House Update, Autumnal Equinox, 2013

It's been a year since I posted a  house update.  We've spent most of that time waiting for the rain to stop.  Global warming has pushed the tropical storms north and the rains that used to blanket the Great Plains south.  Guess where they meet?  In the past year we've had two dry weeks, one at the beginning of summer and one at the end.  It rained the other 50.  The apple and hazelnut trees we planted drowned.  It's played hell with farmers too, so don't be surprised if  you see the prices of food and fabric going up.

We haven't done a lot of gardening, although we did have a small vegetable patch.  We found a pick-your-own blueberry farm this summer and picked about a dozen gallons, so we'll be eating blueberries all winter.  The few dry afternoons we had we sent the 14yo out with the push mower; she's starting to develop an impressive set of shoulders.

We spent the winter and the spring fixing up the sheds.  We insulated them, put inner walls in place where needed, painted said walls, and laid down linoleum.  The previous owner left a collection of old bathroom cabinets behind.  We fixed them up, repaired or replaced their drawers, and replaced their tops.  Now the shop has a lower cabinet and the back shed has a wall-length work desk.  At that point we put locks on the doors and hauled down the first load of tools for the shop and my parents' old china cabinet for the house.  The glass in the china cabinet was broken, and it had sat in storage for years.

As summer started we repaired the glass in the china cabinet.  Some of the trim had been left undone in the den last fall as we weren't sure how we wanted it; we made our decisions and finished everything except the pantry door.  We used the scrap from that project to build a back-of-the-closet bookcase for the girl's bedroom.  I suppose in another family it might have been a shoe rack, but here it's a bookcase.

When our late-summer dry week came, we finished painting the outside of the sheds, then dug and poured a concrete foundation for the chickenhouse.  My husband spent hours truing it up to our immense exasperation because he was "sick and tired of walls that aren't plumb!"  Maybe in another six months we'll get another dry week to work on it some more.

Finally it was time to finish the kitchen.

The "retro" faucet that went with our house's "look" broke and we replaced it with a newer model; apparently they no longer know how to make pieces that both look good and last.  We'd saved the kitchen drawers until last so we'd up our experience with them; now we built the drawer boxes and mounted them on drawer slides.  They don't have facings yet so we can't use them, those are waiting on the countertops to be finished.  The scrap from the drawers became a wall-mounted bookcase for small and regular size cookbooks above the corner cabinet, in a space we couldn't do much else with.  Then we painted the kitchen ceiling, hung the little bookcase on the wall, and prepared to do battle with the countertops.

Back when this project started three years ago we couldn't decide between Corian, marble or butcherblock countertops.  Each had their pros and cons.  Finally we went, "Hell with it", and made up our minds to use all three:  the waterproof Corian for the sink countertop, marble inserts for the baking area and a hot dish "landing zone" next to the oven, and butcherblock everywhere else.  Since we weren't using enough of any one of them to do a whole kitchen, we were able to buy seconds of each of them.  The Corian countertop with the sink went up in the first six months.  The other lower cabinets were finished with a 3/4" plywood countertop underlayer in the next six months, and we've used that as interim countertops.  The butcherblock countertops were ordered in the naive hope that the kitchen would be finished "soon" and stuck in storage right behind my office chair two years ago, where they've been cluttering up things ever since.  On the plus side one of the tops was bowed when it arrived, and the factory sent us a free replacement.  Butcherblock is insanely heavy.  We stored the bowed one underneath the others and in the two years it's laid here it's finally straightened out, so when the back porch finally stops being a covered lumber yard we'll turn the extra top into a porch dining table.

Two years later it was finally time to get the marble inserts.  We tried the local granite and marble countertop companies first, only to quickly conclude they didn't have anything worth buying and didn't know what they were doing.  They couldn't picture how we were going to keep the countertops from falling where they were joined.  They're laying stone countertops directly on top of particleboard cabinets with no underlayer and no support in damp environments like kitchens and bathrooms.  I can imagine what they look like after a year or so, and it ain't pretty.  We ended up going to a mortuary company and buying some of their commercial-grade architectural scrap, which they were happy to polish up nicely for us.

We carefully split the butchblock top that's going to form both ends of the baking counter.  Now we're leveling, sanding, glueing everything in place, and sanding "just a little bit more".  We'll finish it when Mr. "It Ain't Done Unless It's Overdone" runs out of things to overdo to it.

Meanwhile we found a sewing machine repair shop to fix the damage the baby did playing with my sewing machine.  Hopefully I'll have it back in time for Halloween costumes, then I can start making curtains.  We're all getting tired of this project.  Now that there's a place for the tools we're itching to get back to metalwork, especially since the 14yo is starting to show an interest in learning it.

First Week of Homeschool High School

The first week of "high school" started with a scream.  Several screams actually.  Brighteyes, now 14, has always been told the two skills she needs to master are math and writing.  She loves math and hates writing.  This hate fused with her early adolescent self-consciousness into a fierce desire to reveal nothing about herself that anyone might for any conceivable reason take a dislike to.  Even a simple assignment like picking out one item  mentioned in a paragraph from a set of four equally valid possibilities had her storming off to her room and slamming the door.

"I don't get it," I said to the door.  "You won't pick one for fear of what it might reveal to someone else about you -- and it's not like anyone outside the family is ever going to see it anyway -- but somehow you manage to pick out your clothes and dress yourself every day."

She opened the door and fixed me with a 14yo version of a withering glare.   "Nobody cares about clothes!"

I sent up a silent prayer of thanks that this child had never set foot in junior high.

Of course the real problem wasn't that particular assignment so much as what it represented.  Writing assignments were slowly but surely getting longer and more involved, and at 14 she could tell that this was going to end in pieces measured not in words but in pages.

Her father and I assured her that we would always love her no matter what she did or wrote, but she still had to do her work.  Late in the second day she eased out and handed me the completed assignment.  Since then it's been "let me get this done as quickly as possible so I never have to do it again."

Brighteyes and Sunshine got to pick some courses this year, and one of the ones they chose was gymnastics.  They're supposed to start at the end of the month.  It's the first time they'll be part of a larger ongoing class, so we'll see what happens.

Health Update August 15, 2013

"Hey, you've got a bone back here," my husband said, poking at my back.

"Ye-ah."

"It was more padded until recently."

"I'm glad you said that.  You know that 10 pounds I lost so quickly?  I've gained all of that back, and another ten pounds.  And I've added an inch to all my measurements."

"You've clearly lost fat in the front and the back, and you stamina is way up, so I'd say you're putting on muscle."

"Yeah, but it's a bit of a bummer to have such an oddball physiology."

"I don't recall you saying that when you're pregnant, you who have 20-minute labors."

"Hey, it's not all bad!  And then there's the other sign my health is improving."

"We could have done without that."

"Eh, better out than in I suppose."

In addition to being a short endomorph with a physiology that runs backwards of "the standard" I also have PTSD.  Whenever I get to feeling really good, my hindbrain serves up a dose of repressed memories.  Since there's a damn good reason they were repressed, this is pretty much the textbook definition of No Fun.  It also takes time and energy away from my exercise regimen.  Not to mention my sleep patterns, emotional stability, appetite, oh just look up the symptoms.  But I'm seeing someone, and even though nothing is resolved yet apparently my subconscious is satisfied with the effort I'm putting into it.

So all in all I'm getting healthier.  It's a long and winding path to health, with nothing straightforward about it.  But it's going somewhere.

Old School Republican Goes Off On Tea Party Republican

The Mississippi Business Journal, a genteel bastion of pro-business sentiment for generations, denounced Mississippi's Tea Party Governor Phil Bryant in a magnificent rant of epic bullshit-calling:

RAY MOSBY: Paranoia strikes deep with Phil Bryant during Neshoba speech“Paranoid state: Transient psychotic disorder in which the main element is a delusion, usually persecutory or grandiose in nature.”

—Abnormal Psychology and Modern Life

ROLLING FORK — The Republican cheerleader camp that the fabled Neshoba County Fair has turned into in recent years is usually a lot more noteworthy when there’s an election coming up, but this year’s may go down as the one when the fellow in charge of this state relaxed, let his guard down and allowed a little bit of something either mighty presumptuous or flat crazy to seep out.

I am reminded of an old family story from my mother’s side. Quite a few years ago in a certain Delta county, a certain lady we’ll call Mrs. Smith, a fine old Southern damsel if ever there were such, had tragically lost her husband and at the funeral, consistent with the equally Southern tradition of nosing into the business of others, some concerned soul asked her what might she do in the wake of that loss.

Unnerved, and with stiff upper lip, Mrs. Smith immediately responded that folks need not worry, in that she could “fully lean upon” her son for any and all of her needs. Regrettably, that self-same young man was known by virtually everyone else in that gathered crowd to be a more than slightly addled-brained, shiftless, naer-do-well, unable to adequately take care of himself, much less another.
There was, as the story goes, a brief period of dead silence following her remark, which was then broken (perhaps not surprisingly) by a relative of mine who turned to the dear lady, took her by the hands and (perhaps not surprisingly) said to her: “Mrs. Smith, in that case, I fear you are leaning on a bent stick.”

That story, I related, in order to suggest this: If a certain speech at the Neshoba County Fair from this state’s highest elected official is any gauge, then the fine people of the great and sovereign state of Mississippi, not unlike that poor, long ago lady, just might also be leaning on a bent stick.

No doubt feeling the need to match his most ambitious Lt. Gov., who recited the entire Republican creed the day before, the governor of this state confirmed my long-held suspicion that he doesn’t get many calls for advice from NASA by saying something, that if taken literally, which I do not, would classify him as clinically delusional.

First, Gov. Phil Bryant said that after focusing on education and creating jobs in his first term of office, he will now concentrate on public safety. Fine. Good. I and the rest of the public are wholeheartedly in favor of safety.

But then the governor said something else. Then the governor said that he has a “divine responsibility” to oppose abortion, re-establish prayer in schools and protect gun ownership. And that’s not fine. And that’s not good.

“Divine responsibility,” governor? Really? Do you think yourself anointed by the Almighty to carry out what you perceive to be conservative Christian policies? Have you alone been “divinely” chosen as the one to do so?

Well, sir, if you do, then I have a constitutional responsibility to tell you something: The Blues Brothers were on “a mission from God,” Gov. Bryant. You aren’t. And you shouldn’t be. And if you really think you are, then you just might be a little bit wacky. Kindly see the highly relevant definition above.

Thinking you have a “divine responsibility” is a little bit like thinking you are Napoleon and a whole lot like what a competent psychiatrist would call a messianic complex.

This isn’t about your stated policy priorities, governor, all of which are wildly popular in this state and hence, most courageous of you to champion. But how dare you, sir, claim to fathom the mind of God and how dare you proclaim yourself the agent to carry out His wishes?

There is very little godly in politics, governor, and nothing divine at all in cheap, populist, political theatrics.

Low Tech, Long Term, and Vintage

"Take anything you want from that table."  The flea market vendor pointed to what looked like a small pile of mangled Christmas decorations in an old tin box.

"May I have the box?"  I had been lusting after vintage tin boxes all over the market but reminding myself I shouldn't splurge.

She dumped the contents out on the table and handed me the box and lid.  I thanked her politely and scurried away before she changed her mind.

On closer examination it turned out to be a mid-1970s recipe box.  This could come in handy.  We'd always kept our recipes on the computer, but with five people wanting to play games use it access had become an issue.  Going back to the old-fashioned way looked like a pretty good idea.  I put some index cards and a good pen inside, and started thinking about what to write down.  We did a lot of improvisational cooking.  Which recipes should be preserved for posterity?  Which version should be written down, and with how many variations?  What notes should go with them about when, where, and how it's served?

My husband, the family candy maker and fry cook, was enthusiastic about the idea.  "I could just take the card around with me!  We could get those clips, y'know...."

"Magnetic office clips come two to a pack.  We can put one on the fridge and one on the vent hood."

"What about the clip on a stem with a stand thingee?  I haven't seen those in ages, do they even make them anymore?"

"That, um -- you mean a menu card holder?  I'm pretty sure they still make those."
"Yeah!  That way you can carry it to whatever work surface you're using, and it's closer to eye level."
So we're entering a time of recipe examination, which of course is another form of self-examination.  It will be interesting to see what pops out.

The Dawning of the Age of WHAT?

Last night my 14yo finished The Aquarian Conspiracy, a history of the New Age movement, jumped up, and stalked over to me.  "This book was written in 1980.  It talks about a bunch of things that were going to happen in the next few years.  That was 30 years ago.  They haven't happened yet.  What happened?"

"Frustrating, isn't it?"

"It's been 30 years!  What happened?"

"Honey, you just mentally calculated those 30 years.  I lived them.  Frustrating, isn't it?"

I Think I Just Won My Nerd Merit Badge

I went to see a counselor today, and we figured out my personality is sooooo innately analytical that my PTSD flashbacks take the form of data stream insights.  While other people get visual and auditory hallucinations I get -- meta.  Okay....

Huh.

*snort*

If that doesn't earn me some kind of Nerd merit badge I dunno what will.

Neat Site For Kids' Exercise Games

http://gamesforkidsunder5.net/

Observation

Sometimes my soul seems like New England soil.  Every freeze and thaw brings up new shards of some deep buried monolith.

(Duh, I know Frost said it first.  Doesn't make the feeling any less intense.)

Reassessing Videogames

Last fall I got out a Wii for the children.  (Yes, I know, late to the party and all that.  We couldn't really afford one earlier.)  In the ensuing months I've been amazed at how profoundly video games have changed since my husband and I stopped playing them in the late 80s.

I grew up in the 1970s as video and computer games were being invented.  Like all new technology, the video games of my childhood were clunky and difficult to operate.  In a classic example of making a virtue out of a necessity game developers bragged about  how hard they made their games.  And they were very hard.  Early 80s games are among the hardest ever made, a fact that had as much to do with the limited experience and poor "toolkits" of the developers as it did with their actual inclinations.  Video games of the time gave players a challenge for their reflexes, intellect, spatial skills, and stamina; and they almost always ended in defeat.  This idea for what video games should be like went along with a cultural motif common in the popular fiction of the day for what a challenge between man and computer should be like.  The challenge should always be head on, man vs. machine; the computer should always be relentless; and it should always be impossible for the human to win without cheating (hence the early popularity of "cheat codes".)  In a nutshell the relationship was always antagonistic and the life of an avatar was nasty, brutish, and short (at least until you fed the machine another quarter).

I thought video games hadn't changed much.  I was wrong.  You can still find games that exist to kill the player's avatar, with bragging rights earned by how long you stay alive.  But that's not the only kind of game around anymore.  Along with more sophisticated programming techniques has come the idea of the computer as coach, offering accurate but noncritical assessments of the player's ability and gentle, steady encouragement for future progress.  This change has had an immense impact on my reaction to the games.  I'm an abuse survivor.  I'm not used to a steady stream of gentle encouragement, real or virtual.  I try to model it for my children, but I'm not used to receiving it.  It's loosening some old scar tissue -- slowly and gently, the only way to do that task.

Growing up, my family life was like one of those never-ending games that predated Donkey Kong, a relentless series of traps to dodge and pitfalls for the unwary with no victory in sight.  I couldn't understand why anyone would want to turn that experience into a game, when I had to live it only without the catchy music.  Mom was a devotee of unrelenting "constructive criticism", which while highly critical was anything but constructive.  I got encouragement from short-term acquaintances, one-year teachers and the like, but they were about as useful as a disposable raincoat.

There were a handful of people who offered steady, gentle encouragement and stuck around for more than a year.  They appeared to be good people, in occupations that seemed to be devoted to helping others.  After they encouraged me for a time to come to them I approached them with my problem.  "My parents are doing things to me that make me feel bad.  Please help me."

It was the 1970s.  "Child abuse" meant physical marks.  No marks = no abuse.  If a child implied abuse but couldn't show marks the problem had to be not in the child's experience but in the child's perception.  The child was wrong.  The child didn't understand, and needed to be reassured that her parents really loved her -- and in the process assured that her own perception of reality was completely unbalanced.

Either I trusted them and distrusted my own perception of reality or I trusted my own perceptions and distrusted everyone (and I do mean everyone) else.

There are some things I've never been able to do no matter how hard I've tried.  I've never been able to whistle.  I've never been able to disbelieve in God.  And no matter how hard I've tried, and I've tried very, very hard, I've never been able to completely disbelieve in myself.

And so it was that this handful of good, noble, kindly, well-meaning souls with the best of intentions cemented my absolute and unconditional learned distrust* of all of humanity except myself.

***************

I recently found out that therapists are using video games in the treatment of children with mental health problems, especially anxiety.  Makes sense to me.



*I said "learned distrust".  I'm an innately trusting person, it bubbles up within me no matter the circumstances.  But sometimes it takes a very long time to seep through the cement of bad experiences.

Power Women Update

I created a Pinterest board celebrating active plus-sized women hoping I could find (with luck!) 50 pictures.  Instead I've found over 360.  Wow!

Power Women: Plus Size Fitness Role Models

Is that supposed to be wrong?

Nate Silver is a mathematician for the New York Times known for his remarkably accurate election poll predictions, far better than any previously seen in the world of poll predicting.  Because of his accuracy he's an unusually controversial figure for the typically staid world of mathematicians (except for those who work in climate science).  Recently the co-editors of Politico accused Silver of "trying to use numbers to prove stuff".  Oh my stars and garters, can you imagine that?

A mathematician.

Using numbers to prove stuff.

Oh, the horror!

I guess he was supposed to use pigeon entrails instead?  Or tea leaves?

Why the next thing you know cooks will be using food, musicians using notes, and writers using *gasp* words!   Where will the madness end?

Slow

Had a traumatic cognitive breakthrough-type thing last month.  Useful in the long run, stressful in the short.  Completely physically and emotionally exhausted right now.  Trying to write about it.  That'll be a long post.  Have a series of short posts to get out of the way first, to clear the decks.  Hopefully before I start posting those I'll have regained the ability to type complete sentences.

Pretty Frazzled Right Now

Not bad but harried.  Will post more when circumstances (and I) calm down.

Pinning Down a Dream

For about ten years I've been longing for a website that would collect information on plus size athletes, dancers, and fitness instructors.  I get so tired of seeing stupid people spout off about how anyone who is plus sized must be out of shape, and I wanted one link I could use to refute their misconceptions.  So I made one on Pinterest.  Introducing Power Women: Plus Size Fitness Role Models.

Please let me know if there's someone I should include.  I may copy the whole thing over to Tumblr for greater exposure, but I'm not sure.  What do y'all think?

April Timeline

April 19, 1775 -- "The shot heard round the world" begins the Battles of Lexington and Concord, and the American Revolution.  Commemorated in Maine and Massachusetts on the third  as Patriot's Day with the holding of baseball games in Fenway Park and the running of the Boston Marathon.  Also commemorated by Tea Partiers, "Patriot" groups, and white supremacists in less wholesome ways.

April 20, 1889 -- Birth date of Adolf Hitler.  Commemorated by white supremacists and other pond scum.  In America these commemorations are often combined with Patriot's Day.

April 15, 1955 -- Income tax returns are set as due annually on this date or the nearest next business day for most people living in America.  Protested by anti-government groups and other pond scum.

April 19, 1985 -- FBI raids the compound of The Covenant, The Sword, and the Arm of the Lord (CSA) in Arkansas, a reactionary white supremacist Christian group wanted in connection with several murders with no loss of life on their major holiday, the 210th anniversary of "the shot heard round the world".

April 19, 1993 -- FBI raids the compound of the Branch Davidians, another reactionary Christian group with outstanding arrest warrants, hoping to recreate their success with the CSA.  Instead, 76 adults and children die.  Both raids are commemorated by other reactionaries around the country.

April 19, 1995 -- Right-wing nutcase Timothy McVeigh bombs the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in downtown Oklahoma City in retaliation for the Branch Davidian raid.  The most destructive terrorist act on American soil until 9/11, it kills 168 adults and children.

April 20, 1999 -- Junior right-wing nutcases Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold kill 12 children, a teacher, and themselves at Columbine High School in an attempt to outdo Timothy McVeigh.  It's the worst American public school massacre -- until this winter.

April 16, 2007 -- Unable to handle stress and the "frightening prospect" of being "turned out into the world of work, finances, responsibilities, and a family," (according to the official review) college nutcase Seung-Hui Cho kills 32 people and himself at Virginia Tech in the worst massacre at an American college in modern times.  No one knows if he was commemorating Patriot's Day or just panicking over the end of the school year.

April 15, 2013 -- The Boston Marathon Massacre.

Yo.  You think we could maybe have a serious discussion on domestic terrorism in this country?  Or is everyone gonna stuff their heads in the sand and act all shocked, shocked, SHOCKED the next time blood flows in the third week of April?

In 2014 Patriot's Day falls on April 21.  Mark your calendar.

Preacher Wants to Enslave Non-Christians

Source.

In a recently posted You Tube sermon, the pastor of Chalcedon Presbyterian Church, Dr. Joe Morecraft says in a Biblical society, the godly must own “the fool who despises God’s wisdom” because it’s the only way to keep those with a “slave mentality” from ruining other people’s families.
Based on Proverbs 11:29, Morecraft makes a case for Biblically justified enslavement of a man who does not “trust in Christ” since slavery is the only way to “keep a fool under wraps.”
The dominionist pastor interprets the Proverb to predict that in a Christian theocracy, an unbeliever will “lose his family, his property, and his freedom,” and “his energies, talents and life will not be used as he himself pleases, but in the service of wise people who work hard to benefit the community.”
“Put him in somebody’s service where they can watch over him and make him do right even though he doesn’t want to do it.”
According to Pastor Morecraft, the consequences of being a “foolish person who is unwilling to live by the Word of God” is to “become a slave of somebody who is godly and who is wise.”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TSBauI1ETX4

Coming Up For Air

The family's been down with a seasonal bug.  Regular Life (TM) will resume at some later date.

The Grand Bargain

Brighteyes, my 13 3/4-year old is as tall as I am.  We tease her about how long she's been waiting for that to happen.

She and her 11-year old sister Sunshine have been drooling over bright, colorful, expensive workout clothes, so after church yesterday we drove to the JCPenney outlet store in Starkville where I found them two pair of capri pants each, an identical set of two-toned pants and a similar-but-not-identical set of solid-colored pants.

The girls wear the same sizes, so everything we bought them could fit each girl.  Such is the discrepancy in sizing that one set was a "small" and the other set a "large" but they all fit the same.

I found a solid pair of hot pink capri pants that both girls loved and that fit them both, but the only other pants in their size (and my price range) were black.  I bought both.

We had the following conversation in the car.

Me:  We've got a pair of pink pants and a pair of black pants.  Who wants the pink ones?

Chorus:  Me!

Brighteyes washes the dishes and Sunshine dries them and puts them up.

Me:  Okay, who's willing to both wash and put up the dishes for a week for the pink pants?

Chorus:  Me!

Me:  How about two weeks?

Sunshine:  Me!

Dad:  A bidding war.

Me:  Brighteyes?

Brighteyes:  She'll flood the kitchen like she did last time.

Me:  If she does, she'll forfeit the pants and they'll go to you.

Dad:  After you wash and put up the dishes for a week.

Me:  Is that fair?  Everyone agree to that?

Chorus:  ...yeah....

We'll see how it goes.

Fitness Update February, 2013

My weak knee is the hard limit on my exercising right now; I can only add on as much as it will put up with.  I'm trying to keep it at the level where it grumbles in the afternoon but not when I go to bed.  I'm doing strength training three days a week, cardio four days a week, and yoga daily for the cool-down.

After seven weeks with Wii Fit Plus I've almost maxed out parts of it while barely scratching other parts.  WFP is divided into four parts:  yoga, strength, cardio ("aerobics") and balance.  The aerobics weren't getting my heart rate up enough, so I started using Gold's Gym Dance Workout instead.  I'm doing 10 - 15 minutes of that for a warmup when I do strength training and 45 minutes when I do cardio.  All it does is cardio and some rhythm, though.  But it does have a 2-player mode, so when the girls get up in time to exercise with me I can do about 15 minutes worth with each of them.

The rest of WFP has given me a conundrum.  I've maxed out all the yoga and strength workouts that don't involve balance while showing little improvement on the balance games.  The game is obviously calibrated for someone a lot smaller than I am.  I need more strength training than I'm getting there.

The best strength training program for the Wii is EA Sports Active 2.  The just-as-good-but-only-a-quarter-of-the-p

rice program is NFL Training Camp.  Guess which one I got?  Right, the cheap one.  The testosterone gets a bit whiffy, but I can put up with that for the price.  It includes special monitors, although those present a problem when doing floor work.  The darn machine can't read though the wood table it's sitting on.

The program ("game" isn't really appropriate) is set up to use with the included resistance band, which is the flimsiest I've ever seen.  I've never owned a resistance band you can see daylight through before.  It's hilarious to watch these (literally) hulking NFL avatars supposedly straining to use something I could snap with my fingers.  But I can use my own bands and weights instead.  Yes, I know I can use my own bands and weights any time I want to, but it's nice to have someone notice what I'm doing, even if it's a virtual "someone".  The next problem is figuring out how to hold a hand weight and a Wii remote at the same time.  15 pounds of steel vs. 2 ounces of expensive plastic and electronics -- yeah, I know which one I'd bet on surviving.  Maybe I can rig up a sling with the wrist strap and hair bands....

The computer-generated 10-15 minute (which always turns out to be 17 1/2 minutes) "easy" program is enough for my knee, but I'm thinking about creating my own upper-body and core workout to do afterwards.

To my surprise, I did notice that I had lost some weight the other day -- in my shoulder and upper arms, about as far as can be from the hips and thighs where I need to lose weight.   I've read that endomorphs lose weight from the top down, but this is ridiculous.  At this rate my pants size will go down in time for the next presidential election....

Owl's First Journal

Owl (4) has finished the letters section of his preschool workbook.  The next morning he got out a sheet of typing paper and started writing letters on it.  He was thrilled when I pulled out a preschool writing tablet and immediately copied out the alphabet.  His parents are thrilled, period.

The Science of Football

Here's a fun way to teach basic physics:  Science of  NFL Football videos.  Let's hear it for Sir Isaac Newton.

An Unexpectedly Educational Stop

On the way back from church yesterday we stopped for dinner at Luigi's Family Restaurant in Louisville, which turned out to be a diner.  (That wasn't clear from the outside.)  We took the opportunity to introduce the girls to two of their offerings -- a "meat and three" and a Chick tract.  They weren't impressed with either, although the meal was at least comprehensible.  They thought the Chick tract was weird and stupid.   They far preferred Fred Van Lente's parody and with good reason.  Van Lente's a very funny writer.  I miss his work on Marvel Adventures.

We won't be going back to the diner, though.  Chick tracts insult 99.9% of the human race and God as well.  Jack's going to have some explaining to do on Judgement Day.

*blink*

I started using Wii Fit Plus a month ago, and Gold's Gym Dance two weeks ago.  As of one month later I've lost 6.7 pounds.

I'm sure it's a mistake, although I don't see how it could be.  Or maybe it's simply the super-easy part and now things are going to get incredibly difficult.



Well, dang.  I don't have much of a problem with pessimism and poor self image, do I? /sarcasm

Fitness Update

I first wrote about my body issues and fitness a year ago.  Since then the tendons in my knee have largely healed.  In Fall 2011 a steep flight of stairs left me in pain for weeks.  Last summer I could hike (with frequent stops) for two days before it would give out.  Now I can do an hour or so of moderate exercise a day with it only twinging.  Of course that leg is week and I'm still hauling around my pregnancy weight, but I can work on those things now.

We got Wii Fit Plus for Christmas.  Wow, feedback, what a novel concept!  Apparently I'm not nearly as out of shape as I thought I was, although I haven't tried most of the exercises that involve standing on one leg.  The yoga and strength training segments are good, but  the cardio's pretty light.  I got Gold's Gym Dance Workout, and the Latin Dance and "cardio boxing" handle the cardio segments well.  I'd prefer bellydancing, but I can see where that would be difficult for the Wiimote to pick up.  Since the goal of bellydancing is to isolate movements to one part of the body, you'd have to adorn yourself with motion sensors like a Christmas tree.

Brighteyes likes the Latin Dance segments.  Sunshine prefers Shaun White Snowboarding.  Owl likes to beat me at the 2-player race from Wii Fit Plus (their algorithm gives everyone the same stride length, so it's how fast you can pitter-patter that counts).

The weight loss chatter hasn't been nearly as triggery as I feared, although apparently I accidentally turned off a lot of that feature in WFP.  It's nice to see that program makers have learned to turn it down.  They weren't telling us anything we didn't know already.

3 Kids, a Spouse Who Teaches, and Another School Massacre: How I Spent Last Friday

I guess trigger warnings are appropriate.

The Vegas Connection

Right now my internet connection is based on Las Vegas logic:  just a tiny blip every few minutes, just enough so you'll sit there and keep punching away at it instead of getting on with your life.  It sucks.  I hope they get it fixed over the holidays.

Friday's news was bad.  Is still bad.  Isn't likely to stop being bad for a while.

Y'all take care, and if I don't get a chance to say it later, Merry Christmas.

Note to Evangelical Bloggers: Become Better Storytellers

I recently had an invitation to follow an Evangelical Christian blog whose posts consist of out-of-context verses from the Bible strung together in a rambling fashion that did not form a coherent story.  Blogging is storytelling.  If  your posts don't tell a story, even if it's just the story of how your day went, they're not ready to publish.

Best Black Friday Ever

I haven't spent a dime on Black Friday in over 10 years, since Wal-Mart stopped putting practical clothes on their Friday-after-Thanksgiving sale.  I'm neither an adrenaline junkie nor a pleasure shopper, and I like to buy Christmas presents early.  The biggest reason though is that the Christmas shopping period long ago became a making-money time of year rather than a spending-money time of year.  When jobs were scarce I worked my butt off at Christmas and made enough money to live on until the end of March, when hiring would pick up again.  That's why I'm puzzled by all this fuss over working on Thanksgiving.  Twenty years ago whenever I did seasonal work I worked Thanksgiving every year except when I was a paid Salvation Army bellringer.

But this year we actually spent a fair amount of money on Black Friday.  Some of my husband's students are Afghan War vets with pickup trucks.  We paid them to haul furniture from the old house for us, a task we previously hadn't been able to organize.

They brought down the piano and a lot of the older case goods -- mostly mid-twentieth century mass-produced junk, but better built than you can find in all but the fanciest showrooms today.  The only known antique is the wardrobe my great-great-grandmother brought from England.  She was a mail-order bride whose hand in marriage was sold to pay some of her family's debts, and the wardrobe served as her trunk when she crossed the ocean.  The dresser and the cabinets have little value save utilitarian and sentimental, but after two years without a place to put my socks I missed them.

Best money I ever spent on Black Friday.

Boo Hiss CBS! Thanks For Ruining the Thanksgiving Day Parade.

After 15 years of living without a connected TV, I looked forward to showing my children the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade.  We had CBS now, and CBS aired the parade.  All we had to do was turn on the TV and we'd see it, right?  Wrong.

What we found was a morning talk show being broadcast outdoors while all sorts of interesting parade-type things went on in the background where you couldn't see them, while the hosts chatted inanely with people whose bodies were blocking the view.  Doubtless they were important entertainment-type people, but right then they were in the darned way.  Clowns, dancers, and marching bands could be barely made out behind the guests legs, as could the balloon-wranglers whose balloons dangled frustratingly just out of camera range, cruelly teasing us with a flash of color at the very top of the screen.

After 10 minutes the children were begging us to turn it off.  I couldn't blame them.  I'd never seen worse coverage of an outdoor event in my life.  CBS needs to give the job to experts who actually know what they're doing.  It's a parade, not a blooming chat show!

There Will Be War By 2015

The Republicans lost bigtime this election, and watching them work through the various stages of shock, anger, and denial has been highly entertaining.  But as the hangover fades in the cold morning light, the few remaining sane people left in the GOP are taking a hard look at the facts:

FACT 1:  The only groups that voted Republican were old white people and blue collar white men.  One of those groups is dying, and the not-yet-old white people are pretty Democratic.

FACT 2:   The current wave of young people, the Millenials, turned out in large numbers in 2008 and 2012 (half of them voted Tuesday, and they made up 19% of the total vote, 2% higher than senior citizens) and overwhelmingly voted Democratic.  The typical pattern is that if young people vote for the same party in three straight Presidential elections they'll vote for that party for life.  If the Republicans don't convince a lot of Millenials for vote for them in 2016, they're toast.

THEREFORE:  The Republicans are going to have to come up with some way to convince young people, especially non-white young people, that conservative, patriarchal values are necessary, relevant, exciting, even sexy.

Why?  Because in their mind there's a:

GIVEN:  It can't possibly be the MESSAGE that's wrong, only the MARKETING of the message.  "We do not need to change our values, but we do need to find ways to communicate them in an engaging and welcoming manner." (Morrissey)  Every reasonable individual (as they see it) will surely become an authoritarian, conservative Republican if the package is only sold to them in the right way.

The HELP WANTED sign is already up.  Ed Morrissey is looking for "men and women who can think creatively, produce a positive agenda that isn’t defined by an oppositional nature, and who can eloquently communicate that agenda and the values that drive it."  There's a gig for an out-of-work colllege grad with a Creative Writing degree.

But this solution runs up against

FACT 3:  People who can "think creatively" and "produce a positive agenda" tend to be progressives, not conservatives.  It's going to be hard to find a genius who can take a worldview that's defined by an oppositional nature and sell it as something else, and even harder to find people who would buy that argument under normal circumstances (more on that later).  It's a long shot.  The very fact that it's a long shot runs up against

FACT 4:  The 1% lost a ton of money backing Republican candidates who lost.  Ralph Reed was given $10 million, Karl Rove $400 million, and that's not counting Adelson,  the Koch brothers and all the other conservative SuperPacs.  Rich people don't like losing money on what they had been promised was a sure thing.  (The fact that they could stand to lose it is irrelevant. They still don't like it.)  There's a lot of very wealthy, very angry white guys out there who want to make sure that a progressive Democratic landslide never happens again on their watch.  They're not going to want to back long shots.  They're going to want to back sure things.

FACT 5:  There is only one sure, time-tested, tried-and-true method to tilt the country to the right -- war.

THEREFORE:  Some foreign grievance against the US is going to be carefully cultivated for the next year until it erupts sometime in 2014 or 2015 to frighten this country into seeking solace in the jingoistic propaganda of the Republicans, just like so many people did after 9/11.  It'll happen just in time for Obama's "incompetence" in dealing with it to become a rallying cry for the Republican presidential candidate in the 2016.  It'll happen because it's the only guaranteed way to scare that many people into changing their worldview (and subsequently their politics) that fast.

Does my conjecture sound callous to you?  It does to me as well.  Only a cold-hearted cynic would do something like that, and only a blind idiot would let them.  But lest you think the Republicans wouldn't do such a thing, consider

EXHIBIT A:  Republican Presidential candidate Mitt Romney.  Romney made his vast fortune as a job destroyer, closing down factories, shipping the jobs to China,and leaving vast swaths of the country (including the town I used to live in) that had been healthy, prosperous communities full of starving, destitute people bereft of income, jobs, and hope; yet Candidate Romney was sold to the American people as a "job creator".  Only a cold-hearted cynic would try to pull such a con game, and only a blind idiot would fall for it.

Halloween 2012: The Good, the Bad, and the Terrifying

Halloween was a little better for us this year.  We were a little more settled into the new house, and had a little more time and effort to spend on decorating the place.  Our neighbors didn't do that much.  The college students who went by on the hayride said we were the only house that put up lights and decorations, and my husband could only find four houses to take the children to in two towns.  The seller I bought some decorations from said people were under a lot of pressure this year from the churches to be "good Christians".  Apparently "good Republicans" too.  But there's nothing like oppression to breed resentment, so there's a probably a fine crop of angry teenagers coming along wanting everything they weren't allowed to have.

Only two kids came over this year, as opposed to the two dozen we had last year.  Still, it's better than the twelve years we went without a single trick-or-treator before we moved.

When the children got back, I put on How to Train Your Dragon, a wonderful movie that we hadn't seen before.  Now everyone is eager to see the cartoon Dragons:  Riders of Berk.

But all the ghosties, ghoulies, and goblins were only a momentary respite from the true horror of -- the election.  I've never been so stressed over a vote before.  I know what kind of a nation Romney would turn this country into, a nation where every state is governed just like Mississippi.  I don't think y'all want that.  I know for a fact I don't.

Go, Rabbit. Go!

The toddler is currently enthralled with a collection of the first three Raymond's Raving Rabbids games on the Wii.  The mini-games frequently ask the player to move his or her arms up and down to simulate running in a way the Wiimote can detect.  Owl prefers to move the remote and the nunchuk up and down by hopping in place.  It accomplishes the same job in a way that he finds more satisfactory and the rest of us find much cuter.

"No Raymond on Lesson Days!" or 3 Weeks With a Wii

We've had the Wii plugged in for three weeks now.  I hope this box can take heavy use, because with three children it's getting it.

Currently the two girls homeschooled for several hours a day on weekdays, while the 4yo gets a few minutes of lessons.  I allow video games before breakfast and after lessons.  In addition, the girls get two 20 minute "game breaks" one third and two thirds through their lessons to refresh their brains, although in practice they usually take one break around lunch.  The preschooler sleeps until around 10 in the morning and gets pulled off the console in the afternoon to play outside.  They're still undecided on if they'd rather watch TV or play video games at night.

The most obvious change can be seen in the mornings.  No more lazing about in bed for the girls.  The earlier they're up the longer they can play without the toddler.  Owl has limits on his playtime, but at 4 he's trying the "scream louder to get your way" stunt.  The fact that it hasn't worked so far hasn't deterred him yet.

I can see the appeal of mini-games.  In practice I've only got 15-20 minutes/day to play a game and gosh darn it, I'd like to see where I've made just a teeny tiny amount of actual progress in that time.  I've heard the appeal of immersive games is to "lose yourself" in them, but I'd have to "lose" the children first.

As for the games themselves we're currently playing Mario Kart Wii, Boom Blox Bash Party, Active Life Explorer, Just Dance Kids, and Raymond's Raving Rabbids Ultimate Party Collection.

Mario Kart is the children's favorite, especially for our truck-crazy 4yo.  It's fun and very well-designed.

Active Life Explorer is their second favorite.  It lets you be Indiana Jones.  Who doesn't want to be Indiana Jones?  You can really work up a sweat having fun stopping runaway trains and diving for treasure in this game.  I haven't tried it yet as my knee is acting up, but the children love it.  Unfortunately it works with the GameBoy ports and a special mat that can't be plugged into the latest model Wii, so the series it's a part of is going out of print, and the remaining games are selling for insane prices.  Even more unfortunately, it doesn't look like any more of the series will be made.  :(

Boom Box Bash Party is third on their list and first on mine.  The toddler just likes to throw bombs; but dh, the preteens, and I appreciate the intricate puzzles that many of the games present.

Just Dance Kids comes in a distant fourth for the children.  They like it more as a change of pace or a morning exercise program, although their interest has perked up after I showed them you can make playlists.  Yes, the scoring weights toward the arms, but with my knee acting up I can stand still and get a good upper body workout without my score tanking so I shan't complain about that aspect.

Raymond's Raving Rabbids is very fun is a gross, preteen sort of way; but you have to finish huge chunks of it before you can record any progress in your overall score.  For this reason it's confined to weekends when the girls can spend an uninterrupted hour or two with it.

The Wii has done a lot for promoting cooperative play amongst them, although Owl's patience wears thin on occasion.  We weren't able to play board games or card games without all the pieces being lost or destroyed, so this fills a huge gap in that regard.

Everything is Relative -- And Brighteyes Hates It

Brighteyes (13) is pretty cool with most of the world having relative values as long as math does not.  Math is where she goes for certainty.

Yesterday she found out algebra has statements with varying levels of truthfulness.  The resulting explosion was not pretty, and she wasn't happy the rest of the day.

We backed off on that topic.  She's buried herself in A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court for solace.  I've never met a bigger Mark Twain fan.

Changes are coming.

I'm not happy with the new layout, as I've lost the links in my sidebar.  It'll be a pain to rebuild those.  But the old format was no longer supported the way it used to be.

The Terror of Peace and Quiet

After a bumpy period my life is settled now.  There's no problems current or on the horizon, and everything is going just fine.  Objectively I know this based on the evidence around me.  Subjectively I know this because I feel like I'm coming apart at the seams.

Welcome to life with PTSD.

It's not really about nightmares, in spite of the popular mythology.  People who don't have this "coping strategy" usually don't understand it.  It's not a disease because it doesn't kill you.  At some point it saved your life.  If you have it, at some point in your past you feared for your life and/or safety, and PTSD sprang up to help you cope with your fear.  You were terrified, and you couldn't deal with your fears and do what you needed to do to survive at the same time.  PTSD put a time lag on your emotions.  As long as danger has your adrenaline up, you can't feel any emotions.  They're all safely locked away until the danger is past.  Once things calm down and your adrenaline falls, you get your emotions back.

All of them.

Especially the fears, terrors, anxieties, and angers.  They tend to swamp out everything else.

"Calm, peaceful, and quiet" is the most terrifying state I know.  Many with PTSD run from it.  I used to do that, but it only makes things worse if you don't allow yourself some peace and quiet Terror Time.

The real kicker is that I've been this way since I was a small child.  I was three when I got chronic depression.  The PTSD started a little later.  I don't know what it's like not to be this way.

No one knows how to turn it off.

Still, at least I know what it is now.  For 40 years I had it and didn't know what was causing these bizarre reactions.  That confusion and the fear my ignorance caused made things much worse.  These days I know the name, the shape, the pattern, and the cycles.  That helps.

The Banging and the Clanging of the Bells, Bells, Bells....

A lingering head cold has given me three straight days of tinnitus.  I'd rather have the head cold, thanks.

House Update, Autumnal Equinox, 2012

I've got a nasty cold that started yesterday.  I hate being sick on a holiday.

As the den nears completion, we've gone back to work on the sheds.  The lower one now has the inner walls in place.  The upper one is getting the extra insulation it needs.

The den now has the stairs, the floor, all the shelves and most of the trim.  The antenna is up, and we hung the TV on the wall and hooked up the antenna last week.  We now have access to two states' worth of public television signals (Mississippi and Alabama) and some junk.  Reception is intermittent, but we're still working out the optimal combination of position and equipment.

The toddler would watch PBS Kids all the time if he could, and we've had to start finding out-of-reach places to leave the remote.  The preteens are more laid-back about it, although the 11yo never misses a chance to watch anything that's on.  We're still mostly watching our DVDs and downloads, although Nova was a spectacular hit.

Today we hooked up the Wii for the first time, with Mario Kart, Boom Blox Bash Party, Just Dance For Kids, and four Wiimotes.  Thank Goddess I didn't start them off on any more complicated control system.  The toddler threw a temper tantrum whenever anyone tried to put on a non-racing game, and the 13yo threw a tantrum because she insisted on understanding everything inside and out before she made a single move.  She complained that her siblings were pushing buttons at random.  I pointed out that was a legitimate form of experimentation. The resulting explosion was not pretty.

Both girls sworn up and down they're going to get up extra early in the morning to master the Wii before the toddler wakes up.  We shall see.

Oh noes! Am I a good/bad woman by Republican standards? :P

Conservatives tend to have unwritten rulebooks that supercede what they say out loud.  But unwritten rules can contradict each other.  Case in point -- me.

For various reasons I'm currently homeschooling my children as a stay-at-home mom.  Traditionally conservatives have loved women who stayed home with their kids instead of getting jobs.  Traditionally they also favored homeschooling.  They think such women will vote for them.  So even though I'm an elitist Green Party Pagan snob and one of Santorum's "smart people (who) will never be on our side", their first inclination is to see me as a good person.

But because I am a stay-at-home mom, I don't earn enough to pay federal income taxes.

Oh noes!  Suddenly I and every other SAHM (including Ann Romney) are bad people!  We don't pay taxes!  We rely on handouts!  We'll never vote Republican or be invited to join the country club!   Unless of course our husband owns the damn club....

And I'm bad because, since I'm not paying federal income taxes, I'm not taking personal responsibility for myself!  Because I'm doing frivolous things instead like -- taking personal responsibility for my children's education?

So good woman, bad woman, which am I by Republican standards based on my occupation?  I don't personally care, but it shows how seriously Romney is out of touch even with his own party, let alone the country as a whole.

And to the senior citizens I heard today who said, "He didn't really mean us," yes he did.  And the disabled, the veterans, the students, and the soldiers as well as the domestic partners.  He really did mean us all.

"I'm Dreaming of a White President" - Randy Newman

Randy Newman's latest satirical song contains more truth than most of us would like to admit.  Why else would poor people support a man who dismisses them as part of the 47% who aren't "real" Americans?

Hurricane scale note

Isaac is still in the Gulf headed for the Mississippi/Louisianna border.  It's hours from landfall.   We live on the opposite side of the state, on the Mississippi/Alabama border.  We're already getting bands of rainfall from the storm.

Last Night I Dreamed of Frankensteins

Three madmen labored in adjacent cubicles to assemble giant monsters out of piles of rotting garbage that had long ago outlived their usefullness.  When they were satisfied with their work, each zapped them with fire, trying to bring the worn-out dead parts into some semblance of wholeness and life.  All they accomplished was to scorch their stack.  The garbage piles weren't dangerous, unless they fell on you or set fire to you.  But the madmen who believed they could breathe new life into these dead things were very dangerous as they sought more extreme ways to reanimate what should have been allowed to decay in peace, cannabalizing anything they could find for their project.

I woke up and decided I was watching way too much Republican election coverage.

House Update, A New TV, and An Anniversary August 27, 2011

We finished the ceiling trim and the middle ribs, the latter a necessity in a room that has walls made of tongue-and-groove paneling, bead board, sheetrock, and plywood.  That's one of the reasons we chose a rustic "Western" theme for the room, that and the need to find something playfull enough for the children and palatable for grownups.

We've installed 22 shelves, including a video game case, a Doctor Who book-and-DVD case, and extra wide top shelves for puppets and stuffed animals.  There's also another 16 shelves in the pantry we built.  There's another DVD case to come, but it's far enough away from where the TV will sit that we shouldn't have to worry about the TV being damaged.

We tried to buy some linoleum at Lowe's but even though they've previously delivered the next day for free, now they want $79 to deliver in two weeks -- maybe.  We found an indie hardware store that sold us a better product $80 cheaper and was willing to deliver the next day for $15.  Guess who got our money?  But with all the extra running around it won't be installed until this week.

The TV arrived Saturday, our first new one since 1996, which means the first new one the children have ever seen, and our first flatscreen.  It's a mid-size LG, according to the reviews not considered good enough for those used to high quality HGTV, but we're not and our jaws dropped just fine.  It's currently screwed into the carpet in the living room, waiting for us to build it a proper base in the den.

My husband was concerned about the fragility of the screen, and had me prop it up under the edges with hardcovers.  "Now make a barricade of books around it to keep the children from getting close."

I raised an eyebrow.  "If I build a book fort, they're going to play in it."

"Oh, right.  That's out.  Can we put up an electrified fence?"

We got out our old DVD player and hooked up it.  It had a Clannad CD in it, the same one I'd been playing the day before the worst of the burgularies, when we realized the best locks we could buy would no longer work.  I flashed back to that night when we packed up the children and what little a theif might value, and fled the house right before the predawn light.

Clannad began to play.  My husband looked up.  "It's working!"

I grinned.  "You bought me a really big tape deck."

He grinned back.  "And a really expensive one, too!"

We got out My Neighbor Totoro.  The first break-in had been a few days before Owl's second birthday.  Here we were, a few days before Owl's fourth birthday.  It was the first time in two years that we had had the opportunity to sit down in our own house to watch our own TV and feel safe while doing in.  As we oohed and aahed over the picture, I may have shed a few tears.

Later, as Owl lined up flowers from the back yard on the table and we installed yet another shelf, my husband asked.  "Was that nice?"

"Uh, no.  Not exactly."

"Hmm?  Was it fun?"

"No.  It was -- cathartic."

He was silent for a while, then said, "Yeah, me too."

August Weather

Southern summers are always hot, but August heat is in a class by itself.  In theory after the summer solstice the heat of the sun begins to diminish, but no one notices because there's a hot new player on the scene.  After months of constant heating, the Earth itself has begun to radiate heat.  Now instead of heat just raining down on us from above, it boils up from the ground at the same time, catching us in a fiery pincer.  The air is stifling.  Air conditioners strain.  Breathing is difficult.  Sleep is impossible.  The short reprieve granted by a rare rainstorm turns into a hot, humid sauna as soon as the rain ends.

But now a gentle breeze blows, dispelling the stale heat.  Mild rains break up the heat, and afterwards the gentle breeze still blows, keeping the air from heating unbearably.  It can only mean one thing.

There's a hurricane in the Gulf headed right for us.

Time Flies

It's our 24th wedding anniversary.  Yay us.  :)

House Update August 12, 2012

The den is starting to look less like a jumble of other people's abandoned projects and more cohesive.  The pantry is functional and stocked, which means the canned food is no longer in banana boxes scattered over the den floor.  It needs the door installed and some touch-up work, but it will do for now.

The insides of the cabinets and the counter-tops are painted, and the counter-tops are installed.  We're almost finished with the ceiling trim.  We've begun putting up the side trim and the shelf brackets, including some curlicue brackets my husband cut out of scrap.

To-finish:  the trim, and the shelves.

To-do:  clean up, paint, and install the recycled cabinet doors and drawers; install linoleum; and decide how to install the TV.

Most Important Job:  get some sleep!

House Update July 31, 2012

 All other work is pretty much suspended as we race to finish the den. The deadline for having the walls finished, the floor laid down, and the TV installed (not to mention the futon carried down) is August 27, the start of the Republican National Convention, thus providing (hopefully) conclusive evidence on the raging debate in our house, "Is the Republican campaign strategy more motivated by cynical manipulation or by blind arrogance?"

We lost three days due to paint already. Lowe's house brand, Valspar, has worked for us so far, but when we tried to paint the trim a dark color ("La Fonda Earth" aka melted chocolate) the paint came out thinner than milk, ran everywhere, and stained everything. What should have been a one-day job turned into a four-day job, and ruined any chance of us buying more Valspar paint. The trim that hasn't been installed yet will be painted beforehand, and we're reconsidering painting some of the installed trim.

 Instead of building walls for the pantry and then adding shelves to the walls, we built extra-sturdy floor to ceiling shelves whose extra-thick backs form the "walls". After much searching, we finally found someone who would sell us a skinny door for the pantry; for a while we thought we'd have to make one. We finished the cabinet facings at 2 am.

Next up is the pantry door frame, then the pantry walls, the cabinet drawers and doors, the upper shelves, the book and DVD shelves, the trim, the paint, and deciding what to build for the TV: table, shelf, or frame? Then the flooring, the TV installation, and we're done. Knock on wood.

Discovering Smoothies

I finally got everything together to make yogurt. Since the new kitchen is bigger than a postage stamp we now have a blender for the first time in 15 years, which means we can make smoothies. I haven't had very many smoothies, as there's been a lack of: a) smoothie bars in the area, b) money, and c) blenders, so I'm only vaguely acquainted with the process. Blending the fruit to a pulp before serving fruit yogurt seems to help most of the family eat it faster, although the two youngest children are resisting. So far I've experimented with fresh blueberries from the neighbor's garden, leftover sauteed apples, bananas, cantaloupe, and fresh peaches. So far so good, although there's still some pulp left over; it doesn't blend smooth. Oh, and grapes. I found if I add a handful of white grapes I don't need any sugar even with the tart yogurt.

I'm not sure how exactly I'm supposed to get it really cold. The recipes say, "Throw ice, fruit, and liquid into the blender and blend it smooth." That doesn't work. If I blend it at the top speed to pulverize the fruit pulp, the ice is crushed to nothing. If I don't blend it at top speed, I end up with a lot of pulp. Obviously I have to add the ice later. Apparently some people prefer frozen fruit, both because it's colder and because the ice crystals break down the pulp in the freezer. That's fine as far as it goes, but it doesn't do anything about melons (which shouldn't be frozen) or grape skins.

Hmm. I'm told smoothies call for three main ingredients: liquid (to protect the blades), ice, and smooth-blending fruit. Obviously some people are doubling up with the frozen fruit. If I use yogurt for the liquid I don't need liquid fruit juice. What if I freeze the fruit juice and use that for the ice? I know lemonade freezes at a lower temperature than water; I bet it's true of fruit juices as well. I'll try that. I'll also try adding some chocolate milk powder to the smoothies of the two youngest children. That might improve their opinion, as they belong to the "everything is better with chocolate" camp.

Life, With (Optional) Video Games

It's so hot I've largely ceded the computer to my children for gaming, but that and the fact that we should have the Wii hooked up in another month* have me thinking quite a bit about computer games: my own past with them, what my children think of them, and how they'll fit in our homeschooling household.

(*The target date for finishing the den and installing a TV is the Republican primary.  My husband wants to see just how much they think they can get away with up close.)

I loved computer games in the 1970s and 1980s but my coordination is lousy, and it was even worse as a teenager.  I could handle the "shoot" button, although I'd never be a high scorer.  Then Nintendo invented the "jump" button, and I washed out of arcade-style games.

That left PC puzzle games which I preferred, up to a point.  The entire trajectory of my life as a abuse survivor had been about realizing I don't have to do what other people want me to do.  It's served me well in general, but not in puzzle gaming.  I'd get stuck in a game and think, "Why am I expending all this energy pleasing someone who isn't even here?  This is not who I am.  This is not what I do."  At that point it was easy to walk away.  I still liked the concept of computer games though, and I got excited over the developments of RPGs and motion controls.

Our children have no such hangups, and enjoy playing PC games.  When we moved into a bigger house and prepared to get an up-to-date TV it only made sense to pick up a Wii.  Now I'm wondering how I can incorporate this console into our homeschool.

Turns our other people are wondering the same thing.  New Mexico University has an entire department researching how to integrate games in education, especially exercise games.  They summarized their findings in a video, the presentation drags but it has some useful ideas.



And since schoolteachers put everything online, it didn't take long to find free exergame lesson plans.

Indoor exercising in the only way to go in this heat, that's for sure.  And it might be a good idea to keep a dance game pulled up for between-lesson breaks to help "get the sillies out."

The temperature is finally staying below 100F most days, but the rains have  moved in.  While this is good for the garden, the air is so super-saturated with moisture that the air conditioning can't remove the water.  The air flowing from it just blows on the sweat on your body, but it doesn't remove it.  We're going outside as little as possible during daylight.

House Update July 2012

I haven't posted much lately largely because I've been tired out from remodeling.  (Dh just told me to write, "My husband has the summer off, so no one got a vacation."  It's true.  Last-minute Pell Grant "reforms" killed over 2/3rds of the summer school classes and left him little to do but carpentry.)  It's been over 105F for two weeks now, so we're doing a lot of the outdoor prep work between 9pm and midnight.  Here's what we've finished since the last house update in January.



Kitchen

The electrical outlets have been refurbished.  The facings of the upper cabinets are complete except for the decorative bit and the tricky bit.  The paint's been retouched.  The vent hood is installed, so now we can fry food for the first time in almost 2 years.  The drawer slides are here and hopefully we can get on to making the drawers soon.  I need a safe place to store my candy thermometer so I can make homemade yogurt. It's too hot for anything but a cold breakfast, cornflakes get old fast, and it's even too hot for homemade baked goods first thing in the morning.

(Have you seen what yogurt costs in the stores?  Yeah.)

Den

My husband has taken great delight in turning the gloomy former mancave into a sunny playroom.  ("Mancaves are for pathetic losers who can't do anything.")  We finished priming the walls and painted the ceiling.  Extra outlets were added.  The pantry floor is in place right over what was apparently once the garage shed, and the framing has begun.  The built-in cabinets are framed, floored, and have their sub-counters on.  We saved the doors and drawers from the former kitchen lower cabinets, scrubbed them out good, and we'll recycle them here.  Still, the cost of the lumber to finish the room was the biggest expense after the mortgage this month.

I'm slightly annoyed by the work, as I use the den to exercise in and all the commotion has thrown my schedule off.  The 12yo is extremely annoyed that we haven't made the den a priority since we're going to wait until it's finished to buy a new TV (our first since 1995, and our first flat screen) and set up the Wii we got last Christmas.  I pointed out that the delay has given us time to round up extra games, remotes, nunchucks, and a charger, but that only placates her so much.

We haven't been able to buy anything else for the new house or to bring anything large down from the old house, except for a bookcase full of baby and children's books that is now in the girls' room.  They were happy to become reacquainted with old favorites and to introduce them to the 3yo.

The sheds

Much of the outdoor work has been spent finishing one shed and refinishing another.  One shed was left unfinished over a decade ago.  The material to build it was piled behind it and left to weather outdoors for at least 12 years.  Only one wall was completely finished; it held a warped but intact set of 1950's knotted pine upper kitchen cabinets taken from a neighbor's house during their remodeling.   We finished the outer facing, the wiring, the insulation, and the inner facing.

The other shed looked like it had been set up at one time for children's crafts, probably during the house's "day care" era.  It had since been turned into a storage building for at least one other damaged set of upper kitchen cabinets (and possibly part of another set), some lower cabinets, and a huge pile of interior finishing remnants at least 12-15 years old that don't match anything we've seen in the house.   We've cleaned and sorted it out,  The damaged sheetrock was chopped up for Predator bandages flat casting molds. The walls are being prepped so we can install the upper cabinets and return it to it's former function.  If necessary we can run pipes out to it and turn it  into a cabin, should we find ourselves needing to house extra adults in a few years.  We've also scraped the carpet off the ceiling (a 70s fad) and painted it.

The gardens

Last  year's site for the vegetable patch turned out to be a bog, so we're trying a dryer place this year.  Of course that means we're having a drought.  Still, the site has been a good one.  We're just growing enough to eat fresh this year.  We don't have time to can anything.

The flower beds are doing good.  The 11yo likes to birdwatch, so I've pitched the flowers towards butterflies, hummingbirds, and birds, with a lot of red and pinky-purple wildflowers all arranged in drifts according to height, just like they would be found in Nature, provided Nature had the aesthetics of a school photographer.  It's produced a bumper crop of butterflies and dragonflies, and one tiny hummingbird.  The bird feeders we cleaned up and set out, and the bluebird houses the girls made, have also brought us bluebirds and cardinals to watch.

One odd bit came from a cheap bag of "daffodils" we planted out last fall that turned out  to be giant ornamental alliums instead, a much more expensive plant that I never had any fondness for.  (I love to look at alliums while thinking how good they'll taste on my plate.)  Still, we've got them and the butterflies like them, so I'll find a place for them in the back row this fall.

The azaleas are on Year 2 of a 3-year plan to prune them into shape.  They can only be pruned by 1/3 at a time, and they started out as monsters threatening to eat the house.  This year I've got them down to the right height, but they're still spread out everywhere.  I've also started pruning the rest of the shrubs this year.

The floirbunda rose we planted last year did well, so this year it was joined by 15 David Austens:  Harlow Carrs, Braithwaites, a Sharifa Ousma, and a Scentimental.  The Scenitmental and one of the Carrs died, but the rest are doing fine.

We also planted a pear tree and a Japanese persimmon this year.  The persimmon had been sitting in it's pot for two years when we bought it, and had naturally acquired a "bonsai look".  It's doing fine and has even set fruit.

The herb garden has long since outgrown it's spot by the kitchen door and spread out in all directions.   Depending on how you count them, I've now got between 30 and 60 different varieties, including 9 different mints, 6 or 7 different thymes, and IDK how many different dianthus and bee balm.  The regular lemon balm I planted last year is now "golden leaf" lemon balm, which doesn't seem to take the sun as well unfortunately.

While pineapple sage loves my yard, regular sage doesn't.  I've planted three different varieties so far, and two have already died.  Grey-leaved plants don't take to the South, so I'm currently trying a gold variegated sage to see if that will do better.  I wish someone would make a green or golden leaved lavender that would do well down here.

Everything else is doing well, by which I currently mean "hanging in there in spite of the heat".

Mishaps

The people who had this house before us knew a lot about wiring and about heating/cooling installations, but not so much about plumbing.  One problem took out the entire front half of the house (including the laundry and kitchen).  The plumber took one look at it and disappeared for three weeks.  After three weeks of doing dishes and laundry in the bathtub I called him up and fussed at him because I'd had to cancel a talk I was supposed to give at (the UU) church.  He came out to fix them the next morning.  No service provider can afford to be bad-mouthed at church.

Immediately after that the bathroom sink stopped up, and while trying to fix it we found that the house had extra pipes for nonexistent rooms that had never been properly capped -- when it started raining inside the house.

In between those two mishaps the stove element blew, and in the process took out the rest of the wiring in the stove.  (Remind me why we need a computer in a simple appliance.)  After a week of trying to fix it we realized that the cost of all the new parts we needed exceeded the cost of a new stove, and replaced it.

The good news is that it looks like we're about to get a break in the weather.  The forecast is saying that we'll have a big storm next week which will knock the highs down to 95F, which is currently the temperature at midnight.  It's due to arrive on Thursday, the same day the lumber gets here.

Computer Geek's Question Time: Nook Tablet

I want something that will connect with wifi when I travel, basically so I can check into a hotel, hook up the wifi, surf local restaurant reviews, and get directions to obscure places the front desk has never heard of.  Anything that relies on the cloud for storage, like Kindle Fire, is out because I also go to places in the countryside that don't have any wifi access at all, but I'd like to still be able to use what's stored on my machine.

I tried a Nook Tablet in B&N, and immediately ran into problems with the browser.  I couldn't scroll past the bottom of the screen to see what was on the rest of the webpage, and I couldn't get the keyboard to pull up every time I wanted it.  Both problems are sale breakers.

Is there any way I can either fix these problems or install a workable browser on the Nook Tablet?  Or is there some other machine I should be looking at instead?

Poltergeists Explained

My 11yo middle child is in the throws of puberty, and the changes occurring in her body have turned her into a complete hypochondriac.  Since New Year's Day she's had a complaint about some ache or pain every few minutes from when she wakes up until she goes to sleep.  She's been known to wake us up in the middle of the night, or at dawn.  No amount of reassurance or scientific information has made a dent yet, although more books on puberty from a child's perspective are on the way.  Giving her a daily 10 minutes of uninterrupted "complaint time" when she has my undivided attention hasn't worked.  Debunk one complaint and show how that can't possibly happen, and she'll use the same complaint again in 10 minutes.  Exercise hasn't worked.  Sending her out to play with other children hasn't worked.  Mockery hasn't worked.  Nothing has worked. Her ability to drive us all bonkers has gone through the roof.

And suddenly I understood poltergeists, because this almost-pubescent child is so annoying as to make even dead people want to throw things at her.  Gah!

Reading Pratchett's The Bromeliad Trilogy, Fromm's The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness, and Lakoff's Moral Politics at the same time makes for quite a word cocktail:

Most people are not especially sick in the head or especially healthy either.  Most people are just people translates as Most people are somewhat sick in the head but still functional.  Deal with it.

New Neighbors

Earlier this spring the girls made bluebird houses, and we mounted them where they could be seen from the house.  Saturday morning bluebirds moved in, and we enjoyed watching them build their nests.

Saturday afternoon we realized we had another new neighbor -- a young copperhead snake that was trying to move into our yard.  It found a much less friendly welcome at the end of our shovel.

I don't mind new neighbors, unless they bite.

The War Against Western Youth

This is one of the most disturbing articles I've read lately, and that's saying something.  I'm not sure how to prepare my children for a world that eats its young.

A-Day Redux

We celebrated the one-year anniversary of our first trip to Tuscaloosa with another trip to Tuscaloosa, this time sans tornadoes. Technically it was a year and a day, as we didn't want to get caught in the A-day traffic again. We went to a Target for the first time, which was underwhelming; and to Los Tarascos restaurant for the first time, which was overwhelming (great food but none of us are ever ordering a full-size lunch there again).

But the main event was the UA Arboretum Spring Plant Sale. I wanted a golden lemon thyme, a perennial celery (lovage), a Madalane Hill mint, and a ginger mint. I found a golden lemon thyme, a wild celery (smallage), a curly mint, and a berries and cream mint, so no complaints. I also scored a couple of asters and a yarrow for the flower bed.

We wanted to check out a local park, but the 3yo wasn't feeling well. Still, we saw where there was a playground we could visit on future trips.

Adventures in Decorating

Around the time my husband and I married, while we hashed out the guidelines of our future life together, we decided that debt and credit cards were a scam and we would avoid them as much as possible. This led us to buy a 70s-era mobile home and fill it with hand-me-downs and castoffs, but we dreamed of dream houses where everything was "just right". Which, being poor but creative college students looking for cheap entertainment, led to a lot of talking, library book-reading, and window shopping.

We were immediately attracted to Art Nouveau and the Arts & Crafts movement, especially when we realized that the graceful, well-designed houses our older relatives lived in were the Craftsman "bungalows" we read about. In terms of utility, design, aesthetics, comfort, and convenience they were so far ahead of the modern "ranch" houses I and most of our age-mates grew up in that they might as well be from another planet. (I could spend thousands of words ranting about the "ranch" house, but writing time is too precious to rant about anything small. Suffice to say it's impossible to overstate the role of the "ranch" house in the death of the Cowboy Mythos for my generation.)

(And before anybody makes any remarks about being attracted to everything and hating to be categorized, keep in mind it saves a lot of time if you know what bin in the record store you're most likely to find music you like in so you can look there first.)

(And I just realized I dated myself terribly by even knowing what a record store was.)

Last year we bought a 1920 Bungalow and set out to upgrade some of our decrepit furnishings. We soon realized there were some things we didn't know:

1) Craftsmen replicas are hideously expensive.

2) They're very brown. We'd been looking in old books with black-and-white illustrations, and we'd grown up seeing Southern, Colonial-style bungalows which have lighters colors than the older bungalows made up north and out west. We're summer-toned Southerners, we like brown as an accent color but never as a dominant color; and we like jewel toned-accents even more than brown.

So I set about looking for something with Craftsman sensibilities but a more vibrant color scheme. The goal was to find something eyeball-friendly, without the overwhelming, eye-bleeding patterns of the Laura Ashley look or the vast, anxiety-inducing expanses of white of the Modernists. I wanted to give the eye something interesting to look at when it's bored and some blank spaces to gaze into when it's tired.

The "cottage" or "shabby chic" look had potential, when it avoided looking like vast expanses of Modernist white punctuated by puffs of pink. (As with fashion, it turned out the more sedate interpretations of experienced amateurs look much better than the more extreme interpretations of attention-seeking professionals.) I kept hearing the same code phrases parroted over and over again, and I knew there had to be a guru out there somewhere. Turns out she's Rachel Ashwell, and apparently she sells ice cream-colored furniture (WTH did that come from?) and linens through....Target?

Uh-huh. Until we moved, the nearest Target was 3 1/2 hours away. (Now it's only 1 1/2 hours away, but we still haven't been there yet.) No wonder I wasn't aware of the latest trend in "country" decorating. I lived too far out in the country!

Oh, apparently the ice cream-colored furniture is something rich people did in their vacation homes in order to disguise the fact that the their furniture was originally stained *gasp* different shades of brown! Oh, the horrors! Aren't rich people simply too precious for words? I'm not fond of brown, but I don't have a problem with furniture that comes in different shades of brown. It looks more interesting that way.

Besides, I suspect Target is really selling ice cream-colored furniture to disguise the fact that it's probably particle-board crud that will fall apart as soon as it hits the hot, humid Southern air. Cynical, moi?

Still, I could see painting the occasional piece that was too badly damaged to restore. I found a couple of banged-up old tables in the shed out back. I can give those to the girls to decorate, and get at least two weeks worth of art lessons down as well as new furniture. Win!

One of the other things cottage style has going for it is that it's pack-rat-friendly, which is inexplicably rare in contemporary styles. Isn't everyone a pack-rat these days? Er, I mean "collector" of course. I've been collecting decorative boxes (They're both pretty and they organize messier collections) for years, and I love displaying them.

I've seen cottage style photo spreads highlighting just about every collectible you can think of -- except one. The one thing I've never seen photos of collections of in cottage style, or any contemporary style, are books. You have to go back to the old Arts & Crafts layout to see pictures of libraries, yet private book collections are more popular now than ever before in history. I wonder what's behind that disconnection? Whatever the reason for other people's hangups, I realized by age 7 my primary interior design challenge would always be having enough bookshelves.

(Pet peeve time -- if you're going to put up a picture of a room you call a "library" or even a "study" there damn well better be some bookshelves in it. If it doesn't have any bookshelves it's not a "library". 'Nuff said.)

Even with Ashwell I'm hearing something regurgitated from somewhere older, and I suspect, less enamored with vast expanses of Modernist white punctuated by puffs of pink. A bit of digging turns up the Bohemian style, of which Ashwell is an anemic, watered-down descendent.

Apparently the contemporary Bohemian style is a particular outgrowth of the Arts & Crafts movement that started in the 1920s and accreted around the painter Augustus John and his friends and lovers. Hmmm, I wonder how many of the fans of "shabby chic" realize they're following in the footsteps of polyamorous proto-hippies?

Further research shows that boho fashion has apparently been in and out of favor in Britain for several years now, although it gained little traction in the US. Pity that, it's my favorite form of dress. Then again, I've been too busy to dress up any in the past few years.

One of the Immutable Laws of Fashion (don't laugh, a handful really do exist) is that anything that's been fashionable in clothing for over five years becomes a form of interior decor. After a decade of on-again, off-again Bohemian fashions there had to be Bohemian decor, so I googled up some pics.

Ooh, I see color. Lots of color. Sometimes, quite frankly, too much color, but at least there's plenty of jewel toned-accents.

There's also plenty of bookshelves. I approve.

My husband looked at the Google pics over my shoulder and said, "Those look so comforting. Even if I don't like a particular room, it's comforting to see people confident enough to express their individuality like that."

This is starting to look like a win. Of course the fact that I could probably achieve "the look" by simply tossing my scarf collection around the living room is a plus.

The trick is to use strong color while avoiding looking like a rainbow clown wig. Then again, at the craft fair earlier this month I passed up tons of multi-colored pottery and bought an arched tree branch that had been formed into a candle holder. It is easier for an item to be "just right" when it is simple instead of fussy.

I could go with a Colonial Bungalow style with touches of Bohemian. And since one of the other Immutable Laws of Fashion is that when grown-ups become successful enough to dress as they please they invariably head for whatever was in fashion when they were young, as soon as the children of the 90s get some money they'll make sure Bohemian fashion (and by extension Bohemian decor) stays around for many years to come.

This looks like the start of a beautiful relationship.

Contraception: The Breath of Modern Life

Much fuss has been made lately of the contraception fiasco, especially the statement by Republicans that contraception is not a big issue for women. But if that were true, why doesn't the issue go away? Why does it continue to dominate women's thinking and actions in a way that no other political issue has come close?

For women, contraception is like oxygen. In our day to day lives we don't think about it much. How often do you think about the air you breath? How many millions of breaths do you take without thinking, expecting the oxygen to be there for you when you need it, one thoughtless inhalation after another? The oxygen is there doing it's job, allowing you to focus on your life.

Contraception is like oxygen for women. As long as it's there it allows us to focus on our lives. Whether that focus is currently on furthering our education, our careers, figuring out what we want to do about an aspect of our lives, or on the child or children we already have, contraception gives us room to breath.

And just like the air we breath, contraception is not something women focus on all that often. We don't want to focus on it. We don't see why we should have to focus on it. It should be there in the background so we can make other things a priority.

But what happens when something threatens your air supply? Suddenly nothing is more important than drawing that next breath. Nothing focuses a person's attention so swiftly and thoroughly as not being able to breathe. Panic sets in, followed by an adrenaline surge. Nothing is more important than removing the obstacle which threatens your breathing. And nothing makes you angrier than the possibility that someone took away your ability to breathe deliberately.

That is the kind of reaction a threat to contraception sets off in modern women (and smarter men). And that is why women won't stop until the threat is ended, and until they can once again breathe freely and get on with the rest of their lives.

Aaargh!

Please tell me that somewhere they still make a refrigerator with a freezer that has shelves instead of pull-out drawers. I'm so tired of not being able to stack anything efficiently, everything spilling out on the floor anytime I go to get something, and all my freezer storage boxes breaking.

Reading Moral Politics : How Liberals and Conservatives Think. Most interesting. Will have to blog about sometime when the 3yo isn't pulling on me.