It's like Tuesdays with Morrie without all the wisdom
Archive for February, 2009
Why We’ve Been Renting for Four Years
13February 17, 2009
This one time? In Chesaning? We bought this house? And it looked like this:
And we, along with lots of help from our family, worked on it for 5 years straight in this order: 2nd floor, 1st floor, outside. Most people would do the outside or 1st floor first, but we knew if we did that, we’d get burned out and we wouldn’t finish the 2nd floor. A few years later, it looked like this:
And then we added a garage and it was done and we relaxed for a whole summer before putting on a 2-story addition and then, hahahaha, we moved to Columbus and rented. For four years. Because an experience like that scars a person.
The kids were looking at The House photo album with me and when they came to this series of pictures of the 2nd floor bathroom and hallway:
Liberty said, “ZOMG, where did you live when the house looked like that?” She couldn’t fathom that we would actually live on the filthy 1st floor, but we did:
I didn’t tell her that one very special day, three months after buying the house, the furnace guy was late for his appointment with us, so she and Lena were conceived in the midst of that filth. From the look on her face when she saw the above pictures, I think that knowledge would only add to the trauma of her birth story.
Oh, hello sexy. Wouldn’t it be a great idea to get pregnant with one or two babies exactly 44 days from the date this picture was taken? After all, we have a house, let’s put some babies in it!
And that’s what we did. The 2nd floor was finished the day I came home from the hospital, but I couldn’t do stairs, so we still slept on the 1st floor in what would later become this:
That’s all paint, not wallpaper. And it looks a bit dated already, but I guess that was seven years ago. I wonder what we would be doing to it if we still lived there today.
The 1st floor was completely finished right after Lena and Liberty turned 2, then we started on the outside. So we lived on the 2nd floor with them for a couple of years. I don’t remember it being as hard as it sounds. Maybe because Bryan worked steadily, so there was always progress to keep me excited. The 1st floor was painted over the course of I have no idea how long, but I remember a long stretch of time where Lena and Liberty’s naps consisted of me sneaking out from under them to do a faux painting technique or stencil or whatever. I totally got out of painting the 2nd floor because I was on bedrest in the hospital. I was so smart. Our relatives were excited for us because of the house and the coming twins, so we used them all up. I bet once the babies came and the fog cleared, they were like, WTF were were we doing? But whatevs.
So there were walls to move, hallways to make smaller in order to make a bathroom bigger. The electrical and all that crap had to be done. The kitchen was moved from one room to another and we knocked down a wall to open it up into the dining room. The roof, the siding, the drywall, the everything. It was hard. We don’t ever want to do that again. Watching HGTV sometimes gives me panic attacks. And that’s one reason we’ve reveled in the freedom of renting for the last 4 years. REVELED in it. Yes, it was super sad to leave that house, but it was definitely freeing to move into an apartment and not have that sense of ownership and pride because those senses make us work super hard and it’s always easier to work less hard. But now we think it’s time to re-join the land of grown-ups. We’re looking at houses again. With great fear. And excitement. Mostly fear. We’ll never do a rehab to that extent ever again. Probably. But we’re ready for something. Maybe.
Homeschooling Gives Me Blogger’s Block
13February 13, 2009
by Abby
in I homeschool
I don’t want to blog about homeschooling, but that’s what I’ve been thinking about lately so I guess I have to puke it out so I can write about other things.
We went to Kalahari Waterpark and Resort for a few days with our friends and a bunch of other alternative educators for the Unschoolers Winter Waterpark Gathering. I like to go to those convention-type things and have veteran unschoolers pump me full of comforting sunshine right in the middle of winter. It might be my favorite thing. I’m not technically an unschooler because unschoolers are all about teaching everything through life and experience and connections and, well, I use a math curriculum in a box. I avoid math at all costs in my daily life, so it would be hard to teach just by living. A radical unschooler would say, “Well, that just goes to show that you can get by just fine without it.” To which I would reply, “But I don’t want to be the one who has to add up everybody’s points every time we play Uno.” To which the radical unschooler would say, “then play Uno more often so they can get the hang of it.” To which I would reply, “Uno makes me want to stab somebody. And so does this conversation.” The end.
So I use the curriculum (complete with script!) to teach the maths. So, while I’m not technically an unschooler, I’m generally more comfortable around unschoolers than school-at-homers. You will never catch me at a homeschooling conference for people who log school hours and have subject checklists and who are otherwise homeschooling for excellence. I just really do believe that a kid can learn 4 years worth of high school math, english, or anything in 6 weeks or less. I just don’t want to count the Uno points, so…math curriculum. Otherwise easy-breezy, so…unschoolers conference.
The conference was fun and I loved going to the Rethinking Education type chats while the kids were off playing in the waterpark or taking part in a DS tournament or watching a bunch of other unschoolers play Rock Band or getting a Leaf Village henna tattoo:
But I think what I loved most was not being the brand-new mom in the room with the “But what if they never learn anything?” question. I used to be that mom at least quarterly, if not more often, but now I have friends with bigger unschooled kids and I see how it turns out alright. And I have kids who are almost 10 and I can see it turning out alright. I can’t tell you how often their experience with certain things that might not be “educational” in other people’s eyes (*cough* graphic novels) has turned out to be the spark that lit the fire of (traditional) education under them in ways that a chapter from a textbook never could. I think interest and freedom in education are two of the most powerful tools we have.
We all have things from school that have stayed with us or left us right after the test. Me? Everything left after the test. Unless it was grammar, which was already part of my soul for the 17 years before I had my first real grammar class. See how my interest helped me? See? I hated being forced to read certain books and then write a paper about them. I just think that’s mean and not at all helpful. And! And I never spent more than one night writing one of those papers. (I just made a long and boring list of things I hated about school, but I deleted it and I’m just going to say, all of those things I hated? They left me stained with contempt and uninterested in the subject for life.)
Oh, hi, I should say that this post is not to incite debate over school choices and whatnot because, really, I don’t care how anybody else’s kids are schooled because in the end, I think it all just turns out fine no matter what. You can send your kid to public school for 13 years and he’ll find an interest and turn it into a life or not, and I can homeschool like this and my kids will find an interest and turn it into a life or not. Either way, they grow up and make their way in the world and they gather the tools they need in order to make the way they want. I’m just saying the conference was fun, I see this life working for my kids, I’m glad I’m not worried about it anymore, and I’m glad I have friends who can support each other in this life, and Uno makes me stabby.
So Disappointed.
10February 8, 2009
I hesitate to blog this because I love Neil Gaiman ever so much and, since he loves me too, I don’t want to hurt his feelings. But HOW COULD HE LET HENRY SELICK DO THAT TO CORALINE? I’m vague about the details because I don’t want to be too spoilery, but if you know nothing about Coraline, there may be spoilers ahead.
I don’t need movies that are based on books to be exactly the same as the books, but when we all fall in love with a little girl protagonist who really and truly saves the day in the book all by herself, well, we want her to really and truly save the day and not be saved by a character who wasn’t in the book at all and was hardly in the movie enough to warrant his role in the very end of the movie. The ending of the book was clever with the picnic and the well, and it showed how bright and heroic Coraline was. It was important to me that the ending of the movie show her in the same light. It did not. Yes, Coraline is heroic and spunky and tough in the other 1 hour and 39 minutes of the 1 hour and 40 minute movie, but that ending? It hurt me. It hurt my girls and it hurt all girls. (I would like to point out here that my instinct is to apologize for my feelings because, well, I don’t want to seem oversensitive, but I will resist the urge to apologize because I feel well and truly wronged on behalf of my gender and my instinct to apologize for that feeling is only proof of why we need more movies where the girl saves the day. The whole day, not just most of the day or some of the day, but the whole effing day. Ok?)It would have been better if Wybie had helped her with the things she had to do leading up to the big and final thing that had to be done, but the fact that he swooped in and actually did the big and final thing, well, that’s just not right. Some will point out that the character of Mr. Bobinsky says something like, “Coraline, the mice tell me that you’re our savior!” which is nice, but that does not make it ok. In the book, that line fit well, but in the movie you think, Um, actually, didn’t Wybie save the day? In light of Wybie’s role in ridding the world of the thing, Mr. Bobinsky’s comment sounds a little bit hollow.
Coraline’s ingenuity at the end of the book took my breath away. It was a great idea, carried out by her and her alone and all of us girls in this house were delighted to have found a character like her. The ending of the movie left us with mixed feelings. It was a truly beautiful and amazing movie, technically speaking, and we’re glad Coraline was heroic, but it really seemed unnecessary to end it that way. Lena and Liberty do not feel as strongly about this as I do, of course, and I really hesitated about even saying anything about it in front of them. I knew they enjoyed the movie, and I didn’t want to ruin that for them, but I just couldn’t resist asking them what they thought of the ending. I pointed out the sexism, and I’m not sorry. Why should they be inundated with the idea that a boy will save the day without being taught to question that idea? I’m off to read the book again so the true Coraline can live on in my head.
As a side note, Lena, Liberty, and Maya were excited to hear the movie Coraline say she was from Pontiac, Michigan. That was fun and they all gasped and turned to whisper, “Did you hear that?” Funny.
Away!
7February 3, 2009
by Abby
in I very rarely go places
I’m trying to blog but I keep getting distracted by Mario Kart. And I’ve been doing laundry, making food, and packing for the unschoolers conference thingy at Kalahari. And Maya puked a couple of days ago so I had to snuggle on the couch. And Kristen‘s son broke his arm yesterday so I had to fret over that. And I have nothing to say, but I usually don’t let that stop me. I looked for a funny video for you, but I couldn’t find one. Why isn’t anybody making funny videos anymore?
We’re going to the Unschooler’s Winter Water Gathering at Kalahari Resort tomorrow morning with some of the weekly potluckers and other locals, so that’s fun. Dawn has to work, but we’re making her son come with us because our children cannot bear the void caused by Noah’s absence.
Oh, I know! I read this book called I See the Moon by C. B. Christiansen and I got choked up on every single page and then I cried through the last 3 chapters. It’s about a 12-year-old girl whose 15-year-old sister is pregnant and placing the baby for adoption. The little sister dreams of being an aunt and she’s so excited and she wants to be just like her favorite aunt who now has dementia and it’s just so sad. Every page. Read it and tell me what you think. But lower your expectations because when I finally got around to seeing the movie Titanic, I did not shed a tear. For weeks everybody kept saying, “It’s sooooo sad! Bring a whole box of tissues!” And then it was soooo lame except for the musicians’ continued playing and the images of the old people and parents and children holding each other on the bed and waiting to drown. That part was sad. Oh, and the part where Rose didn’t die. That was sad, too. Don’t judge me.
Anyway, that book was sad, but maybe you won’t cry. It doesn’t mean you’re cold and dead inside. Probably.
