Don’t let the map on the wall fool you. This room is Not Done. But I did affix the glorious, tattery because I’ve hung it up so many times, map of the whole wide world up so that it would feel like maybe I am getting somewhere. I feel that I must justify, probably only to myself, why a homeschooler could have a school room, and then what goes in to the making of a good one. If you “school”... Read more
Didn’t realize it was a holiday yesterday until I pulled up into the empty Aldi parking lot and sat there for three seconds, cursing the darkness. Except that it was a bright cheery day so not really. Turned back around and got nearly everything I needed at Price Rite. I think I’m the only person in Binghamton who really likes Price Rite. Where others see doom and gloom, I see piles of vegetables that aren’t Aldi vegetables. Except yesterday, when... Read more
I should be already up and slapping paint hither and yon. Today is the day we face the school room, transforming it from dingy white to apple green (that’s the plan anyway), and maybe tonight is the night I stay up and put everything in there, or not. I’m not really good for thoughts and decisions after seven pm. But instead of leaping up I’ve been lying here hiding everything in my Facebook feed, which is what I do when... Read more
I have lately, as I might have mentioned one or a hundred times, been thinking about writer’s block–the great stumbling stone that trips me up every morning as I go to write, the vast appalling page that gapes at me, mocking me, taunting me. There are different kinds of reasons that make it difficult to write. The first, and more usual for me, is that you can’t always talk about whatever is really on your mind. Delicacy precludes the total... Read more
A charming podcast this week in which we give way to roiling anger about heresy and bash our way around Andy Stanly and Justin Welby. I can’t imagine that you’d want to miss it. Here’s the article I mentioned about Justin Welby. The Internet was good to me this week, so first up, a really good article about poverty in America. And one about race relations. And something super provocative about women that probably has a kernel of truth but... Read more
One The children have started asking if we can start school. I am more than a little irritated by this. We are days and days and days away from starting school. Whole days of sanding the school room walls, painting them, and then me digging through all our school boxes to find the stuff we need. Plus a dreaded library trip to offer up all the money I have to restore library privileges. No I can’t find Timmy Failure. Yes... Read more
August and September, sort of like January, always seem to bring an uptick of articles about how to be more productive and happy. There are studies and Listicles and advice columns. There are pictures of happy smiling people who have got their lives in order, beckoning the reader to be like them, to stop laying around on the couch and make that one single easy change that will bring total happiness. I can never help myself from clicking on these... Read more
I finally have succumbed to thinking about school, and I immediately overwhelmed and panicked myself, so I thought I would dig up this sound advice that I offered up to the world a few years ago, and take it again myself. **************** I’m a pretty cruddy homeschooler. Every year I learn a valuable lesson but it’s always because I was blind to something obvious or something terrible happened that derailed me, bringing me to the brink of failure, and I... Read more
Gosh, the Internet is keyed up this morning. Burkini Ban, that Football Player, Facebook Algorithm Bots, Huma and Weiner–everyone seems hoping mad. I have dutifully scrolled through and I’m just not feeling it. To take them one at a time, the more I’ve tried to be interested in that Kaepernick guy (gosh he looks like a baby child) because I am dutifully patriotic and I like to do what the Internet tells me to do, the more it seems to... Read more
I should already have written something scintillating and delightful, for this bright cheery Monday morning, but Posie the dog wants to put his horrible wet nose on my hand, being jealous of this shiny screen. His life is miserably hard–or was I thinking of mine? Since waking up he has polished off the cat bowl, peed in the hall, pooped in the living room, and sat crying on my lap because I won’t pet him. Meanwhile, his true owner is... Read more
Preventing Grace
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