessed Day

Ric Santorum Disses All Married Couples, Straight As Well As Gay

2012-01-08T21:32:00.000-08:00

Ric Santorum, a Republican presidential candidate who is not afraid to admit in front of a national audience that he doesn't understand the difference between a dog, a child, and an adult, or between a parental relationship and a marital relationship, has said some incredibly offensive things about gay married couples. So offensive, in fact, that it's possible many people have missed his other offensive statements against straight married couples.

Ric Santorum opposes birth control even when used by married couples because it is "disrespectful" of women and families and so "hurts" women and society. Think about it. If a particular straight married couple honestly decide that they would make terrible parents and choose not to have babies and not to inflict their complete lack of interest in children or child-rearing on the next generation, Santorum thinks they are being "disrespectful" of children and families. Really.

More commonly, if a married couple who want to have children choose to delay pregnancy for a few years in order to increase their own maturity and/or achieve a more stable financial base for their family, Santorum thinks they are "disrespectful" of women and families. Honest.

Or if a married couple with children decide to limit the number they have so they can spend more time parenting the offspring they've already got, Santorum believes they are "disrespectful".

It's worth noting that the reason birth control was sought after in the first place was to prevent married women from dying in childbirth after their uterus ruptured from too many pregnancies, a horrible but common occurrence 100 years ago. Santorum apparently thinks dying in childbirth is more "respectful" to women than living to care for the children they already have (or doing whatever else they choose to live for).

Of course without birth control more married women would die in childbirth and leave behind more orphaned children, significantly raising the number of single parent households in America. Their surviving children would suffer all the problems associated with being brought up in a single parent family; but hey, they would belong to "respectful" single parent families! Better be brought up in a "respectful" single parent family where the mother died trying to give birth than to be raised by two loving parents who "disrespected" the mother by not risking her health.

So to all the gay people upset about what Santorum has said about gay couples, You Are Not Alone. Santorum doesn't just hate all gay married couples. He hates all married couples, period. There's only one thing you can say about a man who tries to win the Presidency of a country where over 90% of people marry with such an attitude. Jesus, what a moron.

Trombone Warning

2012-01-04T07:49:00.000-08:00

I'm feeling an urge to talk about my childhood family relationships, something I normally strenuously avoid because I was an abused child. That was 25 years ago, and I've long since worked through most of my issues. Most of them. But there's still some barriers inside my head. I'm running into a few triggers these days that are starting to interfere with my life, and I really don't see any way past them but to write them out of my head and look at them on paper (or monitor in this day and age) and invite outsider opinions. One of the triggers turned up in Harry Potter of all things, another involves my health. So be warned, the waah-waah trombone will be playing shortly.

The Distraction

2011-12-19T21:33:00.000-08:00

We went to an award ceremony today. One of my sister-in-law's students had won an art award. At the last minute he couldn't make it, and she as his sponsor had to accept the award in his place. We're all members of the art association, and we all showed up for the ceremony including our (usually) beautifully-behaved homeschooled children. (We get compliments all the time.)

Unfortunately our middle child, 10 year-old Sunshine, is a little -- absent-minded. In the same manner that Antarctica is a tiny bit chilly. She's sitting on one side of her aunt and I'm sitting on the other side. She's still eating her dessert when it came time for her aunt to make the acceptance speech. Everybody's looking at her aunt and her except for Sunshine. She's staring down her nose at her plate as she busily finishes her dessert, paying no attention to anything around her. I can't get her attention without distracting the speaker between us.

That's when her glasses start to slide.

They fall slowly down her nose, catching in her curls and slowing down but not stopping. They fall off the tip of her nose and hang in the air, suspended only by her hair. When they reach the level of her lips and would impede her eating she finally pushes them back where they belong, barely breaking speed in her effort to finish off the banana pudding. It was one of the most amazingly, hilariously embarrassing things I've ever seen first-hand.

If anyone remembers a word of that speech I'll be surprised.

Later we stopped by Hancock Fabrics in the faint hope of finding curtain fabric that isn't way overdone. Any restrained color or print is only available in the most ostentatious of fabrics. Almost everything on the market these days is gargantuan flowers or even bigger stripes, but I found an antique map print that will look awesome in the den. Now I just need access to my sewing machine. At the current rate of progress that will happen in about, oh, six months.

Question For Gamers

2011-12-12T12:27:00.000-08:00

Is there an online gathering place for grownups to discuss video games that doesn't devolve into a level of juvenile acrimony that would make the worst comic book forums curl up and die of embarrassment?

Getting an early start on Christmas this year.

2011-12-07T19:58:00.000-08:00

It's only the 7th and I'm already slipping into a seasonal depression. At least I'm taking my vitamin D and I've got most of the Christmas shopping done. So far it's manifesting as glumness and a desire to spends heaps of money on myself on Amazon. And grouchiness and a burning desire to bitch about my childhood. I'll try to curb that one.

It's good to be old enough to recognize these mood swings for what they are, and to know that they'll pass.

Go Team Go!

2011-12-04T12:00:00.000-08:00

The football team at the local community college where my husband works won the NJCAA National Championship yesterday. Congratulations guys -- and remember to study for your biology finals on the ride back home. :P

Antici-paaaation! Fer-uhhhstraaaaation!

2011-12-03T20:06:00.000-08:00

You know those stereotypical mysterious Christmas boxes labeled "do not open until December 25"? I never had trouble with them growing up, but this year I've got two boxes in my house I'm dying to get into, and thanks to the ongoing remodeling I have no idea when I'll be able to.

My official Christmas present has been sitting in the kitchen bold as brass since the week before Thanksgiving. It was going to be last year's Christmas present, then my birthday present, then my anniversary present, then I put my foot down this fall and got it. It's a Kitchen Aid stand mixer, which we never had room for in our old kitchen. I love baking and owning one of these babies is a dream come true -- or would be if I could get at it. But the kitchen counter-tops are not in place yet, so there's no place to put the big, heavy beast and it has to stay in it's box for another month or three.

Then there's the official joint Christmas present, the Wii. I wanted one of the older and more versatile models, not the newer and less flexible model they brought out for Christmas, so I had to go ahead and get one before they disappeared. It's sitting there in its case, but I have neither a TV to hook it up to nor a painted wall in my den to hang the TV on. (Remember the old days when a TV was a box you sat down on something instead of a frame you hung on a wall? I know, radical concept dude!) So unless it can be hooked up to the computer it'll have to stay in it's box until sometime between late spring and year after next. The children are Not Happy with that, especially the 3yo, who's thrown two major tantrums so far about it.

The presents we do get to open on Christmas are a breeze compared to those.

Children's Hand's-On Museum of Tuscasoosa: Recycling for Maximum Fun

2011-11-28T09:56:00.004-08:00

We went to the Children's Hands-On Museum of Tuscaloosa over the break. It's a former early 20th Century downtown department store, with all the lovely spaces that go along with that type, that's been turned into an interactive children's museum. Most of the exhibits take old fixtures from various sources that were due to be thrown away, and recycles them into children's make-believe settings. Early 20th-Century house, bank, pharmacy, barber-shop, one-room schoolhouse, post office, and general-store fixtures let you play your way through a make-believe town. The former pilot's house of an old tugboat lets you navigate the river. A Japanese house that once graced an exhibit who-knows-where (The Birmingham Zoo and Botanical Gardens used to have one; IDK if they still do.) now gives children a glimpse into another culture. Bits and pieces from an old Ford pickup now have a cheerful plywood body that lets children "drive" plastic fruit in old peach baskets to market. There's also a puppet theater, some simple musical instruments and science exhibits, a nature section with aquariums and terrariums, a tiny mid-20th Century planetarium that looks like it was once the pride and joy of a small college, several rooms donated from the local hospital when they remodeled (including full-size reception, doctor's office, and patient's hospital rooms as well as all the outfits and equipment it was safe for children to handle), some spare NASA exhibits from the US Space & Rocket Center up in Huntsville, in addition to a farm, fishpond, gazebo, and Native American village sections.

The place was full of children having the time of their lives, but what impressed me powerfully was that all this fun was made possible by things that had been rescued on the way to the landfill. These beautiful things were all somebody else's idea of obsolete junk. My husband summed it up best. Looking around, he said, "This is the work of a very good artist."

As we left, the ladies at the front desk pointed out the work going on across the street. A building was losing it's plain, boring mid-20th Century Modern facade. As the workers peeled away the layers of bland mortar, a beautiful, intricate Victorian storefront was starting to emerge. It seemed the perfect metaphor for how the museum itself rescued the best of the past for future generations.

Signs of the Times

2011-11-13T22:03:00.000-08:00

1998 -- We're living in Okolona, Mississippi, at the center of the US particle-board furniture industry, surrounded by furniture factories. Chickasaw County has the third-highest employment rate in the state. Work is booming. All the parents of the students at the public high school where my husband works who want jobs have them. The better students also all have jobs. The teens always have money in their pockets for snacks, and all wear designer clothing.

2008 -- The factories have almost all moved to China. Chickasaw County now has the third-highest unemployment rate in the state. The adults are now working the minimum-wage stocking and fast food jobs their teenage children used to work. None of the teenagers can find a job. None of them have money in their pockets. Most of them only eat during the week when they're at school. They wear shorts, windbreakers, and flip-flops in the dead of winter. The girls wear short skirts not as a fashion statement, but because they've outgrown their old ones and can't afford new ones.

My husband notices one girl frantically combing her pockets and purse for change. The Food Stamps and the food have all run out at her house. The rest of her family is staying with relatives who still have food, leaving her behind so she can eat at the school. She's looking for enough change to buy a bag of flour and a can of fish so she can go home and cook herself biscuits and fish for supper. She dreams of finding enough money to be able to afford a dozen eggs as well.

2011 -- The jobs are gone. The young people crowd into colleges and community colleges, hoping to get the certificates that will land them jobs elsewhere. My husband is teaching them. Last week a sophomore told him he would be gone over the weekend. The boy had to go home and kill some squirrels so his family would have something to eat through the week.

What do I think of Occupy Wall Street? I think it's about goddamn time people started getting angry and doing something.

"Like a Business"

2011-11-03T13:08:00.001-07:00

A well-dressed woman introduced herself the other day, gave me a card and a pen, asked me to vote for her in the upcoming county election, and immediately began backing away.

"Thank you! We can always use pens. But what will you do if elected?"

"Oh!" The woman stopped dead in her tracks. "Well -- I'm going to run government like a business. That's what we need! My husband and I run a business in the next town. We took over my parent's sales business when they retired. Do you know where so-and-so is? That's our business."

"Oh," I nodded. The place she mentioned appeared from the road to have been closed down for several years. "What would you say our biggest problem is?"

"It's that we don't run government like a business."

"What about unemployment in the county?" The county's unemployment rate is around 14%.

"That's because we don't run government like a business. But I will look into that if elected."

"Do you know about the weekly anti-poverty meetings? My husband has been going to them."

"You mean so-and-so's group? I've heard about them. If they come up with any good ideas I'll look into them." She leaned in closer to me. "But you're new to the area. I've been in people's houses around here. You can tell some of them aren't really poor, they've just made bad choices."

I refrained from commenting on relative values (would my books count as 'bad choices'?) or asking her what she would do to educate people on how to make better choices. Or if she would do something useful and bring in more jobs.

I realize the term "running government like a business" became a meaningless catch-phrase almost 30 years ago but let's look at one of the more annoying false assumptions behind it. Implicit in the conceit is the idea that every businessperson is in such a cut-throat competative environment that in order to survive they must be good at their job. Hah! Maybe in Silicon Valley or Wall Street, but not around here. In the sluggish economy of small-town America, many businesses survive based on good fortune, a combination of luck, inherited capital, and the occassional act of collusion. Let's look at some real-life examples of businesses whose business experience makes their owners supposedly the best qualified to run our governement.

The Only Game in Town This business survives because it's the only one selling item X in over 50 miles. Their prices may be horrible, sometimes the sales crew is horrible, often the item you want is not in stock. But in an emergency you either do business with them or you have to spend an hour driving somewhere else and an hour driving back. So much for cut-throat competition preparing this person to run a government.

The Only Game is a Crooked Game The Only Game in Town is often an honest broker, but sometimes the Only Game in Town is openly a crook. Examples include the car dealership which tries to rewrite the deal you negotiated with them and never honors their warranties. In one local case a single mother negotiated an even swap on a smaller car with less mileage for a larger car with more mileage. When she came to pick up her new car they wanted $6000 extra. She demanded her old car back.

"We can't give it back to you. We already sold it."

"Then give me this car like we agreed to."

"No, and if you take it we're going to call the police and tell them you stole it."

"How can I be the thief when you're the one who doesn't have my car anymore?"

This business person is so obviously a more moral and virtuous person than the crooks who run the government now -- not.

The Owner of the Street The reason no one opens a business to compete with the Only Game in Town is often because of this person. They own every closed and falling-down business on Main Street, having aquired them through fire sales when the previous owner pulled out. (No, seriously, I can name three towns where this is the case.) They'll rent you a slot and charge a higher rent per month than the Main Street of the Big Town down the road, as is, you have to fix it up yourself. (More on that later.) Sometimes they're gettng tax writeoffs to keep them closed. In one case this summer the Owner of the Street, who had promised faithfully to keep all the stores open when she bought them, closed every one of them and had the Fire Department burn down two of the stores for the bricks, leaving nothing but a charred and gaping holes behind. We expect her to finish burning down Main Street next summer. This is an example of the kind of thinking we need in government to revitalize our communities -- not.

In another town the mayor asked the Owner of the Street bluntly why he didn't rent out more slots to open more businesses, bring in more money, and help out the town. The Owner of the Street bristled up and accused the mayor of not doing his job to make the town enough of a tourist attraction to justify the high rental prices the Owner of the Street wanted. He wanted the town to (no joke) dig up the downtown streets and install canals so people would come to see "the Venice of the South" (apparently unaware that New Orleans already owns that slogan). "But what about the mosquitoes?" the mayor asked. "It gets over 90 degrees every summer. We'll be overrun." "That's not my problem," the Owner of the Street insisted. "If you can't keep the the canals clean, obviously you're the one not doing your job." This is the kind of clear-headed thinking that such businesspeople can bring to government -- not.

The Landlord Du Jour This landlord accepts a deal from a person wanting to start a new business. The new business gets to rent a broken-down shop and gets a discount on their rent in return for fixing it up. The new business spends most of their time and capital fixing up the business over the next year, as well as promoting their own business. At the end of the lease agreement term, the business is starting to take off. The landlord admires all the work the business owner put into their shop, then turns around and doubles to quadruples the rent.

"But why?"

"I can get more for it now that it's fixed up."

"I thought we had a working relationship." You did. You had a classic landlord-sucker relationship.

The business goes under because the business-person no longer has the capital to invest in starting again at a new location. The newly renovated shop usually stays empty because no one can afford the landlord's higher prices.

This scam, which I've seen run in many different towns by many different people, is the single biggest cause of business failure among the startup businesses I've known.

And this is why this "successful" landlord would do a good job of running the government -- not.

The Censor I wanted to support local businesses, so I stopped in the locally-owned music shop. After purchasing the one interesting album in the whole shop, I asked if they would order a cd for me.

"Sure! Which one?"

"Libana's Fire Within."

"Who?"

"It's a women's choir. It's in print and available through mainstream distributors. I checked."

The man stared at me for a long time. Finally he asked, "Which church do you go to?"

I didn't get my Libana album there. Nor did I get any other album there again.

And this is the kind of businessperson who would encourage new ways to solve problems in our community -- not.

Real Men Don't Wear Sky Blue My husband doesn't understand masculinity problems. He is male, therefore, anything he chooses to do is by default "masculine". End of. He's also a Summer who looks best in jewel tones, pastels, and just about any blue except navy. It offends him that he can only find pants (not jeans, pants) in black, grey, tan, or navy. One day he's at the shop where he buys work clothes from overrun sellers, and he finds a some pretty sky blue work pants. Wow!

"How much for these pants?"

The owner stares at the garments as if they were covered in dung. "I hate those pants! I don't know why they made them in the first place. Everyone hates those pants!"

"I would like to buy them. How much?"

"Nobody wants to buy them! I hate them! I wish I'd never seen them!"

"I want to buy them. How much?"

"Everyone hates them! I -- what did you say?"

"I want to buy all these pants."

"Oh, they're $3 each. But that's because everyone hates them!"

Those were my husband's favorite pants. Many men commented on how good they looked and wanted to know where they could buy some, but he looked up the manufacturer and they had been discontinued.

And this storeowner is a prime example of the kind of businessperson who can seize any opportunity that comes their way that we need running our government -- not.

Daddy's Little Girls This is the storeowner whose capital and operating expenses are all being paid by another member of the family so they'll have something to do and won't have to go out and find a job. Usually it's a woman. Usually it's a gift shop. Usually the angel is their father or husband. Quite often they don't want anyone who isn't a member of their social circle coming through the door. Almost always they refuse to do business with local artisans and only order from the same two wholesalers as every other gift shop being run by every other Daddy's Little Girl in town, so they all have the exact same stock. But hey, they're a "successful" business owner so they must be magically able to run a government -- not.

The Busybody The mayor of one small town had invited the owner of a successful catfish restaurant in another town to open a branch is his town. As they're chatting in the mayor's office, the look out the window and see the Owner of the Street stepping up to the restaurant owner's car and photographing it from all angles, including the tag. The restaurant owner is so offended he leaves and never returns. The mayor confronted the Owner of the Street and asked him what the #$%& he thought he was doing.

"I've never seen that car before. It's not from around here. Maybe the owner is a criminal out to steal from us!"

This is the kind of outreach to new people and new business that this "successful" businessperson would bring to government.

The Cowards Shortly after Books-a-Million opened it's Tupelo store they received a visit from a couple of people who began clearing the shelves in a central aisle of books. The manager came over to greet them and see what was going on.

"Hello. We're with the American Family Foundation that's headquartered here. We visit all the new stores and check them out. We don't want items sold in our town. Take them down and don't put any more out." The books they had taken off the shelves included every Pagan, feminist, and LGBT-friendly book in the store.

The manager had the books boxed up and taken to the back, then called the corporate office. To their credit the corporate office ordered him to stop being an ass, put those books back on the shelves where they belonged, and don't do anything like that again. I'm not calling Books-a-Million cowards. But the same people had visited every other story in town and every other store had caved in to them, including the town's proud "independent" bookseller. And all those business owners would be automatically assumed to have the fortitude to be a "better" government leader than the people in office now.

I'm not anti-business. I'm just annoyed when people make the statement that business leaders would automatically be better government leaders than the people in office now without taking the time to look around and see who is actually running their local businesses.

Initiate Defensive Education Manuvers

2011-11-02T21:22:00.000-07:00

Baby Owl is 3 years 2 months old. Yesterday he pressure fit a board across his sisters' bedroom doorway and stacked wood blocks atop it. This afternoon he took down the screwdriver and unscrewed their window latch.

Reading lessons began tonight. That brain needs something to do.

Halloween 2011

2011-11-02T12:56:00.000-07:00

After living in a place where we had two trick-or-treaters total in 13 years, we finally live someplace where kids show up on Halloween expecting candy. And it was good. Real good.

Last year where we live now Halloween fell on a Sunday, and the weekly newspaper arbitrarily moved it to Saturday at the last minute, causing outrage and tears from those who love Halloween. So this year the people who celebrate it (only about 1 out of 10 but still better than before) went all out with the decorations, role-play and loot to make up for it. The children pronounced it way cooler than getting candy at the mall.

My husband took a handful of chocolate eyeballs to class with him for his students. He asked the Human A&P teacher, "What's that stuff inside the human eye?"

"Um, duh, uh, aqueous vitae?"

"Really?" He tossed her a candy. "Says caramel on the label."

The sewing machine is still packed up, but we made do. We found Brighteyes a classic trenchcoat for her winter coat at the thrift store this year, so she went as Nancy Drew, Girl Detective. Sunshine got some dragon fairy wings at the Ren Faire, and we cobbled together a dragon fairy costume for her. Owl picked out a monkey shirt and shorts to wear.

We only got two pumpkins out of the pumpkin patch this year, but that was enough for each girl to decorate her own. They looked spooky on either side of the door.

Next year we'll decorate a bit more. I'm thinking of hanging a ghost in the front yard. There's a perfect tree for it. And we should have more trick-or-treaters next year as well.

Of Ren Faires and Chicken Balls

2011-10-25T13:30:00.000-07:00

The Alabama Ren Faire is twenty-five years old this year, making it one of the South's longest-running faire's. We've gone for eight of the past ten years, barring one year's illness and last year's unpleasantness. But this year's faire was not the faire of old.

Any street party takes a lot of grunt work. I've seen town celebrations fall apart at the last minute because nobody wanted to get their hands dirty cleaning and prepping the streets, so having people to do the grunt work is important. When the Alabama Ren Faire first started, the grunt work was provided by the Society for Creative Anachronism, who in return got a tasteful display booth in the middle of the Faire. While they did the labor, the Faire increased in patrons and booths every year. The city park where the Faire is held was a kaleidescope of people in all kinds of costumes: medieval, celtic, fairy, bellydancer, goth, vampire, dragon, steampunk, regular punk. Everyone's freak flag flew proudly, and entering the Faire always gave me a profound feeling of relief and homecoming.

Something happened to make the SCA leave. About four or five years ago the Faire found a new partner to provide a source of labor: a Conservative Evangelical Christian Church located across from the park. They brought their own ideas about things with them. Not all those ideas were bad -- the children's treasure hunt through the hay bale for little trinkets was a smash hit with its age group. But the children's puppet show they put on the first year where cute little puppets told the kids they were going straight to hell if they didn't do exactly what the church told their parents to tell them to do was a bust. And they weren't satisfied with a tasteful booth in a middle of the fair. They got a soapbox on the food vendor's aisle where they could harangue people in shifts on the evils of sin while the patrons tried to eat their lunch. The first year they dressed up in monk's robes and I held out hope that we'd get sermonized on period-appropriate sins, but it turned out to be vilifying TV and gay marriage. This year they didn't bother to dress out.

Neither did many other people. Patronage and vendors were both down by two-thirds over their peak, hardly anyone showed up in medieval costume, and no one showed up in any other kind of costume. The people who came spent less time, and subsequently less money, while they were there. Previously we'd shown up in the morning, walked around a bit, ate lunch, and walked around some more. This time we left at lunchtime.

We asked the locals for a good place to eat and ended up at Evergreens' Chinese Buffet, which had a full parking lot at 1:30 in the afternoon, always a good sign. The paying customers included local Chinese, another good sign. The buffet was a bit small, but the food was delicious. One item I found that we'd never seen before was labelled "California Chicken". It turned out to be a fried meatball of ground chicken, flour and spices. I joked to my husband that the Californians had reinvented the hush puppy. Has anyone ever heard of anything like that before? I couldn't find a recipe online.

If I had a tail it would be twitching.

2011-10-24T12:15:00.000-07:00

Something's making me uncomfortable in my skin. Jostling me, trying to stir up old discontents. I've been fighting down the urge to rant on various and sundry topics for weeks now. (Admittedly, I also don't have the time.) But the feeling is starting to grow past the "rant" stage and into the "startle at strange noises" stage.

Shh. Be Very, Very Quiet. We're Trying To Take Over the Government.

2011-10-18T21:39:00.002-07:00

In my last post I talked about how prominent backers of Rick Perry and other hard-line Republicans include Dominionist Christians who want to occupy government and be the dominant influence in America:

So many people are now paying attention to this nonsense that the Dominionists are getting worried about their image. They're telling their people to stop using the term "Dominionist" in public. After all, they can't create a 'virtual theocracy' without using stealth.

Of course not everyone has got the message. Mike Bickle is still saying Jews who don't convert to Christianity will be sent to death camps:

But, you say, surely these raving lunatics pose no threat to our great land. Well, they already control the Air Force Academy to such extent that cadets hide their true beliefs in fear of punishment from the Academy if they are discovered to not be hardline Fundamentalist Christians.

Think about that one for a bit.

PS: The Statue of Liberty is Demonic, Too

2011-10-11T18:21:00.001-07:00

Last night Mississippi Public Radio aired Terry Gross' interview with New Apostolic Reformation leader C. Peter Wegner on Fresh Air.

My daughters, who I haven't let visit local Christian churches, had never heard Dominionist rhetoric before and were incredulous, outraged, and disgusted at what Wegner said, including but not limited to:

1) the Japanese Emperor had sex with the demonic Japanese Sun Goddess in order to cause hurricanes to fall on Japan and crash the Nippon,

2) that many politicians, especially Democrats, are controlled by demons,

3) that both non-Christians and non-Apostolic Christians are "part of the kingdom of darkness",

4) that democracy is bad for Christian churches, which should instead be controlled by authorized Apostles,

5) "...our goal is to try to have as many kingdom-minded believers in positions of influence in the arts and entertainment mountain as possible." Not to mention in business, government, the media, education, religion, and the family;

6) to have as many Apostles in all branches of government as possible,

7) casting demons out of both individuals (which sounds suspiciously like "rebellious" children of Apostolic parents) and cities (apparently the demons give a copy of their Hierarchy and Employee List to the Apostolics so they know who's in charge where),

8) why Sarah Palin needed special protection against Witches

... there would be some people who practiced witchcraft and other forms of the occult who would try to take Sarah Palin down through certain rituals or curses or other techniques that witches have, and try to destroy her through those things. (Gee, isn't laughter the most effective ritual against Palin?),

9) how they respect all religions, but don't think anyone should belong to any religion except their religion because all other religions are controlled by demons. And this is respectful of other religions. Honest.

But the thing that has Brighteyes (12) up in arms was when Wegner defended fellow Apostolic John Benefiel's claim that the Statue of Liberty is a demonic idol.

GROSS: Okay. You know, you mentioned that you're close to John Benefiel, one of the organizers of this rally. Something he said that was very controversial, he called the Statue of Liberty a demonic idol. Do you agree with that?

WAGNER: I - let me say that I don't have enough information to disagree with it. I know it was given to the nation by - as a gift from the Freemasons of France. And there might be some demonic power that he and his friends discern in that statue, but I don't want to - I really don't want to make a strong commitment one way or another to that one.

Brighteyes read all 442 comments on the Fresh Air website. She found people upset over nearly everything else Wegner said, but not this fact. As it was left out of the abbreviated transcript she thought some people might not have listened to the full audio or read the full transcript and missed it. She wanted me to be sure and tell everyone what "that idiot" said about one of our greatest national symbols.

The chilling part of all this is that due to the delay in airing the Fresh Air broadcast, we heard Wegner's interview yesterday as this story was breaking: 14 Peruvians shamans were butchered by members of a Protestant sect that believed the shamans were controlled by demons.

Does anyone believe they won't be doing the same thing in this country if they ever achieve their goals?

Break Out the Washboard

2011-10-04T20:47:00.001-07:00

Last week the washing machine died. In a family of five this is no small matter.

I've had a checkered history with washers. Shortly after we got married my great aunt entered a nursing home and gave us her 20-year old Speed Queen set, which ran for another 10 years without a problem before dying at the honorable old age of 30. In the next 10 years we've had four name brand washers, none of which lasted longer than three years. It got to the point where I was so used to hand-washing clothes in between machines that when I found a galvanized washboard for sale this spring I bought it without a second thought.

After comparing reviews online I found that Speed Queen was once again making home models. While they were more expensive than average, they were not more expensive than, say, two other-brand machines, which is what I was going through every five years. And they came with a 10-year warranty.

Talk about a no-brainer.

It took a while to find one locally. Apparently they only sell Speed Queens in really small towns where everyone knows where you live and will trash your car if you sell them a crappy appliance. But after crossing four counties, we finally found a dealer who was having a sale. Of course all the floor models were sold by the time we arrived, but they ordered one for us. It arrived today, and it works like a charm.

Yeah, I'm happy with my new toy. But I can't help remembering my mother. Mom never made a decent purchase in her life if there was a cheap one she could buy instead, but in the 60s and 70s washers were so well made that even the cheap ones lasted her over a decade each. And she never needed to buy a washboard.

Homeschoolers as Political Volunteers

2011-10-03T13:40:00.003-07:00

I'm just going to leave this here:

Homeschoolers emerge as Republican foot soldiers

That's something else I still need to do after out move. I need to look up the local Green Party candidate and find out if they need some underage volunteers.....

The Perennial Question

2011-09-27T10:28:00.003-07:00

Last weekend we visited some in-laws we haven't seen in years. One of them, a retired teacher, was curious about our homeschooling methods for the 10yo and the 12yo.

"How do you know they're getting enough basic skills?"

"We-ell, in the car on the way here they were fighting over Mark Twain's Life on the Mississippi."

*blink* "Oh. Okay, then. But what about art?"

The art bag's in the trunk. We do art at least once a week and "art out' once a month. We're going to stop on the way back home somewhere and find some pictures to make."

"Plein air! I've always wanted to do that!"

And another win for homeschooling.

Silver 2004-2011

2011-09-20T16:20:00.003-07:00

Brighteyes' little Australian Terrier is dead. No one knows why. He was in good health, although his appetite had slacked off two days before. We miss him.

He was the only one of our pets who survived the traumas of last year. I think without those traumas he would still be with us as well.

Rest in peace.

Recycling News Headlines

2011-09-05T07:20:00.005-07:00

We're currently getting some much needed rain and a bit of humor from Tropical Storm Lee, who inspired the following headline on my RSS page A Weakened Lee Still Poses Threat in South. What century are we in again?

Dh thought it a pity it hadn't turned into a hurricane and gone up the East Coast. Then we could have seen Lee Devastates Pennsylvania Before Retreating.

Look Ma! An actual homeschooling update!

2011-08-30T10:58:00.023-07:00

This year Brighteyes is seventh grade, Sunshine is fifth grade, and Owl is three years old.

Location -- The biggest change is location of course. We have a new house with an actual "kitchen" (dining room) table to work at. We were so crammed for space at the old house we had to do lessons on my bed, as it was the largest free surface available. There's a built-in china cabinet, and the bottom shelf (the one without the glass doors) is dedicated to their schoolbooks. Also the girls' dresser can double as a desk and there's a resin chair in the unfinished den for those "I can't stand to be around her/him a second more!" days. Eventually they'll each have a desk in their room and there will also be tables and chairs available in the den.

There's also a detached shop in the backyard that was originally part of the preschool when this house was used for that, so they can work on things out there that Owl needs to stay away from. Right now they're using it for their biology experiments.

We still don't have any of the secondary teaching materials moved except for a dictionary though.

Placement -- Last year's lessons were truncated. What wasn't already packed when we scrambled in the literal hour before dawn last October got left. So the girls are up on math, spelling, handwriting, and writing; and behind on grammar, history, and science. I can't complain. DHS is used to working in cooperation with the school system. I've seen them send officers after someone within two hours of a child being enrolled in a school system on the other side of the state. If we hadn't homeschooled and been relatively "invisible" to their system, things would have been a whole lot worse.

On the subjects that we took with us, Brighteyes is slightly ahead of schedule and Sunshine is slightly behind. Brighteyes has also completed two unit studies on diagramming and outlining each and one on geometry (The only part she had trouble with was the trigonometry.) Brighteyes is a puzzle-solver. Sunshine is a "big picture" global thinker who tends to trip herself up by forgetting the order of the steps. At least she no longer takes it personally when I explain to her that that's why I teach her only one step at a time, and not a single step more until she's got that one down. Dh tells me it's a problem he saw often in junior high and high school girls in his classes, and one that clears up in adolescence.

We're a year behind on grammar, and I still need to get Brighteyes' grammar texts -- Growing With Grammar isn't available a lot of places. We're back to doing history summaries and timelines. After pulling our hair out trying to find a decent early biology text, we went with Explorations in Backyard Biology: Drawing on Nature in the Classroom for Grades 4 - 6 It teaches elementary biology the way it was originally discovered -- through observation, note-keeping and making drawings in a naturalist's notebook. It's also similar to the artists' notebooks they're already keeping for their weekend art lessons with Daddy.

Literature has been frustrating since my library is still at the old house, but I've taken to reading to everyone in the evenings. It's hard to find really good books and I refuse to waste my breath reading sub-par books aloud, but I scrounged up copies of Mrs. Frisbee and the Rats of Nimh, To Kill a Mockingbird, and Canticle for Liebowitz. These have lead to some fascinating discussions. It turns out there is hardly any aspect of 20th Century culture that can't be discussed using Mockingbird as a starting point. (I want to revisit that one when they're teenagers though, as some aspects of that story they were too young for me to discuss in detail.)

Extra-Curricular Activities -- We're now further away from any children's activities than ever before. Ironically, we're also doing more. While distance was part of the problem at our old house, fatigue was an even bigger part. Dh was working in what was rated as the worst high school in Mississippi, which was rated as having the worst schools in the United States, so -- yeah. In 13 years he taught under 10 principals and 6 superintendents; as he put it, "It was like a new job every year." I don't think he fully realized how exhausting that mess was, and how exhausted I was from being his support system, until after we moved. But now we're both getting out more and seeing about more opportunities for the girls. Brighteyes is enrolled in a Dance class; Sunshine will follow when she stops giving people who tell her to do something the "deer in the headlights" look. There are nature programs in the vicinity, and we're about to see about a piano teacher. Supposedly the 4H program will fire up this fall. Things are looking up on that end.

Owl is doing stickers. He gets a page of stickers a day, which he arranges in patterns on a sheet of typing paper. The first thing he does in the morning is run to the office to get that sheet of typing paper. He's also scribbling with crayons and pencils. I see washable markers in the very near future.... But his heart belongs to his beloved trucks, which he arranges in traffic and parking lot patterns all over the living room floor. He insists on sleeping with the biggest one.

Owl's Third Birthday

2011-08-29T09:27:00.003-07:00

"Baby" Owl turned three this week. He's now a wriggling mass of high-speed, car-crazy energy. For his birthday he got a board book set, a toy toolbox, trucks, and a bilibo (which his big sisters think is the perfect accessory for their 3yo doll-baby). I got out the antique car cake pan I'd bought earlier this summer and made car-shaped banana bread for breakfast. Daddy made a chocolate birthday cake. Brighteyes (12) made the frosting and decorated it. Sunshine (10) made up songs in praise of the bilibo, most of them set to The Wonderful Thing About Tiggers. For his birthday movie we watched -- what else -- Cars, the sweetest love letter to car culture I've ever see. The next day we went to a water park and downloaded the new Doctor Who episode.

And a fun time was had by all, which made it a vast improvement over last year's catastrophic August 26.

Six Months Later

2011-06-11T09:18:00.000-07:00

Six months after we last spoke to DHS and moved into the new house, I finally feel like I have time to catch my breath. I didn't remember until Memorial Day that the month we moved in was the approximate 25th anniversary of the day my husband and I first met. That made us feel better.

The outside of the new house is ready for summer, and the kitchen sink is installed and working. The kitchen cabinets are coming along. The herb and vegetable gardens are started, and we've planted a fruit tree and a few ornamental to take notes on for next year. The herbs took to their new spots much faster than they did in the 90% clay soil we've been gardening in, and I'm already using the tea herbs. Now the tea tastes like it's supposed to taste.

We went to an Antiques and Collectibles show over the Memorial Day holiday to look for furniture. It'd be much easier to buy everything new from a furniture store, but the Southern climate is unkind to cardboard, hot glue and compressed sawdust. We picked up some 50s and 70s reproductions to go with the pieces that my grandfather made. I found a vintage sewing table big enough to stash an afghan-in-progress inside, something I've been wanting for ages. We got the girls a pair of poker table chairs from a remodeled Indian casino for their bedroom. Children's beanbag chairs that look like they'd fall apart after two weeks if a child actually sat in them run $45 each. These are made for heavy commercial use, look really nice, and cost $35 each. You do the math.

The roof of the old house took some damage in the tornadoes. We've talked to FEMA about it, but they're being stingy with everybody so I doubt we'll see anything out of it.

We've been spied on when we've gone back to the old house, although the spies tend to melt in the presence of a video camera. The back doors been broken into repeatedly. Things have been disarranged, and other things have gone missing. The last time we went back the toilet was full of slushy human feces and maggots. These bozos aren't even trying to disguise their trail. "Harassment" is the nicest term I can think of for it.

Note to Self:

2011-05-27T13:21:00.002-07:00

I should not make, "Where do I find the more evolved people?" my standard request to gatekeepers and entry level workers whenever I file a complaint. It wouldn't get me what I need any faster, for all that it would accurately convey my mood.

Hitting the Fill Line

2011-05-02T14:49:00.001-07:00

Life's been a bit "interesting" of late, in the "May you live in interesting times" way. For the past half year I've put my emotions on hold while I dealt with what was in front of me. This spring as things settled down I was finally starting to unpack them and allow myself to feel vulnerable.

Then the tornadoes came, and feeling vulnerable didn't seem like a good idea anymore.

Now Bin Laden's dead. To be honest, Bin Laden's never really pushed my buttons like he did for a lot of people. I live too far off the beaten track for any foreign terrorist to target anything near me (Homegrown terrorists are another story.) and I refused to run around like a chicken with my head cut off on his account. So I know the tears I cried at his death had nothing to do with him and everything to do with reaching the fill line on my reined-in emotions.

I'm so tired. I want to sleep for about three straight weeks. I know it's just a stress reaction, and I'm glad I crave sleep instead of alcohol or temper tantrums, but on a practical level it's like asking for the moon.

Tornadoes to the left of us, tornados to the right of us....

2011-04-29T07:15:00.000-07:00

Fortunately no tornadoes on us. Phew.

The college has an old air-raid siren they blow for severe weather. We can hear it from our house. How cool is that?

I was working on a post about what we did a couple weeks ago now when the first round of tornadoes came through. The power was out for over a day, so we went shopping in that town across the state line that we haven't had time to check out before. Y'know, Tuscaloosa? Turns out everyone else in all the little towns in that part of Alabama and Mississippi who's power was out also went there. And the Crimson Tide was hosting A-Day, a free end-of-spring-practice football game for their diehard fans, and they have a multitude of diehard fans. So the town was choked with people and we never made it to either mall, although we did check out some antique and thrift stores on Skyline Boulevard.

We didn't go to Tuscaloosa after this round of storms. The tornadoes got their first. One tornado flattened one mall, another tornado flattened the other mall. IDK what happened to Skyline Boulevard yet.

Our friends seem to be all right, except an elderly lady we know broke her hip trying to assist at a house fire during the first set of storms. She was just being wheeled out of surgery and back to her rooms when the second set of storms knocked out the power at her hospital.

There's whole swathes of land around us that's been clear-cut by tornadoes, and a lot of houses missing roofs. Dh is worried people will leave rather than rebuild. I think it depends on whether the businesses rebuild first. No job + no house = no reason to stay. We'll see.

2011-04-23T18:18:00.001-07:00

Tonight for supper I made a sandwich of fresh hot meatloaf and King Arthur Onion Buns. Wasn't sure how they would come out. Took one bite and

oh

my

word.

BEST SANDWICH EVER! Y'know that "one bite and you're transported to a state of bliss" experience? I've never had that with a savory before tonight. I'll definitely make those again. In fact, I may be lynched if I don't.

The New House

2011-04-11T12:04:00.002-07:00

The realtor sighed glumly. "I won't lie to you. The location is wonderful. The site is wonderful. But the house is horrible." He didn't add, "And the seller is erratic." He didn't need to, that's why he was there.

After three months of searching five counties for a house, it was clear that this 1920s cottage for sale by owner was the best for us. It was near the campus. Years ago it had been a private day care center, so it had once been child-friendly. But the current owners had painted it atrocious colors inside and out, tore down the second story off the two-story garage, planted cacti around the house, and collected vicious feral dogs that terrorized the neighborhood until the neighbors bought them an electric fence. The roof was sagging, the cabinets were falling off the walls, the trim work was less than half done (and in some cases had been stopped in the middle of a door) and mad-dog-chewed, and the owner broke the floor by stepping in the middle of the kitchen while showing us the house. For this the owner wanted 50% above the market value, as is, no inspections, no appraisals, we wouldn't even get to see the backyard because of the dogs. Or maybe she wouldn't sell it to us, she kept changing her story. After a few weeks of going nowhere we brought in our own realtor to handle the negotiations.

And all this while we were in the middle of dealing with the harassment issues.

The realtor walked the seller through the inspection and appraisal process, where we found out that the wiring and the plumbing had been messed up but the foundation and the walls were sound. Magically the price dropped to just over market value, although she tried to leave us us the feral dogs.

The worst of the repairs are done, and we've started on the renovations. Normally in regard to houses we're pretty laid back, "we'll just live with it" kind of people. We don't tear out carpets just because we dislike the color or some such, but in this case there's been so much half-done DIY and bad DIY we feel the need to replace it with good DIY. We're working on the kitchen cabinets now, with more to come.

Why Don't These Things Come With Locks? Or Even Doors?

2011-03-10T09:43:00.001-08:00

Open plan kitchen vs. toddler.

The toddler always wins.

Always.

When Hell Came to Our Home Update February 26

2011-02-26T08:57:00.001-08:00

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Sorry to be late. We've been busy getting moved.

After we met with Choctaw County DHS on Wednesday, December 15 we prepared to move into the new house. Unfortunately the sellers had "issues" that we were still dealing with (Good grief, the post I'll write on them when I get the time!), one of those issues being a pack of huge, vicious attack dogs even they couldn't handle anymore that they were trying to leave behind for us to deal with. Long story short, we were almost another week getting moved in. During that time something or someone killed our chickens and ducks where they were being temporarily held. So out of around 30 animals we had when this mess started, we were down to one dog.

Also during that week we got revised forms from Chickasaw County DHS (not Choctaw County DHS). I'd quote from our copies of them but they got misplaced during the move so I'll have to paraphrase off the top of my head. The only parts that were changed were the descriptions of us. Post-psychological evaluation, everything negative had been stripped from my copy, but they had added in that I "refused to acknowledge my problems." What these problems were they no longer said, and if they had it would have contradicted the shrink who has previously shown no compunction for tearing them apart in court. My husband's copy had two statements next to each other that contradicted each other, one praising him for being good at something and the next saying he was bad at it. That faux pas pissed him off quite a bit. It also lists one party as being Anna Warren, not Anna Brock, and doesn't say if she's a supervisor or not. But nowhere on their was Natasha Ivory's signature. Our lawyer got on to her, and says she's signed it since then and the case is officially closed.

Choctaw County DHS promised us copies of the pictures they that were in our file, then changed their mind and said they wanted nothing whatsoever to do with our case.

That is supposedly the end of the legal harassment. There are still some loose ends hanging, but I'll talk more about them later.

As I said in my last post, we went back to the old house to retrieve some things. There were plenty of signs that people had been on the property, including human feces by the back door, but no one bothered us while we were there

We're past the initial move, but not fully moved in. The house still needs the kitchen, the den, one bathroom, and a lot of external work finished. It is minimally furnished while we build the kitchen cabinets (on site from scratch, not prefabs, the room isn't square enough) and scrounge up a panel truck to move some more of our stuff.

I guess it should feel like victory. Instead it feels like a tornado has uprooted us and set us down elsewhere, doing major damage in the process. We've been running on adrenaline for months while our emotions were on hold. Now the feelings are starting to catch up with us, and it's not fun. We want to just scream and cry, but we don't want to upset the children. At least we've got things to build and cook and clean to take it out on.

And we still don't know what was really behind this whole mess, so we don't know if it's really over or if it's just this round that's over.

Anyway, it's time to get back to my Regularly Scheduled Life (TM). I'm putting a tag on these posts ("harassment") if anyone wants to just subscribe to those, and posting about other things again. Thanks to everyone who provided advice and moral support through all this. The ideas y'all had about the video camera and the lawyer did the trick. I don't want to think about what we would have done without you.

When Hell Came to Our Home Update January 17

2011-01-17T07:59:00.002-08:00

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We've been really busy getting moved into the new house, but I'm back at the old house today. Some unkind soul turned off our outdoor water faucet so it burst in the freeze. We dealt with it, added more locks to the house, and for the first time since October spent the night.

It was Psychologically Necessary In the Long Term (TM), but I hated every minute of it. And I hated that I hated sleeping in my own house. And -- you get the picture.

There's a little more that's happened with DHS, but I'm not really in any shape to blog about it today. Another month should not slide by before I post again.

When Hell Came to Our Home Update December 18

2010-12-18T17:36:00.002-08:00

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We're back at the Okolona house with the children for the first time since our house was broken into, doing a last email download before changing over the phone. If you've emailed me recently, please be patient. It's going to take me a while to go through that mess.

Friday December 10 -- We met with the new lawyer and went over the case. She was thrilled that we were buying a house. She showed us the official notice from the psychologist that I was Certified Sane and Not a Danger to Children *TM* (And don't y'all forget it! :P) The only remaining issues we all could find were my middle child's dental records and verification that we weren't living in Chickasaw county anymore. We'd filed a change of address to Choctaw county, where we were staying with a relative, and both lawyers had informed Chickasaw county DHS of that, but when we'd stopped by Choctaw county DHS they'd never heard of the case.

Our lawyer had no idea if we were going to be in Youth Court Friday December 17. She said Chickasaw County DHS didn't bother sending out summons to anyone! All she had was Natasha Ivory asking her, "Are you doing anything Friday?"

Lawyer: "Is there something I need to do Thursday?"

Natasha Ivory: *silence*

Personally I think that's grounds for a lawsuit right there, but first thing's first.

Sunday December 12 -- The seller finally agrees to sell the house for the appraised value (instead of the ridiculously high figure they were holding out for, but that's a story for later.) The bank needs two days to process the last remaining paperwork, and we agree to meet on the morning of Wednesday December 15, the last day all the requisite lawyers and officials can be rounded up before sometime in January (which would do us out of a year's worth of Homestead Exemption.) We're hoping this clears before Friday's Youth Court deadline, which we still have no confirmation about.

Tuesday December 14 -- While we're out buying kitchen wares for the new house, the manager of Choctaw County DHS visit's our relative's house. She says she'll be back to check on us tomorrow morning -- at the exact time we need to be at the bank buying the house over an hour and a half's drive away! But we've got to have this confirmation tomorrow to avoid Friday's Youth Court hearing! We put her off until the afternoon, which is when we're already scheduled to meet with both sets of subcontractors to discuss the renovations. Nobody sleeps well that night.

Wednesday December 15 -- We get up early, go to the bank, sign the papers and take possession of the house, then fly back to Choctaw County to meet the manager of Choctaw County DHS.

2:30 she arrives. I'll have to look up the spelling of her name as I can't remember it offhand. She was nice and professional, and had trouble reconciling DHS Standard Operating Procedure with what has happened in our case.

"What have you worked on in your Family Team Meetings?"

"What's that? We've only heard that term once before."

"What do you want to work on in your Family Team Meetings?"

************** "We want the case closed."

She did note that we'd met all the points that had been presented. She kept wanting to see our updated Individual Service Plan, the one with the vaccination information on it. We showed her the only ISP we had (which doesn't mention vaccinations), and told her that Chickasaw County had refused our repeated requests to clarify and update the original ISP. Apparently there is an updated one we haven't seen, though, because she appeared to have seen one that does mention vaccinations. Interesting.

(We have a family history of allergic reactions to vaccinations, and are delaying the children's vaccinations until they turn 12 so they'll be big enough to handle an adverse reaction should one occur.)

She kept asking when the pictures were taken of our house for the DHS.

"We never allowed pictures to be taken of our house for the DHS. If there are any pictures they were obtained illegally."

She shut up about the pictures. So apparently there are pictures which were taken during a break-in in our DHS file. Interesting.

She took pictures of our relative's house (which pleased our relative none at all), and then my husband had to fly our to meet the subcontractors. She tried to talk to our daughters privately, but they refused to talk. Finally she told them, "We're going to get this resolved so you can get back to being kids. No kid should have to go through this."

She asked very politely if, after all this was over with, I would delete the video of her from my camera as she hated being videoed.

Before she left I asked her to verify our Youth Court appearance. She called and told me we were scheduled to appear in Chickasaw County Youth Court at the Courthouse Friday December 17 at 9:30 am.

9:30 am! Shit!

Wait a minute. Chickasaw is a spit county (has two county seats half an hour's drive apart for historical and geographic reasons). Did she mean the Houston Courthouse or the Okolona Courthouse?

She called back. It was the Okolona Courthouse.

*deep breath* Okay. I thanked her gratefully for clarifying that, said goodbye to her, and set about figuring out what to do next.

A few minutes later I was told that she was back. She said that she'd been called back and that it was really the Houston Courthouse.

Houston, Okolona, which was it? If we guessed wrong we'd automatically be in contempt of court!

"Anna's assistant said Houston. I'll called Anna back to verify."

"Wait, who's Anna?"

"Anna Brook is the manager of Chickasaw County DHS," she said absently while dialing her cellphone.

"Oh thank you!" I said, so thrilled I was ready to jump up and down (also so cold, as I'd come out without my coat.) "We've been trying for months to find out who the supervisor is! Not even our lawyers could find that out!"

"She stared at me, then asked for verification. She said Chickasaw County was supposed to call her right back with the information.

We waited for 10 minutes while she glared at the phone and I shivered. Then she told he that she would find out the exact location and type it up on a Choctaw County DHS letterhead and leave it at her office for us to pick up in the morning. I said goodbye to her again, not expecting to see her anytime soon.

At 6:30 that night she showed back up at our door, handed me a piece of paper, and said, "This should take care of things. Remember our agreement." Then she left.

I opened the paper. It was a letter from her stated that after consulting with Anna Brook, manager of Chickasaw County DHS, we had met all their points and our case was closed. There were no scheduled court appearances for us anywhere. I'll post the letter later.

Everyone is thrilled!

Still, my husband and I are waiting for the next shoe to drop.

Lest anyone reading this wonder how any county could be so corrupt, here's last week's headline: Chickasaw jailer arrested for selling drugs to inmates.

When Hell Came to Our Home Update December 16

2010-12-16T16:19:00.002-08:00

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Bought the house. Renovations begin Monday. Current move-in date is in two weeks.

DHS case may be resolved. More details Saturday.

When Hell Came to Our Home, Update December 9

2010-12-09T15:04:00.002-08:00

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Both our lawyers have informed DHS of our official change of address.

Natasha Ivory has said that we'll be summoned to appear before Youth Court on December 17 (it meets once a month), but we haven't been given an official summons yet. I'll quote from the lawyer's email as to the reason:

She indicated that you have not signed the service agreements or the rights and responsiblities. Ms. Ivory indicated that your service agreement has not changed. She indicated that Gene asked them to provide additional information regarding the agreement but did not inform them of specific questions. The service agreement must be signed. It is indicating that you understand and agree to work with DHS to achieve your goals/objectives.

Those of you who've seen the video know that we repeatedly asked for specific additional information which we never recieved, and which they promised ON TAPE to provide us in writing.

Our psychologist has finished my sanity assessment and faxed it in. The children have been medically examined and gotten clean bills of health; a letter to that effect should be ready Monday.

The preliminary paperwork is finished on our buying a house, and the final negotiations are about to begin. It'll need about a week's worth of renovations after the purchase is finalized. (There's isn't a "move-in ready" house in five counties. We looked.)

That's what passes for good news.

We've been talking with the Mississippi Bureau of Investigations. After stalling us for weeks, they finally said that due to budgetary constraints all property cases without a "smoking gun" piece of evidence attached to them when they come in the door are being given low priority. This was in spite of the fact that the number of property cases had gone through the roof during the recession. Everyone who voted to cut government spending, thanks for nothing.

Tomorrow we have a meeting with our lawyer to discuss matters.

When Hell Came to Our Home Update December 4

2010-12-09T14:25:00.003-08:00

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We have new mailing addresses. We're staying with a relative in Choctaw county and using her address for our personal mail, and we've got a PO Box for our business mail.

DHS refused to believe that our new lawyer was our new lawyer without paperwork, which they delayed mailing to us at our new address so we could sign. We hand-delivered it yesterday. They didn't like seeing it back.

The new lawyer informed DHS that according to Mississippi law, NO agency has the right to monitor homeschoolers. They didn't like hearing that either.

The next part gets really weird. Our old lawyer was emailing us every day insisting that we tell him where we were staying every single day and night, apparently at the behest of DHS who wanted a continuous update on our E911 address. We refused. Our new lawyer is perplexed by our old lawyer's behavior, since even convicted felons don't have to report in that often. Then they insisted we give them a mailing address. We gave them our new PO address, but they refused to accept it. We gave them our relative's address in Choctaw County, but they refused to accept that either, insisting that we were still living in our house in Chickasaw County.

West Chickasaw County DHS insisted that we take the children by Chocktaw County DHS at the beginning of the month so they could see them. We went Thursday, but Choctaw county DHS had never heard of us and couldn't wrap their brain around why West Chickaway County DHS would insist that children who weren't even living in Chickasaw county report back to Chickasaw county once a month. When they called West Chickasaw County DHS, they were told to tell us to bring the children up to Okolona on Friday.

Friday we drove the children 90 miles both ways just so West Chickasaw County DHS could see them, but when we got there they ignored the kids and focused on me. Their only question was had I gotten the mental assessment done?

Then they announced that they were taking us to Youth Court on December17 for not providing them with a mailing address. When we told them they had our new address, they refused to believe it was valid. We don't understand this, and neither does our lawyer.

There's been this weird dichotomy since the beginning. At first they were urging us to go on and move out of the county, so they "wouldn't have to take us before the judge". Now they're threatening to take us before the judge for moving out of the county. Nobody we've talked to understands this.

Here's the Election Day video on youtube.

Part 1

Part 2

It's 19 minutes broken into two parts. I apologize if it's crude, but we did the best we could at the moment. It gets hard to see and hear when they speak to our children (for their privacy) but it gets really interesting after that.

When Hell Came to Our Home Update November 28

2010-11-28T13:58:00.003-08:00

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Thanksgiving has come and gone, and we made do okay.

I filled out two more personal assessments for the psychologist and a Maternal Discipline short-answer test. ("Your child has broken a lamp and lied to you about it. What do you do?" "I don't have any lamps. Everything breakable is in storage. This is why.")

The new lawyer sent a certified letter to East Chickasaw DHS, and hasn't heard back from them. I'm told that from a legal standpoint this is a Good Thing for some reason, but it doesn't feel that way.

We've taken steps toward changing our legal address and buying a house.

Our dogs escaped from our friend's house, and we had to go find them. We found our older daughter's Australian Silky Terrier, but our younger daughter's Lhasa Apso has vanished. I so wanted to scoop them up and take them back with us, but we can't. And there's no way we can explain to them why the humans that love them aren't there to take care of them anymore, and won't be for weeks at least.

ETA: DHS wants to see the children at the first of every month. Since we're not living up there now I expect to here from them next week that I've gone insane and murdered the kids -- again. They've used that same excuse twice before to see them.

When Hell Came to Our Home Update November 23

2010-11-23T13:24:00.003-08:00

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Making a flying visit to the house for food and warm clothes -- the weather is starting to turn nippy. Got an MMPA(?) I think the "M-something Multi-Phasic Assessment" today so I can be Certified Sane(TM). Took care of some details concerning buying and moving into the new house. My husband says Bozo just got back so I don't have time to post details. Gotta leave in five minutes.

Found an email at this address from our lawyer saying that the DHS workers we saw in the video on Election Night called him up and complained that we "talked to fast". Oh boo hoo!

Oh, thanks to those of you who offered to donate money, but we haven't needed it. As I mentioned in my homeschooling blog intro post, we've been tigthwads for over 20 years and debt free most of that time. This "adventure" has been exhausting and infuriating, but not financially catastrophic. What we need are advice, moral support, and contacts for lawyers and media who might be interested in our case. Thanks to those of you who've given us that. I don't know what we'd do without you!

ETA1 - Our animal-minder quit, so we moved the dogs, chickens, and ducks to a friend's house. At least they're not up here anymore.

ETA2 - A poster here offered to edit the video and post it on Youtube. Check back for more details.

When Hell Came to Our Home November 19 Update

2010-11-19T13:47:00.006-08:00

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I'm a bit behind on my updates here.

November 13

Sorry to be away so long. I haven't had access to a computer since my last post.

Got a new lawyer who has experience with DHS. Got a respected psychologist who says I'm not crazy -- one of DHS's claims is that I'm too nuts to look after the kids, even though there's no evidence to support that. (According to the shrink we're totally outside the DHS's usual client base, and they don't know what to do with us.) Other counselors have looked over the document, say it's totally out of line, and offered suggestions.

East Chickasaw DHS has continued to act like idiots, including another claim that I ax murdered my children in our house when we weren't even in the county -- that was the Tuesday after my husband and I went back to the house. (It's awfully tiring to teleport everyone in, scream and murder the kids, resurrect them, clean up the mess, and teleport out every month.) On Election Day they were waiting for us when we drove back to our old county to vote and harassed us again, but this time we made a video. Excuse me while I go learn uploading. I've never had to upload more than a jpeg before.

The entire video file is at http://www.megaupload.com/?d=TFQVWUMR

Okay, here's the crazy "Service Plan" that DHS came up with for us, which looks nothing like any "Service Plan" any other expert has ever seen before: http://www.megaupload.com/?d=NIOO2ML8 Note the total lack of anything specific complaints or remedies.

The video is over 15 minutes in length and doesn't fit on youtube. How do we chop it in half?

When we went back to our home to vote on Election Day we found DHS waiting for us in our driveway. Here Patti Young and Natasha Ivory try to make us sign a document saying that we agree to abide by another document that they don't have with them and which they say they've changed, BUT they won't say what the changes are and they refuse our point blank requests for specifics. Oh yeah, and all this happens IN THE DARK. It's blurry where they talk to our children but clears up after that when the "good" bits happen.

November 19
Not much happened this week. The new lawyer was unable to find out who at East Chickasaw DHS was supposed to be overseeing our case, and finally just sent a letter to their office. We gathered up the girls' homeschool registration forms for her (the only paperwork required by homeschoolers in Mississippi. The rest of the stuff they asked for is not required.)

I'm supposed to have a psych evaluation next week that should satisfy any legitimate concerns they have on that regard. Isn't that the cherry on top of a mountain of stress?

And on top of all that we're still househunting, which ordinarily would be a job all by itself. There's a lot more I can post about that (yeesh!) but my time is limited. More after we get something nailed down. Plenty of running around thanks to that next week.

I have no video editing capablilities right now. Is there somewhere I can post a thirty minute video for viewing? Youtube cuts off at 15 minutes.

We're going to be spending Thanksgiving living out of suitcases. Oh, joy. I only hope something gets resolved before Christmas.

To those who think I'm doing this for attention, I'm really not that kind of person. Given a choice, I'd really rather be sitting back, chatting about fandom, and reading fanfic as opposed to dealing with all this. You have no idea how much I wish I could even care about fandom right now.

When Hell Came to Our Home Update October 22

2010-10-22T13:50:00.002-07:00

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I'm making a flying visit to our house for the first time in 11 days. There's private papers scattered all over the floor and other evidence of another break-in.

But we finally talked to someone who was willing to put us on the trail of the more specialized lawyers. And we got a video camera with a good audio pickup.

I'll update when I can. Internet access is problematic when I'm away from the house.

When Hell Came to Our Home Update October 21

2010-10-22T13:44:00.002-07:00

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Still out here. Progress is being made on various fronts, but it's slow going.

Can anyone recommend a video camera with a good audio pickup?

The children are starting to get fretful, being away from home for so long and moving so much. This nonsense is hard on them.

What's the contact infor for the Huffington Post?

I must commend the DHS for their efforts to "treat" my depression. Right now I'm too darn angry about what they have done to be depressed.

When Hell Came to Our Home Update October 18

2010-10-18T17:43:00.002-07:00

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After many hours of wrangling our lawyer got a copy of the DHS's "Individual Service Plan" for myself and my husband. It's a hoot. Counselors we've shown this to have hit the roof. It only has one signature attached to it, and that isn't anyone I've seen or talked to. Each section has a different date, and a different due date. Everything is out of compliance with the official state practices. Some of it is against state law, other parts of itare against official insurance practices. Some of it isn't even worded in complete sentences.

Part 1 says:

"...will correct her home deficiencies to corrrect but arenot(sp) limited to replaceing the dead bolt lock"

This is:

1) ungrammatical,

2) incorrectly spelled, and

3) the deadbolt lock they want me to remove is next to a front door window that's already been broken into before. The insurance people would hit the roof over that!

Part 2 wants the children's medical/dental records BUT doesn't offer to pay for them. I learned today that's not kosher.

Part 3 says:

"...will provide proof/confirmation that the children's educational needs are being met."

That's ILLEGAL in Mississippi.

Part 4:

"the dead bolt will be replaced with a safer type of lock..."

DHS, meet insurance people. Insurance people, meet DHS.

There's no "client" signature. There's no "social worker" signature. There is an "ASWS" signature -- but no date. I was told that the ASWS is the social worker supervisor. BUT the person who signed in the "ASWS signature" slot is not a social worker supervisor. She's not even a social worker. Melody Hamilton, who has the only signature on the entire document that they faxed our lawyer, is a student intern working in their office.

How many ways can you say FAIL!

When Hell Came to Our Home October 14 Update

2010-10-14T17:43:00.003-07:00

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We emailed the FBI and some support and media outlets today. Please suggest anyone you can think of.

ETA: I'm Debbie Byrd Shinn. The women who contacted me who said they were from DHS named themselves Patti Young, Natasha Ivory, and Joyce Cook. None of those names are in the MS Employee registery: http://dsitspe01.its.ms.gov/its/webphone.nsf/Home?OpenForm

Ever since the activity started at the trailer next door, dh smelled a lot of ammonia and organic solvents in the evening. He originally put it down to remodeling. He also remembers being asked if he could show somebody how to "cook something" last year. "Cook what?" he asked puzzled.

Here is a letter my husband prepared for the FBI. Please forward it to any parties who might be interested:

Over the last several weeks my wife has been the subject of an harassment campaign.

She has blogged this at crabby-lioness.livejournal.com

Most of this happens when I am not at home.

This began with a daylight breaking and entry, and what was suggested by the county attorney to be an attemptedkidnapping of our son. And the telephone went dead 1 hour before all this. (No reply from PSC.)

Deputy Jimmy Rappe,in no uniform, but acting as such still, refused to look at the door, but told my wife DHS would respond; he was interested only in the child being out of the house, and told her not to lock the door.

The sheriff’s dept. knows about the evidence of the break-in, but have never picked it up from the Okolona police.

DHS blames my wife for letting the baby out of the house, as if this break-in never happened. The county attourney even suggested this was an attempted kidnapping; we have asked him as well to have this investigated.

One day after that when my family was with relatives in another county, Chris Ware Chickasaw SD, called me at work,that there was an emergency at my house, that some of my family were inside injured, and no one would come to thedoor. I told him no one was at home. He and DHS said they did not believe me. I said if anyone was in my house, they had broken in, and asked Ware to investigate the windows and doors – he refused. Okolona police recommended we get a civil rights attorney at this point, but none up here will take our case.

More items of harassment came in a steady trickle as we tried to find a way to move.

Saturday, Oct. 9, 2010, our home was entered shortly after we left. About 45 minutes after we left, 3:27 pm,someone called my telephone, and a stranger inside picked up. They discussed and viewed my wife’s medical records,which we found by the telephone. Our attorney did not want us to report this, and it does seem a little pointless since an Okolona policeman thinks one of the voices is Jimmy Rappe, of the Chickasaw SD.

His mother lives next door (see the trailer story following) and has made threatening statements before.

Please read her further descriptions and help us end this harassment.

I suspect something is going on over at the trailer near us; it was almost abandoned until about 2 months ago.

I have smelled ammonia and strong organic solvents (I have a degree in chemistry) from that direction since.

One night, several people came down, turned off the outside light, carried boxes into the pitch-black interior, then emerged with even more boxes, coming down steps and loading these into vehicles in total darkness. Something is going on.

We have removed from the house, as we deem it no longer safe.

Please, please, read her further descriptions and help us end this harassment.

Thank you,

Robert Shinn, Ph.D.

When Hell Came to Our Home October 13 Update

2010-10-13T19:09:00.002-07:00

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Hi folks. Thanks for the info and the kind messages. I've been out of pocket recently. So far so good.

First up -- here is the link for a copy the message I found on my answering machine Saturday night:

http://filebucket.info/?1oo0r81rh

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=EDBCGQXQ

And a big THANK YOU to the cybergeeks who did that for me. If you want to help and have the ability, please mirror that for me. I'll add your links in later.

If you would, please someone make a slideshow using the audio and the transcript I posted earlier and post it to youtube. Please mirror that as well, and forward to anyone who might be interested in civil rights. Thank you.

Second -- DHS

According to the lawyer we hired to handle the DHS end, he spent three hours badgering them before they would even admit to having my name in their files. Then they wanted a release form. Then they spent even more hours giving him the runaround -- wrong person, wrong office, wrong directions et al. Then when he asked them to write down the complaint, they said a bunch of hooey but have so far refused to put anything in writing. ('m not surprised, because they never gave us anythign in writing either.) Some of the hooey isn't even legal in Mississippi.

They complained --

the house isn't clean enough, even though we cleaned it to their earlier (verbal) specs and got their (verbal) approval;

the floor isn't fixed, even though we repaired it to their earlier (verbal) specs and got their (verbal) approval;

(There was a background sense that we weren't acting "White enough", that we weren't living the way people of our socio-economic standing should live. That instead of buying a trailer and some land in the country, and building extensions as we went along, we should have "properly" bought a pre-made house in the suburbs and tied ourselves down with a huge mortgage. That we should buy all-new furniture instead of taking care of the old stuff we have. Apparently one can't be frugal and be a "good" person.

Some of the property is old, but it's all in good shape. The additions were built at above US Navy standards.);

that our homeschooled children needed to be tested to see if they were learning enough. THIS IS ILLEGAL IN MISSISSIPPI. Homeschooled children in Mississippi have to meet no testing requirements whatsoever: http://www.hslda.org/laws/analysis/Mississippi.pdf In fact:

"It is not the intention of this section to impair the primary right and the obligation of the parent ... to choose the proper education and training" for their children, and nothing in this section shall be construed to grant the State of Mississippi "authority to control, manage or supervise" the private education of children. "And this section shall never be construed so as to grant, by implication or otherwise, any right or authority to any state agency or other entity to control, manage, supervise, provide for or affect the operation, management, program, curriculum, admissions policy or discipline of any such school or home instruction program." Miss. Code Ann. § 37-13-91(9).

(The funny part of this is that when they asked to see the girls' schoolwork and I showed them their Singapore Math notebooks, Patti Young, aka DHS-1, couldn't even read the problems correctly out of my 9yo's workbook, and declared the 11yo's workbook was above her head.);

that our children need to be given a medical exam and vaccinated. Okay, we were holding off to see how the mercury content in modern vaccines was being handled, but the kids are old enough they may be safe. (I had an extremely bad reaction to an MMR shot once, and I was 21 at the time.) Still THIS IS ILLEGAL IN MISSISSIPPI. Only children entering the school system have to be vaccinated. http://www.msdh.state.ms.us/msdhsite/_static/14,0,71.html

(Also there was an issue with the age of the vaccines. I was at the County Health Clinic one day when a batch of "fresh" vaccines arrived and was left sitting on the reception counter. They were already out of date and had been culled from another medical center, with all the proper markers for rejects. This sort of thing does not inspire confidence.);

that I am "too depressed" to "properly watch my children" or to "properly homeschool". THIS IS ILLEGAL IN MISSISSIPPI. There's no requirements for homeschool teachers in our state;

that I should send them a copy of any lease I sign anywhere else so they can check out my new home and so they can transfer my case instead of closing it.

They said (but didn't put in writing) that if I moved they would drop the case. That doesn't jive with the above statement.

The lawyer wants to comply with all this. I suspect much of it will actually evaporate when they have to put it in writing.

Third -- the matter of the break-ins and the Sherrif's Department's actions. We're still working on this end. Everyone who hears about it is horrified, but most don't want to get involved.

Gotta go. Please pass this story along to any homeschool advocates, including Mississippi homeschool advocates, the Mississippi state senator who chairs the education committee, and anyone else who may be interested. Thanks.

When Hell Came to Our Home Update October 11

2010-10-11T03:22:00.005-07:00

Master Post

I currently live at

591 Hwy 41 E
Okolona, MS 38860

Catherine Young's old trailer is next door.

Someone probably thinks i saw something or someone over there I should not have. Having me committed would discredit me as a witness. Please circulate this post.

When Hell Came to Our Home Part 2A

2010-10-10T21:58:00.004-07:00

Master Post

I haven't talked much about the trailer next door. Normally I don't think much about it, but with all this trouble coming from that direction I'm reminded that things have been odd over there lately.

It's been abandoned for years, but the week before school starts there's a lot of activity going on over there. Lots of people in and out, lots of banging and remodeling noises going on, so much that I didn't notice anything odd about the banging noises the day our door was broken open.

Then there's the people, who gathered together to talk at the back door instead of the front door, the back door that can only be seen from our back yard. At least they did until the day the baby watched them, three days before this mess started. They watched me take him in. They haven't gathered at either door since then.

Then there's the inside lights, which are never on over there anymore, even though they seemed to be working fine the last time anybody lived there.

Then there's the night a whole bunch of people came over with a whole bunch of boxes. They turned off the outside lights, took a lot of boxes in, then took even more boxes out. Funny thing was they did it in complete darkness, with neither the inside or outside lights on, even though that meant negotiating stairs and uneven terrain in the dark.

Then there's the morning Bozo, the guy who lives there, cut across his front yard like he was coming to our front door. He saw me in the window, stopped, turned and glared at the street, then got in his truck and left. We'd been having a rash of damaged doorknobs about then.

Odd stuff.

When Hell Came to Our Home Part 4

2010-10-10T21:39:00.003-07:00

Master Post

We went to see a lawyer we've had dealings with before today. Usually when he calls us up on Sunday he asks us to come over in the late morning. This time he wants to see us first at 6, then at 6:30.

When we reach his office, there's a campaign sign in the front yard for the County Attorney who won't return our calls.

We tell him about yesterday's break-in and the rest of the story while he texts. He doesn't want to get a subpoena to find out who called our house. He says the answering machine tape isn't the sort of evidence that will stand up in court. Only DNA evidence or pictures will.

(That's funny because when we were robbed two years ago the burglar cut himself on the glass of the window getting in and bled all over the floor. The Sheriff's Department refused to take a blood sample when we asked them to.)

He offers to help us deal with DHS. We take him up on it.

When we get home we find out that he was right. The answering machine won't stand up in court. Because while we were at his office someone broke into our front door and erased our answering machine, including the copy of the message that was on it.

Good thing there's more copies.

When Hell Came to Our Home Mega Post

2010-10-10T09:43:00.010-07:00

Please repost this story far and wide. One forum already refused it as being too "troublesome", but I am terrified as to what will happen to my children and myself if no one knows.

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Part 2A

October 11 update

October 13 update

October 14 Update

October 18 Update

October 21

October 22

November 19

November 23

November 28

December 4

December 9

December 16

December 18

January 17

February 26

Six Months Later

When Hell Came to Our Home Part 3

2010-10-10T08:36:00.004-07:00

Master Post

There's some middle details, but we'll skip to the juicy bits. I'll fill them in later if I have the time.

Friday October 8

2:00

DHS-2 comes to our house. We've had problems with finding both the front and back door locks hanging half out of the door over the past few weeks (as well as both damage and cigarette butts in the backyard) so I've taken to locking the double-locked deadbolt all the time. Friday it's cranky from everything the door's been through and won't unlock for me. I go out the back door and come round the front to talk to DHS-2.

I tell her we're looking at houses nearer to where dh works, but they all need alterations. (We have two dozen poultry and henhouses are no longer standard issue.) The best looking one turned out to have problems on closer inspection, and may take months of repairs to get into shape, so we might not be able to move until spring.

DHS-2 expresses the hope that we would have already moved "So we won't have to involve the judge." She won't explain what she meant by that.

Previously she had brought boxes from the dollar store's leftovers to help me pack. I ask for more. She's surprised I've actually used the ones she brought. (Well duh, I have to pack for five people!) She says she'll be over with more boxes Tuesday or Wednesday.

Saturday October 9

2:45 we leave on a picnic and to do our monthly canned goods run. When we get home there's a strange message on our answering machine. According to *69, the call came at 3:27 yesterday afternoon and was from "662(local area code)/000-0000".

I'll try to upload the message later, but here's what we've been able to make out.

Male 1-Let me know cause I'm saying all you can commit -- if you bring a petula(?) it's going to be, "Hey you." Because she can't go out and commit the people but she can write them up. And you know, everybody should be told to bring somebody. So you know, you're paying for it.

Male 2-So you want me to tell her that, that I talked to you about it already right?

1-Uh-huh

2-Who?

1-I don't have nothing.

2-Who?

2-Oh, okay

1- I told her that.

2-Okay.

Female-Not Medicaid.

Male 3-Man I know a beep came on, that's all I heard.

1-Might be a blue card.

3-I guess.

Coincidentally(!) a medical record from the baby's birth was laying out of its folder on the counter about two feet from the phone with my husband's state-run Blue Cross health insurance number on it. We haven't had that folder open in over a year.

According to one source who wishes to remain anonymous who's heard the message, the male voices sound like members of the Sheriff's Department and the County Attorney's office.

We've talked to lawyers. We haven't found one who wants to touch this case. They say you take cases against the Sheriff's Department to the Attorney General. They also say the Attorney General's office won't do anything.

I don't know what will happen next.

When Hell Came to Our Home Part 2

2010-10-10T08:07:00.004-07:00

Master Post

Sunday August 22

The three children and I arrive at a relative's house.

Monday August 23

Dh calls from Good Buddy's house. He says the Sheriff's Department won't return his calls. The police are asking questions at the telephone relay station.

Tuesday August 24.

Dh calls from Good Buddy's house. The Sheriff's Department still won't return his calls, and won't return calls from the police about the incident. The police tell them to come pick up the doorknob for evidence. They refuse. The telephone relay station refuses to talk to the police about our phone.

Wednesday August 25.

Dh calls from a cellphone. Good Buddy's phone has gone dead in the same way ours did. Good Buddy is a certified electrician. He traces the problem back to the phone being switched off at the relay station.

The Sheriff's Department won't return our calls. The relay station won't answer the cops' questions. Dh calls the County Attorney. He refuses to discuss the case. The cops call the Sheriff's Department. All they'll talk about is DHS-1 giving us 30 (not 25) days to clean the house. They refuse to discuss the doorknob or come get it.

Thursday August 26.

Morning

We don't actually find out what happened in the morning until days later. Mean Sister called the Sheriff's Department. She reported hearing me yelling at the children inside the house we hadn't been in since Sunday morning. She said the children screamed, she heard thumps, then silence.

What we heard was that the Sheriff's Deputy-2 (not Bozo), DHS-1, and DHS-3 come out to our house. Of course the house is locked and they can't get in. DHS-1 later said that DHS-3 said she saw a face at the window that looked like my younger daughter. They don't break in to investigate.

They call dh at work and demand he come home and open the door for them. "Home" is 90 minutes away. Dh calls and tells us what he knows. He gets home, tracks down Sheriff's Deputy-2, and unlocks the door and demands the Deputy search the house for the intruder the Deputy said was there earlier. The Deputy complies with a sick grin. Of course there's no one there.

DHS-1 demands that the children be seen by a Sheriff. Our relative calls the Sheriff of the county we're in at the time. He's a proper Sheriff (not like Bozo and company) and immediately comes out to investigate. I tell him this story and show him the baby's unburned feet, as well as the girls. He says he'll call.

Friday Morning.

The Proper Sheriff calls back to tell us DHS-1 is on her way. Seems she forgot to interview the girls. She says "of course" our safety has to come first. (That's the first -- and last -- time this idea is expressed.) She interviews the girls. According to our older daughter she asks about what TV shows they like (they hardly watch any) and their favorite movie. (DD-1 is annoyed she doesn't ask about favorite books.) Then she asked how we punished the girls and what their homeschool day was like. She leaves.

Friday afternoon we go home.

Then there's a frenzy of house-cleaning and home repairs. We fix everything they told us to fix. DHS doesn't acknowledge this fact. For the next two weeks their questions revolve around when we can move out of the house, the girls' homeschooling, and my mental health. They want me to give them my records and be evaluated by their counselor. I demur.

Then three weeks of silence.

Then last Friday things kick up again bigtime.

When Hell Came to Our Home Part 1

2010-10-10T07:31:00.005-07:00

Master Post

Hi folks. We've had a pretty horrible school year so far. DHS showed up at our door, in a story that gets scarier and more bizarre the further along it goes. Here's how it started:

Introduction

14 years ago we moved to where we live now. Dh started teaching high school, and I started having babies. It's just outside town limits, and there's not many neighbors. At that time we had one good neighbor on one side of us. She was an older woman caring for her elderly mother who lived in the trailer between us, a "Granny cottage" to use the Australian term. We got along well, and I had many pleasant visits to her house -- except for one visit. Her grown nephew came over while I was there. I greeted him politely, and was abruptly told that as a female I was unworthy to be breathing the same air as he was, let alone talking to him -- only in shorter and ruder terms. I chose not to embarrass my Good Neighbor by asking about Bozo after he left.

Years pass, my Good Neighbor's mother dies, and my Good Neighbor moves to another town leaving the two houses beside me to her Mean Sister, who is Bozo's mother. Mean Sister is dogmatic and close-minded. She can't stand any woman who doesn't work and put her children in day care, or anyone who disagrees with her own far-right conservative views. My children and I are no longer welcome at her house. Still, we stay on amiable terms by never exchanging more than a dozen words
at a time.

Over the years the trailer between us that was her mother's retirement home gets used as a crash pad by various relatives down on their luck until they either find another place to live or simply can't stand Mean Sister any longer. We're used to having people pull up to it, stay for a while, and leave.

Last year the public high school where my husband works has a meltdown and gets taken over by the state. He scrambles and finds a job at a community college 90 minutes away. All this is widely talked about in the town where we live, as he's a popular teacher and the parents didn't want to see him leave. It's a very stressful time for us. Maybe people expected us to pack up and leave immediately, but we were too busy to even start looking for a place to move.

The school year starts. I'm busier than ever, what with two dogs, four ducks, two dozen chickens, two homeschooled children, a toddler, and getting dh off every morning. I sorta notice people moving in and out of the trailer next door, but I don't think much of it -- except to notice that when they gather together to talk at the door, as people are inclined to do before leaving, they don't gather at the front door. They gather at the back door, which can only be seen from our fenced-in back yard. One Thursday evening shortly after school starts the toddler comes with me when I go out to water the birds. He stands at the fence and stares at the group gathered round the back door. I scoop him up when I go back inside, but otherwise pay them no attention. I'm more concerned about the fact that they've taken out the old refrigerator and left it behind the trailer with the door standing open, and glad our children stay inside our fence.

The next Saturday all hell breaks loose.

Day 1: Saturday August 21, 2010

9:00 - The Natchez Trace Visitor's Center hosts a nature photography program in the morning. My husband and the girls go to see it and do some shopping afterward, leaving the toddler and I behind to catch up on our rest. We're in the middle of a heat wave, with the temperature over 100F every day, and the photographers hope the program doesn't get cut short due to the heat. It's going to be another scorcher.

12:00 - I check email. After a few moments, the (land-based) internet connection goes down. I think nothing of it, as this has happened before.

1:15 - I finish the scarf I'm knitting for one daughter and take it up front with the toddler following me. I go to the back of the house for the yarn for my other daughter's scarf. The toddler doesn't follow me. Perhaps he got distracted looking out the front window to see if the car is back yet. He does that a lot.

I hear a strange man's voice in my house.

The doors and windows are locked. How is there a strange man in my house? And more important -- where's my baby?

The man says that my toddler was found playing outside, in spite of the fact that the doors and windows are locked and the baby can't open them. I run out the open door and there's my baby in Mean Sister's arms. She yells at me that the baby was found playing in the road, she's called DHS, and I'm in "a world of trouble young woman!" There's something wrong with that statement but I can't put my finger on it at the moment.

I take my child and say that I'm going home to deadbolt my door. Mean Sister yells, "Don't deadbolt the door! Get another lock, but don't deadbolt it!" Weird.

I take the baby home and look him over. He's fine. That's weird for some reason too, but I'm more concerned about the door right then.

Obviously the regular lock failed. Because the door has a window in it that can't be secured, we have a double-sided deadbolt in it. Otherwise a thief would reach through the window and throw the lock. I get my keys to lock it.

While I'm trying to find the right key (I'd forgotten dh had borrowed it a while back) who should come up to my door but Mean Sister's son Bozo, whom I haven't spoken to in years. He says he's a Sheriff's Deputy now, although he's not in uniform and he shows me no ID. (I later found out he was hired on when the regular Deputies were shipped off to Iraq with their Reserve units.) He tells me that DHS is coming, but I tell him I'm more concerned about getting the door locked. I
notice that the regular doorknob has been pulled almost completely out of the door frame, the door frame is cracked even with the regular lock, the bottom of the door is kicked inward, and the frame of the door window has been yanked almost apart. I point all this out to him. He yells, "Don't lock the deadbolt!"

1:45 Dh and the older children come home, wet, muddy, and grinning from their nature photography walk. I tell dh what happened. He drops the groceries he's carrying on the floor and goes to check the baby.

1:55 A woman who identifies herself as DHS arrives (henceforth to be known as DHS-1), although she shows no identification. Coincidentally, her last name is the same as Mean Sister's mother who used to live in that trailer. It's not a common last name in our area.

DHS-1 says she heard the baby was playing in the middle of the road on the yellow line and wants to see the baby. That's when it hits me -- it's over 100F outside (102F we later learn.) My tender-footed baby is barefoot, as he usually is at home. There are no burns on his feet. There are no marks of any kind on his feet. How could he have made it to the middle of an asphalt highway?

I point this out to DHS-1. She ignores it. I point out the door being damaged. She ignores that as well.

Meanwhile, dh has taken the doorknob off the door and replaced it. The knob shows clear signs of tampering. He shows it around. The Sheriff's Deputy isn't interested. DHS-1 isn't interested. Since we live right outside the city limits, he calls the cops. The phone isn't working. He leaves to show it to the cops.

DHS-1 complains that there are canned goods in the floor from the groceries my husband brought in, that the girls are dirty from their nature walk, that not all the power outlets have baby blockers on them, and that there are a couple of soft spots in the floor. She wants to take pictures. I refuse.

DHS-1 wants to know if I have ever been treated for depression. Yes. She wants the records. I refuse.

Dh returns. The police are concerned about the doorknob. DHS-1 still is not. DHS-1 leaves, telling us we have 25 days to get the house cleaned and the floor fixed.

What with all the upset, it's nightfall before I get around to mentioning to dh that the internet went down right before this started. Dh teaches computer building and maintenance classes. He gets out his kit and checks the line. He reports back that there's 1/10th volt on the line, and the only thing that could have caused that would be if it were deliberately switched off at the relay station.

Dh goes over to Good Buddy's house to make phone calls. He calls the cops. They say, "Get out. Get out now. It's not safe." He calls a relative in another county for shelter.

Sunday Morning.

We throw everything in the car and leave for the relative's house.

Then things start getting scary.

To be continued.

2010-07-29T07:39:00.000-07:00

Hi, sorry I've been away. In the past year my baby became a hyperactive toddler, my mother died and left her affairs in an emotional and legal mess, we got chickens and ducks and have been on a chicken-and-duck-related building spree, and my husband's workplace became unworkable and he got a new job 90 minutes away. I think that qualifies as "busy".

Details later.

Happy Fourth of July

2009-07-04T22:12:00.002-07:00

233 years ago our Founding Fathers defied the Authority that had created their Colonies to declare these United States of America an independent nation with Liberty and Justice for all.

3 hours ago an American Fundamentalist Christian told me with a straight face that the definition of "sin" was "to defy the Authority that created you." I know, weird huh?

30 minutes ago we celebrated our country's birthday with Bison burgers, fireworks, and the Annual Sparkler Dance with Barking Terrier.

Happy Independence Day!

2009-01-18T22:14:00.001-08:00

We seem to all be over the worst effects of the flue except for Sunshine. It hit her worse than it did the rest of us. Now we just need to get our strength back.

Got flue?

2009-01-13T08:07:00.003-08:00

We have since Christmas. We're not just talking the at-least-one-day-down-for-one-day-up kind. We're talking about the kind where phlegm comes out your tear ducts - yuck! But aside from exhaustion and sore throats no one's really suffering, so I'm grateful for that.

2008-12-20T21:07:00.001-08:00

27 inches

19 pounds

3 1/2 months old.

He started out on the highest trendline on the infant growth chart. Now he's above it.

And he's nursing like mad so he's obviously about to start another growth spurt.

I'm so tired I can barely remember my name. Lion-something?

2008-12-12T07:11:00.000-08:00

Pre-teething. 'nuff said.

Special Needs Mother Leads the Heroes in New TV Show

2008-11-28T14:30:00.000-08:00

I don't know when it's coming to America, but there's an interesting show on the BBC right now. It's Survivors, a six-part story about what happens to the survivors of a devastating plague that wipes out 99% of the population. The show is a remake of a 1970s series by Terry Nation, the Classic Doctor Who writer who created the Daleks, and the cast is chock full of New Doctor Who/Torchwood alumni. A groups of survivors bands together under the leadership of Abby Grant. Her qualification? Years of mothering a son with leukemia has left her practical, compassionate, and very self-disciplined. It's a heartening endorsement of what we all know but society usually doesn't acknowledge. Here's the website http://www.bbc.co.uk/survivors/

Benchmarks

2008-11-14T21:48:00.002-08:00

This week Owl lay on his tummy, lifted his head, and kicked his feet up for the first time.

This week Sunshine made a 100 on a spelling test for the first time.

This week Brighteyes followed a recipe for the first time. She made biscuit dough for chicken and dumplings.

Today Owl made the "g" sound for the first time

Today Sunshine discovered that silent movies could be wonderful and not at all boring for the first time. (Thank you, Buster Keaton.)

Today Brighteyes laughed at herself for the first time.

Today I learned all over again that I can be completely exhausted and still be an okay Mom.

Not a bad week.

Election Day 2008

2008-11-11T06:56:00.003-08:00

I'm always proud to be an American, but some days I'm prouder than others. Election Day 2008 was one of those days.

We've all been down with bad colds but I'll try to post soon. Owl was 13.5 pounds at his 7-week exam and is over 15 pounds at 11 weeks. He's gaining over an ounce a day, and it's all coming out of me.

Jackpot

2008-09-01T13:54:00.002-07:00

Litttle Owl
Originally uploaded by CrabbyLioness

Sorry to take so long posting, but there's a new man in my life. We made contact a few months ago, but we didn't actually meet until last Tuesday. Since then, the greedy boy has demanded my attention for hours at a time. :)

Owl was born Tuesday afternoon at the midwifery center in Summertown, Tennessee. He's about 10 minutes old in the picture. He was 9 pounds and 21 inches at birth, and came after an hour and ten minutes of labor -- my longest yet.

We came home to north Mississippi Saturday, just in time for his first hurricane. (Don't worry, we're way above the evacuation zone.) I'll post his birth story in a few days.

Puttering Around

2008-08-23T08:33:00.003-07:00

Okay. After three speedy labors my body has gotten tired with it's old pattern and decided to try something new. Now it's trying the "start and stop" pattern. "Let's try an hour or two of contractions every two or three days! And just as soon as Crabby is sure we're finally getting down to business (at 1:30 at night, mind you) let's stop!"

*Deep sigh* My midwife informs me this is a common pattern with third or fourth babies. She and her colleagues are convinced the best thing for me to do is lots of walking. Walk, walk, walk the baby out. There's some evidence for this, since the baby has been moving lower every time I move around and bounces back up when I lay down.

The problem is that I am so not a pleasure or sport walker. It's an efficient way to get from Point A to Point B but I overused walking for stress relief between grade school and high school (you can probably guess that story), and I've never really enjoyed it since. And that's without the 100F weather we're having.

No, I'd rather dance than walk. But it's been over a year since I took the time to practice, and I didn't bring any tunes. Where am I going to find Middle Eastern dance tracks in rural Tennessee?

But wait. The Farm hosts alternative music concerts. Surely the bands leave CDs at the store to sell. I search the bins and -- score! Amidst the folk songs and such I find a Tribal Bazaar and a Barracka Mundi. I am now in business.

(I love "folk songs and such" but this is edging out of pleasure and into neccessity.)

The dancing does help with the stress relief, even if all the "dancing" I'm up to at the moment is just walking around the room swinging my hips. My slow progress has been discouraging to me. I try to remind myself it's actually very good for the baby, but I don't handle frustration well. It's easy for it to set off my chronic depression, and that's the last thing I need.

So that's where things stand now. My husband is doing a fair amount of writing. The girls are alternating between working on their art and being bored out of their skulls. The library visits when are type these up are helping, but my husband thinks they'll be tired of them after today. We'll see how things go.

Me? I'm puttering around.

My actual due date isn't until Friday. I just gotta remember that.

Still here, Still Pregnant....

2008-08-19T09:01:00.006-07:00

Two weeks later...

We left back for Tennessee the next day. It's been all quiet on the home front, with no more break-ins. It's been pretty quiet on the Farm too. We moved back into a different cabin, one across the road from our midwife's house.

I guess I should explain about the Farm Midwifery Center. It's the US's oldest freestanding (not directly attached to a hospital) birthing center. The Farm was established in Tennessee in 1970 as a hippie commune by a group of alternative lifestyle advocates from San Francisco. 38 years later it's still going as sort of a combination gated rural community/alternative lifestyle tourist attraction. It's biggest draw is the Midwifery Center.

The Center both takes care of pregnant women and trains midwives. The provide home births for local women, including the local Amish community. But they also have cabins available for women who come in from outside the area. Currently my neighbors include pregnant women from California, New York, and Illinois. We're the only ones who didn't fly in.

So basically, right now we're in a cabin in 40 year-old woods in the foothills of the Appalachias. The deer come up to the back windows. The midwife lives across the road, with more midwives down the street. There's a clinic within walking distance, a spectacular earthen swimming pool with a rock face diving cliff that's like something out of one of the more expensive hotels at Disneyworld just out of walking distance, good restaurants with cheap lunchtime buffets in driving distance, and a tourist town with a friendly obstetrical department that works with the clinic just down the road. I've had nothing to do but eat, sleep, swim and play tourist for two weeks. It's been incredibly relaxing.

It's been so blasted relaxing the baby hasn't wanted to come.

I've had three premature labors in a row. Since they were all eight and nine pound preemies, nobody was sure what the cause was. Now it looks like the premature labors might have been stress-related. This is the first time I've had a labor go full term. That's good. I keep telling myself that's good. The problem is I don't know how to cope with a full term labor.

I'm not used to the baby dropping and staying dropped. I'm not used to contractions that come and go, letting you get back to sleep. It's all starting to get a teensy bit annoying.

Meanwhile, we're not running short of days. My husband has been saving his leave days for this moment for seven years. He's enjoying the delicious feel of it being August and him not being in the classroom teaching a new class, although he has been asked to guest lecture at the Farm's alternative school.

Sunshine is taking it incredibly well. Brighteyes has had some trouble with the break in her routine. Not a day has gone by without her throwing a temper tantrum over something that she felt was out of place in some way. It's probably aggravated by her loose tooth -- she's always fussy when she's got a tooth coming out. Still, in the last few days we've made it clear that her fusses aren't helping the baby. She was shocked to realize the baby could hear her even though it hasn't been born yet. She's trying harder to keep it together. Now that she isn't spending so much energy on fusses, she's become an extremely prolific artist, doing two or three sketches a day. Her father is working his way through the exercises in How to Draw What You See and experimenting with some pastels I found on sale at a local Hobby Lobby. It's occurred to Brighteyes that she can invent her own art exercises, and she has been making detailed notes on how to draw hands.

Sunshine is drawing more as well, and is getting better at drawing individual objects. She's also working her way through a dinosaur coloring book.

I brought their math and spelling workbooks along as well. These were very helpful in the first week. Whenever they started to feel anxious and get fussy over the lack of a familiar routine, I would pull them out and they would calm down. By the second week they preferred to spend their time drawing.

And that's basically it. We've hit all the local tourist attractions and eaten at almost all the recommended restaurants. I found a consignment shop that sells new name brand children's clothing overruns for $1.50 to $5.99 and got a start on the fall clothes buying. I've almost finished the Torchwood audiobooks I never had the time to listen to at home. Tomorrow is our 20th wedding anniversary, and the day after that is the adjusted official due date.

I'm really, really ready for the baby to be born now. Okay baby?

A Really Awful Week

2008-08-04T08:02:00.003-07:00

I left home to be closer to the midwives for the birth last week. I came home two days ago. No baby yet, but it's been one hell of a week.

Tuesday I ran around trying to finish the packing and get the house settled for our first vacation in 17 years. I was so busy I didn't conciously notice the heat index of 116F. Which isn't to say I didn't unsconciously notice it, as it sent me into precipitous labor around midnight.

All of my births have been precipitous. Once started, labor doesn't stop until late morning, when the baby is born. So, after a few frantic midnight calls to the midwives, we all agreed it would be best if I came on up.

Problem: the Sunshine and Brighteyes are sound asleep. This means an early-morning call to SIL to ask if she can come over and babysit. At 1 am. That she actually shows up is testament to her good character (a fact I sometimes have to remind myself of when -- but that's another story). So we get underway at a 2:45 am.

Did I mention the midwifery center is three and a half hours away? In the daylight? We get there at 6:45 am, find our cabin, and I get examined and immediately ordered to bed. My husband and I eat a cheese pizza we picked up on the way. I manage to convince myself it's really cheese toast with a fruit on the side in a slightly different format. Alas, my husband lacks my skill at self-delusion and had a harder time with it. We get a call from SIL to see if we made it, then crash for three hours.

SIL is supposed to call back at 11. No call. At 11:30 my husband leaves to pick up the girls. I try to talk him out of it, but he logically points out he has to pick up his paycheck today anyway, and he doesn't trust those jokers not to lose it on him. So he made the trip twice more while I got another checkup and slept the rest of the day.

With all the sleep I actually managed to stop the labor for the first time in four pregnancies. Maybe that wild yam extract the midwife insisted I take is actually doing some good. The family gets in around 10, and we finally get everyone fed, settled, and in bed around midnight.

We spent all day Thursday and Friday morning exploring, shopping for stuff that got behind left in the mad dash, and relaxing. We were feeling pretty good by lunchtime Friday when we got a call from SIL that our house now had busted-out windows.

My husband spent the afternoon and night on the phone getting damage reports while I packed everything back up. According to the searchers, the thief had broken through the window in the front door, found it unopenable, then broke a back window, made a mess, stole some change, and left without taking any large items. They couldn't tell what small items were missing and what were lost in the mess. I finally got my husband off the phone at 11pm so we could sleep.

Saturday morning I had an exam, was okayed with a stern warning to avoid stress, and we left. It was another over 100F day. The car, which had been doing fine, had it's air conditioner die once and it died twice on the way back.

The house was in a bigger mess than we'd been told about. On the other hand, it was in a mess when we left, so the searchers probably didn't realize what was us and what was the thief. On the third hand, the thief apparently found it hard to deal with. He checked a few stereotypical places, then stopped instead of doing the whole place.

Note to future thieves: even I'm not dumb enough to hide anything valuable in my panty drawer. We don't have a lot of pawnable swag. A fortune spent on books, DVDs, homeschool materials, and arts & crafts supplies isn't worth much at Leroy's Pawn Shop. It's called "investing in education". You may have heard of it?

Anyway, don't bother looking for the top pawn shop items here. I don't own any gold jewelry. I'm a silversmith, dude. That means everything I own is silver, and almost all of it is non-commercial and so distinctive tracing it would be a snap. Leroy wouldn't know what to do with it.

As for the electronics, the TV is 13 years old. The buttons have worn off the set and it has to be worked with a remote. The computer was assembled out of mostly second-hand parts put together from junked machines people brought my husband to work on. We're not worth breaking into.

Bah. It looks like the thief got a graphing calculator, around $100 worth of change inside two coin banks (one containing dd1's allowance for the past year!), a pearl necklace, some heavy commercial silver chains, a handmade silver and garnet chain, some carved wood and crystal boxes from my collection, a handful of Christmas candy(?), and some forty-watt light bulbs(?) he stuffed into a toy bucket and dropped in the backyard.

This paucity was not for lack of trying, mind you. He backed his car up to our front door with the intention of loading it up, but in the end he didn't find it worth the effort. We didn't design our house to be easy to steal from.

The next thief will have an even harder time. The broken panes have been replaced with a shatter-proof material, and the windows are being fitted with custom locks made by my husband. Never challenge a genius who has his own machine shop.

And the new front window is elegantly engraved with our family name, our business name, and a pair of dragons.

But the sherriff's department and our own searchers missed the Clues. The thief left his homemade club outside the window and left his bloodstains on the curtain and on the floor after cutting his hand opening the window. Pity we can't interest the sherriff's department enough to come collect them or even take our statement. We called and were told the officer in charge "had called this afternoon but no one picked up the phone". (Lie. Neither we nor the answering machine got any such call.) and wouldn't be available until Monday.

By Saturday night my (not) Good (definitely) Old PTSD was wearing off and I felt a bit -- frazzled. On top of all this I'm still almost 9 months pregnant and still under orders to avoid stress. And did I mention easily exhausted? It took me over 24 hours to type up this post, and I to stop once for contractions, which fortunately stopped with rest and plenty of water. I so don't need this right now.

And on top of everything else, it's probably guaranteed it'll be another 17 years before I get another vacation!

"I Got Sunshine on a Cloudy Daaayyyy"

2008-06-20T21:52:00.004-07:00

Sunshine has hit a cognitive bump in her learning. Basically her short-term memory is shot to hell. You tell a story, she'll ask you to repeat it. She works a math problem, and two minutes later can't remember the answer and has to work it again. She looks at a word to copy it down and can't spell it correctly. She loses her pencil and her eraser half a dozen times each during every lesson. She turns over a card in Concentration (card game) and can't remember what it was.

Otherwise, she's smart as a whip. She knows how to spell most words, and her math reasoning skills, handwriting, and drawing are improving in leaps and bounds. She can often out-think her big sister when it comes to making connections and engaging her long-term memory.

That said, I'm about to tear my hair out in frustration. My husband reminds me that Bright Eyes hit a similar cognitive bump as well at 5 years old. True, but Sunshine is 7 years old, and it's harder to keep my patience sometimes. Still, it should clear up in time, when enough brain cells grow enough synapses for her memory to fully work. Not everyone's brain matures in the same manner or at the same rate. Until then it's just a waiting game.

At least she isn't in the school system. One of my husband's former students showed up the other day looking for help for his son. The boy had had a similar problem in his early grades and been labeled "special ed". The problem cleared up over time, but the label stuck. Now 10, he hasn't been challenged to learn anything and his father is starting to panic. At least with Sunshine I can repeat the material as long as it takes for her to master it.

Aaaand back again!

2008-06-20T21:49:00.002-07:00

Our recurring problem with the telephone and internet connections being down during working hours tends to clear up within hours after complaining to the state utilities regulatory board. Three cheers for regulation!

Same Song, Second Verse.....

2008-06-05T16:46:00.000-07:00

Once again, our phone and internet lines are completely down except for a few hours at night. Once again, I'm not a happy camper. I've been working on new posts. This development really throws a spanner in those works..

2008-05-22T06:38:00.002-07:00

With the political campaign heating up, attention is beginning to fall on Bush's No Child Left Behind program for public schools. The program has drawn loads of scathing criticism for its top-down approach to solving problems and the inept way that it has been implemented in many schools, including the snarky No Child Left Behind -- Football Version

All teams must make the state playoffs and all MUST win the championship. If a team does not win the championship, they will be on probation until they are champions, and coaches will be held accountable. If after two years they have not won the championship, their footballs and equipment will be taken away until they do win the championship.

It would be a great analogy if it kept things in proportion. NCLB is not, as the blog claims, supposed to prepare children to win the championship. It's supposed to prepare children to qualify for the team. Way-big difference. Currently too many schools are not bothering to prepare children to qualify for the team.

The other day a young woman came over to our house for some math tutoring. She had graduated with good grades from the local "good" high school and is probably gifted, but she had never been taught the fundamental concepts she was supposed to learn. She couldn't subtract 0.5 from 6. While this distressed the adults in the room, it totally amazed my home-schooled eight year-old, who could do all the problems on the woman's college homework assignment in her head. I finally had to distract the child with cartoons before the poor woman died of embarrassment.

While NCLB is a step in the wrong direction, it only got passed because public schools weren't doing their job in the first place. To quote from today's AP article

Educators look at that goal and say, 'These people must be kidding,'" Petrilli said.
Even if educators have that view, parents don't, says Kerri Briggs, the Education Department's assistant secretary for elementary and secondary education.
"They would like their kids to be on grade level now and not 50 years from now, not 20 years from now, but this year," Briggs said.

Let's not even try to kid anybody. The only reason NCLB passed in the first place was because the public schools were broke and had refused to do anything substantive to fix their problems for decades. Desperation was the cause for NCLB, not malevolence. Yes, there are a few loonies around who want to end public education, because a working public education system (as opposed to the mess we got now) is essential to a working democracy. But NCLB was not passed because of a few loonies. It was passed because a substantial number of parents in this country are fed up with their schools not working.

Want to end government interference in the school system? Fix the blooming schools without government interference. If the schools are not willing to fix their problems on their own, they can't blame their customers, the parents, for trying to fix the problems for them.

I Ought to Frame This

2008-05-19T19:20:00.002-07:00

"Dear Taxpayer,

"You are entitled to an economic stimulus payment of $xxx as provided by the Economic Stimulus Act of 2008. You can expect your payment by 5/23/08."

Honestly, how often do you get a note from the Federal Government saying, "Your check is in the mail"?

2008-05-18T22:44:00.000-07:00

After weeks without reliable phone or internet, we finally got our line fixed. Turned out there was a loose wire on a pole outside our house. Then AT&T tried to charge us for all that, and tell us there was nothing we could do but pay up. A complaint to the State put paid to their little game.

Mississippi's First Big Budget Election

2008-05-13T19:49:00.003-07:00

My family just survived our first big-budget political election. In previous years Mississippi has been too inconsequential for the Big Guys to bombard us with a propaganda saturation campaign. Not so this year unfortunately, as the race for the House of Representatives seat MS-01 seemed suddenly worthy of big-money mass callings, media, and mailings praising the virtues of the Conservative Republican candidate while accusing Democratic candidate Travis Childers of closing churches, not paying his own taxes, increasing taxes on others, and everything else short of eating babies for breakfast. Most of the attack ads turned out to be lies and all of them carefully avoided talking about the real issues, like the war and the economy.

I'm pleased as punch to report that the big-money ad campaign failed completely. Glenn McCullough, the Fundamentalist Christian Conservative Republican candidate who snowed in our mailboxes and whose flunkies called our phone 6-12 times a day with pre-recorded messages was about the first person knocked out of the race. Then we were blitzed with a fistful of anti-Childers mailings every day. My husband especially loved the one that linked Childers to Obama; he thought it was the best endorsement anyone could possibly offer Childers. The net result of all that garbage was that Democrat Travis Childers carried our county easily and won the race.

Hopefully the big-money people will have learned their lesson and we won't get a similar blanket of glossy over-sized postcards and annoying phone calls next election. Hopefully.

As for us, we voted for Green Party candidate John Wages until he was knocked out of the race. Wages was the only candidate running in favor of pulling out of the war. Then we switched to Childers for the runoff. Childers seems tolerable, but I could not in good conscious vote for someone who would, among other things, deny the sanctity of marriage to all single adults who seek it's blessings while a better candidate was on the ballot.

While looking for tonight's election reports I found a nice-looking blog for Mississipi Democrats called CottonMouth. It's good to see another Mississippi blogger who isn't a staunch Conservative; sometimes I feel a bit lonely.

The Coming Collapse of the Middle Class

2008-05-12T12:39:00.000-07:00

Harvard Law Scholar Elizabeth Warren gave a lecture on what has gone wrong with the American Economic Dream. It's up on youtube here. Watch it. The sad but entirely predictable thing is that I heard all these statements 20 years ago in publications on the "radical liberal fringe". I did what I could to protect my family then, staying away from credit cards and debt. I figured, rightly it turned out, by the time the mainstream media picked up on the story it would be too late. Still, it's nice to see the government's figures backing everything up.

Keep in mind that what Elizabeth Warren talks about isn't news. It's history. She isn't talking about what is happening right now, but what has already happened while America has slept.

Blasted At&T

2008-03-12T17:43:00.000-07:00

Thanks to our wonderful phone company and internet provider, we now have no phone or DSL during business hours and only intermittent service at night. AND they give me the run-around when I try to get it serviced. I am so not a happy camper.

March 2008 Update On the Girls.

2008-03-03T06:53:00.006-08:00

Latin

We're starting over again on Minimus. It's a refresher for Brighteyes, but Sunshine needs it more. I had hoped both girls would precede at the same pace, but that's not to be.

Math

Brighteyes is working through Singapore 3 without any real problems. Sunshine is having trouble adding and subtracting above 10. She doesn't want to give up her fingers yet, even though she knows how to use the abacus. I'm printing her out worksheets from http://www.kidzone.ws/ for extra practice.

Spelling, Handwriting, Grammar

All going fine. Sunshine is through with her handwriting book and currently practices with Draw, Write, Now at the end of lessons. While Brighteyes inherited her father's command of the pencil, Sunshine has inherited my lack of command of the pencil. She's coming along with her handwriting with practice. I hope we'll show the same improvement with art eventually.

Brighteyes is working in First Language Lessons Volume 3. I really like the way these lessons integrate sentence diagramming into the lessons, teaching the parts of a sentence by teaching their place on the diagram. That makes so much more sense than the way my husband and I were taught grammar in grade school.

The importance of these skills really sank in to us this year. My husband is teaching a remedial test prep class at the high school. He began by spending two weeks teaching the parts of speach and sentance diagramming. The students had never been taught either skill before. They hated every minute of it! Why wasn't he teaching them math, which was on the test, instead of this garbage which wasn't on the test? They tried to sneak out at every opportunity, and he constantly had to round them up. But when they were tested after the first two weeks, every one of them had jumped a letter grade higher. It turned out grammar was on the test after all in every problem. Those poor kids had literally not been taught enough grammar to properly understand the questions they were supposed to answer.

History

Back at it.

Literature, Science, Art

Not back at it. I have hopes for it as soon as Sunshine stops throwing a tantrum at the start of every lesson. Brighteyes went through the same stage at that age. I hope Sunshine will also leave it behind when she turns 7.

Reading

Sunshine is working through her beloved Doggie Sticker Book and happily reads aloud the description of each dog.

Logic

Brighteyes has started on Mind Benders. At 8 1/2 she seems a bit young to me, but she is eating them up, completing 3 or 4 3-square logic problems a day. So, I'm ordering her the beginning set and the first Cranium Crackers book. That ought to keep her busy for a while. Sunshine is chomping at the bit to begin the Mind Benders Warmup, but I told her she had to finish first grade math before that.

Format

Right now we're splitting lessons. We work in the mornings until lunch, then resume after a 4pm snack. It's working for now.

One More Round!

2008-02-27T21:46:00.001-08:00

I'm pregnant again, for the fourth time. It lacks the thrill of my first time, but it also lacks the stark terror of #2 and #3 after the death of my first child. I can live with that. More details to follow.

First Computer

2008-01-07T12:25:00.000-08:00

We fixed up an old computer for the girls. It's on Windows 98, with no printer or internet access. It will play the older games and educational software though.

Brighteyes liked playing Jumpstart 3rd Grade on it, but other games haven't interested either girl that much. It's not as much fun as playing outside. That's a pretty good start in my book.

December Update

2007-12-20T21:18:00.000-08:00

Must update blog.

We're still alive in spite of everything. Yay! But it's been an exhausting year and a half. I can't remember the last time I felt rested.

Part of my updating problem has been that Blogspot's new owners were constantly losing my password, making it too much of a hassle. That appears to have been fixed. Cross your fingers.

Brighteyes is eight now, and surprisingly responsible. She's doing a few chores and gets a $1/week allowance. Her handwriting has improved remarkably, and her ability to correlate things has grown in leaps and bounds. She's also finally started to figure out how to crochet, which she has tried to do without success for years. She no longer throws screaming fits over loose teath, although they still make her fussy.

Sunshine is six. She's incredibly bright, but she has the attention span of a kitten. Her handwriting has been very bad, but it's started to improve after I started making her try to read what she herself had written and she couldn't do it. Must remember that trick. She has also lost her first tooth.

We've been writing a jewelry-making book and trying to teach classes in Jackson, three hours away. We could now write a separate book titled Logistical Nightmares Associated With Distance Teaching.

We had a wonderful babysitter for many months whom the girls loved. Unfortunately transportation problems have recently prevented her from being with us anymore. We're going to see if we can fix this.

I haven't been doing much of anything else. The house is a complete disaster area and the tree isn't up yet. I sewed the girls up some pants for the fall, but that's all I've been able to sew. I've started crocheting while I sit with the girls for lessons to get something creative done so I don't go insane. I crocheted six hats for the winter. The girls got striped hats and got to pick out the colors. Then I took all the untangled a ball of cut yarn and crocheted the individual strings into flowers. I gave them to the girls to sew onto their sweaters. They've had fun arranging the flowers and sewing them on with a big yarn needle and yarn.

Now I'm feeling a bit more ambitious. Tonight I found a pound of a lovely varigated bulky wool yarn originally sold for $70 on sale for $15. After a quick look around I found a beautiful pattern that calls for just that. The problem is, it's got Martha Stewart's name attached to it. I don't care for Martha Stewart. In over 25 years, I have never heard anything that woman has said or done that wasn't stupid, venal, petty, ridiculous, and/or a health hazard. I don't want to look like I'm the sort of person who idolizes her. But that said, it's a real nice pattern. I really want to make it up. So I think I'll chalk it up to my philosophy that no human being is a complete waste of space, even Martha Stewart.

I'll try to post again before 2008.

School's Back

2007-09-12T11:49:00.000-07:00

After limping through our first 100F summer in 10 years, cooler weather has finally arrived. We did lessons once or twice a week during the summer, now we're trying to get back to a daily schedule. The fact that it's cool enough to tempt the girls to go out more is helping keep them focused on getting through.

We're just doing math, handwriting, spelling, grammar, and a little Latin at the moment. We're all out of practice, so I'm holding off history and science until the girls get more used to the schedule.

Brighteyes is 8 now. She has lost four baby teeth and has 3 1/5 adult teeth. Unfortunately she fusses and screams up a storm when a tooth is getting loose. I've had to pull her last three teeth just to help her with the pain. Immediately after the tooth comes out she calms down, even though she insists has cranky mood has nothing to do with her bad mood and that the real reason is that the world hates her. I'm hearing a lot these days about how much I her daddy, and the world at large hater her. I'm told that some sensitive children are like this. Her father is of the opinion that it's better if she gets it out of her system now than when she's a teenager. There's some truth to that.

Sunshine is 6. She is smart as a whip and surprises us with the things she says. Unfortunately she rarely speaks clearly, usually rushing or mumbling her words, usually both. It drives me to distraction. I know she hates getting asked to repeat herself, but often even I can't make out what she's saying.

As for me, I'm getting over my depression. Previously I self-censored myself on this blog. I tried not to write about anything I couldn't put a positive spin on. Then came things like the Iraq War and mad cow disease, and how do you put a positive spin on those? The effort just made me frustrated and depressed. So you may see me ranting a bit more in these posts. Consider yourself warned.

First Lost Tooth

2007-05-08T08:24:00.000-07:00

Brighteyes didn't cut her first tooth until she was 14 months old, so I wasn't too surprised that she didn't lose her first tooth until she was almost eight. We've been telling her to expect it for two years now. Still, she sobbed when she came ran up to me, crying, "Momma, Momma! My toothy fell out when I bit Sister! It hurts!"

For some reason she didn't understand why Momma fell out laughing, and chuckled all day long.

Long Time, No See

2007-05-07T11:43:00.000-07:00

Hello, again. It's been a busy fall and winter, and I'm trying to get back to something resembling a schedule. But first let's catch up on old times.

Chimneyville

When you last saw us, we were heading toward Chimneyville for our first major show. It weeks to get everything ready. Finally, after a last-minute babysitter cancellation and replacement we were on our way. We were ready. We got there and found the other vendors were ready.

Unfortunately the management wasn't ready. There were new people running the show who didn't know what they were doing, and who had driven off the best customers with their pre-show scheduling blunders. Sales were terrible. We had entire days where we didn't sell a thing. So did the more experienced vendors around us. All in all we spent over $600 to get there and made $37.

But hey. It's just the first show. If we really get a move on, we can improve the look of our setup and quadruple our sales. We can slash expenses to the bone (after upgrading our setup, of course) and cut our costs in half. Then next year maybe we can spend $300 to go there and make $150.

It was even worse than I've said so far, but I don't want to go into the gory details yet. Just thinking about writing them down has kept me away from this blog for months. Maybe later.

New Project

My husband and I are working on a new project which is eating up large chunks of our time. Details to follow.

Homeschooling

We've had trouble with homeschooling for the past year. Last summer we let the girls take a couple of classes at the local summer workshop program. The year before they had been very well run, but last year they were run badly. All the girls came home with was a bunch of excuses in their repetoire, such as:

"It's too hard!"

"You can't make me!"

"I won't do X unless you do Y!"

*random screaming fits to disrupt lessons and everything else*

Those wear Mom out fast.

Then came Rightstart Mathematics. It's a lovely math program which I've heard nothing but good things about. It seems perfect for closing up some holes in my daughters' math education. But it takes 4 - 5 times the work out of the parent as any other math program.

Between the girls' fit-throwing, the work for the show and the new project, and the extra work for Rightstart -- I crashed. I crashed long and hard. We got down to doing lessons a few times a week, then not at all over the winter.

Spring came, and we're back to doing lessons now. Enough time has passed that Brighteyes actually wants them instead of fights them. We were far enough ahead that we're not behind on too much with her. I'm concentrating on math and English, catching up on the rest when I have the energy for it. Sunshine is still way ahead.

I haven't tried the Rigthstart program again, although I do pull out the manipulatives when Sunshine gets bogged down by mathematical concepts. I just don't have the energy to do more with it at the moment.

Doctor Who and Torchwood

While all this was going down, I found someplace to escape to from the madness for a while: Doctor Who. I loved the show as a teenager, but I was dubious of it's revival. Have you ever seen a show where the revival was as good as the original? It's theoretically possible but it never happens. It didn't happen with Doctor Who either. The revival is better than the original, which is way beyond all but my wildest dreams.

I've reviewed the first season here already. The second season was not as good as the first, due to it being rushed and revised several times (long story, but it wasn't the production crew's fault), but had some stellar individual episodes.

Then came Torchwood, the adults-only spin off of Doctor Who. Words cannot express how much I love this show. And yes, before we go any further, the first season was badly flawed. The series didn't have enough production time, and what little they did have was cut in half by technical problems with their cameras. The writing was experimental, and not all the experiments worked. But what they did right hit all my buttons.

Torchwood is about a group of ordinary people whose job it is to save the world from alien invasions without letting the world know that aliens exist. They don't know very much about aliens, they are hideously underpowered and understaffed, the job has an incredible stress load, a tremendous death toll, and nobody who works there longer than six months is sane anymore -- they know all this and they still show up for work every morning because somebody has to do the job, and for lack of anybody better qualified it looks like its going to be them. That whacks the biggest button I've got square on the nose.

In the first episode you find out that a fairly likeable Torchwood employee has been driven crazy by the job and become a serial killer. The policewoman who uncovers that is offered the job of replacing her. In spite of what she just uncovered she thinks she can turn the organization around and make them all happier, saner people.

You just know she's going to end up the craziest one of the lot. Well, I did at any rate. And by the end of the sixth episode she's jumped off the deep end with the rest of them. But she's just one member of an ensemble cast, and some of her coworkers are far more interesting and/or admirable than she is.

But Torchwood is an adults-only show, and I don't feel comfortable talking in detail about it on a homeschooling blog that children can read. It's rated for ages 15 and up, with good reason. I don't let my own 6yo and 7yo watch it. So I have a separate lj account for my analysis, speculations and fan fiction about Torchwood. If you're old enough and interested enough in the show, click on it.

Writing

You read me right. I've been writing fiction. Well, it's "missing scene" sorts of things, with someone else's characters and setup, but it's a start on something that has absolutely terrified me in the past. I'm told I'm pretty good with voices and pacing, which is good to know. It was very hard the first time, but the basics have become easier. I'm still setting new challenges for myself though, and each one is scarier than the last. Hopefully I'll eventually work my way up to original setups, and then on to original characters.

In the meantime it looks like I may be doing some nonfiction for publication. Wish me luck.

A poem from my husband.

2007-01-23T21:07:00.000-08:00

There is grass under the swings.
There is grass under the seesaw.
There is a bird's nest on the slide.
Testing is more important than childhood.

Happy New Year

2007-01-03T17:24:00.000-08:00

After a long and frustrating December, I'm back. We're in the middle of a computer upgrade that should be finished in a day or so (knock on wood). After that blogging should recommence with commentary, war stories, reviews and maybe even a bit of comedy. Maybe. Looking forward to seeing you then.

Chimneyville

2006-11-30T22:22:00.000-08:00

My husband and I will be selling our jewelry at the Chimneyville Crafts Festival in Jackson this weekend. Hopefully after that I'll be able to come up for air.

Pumpkin Patch

2006-10-22T18:44:00.000-07:00

We went to the Pumpkin Patch at the Tupelo Buffalo Park with a group of families from PEAK. They had a haybale maze which everyone enjoyed, even the lady who lost a pair of glasses in it and walked over it three times with helpers before she found them. The children played themselves out.

Autumn has been hard for us. My husband has had commitments almost every evening for over a month. I'm left alone at home with the girls all day and a good part of the night. We can't find a babysitter and we've only got one working car, so the girls and I are pretty sick of each other right now. Brighteyes has been so fussy we got down to doing lessons only one or two days a week, then stopped completely. I don't have the energy to deal with all her screaming.

I've also felt the urge to write fiction again. Fiction is a lot more uncomfortable for me to write, what with getting inside another person's head instead of just blathering my own thoughts. It feel much more intimate. I can't do it with anyone making noise near me, let alone standing over my shoulder. But I'm never alone. I can already feel the urge dying inside me from not having a chance to get out, and all I've written are snippets. The girls don't understand why I need to be alone, and it makes them cling to me even tighter. I don't know what to do.

2006-10-01T06:08:00.000-07:00

We set up at the Rock & Gem Show on the Old Miss campus yesterday. Our babysitter cancelled at the last minute, which threw everything up in the air. We took the girls along, and I must say they were very well behaved. It still put a spanner in the works.

Note to self: always put out your own press release. Don't rely on the show to do it for you. That's the only way to control the quality.

It's the first time I've been on a college campus that had a football team since "tailgate parties" became big business. How on Earth do the students stand it? There were thousands of strangers everywhere, spending huge sums of money to rent dinky tents, grills, beer kegs, and satelight dishes that littered every inch of grass on the campus and made driving impossible. And this goes on for every home game? Unbelievable. The Administration's response to that lunacy had been to move the game time back to 8:00 to encourage it. I went to the football-free Mississippi University for Women and later attended the University of Southern Mississippi before tailgate parties were hot. Weekends were down time. They were time to chill out and catch up on your friends, your sleep, and your homework. I couldn't have stood that insanity twice a year, let alone every other weekend. I was shocked at the Ole Miss Administration, as it looked like they were placing money-making opportunities way ahead of the needs of their students.

We were set up at the Oxford Train Depot. It's a 135 year old brick building with hardwood floors. It's lovely, and the brickwork is in fabulous shape. My husband walked with the girls up to the Ford Center for the Performing Arts. It's a 10 year old building that looks really impressive from a distance. Get up close to it and you'll see that the "brickwork" is actually concrete slabs with caulk holding them together instead of brick and mortar. Find a place where the caulk is peeling off and you'll see cardboard shims under the caulk. One of these buildings will still be here in another 100 years. The other won't.

2006-09-29T20:58:00.000-07:00

We're still getting back in the rhythm of lessons. We managed to have them three days this week. Yay for us! And Brighteyes is now taking lessons with Sunshine. Double yay! She's learning cursive, and finds it difficult but exciting.

My husband had to go to the high school homecoming game tonight. He said the entire homecoming court was escorted by either their fathers or their first cousins. None of them have boyfriends to escort them. The high price of gas is putting a severe crimp on the high school dating scene.

We'll be at Ole Miss tomorrow setting up at a Rock & Gem Show. It's our first show of the fall.

2006-09-24T16:49:00.000-07:00

Yesterday morning we all got up late. I was the last person to stumble into the bathroom. As I wandered around it in my birthday suit trying to wake up my brain, I noticed a yellow towel folded on the counter beside the sink. I had placed it there the night before so some toys I washed could air-dry. I had put away the toys before going to bed, but one of the girls' toys was laying on it. Good, they must have washed one of their toys themselves for a change. Which one? Ah, the toy snake their grandfather gave them. Haven't seen them playing with that for a while.

I sat down. I looked around. I looked at the toy. I admired the workmanship. It was well made.

The girls' toy snake was green.

This one was black.

And yellow.

And had a diamond pattern on the back.

BADSNAKE!

I got to my feet and backed out of the room.

Rattler or cottonmouth?

They're first cousins, whatthehell does it matter when one of them is on your freakin' bathroom counter! "Only aggressive when cornered" or "always aggressive" is immaterial when it's effectively already in a corner.

I called to my husband, "Come here now."

"Whuh?"

"Come here now!"

He walked in, also in his birthday suit, looked, and said, "Cottonmouth." That's cleared up. It's the "always aggressive" one. "Where are the girls?"

"Outside in the playhouse."

"Keep them out, keep the dogs out, watch that."

Clothed and shod, he stepped out to the workshop and came back with leather gloves, a one-inch wood dowel, and the long-handled tin snips. Sunshine came up and tried to walk into the house. I told her to go back to the playhouse until Mommy and Daddy said she could come in, don't fuss, it's important. She protests, I repeat myself. She turns around and screams only once, which is incredible self-control for our five year-old Scream Queen.

Unfortunately the snake heard her and -- disappeared.

We search the floor. No sign of the snake.

We start carefully pulling stuff off the counter. It was coiled up under some ointment bottles, ready to attack the first thing that moved.

It got the end of the dowel on its back behind the head. As it tried to strike at the dowel, the long-handled tin snips took off its head.

My husband carried it out the front door by the tin snips. He crushed and buried the head, then asked me to call in the girls.

"Come in and see this."

Brighteyes asked, "Why?"

"It's a lesson."

"Lessons on Saturday? Before breakfast? That's not fair!"

We showed the girls the snake. Even headless, it still looked more impressive than the ones at the Mississippi Museum of Natural Science had looked two weeks ago, probably because it was on their front steps.

My husband had been in the bathroom shaving only minutes before me and hadn't see it, so it must have just come in. At a little over a foot long, it was a juvenile looking to mark out its own territory. No other snakes around then. We search the house anyway. We found the entrance point, a tree branch touching the bathroom window where there was a gap in the frame. We lop off the branch and seal the gap.

We tried to recover enough to get the rest of the day's work done. Somehow that wasn't as easy as it sounds.

Celtic Fest 2006

2006-09-10T19:46:00.000-07:00

We went to Celtic Fest this weekend. It was a bit disappointing. There was Irish singing and dancing for hours, but there wasn't anything else. The Highland games and other events that the festival used to boast about were gone. There was hardly even any vendors, to the disappointment of many people. They'd be better off changing their name to Celtic Music Fest and not getting people's hopes up.

While we were there we took in the Mississippi Museum of Natural Science and the Small Town exhibit at the Mississippi Agriculture & Forestry Museum. There wasn't anything else to do except sunburn.

2006-09-07T08:00:00.000-07:00

We're going to Celtic Fest this weekend. It will be our first time there. Two years ago I actually got my husband in Jackson the weekend of Celtic Fest, but he balked at the sight of the crowds. This time we're going in.

Still getting over some stupid sickness.

2006-09-03T10:46:00.000-07:00

This week lessons went easier, but they were still very tiring. I only managed to give lessons three days a week. That's an improvement though.

Brighteyes and Sunshine are still moaning about starting back up, but they're getting more in the rhythm. I still can't give them lessons at the same time. I have to give Sunshine her lessons in the morning and Brighteyes her lessons in the afternoon. Brighteyes is too fussy in the morning. Sometimes she'll try to throw a screaming fit in the morning during her sister's lessons. I'm trying to encourage her to go play outside at that time. By the afternoon she's calmed down enough to do her work with a lot less fuss, but mornings just aren't working for her.

This means I have to spend twice as long giving lessons, and I'm not getting anything else done. Period. I'm so worn out all I can do is collapse when we get through. I haven't been this exhausted since I was tandem nursing.

Hopefully it will get better soon.

2006-08-29T20:34:00.000-07:00

I got sick two weeks ago, but I'm starting to feel better.

We picked up a real problem this summer. The girls went to a summer learning program and picked up some bad habits, like throwing tantrums and refusing to do what was asked of them. I thought it might just be a development phase and backed off for a few months, but the behavior has gotten worse and extended to everything they're asked to do. So now I'm having to homeschool them separately while making it clear that such behavior is not an acceptable way to communicate. It's very exhausting, which is why I haven't been posting as much.

Stone Age Board Game

2006-08-24T19:20:00.000-07:00

A nine-man's morris board found in Nottinghamshire appears to go back to the Ice Age. People had to have something to do on those cold winter nights.

More Ignoramuses

2006-08-24T18:31:00.000-07:00

Evolution Major Vanishes From Approved Federal List

By CORNELIA DEAN
Published: August 24, 2006

Evolutionary biology has vanished from the list of acceptable fields of study for recipients of a federal education grant for low-income college students.

The omission is inadvertent, said Katherine McLane, a spokeswoman for the Department of Education, which administers the grants. ?There is no explanation for it being left off the list,? Ms. McLane said. ?It has always been an eligible major.?

Another spokeswoman, Samara Yudof, said evolutionary biology would be restored to the list, but as of last night it was still missing.

If a major is not on the list, students in that major cannot get grants unless they declare another major, said Barmak Nassirian, associate executive director of the American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers. Mr. Nassirian said students seeking the grants went first to their college registrar, who determined whether they were full-time students majoring in an eligible field.

If a field is missing, that student would not even get into the process,? he said.

That the omission occurred at all is worrying scientists concerned about threats to the teaching of evolution.
One of them, Lawrence M. Krauss, a physicist at Case Western Reserve University, said he learned about it from someone at the Department of Education, who got in touch with him after his essay on the necessity of teaching evolution appeared in The New York Times on Aug. 15. Dr. Krauss would not name his source, who he said was concerned about being publicly identified as having drawn attention to the matter.

An article about the issue was posted Tuesday on the Web site of The Chronicle of Higher Education.

Dr. Krauss said the omission would be ?of great concern? if evolutionary biology had been singled out for removal, or if the change had been made without consulting with experts on biology. The grants are awarded under the National Smart Grant program, established this year by Congress. (Smart stands for Science and Mathematics Access to Retain Talent.)

The program provides $4,000 grants to third- or fourth-year, low-income students majoring in physical, life or computer sciences; mathematics; technology; engineering; or foreign languages deemed ?critical? to national security.

The list of eligible majors (which is online at ifap.ed.gov/dpcletters/attachments/GEN0606A.pdf) is drawn from the Education Department?s ?Classification of Instructional Programs,? or CIP (pronounced ?sip?), a voluminous and detailed classification of courses of study, arranged in a numbered system of sections and subsections.

Part 26, biological and biomedical sciences, has a number of sections, each of which has one or more subsections. Subsection 13 is ecology, evolution, systematics and population biology. This subsection itself has 10 sub-subsections. One of them is 26.1303 ? evolutionary biology, ?the scientific study of the genetic, developmental, functional, and morphological patterns and processes, and theoretical principles; and the emergence and mutation of organisms over time.?

Though references to evolution appear in listings of other fields of biological study, the evolutionary biology sub-subsection is missing from a list of ?fields of study? on the National Smart Grant list ? there is an empty space between line 26.1302 (marine biology and biological oceanography) and line 26.1304 (aquatic biology/limnology).

Students cannot simply list something else on an application form, said Mr. Nassirian of the registrars? association. ?Your declared major maps to a CIP code,? he said.

Mr. Nassirian said people at the Education Department had described the omission as ?a clerical mistake.? But it is ?odd,? he said, because applying the subject codes ?is a fairly mechanical task. It is not supposed to be the subject of any kind of deliberation.?

?I am not at all certain that the omission of this particular major is unintentional,? he added. ?But I have to take them at their word.?

Scientists who knew about the omission also said they found the clerical explanation unconvincing, given the furor over challenges by the religious right to the teaching of evolution in public schools. ?It?s just awfully coincidental,? said Steven W. Rissing, an evolutionary biologist at Ohio State University.
Jeremy Gunn, who directs the Program on Freedom of Religion and Belief at the American Civil Liberties Union, said that if the change was not immediately reversed ?we will certainly pursue this.?

Dr. Rissing said removing evolutionary biology from the list of acceptable majors would discourage students who needed the grants from pursuing the field, at a time when studies of how genes act and evolve are producing valuable insights into human health.

?This is not just some kind of nicety,? he said. ?We are doing a terrible disservice to our students if this is yet another example of making sure science doesn?t offend anyone.?

Dr. Krauss of Case Western said he did not know what practical issues would arise from the omission of evolutionary biology from the list, given that students would still be eligible for grants if they declared a major in something else ? biology, say.

?I am sure an enterprising student or program director could find a way to put themselves in another slot,? he said. ?But why should they have to do that??

Mr. Nassirian said he was not so sure. ?Candidly, I don?t think most administrators know enough about this program? to help students overcome the apparent objection to evolutionary biology, he said. Undergraduates would be even less knowledgeable about the issue, he added.

Dr. Krauss said: ?Removing that one major is not going to make the nation stupid, but if this really was removed, specifically removed, then I see it as part of a pattern to put ideology over knowledge. And, especially in the Department of Education, that should be abhorred.?

A study in contrasts

2006-08-21T20:07:00.000-07:00

My 7-year old daughter asks out of the blue, "What's 149 +137?" I pull up a sheet of paper and start to show her how to figure it out, but she waves me away, thinks a bit, and says, "It's 286, isn't it?"

"That's right! Yay!"

That afternoon my husband comes home talking about his chemistry students, "When I mentioned the Chinese working on a space elevator for a lunar colony, a 17-year old senior in the class started laughing so hard he couldn't sit up straight. 'It'll never work! What will they do when the moon isn't in the sky? It goes down in the daytime!' Seventeen years old, a high school senior, and no one had ever taught him that the moon orbits around the earth."

My Favorite Geek Quote of the Week

2006-08-17T18:55:00.000-07:00

An exasperated Paul Cornell, one of the writers on the revitalized Doctor Who, responding to complaints from some older fans about the romantic elements that have been added to the show, "People! Armies of teenage girls raving about Doctor Who used to be a distant dream. Let's not blow it now!"

No, make that my Favorite Geek Quote of All Time. It just says so much about where geek culture came from and how it's matured (or sometimes not).

Still here

2006-08-16T06:50:00.000-07:00

The heat is beginning to break, and we're starting lessons back up.

I'm working on a review of reports about Patrick Henry College. It's turned into the most depressing thing I've written in ages. An hour of work on it is enough to send me into a tailspin for the next 10 days. I need to get angry about it. I need to build up a good head of steam and pound my way though it in a total fury until I beat it into a postable form, but it just saps away all my energy. It's a humongous leach on my chi. So I'm spending all my time on the recently discovered youtube watching sappy romance fan videos set to 80s pop songs. YT is cheaper than therapy and healthier than bourbon.

Do me a favor, guys. Nag me to spend more time outdoors, and to put on some music and dance.