Post Christmas

In past years, I've felt a big sense of let-down after Christmas.  Once the present-making and giving is done, and the fun of Christmas day is reduced to just one big mess of paper and more "stuff" that I have to find a home for in my home ... I've felt sad and depressed each time.

This year felt a bit different.  There was less frenzy leading up to the big day.  We didn't do everything on my list - we didn't even put out all our decorations.  In some ways I was sad to never get around to having the kids make wreaths - but in other ways it was a relief to just do what we had time for and not to whip myself along at a frenzied pace.

And our Christmas day wasn't perfect either.  I got a terrible sore throat and had to send my husband out for zinc throat lozenges.  Carbon didn't get a single toy - just clothes and practical-type stuff - and he got cranky and was rude when he opened a hoodie sweatshirt from his grandma.  I had to pause gift-opening and take him to the side and give him a talking to, and lecturing your child about gratitude in the hallway while he cries about not getting what he really wanted puts a downer on Christmas.

But, strangely, I'm not feeling a let-down after the fact. Things weren't perfect.  I didn't create a "magical" holiday for my family and kids.  There were disappointments, even tears, about how the holiday worked out.  And yet I'm OK.  I did the best I could, and we're just moving on from here.

This week post-Christmas has been lovely.  We've just been hanging out, resting, taking it easy.  Carbon and I had a good talk and I promised to buy him a toy if he ended up not getting one at all (we still have one more gift exchange at my dad's house left to go).  His grandma took him to return the hoodie and bought him a toy robot instead.  My sore-throat turned into a head cold, and I spent nights sleeping in a chair with a humidifier while my husband brought home spicy carry-out food for me.  We didn't really get anything major done at all.

And the seed catalogs have started to arrive.  And there are plans to be made for 2013.  And it's all going to be OK - maybe not perfect, but OK.

The New Jim Crow

This is the 2012-2013 UU Common Read: The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness by Michelle Alexander.

Wow.  The subject matter is so compelling, and the more I read the more angry I felt that our society could be this unfair to people.  Alexander lays out a detailed and persuasive argument that the criminal system, especially the War on Drugs, is stacked against people of color, and that this unfair design to the system is every bit as much of a system of racial control as Jim Crow laws ever were.

Everyone should read this book.  That said, I did find that the book begins to repeat itself by the mid-point.  But even so, I still respected the sheer size of the argument Alexander has put together here.

An interesting article about the book here.

A discussion guide is available from the UUA.

In our congregation, our minister has given a sermon on the book, and we're doing a class in our Adult Education program.

Read it!

2012: A Year in Learning

Here's what we did in 2012 in our little Home School.


Classes Taken:
JiuJitsu
Physical Education
Swimming
Theater Arts
Science
Chess Club
Religious Education at Church
Tumbling
Baseball
Gymnastics
Violin and Piano Lessons

Workshops Taken:
Science and Inquiry
Paper Architecture
Chemistry
Zoology: Bees
Physics
Lego Engineering

Camps:
Nature Center Camp
Church Camp
Interfaith Camp
"Play in Spanish" Camp
Video Special Effects Camp

Curriculum Used:
Math U See
Five in a Row
Story of the World
Story Book Art
Beginning Geography
Handwriting Without Tears
Language Lessons for the Very Young
Explode the Code
Sonrisas Spanish School
Exploration Education Physics
Rosetta Stone Spanish
Real Science Odyssey: Earth and Space
Art Lab for Kids
Writing Strands
History Pockets: Ancient Civilizations
Hooked on Spanish

Some of the Books We Used:
Young People's History of US
Before Columbus: 1491

Highlights of the Literature We Read:
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
Origami Yoda
Theodosia and the Serpents of Chaos
Penny from Heaven
The Mad Scientists Club
Anne of Green Gables
Stuart Little
We Have Always Lived in the Castle
Cheshire Cheese Cat: a Dicken's of a Tale
Wind in the Willows

Kits and Programs Used:
Big Bag of Science
Typing
Reader Rabbit

Unit Studies Initiated by Me
Women's History
Columbus
Maurice Sendak
Tibet
Charles Dickens

Child-Led Interests Followed:
Origami
Chinchilla Care
Bats
Scribblenauts
Volcanoes
Dinosaurs
Evolution
Writing a short story about zombies
World War I
Minecraft

Performances Attended
ScrapArtsMusic
The Phantom Tollbooth (local Family Theater)
The Mystical Arts of Tibet
Nathalie MacMaster, Celtic Fiddle
Go, Dog, Go (local Family Theater)
The Imperial Acrobats of China
Le Ballet Jazz de Montreal
The Wind in the Willows (local Family Theater)

Projects
performing in Lorax -themed Earth Day Worship Service at Church
Built a chicken-coop
performing in Holiday Variety Show at church
demonstrating in support of marriage equality
doing a food drive and delivering it to the Food Bank
making Halloween costumes

Free-Form Learning
Boardgames
Nature Study
Written Correspondence (notes to Grandparents and so forth)
Goat and Chicken Care
Spanish through bilingual books and DVD's
Gardening
Geography
Cooking and Baking
Sewing and Knitting

FieldTrips
Homeschooler Days at the Great Wolf Lodge
The Zoo
Many Nature Hikes
Camping at the Ocean
Mt. St. Helens
King Tut Exhibit
State Homeschool Convention
Washington History Museum
Chihuly Glass Museum
Art Museum
BeachCombing for Rocks
Mushroom Farm Tour
Salmon creek tour
Pumpkin Patch
"Creative Quest" at Michael's store
Children's Museum
Mazatlan, Mexico
Christmas tree farm

Social
Homeschool Play Group
Game Nights at Church
lots of playdates with friends
Summer playgroup

Reflecting on Christmas

Reading #621 from Singing the Living Tradition

Why Not a Star?

They told me that when Jesus was born a star appeared in the heavens above the place where the young child lay.

When I was very young I had no trouble believing wondrous things; I believed in the star.

It was a wonderful miracle, part of a long ago story, foretelling an uncommon life.

They told me a supernova appeared in the heavens in its dying burst of fire.

When I was older and believed in science and reason I believed the story of the star explained.

But I found I was unwilling to give up the star, fitting symbol for the birth of one whose uncommon life has been long remembered.

The star explained became the star understood, for Jesus, for Buddha, for Zarathustra.

Why not a star?  Some bright star shines somewhere in the heavens each time a child is born.

Who knows what it may foretell?

Who knows what uncommon life may yet again unfold, if we but give it a chance?

--Margaret Gooding

Fun in the mail

Who doesn't love to get a package?

Fun things that came in the mail: our new trampoline (not assembled - Carbon claimed to be terribly disappointed it wasn't lowered down into our backyard by a helicopter) and a whole box of new study books for the RE Credentialing program.

Two very different kinds of fun, but I love them both.

Meet "Rocky"

This is the kids' new "adopted" penguin, "Rocky".  He's decked out to go ziplining, on a set-up they ran across the room on a string.

He arrived in the mail last night, and is a hit!  They had decided to adopt a penguin when they got the WWF gift catalog in the mail, pooling all the money in their two piggy banks (tooth fairy money and money earned doing chores).  Adding it all together, they only had $25 between the two of them - enough to adopt a penguin and get a certificate but not enough to receive a stuffed animal.  That was OK with them - they just really wanted to adopt a penguin.

Well, without telling them I went ahead and provided a Mom's-matching-grant (a time honored program you've probably heard of before, I'm sure), and upped them to the $50 level that would bring the stuffed animal.

Today has been all about this penguin.  They had to work out a custody-sharing agreement in which he will sleep with each of them alternating nights, and they've been making clothing and ziplines and cutting out paper fish for him to eat.  We read up on Rockhopper Penguins online, and looked on the world map to see where he probably came from.

In my experience, children love to donate to animal causes.  If you have an animal-loving child, consider a symbolic adoption as a gift - I bet it will be a hit!

Snow Days for Homeschoolers

Yesterday was a sick and snow day here.  Sick for me.  Snow for the kids.

One thing about growing up homeschooled was that I never got sick or snow days as a child.  There was always something I could be doing, and no day needed to be totally wasted.  I remember lying in bed and doing math, or if I was really really sick my mom would resort to educational movies.  My experience of Shakespeare's plays was heavily tinged with fever from one particularly sick week when she had me watch all the recorded performances of all the plays I had already read.

My own kids complain now that they don't get sick days, or snow days.  It's not that I work them into the ground - I think it's just that the idea of a Snow Day as a day of freedom is so appealing.  My kids have days of freedom all the time, so there's really no need for it to be weather dependent.

But yesterday I let them have it.  I was sick, sick enough to just want to lie on the sofa and read to myself, and there was snow to play with outdoors.  The forecast wasn't good for it sticking around, so why not seize the fun while they could?

Today is shaping up to be a repeat, as I'm still feeling awful.  But today I think they'll do their schoolwork.

Turkey for dinner for weeks ...

I find this little parody very cute.

I missed the turkey Thanksgiving this year (shrimp feast in Mexico instead), so I was glad when my mom offered me a turkey for our early Yule/Christmas gathering a couple weeks ago.  She raises her own turkeys, and this fellow was about 30 lbs.

Those 30 lbs of bird have become:

1. Roast turkey served at a holiday dinner for nine.
2. Eight turkey sandwiches.
3. 10 quarts of turkey broth.
4. A giant pot of turkey soup that has been enough for six meals.
5. Turkey pot pie, enough for two meals.
6. Turkey tomato rice (I cooked the rice in turkey broth, added chopped up turkey, a jar of home canned stewed tomatoes, some frozen swiss chard I froze this summer, and a few marinated artichoke hearts, with plenty of dried oregano, salt, and pepper).

We're almost out of turkey, but I think two + weeks of meals from one bird is pretty awesome.  We eat one or two turkeys a year, and I'm always thrilled at how far they go.  

Our little Dickens unit study

Today I finished reading Charles Dickens: Scenes from an Extraordinary Life to the kids.  It's a nice biography of Dickens using his own letters and notes, and including quick synopses of all his books.

To go with the biography, we've listened to the audiobook of A Christmas Carol and watched several movie versions (lowpoint on the movies has to be A Barbie Christmas Carol).

We also had a fun conversation, initiated by the kids, about what Dickens would be surprised by if he were to time travel to our time.  Sadly, we all agreed that the way we treat the very poor and children is still not good enough, and we think Dickens would be disappointed by that.

Now the kids are interested in some of the other stories.  I think we may look into Oliver Twist and Ye Old Curiosity Shop next.

Holiday Weekends

The holidays are busy times for me at church, although it usually settles down by the second half of December and I get a little reflective time in the second half of the month.

This weekend was the biggie.  A holiday variety/talent show on Saturday, then church Sunday morning and taking the youth group to the zoo for their light display Sunday evening.

Everything involved my family as well, so they are just about as tired out as I am.  I'm looking forward to my day off tomorrow!

A sad day

My heart is breaking over the tragic events today.  These mass-shootings are always horrible (interesting stats here), but this one feels even more horrible because the children were so young.

Yes, there are cultural issues we should talk about.  Yes, we should examine our gun controls and our mental health systems. But at some deep, deep level, this just points to our vulnerability.  Our terribly, terribly vulnerable incarnated selves and the terribly, terribly fragile receptacles of our love - all can be dust at any time.  And it's so hard to hug your babies close and to know that the world is not a safe place.

And yet the world is also a wonderful place.  How to balance this, to cherish and love life and yet to know that it will end?

My heart is breaking.  I will pray, and I will work for better gun control and mental health services. But this is also a reminder to look again at mortality, at love, and at what matters most.

(This reminds me of how I felt a few months ago when I wrote this post.)

In the Bleak MidWinter

OK, honestly things are pretty rough right now.  Work is hard, people are hurting, and the future is unclear.  At home life is messy, my children are super cranky, I fight with my husband too much, money is tight.

It's shaping up to be a bleak winter.

So I need to focus on self-care.

 I cannot change the outcome of things at work.  All I can do is be present to what will be.  It's truly out of my hands, although my presence is not irrelevant.  I cannot make it all better, but if I wasn't there it might be worse.

I also cannot make everything perfect at home.  My children are cranky.  Yep, this too shall pass.  I just need to give them my best no matter what.  I fight with my husband.  Newsflash - marriage isn't perfect and I'm sure we will fight more than a few times in our lives together.  When I love myself the best, it seems like he loves me the best too.  Money is tight - and the way to get through that is to be tight with my money.  And here also, I am best at managing money/resources when I'm at peace with myself.

So it all comes back to me, which is good because it's really the only thing I have any control over.  I took time to meet with colleagues yesterday, and to do some holiday preparations.  Today I went to the gym and ran my anger and frustration out.  A new spiritual practice book arrived in the mail today.  I'm starting a mother-daughter Bible study with my mom.

All I can give is my best.  Cultivating my best, caring for myself - it's not selfish.  It's the best path through these dark times.  I also have faith that the sun will come out again, but it's time to turn inward now - it's winter for me.

Our Gift Guide 2012

(I am not getting anything for writing these reviews.  These are just the things my kids are enjoying right now, that I think are pretty cool.)



Here are some of the things my kids will be getting for Christmas:

Fluxx is a fun series of card games, with each variety having its own flavor and special twist.  For my kids who can get a bit too competitive, these games are nice because the point is really not to win - that tends to just happen by accident in the course of playing the game.  We love to play games, so they'll be getting some new games for Christmas this year.

Dover Coloring Books are complex, and come with educational themes such as history or art.  Hypatia loves to sit and color, and the more complex the pictures the better.

Personal Lanterns are useful, and I don't know about everyone else's kids but mine love to have control over a light source.  They also break and lose all their lights, so new ones are always needed.

Art Supplies are always needed and enjoyed.  The same goes for Bare Books.

Books, of course.

Walkmans are old technology, but for my audiobook loving kids it's great to check books on CD out from the library.  I also appreciate that they are carrying around something I can afford for them to lose or break, instead of an iPod.  Our last pair of portable CD players were thrift store finds, but they are breaking and it's time for new ones.

Travel Mugs for their hot chocolates and steamers that they love to get as special treats when I'm getting my espresso.

And I'm sure Santa will also stuff some legos in their stockings, and some edible treats.  (Hypatia put Swiss Miss Hot Chocolate on her Santa list, because she doesn't like the Fair Trade stuff I buy.  I'll have to bend my rules about chocolate and get that for her.)

They'll also each get a homemade gift (a knit hat, a quilt), and the family has been saving our allowances for 6 months to buy a family Christmas gift of a trampoline!

It's going to be a good, but not crazy, Christmas.

Sparking creative play

I pulled off a great parenting feat today: my kids voluntarily played happily together "unplugged" from their electronic devices for over an hour without any fighting.  It was creative, original, messy play.

How did I do it?  I gave them a box of trash to play with.

In fact, I keep a largish stash of bits that could have gone into the recycling but that seemed to have potential for creative constructive play, and these items can get pulled out when the kids want to make stuff.  Today I added a box of newly cut scraps of foam board ... and Voila!

I love how the box can be more fun that what came in it, and this is the same idea. :)

Grown-up Christmas List

I've been listening to the local "Warm" station that goes into 24/7 Christmas mode this month, and this song has been getting to me.

My grown up Christmas list:

no more lives torn apart, 
and wars would never start,
and time would heal all hearts.
Every one would have a friend,
and right would always win,
and love would never end.
This is my grown up Christmas list, 
this is my only life-long wish,
this is my grown-up Christmas list.

What would I put on that list?

What would you put on that list?

The rewards of patience

So many things are like this mushroom kit that the kids put together a month or so ago.

You put in the effort, and you can't see the result right away.  All you can do is hope for the best.

You peek on it, checking and worrying.  Maybe you didn't do it right?

And then you forget about it.  It takes too long, so you stop checking on it everyday.  You let it sit, you move on to other projects ....

And then, you notice it all of a sudden!  And it can be like magic - like wow! how did that happen all of a sudden?  Where were you when this awesome thing just popped out?

Growth happens when no one is looking.  It happens after you've given up on it.  It happens in between the check-ups, the moves, and the fussing.

Oh, Christmas Tree

A family ritual: going to the same tree farm we've visited for years in a row (a lovely family-run farm), the adults put on the lights and the angel, and the kids hang the decorations.  We had a bit of debate about whose turn it was to hide the pickle, but the kids were gracious about it and worked it out between themselves.  (So the pickle tradition seems to have actually been invented in America.  But my German-descent American grandma said the reason to hide a pickle had nothing to do with good luck or getting an extra present ... it was because Christmas is too sweet and to make sure you don't attract bad luck you have to put a little sour into all that sweetness.)

The Reading Life

It's been a long time since I wrote a post about what I've been reading.  It's been a great reading month, much of it done while on vacation (I love vacation reading).

I took a nice nerdy pile of books on vacation with me:

Congregational Leadership in Anxious Times by Peter Steinke.

This book lays out the fact that anxiety is normal, and the need for steady leadership through anxious times.  It is practical, but deeply grounded in clear principles of theology and psychology.

The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness by Michelle Alexander

The UU Common Read for next year, this book was eye-opening, shocking, even enraging.  It made me mad at the system, sad about all the injustice, and convinced we need to move away from the paradigm of punitive justice and toward a more compassionate society.

Christianity: A Very Short Introduction

A publication of Oxford University Press, this is part of the "A Very Short Introduction" series - a series I had not been aware of before but now I would love to collect.  This one was clear, concise, and fun to read.  The other titles in the series cover seemingly every sort of topic - I could really get into this.

The Postmistress by Sarah Blake

The only novel I've read recently, this book started off slowly, ended a bit anti-climactically - and moved me profoundly none-the-less.  It did what I think stories do best, asking a big question, making you think, and not answering all those questions.  But, from the other reviews online, people either love or dislike this book, and I can see why.  I loved it, but could still see the deep flaws in the plot and writing.

Advent

I love drawing out the process of Christmas fun ... spreading out the excitement and little gifts instead of having one huge blow-out.  Advent calendars are perfect for my preference of slow gratification and daily ritual.

The kids didn't get home until the 3rd, so I had to get it all set up and ready for them to start as soon as they got home.  This year we've got the buffet in the dining room set up as Advent land.



First, we have fun packages that came in the mail from grandparents.  Egg-carton advent calendars have been a tradition for several years, then we didn't get one last year because my father-in-law was very ill.  So nice that they felt good enough to put them together again.  They fill them with all sorts of random coolness, wrapped in bits of tissue paper, recycled office paper, and newspaper.  We've opened some odd bits in the past - a dried dead lizard was a memorable one.  So far, some cool rocks, a shell necklace, and a quarter have been revealed.

Then we have a Playmobil advent calendar.  These are fun and come with a cardboard background that can be slowly filled with the figurines.




And then I wanted to sort of copy an idea I saw on the blog Salt and Chocolate, to have a winter scene with little parts individually wrapped, and each day the kids can open one and add to the scene.  They can also play with the scene and move it about anytime they want.  This was my favorite part of my childhood nativity scene, and one of my favorite childhood Christmas memories.  Salt and Chocolate's version is very Waldorfy, (that's a word, right?) while mine is made of the cheesy pseudo Dickens Christmas Village stuff that I just can't help loving.

The kids are loving it all.  OK - I love it too. :)

Learning All the Time - and While on Vacation

The kids get back from vacation tonight, and tomorrow we start "school" back up again.  But what did they learn while on that vacation?






We took a boat tour back into the mangroves, and saw all sorts of lovely birds (and crabs and iguana) up close.  Nature Study, for sure.



We also visited the Aquarium in Mazatlan, which features a display on maritime science and history and the local fishing practices.  Clearly educational.



The kids did a lot of boogie boarding, with their dad, aunt, and Papi.  Physical Education!



And then there is Geography (field trip to another country, discussion of timezones, looking at maps, etc.) and Foreign Language (even if they were really shy about trying to speak Spanish).  They probably learned more from their "vacation" than they could have possibly learned in the same number of days sitting in school.

Sabbath Keeping

From Gates of Prayer:

There are days when we seek things for ourselves
and measure failure by
what we do not gain.

On the Sabbath
We seek not to acquire but to share.

There are days
when we exploit nature as though it were a horn
of plenty that
can never be exhausted.

On the Sabbath
we stand in wonder before the mystery
of creation.

There are days
when we act as if we cared nothing
for the rights of others.

On the Sabbath
we are reminded that Justice is our duty
and a better world
is our goal.



I wish all a Happy Sabbath, whatever day of the week you observe it.

Choices, Choices

Today, I had just stepped out of my bath when I got a message from our renters that there's another leak  in the roof.  I already had some errands planned, so when my husband got in from the morning chores I proposed that we pool our errands and go by the rental house while we were out.

Errand pooling = a reduction in gas used

But ... 

If we were going to go look at the roof leak, he wanted to take the ladder, which meant driving our pick-up truck instead of our hybrid.

Truck use = more diesel used

As we got on the road, he saw that we actually needed to stop and get more diesel in the truck.  We got to the station, and looked at the prices ....

$5.89 a gallon for 90% biodiesel.  Or $4.69 a gallon for 20% bio.

Or, we could just go with mineral diesel, and even that's not cheap.

How much do I want to pay (and can we actually afford it right now, because we may have to get a roof repair done on the rental house right before Christmas!) to know that I'm not contributing to the tar sands/gulf oil spill/middle eastern wars over oil?  And, s**t, biodiesel is still bad for air quality and climate change!

OK, back on the road again, knowing that we were 20% not culpable in all that bad stuff and 80% still culpable, but we are still errand pooling right now ...

To the downtown public library, where I had my canvas book bag and returned a few items that should have gone back before we went on vacation but didn't make it in (oh well, paying library fines supports a fine public institution, right?) and got some books I needed for work and home ... no moral compromises to speak of presented themselves there.

Then on to the mega fabric/craft store.  We got there and found a parking spot large enough for our stupid giant pick-up truck.  And then I realized that all my reusable shopping bags live in the back of my hybrid, because who would ever take the pick-up truck shopping?  That would be a silly thing to do.  And the little compact bags I keep in my purse are still in the purse I took on vacation with me.  

So this little forgetfulness = 5 unnecessary plastic bags being used

I'm sure my husband loved going through the fabric store with me.

I was hungry by the time we got to the check-out line, so I grabbed a bag of candy.

Junk food = all kinds of bad choices from so many points of view

We got stopped at a flashing red light intersection, and my husband being himself, he laid down his horn on the person two cars ahead of us who wasn't "getting some balls and just going for it".  That led the person one car ahead of us to honk back, and then flip us off through their back window.  And then, because we might not have seen that flip off, she rolled down her side window (in the rain) and stuck her arm up as high as it would go and flipped us off again.

And my dear husband honked at her again.

Argh!!!!!!!!!

This is why I always want to drive.  But I don't like to drive that damn truck.

We just should have driven two cars.  The truck would have only been used for a short drive, and the hybrid would have done the across town errands.  And I wouldn't have come home with 5 plastic bags or been flipped off today.

Day 30 of Gratitude: Back from Vacation

I'm just back from vacation today, after being with the family in Mexico for a 10 day vacation over Thanksgiving.  As it's the final day of my 30 Days of Gratitude blog series, it's fitting to say today that I am grateful to be able to travel and take a lovely vacation in the sunshine.



And now on to the Christmas season!

Day 28 of Gratitude: My Kids

I'm almost done with this month of Gratitude Reflections, and it would be wrong to end without talking about my children.

There has been a bit of conversation in the last few years about studies that show that having kids decreases happiness for the parents.  But then there are new studies that critique the old studies, and you can read more about that question here on Jezebel.

So, am I glad I had kids because they make me happier?  I like Gretchen Rubin's observation that having kids isn't happier on a day-to-day, moment-to-moment level, but that it is part of how she "feels right".

My children were dearly wished for.  And yet, they are not what I imagined they would be.  Who was it that said that in order to love the child you actually have that you will need to mourn and grieve for the imaginary child you carried around in your head for 9 months?  (I think it was Mr. Rogers.)  Well, for me that is true.  They are not my creations, not my imaginings, not what I expected.

And they're perfect just the way they are.

Day 26 of Gratitude: the life of the mind

This month of gratitude thing has actually been challenging to me - and possibly boring to my one or two readers - as it has started to feel like I'm bragging/repeating myself/not saying anything interesting.

But I'll finish it out, anyway.  Today, I pause to tell the world how grateful I am for the life of the mind.  My maternal grandparents were life-long learners, and modeled an engaging and inspiring life of the mind.  They subscribed to interesting magazines, read difficult books, took educational trips, and patronized and played classical music.

I knew I wanted to be like that.  I watched my mother also pursue her own life of the mind, and I am happy to think it's something I'm passing on to the next generation.

There is always something more to learn, and for that I am grateful.  Life will never get boring as long as I'm still able to engage with it in this way.

(For the record, and for full-disclosure, Carbon does not make a habit of reading Scientific American.  I had told him about an article I thought he would find interesting, and he was just trying to read that article.  In the end, I read it out loud to him.)

Gratitude Day 24: Skipping Black Friday

We spent Black Friday at the zoo, where this duckling tried to bond with Hypatia and follow her out of the avian area.

I'm very grateful to feel no urgency about my Christmas shopping.  My extended family does a Secret Santa gift exchange, so we all only need to get one gift.  My in-law's are a smaller family and are pretty laid back about gift giving also.  And my immediate family will only be exchanging small, mostly homemade gifts, and expecting Santa to come just to fill the stockings with some small things.

Our usual routine is to pick a shopping day and to make a day of it in our small downtown shopping area, for festive fun.  No real crowds, no parking lots, no lines to speak of, and no cranky mall employees.

I love the Christmas season, and am grateful to start it the same way I want to end it: with family and togetherness and hopes for a peaceful, better world.

Day 23 of Gratitude: Food

We spent Thanksgiving here with my in-laws, for a very different food-culture for Thanksgiving.  It was a bit of a sad thing for me, because we have always been with my family for this holiday before.

More than in any other area of life, I notice the family-tradition that goes with our Food Culture.  It is about where you live, yes, but it is also about where your family has come from.  Here, we ate a local feast, but still brought along our can of cranberry sauce and made a pumpkin pie.

Food and Family.  Happy Thanksgiving!

Day 21 of Gratitude: Flexible Work

I have a great job.  What you do for work is going to take up a huge part of your life, and although this is a pragmatic transaction (your time in exchange for the money you need to live) people almost all agree that a happier life results from finding work that you love - work you want to do even if you weren't being paid for it.

As a Director of Religious Education, working full-time, I have quipped that I have the reverse of what many working people I know have: They have 5 or 6 days a week of rigid work and 1 day to figure out how to get everything else done, while I have 1 day a week of rigid work and 6 days a week to do everything else and get ready for that one day.  It's a pretty sweet deal.

Don't get me wrong - flexible work does not mean No Work.  A flex day is not a day off.  And sometimes flexible goes both ways - most of my meetings have to be in the evenings and that means less time with my husband, I work weekends and that means no normal weekends with my husband, I get random work calls on my cell phone at any old hour, and I find it hard to go out for coffee by myself without running into someone for church who would like me to sit down and talk with them for a bit ... sometimes for impromptu pastoral care sessions.

When I go on errands, they are usually mixed, with a list for church and a personal list.  I'll separate my purchases at the check out line and saying "I need to use two different charge cards today" rolls off my tongue on a regular basis.  My family is used to the line "I just need to run into church for a little bit ... I'll try to be back soon".  And of course holidays have no real meaning for a religious professional, and I'll never get to enjoy a 3-day weekend with the rest of the world.

But ... if you can take your work to the beach with you, how cool is that?  I love 85% of my work, and would do it even if it wasn't my job.  (I'm giving it 15% for attending boring or unpleasant meetings, which not all meetings are, cleaning up after others, moving heavy furniture around at church, and the other less-fun but necessary tasks).  And I get to read or write or plan while watching my kids play on the beach, or at the park.  And, yes, I've also brought my work to less fun places, like dentist or hospital waiting rooms - but that is also a blessing to be able to do.

I am very grateful for this flexible work.  There is a lot to be said for a change in work culture that requires a bit less "face time" in the office and transitions us to a focus on productivity rather than time-spent working.  If you can get it done on the beach, why the heck not?

(Caveat - I do see some necessity for face-time for work teams, and it is nice to be able to pop down the hall and ask a co-worker their opinion real quick.  But overall I still think a lot of professions and groups could have less face-time and more flex-time if we had a small culture shift and worried more about product and less about controlling people.)

Day 16 and 17 of Gratitude: Libraries

I'm a day behind on my 30 days of gratitude, but I love Public Libraries so much that I think I can give them two days worth of my gratitude. :)

Without libraries what have we? We have no past and no future.
Ray Bradbury 

I have always loved libraries.  As a child, my mother would take us to the library and we'd haul out a radio flyer wagon full of books to take home.  We always had as many books out as we could, and although we ended up paying a lot in overdue fines because of having too many books out to manage properly (a problem I still have - the bane of homeschoolers, autodidacts, and avid readers alike), but I think paying fines to libraries is only right and just.

Libraries are the one American institution you shouldn't rip off.
Barbara Kingsolver 

What do I get from the library?  Books, of course.  Audiobooks, as well.  Music CD's, sometimes.  Children's DVD's.  Bilingual books that we use to try and learn spanish.  But we also get children's story hour and other educational events, author talks, meeting rooms available for community groups, internet access, printers, reference librarians, children's librarians, summer reading programs, and more.

People can lose their lives in libraries. They ought to be warned.
Saul Bellow 

The kids and I go the library at least once a week, and habitually have out about 150 items (our limit with three cards).  I end up paying between $5-$20 a month in fines, but the service we receive is priceless.  

Day 15 of Gratitude: the town we live in

A new building for the local Children's Museum just opened this week - and it is amazing.  The kids love it.

Today I'm grateful for the town we live in.  It has so many wonderful amenities like museums, performance art centers, art galleries, bookstores, public transit, and parks, a great local culture with lots of artists and cool people, a good Farmer's Market, and yet it isn't too big and the traffic and crime are pretty low.  It's also the sort of town where you can get from downtown to a small farm in 15 minutes of driving.

I grew up Seattle, and by the time I was leaving I was so sick of the traffic.  I love our little slice of rural life, but there are also some things that I will always want somewhat near me: a UU church, a place to see live performance, access to local shops and not just big box stores, a public library, good restaurants and coffee shops, and a fabric store.  I could live without them, and I would if I had to, but I am glad to not have to give them up.  This town is a wonderful balance for me.

Urban, suburban, and rural are the only categories we talk about anymore.  Technically, we're suburban.  But what happened to the category of "Town"?  I love my town/small city.

Day 14 of Gratitude: Head, Hearts, and Hands

Today I am grateful for a varied work life that keeps our whole selves busy and active.  I think of this sometimes when I am planning our To Do Lists or packing for a time away from home:

What is our Head Work right now?  What are we learning, reading, thinking about?

What is our Heart Work right now?  What is calling us to care for others, feel beauty, express ourselves?

What is our Hand Work right now?  What are we making, doing, and building?

(And then there is also Body Work, which is running, playing, jumping, etc - but that doesn't fit into my "H - Work" alliteration theme.)

I know many people - adults and children - end up in routines that specialize in one of those types of work, but I personally feel out of balance whenever I'm too much in Head, Heart, Hands, or Body.  My job, home, and our homeschooling are so wonderful because they all allow for a balanced approach to the types of work in our lives.

Today I spent time comforting a sick child, driving to and from a meeting about 70 miles away from home, meeting with colleagues for mutual support, giving a presentation to colleagues about systems theory and a specific book we had read together (How Your Church Family Works - great book), ruminating on a passing comment that caused me some anxiety and self-reflection, meeting with the youth advisors in my congregation for a check-in and planning meeting, reading another study book (Congregational Leadership in Anxious Times), supervising a child with Spanish and math schoolwork, watching a nature documentary with a sick child, washing dishes, folding and hanging laundry, cooking dinner, knitting a hat, emailing, playing Words with Friends, watching Dexter with my husband, reading blog posts, ranting to my husband about said blog posts, writing thank you notes, and tidying up and sweeping in my home.

With a life as varied and rich as that, no part of me has a chance to atrophy or get out of balance.  I am very grateful for the sheer variety life provides.

Day 13 of Gratitude: Dance

Tonight the family got to see Le Ballet Jazz de Montreal.  Despite the challenges of taking two young children to adult art, it was so worth it - especially the second half where they performed this piece "Harry".  Very interesting and accessible.

Ballet was a huge part of my young life.  Much as the song from Chorus Line says "Everything is beautiful at the ballet ... whenever you lift your arms someone is there ...".

I dreamed of being a ballerina.  I attended the best local dance school (a national level ballet school) from the age of 9 to the age of 16, with private lessons and intense dedication.

It didn't work out for me ... I am not built for it and no matter how hard you try (and I tried - anorexia and torn muscles and deformed feet to show for it) in the end I found it impossible to defeat my own physiology.  Spirit didn't beat out biology.

That hurt.  It was the greatest heartbreak of my young life - it far outweighed any sort of romantic heartbreak I could have experienced.  Giving up on ballet was giving up on my dream ... in a way it felt like giving up on myself.

For years I couldn't appreciate dance as an audience member, because it still hurt too much.  Now though, I can see the beauty again.  I can appreciate how marvelous the skill and dedication (and lucky physiology) of the dancers truly is, and I am glad to be able to appreciate the dance.

Gratitude Days 11 and 12: Veterans Day

(My husband and daughter, a couple years after he returned from Iraq.  She was our post-deployment baby, and I remember on this day as I watched them both walking ahead of me that I was pierced with gladness that he had come home and that she had been born.)

Today I am grateful for all who have served.  I believe in service, and I my time served in the National Guard was an important part of my life.  I met so many people that I never would have known if I hadn't taken time before college to attend Army training.  I'm extremely grateful for the experiences I had, the training I received, and the opportunity to serve my community in times of fire, flood, and riot.

I am also grateful today for my husband's safe return from his time serving in Iraq.  We met in the National Guard, but my time in was peacetime.  His luck was different, and his year of combat was something we never expected.  I am so proud of him for self-lessly and stoically honoring his commitments, and I am so grateful that he was one of the lucky ones to return relatively unscathed.

War is never a good thing.  I wish our leaders the wisdom and will to always work for peaceful solutions.  But for those who fight, it is different.  They serve, with the very safety of their bodies, hearts, and souls on the line.  Thank you to all who have sacrificed and served.

A few quotes I like from this article:

"The more we sweat in peace the less we bleed in war." -Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit

"In war, there are no unwounded soldiers." -Jose Narosky

"We often take for granted the very things that most deserve our gratitude." -Cynthia Ozick

"How important it is for us to recognize and celebrate our heroes and she-roes!" -Maya Angelou

"When our perils are past, shall our gratitude sleep?" -George Canning

"Courage is almost a contradiction in terms. It means a strong desire to live taking the form of readiness to die." -G.K. Chesterton

"As we express our gratitude, we must never forget that the highest appreciation is not to utter words, but to live by them." -John Fitzgerald Kennedy

"I dream of giving birth to a child who will ask, 'Mother, what was war?'" -Eve Merriam

Day 10 of Gratitude: Home

I am so amazingly in love with this place that we found to call home.  Instead of talking wistfully of "someday" when we have "a few acres", now we actually have them and we're just busy enjoying and taking care of them.




I've been reading Making Home by Sharon Astyk (one of those rare books that I enjoyed so much from the library that I bought a new copy) and it has inspired me to appreciate and love my home even more.  It's also inspired me to want to do even better, to settle, to be a better steward, to plan for the future in responsible ways.



One immediate change I'm making is to break my dependence on the dryer.  If I have a "laundry day" once a week, the only way to get all the laundry done is to use the dryer.  But dryers use a lot of unnecessary electricity, when the same job could be done by passive energy and a sunny corner of my living room.  So I'm not doing the laundry once a week anymore, and am drying everything on my wooden drying rack.  That means I need to do laundry three or four times a week, and have a better system of storing dirty laundry as it waits its turn.  But I've made the changes, and everyone still has clean laundry as they need it, and our dryer now just sits empty.

I am very grateful to have a home, to have the resources that give me the freedom to make choices in how I want to live, and to have found this corner of the world to settle down on.

Day 9 of Gratitude: My Husband

Today is my 10th Anniversary of being Handfasted to my dear Husband.  We were handfasted in a lovely pagan and not-legally binding ceremony held at the Supreme Court House of our State (with the Chief Justice coming in to unlock the building and be there for us, but the officiant being a family friend and member of my mother's Full Moon Circle).  A few months later, we would be pushed to make the union legal because of my husband's impending deployment to Iraq, but the date we care about is the day we stood before friends and family and bound ourselves to each other with vows and symbolic cords, then jumped over a broom together.

We were young (I was only 23) and we jumped into it all very fast.  But we had been living together for a year, had decided to have a baby as I faced endometriosis and felt my fertility to be a ticking time bomb of scar tissue and troubles, had been strengthened/tested through the experience of miscarrying our first pregnancy, had bought a house, and were again 4 months pregnant by the time we took those vows to each other.

And since then those vows have been tested again and again: babies, deployments and war, graduate school, bouts with depression for both of us, escalating debt and money troubles, home daycare, illness, our bodies aging, stressful jobs, long hours and commutes, family members moving in with us, personal growth that doesn't always go in the same direction for both of us, snoring, different "love languages", my tendency to throw hissy-fits, and all the times I've had to pick up his dirty socks from all over the house.

But a commitment doesn't happen just once.  It's made over and over again, day to day, moment to moment.  It's a choice, and we make it.  Sometimes it's a hard choice, when I'm so mad I could spit fire.  And sometimes I marvel at his choice and how he can be so amazingly patient and supportive of me.

Did I find Prince Charming?  No, of course not.  But I've been plenty lucky, to find a good man to walk by my side for these years.

Once the realization is accepted
that even between the closest human beings 
Infinite distances continue to exist
A wonderful living side by side can grow up
If they succeed in loving the distance between them
Which makes it possible for each to see the other
Whole and against a wide sky.

-- Rainer Maria Rilke

Day 8 of 30 Days of Gratitude: Bulbs

Today I am reflecting on how grateful I feel for the amazing property of bulbs to be planted in the ground in this time when everything else is dying, and that they will be growing away and seem to just appear by magic in the spring.  When the rest of the garden is a dreary place, there is something so comforting to be pushing the garlic cloves into their new bed.

 

They have been planted and tucked into bed for the winter, and now we can look forward to lovely garlic scapes and garlic bulbs next year.

Day 7 of Gratitude

(History Lapbooks)

Today I am feeling grateful for the place we are finding ourselves in with our homeschooling right now.  Although I know this won't last forever, I am very grateful that these days it feels easy, that we have the right pace and routine down, that the kids are (mostly) doing all things they are interested in and are excited about learning, and that we have found resources that are working.  It feels like we have a good balance of time with other kids, time alone, structured time, flexible time, and time to just Be.

When it's working like this, it feels so great.


(FieldTrips)

30 Days of Gratitude: Days 4-6

No post from me yesterday, as I observed a new Sabbath practice of no driving, no internet, no shopping.

But now on with my 30 Days of Gratitude:

4.  I am grateful for this sign that I found taped to a closet door on Sunday as I prepped for classes.  I don't know who put it there, but it was a message I appreciated.
5.  After his motorcycle broke down on the freeway on the way home from work last night, I am very grateful that my husband managed to get off the freeway safely and to push his motorcycle for 1 1/2 miles to the hospital parking lot.  A very unfortunate event, but thank goodness he didn't get hurt in the process.
6.  And tonight, I'm grateful for the Election Results!

30 Days of Gratitude

As much as I am able, I want to observe the 30 Days of Gratitude this month.  As spiritual practices go, gratitude seems so easy - and yet I don't make time to practice it nearly enough.  So far I note that I am grateful for:

1.  The beautiful fall leaves.

2.  Being warm and safe and having enough food and water ... not to be taken for granted.

3.  My dear generous children, who have pooled all the money they had to adopt a penguin from the World Wildlife Fund, and when they discovered they had read the catalog wrong and only had enough money to receive a picture and certificate in the mail, but not the stuffed animal, took that in stride and still want to send in all their money.

What are you grateful for?