Things Worth Remembering The three habits that lead to success are: Patience, Application, and Vision.
It is always better to be underestimated.
There are three things that are better than riches: Health, Freedom, and Honor.
Think swiftly, speak softly, act wisely.
All from: The Book of Celtic Wisdom
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Obi-Wan: “Captain Typho has more than enough men downstairs. No assassin will try that way. Any activity up here?”
Anakin: “Quiet as a tomb. I don’t like just waiting here for something to happen to her.”
Star Wars II: Attack of the Clones
Please forgive the crazy delay. I popped in today and noticed that my last post was on July 4th. A month and a half. Geez.
So, you see here’s the thing. I got a job. A full-time job. A really full-time, on my feet all day long on a concrete floor job. A this was supposed to be a part-time, up-to-20 hours a week, filler position job, but after six days spread out over two weeks I was offered the position of store manager on July 8. A full-time, at least 40 hours a week job. Well, holy cow. I said yes, took over on July 9, and it’s been a crazy rollercoaster ever since. Have I mentioned that it’s been way too many years since that kind of non-stop on-the-go activity has been a regular part of my life? I have learned a new level of both exhaustion and sore foot pain.
On the up side, I love this job. Love, love, love it. It’s fun, it’s positive, and it’s close enough to walk or bike to. The women I work with are fun and hardworking (a great combo), the challenges are enough to keep my brain pumping along, and the feedback from my employers and customers regarding the changes I’ve been implementing have been uniformly positive.
Many other things have been happening as well these past couple of weeks.
Padawan Learner turned 16 this summer, is driving around town by himself, started back to school at 5 out of the 8 periods (and is picking up a 6th period geometry class starting on Monday) and has been pleased with his newfound freedom. It’s a little weird, but we’re both enjoying the break from each other 24/7. He’s very 16, and I’m definitely a mom. Clashes have ensued. He’s talked about getting a job and working toward becoming independent sooner rather than later. It could be a good idea, but we’ll see how much effort he puts into meeting that goal. As you know quite well, there’s more to being a grownup than earning an income.
PL went to two different camps this summer, a week long half day parkour camp in Boulder. So PL got to participate in one of his most favorite activities ever AND we got to visit with our nephew who just moved into the area a few months earlier. I think he enjoyed our visit too since he was forced to learn first hand about lots of great restaurants in the area. PL also went to a week long overnight camp (his first experience with that type of program) for trampoline and double mini in Michigan, so Dad Windu and I were able to visit some old friends from different parts of Michigan – including some that we hadn’t been able to see for years.
To round the summer out, our niece married, rather unexpectedly but apparently happily, and we were all able to gather once again as an extended family (minus 3) for a long weekend. But it seems that with joy comes pain, and this weekend was no different – DW’s co-worker was in a motorcycle-car accident on the way home the same day we left for MI and was airlifted to a hospital near us. Thankfully he had on his leathers and a helmet (a rarity in Iowa). Still, he has two broken legs, a broken arm, and bleeding in the brain (now stopped), but he survived the first night (a major event) and is on the mend. He is such a sweetheart and such a fighter. I’ve been able to go sit with him in the mornings while his wife gets their four kids off on two different school busses (two hours apart!) so that he doesn’t have to wake up alone. The good drugs are giving us really fun conversations. It’s so nice seeing his bruises go down day after day, but it’s heartbreaking to see the pain that goes along with all the things that will ultimately make him better – multiple surgeries and their subsequent swelling most of all. Send any extra good thoughts along to JerBear.
So there you have it. Sorry for making you wait for an update.
[Chewbacca is carrying a dismembered C3PO in a net bag on his back]
“If only you’d attached my legs, I wouldn’t be in this ridiculous position. Now remember, Chewbacca, you have a responsibility to me, so don’t do anything foolish.” – C-3PO, Star Wars V: The Empire Strikes Back
What? Two posts in one day? Has the world gone crazy? Perhaps.
In my effort to find these  little beauties on super-secret sale, I ran across a website called SHOEBACCA. It’s no Fluevog, I grant you, but it looks like it has the makings of several wasted afternoons in my on-going great shoe search. While SHOEBACCA doesn’t carry the Aldo brand, and I was forced to order elsewhere, I feel it is my inter-galactic duty to pass along an online shoe store making a passing reference in their name to Star Wars. The Force is with them.
You’ll be glad to hear, I am sure, that not only did I find the above lovelies on super-secret sale and in my size, but I ended up getting them in both black and brown. They are, indeed, fabulous.
Palpatine: “You don’t need guidance, Anakin. In time, you will learn to trust your feelings. Then, you will be invincible. I have said it many times, you are the most gifted Jedi I have ever met.”
Anakin: “Thank you, Your Excellency.”
Palpatine: “I see you becoming the greatest of all the Jedi, Anakin. Even more powerful than Master Yoda.”
Star Wars II: Attack of the Clones
There’s nothing like knowing your kid is off doing something important that you have absolutely NO control over. Not that I have control issues or anything. Me? No, never. Oi vey. I’m a right regular basket case this morning.
Pet Shop Boys, OMD, Modern English, (vintage) U2, New Order, Echo & The Bunnymen, The Cure, Men Without Hats, INXS - I’m filling myself up with the comfort music of my high school and university years on Pandora Radio to keep myself sane. OK, I’ve just seriously dated myself. If I end up cutting my hair asymmetrically and dying it flame red, you’ll know why. Seriously, I really, really want to have flame read hair again. I blame that mostly on Ramona from Scott Pilgrim vs. the World though. (I’m also feeling compelled to dance with several of the songs as they play though, so daily exercise? Check.)
And tea, I’m drinking vats of tea: Santa’s Secret from my dear friend, Eileen Cook. This may or may not be a good idea as it’s packed full of caffeine and has real, miniature candy canes pieces scattered through out the mix, but that’s not going to stop me. I received a Saeco Electric Water Kettle for Christmas and Ho Boy! that thing rocks. Super fast water from the tap to 150-boiling in moments, and with the measurements on the side I can measure out just how much water I’m going to need.
Padawan Learner is taking the first half of his very first mid-term exam today, the verbal Italian segment. I spent all last night saying, “Shouldn’t you be studying for that Italian test?” only to keep hearing, “No, it’s under control.” He glanced over his notes, made a few pretty sounding utterances (strange, I know, but I really miss hearing those guttural G’s from his Dutch-language days), and watching an episode each of The Big Bang Theory and CSI before going to bed. Who IS this child and how could he have ever come from Dad Windu’s and my DNA? I was a compulsive study-freak in school and I’m pretty sure DW was too. I kept thinking – but thankfully not screaming out – “What the blazes does that have to do with anything? ” In the end, I went and finished up my latest library find (Death of a Valentine ) in the bathtub.
I really don’t have reason to worry too much, PL is doing well in his Energy and Italian classes, but I think one of the underlying reasons is that I feel a fair bit of pressure due to the fact that this is his first leap into the unknown of what is commonly referred to as “real school” by family and friends that were not terribly homeschool-friendly in the first place. This semester has felt like it is, in their eyes (and I fully admit that I could be completely projecting my own insecurities onto others here), the proof in the pudding of homeschooling in general and of our homeschool family in particular. How about you other homeschool to traditional school or duel-enrollment folk? Did you experience this the first time one of your kids started thinking inside the educational box?
OK, on to other things now. Like those dust bunnies lurking in the bathroom and under the beds. Time to slay them all.
Ric Olie: ….our communications are still jammed.
Obi-Wan : Now stay here, and keep out of trouble.
Star Wars I: The Phantom Menace
That’s an apt quote. My communications have felt jammed lately. For a couple of months, actually. In the past, I’d have those ‘I have to write about this’ thoughts a couple of times a day or week, but lately… Nothing. Nada. Zip. Zilch. And since I’m of both the If you don’t have anything to say, do us all a favor and put the keyboard down and It’s your blog, so don’t feel the need to apologize if things go quiet camps, I’ve not written and I’m not sorry about it. I wish it hadn’t been so long, but it has been and I guess it needed to be.
Padawan Learner is off watching Tron 3D with the local teen group, Dad Windu is hob-nobbing on shores of the Mississippi with the corporate headquarters crowd, and I find myself in an aggressively Christian coffee shop eaves-dropping on some very interesting conversations. A mom/daughter duo are discussing a felon’s drug/alcohol addiction (sounds like a dad/brother) and his refusal to enter a half-way/treatment house post incarceration which is – specifically – why he’s not being allowed back home. Apparently his parents in AZ are not facing the fact that he’s going to end up right.back.there if he doesn’t get the help he needs. Dad, it turns out to be.
A customer just said, “Happy Holidays” to the latte-maker girl. This has been such a BIG DEAL on my Facebook status update wall, with calls to (and I quote) “force stores to say Merry Christmas” and announcements that people are “not going to have a Happy Holiday but only a Merry CHRISTmas” or that they won’t go to “Holiday concerts but only to Christmas concerts” that I actually shuddered a little to hear him say it. But no one in the coffee shop even blinked.
The guys next to me are discussing a co-worker (not present) that likes to show off his p@rn collection in the warehouse - can you spell F.I.R.E.D? – and the fact that tomorrow is a guy at the table’s birthday. One of the guys just smiled at me. I wonder if he knows I can hear every word they’re saying.
A new guy at the coffee counter is now debating the existence of God with the girl behind the counter – and doing a good job of it, frankly. Respectful, but not taking the “mystery” and “faith” arguments as definitive answers. I just heard, “Come on, Jonah really sat around inside a whale? You know better than that.” It sounds like this is an on-going conversation with a regular customer.
An intense, Save the Whales bumper sticker on the computer case, trio of guys across the room are discussing ways to bring freedom of the press to some country I can’t quite hear from here, but somewhere in Asia from the sounds of it. Wow, I feel like such a slacker just sitting here. I’m not doing anything to save the planet or expand personal freedom to oppressed peoples anywhere. One of the guys looks just like the lead actor from Napoleon Dynamite – without the painfully poor fashion sense. He must have gotten so much crap after that movie came out.
OK, the religious conversation is beginning to grate on my nerves. Time to find a new typing place. But on the upside, I think I’m digging out. It feels good to write again.
“Sir, I don’t know where your ship learned to communicate, but it has the most peculiar dialect.” – C-3PO, Star Wars V: The Empire Strikes Back
As you may have realized (yes, I know, I hide it well), reading is one of my favorite activities. In reality, reading mysteries set in the English countryside has become, to be blunt, a bit of an obsession these past few years. I like them set from modern times (Minette Walters) to a more genteel age (Agatha Christie), between the World Wars (Jacqueline Winspear) to over a century ago (Sir Arthur Conan Doyle), and everything in between. I just can’t seem to get enough of them.
Despite the fact that the authors and I share (for the most part) a common language, there are frequently antiquated or obtuse terms that send me running for my trusty old Webster’s Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary – spattered, stained and highlighted (but still tightly bound, thankyouverymuch) after these two and some odd decades. Yes, I can generally gather the meaning through context, but it niggles my brain (3rd definition: GNAW) not to know exactly what the author meant. So I scurry into the delicate pages, hunting for meaning, before re-reading the passage with the full knowledge of what the author meant to express. Ah, it’s just divine.
So I have been sitting here this afternoon, while Padawan Learner goes about his lessons, very much enjoying my first book by Catherine Aird, The Stately Home Murder , with my much revered old red dictionary by my side. Seventy-three pages in and I’ve already looked up a dozen words. Now that’s my idea of an afternoon well spent!
“I’ve built a racer. It’s the fastest ever!” – Anakin Skywalker, Star Wars I: The Phantom Menace
Just found this in my drafts area. I guess I forgot to hit the publish button. It’s from this past May.
I’m watching, well really just staying around with, the boys of my friends, Mr and Mrs Sunday Morning Donut Buddy. Mr is off visiting my dear Dad Windu for the weekend while Mrs is working. After running to and from Jango Fett’s soccer game, I popped the television on just to see and what should be playing but the movie International Pie.
I’ve never seen this movie, which is rather shocking, as it was my most favorite book growing up. Parts of it brought tears to my eyes, just because I knew what was coming. Like when she goes to buy the foal and the drunk college boys and the selection trials. For I wanted nothing more than to compete in three day events until the day I died. My beautiful bay standard-bred, Charlie Brown, and I were inseparable from the age of 12 until I left for college. It was then that the reality that I was poor (I really didn’t know until I was 15, since everyone else I knew was broke, too), that riding was beyond expensive, and that I had to choose between college and riding.
Do I regret my choice? Sometimes.
“Your feeble skills are no match for the power of the dark side. You have paid the price for your lack of vision.” – The Emperor, Star Wars VI: Return of the Jedi
Poor Padawan Learner. All these years he’s never had to learn to take proper notes from a book, but all that has changed.
With his move into high school classes and his interest in taking a whopper of a class next year (with Biology and/or Chemistry AND Algebra II as pre-requisites), I’m weaning him off the mom-directed manner that used to define how we homeschooled – you know, back before we were unschoolers. (Cue the maniacal laughter for the strangeness of the path PL has taken over the years.)
In past years, I drew up a daily to-do list with everything broken up into little bite-sized morsels of reading, math, and etc. In addition, we previously only used conversational assessment since I find test-taking so limited in its scope. It was easy for PL since he didn’t have to put any thought into how things were going to get completed, and it was lovely for me because I’m an uber planner. Different times require different methods though. As he becomes independent as a student – even making his own lunch the night before school without being reminded – I’m scheduling weekly- and chapter-based readings for the science, history and health-related books that he’s using. That means I’ll still be breaking his math and formal writing topics into 2-3 day chunks, since they require so much participation on my part ahead of time, but he’ll be setting the pace (to an extent) for his independent reading.
What about the note-taking though? Well, part of his independent reading task is taking good, detailed notes from the chapters read. I want to emphasize that: good, detailed notes. Yes, I’m being a stickler on these notes because this skill will be the foundation for any out-of-the house classes he’s bound to take in the future. PL is not enjoying this at present, but I didn’t expect that he would. He hates writing, mostly from lack of practice I do believe. The conversational manner of his education up to this point has been fantastic for comprehension and rationalization skills, but it has done so at the expense of his writing skills. I wrote up some good, quality notes from the introduction of his Art History book to show him an example of what to aim for, and explained that I knew it would take some time for him to get to that point.
I’ve also included section review sheets for his Biology and Physical Science books and will include chapter quizzes, a mid-term test, and a final exam. This is a completely new arena for both of us, but is the reality for the educational setting that he has chosen for the sciences. It would be a disservice to exclude them this year just because I find them so distasteful and limited in scope. We’ll also use the corrected section review sheets as a study guide for chapter quizzes and the larger tests to come. Ah, the skills one learns while taking traditional classes. They will serve him well.
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