Sunday

We have heard the calling of the spring peepers, all is well in the world.

Today I set Ben and Chan up with cardboard looms and we picked up grasses and twigs and such from the yard and they sat at the table weaving mats out of dry wheat and pampas grasses.  Their work is hanging on the wall now, I wish we did more of those spontaneous nature crafts.  Jake is beyond any interest in such things, though I imagine he would want to play with clay or make something that resulted in some sort of noise or missile projection caabilities when it was all over and done. 

I had wisdom teeth pulled late last week, I have been weaving myself-in and out of reality.  I stopped taking the pain meds today, determined to achieve some level of function before Matt heads off to work in the morning.  They make me very sleepy followed by very sick to my stomach and reading in bed gives me a case of carsick.  I imagine the pain leftover after 4 days of meds is worth dealing with as long as I can recall my full name.  I don't understand how people get addicted to pain meds, they really are horrible things all the way around.  If my oral surgeon had managed to just pull out the teeth instead of using my forehead as leverage and apparently punching my jaws and doing something to my ribs, I feel I would be just fine by now.  As it is, I feel like I did that time I was thrown from Perkins, a horse owned by my best friend's family-a horse of evil repute and vile nature that I was sure I could overcome and tame with sheer cheerfulness and willpower.  The only thing I overcame was my own rear-end as I sailed off the back of him and on to the front of me.

Chandler spent a few hours on the roof of the shed, soaking up some sun and reading a book and working a bit on her latest comic.  In this one, Jake is doing the art for an evil turnip and there seems to be a panda in there.  We watched The Amazing Screw-On Head Friday evening and it changed their lives.  For the weekend at least.  We also watched Black Books, series 3.  It may have been the pain killers, but I don't think I laughed quite so much at the first 2 seasons.  I love BBC.

Jake has been listening to a new series of books since last Monday.  These are about a teenage spy named Alex and he is very into the whole storyline.  I wonder where it will lead, will he play at being a spy or will he incorporate it into his turnip comic plot?   Maybe he will return the cds and never mention it again.  Until the CIA comes up and he will have all kinds of opinions about their work ethic. 

Ben is not 100% well, we all went through the flu this past month and he still seems to be dragging.  He is currently messing with Olympia, the guinea pig.  Ifrit, her cage mate, was put to sleep last week as she was unable to stand up or move her back legs.  I had hoped it was an ear thing, but the vet said it was neurological.  It was a horrid experience for all of us.  We all cried and the funeral was very difficult.  I was plagued with additional worry that something would dig her back up, Hasenpfeffer returned from her grave days after she died and appeared on the front steps.  She was hastily re interred, but Ifrit was loved while the bunny was just sort of 'there'.  It's never just one thing at a time.

It was bath day today, what an ordeal a little personal grooming can be!  Well, I had my bath with no fuss.  But it is never a good time for the boys.  They are busy and have things that need doing, something waiting for them and so on.  I just don't recall being so busy as a child.  I recall mostly waiting for the next part of whatever to get going.  Never what I was currently doing, but what was coming up.  I have yet to learn to live in just today.  The kids have that down, there is little coming up, not much to dwell on, though they love to retell stories and adventures.  They don't get angry or worried like I do, things that happen a mile away might as well be another planet and things that I lay awake and get heartburn over never cross their minds.

They don't worry that our lifestyle could go away one day, that they could end up in public school being one of 25 or 30 kids being told what to think and when to do things.  Now that the 'election year' is in full swing, I find myself seeking proof that the candidates support homeschooling, that their innane education reform plans don't mention us.  I have not sought past this solace, I don't know what anyone thinks of the war or social security or abortion rights.  In 4 years, Jake will be beyond their reach, old enough to quit school.  In 8, Ben will be out.  That's just 2 elections, so if they get re-elected, I am home free, right?  I will be able to sleep again?  My stomach is in knots and I can't blame the meds any more.

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Monday

I slept like poo last night.  The wind is up and the kids are like baby calves, they just want to buck and romp in the air and wind.

I have been out with them all morning, but housework called and I am really tired.  I will be glad to get back to normal after this.  I don't like feeling weak and puny and tired.  It's boring and the weather is just going to get better as we get closer to spring and summer.

I usually let them play in the yard and just keep an eye out the window and pop out to check in every little while, but there is someone shooting a gun in the valley between us and the main road.  I can't tell what direction they are firing, so I am out if the kids are and if I see anything that looks like anything near our property line get hit, I can ask the police to come out.  Until then, I get to wait to see if one of the kids gets shot-or the van, or the house or our pets...gotta LOVE the solitude of the country life.  I am 99% sure it's the redneck kids across the main road, it's THEIR family's valley and I don't doubt they are firing in 47 different directions, mostly toward the house.  I have had the police out on them for that before.  But they have to HIT us before I can call if I can't actually see them aiming at me.  Great policy, eh?

Chan tried sketching some wildflowers, but that wind, goodness!  We watched the Oakland Bridge Extreme Engineering and that went badly.  First, there was loads of cursing which got 'bleeped', I mean LOADS.  We have our fair share of bad words but one at a time and rarely AT anyone and certainly not over honest accidents.  I guess things are really different when the pressure is on to get something done by a certain time.  Jake is the only kid that slips in the occasional curse and he is not very good at it yet.  I have told them you can curse-anyone can curse-when they are willing to admit to themselves and others that their brain would not come up with an alternate word.  It's important for Chan and Ben to have the better vocabulary, Jake just likes the shock and the naughtyness of it all.

The next thing that happened was one worker returned to the crew after 9 months off because his fingers got ripped off.  They gathered them up and replaced what they could and used toes for the rest.  Chan freaked out and started saying 'toe hands...he's got toe hands!'.  I guess that was more info than she needed today.  Oops!

We did get some distracting and good news from Brad, his goat Lula Bell had a baby named Lula Tula Bell.  Their other female, Ginger, is due this week as well. 

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Tuesday

I am feeling better, I think I am on the mend after the horrors of prescription pain killers! 

Today I woke up freaky early and have not really gotten out of bed all day, it's just after lunch, about 1.

Ben came in and curled up for a while, he and I read for half an hour and he was off to play on the computer again.

I downloaded an interview with Valerie and Laurie this morning from The Story from NC public radio.  They were early unschoolers and I just finished The Unprocessed Child by Valerie Fitzenreiter that was about Laurie growing up.  We listened to that and now are about to listen to the follow-up which includes the mom, Valerie and a retired school teacher who said, "How charming, for people who don't need, or dismiss the aspect of, general education."  We are all interested to see what comes of that and will find out...in 3 hours.  Ah, dial-up! 

I crawl from my death bed to make cheese quesadillas. The package of little tortillas is a 10 pack. The kids have a hearty row about how many we each get, which they conclude is 2 and half each. No one quibbles about carrot sticks or apple slices. They eat those before they ever see a plate. They eat a tremendous amount of raw vegetation, all sorts of fruits and spinach leaves and broccoli. They will tussle (with me in the mix) over snow peas. Carrot sticks last a single opening, there are no reseal packages here. I take a breath and suggest a garden this spring while we eat. This does not get the resounding 'great idea!' I had in mind.

Ben immediately recounts in full detail The Year of the Tomato when I bought 3 measly tomato vines which proceeded to grow up and over the top of the house, providing us with 30-50 tomatoes a week per vine. I made spaghetti sauce by the bucket, which, other than slicing them for sandwiches, is all I know how to do with tomatoes. I thought 3 plants would make a couple dozen fruits over the course of the whole summer. Next came The Year of the Squashcumber, when we planted squash and cucumber too close and they made some gross combo veggie that no one ate. Last year was The Year of the Dead Everything when I decided saving a few bucks by growing our own stuff was not worth heat stroke and let the garden go.

It's all true, I have bombed heartily in the green thumb arena. I set my budget and buy my plants and kill them off methodically like a serial killer in training. No doubt the squashcumbers killed a couple unsuspecting bunnies in their day and thus, I have escalated. Soon, I will start prowling town looking for hobos and hookers, the fringe people no one will miss and I will plant them in my Garden of Death. Except, I have only had my van a year and still rather like it. And there are no hobos or hookers at the 4-way stop that is 'town' and the dogs would likely dig up the bodies and drag them around.

****

After lunch, I get back in bed.  Changing the laundry and dishes and eating have left me light-headed.  I looked at the stitches and think I snapped one somehow.  But what will it do?  Scar?  My gum?  The humanity!  I opt to ignore it via the help of a few good Aleve and slide back under the covers.  This is the plan anyway.  What I do is move the mail  and a cat off the foot of the bed, use my hand as a whisk and sweep off the dead grass that somehow got in the sheets and opt to make the bed up neatly and THEN get back in.  After I get a snack and a drink and some books.  And use the bathroom and 'ride' the roller coaster Ben has been working on all day and look out the window at the weather and let the dogs out to potty and stack up the library books and help Jake spell some words in a chat.  I never wonder why it takes the kids half an hour to actually get IN the bed at night.

Jake is back on Club Penguin with buddy Brad and they are pretending to be the ghost of Rock Hopper, the local hero.  Tiny Wonder, the baby cat climbs on me while I sit trying to read and after a casual inspection of my face, she quickly moves up to fix my hair.  My hair is an issue betwixt me and the kittens.  Unless I make an effort, it sticks up in the back-much like Ben's. I have not made an effort lately.

Chan shows up while Jake is listening to The Sisters Grimm, she has been writing something all day.  I rarely get to see what she has to say, I imagine at some point she will be interested in feedback or suggestions.  Sometimes I see the art that goes along with the tales.  Chan in a superhero costume.  Chan surrounded by loads of other girls, who are all named things like 'Sara' and 'Amy'.  I read her some of an artice I am writing.  I have to admit, I hoped she would run off to read a selection of her work to me, but she laughs at a reference I made and leaves, humming and walking on her toes, her long hair swooshing around her shoulders like a cape.

Matt is off in an hour.  We will have dinner and hopefully have a quiet evening followed by going to bed early.  Gosh, being a grown-up is so lame.

Wednesday

No better sleep last night, but did catch a nap after Matt left and before the kids got up.  I have been really on-edge all week, I feel stressed beyond all reason, I have a pretty simple life.  I am pretty sure I have dry socket from my teeth-pulling, on the right side.  The mayo clinic site says it will get better within 10 days, so I am not going back to have it poked at by the doctor, he's done enough.  They also backed up my theory that antibiotics for a tooth extraction is pure overkill.  I never take them anyway, but it's nice to see it's not because I am crazy.

The weather turned out nicer than I had hoped and I got the kids outside for several hours.  I walked around and refilled the feeders and took pictures and sketched flowers.  The baby cats scampered and played, it was very sweet to watch them.  By 3 or so, the kittens were bored and wanted to come back in.  By that point, I was sitting on the porch with nothing to do other than hatching a new conspiracy theory about the rednecks across the road anyway, so we all came in. 

Chan and I headed to the library for about 20 minutes.  The local women who work there, one is a librarian and one a volunteer, are SO loud.  Chandler and I would like totally silent libraries with super thick carpets and loads of chairs with lamps.  Our library is shaped like a barn and has 3 computers and a children's section smaller than my living room.  It's so unfair, I miss Ben West in Nashville.

Last night before bed, the kids got out the Playmobil set Matt had as a child.  It has a set of Indians with teepees and canoes and campfires and a set of calvary with horses and guns and a fort.  They played for hours, we have gotten rid of bedtime, now that they are older and can keep the noise levels down.  Matt was freaked that the Indians were the bad guys and the 'cowboys' were the good guys.  He is not sure how they came across that sterotype.  After a while, the Indians were good and the cowboys were bad, then the guys in blue fought the guys in black.  I don't think it was a sterotype and if I want to be really anal, I would count it as math and science as they classified and categorized items. 

This afternoon they cut down saplings-privet hedge-and made staffs.  We have enough privet to supply the whole town with staffs.  That stuff is amazing, it needs like 2 drops of water a season and a quarter inch of space to grow and it's 30 feet tall.  I worry about parking over a sprig in case I don't move the van for a few days and it grows through the tires or up into the engine.  Southern bamboo, it's lethal. 

Thursday

The weather was surprisingly nice today.  We spent a good deal of the day outdoors doing minimal yard work.  I restacked the rock walls around the flower beds with Ben and we all dug up thistle and tossed it into the woods.  I love thistle as a flower, but the little baby clumps it leaves behind all winter are like stepping on a clump of stingers if you happen upon one barefoot.  And we are barefoot all the time, even today.  Matt's dad told me not to let the kids go barefoot in the dew, they would get worms.  I did not have the heart to tell him that has happened hundreds of times already.  No worms yet.

I am scandalized, as fire ants bit my feet all up while I was picking flowers off the maple tree to press.  It's still winter!  I won't be able to wear lace-up shoes for a few days. 

On in the afternoon, the kids climbed on the roof of the house and clean the gutter and swept the pine needles off the valley between where our bedroom was added on and the rest of the house.  Ben and Chandler climbed up and looked in the chimney, trying to decide how it is made.  They have been in the wood stove at the bottom before and have an idea now of how it works.  They head off with a sketch book and draw out some chimneys.  Ben stopped calling them 'chivneys'.  I did not even notice when the wording changed, just that it has.

I am still slightly off-kilter from the meds for my teeth, um...teeth-related holes, and thus prone to pondering things like that.  I can't remember the last time Jake slept in our bed before he moved to the toddler cot a foot away.  He just got in it one night and every night after.  Same for Chandler, she moved out of our bed sooner than Jake, he was still sleeping with us long after she was born.  Ben still has not abanonded the family bed entirely.  Once or twice a month, he just gets in our bed and goes right to sleep.  Every time, I wonder if it's the last time.  I always hope it isn't.

Friday

Today was delightfully about nothing.  We all read and played Yahtzee until the mail ran, bringing in the next Supernatural, which we watched back-to back the first 2 episodes and then went to the grocery store to beat off fellow housewives for bread and eggs-weatherman sez snow's comin!  2 bags of food and $82 later, I head back home the back way and start counting dogs.  There are 23 dogs in the 1.5 miles between our house and the store.  I thought about putting pins in the google earth map of our area and driving around for the next few weeks counting all the dogs. 

Then I realized it was a bit strange and did not really have a point.  Not like counting cars to see what the pollution output for our 'block' is.  My father is a counter, he counts and collects things.  He also likes to watch people and I get that from him, apparently along with this emerging need to catalog pets and of course I inheirited his tender tummy.  I particularly like my Daddy of everyone I am related to, he is my favorite and well, okay, the only one I have any contact with.  Black sheep says Baa!

But even so, I like to think anyone who knows my father is better for it.  He has always had this whole life that never included me, work and pastor stuff and I loved that he was a whole person.  My mother was VERY much The Mother and made sure everyone knew every sacrifice she had to make, she was never a whole person, she was too scattered to her various roles and kept looking back to see what she had missed.  I remember desperately wanting to have been adopted as early as four or five, except it would have made me not Daddy's and I could not bear that.

We finish the last 2 episodes on the disc, 'wasting' a total of 3.5 hours of the day watching cheap thrill entertainment.  Everyone needs a veg day. 

The kids spend the evening resurrecting Dead Chicken News, a newspaper they have designed and write articles for.  I pay to have an ad run for a single sock mixer this weekend on the back porch.  The first article includes a recipe for chocolate chipmunk cookies.  It goes downhill from there.  Ah, progress.  They were fixated on potty humor, gore is a step up.  They had a regular thing going for several months, then Matt upgraded their systems and to do that, had to upgrade their operating system and so they lost loads of writing on a couple programs.  To avoid that fate again, they created their own template in Word and are using that.  Chan set up the reading software to read the articles to them when they are done.  I was stoked about that because Jake is a horrid speller, but the reading software can't properly read a misspelled word, so he has to make a bigger effort all without me having to stick my dog in the fight. 

To that end, they got out the various visual dictionaries I keep buying.  I LOVE those things, they are so useful, not only to help a kid spell a word by looking up the picture of what they want to spell, but also just to thumb through.  I had no idea all the parts of a church had their own names until I looked over the exploded-view drawing of a chapel.  We called it the front door and the meeting hall.  Who knew?  The people at the visual dictionary place! 

Saturday
Woke up to snow!  Woot!

We were all up and outside playing by 8, the kids were able to sled a while before it melted off.  I even had a couple runs down the back hill in the pasture.  That wind was COLD.  Gah. 
Matt made a big lunch, which was consumed in record time and I promptly fell asleep right after for a nice nap.  The kids worked a while on their Dead Chicken News stories.

On in the afternoon, Matt took Jake and the dogs off geocaching and Chan (and later Ben) and I settled in to watch the anniversary edition dvd of Annie that I got at the library.  Leapin' Lizards!  About half way through, in the middle of 'Little Girls', Matt's mom, aunt and sister dropped by.  They dropped off stuff from Mardi Gras and we learned that the moon pies are frozen before they get chucked off the parade floats.  I speculated about ER stories after the parade.  Matt's mom told of the time she was knocked for a loop by a frozen Snickers bar.  This has been re-enacted since and no doubt will be a DCN article at some point. "Local Homeschooler's Granna Knocked Senseless by Snickers".

Matt returned while they were here and after they left, we all finished watching Annie.  Matt's sister had brought along several books from her teen years, all blood and gore or joke books.  The kids have been rooting through them this evening.

And so concludes our week.