Typical Week
October/November 2008

January 2008
March 2008

Sunday
We just got in from an 8-day trip Saturday morning.
We lounge for the most part, putting away a few things and changing out laundry, I bake a whole bunch of potatoes, all chopped up and topped with vegetable broth and the kids add diced wild onions straight from the lawn.

By afternoon, the kids have moved outdoors and are playing in the orchard. Jake comes in with a sliced-open finger which we discover was a result of trying to use his pocketknife-a Christmas gift from a relative. We decide not to take it away from him; he has already been ‘punished’ for his lack of proper caution. He put it up on his own, deciding for himself that he is not ready to have one.

They head back in one at a time to play on Club Penguin with their buddy, Brad. Since to get the cooler stuff on CP, you have to pay, they opted to share one character and pool their money. So, sometimes ‘she’ is pink and wearing a pink tutu and purple shoes with a flower on her head OR, ‘he’ is wearing something like a diving helmet, is yellow or black and has an electric guitar or surfboard under his flipper.

Matt and I curl up and watch the first 2 episodes of Jericho. We don’t have a TV, but we use Netflix to send us DVD’s, which we watch on one of our computers. We are hopelessly behind on everything and stay blissfully unaware by not going to fan or show sites or reading entertainment news. The kids get DVDs as well. We have a 5-at-a-time plan and usually go through all 5 DVDs in an average week.

The kids in the last few months have been watching Teen Titans, Popular Mechanics for Kids, The Tick vs Season 1 and 2, All Creatures Great and Small as well as Smallville, Mythbusters and Robin Hood with Matt and me and all of the Magic Schoolbus shows-again. In the queue they have more Teen Titans, Batman, a few NOVA shows and a series about insects and Planet Earth waiting to arrive. We usually catch the more worthwhile kids movies in the theatre, after I read a few reviews. Which means we don’t go see many. Hahaha! I don’t censor or worry about bad influences from what kid movies they see, but I also don’t want to waste 90 minutes and $20-30 to get brain rot, either. I like what they see to stimulate some part of their brains, give them something to think about or fodder for a later plot line.

On our recent vacation, I let the kids spend one rainy morning in the room watching as much TV as they wanted. After 2 hours and what they claimed were 900 commercials later, the TV was off and they had set up a snack stand using the table in the room and our snack stash. They were willing, however, to deal with the commercials to watch the back-to-back Goosebumps on each night. It was the week before Halloween.

Sunday evening, we had dinner of leftover potatoes and I made biscuits. Starch and er, starch. Perfect! I hopped the copious amounts of pepper and cheese they added to the taters counted toward a more rounded meal!
I am the mom who is convinced Dreamscicles are a citrus fruit.

Monday

Matt’s first day at his new job-hence the vacation last week. He got out the door before we even woke up, which is typical. He has an hour’s drive and has to be there at 7 a.m. The alarm goes off just after 4 in the morning. Sometimes I get up with him, but often when that happens, I experience burnout by around 9, just when the kids are revving to go.

This day, I wake up at 7:30 on the dot and go out to feed the dogs. I change out laundry and unload and reload the dishwasher, cleaning up the one pan and plate Matt dirtied making himself some eggs for breakfast and spray the stovetop and counters. I flip the chore chart to Monday and empty the trashcan, replacing the bag.

I head off to brush my teeth and wash my face, make my bed and clean the bathroom a little. Then I let the dogs in, hop online around 8:15 or so and check e-mail and the weather read Dear Abby and look at the Flickr ‘Interesting Photos of the Day’. After that, I turn off the computer unless I need to look up something specific and get on with my day. It’s usually 9 by this time, the kids have been up for about half an hour and have eaten breakfast and are starting to wander in and climb up on the bed to see what’s going on today.
This is our typical morning when we don't have plans.

The kids vote on if they want to stay here or go do something. Today, only Jake wants to get out of the house for a few minutes, so I take him with me to pick up dog food and laundry detergent. We are back in 20 minutes, thanks to the new Dollar General less than a mile from here. When it’s warm-but-not-hot, sometimes we all bike it, hauling our purchases back in the baby trailer no one needs anymore. But the roads here are dangerous. 2-lane paved roads that wind between farms and along hilltops, dropping into valleys and skirting huge empty fields. It’s easy to go too fast in a car, and some people seem to just drive back and forth all day long, music blaring and bass booming, going as fast as possible over the hill on the road our long driveway runs off of. It’s not always so idyllic and quiet in the country.

By lunch, which is more taters-I make a mental note to not cook all 20 pounds at once next time-the kids have been working most of the morning on a new story. The boys sit on Chandler’s bed while she types as fast as she can on her laptop; they all come up with some of the silliest nonsense I have heard to date. Chan engages in a written dispute with one of her characters, renaming his ship ‘Skylance’ to ‘The Dung Beetle’ whenever he balks at something she has set forth for him to do.

Ben plays on his Gameboy, at some point he drifts off to be by himself and then hops on to play Roller Coaster Tycoon 2 in the sandbox mode, so he can design rides that get more scary and complex every day.

We have lunch around 12:30 and Jake reads off what chores everyone has. The laundry and dishes get swapped around again, clean clothes folded and put away, the dogs are let back in while I head out to feed them and Ben tops off their water bowls. The kids don’t feed the dogs, they are not consistent enough and would give them a pound of food each 3 times on one day and totally forget the next day. And the dogs would never say a word, they always look vaguely hopeful when there is food around, no matter how much they just ate-or did not eat. The cats feed themselves; I just have to dump a bag of food in the hopper once a week.

After clean up, Jake and Chan are right back at writing their story. I have read it off and on and fixed the 2 spelling errors. She had ‘torcher’ instead of ‘torture’ and left an ‘l’ out of called once. Not bad for 9 and never seeing the inside of a classroom. Or a textbook for that matter. She even uses italics for titles, which I never get around to doing myself.

Ben heads off to his computer again, having poked and poked at his chore of cleaning off the table. You’d think I meant for him to lick the surface clean as much of a fuss as he makes, not just wipe it down with some spray cleaner and a cloth. It’s one of those mysteries of childhood. I like things clean and shiny; they seem to only notice once the floor has ripped a sock off with a tacky juice spill or if the table actually tries to hold them captive with jelly from earlier that morning.

The dogs try a bit of drama. Kuma stretches out and makes horse-blowing noises while lying upside down. Jess stares at him as though he were insane. He lolls his head and whines a little. Jess stands up and walks over, very casually leans her head down and clamps down on his throat. He flips over and they are at it, Sora hopping around snapping at any dog leg she can see, managing once to grab her own. I herd them back outside and shut the door. Goodness!

The mail has run, an exciting event out here in the country. It proves to be the only car we see until Matt comes home. I have a system with the mail. I rip anything from any credit card companies in half and toss all catalogs after I go online and e-mail them to be removed from their mail list. Sale papers go in the recycle bag-we don’t actually have a bin. That leaves the occasional bill or magazine that I actually need or want to get, along with our Netflix goodies, of course!

This close to Christmas-meaning before Halloween- some days I have 5-6 catalogs. Some are good, like Magic Cabin and some I won’t ever even open, like Fingerhut. I do most of my shopping online, mainly because I have all 3 kids with me 97% of the time. And at least one with me 99.9% of the time. And they can’t keep their yaps shut and neither can I. Gift buying is a HUGE ordeal for me. I have already given the kids the one gift each I had gotten them for Christmas. Before Halloween.

Each year, I vow no gifts and we are just going to travel instead. Then, we go somewhere and I rush out in a strange town at 8:30 Christmas Eve and look for the perfect thing for each kid. It’s some bizarre guilt, though I don’t really FEEL guilty, these kids have a pretty good life as far as childhood goes. So, I started a new theory of getting them one gift each, something they would not get any other time of the year. Clothing and gear don’t count; it HAS to be a toy or something like that. They all 3 have a birthday within 6 weeks of Christmas, too. So if they don’t get what they want for one day-or more to the point, come up with something they want-then the next gifting occasion is just weeks away. Not being exposed to commercials has its disadvantages in that they don’t know what cool toys are out there and have never been gripped with the ‘I wants’. Until the Gameboy.

Jake bought his own-used, and then he gave one to Ben when his buddies moved up to a DS and no longer needed a second Gameboy and gave theirs to Jake. Then we bought a used one for Chan for a trip. The games are easy to find used and they have made long drives far easier on everyone and even help for things like sleeping in a new place. Just play a few rounds of a game and drift off. Waiting has never been so easy.

I had mixed feelings about them, but decided to embrace the good sides like the reading practice and the distraction they provide and sort of block the negative aspects, like the kids missing the views out the window on the 5th hour of a 12 hour car trip. So, I had to read and get carsick or fight with my brother to pass the time on vacations as a child and I had to read 11-month old Highlights with all the puzzles done in them while I waited for my mother to get her teeth cleaned. I guess the kids will just have to miss counting ceiling tiles and watching for an exit with a McDonald’s (so I could get ice cream while my father had coffee-I would not eat there now if I owned one) and instead will battle evil and solve puzzles and go on quests. It all carries over into their play, they often act out an exciting adventure they had in a game. I sure never played ‘The Timbertoes’ when I got home.

So the day went on and I had a bath and the kids went out to play with pointed sticks and run around in the yard. Matt came in early, about 2. We each poked around on our own computer and he told me about the cool geocache he found on his way home. The kids wandered in and I made dinner-real food with veggies and protien and no starch. Matt and I watched the rest of the first disc of Jericho and popped it back in the mail. We started CSI:NY after the kids went to bed at 8.

We were in bed at 9:15 ourselves; 4:15 comes mighty early.

TUESDAY

Oh, those cats! I swear, one wants in and the other wants out, they have a schedule so they can hiss and arch at each other and swap the yard for the food bowl throughout the day. This started before Matt even left today-about 4:45. I tossed one out and let the other in and crawled back in bed. Kuma barked once out in their fenced yard. My eye cracked open long enough for Matt to say he found a check stub from The Old Job (I wanted to compare insurance costs) and that he was leaving. I made some horrid ‘living dead’ type noise and he swerved mid-swoop from a quick peck on the lips to a polite peck on the forehead. Right at my hairline. I pass out again.

I don’t wake well or pretty. I don’t talk right away, I can’t eat for hours, I brush my teeth and tongue and swish mouthwash and still feel like there is a skunk butt in my mouth. I hate waking up, it’s like I would imagine coming back to life would be. It’s painful and I am disoriented and everything is a target-“Blah, why do you disturb my slumber!?”. I have never once been drunk because I can’t imagine adding a hangover to my morning.

I glare at the cats, I glare at my reflection, I groan at the dogs to stop making so much racket-they are back inside and are breathing quietly on their beds in my floor. Kuma and Jess thump their enormous otter-like tails against the foot of the bed and Sora gets up and tap dances with her tiny feet clattering away like conjoined twins doing Riverdance. They LOVE being talked to early in the morning, they love any attention. “Sit! Stay!” I command. If Jess walks toward me, she will be by the drum cage and her tail with hit the bass drum and it will be so...loud. They sit, Sora hopping up every half-second and sitting again, like her rear-end is on fire. Her front feet tap away, her ears so erect she looks like she’s had a facelift.

I stumble into the kitchen to get them a cookie for sitting and staying. Sora grabs hers and runs fast, Jess and Kuma have 3 each, chomping and drooling and dribbling bits onto the floor. Jess and Kuma weigh just under 80 pounds. Sora Blue weighs just under 30 pounds; she barely outweighs the cats and is not much taller. For her, a ‘large dog Milkbone' is half a meal. For Jess and Kuma, it’s barely a snack.

I trudge outside and fill their bowls. They all three have an odd way of eating. They lie down and eat from the bowl, keeping it between their front paws. Jess and Kuma can look around and munch, Sora has to nearly strangle herself to get her head over the edge each time. It’s very strange to watch. They each eat half their bowl and get up and go off. Kuma-who is still growing like mad-will sometimes come back and finish off all three bowls later.

Back inside, I blear around to discover I am on the back porch, home of the washer and dryer. I go visit them, glaring at the rising sun, who is busy streaming perfect yellow light into the eastern windows and who smiles warmly back, making me feel bad for being so cranky. I soften some. The vanilla and lavender scented dryer sheets perk me up a bit. The towels are still warm; Matt must have changed out laundry before he left. Awww. I soften a bit more.

I muck about in the bathroom-not REALLY because I am not a horse-but close enough. When I emerge through the curtains-we only have 3 doors in the whole house-I am feeling closer to human. My teeth are scrubbed, my face is shiny with astringent, the toilet and sink have been wiped down and I have a bundle of laundry in my arms. I head back to the porch again, the sun is a bit higher, I consider waking up early enough tomorrow to take some photos of it rising. I have forgotten the agony of waking up much like I forgot childbirth and had another baby.

I let the dogs back in, they are chilly to pet and Sora’s tiny feet dance on the wooden kitchen floor as she takes 400 steps to cross it compared to Jess and Kuma’s 3 steps each. She constantly looks like she is DYING to pee. Her blue eyes gaze up at me and then past me to settle on the doggie cookie jar. Jess and Kuma make their customary huffs as they hit the floor in my room, so I sneak her a cookie and she takes it to the back porch to eat it without being snuffled to death by Kuma.

Ben is awake by now. It’s around 8 in the morning. His hair waves at me while his face is stormy. He is in footed pj’s perched alone on the high chair I used as a child. So it’s a high metal thing with little padding and no sides. It occasionally falls into two pieces and has to be fixed by putting a metal pole into a metal hole and reattaching the footrest, which holds the front to the back. It’s probably the most dangerous thing we own, and of course, the kids love it.

Ben is the baby. He is nearly 8. He has brown hair and big blue eyes. He has 5-6 freckles on each cheek and dimples. His hair will never lay down in the back thanks to a double crown that swirl away from each other, making his hair grow in opposing circles that then meet in the middle of his small head, forming a rooster-like crest where they crash. My deepest wish for him is that his head gets much larger and the crowns spread out a bit. He currently is sporting a single front tooth, the rest having fled his head in a mass exodus that got him a quick $30 from the tooth exchange program, but left him gumming things like pickles.

He is my passionate child. He freaks out as a first reaction. Some typical responses: “AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA-the cat put her face in my pizza!”
“This is the WORST thing EVER.”
“I had to search all the way to the crack of the Abyss for this thing!”
”I will NEVER speak to you AGAIN.”
* High-pitched scream *
Translation:
I am happy.
I am angry.
I am winning.
I am losing.
I am being tickled.
I am being ripped in half by wild dingoes.
Someone is kidnapping me.
Someone is looking at me from 500 feet away.
Someone is breathing air I just exhaled and I was not really done with it yet.
I am tired.
I am hungry.
I am frustrated.
I am really high in this tree.
I have never been happier.
I have never been angrier.
Someone looked like they might one day think even briefly about coming with 5 feet of me while I am building with my blocks and they could might potentially knock them over.
My blocks fell over.
My blocks did not fall over and I have a tower that touches the ceiling.
I won a scenario on Roller Coaster Tycoon, even though I can’t read 10 words out of 20 that flash by.
I lost a scenario on Roller Coaster Tycoon because I did not know what the objective was.

And so on.
He tends to lean toward the dramatic.

“Morning, Pumpkin Boy, how are you feeling today?”
* mutter and some sort of growl * “Ugh! FINE, I’m FINE.”
“Well, you sure don’t sound fine.”
”Yes I DO!”
“Are you hungry?”
"I never want to see food as long as I live!”
"I have Booberry for Halloween.”
"Ooo, goodie!”
He caves into dimples, scampering off to sugar up. I encourage him to have some orange juice, hoping juice and the ‘berry’ part of the Booberry will make a more rounded meal.

Jake is up next. He thuds around like his 120-pound frame is made of solid lead and has 2 joints. He is growing in odd spurts; nothing looks like it’s in the right proportion. His feet and hands are huge, his legs still little-boy stocky and chubby. His face is bigger, his mouth and gut have combined forces to consume half the paycheck in groceries each week. His chest is filling out, his belly in the midst of another inchworm growth spurt. He will plump up and then shoot up, defying science-or perhaps proving it.

He will be 12 in 2 weeks. The doc says he will ‘start growing in earnest’ closer to 13. He wears men’s sizes, he is 5’3, and his feet are a size 10. I am dreading the earnest part; I already only buy him 2 pairs of pants and one set of shoes at a time. He grows so fast, it’s not worth the investment and he is stocky while Ben is very slim, so I can’t pass his stuff down any more. He may just have to walk around in a bath towel from 13-17. Thank goodness for thrift stores!

Jake is cheerful ALL of the time. He is kind, he is attentive, and he realizes what is going on around him. He likes to help; he is a big tattle-head and has a fierce need for everyone around him to follow the rules. He would probably opt to chop his own arm off before he hurt someone else, but he is not my dramatic child. He would not think of that alternative, instead he would say-and mean-“I would never hurt you.” He has little need for high tension and big productions. Things are the way they are.

When he plays pretend, he is the hero. He does battle and saves the day every time. Everything comes out they way it should, no one gets hurt, the bad guys are vanquished and the good guys win. His heart is huge and very soft. He has crawled into bed with us in the middle of the night, sobbing himself sick over a character in a story dying. He will reinvent the endings in his mind; find some detail even the author overlooked that HAD to ensure the character did not REALLY die. He comforts himself with these thoughts, unable to face a world without Dumbledore or Nathaniel or Commander Root.

Chandler is the last one to emerge from her room. Like the boys, she has no door, but she has a big canvas tent hanging over the frame that extends into her room. It is lined with pockets and they are stuffed with notebooks and pencils, books, stuffed toys, bits of lace and silky stuff. After you pass through the tent, there is her bed, reading platform and desk. She is usually at her desk or up on her platform, tacking away on her keyboard or reading voraciously.

She is the most like me in that she finds pleasure in solitude most days. But she loves her friends, too. The boys would rather have a half a dozen kids over every single day. She is steady, sometimes given to angry hysterics, but usually fairly calm. She takes great stock in what she reads, gleaning habits and opinions from American Girl and Little House on the Prairie. She has certain ‘ideas’ for how things should be and my decided lack of any sort of pioneering skills is a constant burden for her to bear. I bake cookies now and then and that seems to satisfy her to some extent for a little while. But if could just feed chickens or render lard…maybe shoot a bobcat from the bedroom window…or give birth in the back of a wagon...

They feed themselves breakfast, another small handicap of mine. I abhor food for hours after waking. If I could just nap regularly, I would be a size 2. Sleep, sleep, sleep your way to shapely hips and thighs! Jake could get his own breakfast bar from the pantry by the time he was 18 months old and by the time Chandler was weaned, he was able to peel boiled eggs for both of them and cut them up with a spoon or pour cereal and milk. Now, he can whip up pancakes and muffins, fry eggs and make omelets or cook oatmeal with the perfect amount of honey.

They come in here, where I am clacking away on an e-mail, setting up a picnic and hike tomorrow with a few friends. It only takes Jake a couple minutes before he asks about what I am planning for lunch-it's been 10 minutes since he last saw food, after all. They head off, Chan goes to type on the story and Jake and Ben play with Xevoz in the floor in the living room, rolling the die and adding and subtracting points for hits. They also have to follow directions to add and remove arms, legs and so on from their creations, depending on what is rolled. They have no clue it’s math and reading.

This summer, I burned all the decrepit living room furniture and built a big fort in the once living room and set the computer the boys both use up in there. There is a desk in one corner of the room-previously-known-as-the-living-room for nature finds to be displayed and identified and several bookshelves lining the walls and jutting out into the room. Snapshots cover most of the wall space and the tops and sides of the shelves. I take a LOT of pictures.

The boys move to checkers after a while. It ends with Ben in a screaming forfeit, the board probably got tipped, sliding his men slightly off-center on their squares. Ben goes to hurl himself on his bed while Jake clears the board and puts it away. I don’t hear from anyone for a while. I am reading between getting off my duff and ‘doing something’. I finish the laundry (for now) I clean the kitchen, I sweep the floors and gather up library books for tomorrow. I post the missing book list-Judy Moody and something called Jessie’s Secret something or other. Chandler looks for 20 seconds and gives up. She goes in fits and bursts like me if it’s something she’d rather not do. We find the Jessie book in the book bag.

I continue my search for the screws that hold the vacuum together. I can’t vacuum until I find them. I eye the gorilla glue. I head back and check my e-mail again. I type and hear the keys squeak, mainly the space and the ‘e’ keys. I wonder if I should start backing up my files. It's not like I can get a new keyboard for the laptop.

The kids file back in from various locales to play at Club Penguin again. Chan has the mail, a side effect from a peek in the van to see if Judy Moody ended up out there. National Geographic! And it has blown-up microscopic pictures. Ben and I look at every picture, I tell him the names of the stuff they found in the ocean. He is entranced, he LOVES tiny things. There is an octopus that is only .05 inches actual size. He swoons for joy.

Jake and Chan take the dogs out to run around. I go find food to make for lunch. I make black beans and corn mixed with Mexican rice and pepper jack cheese. These come in a jacket of soft tortilla and are quite good.

After lunch, the kids head out to do their various chores. The table is in bad shape again, Jake’s turn today. I think about taking over the table and having the boys clean the toilets and the shower tile instead-I think they would complain less. Chan tops off the water for the animals and Ben shuffles the yowling cats through their exchange program. He is supposed to sweep the porch, but the wind is crazy and there is no need.

I clean the kitchen and feed the dogs and think about dinner and think about the frozen ravioli I bought last weekend. Maybe I can add some Boca to the canned sauce and it will seem like I made a bigger effort. I really hate to cook.

I make everyone be vegetarians with me at home. They eat what they want when we go out. Jake will order a hamburger with steak in place of the buns and some chicken strips for a side. Chan can eat a piece of fried chicken leg to the core, leaving the bone so clean; it could go right into a skeletal model at the Smithsonian. Matt likes piles of meat under piles of peppers and some greens on the side. Ben tends to have grilled cheese or macaroni when it’s an option. Ben gets a car first.

The kids have drug out the microphone to act out their story so far. I am working on this. Matt will be home before long. We are all eating bananas. Ben said, “banene” instead of banana in the background of the story and thinks he is a laugh riot. He has no lines in this chapter, so he is supposed to be ‘background noise at the market’. So he is standing across the room yelling, “I want beef jerky!”

I often wonder what they think of the world at large.

The kids are SO busy, Jake and Chan are reading their color-coded scripts and pausing to tell Ben his lines. They have made a studio with the middle chair from the van, a moon chair and the highchair. The laptop is in the middle of their circle on a bin of toys. That’s what happens when you burn all your real furniture…

We will have dinner and watch more CSI while the kids take turns bathing and will head off to bed by 8:30 for them and 9 or so for us. We will pack our lunches for tomorrow.

**********

WEDNESDAY

Today we got up and out without much drama. On our end, that is. One of our friends that were planning to meet up with us e-mailed to say her elderly dog had collapsed. It colored our day, worrying about the poor pup! They showed up at the nature trail late, but with pup in tow, she had recovered and was out and about again.

We had a picnic and a walk, the moms chatted while the kids played, it was a perfect day to be out. We ended up at the library after we all parted ways, planning a dinner out for next week with the husbands and kiddos. I dropped off and picked up books, the kids getting their selections and me dragging Ben to near the books so I could show him covers and titles until he agreed to 3 nonfiction and 3 storybooks that appeared to be about houses.

His books were nearly all about building things with loads of pictures, Chan got her usual girl-heavy books and Jake scored some new Goosebumps manga. I got one book of story collections-nanowrimo starts tonight at midnight!

Nanowrimo is National Novel Writing Month, you sign up and write a 50k word novel in 30 days, submitting your word count each day or week. There are local write-ins and so on with goodies, last year we got tattoos and stickers and pins. I finished at exactly 50,000 words.

That makes today Halloween and the kids opted to stay home tonight. We had spaghetti-the good kind with protien and fiber-and picked up some candy at Dollar General. They dressed up and went to the bedroom doors and collected their goodies, then ate ice cream and we are all watching Batman. Bedtime will be after it goes off and tomorrow will be another day!

Thursday

Today the dogs woke me up. I did not sleep well at all during the night; feeling like something was crawling on my legs and biting me. Sure enough, this morning when I got up, my ankles and the tops of my feet are covered in welts. Ben arrived reporting the same, so I taped the vacuum cleaner back together with duct tape and started cleaning and spraying flea spray all over the place. I don’t know that it’s fleas, but back in June, it WAS and that’s enough for me to get busy.

All the beds are stripped, the pillows outside to air, the dog bedding being washed or aired and getting a good coat of flea spray. The spray that works is the IGR stuff, Insect Growth Regulator. It stops eggs from hatching and it has something in it that weakens the adult exoskeleton, making them melt in two after a couple days. It’s cheap, too. Only about $8 a can compared to who KNOWS what we paid for some of the ‘treatments’. We were out $350 by the end of the month and all it took was a single $8 can with IGR inside. And of course treating the dogs and the only thing that works is Frontline Advantage Plus, the $$ stuff. So, $45 for enough for all three dogs and the cats from the vet or $32 online for the SAME thing-that drives me nuts because they get you unprepared. The damn fleas just hop up one or two for a couple days and you think, “It’s no big deal!” and by the end of the week, you have to coat yourself in flea repellant just to get out of bed to go pee without being taken down and drained dry by the things.

After I calmed down, I looked at our legs again.  Not flea bites, maybe a last-effort poison oak rash from our hike the day before? A reaction to fabric softener on our socks?  It was gone by bedtime.

It’s the first day of Nano and I have written exactly nothing. I baked muffins, cleaned the whole house, I am in the middle of a pile of laundry that started out taller than me, thanks to stripping all the beds. We had pizza for lunch.

Matt’s last paycheck was supposed to come in the mail today, it did not. It will be 2 weeks from tomorrow before his NEXT check comes in and we have about $200 in the bank and about $550 in bills due no later than the 9th, which is in 8 days. And no groceries to speak of-we could get through the weekend easily, but by Tuesday or Wednesday of next week, we will be down to a few cans and tap water.

It scares me how vulnerable we are-if his check does not come in for some reason-which has happened with the company he worked for once before for a few days of vacation pay it took 3 paychecks to get back-we will have to use the credit card for groceries and gas and to cover the water bill and phone bill. That’s not using the credit card to cover an emergency car repair that means him getting to work or not, it’s using credit cards to pay for milk and bread and cheese so we can eat.

In January of 2007, I vowed to get us out of debt. Then BOTH cars died and had to be replaced within literally weeks of each other-it was not even a full month, Matt’s taking most of our savings to pay for in cash and mine getting financed with a loan I still am not ready to think too hard about the terms of. So, we got more in debt instead and depleted the savings account, which ‘things’ have come up and kept us from plumping back up again.

Which puts us here, at the start of the holiday season and nearly the end of the year--looking at using the credit card to buy toilet paper for the next 2 weeks. It’s not a good feeling. I am trying to budget better for next year so this does not happen again. This year is shot, I already know anything not going to living expenses will go to Christmas and birthdays, the next check I can work the budget from will be the 28th of December.

The kids are oblivious. They know enough of the money situation in the household to not complain if I say, “we can’t afford that” if they want to do something. They ask for very little, they like to have their own money, though. Chan will hold on to cash until it expires, Ben gets talked into going ‘in half’ with Jake pretty often and Jake never has any money.

This afternoon, the kids are playing online while I poke around and keep the laundry going. I am thinking about my nano story, but nothing is coming. Instead, I am cleaning and moving things around. And typing on this little project. At least I am writing, I feel better at the end of the day if I have a few lines down somewhere. I used to want to be a writer, but reality has shown me a love of language and reading does not qualify you for any ability to write. Oh well. I can tack away, but I am horrible with conversations, long-term planning in way of foreshadowing or even outlining a plot of any kind. Those seem to be sort of vital to writing.

Neopets have their attention. Chan is creating a new pet, Jake started an account yesterday. Ben is next. They will share one account, each having one pet in the 4 slots they are allowed. In an hour is their scheduled time to play Club Penguin with online friends.

Chandler, “That’s not red-that’s magenta.”

Fresh from the tub, the kids have met their friends at CP, I am going to stare at a blank page and flashing cursor and see if nano fairies can come to my aid. With, preferably, a best seller. I think a flat million would round us right out-pay off the van and what's left on the credit card and invest the rest at 10% for an annual income of say 60k after taxes. That's a nice vacation somewhere every year. Six months of every year.

The kids have pulled out Wizardology and Dragonology, going thorough each section as if they may have missed something the first 20 times. Chan covers CP while Jake and Ben carefully unfold tiny booklets and play with the little charms and cards in the Wizard book. They pull out the Dragonology book and quiz each other on the differences between male and female dragons. When asked, I guess. “The boys have bigger horns?”

They come upon a packet of dragon dust on one of the pages. “It’s glitter!” yells Ben. They are not taken in with the magic of the book, but Jake gets infuriated about people killing what they don’t understand. He rails a while and stomps off, disgusted there might be some small truth to dragons existing hundreds of years ago and being hunted to extinction or into permanent exile by stupid humans. “Humans ruin everything!”

Brad pops up on CP. He has Elvis hair today, which sends the kids into a fit of laughter and has Jake forgetting the stupidity of humans and punctuating his sentences with ‘uh-huh’ instead. I have to wonder where they picked up that signature phrasing, or even know about Elvis in the first place. A few days ago, I was trying to explain the Terminator to the kids, the ‘Hasta la vista’ and ‘I’ll be back’ quotes still pop up in other stories now and then and in the middle of it, Jake pipes in with how I was wrong about certain details, and he was right, but they have never seen any of the Terminator movies.

Some children can pluck music from the air; some can comprehend mathematics or science with barely a glance. Some are gifted in sports or languages. My child can name 500 pokemon and all their phases, he can grasp the plot of any movie whether he has seen it or not, he can rattle off details about 50 computer and Gameboy games-characters, levels, cheats, spells, attacks, places. He knows nearly all the 3rd edition D&D monsters. He is gifted with pop culture. I am almost sad, it’s seems so mundane.

But I guess providing for his special genius is pretty easy.

Matt gets home, we eat dinner and watch the last disc of Grey’s Anatomy and the kids and I watch 2 episodes of Robin Hood after Matt falls asleep.

We stay up late-it’s 10 when I shuffle them off to sleep.

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Friday

We arranged to meet Joanne at the park at 12:30 for lunch and some playtime this afternoon. Karen had to go out of town for the weekend and Heather is taking her crew skating, so we are the only two nanos getting together today. Neither of us has written anything yet.

This morning, the kids are playing at Neopets. Ben got up earliest of the three, I woke up bright and early-a side effect of awaiting the unknown paycheck in the mail today. I let the dogs out and fed them, but he wanted them back inside for some reason. So he let them in, petted them all silly and put them back out, crawling into my bed to mutter about ‘freezing’ for a few minutes.

Jake got up and started right in on using the internet. I wish DSL was an option here, I would buy less food to cover the cost if it came down to having to budget it somewhere. We have been on the satellite broadband wait-list since we moved here nearly 4 years ago. I go every season and re-submit our information at each of the three companies that accommodate our area and each time I get assured we will be contacted ASAP.

In the meantime, all calls to our house go straight to the voice mail and I never answer the phone because we are never off line. Between us and the kids, someone needs the internet all the time. Games take up to 60 minutes to download. Webpages can take several minutes, especially if there are pictures. We don’t even bother with video-that takes hours. An audio file from This American Life takes just over 3 hours to download, compared to the 50 or so minutes it plays. Every picture I upload to my website or to friends takes 7-11 minutes each for the full-size and 90 seconds each for the resized. It takes the same amount of time to download, so 5 photos from a friend can tie up the connection for 10 minutes, often longer, and it will sometimes time-out and have to restart the downloads because it takes so long.

I hate dial-up, but I won’t go on and on about it-I could have NO way to connect, or have to use the local branch library that is only open 2 hours a day and their 3 computers are swamped most of that time. It’s better than nothing.

The kids have out one of Ben’s building books. They are trying to find a good floor plan for their Neopet house.

We ended up having lunch with Matt and met Joanne at the park later in the day, due to some car trouble they had. We made plans to get together next week and came home around dark.

Saturday

Anna’s birthday! It was at Southern Adventures in Huntsville, we had a blast. The kids got to ride all kinds of stuff and play in the arcade, eat pizza and cake and ice cream. Matt and I even splurged and bought some tickets and rode the indoor roller coaster and I got to ride the swings!

Afterward, we went to Hobby Lobby and spent a chunk on Christmas, birthday and geocache goodies, then had dinner at Moe’s, over to Party City for more goodies and a much smaller grand total. I just need a couple more things and the stockings will all be stuffed, the Christmas bags I am making for friends will be filled and all of their birthday parties will have favor bags. And Matt’s geocache ‘swag bag’ is crammed full of small tradable items. His big soft heart has him filling other people's ransacked caches that are low on swag with his stuff and he leaves items at every cache, so he is in constant need of little toys and useful do-dads like key chains and small flashlights. He will often move what he gets from a cache along to another one, but the kids and I have laid claim to some of the stuff we have found. My favorite-that has been taken over by Ben now-was a little drawstring bag of soft purple cloth, like a Crown Royal bag, but about 1/3 of the size.

To this end, we drug out the Oriental Trading catalog. Oh, how I love that place, if you want it-they have it.

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Sunday

It’s so cute when we all decide to spend the day at home together.
By 11, we were getting dressed to go lunch at the deli. We actually got there closer to 1:30, another benefit of homeschooling: you can take your time getting there. My poor kids would be totally lost if I came in to wake them at 5:30 so they would be out to catch the bus-that stops for the ratfink kids who live across the main road and down a bit-at 6:50.

Ah, the ratfinks. They are probably inbred, though I can’t be sure. This is a small town and for the 400 or so people living here, there are only 6 last names, much like Port Charles. We are imports, Matt’s mother's family has only been here since the 1930’s and our last name came from his dad and was foisted upon his mom back in 1972 and he was…a Yankee. There, the family secret is out. Though on our vacation, we read that Maryland thinks it’s in the South. Having been there, I can say, it ain’t.

My family was made from the red mud of Alabama back when the Cherokee gods molded humans from clay and breathed life into them. My grandmother could trace our lineage back 10 generations and they were ALL-my father included-born at home. She gave the doctor a pig for attending his delivery. My mother’s family past is a bit shadier, but just as bound to the earth as Daddy’s. She has half-siblings and that’s scandalous. She never acknowledges them, it’s very haughty and used to make me feel like they were national traitors or something just as bad. Now I know, they were just born, like anyone else. It’s not like you get to pick when and where and who you are as an infant-that’s what adulthood is for.

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We spent Sunday afternoon tooling around looking for geocaches. We ended up back over at The Bad Place and I got photos printed and we picked up groceries for the week. The kids call it Death Mart. But I needed the prints.

One of the places we went hunting was at a park that had very friendly ducks. Ben and I walked out on a retaining wall and tried hard to fall in the water, but no luck. We talked a while about the male:female duck ratio we have been seeing all over in the last 2 years. 3 males to one female is very typical. I make a mental note to ask Daphne at Wheeler if that is normal.

Another was at a cave that was a swinging hot spot in the 30’s and is just scary now. The kids cannot imagine what makes a person look at a rock and decide to spray paint it. It angers Jake the most, it being an ‘against the rules’ type thing to do.

The kids got little notebooks at Anna’s party and spent all of Sunday morning writing up complex rules to a game, Ben has his own going and Jake and Chan are working together. They have maps and charts, characters and items, tradesmen and so on. It amazes me how they can devote so much energy to creating these games that I often never see again. I chalk it up to the experience. They see what works and what does not work and the next time, they do a bit better, or use the whole thing for a story. Maybe by the time they are adults, they will have created the next Icewind Dale or Lord of the Rings.

We finished the evening by watching the first 2 episodes of the recently released Avatar Book 3, Fire Nation. We love Avatar, it is brilliantly done-as are many ‘cartoons’ nowadays. The characters are rounded and full of inner turmoil that makes them seem real, the fights amazingly choreographed, some of the scenes are SO funny or touching, we are all very satisfied with the whole show. Mo-mo provides comic relief in episodes where the people are involved with deeper issues and Oppa is much-coveted around here. We all want a 6-legged flying bison with big, flat teeth.

That is the end of a ‘typical week’ around here. As you can tell, we do almost no formal work, the kids come with questions when they arise and I help with spelling or math if they need it. They learn by doing and keep themselves far busier than I ever could. We read loads of library books, look up info as needed, try out the ‘hands-on’ as much as possible. The kids are always drawing, doing, writing, listening to books on cd, working together or apart, with the dogs outside in the orchard or pasture or sitting up on the fort with a pile of books or at the table with paper and art supplies. I almost never hear, “I’m bored.” And when I do it usually means, “I’m hungry and don’t feel like eating what’s in there.” Or “I have not seen my friends in a few days, can we have someone over or go somewhere to meet them?”

Homeschooling and in particular, unschooling, is the way for us. It fits the way children learn, allows the freedom to move from one thing to the next like hummingbirds, or sit and feast for days like lions. I stay out of their way and don’t direct more than I have to in order to keep the house from caving in on itself. I do expect chores to be done daily and I expect to be informed if they will be outside. And I ask that they change into daytime clothes before going outside, but that’s fairly optional depending on the weather.

I love our lifestyle. The kids have proven to me over and over that a set of guidelines created by the school systems to gauge academic development is just stupid. They excel where their interests lie and pick up what they HAVE to have from what they don’t do so well with. Jake reads well, is good with math and spells like he has never heard of a vowel. Chandler does nearly everything creative above and beyond expectations: reading, writing, spelling, art, dance, singing and so on. But math-she has to have a good solid reason for what it’s good for. Money, time, fractions-okay. But adding problems to get a number to color in a sheet using a code-forget it. Coloring is personal expression. Ben loves numbers, anything to do with building or creating, he loves games that involve solving things, he wants to go against a clock, he likes to have an idea of the finished product and strives for precision in what he does. But reading about Sheep in a Jeep-no thanks. A book of floor plans from Frank Lloyd Wright-hand it over!