First Computer

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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).