I cooked a turkey!

And I didn't completely destroy it! Hooray! And it was yummy! Hooray!

My dad came over to eat with us. The girls have such a great time with him. I really think we should do more stuff with my dad. He brought his swank new digital camera with him. I have camera envy again.

Pat had to go to work and now it's getting dark (at 4pm, stupid winter). I wish he had been able to stay with us for the whole day. It would have been nice to spend the rest of the day just lazing around with him. But then, if he had been off we wouldn't have eaten so early in the first place.

Anyway, yay for leftovers and happy day of thanks to you all.

Dear Blogger, Fuck you.

Pat says you can't re-use titles, but to that I say, "Feh!"

How many times have I typed out a long-ass entry, hit post and publish, and then lost the entire entry to a blogger error? Well, add one more to the list.

I wrote about what we did on Friday and Saturday and Sunday and now you'll never know. I can tell you're incredibly upset by this news.

Also, we were unsure about the exact date that Pat and I met, but we just looked at a calendar from 1996 and found that today is our 7 year anniversary of the day we met. Yay! It's odd. Sometimes it seems like we have known eachother longer and sometimes it seems like we have known eachother for only a short time. I really feel incredibly lucky in the fact that Patrick is the person with whom I will spend the rest of my life. I think sometimes things come together rather beautifully.

Other news in the less lengthy version: Saren got her ear repierced. We went to Chuck E. Cheese and used up all of our leftover tokens (but the basketball game was broken :( ). We went to Pat's dad's retirement from the air force ceremony and I got some flowers. We got our pictures taken at Sears Portrait studio with the rest of Pat's family (and some of just us (Pat, the girls and I)). We have been eating out too much. It's cold.

Other other news: I think I am going to start using Movable Type, but I am a bit wary about it.

Thanks for using the postal system! Ka-ching!

I've been instructed by someone that I should blog if I want someone to get me a cheeseburger when someone gets home.

Firstly, I was thinking that the whole idea of bail is just an admission that people who have money really are more important than people who don't.

Secondly, I was skimming the channels and I found that channel 8 had apparently been covering the whereabouts of Michael Jackson for the entire afternoon. It was 6pm when I turned it on, so I can't be sure of this. It seems after he posted bail (3 million dollars), he came back to Vegas (and, um are you really allowed to leave the state like that?) and got caught in traffic or something. So they had this shot of the parking garage at the hotel that he's staying at and they speculated for like 10 full minutes as to whether he may have had to walk directly through the casino to get to the hotel suites or if there may have been a more direct and less public route that he and his people took. That was about all I could take.

If people would just stop watching the news, we wouldn't have it anymore. News, that is. Ah, what a lovely world that would be.

We have a thing to go to tomorrow and I stupidly didn't think to make sure that everyone had suitable clothing for it. Turns out we don't. So I'm going to have to go out early tomorrow to buy shoes and tights and such. Sigh.

You'll be better off this way.

For the past few days (maybe it's been longer now that I think about it), I have been feeling this restless sort of feeling. This kind of impending something or other feeling. And all the songs I listen to seem to be trying to tell me something profound.

Here's what Guster is saying to me:

if that's all you will be
you'll be a waste of time
you've dreamed a thousand dreams
none seem to stick in your mind

Yes. I know that, Guster. Leave me alone.

I don't like walking around in a fog of in-between. It makes you stare contemplatively at William Wegman dog photos. That's just stupid.

Zelda on the brain.

Saren just said of a Well's Fargo commercial, "Those horses look a little bit like Epona." That's my girl.

I've decided to make Thanksgiving dinner for Pat and me and the girls. I don't know if that was an insane thing to do or not. I've never made a turkey before. But I'm looking forward to having Thanksgiving with just us. We usually go to my grandmother's on the Saturday after Thanksgiving as well as Pat's parents either on Thanksgiving or near it. And it's not that I dislike all that, it's just that... maybe it is that I dislike it.

No, it's definitely not. But I do feel like this will be much more comfortable and pleasant. Anyway, cooking it will be an adventure.

I think Oreo is ill. I think he has a cold or something. He threw up in our room this morning and was all sneezy and then he spent much of the day all curled up in a sorry-for-himself ball sleeping. He just got up to chase a cricket, but his eyes are all half-closed and his heart's not in it. Poor baby kitty.

Bah.

It's funny how you can get two completely different experiences with the very same company by talking to two different people. Last month, Pizza Hut charged my debit card for the same pizza twice and I ended up with an overdraft charge on my bank account. I went to Pizza Hut and told them about it and they put the money back in my account with no problem. Today I finally got around to calling the bank about the situation. At the first branch I called, I talked to a very helpful girl (even though I wasn't fully prepared when I called and she had to wait while I looked around for my checkbook) who told me that it was no problem because she could see that Pizza Hut had credited my account, but that I needed to call the branch at which I had opened the account. But when I did that, the girl I talked to there first said that I couldn't do it over the phone and when I told her she was wrong (nicely), she just clicked around on her keyboard for a little while and then said, "Okay, I did it, but this was just an exception." I didn't know if she meant it was an exception that she did it over the phone or that she did it at all. Either way, that's bullshit.

It's funny though, how people can get all caught up in their own non-existent authority.

Anyway, the money is back in the account and all is well. Okay, actually... the money was back in the account, but we just used it to buy some pizza. From Pizza Hut.

Joy!!! I think.

Saren said she doesn't want to go to school. Yesterday, I made a schedule for our day that included some schoolish type stuff. Saren was really excited about it at first, and she really enjoyed some of it (like doing yoga together and making turkeys out of pine cones), but she didn't like the schoolish stuff. I printed up a handwriting practice sheet for her. It had her name on it. She took it excitedly to her room and then she came out a little bit later telling me she didn't like doing it very much. We also read from the What Your 1st Grader Needs to Know book in the history and geography chapter and she found that she was bored after about 2 paragraphs.

I pointed out to her that all of the things that she didn't like about our day were things that she would have to do in school and that a teacher would not be likely to say to her that she didn't have to do it if she didn't want to the way that I did. I also reiterated the fact that if she were to go to school, she would barely see her dad, because Pat works at night and by the time she would get home from school, he would be gone. By the time he would get home, she would be in bed. Sunday would be their only day together if she went to school. She again said something about how "everybody" says that if you don't go to school, you won't be smart. I told her again that Annika didn't go to school and she's very smart. Somehow, we got into a conversation about how Annika did go to school for a short time because her mom had to go to work, and about how Annika really didn't like it and she like homeschooling so much better. She was surprised and didn't know that Annika had gone to school. It was shortly after that that I said, "Why don't you just stay home and we'll make sure to do lots more activities with other homeschooled kids?" She said okay and gave me a huge hug. We talked about it a bit more so that I could make sure that she was sure and she seems to be committed to homeschooling for now.

Does this mean that all her talk about school was never really all that serious anyway? Or does it mean that she really can completely shift her desires that quickly and that easily? Or did all my discussion with her on the matter (we've talked a lot about it in the past few weeks) manage to convince her that school was a bad idea? Or will she start asking to go to school again in another couple of weeks? I wish I knew. I think I know my child pretty well, but 6 year olds can sometimes be quite a mystery. Maybe she just decided that since Annika had both been homeschooled and gone to school, that she (Annika) really did know both sides of the coin, and that convinced her. Maybe it was the actual experience of school-type work. Ah, the wily mind of the 6 year old.

I guess time will tell on whether or not her school desire has truly departed or not. I think that she knows it's always an option and I'm glad that she knows that her parents will take her seriously if she ever expresses the desire again in the future. Maybe that's all she needed to know.

Edit: I forgot to mention that Saren has sent off 6 of her postcards and we are waiting until payday to buy some more. I think the next batch will be about 7 postcards. I'm doing all of the writing now, though she is telling me what to say and is signing and decorating all the postcards. If you haven't gotten yours yet, it should be coming soon.

Wokka wokka wokka!

I don't know.

I'm all in a turmoil over this school thing with Saren. And I'm pretty sure I'm overreacting. I also don't know if I can really put it into words, and I don't know if I want to try.

Okay, I'll try! Watch out for vagueness ahead!

There are all these feelings of failure and guilt and rejection mixed up in this. And then part of me says, "Get a grip, lady! She just doesn't know what school is like and isn't willing to take your word for it. Since when is that a new thing?" But it's only part of me and the rest of me is totally freaking out.

Like there was this story recently about the drug raid in a high school. It absolutely enraged me. If ever we needed more proof that children in our society have no rights and are treated completely without respect, that this happened is it. Further proof comes from the fact that when Pat's station had a poll about it, only 62% of the people polled thought the police had gone too far. 38% of those people thought what the police did was perfectly acceptable. Yes, pointing a gun at an innocent fourteen-year-old's head is perfectly acceptable. How would those people have reacted if it had been an adult situation. What if an employer suspected that there was a lot of drug use in his workplace. What would people be saying about it if he had made the decision to allow a drug search in an office building on a bunch of grown-ups?

This is what I would be sending my child out into. Yes, I know that we're talking about the difference between elementary school and high school, but the picture is a lot larger than that, I think. I would be sending my child into a world where she was not afforded any respect. Here, my daughter is treated like a person. Not a subordinate. Not property. Not a criminal. She is a person. Out there, I know there are people who are teaching who care about children and who would treat my child with what they think is respect. But it's not just the big things, it's the little things. The overall attitude toward children which is pretty much taken for granted and never questioned.

So I got one of those What Your 1st grader Needs to Know books from the library. I like those books as just a kind of thing to thumb through every now and again because they have a lot of stories and information in them. What I don't like is the idea that every child needs to share this same body of information. Shared knowledge is fine, but it's better that it should come about naturally, not in a pre-packaged set of things that all the little clones must know. And it does happen naturally. It's just that it's messy and there's lots of overlapping. Anyway, I suggested to Saren that we could have a more scheduled type of day, that could be more, well... schoolish, if she wanted to try out that type of thing. And I was going to use that book to some extent to plan our day.

I keep telling myself it's just an experiment and that I'm trying to figure out what is best for Saren, and that's absolutely true. And it's not like I won't enjoy our day or anything. I'll like it no matter what we do together as long as she likes it. It just feels like... I don't know. Like I'm betraying my own philosophies. But it's not about me. And we just may come up with what's right for her by experimenting and it may be something that we can both be perfectly happy with.

But wait! There's more!

I still don't have anything to say. I'm more inclined lately to write on the 2 Girls blog. But I did realize yesterday that I could talk about the dream that I had the other night.

I dreamt that I was in this town, I guess it was my town, and I had just come back from a vacation. While I had been gone, the Disney people had erected a stylized city in the middle of my town. It was a theme park that had at it's center a scaled down city with skyscrapers that rose above the outer walls of the park. That was all anyone could see of it and the skyscrapers were dark because the theme park hadn't opened yet.

Every time I looked at the skyscrapers I would get this really uneasy feeling. Like they were just pure evil. But everyone else was intrigued and excited.

Then, on the fourth of July, after the fireworks had stopped, the skyscrapers lit up and Mickey Mouse's voice started to boom (squeak?) all over the town, telling everyone about how great the new theme park was and how it was going to be opening soon. And just outside the gates there was this pig who was dressed up in clothes (wow, this dream becomes more and more embarrassing the more I talk about it) talking to a growing group of people enthusiastically about the theme park and how great it was. To me, he had this obvious cartoonish (duh) wolf-in-sheep's-clothing look, but everyone else seemed to be oblivious and they were entranced and enthralled.

That's all I really remember, besides the feeling of being the only one to see that something horrible was happening.

Then there was another part where I was living with my mom, and my stepdad was a crippled person who miraculously learned to walk and he became beloved by everyone for it even though he was a jerk. It was his birthday and he was on the phone with my brothers and I wouldn't talk to him. Everyone was mad at me for not talking to him, and my mother said, "How can you just abandon him like this?" I was about to say to her, "Look lady, who abandoned who?" when I woke up. (For the record, in real life, "abandon" is a pretty strong and mostly inaccurate word for the situation.) But when I woke up, I had some interesting revelations about my relationship with my mother.

When I thought some more about the other part of the dream (the disney part), I realized it was totally Ishmaelian, because the scaled down city and Disney represented civilization and materialistic excess.

I don't know why, but I have nothing to say lately.

Here is a condensed version of our lives at this moment:

We're broke.

Also! Saren's Postcard Project

Saren is going to be doing a postcard project and we are looking for some people to help her out with it. If you would like to participate, here is what you will do: Saren will send you a Las Vegas themed postcard that might say something about what it's like living here (or it might not, she's much better at reading than writing at this point), and you send her back a postcard from the area where you live (preferably with a picture of something near you, or the landscape near you) telling her something about what it's like to live where you live. If you would like to help us out, just email me (the email me link is on the right) with your address. If we don't already know you, then please include in your email something that allows us to get to know you before we go sending you our address (like a paragraph or two telling us who you are or a link to your website or weblog). Thanks!

School. School?! Urgh. School.

So. Saren wants to go to school.

I've always said that if any of my children want to go to school, I will let them (on our terms, not the school's terms, more on that later). Nevertheless, every time she brought up the subject (and she brings it up as if she were talking about a toy that she reeeaaallly, reeeaaallly wants: "Oh, mom! I really want to go to school. Can I pleeeeaaaaase go to school?"), my mind would start to race and panic. Oh Lord, what do I do now?

The reason I've always said that if any of my kids wanted to go to school, I would let them try it out is because if I forbid them to go, I strongly feel like that would be a direct contradiction of all the unschooling philosophy I believe in so wholeheartedly. Unschooling is all about freedom and choosing your own educational path. So, how could I, in good conscience, cut something completely out of the picture for my daughter if it is something that she is requesting? So this causes somewhat of a dilemma for me because I want nothing more than to just forbid it outright, but I'm absolutely certain that Saren would pick up on the hypocrisy of that move, if not now, then definitely later in her life.

And it brings up all kinds of other worries. What if things just haven't been exciting enough around here? What if she somehow, defies all of my expectations and likes school? What if I send her and something terrible happens? I don't mean something catastrophic, but just something in the line of all the hundreds of horror stories I have read about school in all the research that I have done so far about home and unschooling.

And what if the school people hate me, because I don't operate in the same way as all the other parents? Because I won't. I will never make my daughter do homework. I will never punish or reward her for the work she does there, beyond being enthusiastic about anything that she is proud of herself. If Saren wakes up in the morning and says that she doesn't want to go to school, I will say, "Hooray!" and keep her at home, joyfully. She will know that not following the rules at school may result in consequences from the school, but never from me. If she decides to go, she'll be there because she has chosen to be there, and that will make a huge difference between her situation and the other kids'.

So we made a deal, Saren and Pat and I. We said that if she still wants to go to school in two months, when the next term starts, that we will let her. She knows that she can quit at any time if she decides that school is not for her. So, for the next two months, I plan on doing a lot of extra activities and special things. I plan on pointing out to her often that the things we are doing we may not be able to do if she chooses to go to school, due to time restraints. I plan on helping her meet a bunch more homeschoolers in the next two months because I think part of this comes from feeling different and I don't think we socialize with other homeschoolers often enough.

But you know what? I have a feeling that it's not going to do much good. Because I really feel like Saren is the kind of kid who needs to experience something for herself to know what it's like. I can't tell you the amount of times I've told her something and she argued with me, not believing it was true, even though I never lie to her and she knows it. Then she experiences it for herself and comes to me and says, "Mom, you were right!" So, I have a pretty strong feeling that come January I am going to get a dose of what it's like to pack a lunch and send my child off to school for the better part of the day.

I'm trying to remain faithful to the thought that she probably won't last there very long before she becomes fed up with the arbitrary rules, and the waking up early, and the being told what to learn and when, and the drill work, and the rote memorization, and the lack of real respect for children. But Pat and I need to stay open to the possibility that she might actually like it. Or that she might find one part of it good enough that it's worth it to deal with the not-so-good parts. She might luck out and get a teacher who is very loving and caring and wonderful. That's another reason that I want to do this now for the second term of her first grade year. If she does like it, or part of it, then we can always just withdraw her when we move to Oregon and once there, we can rethink and rework through the whole situation.

So, that's about where we are. I guess we'll see what happens.

In case you are interested, before we came to this decision, I read a bunch about other people who were or had been in the same situation. Here is one of the articles that heavily influenced me.

Cross-posted to Radical Homeschool Blog.