Mary Oliver- "The Journey"

One day you finally knew

what you had to do, and began,

though the voices around you

kept shouting

their bad advice -

though the whole house

began to tremble

and you felt the old tug

at your ankles.

"Mend my life!"

each voice cried.

But you didn't stop.

You knew what you had to do,

though the wind pried

with its stiff fingers

at the very foundations,

though their melancholy

was terrible.

It was already late

enough, and a wild night,

and the road full of fallen branches and stones.

But little by little,

as you left their voices behind,

the stars began to burn

through the sheet of clouds,

and there was a new voice

which you slowly

recognised as your own,

that kept you company

as you strode deeper and deeper

into the world,

determined to do

the only thing you could do -

determined to save

the only life you could save.

And so it begins....

With still a bit of a cough, I got out there at 5:30am this morning and ran 10km.

It was quiet.

No wind and just the sound of my feet. There is no better therapy for the mind.

I started off at a good jog. Everything abotu teh run felt goos. Which is strange because of how sick I have been lately. I had a bit of water at km 3... but then didn't feel i needed any until i finished.

I am determined to get a road bike by the end of April. And tweak my running and swimming until then...

mmmmmm...

it sure feels good to be running outside again...

:)

An easy day ahead...

Yesterday started out aweful....

I mean the kindof aweful that makes you want to run for the woods and never come out.

My furnace needed to be bled, and honestly I felt up to the task... but after an hour of fighting with it... I decided it deserved some professional attention. Monday was the earliest this could happen. So I put it out of my mind.

I send the kids to my moms and headed up to Moncton to Mike's Bike Shop and learned about triathlon bikes and the gear. The store really surprized me. The science behind the bikes... I was inspired to learn more.

I feel up to the swim and know that i can get help training for that...

I love to run so that isn't an issue... but the bike.... ug.... I really should have a street bike.

Andre was very kind to explain things down to my level. From the gears, the pedels, and the differences between all the bikes... he has been doing triathlons for 15 years and it is impossible to not be effected by his passion for the sport.

I came back to Amherst convinced that i can do this.

:)

With that said, this morning I have accepted that it will be an easy day. Kale and Drew and Haven are all suffering from a virus that i am slowly recovering from. There will be some coloring and a movie or two. And fruit slushies... mmmmm...

a turn for the worse...

I considered posting a picture....

but no...

:)

My finger is bad... really bad...

I know my pain limits, and yesterday i knew instinctively that something was really wrong. Much more wrong than just a hurt finger.

It is infected.

So today, I cleaned the cut out myself and put some hydrogen peroxide on it....

It has since swollen worse and i can barely bend it..

GRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR

I hate not being at 100%. I know that it is just a finger.... but sheesh... I have to go to the hospital again? Kyle will be here in 45 minutes and i am giong to the hospital for some meds to help with the infection...

no glue.... no stitches... just a bandaid and some meds...

did i mention

GRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR?

:(

Kale Scott Whitten is 4....

Happy Birthday Kale!!!!!

Bad Dreams

last night was aweful...

I dreamed about the Bluenose Marathon all night long. I dreamed that I decided to do it again.... but i got lost, and it wasn't 42 km, it was 100 or more and ... they ran out of water stations... and then the dream took a strange twist and it was like a movie with men with guns... and suddenly i was Station Street, and Teasers and the old Enheat buildings were not there... the ocean was there ....

and there was a huge boat that i was invited to party on and we were jumping off the boat into the shark infested waters..........

ug...

You wake up from dreams like that exhausted...

:)

I need to go workout...

then yoga....

When a bad day gets worse, then you blog about it,... and your blog gets lost in "Internetland"

Such was my day yesterday,

My day was aweful.

Haven had another allergic reaction (maybe to eggs this time?) then cried most of the day. Later, I ended up cutting my finger bad enough to go to emergency...

and once i got home ...

I had enough of a sense of humour about the situation to blog about it all...

I wrote a big old blog..

(didn't save it... didnt; feel i needed to)

I hit send... and it was deleted.

:)

Yup and thus ended my day... after that, i was officially done... and I curled up into the fetal position and begged for mercy....

....

Not really....

But you get my point...

:(

I am not a fan of assuming the role of a "Hurt Person"...

I need to run at 100% or I sook...

and today, I am Debbob Sookiepants...

:(

The hives...

Yesterday morning i noticed it...

Haven had very red feet and hands... then little hives started appearing.

I resisted the urge to take her to the hospital because #1: her breathing wasn't interupted yet... (and i was watching her closely), and #2: all they would tell me was something that i already new...

...find the source of the allergic reaction...

Then this morning when Kyle came over to get the boys he brought Haven. She seemed fine. Then I gave her a chocolate coin. Bright red hands and feet and huge hives...

... i told Kyle to take her to the hospital right away so they could see her at her worst...

After assessing the coin and what she had yesterday before her outbreak... I have come to the conclusion that it might be chocolate....

or it might not be...

:(

within 10 minutes she was cryign an dher hands and feet were covered in

failure #2...

OK...

It is a good thing i do not take failure personally because

OMG....

I forgot to buy hot chocolate and when the kids asked for it, i loooked in my cupboard and found the LL Bean hot chocolate my mom bought me...

So i attempted to make it...

it was aweful...

i even tried to add chocolate milk...

but nothing could save it...

:(

Plan B...

?????????????????????????

:)

smile... and suggest a game?

Kryptonite....

yes... it was a miserable failure...

my green jello never set and tasted aweful...

I mean seriously, how bad of a cook do you have to be to screw up Jello?

Welcome to my world...

:)

Despite the Jell-o disaster, the party is going well...

The drumset is in contstant use and Superhero Jeopardy is going to start in about 30 minutes...

Honestly, it is almost too much fun to see the other parent's faces when they drop their kids off...

:)

They just cannot believe that i would want 9 kids in my house overnight...

But i ask... why wouldn't I?

My kids have a blast, the other kids have a blast, i have a blast... and because I invite the siblings of the kids, the parents of the kids actually get to go out and do something fun...

:)

fun fun fun....

Spring fever...

Myles wants to go biking bad...

As do I.

I cannot wait to hook up the bike trailer and take Kale and Haven out for a drive.

:)

This morning Myles and his friend woke up around 7:30am.... Logan's Mom came to get him around 9am and then Myles and I left for Tim Hortans. We had so much fun there. After 20 minutes of him begging me for math questions... (March break doesn't apply to this deschooling family) ... we then tore apart the box that his donut had come in and he wanted to make cell phones with the handles...

:)

our "pretend cellphones" even had the camera option... then i called Santa and the Toothfairy.... Myles was less than impressed...

:)

Today I have more planning for the Superhero Sleepovver party, Drew has a birthday party to go to, I have laundry and dishes to finish and 3 blogs to get on....

Right now I am watching Hulk to get questions written up for the Superhero Jeopardy...

things are good...

I would have liked to workout today but it wasn't in the cards... i think i will do yoga after the Hulk and then maybe again before bed...

Looking ahead to tomorrow, I want to get Myles a new winter jacket and get some groceries...

some weight loss...

I woke up with sore glutes this morning.

:)

And honestly, I wasn't expecting to see any weight loss... but there it was this morning, after i ate my banana. I've lost 3 pounds...

And I am ready for more...

I am completely motivated.

I have worked out the last 4 days in a row and I have decided to take today off...

The little Mommy group that we used to have before Christmas called "Chubby Buddies"... needs to be renamed to something more positive....

:)

Bikini Buddies...?

(not that i'd be caught in a bikini...)

but it reminds us what we are eating for... not for comfort... but for nutrician and energy ...

(well, maybe comfort sometimes... er..... rarely....)...

I am hoping to have a meeting Friday in the afternoon.

Back back to today...

I am having a fairly good morning.

I have alot I'd like to accomplish today and will not relax until supper.

Brush the dog, dishes, clothes put away, invites delivered, Library....

i better take off..

go go go

all you need to say is "Bag Sale"....

I took my kids to the Library this morning and saw that they were having a "bag sale"...

and i hit the mother load...

for $2 dollars total.. ($1 dollar a bag)...

i got:

"Choose your own Adventure- the green slime"

"Heart of Darkness"

"Mommy I'm bored"

"ocean life"

"animal world"

"plant life"

"rules of the game"

"anne of green gables"

"close encounters of the third kind"

"the hobbit"

"one Earth"

"echos of Freedom"

"1 is one"

"the grand and wonderful day"

"what makes it go, what makes it work"

"the bike lesson"...

The results are in...

and..........

after waiting for an hour and 15 minutes beyond my scheduled time... I finally got in to see my surgeon. What a "card" this man is... :)

I mean the jokes this man knows... ug.... :)

When I finally re-directed him back to the situation at hand, I asked about my Cat Scan and he said that it is recommended that i have an ultrasound of my thyroid...

thats it...

(phew...)

:)

my thyroid...

what is my thyroid...

so i looked up my thyroid...

And found out... that i have an excuse to eat more dulse...

but i digress,

back to the knife in his hands...

:)

I am the proud owner of 4 brand new scars... (how's that for being positive...)

I go back in a week to get the stitches out...

...

and no swimming for 6 days....

a small blip in my training... but i'll just bike more...

:)

ere flying... and the nurse were in stitches...

the winds of change...

I have decided to see if the YMCA is interested in starting up a meditation class.

Right now I am in the process of writing up some of the benifits associated with Meditation

During each class, I could give out some information of what they are to expect... and then have the people sit quietly and encouage them to "come back to the breath"...

I am really no expert but i, personally, want to get better at meditation... so the class would be for me as well...

:)

I need to buy some pencils today and bike out to my Dr. Appointment... I get the results from my Cat Scan 2 weeks ago...

I am also getting cut. My surgeon is suspicious of a freckle or two.... or 5.... :P

but seriously, what is another couple of scars when i have so many now....

Well, I'm off....

:)

Finally, some pain...

I woke up this morning and felt sore... It was fantastic.

:)

Finally I am pushing myself...

Yesterday I biked at the YMCA and then ran some...

My mind is a jumble of "to -do"'s.... I have no fewer than 5 blogs all set to write, floating in my head...

but my house needs my attention... lots to do...

Currently I am getting my stuff together, I am going to the YMCA to swim and then bike...

I think that I am still high from the feeling of pushing myself beyond what i am used to...

:)

Yay!!!!!

If it is to Be, it is up to ME!

Takin a break... :)

I am finally sitting.

It has been a busy day. And it isn't over yet.

I had to go out this morning and do some errands. At noon I swam 40 lengths in 25 minutes (i was a machine...), and then I walked to Tim Hortans to read.

I stood at the counter and ordered a Coffee, hearty veggie soup and a whole wheat bun...

She repeaded the order back and said hot chocolate instead of coffee. I corrected her.

I brought my order to the table and placed the spoon in my soup. No vegetables to speak of...

ug...

I brought my broth back over to the lady and showed her that there was infact no vegetables in my "Hearty Vegetable" soup...

She gave me a look.

:)

I smiled and said I'll take a clam chowder instead. She got a fresh bowl out and got me a nice bowl of clam chowder...yummmmm..

I got back to my table and picked up my bun... it was white...

did i let that go? did i just chalk it up as an innocent mistake? ... heck no....I mean this just is not rocket science...

is it?

I brought the bun over and explained the mistake. She brought me a WW bun, but not before she whispered something in the other waitress's ear...

grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr

My compassion flew out the window until i sat back down...

I sat back down, to read a book on mindfulness, and my anger dissapated...

poof...gone... that poor girl obviously had more on her mind than my order...

:(

I am home now and am about to embark on a cleaning spree.......

10 minutes from now...

because right now, i am enjoying the stillness....

Thus far........

Well, I awoke this morning to the gental beeping of my cellphone crying out for power.

:)

I plugged it in and checked the time. A quick message to Kyle to figure out the schedule with the kids today and I realized that if I got ready in that very instant.... I could make it to a lane swim at the YMCA and have it done for the day.

Off I went, swam, sauna'd, then back home to collect my book and I headed to Tim Hortans to read a bit.

Henri showed up with Curtis and Austin and we sat together and chatted a bit...

Then i met up with Kyle and the kids and went out shopping and paid some bills.

The rest of the day involves taking teh kids to Moncton so they can spend their allowences and I can get some reading done.

I seriously cannot read at my house. There are 1,000 things that call my name...

laundry, dishes, the floors and the bathrooms...

my scrapbooking, my knitting....

even my yoga tape...

:)

I am currently experiencing a massive headache. I didn't have any tylonal for myself so I ate 3 of the kid's... blech....

(sigh)...

.

Havenbob Brokentoepants

When i mentioned my swimming lengths at the YMCA the other day, I failed to mention Haven's encounter with (what I am saying was) a door.

While I waqsswimming, Haven and Kale were being babysat by YMCA staff.

After my 30 lengths, I sat in the sauna...

saaaaaaauuuuuuunnnnnnnnnaaaaaaaaaaa................................................

:)

After 5 minutes the babysitter came to the door of the sauna and told me that Haven was fine. (this is always a mom's first clue that their child might not be fine)...

She informed me that Haven's toe had been hurt, was bleeding, and she was screaming, but it was under control. I sat back and smiled and said "ok."

She obviously expected more of a reaction from me...

And had she uttered the words "ambulance" or "911"... yah i would have grabbed my towel and saught out my child...

But after 4 kids and thousands of bumps... a bleeding toe is nothing to run half crazed to the bathroom for...

But I could tell that the babysitter wanted me to follow her, so i did.

And honestly, Haven's toe looked AWEFUL!!!

:)

Dried blood on both feet, on the bottoms of her pants...

ug...

But the good news is: She can walk on it, and wiggle it, and doesn't cry, so I doubt that it is broken...

swimming...

Yesterday was the beginning...

:)

I scheduled Haven and Kale to be babysat at the YMCA, while i swam 30 lengths...

It was hard going. I kid you not. I am not a swimmer. But i kept my spirits up knowing that i definately will only get better. The sooner John can meet me at the pool... the better.

:)

Today i need to get to the Superstore and try and find a babysitter so I can go out to Teasers tonight. My family is going out to help support a local man that has cance and my younger sister has requested my presence....

...

My boycott is over... :)

Yay!!!

The evil redhead librarian has left the building...

:)

I had a run in with this librarian 4 years ago. It was not a good experience and I vowed to never set foot in that library as long as she was in charge.

I read in the newspaper today that she has accepted a post elsewhere and that friend of mine's girlfriend has accepted the newly vacant post...

Yay for Beth and yay for meeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!!!!

I missed the library, but I'm glad I stood my ground.

:)

I

A new challenge...

I have decided to commit myself to a triathlon...

I know what you are thinking...

Deb, are you crazy?

and yes I am....

:)

I know i can jog, and i know i can bike.... but the swim....?

Are we allowed to wear lifejackets? (kidding)....

I bought a new bathing suit... and a bike...

I have until the end of August to train for it...

I am a little bit scared but mostly excited....

:)

All it takes...

... sometimes, fresh air is all you need.

:)

I got out with Geneva for a walk this morning. We walked to the mall, i tied her to a post, and I ran in and bought a book called "Coming to our Senses" by Jon Kabat-zinn. I then headed over to Tim Hortans to get a coffee and sit outside and read.

Geneva laid by my table and I dove into my new book.

I felt good. The day was already looking up.

:)

I didn't get very much reading done though.

I had no fewer than 6 different people come up and talk to me while i sat there.

One man commented on my possibly being the first person this year to sit at the tables outside, inviting the sun to shine on the book i read. he then wished me a fantastic day.

One lady brought a cup of water out to Geneva because she saw her licking the snow and ice.

(Geneva eats snow and ice... but i didn't tell her that.... I just thanked her for her thoughtfulness.)

A guy i was in firefighting with a couple of years ago, came over and talked to me a bit. His girlfriend and I were pregnant together.

Then Jimmy stopped by to get a coffee while a nearby car dealership was giving his car an oil change. I asked if he was bringing his son to Cub's Wednesday night. But he said he worked and his wife probably would.

Even Dan, a Cub leader, was yelling out of a vehicle, taunting and trying to tease me, while he was in drive thru. But I teased back and the poor guy never knew what hit him....

I was on fire.........

:)

I am now getting ready to go find (and hopefully buy) a bike and a bike trailer...

I'll leave you with another quote:

this time from Henry David Thoreau in Walden...

"I went to the woods because i wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life and see if i could not learn what it had to teach and not, when i came to die, discover that i had not lived."

.... i think i need a moment......... or two...........

Today is not a good day.

*****************************************************************************************************

"I'm not upset that you lied to me, I'm upset that from now on I can't believe you." -Friedrich Nietzsche

Sleigh Ride 'Feb'08

Yes, that is my son in a t-shirt and pants.... in the snow...

we can safely say that he is my son through and through....

Haven was the Mayor of Meltdownland, Drew hid in the shadows, and Myles ate 5 veggie hotdogs....

It was a great time... the best year yet!!!

:)

the lifeguard freakshow

My day was a head-shaker from start to finish.

:)

After taking the kids to the Beaver Buggy/Cub Car Races at the mall, during which my youngest two ended up having meltdown after meltdown, I banished the three of us to the Van to allow Drew and Myles to enjoy themselves....

Myles came third in the race.

Yay. :)

After all that, I figured the day could only get better..... right?

hahahahahahahah

I decided to take the kids to Moncton to go swimming at the YMCA.

Wow.

I had no idea what a bad idea that was.

I had been promising them for A YEAR that we would go there someday... and today was that very day...

hahahahahahaha

After roaming the Champlaine Mall for over an hour looking for swimming trunks for my two oldest, unbeknownst to me, the meltdown fairy had followed us to Moncton and casted evil spells on my youngest two in Sears...

grrrrrrrrrrrrr

However, it was ME that just about flogged a lifeguard to death when we finally made it to the YMCA.

OMG.

We walked onto the pool deck and the trouble began.

Lifeguard said: We were not wearing bathing caps.

I fixed that.

5 minutes later-

Lifeguard said: Haven was not allowed to wear her Water wings. (Dept of Transportation rule?)

?????????????

I fixed that and put a life jacket on her.

5 minutes later-

Lifeguard said: Kale wasn't allowed in a wading pool for 12 year olds.

I fixed that.

5 minutes later -

Lifeguard said : Haven wasn't allowed in the deep end with her life jacket on.

I fixed that.

5 minutes later-

Lifeguard got after Myles for cuttting through the lane for lane swimmers

5 minutes later-

Lifeguard got after Haven for entering the tot pool without using the stairs.

5 minutes later-

Kale got into trouble for entering the tot pool without using the stairs....

grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr

I was losing my compassion by the milisecond....

then it happened...

the unthinkable...

:)

My kids were getting upset and starting to realize how we were being singled out for doing EVERYTHING wrong.

Drew wanted to leave.

I told him not to sneeze wrong or we'd get kicked out for sure...

:)

and then... he got upset at Kale for something... so I told Drew to sit on what i thought was the side of the pool and and calm down, and not word of a lie, 3 minutes later the lifeguard came over and told him he wasn't allowed to sit there...

I started laughing and laughing and said outloud.... "OMG we are NEVER coming back to this pool. It is sooo aweful here."

We got our stuff together and we left....

wow...

We RAN out of the building and even Kale was saying, "We are NOT ever going back there ok mommy?"

What a shame too because we had built it up in our heads that it was going to be so fantastic... and then it was such a let down...

They have basically done everything they can to not let kids have fun...

and drive the parents an inch away from the Psychward fairy....

grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr...

At 2am came the knock on the door...

I was asleep...

Then i heard it...

bang bang bang...

I checked the time on my phone. 2am. I then decided I imagined it.

Bang Bang Bang.

I get up and go downstairs to see who it is.

A red car is in my driveway I do not recognise...

I open the door and there is a guy from my local pizza place.

:)

He is holding something... yummmm....

I mumble something about him being at the wrong address. He apologises profusely and leaves...

No harm done.

I went back to bed and fell asleep.

:)

heard on the battlefront...

"Don't flush it if you didn't pee in it..."

grrrrrrrrrrrr...

-Haven has developed a newfound addiction to "flushing"....

Computerized Axial Tomography Scan....

I got "axial-ally" scanned today.

It was supposed to happen next week but my appointment got bumped up.

I got a full scan done and will get the results in two weeks.

Today was a busy but good day overall. I bought each of the kids a journal book so I can write in it each day and tell them about what they are like. I rearranged my downstairs (again) and feel a bit better.

I moved the TV to the diningroom so I can have more room for my yoga and my livingroom can finally be more of a sitting area.

I didn't work out today and feel abit guilty. I have been seeing some joggers out and about and have decided to stop torturing myself on the treadmill. I guess I can always be a bit more "hard core".

My kitchen currently looks like something from a "How Clean is Your House?" episode. I better get off my rearend and get to it....

:)

homemade...

I love the idea of making what i need.

I make my own laundry soap and am currently in the process of trying a granola bar recipe.

It is raining out and I am getting ready to snuggle into some Harry Potter movies as soon as Haven goes down for a nap...

Drew and Myles each did some fantastic math pages today. They remain focused and motivated to get the math books done that i bought. If they get them done by March Break then they get to go to Krystal Palace.

:)

Unfortuneately, I am avoiding the mess of papers and junk in my computer room... I have a whole corner that is taken over... it has been a mess for a week. I need to do it... I just need the oomph...

maybe later...

the granola bars just beeped...

:)

Metta...

Last night I went over to my mother's house and did some scrapbooking. My younger sister was there as well and I organized all of my materials.

Then i came home and got ready to go out with some friends.

:)

I showed up approx 20 minutes earlier than my friends, and quite contentedly sat alone at a table and watched some of the highlights from the "All Star Slam Dunk Contest" on TSN.

My friends showed up and the dancing began.

I wasn't drinking, but my friends all were.

It was a good night. I was mindful and enjoyed the time i was there. I even got to practise some "metta."

Metta (pali) translates into "loving kindness, a friendly attitude".

While i was in the washroom i heard a girl lavishly bragging to her friends about a half marathon she had run. As I left the stall I had been in, I saw the young girl and was immediately impressed she had run a half. She was in good shape, but seemed so young.

I can remember feeling compassion for her need to brag, and yet still happy for her. In my mind I wished her happiness and the ability to continue running.

This is a huge breakthrough in terms of my learning about Buddhism.

:)

post scriptum.........

9:30pm

Well, the day is done.

:)

And all in all, it wasn't that bad.

I felt a smidge guilty that Geneva never got walked today, (but then again, I feel guilty anyday that she doesn't get walked) but the ice is pretty scarey out there ....

I also would have liked to have had a reason to put on a hot red dress and nice shoes and gone out somewhere to do something... ANYTHING.... lol....... but it wasn't in the stars this year...

Oh well, life goes on......

:)

Tomorrow is "surprize breakfast day".

I intend on trying to make pancakes with smarties in them...

Good thing I live 20 feet from the Fire Station...

:)

goodnight y'all.....

zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

Happy Valentines Day!

Other than not feeling 100%, I am having a great day.

Last night I ended up giving Haven 2 Toddler Tylonal and soon she was fast asleep. The 4 children's Tylonal that I took finally kicked in and there was sleep for me as well.

:)

This morning was busy as the kids were anxious to go and spend their allowences. We did some running around delivering Valentines and then it was time to visit with Daddy.

So I, trying to judge how sick i was, went to the YMCA to work out. I lasted a mere 30 minutes on the treadmill. That is all I had to give. But I supopose 30 minutes on a sick day is better than nothing ....

Now I am home getting ready to go and get some groceries.

My clothes dryer is broken and tonight I will need to rig up some indoor clothes lines to dry my clothes...

I suppose Spring is near-ish...

My dryer can wait until the summer to get fixed.

:)

Tonight I am taking my kids to the Open Mic Night as a Valentine's surprize. They had alot of fun last time. Haven danced and the boys played checkers.

It is a good day.

Pain.

I have had a raging bad headache for the last 4 hrs that brings tears when i go into a coughing fit (which is alot). And I have no tylonal...or advil.... but i did take 4 children's pain meds....

maybe that'll do something?

:P

And then Haven woke up at 9pm after sleeping since since 8pm and has been crying for the last 2hrs straight. When I ask her what is wrong, she says "bedtime". She has gone from my bed, to her bed, to my bed, to her bed, to downstairs, and now she is back upstairs.

My entire body is exhausted from coughing.

My compassion is being tested with this child up screaming whilst i have a raging headache and terrible cold...

(I can hear her coming back downstairs...)

But... I do feel better now that I have shared my pain...

i hurt....

i dont say that very often...

but right now, I hurt....

:(

In need of interpretation ...

Here was my dream last night... feel free to tell me what you think it means....

:)

I dreamed that i was being held captive in a building that was 7 stories high. We were being held on the top floor.

I was being held with other people but... they were useless... I was always trying to think of a way to escape and they would just sitting there like it didn't matter. We were in a large room that had boarded up windows and we were watched constantly. There must have been 11 capturers and they really didn't know what to do with us. Then on about the third day, one of the guys brought in a table. That scared me because i imagined them cutting me up whilst i was tied to this table... so when they opened the door to the room... I acted like i was going to run out of the room.

but i hesitated.

And the two guys standing in the hallway said "what? you gonna run?".

Then i thought to myself, they really dont think i will.

So I did.

:)

I ran and ran down halllways and stairs to the 6th floor and then the 5th and then I could hear the guys laughing behind me and gaining on me. I turned another corner and it was all windows. There was a large hill outside. I contemplated this as i picked up speed to attempt jumping through the sheet of glass/window so that i would land on the hill....

I thought i had no other way to escape.... so through the glass i jumped and i did land on the hill (just like in the movies) and i got up and I kept running but there were no people in Amherst.... I ran up and down streets yelling for help....

but Amherst had been abandoned.....

dun dun dunnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn

:)

here comes "hateful"

Yup thats me...

:(

I cannot remember the last time i was this stuffed up. Vicks Vapo Rub is my best friend and Halls Cough Drops are like Mother's Milk.

I have tried to avoid people today but then i thought it best to put my "crank" to creative use.

And that is just what i did.

:)

I commented on some online articles...

Gave my 2 cents worth...

Here are the links....

Incase you are THAT bored...

:)

http://www.amherstdaily.com/index.cfm?sid=107274&sc=58

and then here I left two comments....

http://thechronicleherald.ca/Front/1037347.html

I have always been opinionated, but now i am sick and tired and angry and opinionated...

baddddddd combination......

:P

Monday is Cancelled

I have two Chalkboards in my kitchen. The large green one was a gift from my dad. It gets alot of use. I know this because the company that makes chalkboard chalk sent me an email thanking me for my financial support.

:)

(kidding)

The kids tend to write me notes on it when they are feeling bored or sad or mad. So i decided to let them know how i was feeling this morning when i woke up....

The other chalkboard (the black one) was one that I made. I bought chalkboard paint and painted the area where a doorway used to be.

I love my Chalkboards.

Mucking on through

Well, as you all know... today happened...

And I managed to convince my body to move around a bit. But not much. I had the boys do some math tonight and make "piggybanks". I have decided to give all my kids an allowence every two weeks.

I also recognise that March Break is coming up soon and that my kids are going to want to go to Crystal Palace in Dieppe. So I have started a Mathapolooza of sorts for the next couple of days.

Myles is completeing his Grade 2 Math book (he has been begging to go to Grade 3) and I have bumped Drew up to Grade 5 Math for kicks...

Grade 5 math entails alot of fractions and area and word problems...

Even I find it challenging... fun, but challenging...

Drew is also working on geography...

I never knew how little i knew until i started homeschooling...

:P

The bottom...

ok...

I know my limits.

And the Sleigh Ride that planned for this afternoon for 4H, is going to have to go on without me...

And I feel bad because it was also supposed to be a general meeting.

But seriously my entire body is being ravaged by this "no oomph wanna be cold" virus. And except for throwing some food at the kids from time to time... I intend on sitting still and researching Mic Mac's for most of the day.

I might play some guitar.......

nope...

I just looked at it and my arms and fingers yelled out in protest.

:)

I am in a constant state of exhaustion... so my compassion is paramount, where as i haven't the firey spark needed to get angry... but I'll you... I am losing my patience with my newpaper. It has been over a month and my Blogs are not being posted. And last year there were times when i would blog about an event coming up and it would be posted after the event happened.

Oh well.

Like i said.... no spark...

Tomorrow night i heard there is meditation over at the University. I might go over and look into it.

Namaste.

:)

It is snowing here now...

Myles said:

"Sucking my thumb is my life."

Kale's Kwotes

"Hey Mom, look at all those sticks in that tree!"

it sucks to be my kids today...

I had all the plans today...

...baking cookies, swimming at the ymca, hiking, sledding...

:(

but i got landed with the "no oomph..." virus.

I am kinda sick, the all over tired kinda sick.

No patience, no creativity, no... fun.....

Just the thought of having to make lunch soon, exhausts me.

I want to curl up and sleep for days.

But then there is a little voice inside me that says:

"gogogo"

My kids are going to have to entertain themselves today...

Mommy is taking a sick day...

Another Dr's appointment... another Cat Scan...

My family Doctor sent me to the General Surgeon today in my town about a suspicious mark on my toe.

Dr. Van Boxel took a look at it and decided it was a bruise.

He then checked me over quicky and is going to remove some other "marks" he doesn't like. He is also setting me up with another Cat Scan. He seemed surprised that i wasn't going to be followed up by my Dr's in Halifax that removed my cancer 2 years ago...

I have been thinking alot lately about getting another Cat Scan and the peace of mind that it brings. So as soon as Van Boxel mentioned it, I was excited for it.

but ug...

More scars...

:(

Anywhere but here...

Today was supposed to be different, but i seem to be carryng the baggage from the last few days and how aweful they have been.

I have the kids all ready to go somewhere, anywhere but here.

Getting out of the house and getting some fresh air might help my mood...

it always seems to help...

I hope it does today.

It's 11:39am

Geneva hath bathed-ith

ahhhhhhhhh....

:)

She didn't seem to mind it either...

...this kids all chanting "shake,shake, shake"

started to annoy me, but only briefly...

:)

It never ends....

wow...

Myles was taking a hot pizza pan out of the oven (without my permission)...and when he did he sideswiped Haven who was sitting at the table.

(sigh)

She started bawling and then knocked over her hot chocolate which got on her hands and she cried harder.

(sigh)

Myles started bawling because he felt bad...

i am thinking that it is bedtime...

"bedtime everybody"

:)

being tested and failing

I am being tested.

It is crazy.

Kale was up all last night screaming with an ear infection. Kyle had taken him to the hospital Saturday night for the same reason and had recieved a perscription... which he didn't fill the next day... because he didn't think that pharmasies were open on Sundays...

an honest mistake .... ?

But i was still seething with anger... then ... compassion... what else could I do?

I gave Kale some Tylonal and rubbed his back until he crashed.

But then this morning the kids were testing me.... and I failed...

:(

They drove me crazy begging for every breakfast food under the sun and I caved... then they wanted to get their own cereal and ended up pouring salt instead of sugar on it...

wow... such a simple mistake...

but to me... still semi-upset at Kyle, no sleep, and feeling aweful about yesterdays horrid excuse for somethign that would never pass for parenting....

I failed...

I am trying to salvage the day from here...

I just dont want to mess things up worse than i already have...

:(

I need my oomph and my sence of humour back...

I better start looking...

Maybe a quote will help....

“Never retreat, never retract, never apologize; just get the thing done and let them howl. ”

Nellie McClung

Running...

It is one of those days.

:(

You know what I mean...?

I am experiencing one of those days where you want to be anywhere but where you are...

The weight of the world, nothing seems to be going right, the tears are just waiting for the right moment.

I can't explain why I feel this way...

And of course i feel guilt... I should be happy... I have lots to be happy about.

But I am not happy...

not right now...

:(

Let's talk alternatives...

Well,

I have been on a huge veggie sausage kick.

I eat them once a day. Saurkraught, mustard..... toasted bun...

:)

The brand that I buy is called "Spicy Italian Veggie sausages by YVES"...

If you enjoy sausages.... you might enjoy these ones... as a matter of fact, buy them and then try and pass them off as meat ones and see if anyone notices...

It seems as though the second someone finds out that something is "healthy", they will assume that it tastes like crap....

:P

now i am hungry....

A guitar... an SG

This is a cub car cut out and painted to look like an SG...

I am going to be attempting a pink one...

Mwahahahahah....

It is good to be Ikki....

>:)

Back on the Blog Train

Well, here it goes.

Me despirately trying to imagine what on earth to write about.

My fan base is begining to turn on me. I am currently on the phone with my sister who is within the throws of telling me the flogging i am going to recieve if i don't get to blabbing about my life...

So, I guess i'll write about that fact that I am taking some satifaction in leaving comments to articles on the Amherst Daily News Website. My editor hasn't been posting my blogs so I had to find an outlet.

Maybe Brad is on vacay or maybe he is sick....

who knows...

:)

but in the meanwhile, I get a mild kick out of leaving my opinion to what others have written.

In other news,

I went to the movies last night to see "The Bucketlist"... and I must say that it was much much better than i was expecting it to be. I even got choked up at one point and couldn't breathe.

This has happened 2 other times where i got emotionally upset to the point of not being able to breathe. One of those 2 times was when i saw my 7 year old running for me at the end of the Marathon I ran last year.

What a scarey feeling. I find it hard to breathe... but i still get oxygen.... I pretended that it isn't happening but it is still very scarey.

here i am now....

I am waiting for my kids to arrive.

Kyle is taking Myles to Beavers (they are making Beaver Buggies).... and then I am going to my sister's SuperBowl Party.

YAY!!!

:)

I'll blog more later...

gotta have some tea...

and finish my laundry...

Holt Associates - (If you have kids.... you must read this....)

HOMESCHOOLING AND JOHN HOLT'S VISION

by Pat Farenga, Holt Associates

John Holt was born into his fairly affluent family in 1923. He was sent to some of the "better" private schools and eventually graduated from college with a degree in Industrial Administration ("Whatever that means" John would always add after saying that). In his later life John didn't like to reveal his alma maters because

I have come to believe that a person's schooling is as much a part of his private business as his politics or religion, and that no one should be required to answer questions about it. May I say instead that most of what I know I did not learn in school and indeed was not even "taught?"

Upon graduation John found the United States Navy needed his services to help fight World War Two. John was a lieutenant on the USS Barbero, a submarine that fought in the Pacific; he served a three-year tour of duty. After the war John felt nuclear bombs made war suicidal for mankind and he joined the United World Federalists, an organization that seeks to bring peace to our planet by establishing one World Government. John lectured for six years on their behalf and became the Executive Director for the New York branch of World Federalists. Dissatisfied with what he perceived as their increasing ineffectiveness, John left the organization in 1952, spent the next year bicycling around Europe, then went to visit his family in Colorado. It was there his sister Jane suggested John try teaching, urging him to visit the Colorado Rocky Mountain School, which had just opened. John went there to visit one day and liked it so much that he began teaching. The school was unusual for its time because it was co-educational and both students and faculty did almost all the manual work of the school.

John taught in Colorado for four years and decided to move to Boston to experience city life again. He got a fifth grade teaching position in Cambridge and met faculty member Bill Hull, who became a colleague with John and shared his interest in children. They decided to observe each other's classes, one sitting back while the other taught. John's memos from his on-going observations form the core of his first two books. Eleven years of teaching provided John with the notes and journals that finally got published, after several rejection notices, as HOW CHILDREN FAIL. Today this book and the one that followed, HOW CHILDREN LEARN, have combined sales that exceed a million and a half copies, a remarkable feat for any books about education.

What is it that John expresses that so inflames discussions about school? There are two versions of the reason, a short one and a long one. The short version is two words: Trust Children. The other version is contained in all of John's books. Let me supply you with something in-between.

As they worked together John and Bill eventually decided to frame their work in the classroom with the question, "Where are we trying to get and is this thing we are doing helping us get there?" Clearly they wanted their students to be better learners and they tried all sorts of things to help them get there. John writes about ingenious ways he invented of using Cusinaire rods for math, playing twenty questions to develop reasoning skills, using a balance beam for weights and measurements, all sorts of approaches to problems he thought his students were facing. But the endless cycle he noted from his first days as a teacher repeated itself once again: He taught but they didn't learn. Sure, some of them passed his tests but that didn't mean anything if they couldn't, and most couldn't, at least remember a week from now what was on the test.

First John and Bill thought the reason so many children in their classes learned so little was that they used such bad thinking and problem-solving strategies. Eventually John saw it differently. If we, and not the child, choose the task, then they think about us instead of the task. John meticulously details in HOW CHILDREN FAIL, how it is their position as teachers, which is to say givers of orders, judges, graders, that is the source of the children's strategies. If the children can somehow get the answer the teacher wants, be in a class situation or on a test, once they've provided an answer, they are out of danger. The tension is past. The teacher no longer threatens, fear of not having an answer, or of having the wrong answer, or of being ridiculed before classmates, goes by. Teachers, not math, not reading, or spelling, or history are the problem that the children design their strategies to cope with. Why does this happen? Because of fear.

Fear in the classroom. Most adults scoff at the idea, "What's a kid got to be scared of? You don't see other kids crying about going to school, do you? What are you, a wimp?" But we forget what it is like to be a child. We find it hard to remember life as it looks four feet off the ground. "There are very few children who do not feel, during most of the time they are in school, an amount of fear, anxiety and tension that most adults would find intolerable; it is no coincidence at all that in many of their worst nightmares adults find themselves back in school."

John decided the prime reason children act stupidly, don't learn, or misbehave is because of fear, usually the ever-present fear of failure. Ask any sports figure, actor or politician what makes them choke in front of a group and the answer is fear. Studies show that anxiety and fear can actually create perceptual disturbances such as blurring of vision and loss of hearing. Can this be the root of our recent discovery of "learning disabilities?"

Fear dominates the classroom environment in thousands of subtle ways, most of them disguised as helpful "motivation," some of them not disguised at all, and all of them coercive. John felt the error of "progressive educators" is that they thought there were bad ways (harsh, cruel) and good ways (gentle, persuasive, subtle, kindly) to coerce children. However there is a great difference between setting a goal for oneself and doing difficult and demanding things to achieve it, and doing something, in the case of school usually something uninteresting to the student, simply because someone tells you you'll be punished if you don't. In this book, John forcefully shows us how whether children resist such demands or yield to them, it is bad for them; and that the idea of painless, nonthreatening coercion is a illusion. John writes, "Fear is the inseparable companion to coercion and its inseparable consequence.

Fear is not all. John notes how boredom and resistance cause much activity in school as fear. Many of the tasks given to children in school are busy work in the purest sense of the word. If a child can properly do five division problems, why must he do twenty-five? If we think we must force children to learn, we are grossly mistaken, but this is the primary assumption of our school system. For many people education is not primarily concerned with learning, but with discipline. A school where children learn but appear to be undisciplined is therefore failing in its task, and this is why so many of our finest teachers are fired, as John Holt was. In HOW CHILDREN FAIL John writes:

The idea that children won't learn without rewards and penalties, or in the debased jargon of the behaviorists, "positive and negative reinforcements," usually becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. If we treat children long enough as if that were true, they will come to believe it is true. People say to me, If I weren't made to do things, I wouldn't do anything. This is the creed of a slave. You may believe that of yourselves, but I don't believe it. You didn't feel that way about yourself when you were little. Who taught you to feel that way? To a large degree it is school. Schools teach it because, believing it, they can't help acting as if it were true.

The seminal questions teachers should always be asking is, "What do we do to help or prevent learning?" This is seldom asked because it is assumed that unless there's something wrong with the student, all teaching produces learning, so all we need to think about is what children should be made to learn.

Why do we presume that we can say what anyone must know? How can we say what a child wants to know is less important than what we want him to know? Even if we could all agree on what the curriculum should be, it still wouldn't work, because our knowledge of ourselves and the world is constantly changing, today faster than ever. Who can say what we need to know ten years from now? Our laws, our physics, our astronomy, our science, of ten years ago has changed considerably. Many things once considered textbook facts have to be changed every year due to humankind's curiosity. We don't need fact-splitters for the future, we need able learners, and our schools are failing in their chosen task of educating the masses. This is because schools do not encourage real learning, which happens when children discover what they most want to know, instead of what we think they ought to know. Teachers need to be geared to the student's learning schedule, not the state's learning schedule.

The state's learning schedule and most of the school bureaucracy is enforced by administering tests on a regular basis. The true purpose of tests should be so the one taking the tests can discover deficiencies and move towards improving them. Tests are designed by teachers to show these deficiencies, but instead the school system uses tests for a different end, as measures of intelligence and aptitude skills.

Never losing sight of the right to question what we are told, John maintains there are two real reasons why we test children: the first is to threaten them into doing what we want and the second is to give us the basis for handing out the rewards and penalties on which the educational system - like all coercive systems - must operate. Struggling with the inherent difficulties of a chosen or inescapable task builds character; merely submitting to a superior force destroys it. Do we want to turn out intelligent people or clever test takers? How can we foster a joyous, alert, wholehearted participation in life if we build all our schooling around the holiness of getting "right answers?"

Besides this, why do we presume, despite all the evidence to the contrary, that the vast amount of knowledge and ability in each of us can be reduced to a number or grade? These numbers and grades are indelible marks on our lives that the school system can turn over to anyone, such as the government or prospective employers, and these marks can follow us forever. Many teachers' recommendations are written in secret and never seen by the student, so even the veneer of grades may be undermined by a careless recommendation. The student has little or no rights in this matter. As Edgar Friedenberg says, the student owes the school everything and the school owes the student nothing. This fact was upheld in a recent court case. Discovering that their children, upon graduating from high school, could still not add, subtract or write their own names properly, the parents sued the school. The court ruled against the parents claiming the schools are under no obligation to teach anybody anything and because they were worried that by making too broad a ruling they might encourage a rush of lawsuits that would bankrupt the schools. So learning must be the duty of the student, not the school, despite, as we see, the fact that the schools are designed to prevent real learning for the vast majority of students.

John maintained that the test-examinations-marks business, and it is a multibillion dollar business to many people, is a gigantic racket set up to perpetuate the school bureaucracy, not to serve the students. He often wrote how students, teachers and schools all join together in this masquerade of testing to show how the students know everything they are supposed to know, when in fact they know only a small part of it - if any at all. In his 1983 revision of HOW CHILDREN FAIL John added:

No matter what tests show, very little of what is taught in school is learned, very little of what is learned is remembered and very little of what is remembered is used. The things we learn, remember and use are the things we seek out or meet in the daily, serious, non-school parts of our lives... The true test of intelligence is not how much we know, but how we behave when we don't know what to do.

When John wrote HOW CHILDREN FAIL and HOW CHILDREN LEARN he still had a vision of what school might become. In these books John writes about rehabilitating old school buildings and turning them into resource and activity centers, citizens' clubs, libraries, music rooms, theaters, sports facilities, meeting rooms, open to and used by old and young together.

John still thought that schools could be changed from within and his reputation was well respected by many educators at this time. In 1968 he stopped teaching grade school and became a visiting lecturer at the Harvard Graduate School of Education; he held the same post the next year at U.C. Berkeley. His experiences in the upper echelons of academia spurred him to write THE UNDERACHIEVING SCHOOL. With this book John moves his case out of the classroom and studies the school system itself, which he sees, not surprisingly, as self-serving and demeaning to students. His unabashed sympathy for the plight of college students during campus unrest of the late sixties placed John squarely against the education establishment. I recently came across an unpublished ms. by John from this time, 1969, entitled LIVING FREE AMONG THE SLAVES: A Handbook for the Young. In it he offers sharp reasons and strategies for nonviolent confrontation with one's elders. In the midst of this era of hippies, happenings and Vietnam John wrote:

Older people will say that their anger and hatred has been roused by your appearance and behavior. They may well believe this. It is not true. At best, it is only a small part of the truth. I think the current hatred of large numbers of older people for the young began growing long before there was any movement of student protest and it has been strong for years. For a good many years I have been observing children with adults and particularly of adults with children around them and I have felt more and more strongly, and for some years now, that very large numbers of people have had a generalized dislike of any and all children of almost any age past three or four.

You have not created the hatred of the old. You have perhaps focussed it and given it a clearly visible target....

A publisher could not be found and the book was forgotten, yet it shows how seriously John takes young people's problems.

The next book to be printed was a year later, 1970. John called it WHAT DO I DO MONDAY? because it is essentially a book of practical ideas and suggestions for parents, teachers and anyone who works with children. John writes about specific ways of teaching math, science, history and other subjects with household items or easily found examples so people can approach these subjects in more useful ways.

It was around this time John was invited by Ivan Illich to be a guest at CIDOC in Cuernavaca, Mexico. Illich wrote, among many books, DESCHOOLING SOCIETY, a book John admired. Illich's concept of making people less dependent on institutions, in effect "deschooling" themselves and becoming more self-reliant - life-long learning without credentials - mixes well with John's concepts.

During 1971 -1974, John wrote the books FREEDOM AND BEYOND and ESCAPE FROM CHILDHOOD. Inspired by his visits with Illich, these books show John moving from the classroom and school system to an analysis of children's place in society. He challenges our very notions about childhood and how we have created a sentimental prison, a walled garden that prevents our young from attaining the dignity and responsibilities they want and need until they reach the arbitrary magic age of eighteen. Children's rights are integral to John's ideas, and the way they are treated in our society angered him. In FREEDOM AND BEYOND John writes:

What determines what sort of person a child will be is how they are treated, not what they are told. If children are brought up with strong sense of dignity, competence and work they will extend this to other people one way or the other.

John officially gave up on reforming schools and challenging their assumptions about children and learning in the opening chapter of INSTEAD OF EDUCATION (1976).

Do not waste your time trying to reform these schools. They can not be reformed. It may be possible for a few of you, in a few places, to make a place called school which will be a humane and useful doing (as distinct from educating) place for the young. If so, by all means do it. In most places, not even this will be possible.

INSTEAD OF EDUCATION, like WHAT DO I DO MONDAY? has a lot of practical suggestions for making a part of the world of adults accessible to the young which is as interesting, exciting, meaningful, transparent and emotionally safe as possible. John provides examples and methods for running free schools, learning exchanges, and offers his thoughts on how compulsory schooling is among the most authoritarian and destructive of all the inventions of man.

INSTEAD OF EDUCATION marks a change in John's vision of schools and society. Rather than turning schools into resource centers and teachers into guides, as he envisioned in his first books, John describes a new utopia, the society of learners:

In that society all people could have work to do which is varied and interesting, which challenges and rewards their skill and intelligence, which they can do well and take pride in doing well, over which they can exercise some control and those whose ends and purposes they can understand and respect...Beyond this, all people would feel - as very few people do now - that what they think, want say and do would make a real difference in their lives and the lives of people around them. Their politics, like their work, would be meaningful. Their elected officials would be public servants, not petty kings or officers. They would shape and control the society they lived in, instead of being shaped and controlled by it. In such a society no one would worry about "education". People would be too busy doing interesting things that mattered and they would grow more informed, competent and wise in doing them. They would learn about the world from living in it, working in it, and changing it and from knowing a wide variety of people who were doing the same. But nowhere in the world does such a society exist, nor is there one for the making.

Given his pessimistic view, John provides sympathetic advice and sound tactics for change, including a plan for an underground railroad to get your kids away from authorities if you are serious about taking them out of the school system. It is here the bridge John created toward homeschooling starts to define itself.

People have been teaching children at home instead of sending them to school for quite some time before John became a spokesman for them. When John wrote INSTEAD OF EDUCATION he wasn't aware of such people but they found each other after publication of this book. A year later, on the basis of correspondence he started with some people who successfully taught their children at home, John printed the first issue of GROWING WITHOUT SCHOOLING and started selling books he thought were important and helpful to learners of all ages.

GROWING WITHOUT SCHOOLING, a bi-monthly newsletter started in 1977, is best described by John. In the first issue of GWS he writes that GWS will provide readers with approaches to learning...

...in which people, young and old, can learn and do things, acquire skills and find interesting and useful work, without having to go through the process of schooling. It is mainly about people who want to take or keep their children out of school and about what they might do instead, what problems come up and how they cope with these... GROWING WITHOUT SCHOOLING is very interested, as schools and schools of education do not seem to be, in the act and art of teaching, that is, all the ways in which people of all ages, in or out of school, can more effectively share information, ideas and skills.

Disappointed and disillusioned by previous efforts to reform the schools, John writes in GWS #1 about how homeschooling might cause social change:

In starting this newsletter, we are putting into practice a nickel and dime theory about social change, which is, that important and lasting social change always comes slowly and only when people change their lives, not just their political beliefs or parties... I have come to understand, finally, and even to accept, that in almost everything I believe and care about I am a member of a minority in my own country, in most cases a very small minority... This doesn't trouble me any more, as long as those minorities of which I am a member go on growing. My work is to help them grow. If we can describe the effective majority of our society as moving in direction X and ourselves, the small minority, as moving in direction Y, what I want to do is to find ways to help people who want to move in direction Y, to move in that direction, rather than run after the great X-bound army shouting at them, "Hey you guys, stop, turn around, you ought to be heading in direction Y!" In areas they feel are important, people don't change their ideas, much less their lives, because someone comes along with a bunch of arguments to show that they are mistaken, even wicked, to think or do as they do. Once in a while, we may have to argue with the X-bound majority to try to stop them from doing a great and immediate wrong. But most of the time, as a way of making real and deep changes in society, this kind of shouting and arguing seems to me to be a waste of time.

Tired of school but always fascinated by children and their ways of learning. John wrote an unusual book in his canon at this time, NEVER TOO LATE, his musical autobiography. John always loved music, jazz and classical especially, and he himself could play some flute and guitar which he learned as a young man. A few years before he wrote this book, when he was in his early fifties, John learned to play the cello on his own. Besides tracing his life and musical history, the book serves as a reminder for us to try something from the ground up again. As an adult learner John shows that to learn well we must become like a very young child again, dealing with endless false starts and seemingly inpenetrable mysteries. It is a warm autobiography of a true individual and learner.

NEVER TOO LATE was published in 1978, a year after John started GROWING WITHOUT SCHOOLING. John would have preferred to spend his later life with his cello, but he soon found he was much in demand as an advocate for homeschooling. Families who were homeschooling for years contacted GWS and expressed relief that someone other than themselves practiced homeschooling.

Then, and even now, a family can get pulled into court on truancy charges because they are teaching their children at home but haven't permission from the State or School Board to do so. John frequently wrote and spoke on behalf of such families. This used to happen a lot more frequently than it does now because most school districts, like most people, never knew that people can or would want to keep their kids home rather than send them to school, or that it was a perfectly legal option. John's helpful and wise testimony before several state legislators and various commissions helped smooth the way for homeschooling in some states, and he found subscriptions and letters coming in bigger mail-bags every day.

John's last book, TEACH YOUR OWN, was a direct result of his involvement with GROWING WITHOUT SCHOOLING. Many educators felt John abandoned them when he wrote this book, but I don't think they read it closely. Its subtitle is: A HOPEFUL PATH FOR EDUCATION. TEACH YOUR OWN 's pages are loaded with letters from parents describing how they manage to let their children learn around them without anyone going crazy. It is full of positive news about children as well as containing the best nuts and bolts descriptions about how to answer questions about homeschooling, how to write a curriculum, how to make your proposal, how to find out what your legal rights are, and just about anything else you need to know about unschooling children. Most importantly for John, homeschooling provides the proof that children can be trusted to learn without being forced to.

Why do people homeschool? John thought there are three reasons:

They think raising their children is their business, not the government's; they enjoy being with their children and watching and helping them learn and don't want to give that up to others; they want to keep them from being hurt, mentally, physically and spiritually.

John emphasized how homeschoolers can allow their children's abilities to develop naturally in an unforced manner. Certainly parents who take their children out of school would be wise to make sure they do all the work they say they would do on their curriculum, but once they get that out of the way, and some families can do a whole semester's required work in about six weeks, then they start their real learning. Everyday homeschoolers prove by their example that learning is a life-long process that can take place anywhere and anytime, not just in a school supervised by experts. Time and a great student to teacher ratio are on the homeschoolers' side, rather than pitting their child's learning against a schedule designed by someone who has never seen their child. They are best able to facilitate a child's learning, especially during their early school years.

Experience being the greatest of all teachers, homeschoolers can make their children part of their everyday adult lives. By being accepted into the continuum of their parents' lives, a child learns by doing, by seeing other people work and do things and wanting to do them themselves. By seeing how one uses numbers to decide what to purchase, seeing their parents read and write to communicate with others, these children are being exposed to the total territory the world of numbers and words encompasses. Math, science and English are no longer facts one memorizes and uses just for tests, disconnected from real life. Homeschooled children can learn math, science and other skills not in little increments of lesson plans, but by actually doing them, by counting, by reading, by taking in the manner they see other people behaving around them.

A child in a homeschool environment is afforded the opportunity to learn as he or she always did, that is, through play and interaction with the people and objects around them, The importance of play during childhood is noted by Piaget and many other child specialists, but most schools rob their students of that. From age six on, forty hours a week or more, the student must be forced to sit still and be instructed at the cost of his or her childhood. During classtime which fills the bulk of any school day, daydreaming and childish behavior, such as playing, are ridiculed and penalized; we chastise the child for being a child. Why are we in such a rush to get them out of childhood? John wrote in HOW CHILDREN FAIL: "Our teaching is too full of words and they come too soon."

Homeschoolers do not take their children out of school to escape from the real world or to make them antisocial. They make their children part of their world, the real world of business, home and family. Where being a citizen means getting out into the community, meeting and being exposed to people from all walks of life and all ages. Boy and girl scouts, 4H, YM- and YWCA's, church and community sponsored events, private lessons, apprenticeships, after-school sports activities - all these and more are ways that children who stay at home are "socialized."

The so-called social life of schools is probably a major reason why parents want to take their children out of school in the first place in TEACH YOUR OWN, John wrote:

Social life in the classroom is mean-spirited, status-oriented, competitive and snobbish. No one ever says school is kindly, generous, supporting, democratic, friendly, loving or good for children. When I condemn the social life of schools people say, "But that's what the children are going to meet in Real Life." This seems to me to be a self-fulfilling prophecy.

In his last years, homeschooling provided John with the hope that children may escape the indignities, mind-numbing routines and hypocrisy of school and so become the loving, intelligent people he believed we are all capable of being. Two years before he died, John revised his first two books, HOW CHILDREN FAIL and HOW CHILDREN LEARN. His later additions make the books even more forceful in their arguments, and when looked at as the beginning of John's writing and thinking about schools, they clearly show how John's criticisms and ideas about schools and learning developed in a logically and consistent manner based on his constant observations of people, especially young children, learning. As he says in the revised HOW CHILDREN FAIL:

Nobody starts off stupid. You have to watch babies and infants and think seriously about what all of them learn and do, to see that, except for the grossly retarded, they show a style of life and a desire and ability to learn, that in an older person we might call genius... We adults destroy most of the intellectual and creative capacity of children by the things we do to them or make them do. We destroy this capacity by making them afraid, afraid of not doing what other people want, of not pleasing, of making mistakes, of failing, of being wrong.

We destroy the disinterested (I do not mean uninterested) love of learning in small children, which is so strong when they are small, by encouraging and compelling them to work for petty and contemptible rewards - gold stars or papers marked 100 and tacked to the wall, or A's on report cards or honor rolls or Dean's lists or Phi Beta Kappa keys - in short, for the ignoble satisfaction of feeling that they are better than someone else. We encourage them to feel that the end and aim of all we do in school is nothing more than to get a good mark on a test, or to impress someone with what they seem to know. We kill, not only their curiosity but their feeling that it is a good and admirable thing to be curious, so that at the age of ten most of them will not ask questions and will show a good deal of scorn for those who do.

At one point John wanted to make a bumper sticker with this slogan on it: "Children are born smart. Schools make them dumb," but he thought better of it. It summarizes his thoughts quite neatly, though.

John's work is based on principles of nonviolence and faith in our intellectual abilities to grow. He showed this in his daily life as well in his books. As his ideas about school changed, so did he. He was frustrated by the lack of change in our schools, to be sure, but he kept finding new ways to approach the problem. John's grand vision of a peaceful society of life-long learners and doers was at least partially realized for him during his life through the efforts of homeschooling families, and their happy children are his tribute.

(Please feel free to tell me what you think of this... I am sincerely curious)

:)

the mail came...

Yesterday's mail brought a letter from Corrections Canada.

It is "pleased to advise" me that my application meets their "basic screening criteria".

:)

However, I am not convinced that I will get any farther in Corrections than the last question in the test in the Spring.... but at least I am trying to do something...

There has been a lag in my blogging and I need to get back into it. There simply just isn't enough hours in a day it seems.

Jeff's boys are up visiting him for the week and I am helping him to entertain them until his leg feels better. Today we baked cookies and read some stories. I am hoping to get them to the YMCA for some swimming with my kids tomorrow or Thursday.

Yesterday I saw Dr. Frizzle about some "questional markings" and she is referring me to Dr. Van Boxel who will surgically remove them. Ahhh yes.... more scars....

grrrrr...

Well I have been egnoring my domestic duties and need to jump on my dishes and laundry...

go go go

(yawn)...

nope, that didn't work...

:)

Open Mic Night at the Bridge Street Cafe

Every Thursday night at 8pm the Bridge Street Cafe in Sackville NB has an "Open Mic Night."

Naturally, I was curious and packed up the kids and we went there for oatcakes and fair trade coffee.

Haven danced, Kale socialized, and Drew and Myles played checkers.

I cannot wait to go back. ... ahem.... (minus the kids).

And before you even ask, .... no, i will not be bringing my guitar...

:P

The two gentalmen playing there that night were...um... "seasoned"... and my piddly excuse for guitar playing.... just wouldn't be welcomed...

However i did just acquire a new-to-me drum set...

This spring you will see my drumset set up in the garage under the Christmas lights...

...and the po-po will probably be in my driveway...

(neighbors, you know how it is)

:)

It's always something...

When I say that I learn something "brand new" everyday, it is true...

and yesterday, i was informed that my use of the word "Jew" was socially incorrect.

Wow.

I had never heard this before, so i looked it up... and sure enough...

The term "Jew" is considered derogatory to some people in the Arab world.

When something like this happens, I am always nervous of how much I don't know about the world...

... I believe that i have some research ahead of me...

:)

Pictures From Halifax

Zen Shorts - by Jon J Muth

If you are looking to buy an amazing book, then this should be your next purchase.

I read this book while in a bookstore the other day and it gave me goosebumps and i became flushed.

I immediately bought the book and brought it home to my kids.

It has gorgeious pictures and such moving "morals".... that you cannot help but want to share this book with everyone you know.

Avoiding the dishes....

Here i am at the computer.

My dishes await. As does the upstairs and the overwhelming disaster of clothes that are calling my name.

In other news:

Tomorrow I begin my Cleanse again.

I was so distraught about accidentally eating that first day that i decided to try again. Another fresh start.

If Jack Osborne can do it.... so can I.

:)

So I have everything I need for a 5 day cleanse... Mon to Friday.

I will be taking very detailed notes about my moods and energy levels because I intend on blogging it for my Town Paper.

I am re-motivated and will inform my kids that there will be a cash reward for anyone catching Mommy with food in her mouth.

:)

Day 2 - Master Cleanse is working its magic...

Yesterday:

After Yoga, I weighed myself and I was 140.

I had a Cleansing drink at 9am, noon, and then I walked Geneva (not far and not fast) maybe a little more than 2 km.

I then walked over to Kyle's to get the kids. I had a Cleaning drink at 5pm, and another at 7pm.

I did mess up at one point and had Mind Burp.

I was getting the kids a snack and ending up throwing about 7 Fruitloopy Cherrio-things in my mouth.

:P

Honestly, I find it difficult to do this Cleanse and have to feed the kids.

Alone it was easy to not think about food. But to have to make meals for others.... the will power that is required is almost beyond my capability.

But I push on.

My goal is to get to Saturday morning. If I make it... (and it actually seems possible today) then i will re-evaluate how I am feeling and possibly try and get to Monday.

Today:

I weighed myself this morning and expected to see 139 or 138.... but it was 137.

:)

I am happy about the number, but it still is unnerving to lose that much weight in a day.

But I feel good.

Surprisingly i have no cravings for certain foods or coffee and no headaches. (That might happen today). I have energy and am excited to start exerising as soon as this detox is over.

I have read about some side effects but I haven't had any yet; it is still early on.

There are other "day to day" blogs out there of people that have done the Cleanse and what their experiences where.

I don't have links but they are out there.

I should also metion that I am making my Cleanse drink using filtered and boiled water that has been cooled.

And I must remember to pick up my Cayenne pepper today...

...

enough sitting....

go go go...

The Master Cleanse - Day one

After being unsuccessful at trying to curb my bad eating habits, I have decided to try something new.

The Master Cleanse.

The picture you see here is a glass of water with 2 tbsp of lemon juice (I used freshly squeezed... see the seeds on the bottom if the glass) and 2 tbsp of maple syrup (from a tree, not the corn syrup stuff).

I was supposed to add cayenne pepper , but i don't have any so I will pick some up tomorrow.

So far so good.

:)

This morning was the day.

I could feel it.

I was ready for this adventure.

I woke up and did Yoga. Then I took a Vitamin C and made my first drink and thankfully, it tastes alot better than i expected.

:)

I have researched this cleanse for years.... it is actually the one that prompted me to do the detox that i did 2 summers ago. However, just water and some lemon juice had scared me into a "modified" slushie detox...

But this time, inspired by a book i received for my birthday, i decided that it is now or ...later....

:)

Now.

I have read both sides of this story. I have read that it is a farse and I have read that it does good. So, what better way to find the truth, than to subject myself, "guinea-pig" style, to the process.

Just call me:

Debbie Megeney-pig...

yup, that was the best they could do when i was in school...

And, now I am finally living up to my "nick name"...

:)