I happened to look at the calendar yesterday and discovered that we’ve been toiling away now, on school, for just slightly longer than an entire month. Every morning I think we are still ‘easing in’ but I think I should count in my mind that on some level we are already there. The last piece of the fall return was hiking all the way out to Endicott to resume fencing. I try not to have small black feelings about Endicott, but they creep in, here and there, especially on Wednesdays when we are driving and driving and diving and driving to fencing. It’s worth it, though, because just being able to say, quietly to myself, ‘oh yes, the children are doing classical Italian fencing’ fills me with a warm glow of hope. Never mind whether they are actually fencing. Gladys has trouble holding straight the immense sword and kind of shuffles around, trying to keep up. And Romulus is easily distracted and occasionally unable to do exactly what the instructor says. I say unable because sometimes he is just sitting on the floor, resting while others work. Then he has to leap up and get back into formation.
A whole month ago, lazing as I was about in the garden, I couldn’t fathom how we would actually return to a life of order and work. I felt quite panicky, even, but not so panicky I did anything about it. Looking back I should have known that you just have to rebuild the muscle, you have to just show up and do it, however painful, and eventually the strength and endurance returns.
I am able to adroitly use a muscle analogy because I also started trying to lift my stupid hand weights yesterday. I’ve taken such a long rest from them that I nearly put my shoulder out, on Sunday, trying to pour water into the coffee pots at church over and over. It doesn’t help that the counter is really too high for me, but that trouble is exacerbated when I let my flesh fall into the way of gentle decline. I hate exercising. Hate. It. But I go through bouts where I do it sometimes, because I want to be able to consume the occasional bite of potato. So I returned to lying on the floor watching a thin muscular person swing her weights around on YouTube and trying not to hate her.
Also, we retuned to the stick economy, with some modifications. Tried to introduce the idea of sticks last spring and kept up with it for two months before being derailed. It didn’t have the effects I hoped it would, probably because I was doing it wrong, and also, I’m terrible about remembering anything like that. But I did need a way to try to keep track of who had completed what task as we starting back into school work, and so I dug out all the failed sticks and tweaked them. Now, anyone who does anything at all, to completion, gets a stick. Math, writing, geography, sweeping the floor, practicing the piano, cooking a meal, changing over laundry, everything. All the tasks are jumbled together and the sticks are worth very little, maybe only five or ten cents, so if you earn ten of them in day, I won’t become destitute. The little girls are able to earn a stick by me reading them a story. It’s the only way I can remember to do it, because they are hounding me for a stick. Also, over the course of a couple of days, I can go look in the jars and see who is completely slacking off. If only one person has a goodly amount of sticks, that means only one person is doing any work, and then I can go back and see who is neglecting what. It has got me away from having a list and losing it by mid morning, and then having no idea where I am in the flow of the day.
The other great and happy change from last year is scrapping a full amount of praying and bible in the morning, and having it at bedtime. None of us are really evening people, well, nor morning people, but doing anything at night besides flinging the kids in bed has been beyond reality. But with five different grade levels going on, I can’t pull off very much work together, and the time is severely shortened by everyone really needing to be on their own. Extending even the little we do together with prayer was Not Working, tragically. But now, right at bedtime, we’ve taken up saying compline and reading the bible and then collapsing. It’s a soothingly holy way to end the day.
There, I’ve bored the Internet with the details of my first month of school. Do wish I could, in my own mind, call it something other than school. There’s nothing pithy and easy. ‘Now we will learn something dammit’ is too long. So is ‘try to think about anything for a few minutes.’ Reveled in a glow of contentment yesterday, huddled as I was next to the heater, letting all the industry and concentration swirl around me, answering questions here and there, when the dog, with his teeth, leapt into my lap and knocked my tea cup out of my hand and onto my stack of books. Truly, the new year is turning out to be practically perfect.
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