Missed Strewsday Tuesday!

Yesterday, for some unexplainable reason, I could not access the internet on my laptop.  I could on my ipad but that is so awkward for posting anything more than a few sentences.  But it turned out okay because yesterday was busy just living and I really didn't have time to sit and post much.

The only Strewing that seems to be going on right now is that I brought back some library books the other day.  Becky picked Skating Shoes by Noel Streatfeild to read.  She's very proud of herself because this is her very first chapter book that hasn't been read to her first (like Harry Potter, they were read to her over the years and now she's reread them all a couple times over!) or a book she'd listened to on audio first.  Yesterday morning she asked if she could go back up to bed after breakfast and just read.  So she did.  I love Noel Streatfeild!

Sean is still into physics and he LOVES his math tutor!  Poor Josh is snowed under by school work.  Poor guy.  And it's all because he's been neglecting things and playing on the computer.  Ongoing issue here!  I'm letting him skip Latin class today so he can catch up in other subjects.  Which reminds me, I'm out of time!  Gotta go finish up my homework and get my aunt up!

Any strewing going on in your neck of the woods?

My to do list

Wake
Feed pets
make coffee
check email
move laundry
unload dishwasher
(get paper)
(give Jackie medicine)
(get Jackie's coffee and breakfast)
shower
make breakfast for kids
get kids up
set up for morning studies
(help Jackie get dressed)
read aloud over breakfast (AL Visual aids, poetry, religion, scripture, science)
work on copy work, math, Latin
Latin homework  (M & W)
Latin class (M & W 10:00 to 12:00)
(Sean has math tutor 10:00 a.m. T)
(take Josh to Chem @ either 8:30 (lab day) or 10:00 F)
Lunch
(pick up Josh from Chem and take to Shakespeare F)
(take Josh to Chem @ 12:15 p.m. T)
(take Becky to art class @ 1:10 p.m. T)
(Sean has art lesson @ 1:00 W)
Afternoon studies (literature, composition, grammar, history, AL activity sheets)
reading/rest hour
outdoor/exercise hour
(Becky to AHG 2x a month at 3:15 to 5:15 M)
Make dinner/tidy house/move laundry/put away laundry
set table
eat dinner
clean up
(take Josh to CLC W)
homework, free time
8:30 prayers
read alouds
(p/u Josh from CLC @ 9:00 p.m.)

Thursday:
All kids come to Adler for a.m.. Becky helps girls class, Josh and Sean work on studies.
In p.m. work on logic with Sean.

Sentence Diagramming

A couple of streams of thought have come to sort of a confluence recently.  As Josh and I get deeper into learning Latin, I'm finding my shaky grammar skills a hindrance to understanding.  We've been working with participles and how they are declined.  When we first started I could barely remember what a participle was.  Also, the teacher keeps foreshadowing the time when we'll be  learning the subjunctive voice.  I had to go look that one up, because I couldn't remember it at all!  So this had me thinking that it would be good to pull out my copy of Rex Barks and brush up a bit on grammar.  I've found that sentence diagramming is most helpful to me when it comes to trying to make grammar stick.  I think I must be a visual person, even though I've never really thought of myself as such.  But just this past week I was helping Sean with his math and he was learning about factoring.  I remembered and immediately could do the 'factoring tree' method of finding a number's factors.  I could not for the life of me do the other division oriented method.  When we told this to the tutor, she said, well the factoring tree is very visual.  Aha!  So diagramming sentences and factoring trees really work for me.

Sean went to shadow a student at a small, private, Christian classical school the other week.  His father and I think he might need to go to school (at least for a year) to perhaps get him out of his slump and into a well ordered day that requires him to get up and work hard.  Anyway, I've been in a bit of contact with his potential teachers so they can give me advice on how to prepare him for next year.  I have to call the English teacher on Monday.  Sean mentioned something about grammar class and I thought, wow, maybe we should work a bit on grammar as a separate subject.  We've been learning it through Latin, but in the past about every two or three years, I've done a focus on sentence diagramming for a month or two.  Sean needs a round of that I think.  So once again I wondered where my Rex Barks book is.

Then this morning I stumbled across this very helpful site.  Looks wonderful!  I still want my Rex Barks book, but I think this site will be of great help.

Excellent Women - Book 48

Rereading Excellent Women by Barbara Pym was a trip down memory lane for me.  I first read it when I was 22 years old or so and it was my mother who first introduced me to this author.

I had just graduated from college and had no idea what I was going to do with my life.  I had no plans, so I moved home.  I was happy to do this for I was sick and tired of dorm life and I missed my mom.  At that time there were a lot unhappy circumstances ongoing in our loving but dysfunctional family and my mom was often struggling with depression about them, or so it seemed to me.  I liked to be with her to keep her company and help her when I could. She couldn't drive because she was partially blind in one eye and had no peripheral vision.   I liked to go shopping with her and run errands for her and sometimes we'd go out to lunch.  Somehow through the turbulent days of my high school and college, we had grown to be very good friends.

I was lucky in that when I got home there was a job waiting for me.  I had worked for the Military Traffic Management Command for two summers and two Christmases, during college.  I had a contract with them as a part-time, temporary employee and my contract wasn't up, so I was able to go back to the same folks I knew and had become friendly with and work there for a few months until my contract was up.  And, luckily, a friend of mine was planning to go to graduate school.  She had a job as a secretary of a women's art club that was headquartered in an historic house (one of Abraham Lincoln's sons lived there for while).  She asked me if I would job share with her.  So I started working there on Tuesdays and Thursday and at the MTMC on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays.

I liked working.  I liked having to dress in clothes suitable for an office.  I would get up every morning and get myself to the bus stop.  I had to be careful not to get on the wrong bus.  The days I was working downtown, I got on one bus which took me to the metro, I rode the metro into town, got out and walked about 4 or 5 blocks.  On the alternate days I took a different bus, but from the same bus stop.  And this bus very conveniently took me almost directly to MTMC after about a half hour ride.  These buses came within minutes of each other and I remember the bus drivers got to know which day of the week I would get on their bus.  It was funny.

It was a very social time for me.  I had old high school friends I sometimes hung out with.  I had friends from work I often went to happy hour with, and there were office functions and parties to attend.  I had a good friend from college who had moved to DC.  She had a really cool, quirky apartment in the basement of an old townhouse in Dupont Circle.  We'd go out, to a movie, or to dinner and I'd wind up spending the night at her place because it just took too long to get home via the metro.  I also had a long distance boyfriend.  He lived just outside of Philadelphia.  We'd gone out for a year our junior year in college.  Then he'd gone to another college his senior year (his father tried to break us up!  Oh the drama!) but we'd continued to go out.  And we were still going strong when I moved back home.  So about once a month I'd either take the train up to Philly or he'd take it down to DC and we'd spend a weekend together.  We wrote lovely long letters to each other and often talk on the phone (though that was expensive).  So my life was very full.  I kept contemplating moving to the Philly area but I was hesitant.  I was afraid of his father and while I convinced myself I was terribly in love, there were certain aspects of the relationship that made me uneasy, so I didn't move.  And then he decided to go to law school up there.  We lasted almost 5 years together with 4 of the years being this long distance thing, but the last year was very rocky and finally we kind of mutually broke up.  But at the time I discovered Barbara Pym that hadn't happened yet and I was still happy.

I decided that I needed to have more ambition than just being a clerical worker in some office somewhere.  So I lit on the idea of getting a Legal Assistant certification from Georgetown University's Continuing Ed.  That way if people asked me what I did, I would have a definite answer.  I applied and attended classes there and after a year got my certificate.  Then I got hired as a receptionist for a small law firm in DC.  After awhile I moved up from receptionist to legal assistant.  I loved working there.  I got along with everybody.  I loved working downtown.  I got to do things up on the Hill and even go to receptions there.  I loved the pulse of the city.  I went out dancing a lot, and to concerts and the theater.  My aunt got season tickets to a certain playhouse and we'd go regularly to see great plays.  Sometimes she'd take me out to lunch (she's my aunt who is currently living with me).  I also liked to take classes.  I was enamored with Georgetown and their continuing ed program was lots of fun.  I took a writing course (where I discovered that as much as I loved to read I wasn't really cut out to be a novelist) and a wonderful Italian class and a music appreciation class there.  I thought the Georgetown Continuing Ed program was paradise.  I used to look over all its catalogue of offerings and try to figure out how much I could afford.  I was planning to work my way through pretty much all of them.

But even in this time of busyness, I enjoyed quiet evenings at home with my mom.   I just enjoyed being with her.  I miss her so much.  She was one person I just enjoyed being with.  She was a great conversationalist.  She liked to watch Jeopardy and Masterpiece Theater and I watched them regularly with her.  She also read a lot and always had good recommendations.  I read lots of books at her suggestion; Muriel Spark, Anthony Trollope, R. F. Delderfield (my mother was an Anglophile!).  One of these recommended authors was Barbara Pym.  So I went through a Pym phase where I read all her books.  I had a lot of time to read riding the buses and subways to and from work and then all those train rides up to Philadelphia and back.  I identified with the women in the books.  Although at the time I thought I would marry my boyfriend, I was living a single life and sometimes I wondered what would happen if I didn't marry.  I thought I would probably be very comfortable with it, as long as I kept busy.  However, I longed to have my own children one day, a longing Barbara Pym characters never seem to succumb to.

Anyway, about this book, Excellent Women: It is set in London in the 1950's.  The British are still getting over World War II, things are still tight and buildings are still bombed out.  Everything is told from the point of view of Mildred Lathbury, who is the 30 something spinster daughter of a clergyman.  She lives alone in a small flat.  She works mornings at the Care of Aged Gentlewomen and in the afternoons she helps out at her Anglo-Catholic parish.  She is good friends with the pastor and his sister.  Her life is thrown into a tumult of sorts when she gets new downstairs neighbors, a married couple who are much more worldly and sophisticated than she is used to.  The book is very funny in a quietly amusing sort of way and the little awkward social situations and the comedy of manners revealed there, really do remind you of Jane Austen a bit, (just as the blurb on the cover says).  I don't know how Pym did it, but her books about these quiet, ordinary spinsters are hard to put down.  She really creates an atmosphere that is absorbing and somehow charming, even though one senses the drabness of postwar England.

So I highly recommend this book and all of Pym's works.

For more book reviews go to 52 Books.

Happy Thanksgiving!

I have barely thought about cooking this Thanksgiving.  I mean I bought the turkeys a couple weeks ago.  And I remembered to get them out of the freezer and start defrosting them on Monday.  And I remembered to get the ingredients necessary, a few every time I went shopping, which seemed to be every other day, for some reason or another.  So it wasn't like I did a great big Thanksgiving shopping.  And last night about 8:00 or so I checked to see what time I should put the turkey in if I wanted to go to 10:00 Mass.  And I chopped up the celery.  But really I just don't have that big overwhelming planning feeling I usually get.

The menu is:

2 Turkeys ( I do one roasted with stuffing.  I LOVE stuffing but only eat it once a year!  Rick has been doing a rotisserie turkey out on the gas grill every year lately.  Delicious.  I like it better than the oven roasted but I need the stuffing, so we do two and have lots of turkey meat left over.)
Stuffing - I just make a really simple savory stuffing with bread crumbs, celery (and lots of celery seed; to me stuffing is largely about celery), butter, onions, chicken broth and seasonings.  I love in turkey stuffing!
Mashed potatoes - dread the peeling, but mashed potatoes makes everybody happy.
Cranberry sauce - I just simmer cranberries and sugar and water until it is just right.  Yum.

That's what I make.

My sister in law always brings:

green beans and fruit salad
rolls
sweet potato casserole (with marshmallows - we both agree these are absolutely essential)

My father in law, his lady friend and my widower brother in law bring:

pies - usually pumpkin and apple; occasionally a pecan pie is included.

My father in law's lady friend is bringing kugel as well.  I am imagining a sweet kugel of some sort.  This is something new.  We've never done kugel for Thanksgiving before.

We managed to clean the enormous piles of clutter out of our dining room, which is an official dumping ground when it isn't being used for festive occasions.  We are trying to figure out how to seat 15 including a wheelchair, which is something new too.  I mean the wheelchair, we've had 15 guests before.

So right now I need to get my aunt up, get her her medicine, make her breakfast, chop onions, saute onions and celery in lots of butter, stir into bread crumbs, add chicken broth to get the right moisture level, add seasonings, rinse and clean turkey, sprinkle with seasoning, slather with butter and olive oil, stuff with stuffing, get it into the oven, help my aunt get dressed, take a quick shower and dress myself, go to mass (somewhere in there I'll have eaten breakfast too).

When I'm home again, I'll rally troops to tidy up the house a bit more (the dining room looks great but every other room could use some help).

Make cranberry sauce

Peel and boil potatoes.

Make sure Rick's on target with his turkey.

Folks are expected arrive sometime after noon but before 1:00 p.m.  Eating at 2:00 (for my father in law who doesn't like to drive in the dark anymore.)

Most of all though I'll have a good time hanging out with my older kids.  It is wonderful to have them home for this holiday!

Happy Thanksgiving again!  (Wow, writing this out really helped me!)

Oh how I long for my camera!

Where oh where did my camera disappear to?  It's been missing for months.  And I truly think it just got buried somewhere around the house.  I could do so many great Wordless Wednesdays.  For instance, I could take a pretty picture of Becky's dolls which are now arranged in a circle in various doll chairs in the middle of our family room.  Yesterday, I tried to talk her into coming with us on errands but she would not come.  When we got home, we found the circle of dolls.  She spent the almost the entire day playing by herself very contentedly.  She read lots of comic books, made up her own arts and crafts projects, played with her dolls, listened to music and daydreamed, played at the American Girl website.  She watched a little TV but not even very much at all.  She was here with Aunt Jackie while we were out.  For both Sean and Becky the whole day was spent in waiting mode, waiting for their older siblings to come home from college for Thanksgiving break.   Rick picked Will up at the airport at 8:40 p.m.  Then Rick and I crashed around 11:00.  And I made Sean go to bed too because he's got an eye doctor appointment this a.m.  But I let Becky stay up and go with Will to pick up Hannah who wasn't due in until 12:15 a.m.  Hannah came in to give me a kiss and by that time Becky was overtired.  This was after 1:00 a.m. so she wound sleeping on the floor on her beanbag at the end of our bed.  For a little girl who seems so independent during the day and, in fact, insists on it, she certainly likes sleeping with her mama still!

Strewsday Tuesday - 11/22/11

I took a little break from this for the past two Tuesdays, didn't I.  Not that it was intentional; Strewsday Tuesday just sort of swam out of focus for a bit there!

Anyway, some fun strewing has been going on around here lately:

• Becky climbed a tree and gently brought down a bird's nest she says she's been eyeing for a while.  We don't know what kind of bird though, but that is the second bird's nest she's now collected.  So I guess nature strewed that one!
• I've been on a housekeeping kick which inspired me to go to the bookcase in the dining room and pull out this charmer.  Becky discovered the paper dolls in the back of the book and we've had several charming hours where I've read from the book while she's played with the dolls.  The one caveat to this book is the dated characterization of Lucinda the maid.  "Cinda" is right out of a minstrel show.  I don't get why America thought this stereotype was so amusing.  I think Margaret Mitchell must have used Cinda as her model for Prissy.  I keep waiting for Cinda to burst out with "I don't know nothin' about birthin' babies!"  The very interesting thing is that we noticed these books were published in 1912, so that's pretty much 100 years ago.  We've had fun noticing what they call different things, for instance there is a piece of furniture in the kitchen called the kitchen dresser.  Nobody has a kitchen dresser anymore.
• Becky found this old book that Hannah left behind and it inspired her to clean her room!  Yep!  All on her own one day she spent several hours working away on her room, incorporating many of the ideas in this book.
• Becky continues to play on the piano a lot; practicing Christmas songs and making up little melodies.
• Rick has been reading a biography of Einstein (he just finished one on Steve Jobs; he's on a biography kick) and he's been talking a lot about it with Sean.  Sean has been interested in physics for a couple months now, but he got really into trying to understand Einstein's Theory of Relativity and he gets it!  I don't get it.  My 12 yo has to explain things to me and then I only see it dimly, but he gets all excited about it.  He's been reading The Cartoon Guide to Physics, off and on as a result.  Rick, kind of joking around, said to Sean, "hey maybe you'll grow up to be a theoretical physicist one day."  Sean kind of beamed about that, but then thought about and decided no, he still wants to be some kind of artist instead.
• Our 4H club we were starting up has fallen apart due to circumstances beyond our control, so we've gone independent but at the last minute we were able to join in a project at our former 4H group.  It is a project based on projectiles.  The kids (mostly boys) made slingshots and met on Sunday afternoon to shoot them.  They also got to shoot arrows.  The next project is building their own catapults.
• Josh went on a weekend retreat (getting home just in time for 4H).  He made some resolutions to change certain poor habits, got home and immediately broke them; this is all due to his computer addiction.  I firmly believe he is addicted.  He will play on the computer and deprive himself of sleep, food, and neglect, to his own shame, his duties.  He gets disgusted with himself and wants to do better but then immediately loses control again.  I think that he would be much more social if he wasn't so trapped.  I think he lost his good friend due to the computer.  I am chagrinned at all the advice I took now on letting kids self-regulate.  I feel like we've reached the point where we are doing an intervention to try to help him get ahold of his problem.  The kid really is struggling to control himself.  Bah!  He has asked us to be more strict with him.  He was without computer for the weekend retreat but I believe he must have spent 10 hours yesterday on it. He was supposed to be doing his Precalc but he didn't even finish a lesson.  I would go down and check on him occasionally, asking him what he was doing.  He is very deceptive with me about it and then he's terribly ashamed that he's been deceptive. I'm not even mad at him because I can see he's not able to control himself.  So......as soon as Rick has time, he's absolutely got to put a timer on that machine.  In the meantime, Josh will do his precalc on my computer (the program is online so what happens is Josh gets on to watch the videos, gets tempted to look up other stuff on the computer and before you know it, hours have passed and he's not done what he set out to do.    All this is good though because he's learning about himself and we are coming up with a plan to deal with the problem.   But it's a tough nut to crack and I wish I had never let it fester so long. . . .

Make the Bread, Buy the Butter - Book 47

I'm so mad at myself for getting this book on my Kindle instead of getting the actual book.  I did this because I read a review of the book where the reviewer said they hesitated to call this a 'cookbook'; it was more like a reminiscence of Jennifer Reese's experiments in making foods at home that you usually would think of as foods you just purchase at the supermarket.  But this book is page after page of recipes, so if it isn't a cookbook, I don't know what is.  And now I've blown $10 on the Kindle and I can't easily flip to the recipes that I'd really like to try.

This book is a delightful read.  Jennifer Reese is very honest and funny.  And fearless.  I never, ever would have the guts to attempt some of these foods, homemade bacon, prosciutto, vanilla extract, hot dogs, napoleons, vermouth and many, many more.  Like I said, many of these recipes were amusing to read about but I know I'll never make them. But some of them I definitely want to try.  For instance, I've always feel guilty about throwing away stale bread.  I always think to myself that if I had my act together, I'd make bread crumbs or croutons.  Well, Reese includes very practical and simple steps for taking that stale bread and making those items.  She's also got a recipe for melba toast, which I think sounds great for a snack or lunch with some creamy cheese.  And she has a recipe for homemade Cheez-its that I want to make for my kids for Christmas.  They sound so yummy.  And homemade graham crackers sound great too.  And I really want to make butterscotch pudding!  She also has some very simple recipes for making yogurt and cheeses (well some cheeses are much more complicated than others).  So scattered throughout the book are many recipes that I'd love to give a go.  Alas, I'll have to hit that back and forth button on my Kindle a million times in order to find these things.  Who has that kind of patience.  I might have to shell out more money for the actual book.

The impetus for Reese's long journey into making things from scratch came from her losing her job and becoming suddenly very aware of the price of groceries.  She's been an avid cook since she was seven year old, so she decided to compare storebought foods to homemade, mostly focusing on the price.  She also explains how much 'hassle' each food is.  Her idea of hassle and mine though are widely different.  She loves to cook and while she grumbles about having to grate cheese or chop things finely, she thinks nothing of recipes that take days to complete.  I mean days.  When she's explaining how to make prosciutto she literally tells you all the steps and then says, hang in dry cool place for six months.  Some things she definitely thinks are worth getting from the grocery store.  She tried hard to make a good rice pudding that rivaled Kozy Shack's and she just couldn't.  Same with making maraschino cherries.  But most of the time she comes down on the side of making something at home or at least trying to make it at home just once, to see the difference.

In between the recipes, Reese recounts the things that were going on in her life, like her children's responses to all her experiments.  A line I laughed out loud about was when her son Owen remarked, when she set out to make some laboriously complicated meal, "It's like we need a ride, so you decide to build a car."  She also has lots of memories of her mother, who passed away in the midst of all these months (or years?) of  cooking.  That aspect was very touching.  Reese really is a wonderful writer.

By the way, Reese blogs at the Tipsy Baker.

Anyway, I give this book 2 thumbs up, but don't get it on your Kindle.

Housekeeping helps and inspirations

Here is a really helpful article on how to use your bread machine if you don't have the accompanying manual.  My bread machine is very old and has been sitting in our back closet for a few years.  I needed this!

I have been frequenting this blog lately.  I love all the different categories.  I'm planning on making everybody homemade Chapstick for their stockings this Christmas.  The recipe is listed under 'green & natural.'

Someone linked to this blog and I have been enjoying it immensely.  I don't live on a farm, but I love read about living on a farm, and I love seeing ways I can incorporate little bits and pieces of farm life into my uber-suburban one.

This blog is a great resource for Nourishing Traditions recipes, advice and inspiration.

And I often turn to this old standby for help with cooking.

About a week ago I decided that for the new liturgical year coming up next Sunday, Nov. 27th, I'd treat it like a regular new year and come up with a resolution.  My resolution morphed into more of a motto, "live intentionally."  Then I stumbled across this wonderful blog and saw that it has the same motto.  Thank you, Holy Spirit!

For going plastic free, this list is great.  I know I've cited this blog a couple of times lately, but I keep going back to it to glean more info and advice.

That's it for now!

Imagining Better Homemaking

I'm trying to ease into no plastic/more Nourishing Traditions habits of homemaking.  It is a sea change for me pretty much.  I live in a convenience oriented, carry out world when it comes to cooking.  It amazes me how much plastic I take for granted every single day.  Try being conscious of the plastic in your life from the moment you wake up until the moment you go to sleep.  You can't even do it, it is so ubiquitous.

The only way I'm going to improve things is by perseverance and baby steps.  This is gonna take time!

I've come up with a 3 week menu plan to help me.  My biggest changes are to make bread instead of buying it.   I am asking for this bread machine for Christmas.  The other thing is instead of buying canned soup, I'm going to get in the habit of making some once a week.  I need to get non plastic containers to store my stock in, though.  That's the first thing.  I figure I'm in the experimental phase right now.  Trying to figure out how to accomplish this.  I'm trying different bread recipes and exploring different recipes for soups.  When the new year comes in I'll implement fully, God willing.

3 Week Dinner Plan:
Sunday:  Rick gets to pick dinner - he's pretty predictable though - he likes hamburgers, hot dogs, steak, roasts and seafood.
Monday (Chicken)  Week 1:  Roast Chicken, Week 2:  Chicken Parmesan, Week 3:  Breaded Chicken breasts (from NT cookbook)
Tuesday (ground beef)  Week 1:  spaghetti; Week 2: meatloaf; Week 3:  chili
Wednesday (soup) Week 1: potato cheese soup;  Week 2:  some variation of chicken soup; Week 3:  Chowder of some sort
Thursday - pizza night - sometimes carryout; sometimes homemade
Friday (meatless) Week 1:  fish;  Week 2:  Mac and Cheese;  Week 3:  omelets
Saturdays - this is kind of a free for all:  leftovers or carry out or some recipe I feel like trying out.

I know I have to plan at least two easy dinner nights - Thursday pizza night and Saturday's free for all, just because I know I'll burn out if I try to cook every single night.  I just don't have that much Suzie Homemaker in me!

The big changes will be:
making bread
making my own stock and making soup weekly

For breakfasts:
Sunday -bacon or sausage, eggs, pancakes, waffles or french toast
Monday - oatmeal (gotta soak it per NT - another habit to get into!)
Tuesday - smoothies (made with homemade yogurt per NT - this intimidates me!)
Wednesday - eggs and toast
Thursday - oatmeal again
Friday - smoothies again
Saturday - bagels

Lunches:
Sunday - we usually have a big breakfast and an earlier dinner so lunch is kind of dig around the fridge and eat leftovers or make yourself a sandwich.  We usually still have some bagels left so some one usually has that for lunch.
Monday - Dunkin' Donuts - they only use paper for the most part in their carry out.
Tuesday - left overs/sandwiches
Wednesday - leftovers/sandwiches
Thursday - quesadillas (I want Rick to make me a tortilla press and learn how to make them from scratch.  I understand this isn't that hard if you have a press.)
Friday - leftovers/sandwiches
Saturday - leftovers/sandwiches

The lunch menu seems pretty uninspired, doesn't it?

Because of these changes I have this long Christmas list of things I want!

1.  New really nice bread maker
2.  French Press coffee maker (I hate my plastic one)
3.  An enamel dutch oven
4.  A hand blender (our old one broke about a year ago)
5.  A Tortilla press (I hope Rick makes me one!)

Sean and I are going to get into cheese making.   Sean's into this whole anti-plastic Nourishing Traditions things right along with me.  He's been going grocery shopping with me a lot.  And he loves cheese.  He's very dismayed at the fact that all cheese is covered in shrink wrap, so we've decided to learn how to make our own via the New England Cheese Making Co.  We plan to get the starter kit.  Again, this will happen after the Holidays.  Too overwhelming to start it now.

Journaling the Day - 11/15/11

Woke up at 6:30 a.m.  Yahoo!  That's sleeping in for me.  Because Becky has been staying up so late and then being such a grouch in the morning, I had her sleep in our room like she used to back when she was little.  She was still sound asleep on the floor in her bean bag and blankets.  Rick got up to take a shower.

Fed pets, cleaned up kitchen and ran dishwasher.  Made coffee and checked email.  Baked some cornbread for breakfast.  Took a shower.  Aunt Jackie's caregiver took care of her this morning.  Usually we don't have her on Tuesdays but today the schedule was a bit mixed around.  Rick left for work.

Got the kids up at 8:30 ish.  Josh took shower.  Becky came down and ate breakfast and we chatted.  She was in a much better mood having slept for 10 hours.  Seano was the sleepy head this morning and didn't come down until after 9:00.  I felt a little rushed as a result because his math tutor comes at 10.  Read Little Orphant Annie out loud to Becky and Sean.  James Whitcomb Riley is our poet of the month.  Becky liked it, Sean is turned off by the dialect.  I think he sees it as too cute.  Read a very short bit from The Creed in Slow Motion about the hypostatic union of God and Man in Jesus Christ.  Read about Alexander the Great from A Little History of the World.  Becky knew the whole story of Alexander from a Jim Weiss audio and kept correcting poor professor Gombrich's story.  Becky also was writing out emails to her older sister during this time.  Sean laid on the couch under a cover refusing to wake up.  A few minutes before 10 I realized that Sean was still in his pjs and hadn't eaten any breakfast.  He quickly ran upstairs and changed and then opted to make a pb&j and was just finishing it up when the doorbell rang.  Mrs Zinn had arrived!

What was Josh doing all this time?  He grabbed a plate of cornbread and headed to the computer downstairs.  Supposedly he was working on precalculus.  When I went down to check on him after the tutor arrived, he was reading email.  He said he'd been working and was taking a break.  He's going to check in with the tutor when she's done with Sean.  Hopefully, this will provide the external motivation he seems to need so much in order to get stuff done!

While Sean was with tutor Becky and I orally did one of our Aquinas Learning sheets - namely the civics one.  We read the Preamble of the Constitution out loud and discussed what it meant.  Then Becky did the Catechism sheet on the Two Greatest Commandments.  I said she could do it orally but she wanted to be independent and write out the answers to the discussion questions herself.  So be it!  Then Becky helped me brainstorm about crafts for our Aquinas Learning Center.  She showed me a craft we could do in the preschool with tissue paper.

Tutor finished up with Sean.  Sean really likes her!  She made him feel smart!  Josh met with her briefly to get some accountability for the pace of his precalc work.

Becky started practicing playing Good King Wenceslas on the piano.  Yesterday at her AHG meeting they began practicing Christmas carols for when the troop visits a home for the elderly Dec. 17th.  This got her all excited about Christmas songs.  Last night when I was out shopping for pants for Sean, Rick taught her how to play it on the piano and she's been practicing off and on last night and this a.m.

Sean immediately went downstairs after his lesson to play videogames and watch old Simpson episodes.  Josh ate leftover spaghetti for lunch and then I took him to his Chemistry class at 12:15.  Came home and Becky and Sean were watching a Phineas and Ferb cartoon.  I then fed Sean and Becky tater tots and cheese and crackers for lunch.  Left Sean at home playing video games (I think) and took Becky to her art class.  Ran to Michael's to pick up some supplies for our Aquinas Learning center.  Picked up Josh from Chem (also another classmate who needed a ride home).

Came home, putzed around for a few minutes.  Called Sean up from basement to do his Test 3 from Saxon.  He is not happy.  At all.  Prepared a roast chicken for dinner.  Josh is downstairs on his computer playing something. . . . Sean's friend Jack called him just as he was finishing up his test.  So I told Sean to call him back when he had finished completely which he did.

Took Josh to cross country practice, then immediately drove to pick up Becky from friend's house (friend picked her up from art class).  Miscalculated the time I had to pick up Josh.  For some reason I thought it was 5:15 instead of 5:45.  Drove back to cross country.  Becky wanted to be independent and walk around by herself but it was already dark.  So we compromised by me following behind her while she walked ahead.  I was a little miffed about her attitude until I remembered that she'd slept all night in my room!  Walked over to gas station store and let her buy some nacho cheese chips while we waited.  She was generous and let me have one, LOL.  Remembered that I'd put a chicken in the oven and it was going to be in for 2 hours by the time I got home.  Called home but nobody answered.  Fortunately Josh returned early from his run with a couple of boys.  Pulled him out early and drove home.  Chicken was alright.  Sean had been on the phone the whole time.  Warned him about hogging the phone and not answering the call waiting beep when I am out of the house!  Becky has been singing Christmas carols all day.  It was cute this morning but now I am already a bit weary of them!  Oh good, she just announced that that was enough practice for now.  Her new project is to decorate our pretty wooden dollhouse that sits in our family room for Christmas.  She's busy dusting and arranging everything now.  Wow, Christmas is coming early this year.  Hannah and Will come home next Tuesday and then Thursday is Thanksgiving.

Had chicken, rice, cucumbers, red bell peppers, and grapes for dinner.  Becky cleared the table, Sean loaded the dishwasher.  Josh and I did 1/2 our Latin homework for tomorrow.  We resolved to resume it again at 8 tomorrow.  Becky watched some Zoom shows at the PBS website.  Rick came home, ate, we said night prayers and he then read Son of Neptune to Becky and Sean.  Hannah called and I talked to her for a while.

So that's it!  Good night!

Non-plastic stuff you can get at Trader Joe's

When I first went in, it seemed to be a sea of shrink wrap and plastic containers.  Everything frozen is in plastic, of course.  But I did find some stuff I was pleased with.  I didn't include canned items because you just don't know if they've been treated with BPA.  Also, I didn't include anything in cartons that looked like they've been sprayed with plastic.

Bunches of bananas
paper bags of apples and pears
large red peppers that weren't wrapped up like most of the other stuff in the salad section
Glass jars of:
cherries
peaches
pears
applesauce
artichokes
hearts of palms
marinated mushrooms with garlic
sliced sun dried tomatoes
Greek white beans
bbq sauce
teriyaki sauce
tartar sauce
cocktail sauce
dijon style mustard
pasta sauces
peanut butter
almond butter
all sorts of jellies and jams
maple syrup
salad dressings
olive oil
flour
spices
cake, quick bread and muffin mixes
tissues
automatic dishwasher detergent (I love their brand!)
automatic washer detergent
bars of Dr. Bronner's Castille Soap
coconut oil
vinegars
cream cheese
Kerrygold butter (they have the best price for this in my area)
eggs
apple juice
Orangina in those cute little bottles

Sunday - weekly goals

I decided to jot down my goals for today and this week.

Today - Sunday:

Josh is running in the Turkey Trot 5K this a.m. that our town is giving.  We've never participated before.  The money raised goes to support the local high school band and the volunteer fire department, plus they are having a food drive as well for a local food bank.  He is supposed to be there before 8 a.m.  Race begins at 8:15.  Rick is taking him.  We'll see if he gets Josh there in time!

When Josh and Rick get back I plan to have a nice breakfast waiting for them.  Hopefully, all this will unfold so that we can attend the 11:45 Mass this a.m.  I'd really like to go because Bishop Justs is going to speak.  He was a pastor at our parish before we joined.  He then was chosen by the Pope John Paul II to be a missionary in Latvia (his family is from Latvia).  While there he was made bishop!  Every year he comes back to raise money for the Latvian mission and it is always interesting and heartening to hear this holy man speak.  I think now he is officially retired but he still does the speaking circuit.

After Mass, while Rick is watching football, I want to focus on clearing off the surfaces of my kitchen and continuing my goal of reducing plastic in our home.  I'm focusing on the kitchen first.

After that, I might nap a bit and then Josh and I have to buckle down and study for a take home test in Latin.  104 vocabulary words plus their derivatives!

I have no idea what we are having for dinner.  Perhaps Rick will grill.

And I must remember to get recycling to the curb.  I'm so sloppy at getting it out weekly.  But I'm renewing my efforts to be environmentally conscientious.

Weekly goals:

To stick to our routine and rhythms as much as possible - that means breakfast read alouds, doing math, Latin and copy work with Sean, copy work, Life of Fred and Aquinas Learning memory and activity sheets with Becky and keeping Josh on track for his Precalculus, Latin, Chemistry, Shakespeare, Driver's Ed and Psychology.

To pray, read, exercise, clean, cook, tidy in an intentional way (big goal there!)

To prepare for Thanksgiving.

Sean has his first meeting with his math tutor on Tuesday and then he goes to shadow another 7th grader at a private school on Thursday.

Outta time!

Keeping House - Preface

Willa is doing a book study on Keeping House: The Litany of Everyday Life by Margaret Kim Peterson.  I downloaded it onto my Kindle and started reading it.  Somehow I didn't stop at the Preface but read right through to the end of Chapter One.  Very undisciplined of me!

Since I can't keep my remarks to just the Preface because 1) it has now blurred with the first chapter and 2) I'm expecting guests soon and don't have time to go back and reread at the moment, I'll just quickly post about why I wanted to join in this book study.

See, me and housekeeping, we don't get along.  I am at my most ADD when it comes to keeping tidy.  I often joke that I am like Pigpen in the Peanuts comic strip.  Where ever he goes, there is a cloud of dust. Where ever I go, there is a pile of clutter.  I've been like this all my life.  As a child growing up, my mother was very strict about keeping things tidy.  Once I left home, however, I completely fell apart and never ever gained traction again.  I have struggled with this all my life.

One thing I know about myself is that I can fall easily into despair and feeling overwhelmed.  So I have to work at keeping myself buoyed up.  Prayer is good, cultivating my spiritual life is good, surrounding myself with encouragement is good.  And all this does a wonderful thing - it keeps me from being a subject of that reality show Clean House!  I am able to just barely keep myself above the water so I don't drown.  And this is even with housecleaners that come to our house every other Monday and vacuum and scrub it for me!  That's how pathetic I am!

So as the holiday season approaches, I tend to really want to get my house clean.  Even though I'm terrible at keeping things in order, I crave order especially around the holidays.  I have a very hard time with Christmas.  I find it completely overwhelming and sadly, I don't enjoy it much.  I'm always exhausted when it is over and it takes me a while to recuperate (like all winter!).  Every Christmas I vow I'll be different.  So far I haven't accomplished this.  But hope springs eternal!

Anyway, I am hoping this book study will be a source of inspiration to me as we move into the holiday season.  I've had a rough fall.  I've overbooked myself and have run into a lot of bumps in the road.  I'm very tired.  I suspect that I have fibromyalgia.  I don't know for sure, but I am exhausted and in pain much of the time.  I've been feeling very down lately, though I'm fighting mightily!  Anyway, I know perseverance is key.  I know that if you wait long enough the sun will rise.  I know God will never abandon me.  So things are good even when they seem bad!

Back to the book, I like the author's clear-sighted and intentional approach to housework.  Her voice rings very authentically true to me, so I am finding the book very appealing.  It gives me food for thought and make me want to be more intentional about my wifely and motherly duties.  And that is what I need.  So I am looking forward to this book study very much!

The Saga of Two Children

Once there were two children who were homeschooled.  One was a 12 year old boy and one was a 10 year old girl.  They were good friends when they weren't engaged in champion-style bickering. Sometimes when they played together the world was a golden place; they were joyful, creative, funny and so attuned to each other, it was beautiful.  Such good, good friends.

But the boy grew bored and nothing could un-bore him.  They would do the same exact things but the boy would be bored and the girl would not.  When they played outside the boy wandered around aimlessly while the girl:  rollerbladed, played basketball, rode her bike, played all kinds of pretend games by the fort and the pond, nature watched, made make believe stew out of acorns and water, dug in the dirt,  and generally could spend hours outdoors in exhilarating play.  She'd come in with dirt under her fingernails, scratched by thorns and full of some interesting tidbit of something she saw.  Sometimes the boy would play like this too, but most of the time he came inside much too soon, sighing that he was bored.

Inside the house the girl was always busy.  She liked to make things, cook things, draw things, write things, play things, daydream things, rearrange things, clean things, talk about things.  She went about her day singing to herself.  The boy sat on the couch and wept because he was so bored.

The mother tried to engage the boy in things that might interest him.  She signed him up for activities but he inevitably found something wrong with them, complained bitterly until his mother let him drop whatever it was.  This meant he spent more time at home and therefore had more time to sit on the couch and be bored.

The mother very carefully designed his academic work around what she thought he might like.  When she worked with him one on one, he sometimes mildly enjoyed himself.  But most of the time he was bored.

The boy began to wonder if maybe he should go to school.  Maybe getting up and out of the house and being with a bunch of other guys and being in a different atmosphere might be a good thing.  After the boy wondered this out loud several times the mother decided it was worth a shot.  And now said boy is going to visit a school next Thursday (a nice private Christian school) to see what life is like there.  Maybe it won't be boring.

Today is Hannah's 21st Birthday!

I hope she has a great day.  I resent the fact that she is so far away in Texas and I can't celebrate the day with her.  Hopefully, when she comes home for Thanksgiving, we can take her out to dinner (and maybe buy her a drink - just one!)

If I could figure out how to get a photo of her on here, I would!  Just been looking through them all but, alas, I am once again stymied by my lack of computer aptitude!

Getting Rid of Plastic

So last week I read this book, Boys Adrift.  One of the issues the author discusses is the endocrine disrupters that are prevalent in plastic.  These plastics leach low level doses of estrogen-like chemicals into our foods.  In Dr. Sax's book he looks at how these low level does effect the development of boys.  He ties it to a lack of drive and the skyrocketing numbers of boys being diagnosed as ADD.  He briefly discusses how it might actually effect a boy's sexual development.  People have linked this to all aspects of male sexuality from current low sperm count in the developed world's male population to an environmental cause for homosexuality.  I need to research all this further.  But the idea that plastics, something so ubiquitous in our lives nowadays could being doing something so harmful to males and to our whole society as a result, scared me deeply.  Add into this the prevalence of birth control pills, the hormones of which get into our water, along with the rise of soy everywhere (soy had estrogen in it as well) no wonder men are at sea when it comes to figuring out who they are and what their roles should be.  I wonder if this isn't behind the shift in how we perceive gender even?

And this issue with plastic is completely separate from the horrible pollution/waste aspect of it!  I used to half-heartedly recycle my plastic, but often would get lazy about it.  Now I feel super guilty about it.  I think I read only 7% of plastic actually gets recycled into another use!  That's a lot of non-biodegradable garbage we are leaving for our children!

Anyway, this made me look around and see just how much plastic there is EVERYWHERE.  And much of it is food related.  In my fridge every single slice or block of cheese is wrapped in plastic wrap.  My turkey, ham and bologna is too  In my freezer, my quarter of grass-fed, hormone free beef is all shrink wrapped in plastic.  My milk is in a plastic jug.  Even my orange juice, which I thought was safe because it is in a cardboard carton, isn't really.  That cardboard is not coated in wax anymore.  Nope, now it is sprayed with plastic!

We have plastic cups and plates, and cereal is packaged in plastic inside its cardboard box.  And those organic bags of salad mix I get, thinking they are so healthy?  Bagged in plastic!  It is truly everywhere!

So googling around I found this wonderful blog: http://myplasticfreelife.com/  This young woman is a pioneer in plastic free living.  Of course she doesn't have children and she lives in Oakland where everyone is probably pretty green anyway, so this kind of change for her is probably not nearly as difficult as for others, but still she has many practical suggestions and for the last couple of days, I've been visiting her blog and gleaning lots of advice.  I think she's even started her own plastic free store.   I love entrepreneurs!

So I made up a list of things I could do in my home to at least get us on the road to having fewer plastics in our lives.  I'm starting with plastic that comes in contact with food:

1.  No more plastic grocery bags.  Terry (from the site above) says to keep canvas bags in your car so you have them with you whenever you stop into a store.  She keeps a little foldable one in her purse even.  I'll have to look around for one like that.  Often times I'm too forgetful and I leave my bags at home and wind up getting new bags at the store.  Also she says don't put your produce in plastic bags.  Just put them directly into the reusable nonplastic bags you've brought.

2.  I am from now on buying milk, cider and water in glass only.  This is more expensive because the only place I know to get these are at Whole Foods which is so pricey it makes me want to scream!  However, I'm also going to check out Trader Joe's and see what they carry.  As for OJ.  I've decided it is better to buy a bunch of oranges and squeeze it myself.  My little juicer (not the fancy electric kind but the kind with a glass jar and the special doohickey lid that you rub half an orange over to juice) is half plastic (the top part) so I'd like to get one that had no plastic on it at all.  Where can they be had?

3.  I will only buy eggs in cardboard cartons.  Lately they seem to be selling them more and more in plastic cartons.

4.  For leftovers, use a Corelle bowl (I hope that is safe!) and aluminum foil.  I'll just try not to let the foil touch the food.

5.  I want to start buying things in bulk.  I went to whole foods yesterday with this in mind, thinking I'd get some healthy snacks.  However, every single bin the bulk food was stored in was made of plastic!  So I passed on that for now.

6.  I decided to get out my bread machine and see if I can make sandwich bread instead of buying the stuff wrapped in plastic.  I tried to make my first loaf in many years and it bombed.  It just didn't rise properly.  I'll try again this afternoon.

7.  I'm going to buy foil wrapped butter and foil wrapped cream cheese.  Maybe I'll get ambitious and start making my own butter and cream cheese!  I'm laughing at myself because I am not very good in the kitchen so I have doubts about ever really making cheese.

8.  Cheese is really hard to find not tightly ensconced in shrink wrap.  I could try to make some of this as well (dreaming very unrealistically big here!) or I could try to buy cheese that is in wax still.  Terry suggests buying a big wheel and splitting it with friends.  That might work.  I did find a really yummy bleu-brie cheese yesterday that was in a cute little wooden container.  Inside it seemed to be foil wrapped. So I got that.

9.  I'll try to buy things in cans that are labeled BPA free.

10.  Stonyfield yogurts come in plastic that is made from corn.  Dr. Sax talked about this as a good alternative.  Apparently the stuff made from corn doesn't have the estrogen in it like the petroleum byproducts do.  I'll have to look into that.  Plus it is a renewable resource and recyclable, so it is a good alternative, it seems.  I do want to try to make my own yogurt eventually.

11.  No more bagged salad for me!  I'll just have to make my own.

12.  I want to buy some stainless steel containers to use for storing cheeses and lunch meats.  I can always reduce the amount of plastics leached by at least taking them out of the plastic containers right away and maybe disposing of the pieces that came into contact with the plastic.

In the meantime I'm going to be cleaning out my kitchen and trying to figure out how to accomplish this mammoth change!

Internet Strewing for Strewsday Tuesday

My 12 yo does a lot of research on the internet.  Lately he's been into minutephysics.  I'm wondering how accurate these are?  They do seem to leave out an awful lot.  However, the fact that he enjoys watching them shows Sean's growing fascination with the topic.  And they are really cool!  I'm assuming most of the science is fairly good.  I had trouble with the thought experiment of the cat in the bunker though.  Just couldn't grasp that one.  They seem to make a jump in their thinking that doesn't follow logically (at least to my little ole brain!).

He's also been going to blogs like this:

http://blogs.voices.com/voxdaily/

He continues to be fascinated by voice actors.  He practices different voices all the time.  He and Becky have a host of characters they play, all with different voices to match their personalities. Yesterday, we went on a long walk and I had to listen to many of the voices.  Now, I'm sure this is a good thing, to have such a passionate interest and to have a sister who plays along so well, so I appreciated it at that level.  However, it was a gorgeous fall day and I would have like to have a nice, peaceful, let's look at nature kind of walk.  Instead it was anything but peaceful!  The kids could have been anywhere so wrapped up were they in their own little world of characters and voices!  But at least we got some fresh air and exercise.

And lastly, he's been into Popeye and Tom and Jerry.  In fact, this past Saturday we got a really early (1930s?) Popeye cartoon on the Apple TV.  It was the first animated telling of Aladdin.  Sean marveled at how cleverly they got the whole story in.  He praised the humor, the pacing, even the music was good!  He said he thought it was much better than the Disney formulaic retelling.  Early Tom and Jerry cartoons have always been a favorite and he's been revisiting them, too.

All this is Sean driven.  I have been having issues with my kids' access to the internet,  but on the whole it really has been an blessing to us, all that free information out there, free for the taking!

Boys Adrift - Book 46

Boys Adrift; The Five Factors Driving the Growing Epidemic of Unmotivated Boys and Underachieving Young Men is by Leonard Sax, MD, PhD.  

This books scared the @&*! out of me!  First of all the five factors that Dr. Sax identifies are:  1) The feminization of education, like expecting reading in Kindergarten when little boys' brains develop later than girls, thus ensuring their first experience of school is a tough one.  Another element of this is the disapproval of friendly team-related competition.  Dr. Sax is a strong proponent of single-sex schools as a result.

2)  Video games - Dr. Sax goes into detail about all the studies that show that video games demotivate and disengage boys from reality.  I have a son who seems very addicted to video games and I can attest to the fact that he is not very motivated.

3)  Long term effects of ADHD medication.  Studies have shown that even being on these medications for a short time can cause a loss of drive in boys and young men.   They impact the area of the brain that deals with motivation.

4)  Plastics - it turns out that plastics contain endocrine disrupters that make the body think it is receiving low dosages of estrogen.  This has absolutely devastating effects on boys' sexual development.  This is the thing that scared me.  Wow!  Why hasn't anything been done about this?   It is effecting our society and our future.

5)  Society's changing perception of masculinity - men don't have clear roles anymore.  We've lost any rituals for helping men grow from boys into men.  Our culture doesn't guide boys into manhood anymore.

The books goes into very great detail about each of these factors and how they intertwine to create the mess we are in now.  I found the book very convincing.  Even though, as a homeschooler, the only two factors that truly impact my boys are the video games and the plastics, that's enough to galvanize me into action.  I want to reduce the use of plastic in our lives drastically!  And I also am going to be very careful about the amount of time spent playing video games.

I don't have time for a longer review.  Wish I did.  But I am planning to read Dr. Sax's other books:  Why Gender Matters and Girls on the Edge.

For more reviews check out Robin's 52 Books site.

Today is Our 23rd Wedding Anniversary!

Yep!  Twenty-three years!  It doesn't feel that long at all.  Life just races by, doesn't it?  We went out last night with our friends (she blogs here) to a nice, casual, Mediterranean cafe that they recommended.  The food was excellent.   The company even better.  A nice glass of pinot grigio and some laughter makes for a good time.

Today Rick and I plan to putz around the house relaxing.  He's been so incredibly busy at work, I've really been worried about him and I feel like we never talk.  In fact, last night he made a remark about how Becky wasn't taking art anymore which made the rest of us laugh because she most definitely is.  He's just gone so much of the time and if I forget to mention something in the short distracted moments when we aren't collapsing into sleep, well then, how's he supposed to know?!?

So today I plan to:

• Go get bagels.   Saturday is bagel day around here.  I go to a bagel shop that has pretty darn good bagels even if we aren't living in New Jersey.
• Wash sheets and towels; something long, long overdue around here!
• Tidy up the main living areas (maybe an hour spent on this - nothing major)
• Plant the tulip and daffodil bulbs I impulsively bought yesterday.  I'm hoping Becky will help with that.  We used to like to do gardening things together.
• Do Latin homework with Josh
• Go to confession this afternoon.  Another thing that is long, long overdue.
• I know Rick wants to clean his aquariums today.  He always feels better when his aquariums are in good shape!

So, hopefully a satisfying, quiet day at home with family.  That's a good way to celebrate 23 years of marriage!

What We've Been Up To - 11/4/11

• walked, ran, played in the beautiful fall weather this week
• read:  The Frost is on the Punkin by James Whitcomb Riley, The Creed in Slow Motion, Exploring the World of Physics, A Little History of the World, Son of Neptune, My Side of the Mountain.  Rick is reading a biography of Steve Jobs and keeps regaling us with stories.  What a peculiar fellow!
• Ate lots of Halloween candy and lots of carry out this week.  Not a good food week!
• Focused on math, handwriting, Latin
• Becky is writing a novel!
• Sean continues to write comic strips with his friend
• Josh wrote an essay for his Shakespeare class on Much Ado About Nothing
• Josh went to Chemistry class (got 92 on his test), Latin (100% on quiz), didn't do so well on his Precalc homework - needs to rework that, went to CLC, practiced running; will be in a race this coming Sunday.
• Sean's getting a math tutor and a drawing tutor, it looks like!  Yippee.  Keeping him busy is so very important to his emotional health.  
• Josh and Sean took a long walk yesterday morning.  Josh was cheering Sean up.  Sean came home in a much better mood.
• I really like being able to work one on one with Sean.  Need to get a better working relationship with Becky.
• Had a meeting with Aquinas Learning staff trying to regroup after our blow last week.  
• Becky seems to be enjoying Life of Fred.  I have to sit down and read it too, to see what's going on.
• Also need to catch up with Sean in Journey to the Center of the Earth.
• Josh is in class all day today from 8:30 a.m. to 4:00.  He's going to a Chem lab early, then a regular Chem class, then off to Shakespeare which usually ends at 2:30 but those that want to can stay and watch Much Ado About Nothing.
• Tonight Rick and I are going to dinner to celebrate our 23rd anniversary (which is actually tomorrow).  I'm hoping the actual day is just a relaxed, family day.

Pain hurts

I woke this a.m. with a migraine that didn't quite morph into a horrible, nausea-inducing migraine.  It seems to be fading, but for the first two hours I was up, I couldn't blog because light made me queasy and sent shooting pains through my left brow.   But now I'm feeling a bit better.  Thank you, Jesus!  I know why I got the headache though.  Chocolate.  I ate some of my kids Halloween candy yesterday.  Bad, bad, bad.  Very self-destructive on my part.

Yesterday was weird.  The weather was beautiful and the morning started out great but somehow things petered out into gloom, despite the lovely day.  And poor Seano.   He's got two best friends.  One he used to see at least once a week and often more and then another he talks on the phone with often but sees in person more like once a month.  But he is getting shunned by the first friend for the last month or more.  He used to have a standing playdate with this friend on Wednesdays.  But he hasn't had one for three weeks.  The first week there was some reason why they couldn't get together.  Then second week, there was no explanation.  Then Sean asked over the weekend if they could get together this Wednesday.  The answer was yes, but when Sean called yesterday, his friend just gave him the brush off.  They go to the same youth group at church and the weird thing is that the last two times they'd been at an event, his friend has completely ignored Sean.  This never happened before, but Sean excused it by saying (this broke my heart):  "He's with his school friends and they're all cool and I'm not."  So yesterday when Sean got the brush off, it was very hard to see the hurt and rejection.  This is the son I am very worried about because he seems so sad and lonely so much of the time.  My heart was just raw all afternoon and evening.  And there wasn't much I could do.  I can tell him I love him.  I can try to distract him, but I can't fill the hole in his heart right now.  I can't heal the hurt of being rejected by someone he cared for and trusted.

I don't even blame his friend because I know that childhood friends can be volatile.  They can move in and out of intensity.  Kids, as they grow, can grow apart.  But it is hard to see your child go through this rejection.

My son is sad and I am too.

I know I should be philosophical about all this.  I know that this, too, shall pass.  I know we all need to embrace these little crosses in life.  I know that there are many, many others out there who are in terrible straits feeling much greater pain and hopelessness.  I do have that perspective and it is helpful.

But even so, pain hurts.

The migraine is threatening to come back in full force if I keep typing.

I'll ask for help from St. Martin de Porres, one of my favorite saints ever!  It's his feast today.

St. Martin de Porres, pray for us!  Pray for all whose hearts are broken today.

Self-Improvment

I always have such plans to improve myself and 99% of the time they fall flat.

I still need to lose weight, eat better, exercise more, food shop and cook better, be tidier and more organized in my daily living, be a more attentive, patient parent, a more considerate wife, and, of course, I always need to pray more.

It can be discouraging, being me!

The truth is that life consists of having goals, getting off track for a little or a long while and then getting back on track.  That is what life is.  Always shifting, always refocusing, always examining and re-examining, never giving up.  At least for me, it is.

Right now, at this point in my life, I have been uber-busy.  I think it is a combination of factors:

I thought with only 3 kids at home, I could handle a lot of outside commitments.  I always start off gung ho about things and then my energy level does a nose-dive and my brain gets all foggy and everything becomes such an uphill battle.  I am a very limited human being, not cut out for grand action!   I have to learn this lesson over and over again.

I have my aunt to take care of and even though she really doesn't add much into the mix, it does cause a bit of strain and add another layer of complexity to everything.

I was very used to having teen-aged drivers to help me out.  I don't have another driver this year, so it is just me doing all the driving.  Driving here and there and all over the Northern VA Metro area has always been a fatiguing exercise to me, but doing it when you are 35 or 45 is easier I think, than doing it when you are 51.  Just yesterday, I was in the car much of the day and every single time I got out, my legs had stiffened up so I was hobbling around.  Geez!  I kept thinking, how am I ever going to make it to 61?

  Also, Rick has been very busy these past months, making me feel like I am really single mothering it often.  We are going through a phase where we hardly seem to talk.  We kind of wave at each other in passing, say how much we miss each other, and then run off to do the things that are keeping us so busy.  Our 23rd wedding anniversary is coming up on Saturday.  We are hoping to go out to dinner with friends.  But I'd really like a long weekend of alone time with him!  That's dreaming big!

So what am I going to do about all this?

Part of the busyness has been due to Aquinas Learning.  That turned into a bit of a mess and now we are trying to clean up the pieces and reconfigure things.  So that's an ongoing project.  I'd like to have certain portions of the week devoted to working on that.  What I don't like is the way it seeps into other times in the week and seems to take over everything.  I"m only doing this for one child and it hasn't been particularly successful for her.  It needs to have a proportionate demand on my time.  So I'm trying to figure out how to do that.  I've started to say no to things.  For instance, I was so exhausted last night, I did not join in on a conference call to help directors.   We've got two other directors involved and I'll just get feedback from them.  I also am not going to observe another center on Thursday.  I can't take all of the Thursdays away from my kids.  We are having a planning meeting here at my house on Thursday afternoon, so that's good.  I'm contributing in that way, but that means I'll get to have the morning with the kids.

Josh's cross country has involved a big driving and time commitment.  I really like it though.  I like the coaches and I like that he's involved in it.  I think there are great benefits to it.  Not only getting out with others and running, but learning discipline and entering the social world of running.  I really am considering strongly encouraging the other kids to join in the spring and maybe do this again next fall too.  Having all the kids involved would be good.  I wouldn't feel torn about leaving the younger ones at home to get Josh to where he needs to be.  We'd all be together.  Also. the season is limited. It is not like Karate for instance where you are going 3x a week for the rest of your life!  It lasts from September to the middle of November for cross-country.  For track, I think the season is spring, not sure exactly when it starts but it is still a limited time.  So I know that all this driving and time commitment is going end in two or three weeks.  I can keep up the pace for that long.

Another time sucker is Latin.  I love the idea of learning Latin but it is still hard to be disciplined and sit down and study as much as I should.  We've moved from going to class 1x a week to 2x.  That's a major adjustment.  I feel very free today, because we don't have Latin class!  The teacher is attending a class reunion and cancelled class.  Yippee!  I didn't have to struggle to stay awake doing the homework last night.  I truly was exhausted.  I feel asleep about 8:30, woke up at 9:30.  Said prayers, made everyone I could make, go to bed.  The ones I couldn't (my husband and 16 yo) I sternly warned about staying up too late and being noisy when coming to bed!  Then I collapses again.  Woke up at 5:30 a.m.

I need to focus on household stuff.  I need to do laundry regularly instead of waiting until people are out of clothes.  I need to get the kitchen cleaned every night and the trash and recycling out on a regular basis.  We've drifted from routine because I'm too busy being elsewhere and then when I'm at home, I'm too tired to focus or insist.  Doing these little homey things would go far in reducing stress and lightening  the sense of feeling inadequate and overwhelmed all the time.

I also have been eating poorly lately and that always increases fatigue and body aches and pains in me.  It is the rushing around that makes it hard for me to eat well.  Plus, I am an emotional eater for sure.  It doesn't help that we've got Halloween candy coming out the whazoo around here right now.  Though, I think I've been pretty restrained about the candy, considering the circumstances!  So I need to eat better!

Also, I found a math tutor for Sean who seems an answer to prayers.  Her price is reasonable, I like her spirit and attitude, and she happens to be Catholic!  I think having a tutor will add structure and accountability for both myself and Sean.

This has gotten very long!  But I feel better putting it down on 'paper.'

Now to tackle laundry and the kitchen and get the day started.  Our morning studies are actually going pretty well this year, so that is something to be pleased about.

Today is All Souls Day.   It is also my mother's birthday.  I plan for us to do some academics this a.m.  Then I want to visit my family's graves, get Josh a haircut, maybe visit the library and the grocery store on the way back.  I've got to get Josh to CLC tonight.

Rick already left work and won't be home to midnight or so, he thinks.  Poor dear.  I hope he naps on the train.  We are so disconnect lately that I thought he was in New Jersey yesterday, but it is really today.  That's bad when you don't even know if your husband is in state or not!

My Own Personal November Blogathon

Everybody seems to be doing NaNoWriMo.  I've attempted it twice, that last time was just last year.  Neither time did I get very far.  I find November is just not the best month for me to decide to spend lots of free time writing.  When I started hearing about all the people who plan to do NaNoWriMo (a good friend who lives near me is doing it for the first time), folks at the Unschooling Catholics lists are officially banding together to support each other and then I've heard from other corners of the internet about it too, and I thought, Shoot!  This year I just don't have the time or the energy for attempting it.  No way can I do it.  But someone, somewhere mentioned that they planned to just blog in November and I thought that was a good alternative.  Blogging is the only kind of writing I do lately, and I don't do much of it or as much as I had planned.  So for November, I plan to focus on my blog in order to become a better writer.

The first thing I want to do is fix some technical stuff. Ever since I switched to my MacBook Pro, I've had problems.  I had a very painful learning curve in just getting used to it.  That took a while and I still am trying to adapt.  But also I've had frustrating hurdles that I've yet to overcome:

• I've been using Safari, the browser that comes with the laptop.  However, for some insane reason it will not let me cut and paste a link into my blog.  I also seem to have lost the ability to copy an image and put that on my blog.  I don't understand why this would happen.  No one seems to be able to explain it to me, but I want to crack that nut this November!
• My dear husband installed Chrome, the browser I was used to before I switched.  It worked wonderfully for a few weeks and then just. stopped.  Like that.  I'd like to get it reinstalled because it did allow me to link on the blog, and sometimes (but not always!) would let me copy and paste images too.
• Elisa, of ElisaLoves, made a beautiful strewing button for my Strewsday Tuesdays and I can't put it on my blog because a) the troubles I just described and b) probably some of my own klutziness when it comes to computers.  I'd really like to conquer that baby this November!
• I have lost my camera.  I no longer put photos on my blog because of this.  I still am not 100% sure how to do it with the MacBook.  I had the hang of doing this with my old laptop.  I never understood it, but I knew if I followed a precise system I could put a photo up.  So, I either need to find my camera or get a new one.  And I need to refigure out how to upload and then post the photos.

I hate being so dumb at computers!

Today is All Saints Day.  We can't sleep in today.  We've got to get to 9:00 Mass.  At 10:00 a possible math tutor for Sean is coming over to meet us.  Josh must go to his Chemistry class at 12:15.  Becky has art at 1:30, need to leave the house around 1:00.  Then I have to go pick up Josh from Chemistry.  Usually Becky goes home with another little girl and plays there for a bit after art class.  At 4:30 I take Josh to cross country practice.  I drop him off, pick up Becky, take her home and then go back to pick up Josh at 6:15.  Then we get home around 6:35 or 6:40 and I rustle up some dinner as quick as I can.  I know I planned some easy dinner, but that was Sunday and I failed to write it down and now I have no memory whatsoever of what we are eating tonight!  Intertwined with all this is my aunt who needs various things throughout the day (though she's remarkably independent.)

Have a blessed All Saints Day!  I gotta go change laundry and get my aunt up.