Mira Has Learned How to Sew

The other day at karate, Mira saw a girl sewing, and decided she wanted to learn. Yesterday, she sewed a whole pillow by herself, and today she made two more, with very nice, even stitches!

This is very much like her. She shows no indication of wanting to learn things, then when she decides she wants to do something, she does it with fairly quick mastery. She seems to have a clear awareness that she has no need for things until, well, she does. She's very mature about these things, which makes her very good at pretending she's immature. No, it wasn't that she wasn't *ready* to read. She'd just decided that all those books with *words* must be incredibly boring and therefore reading was "stupid." Now she's reading hundred-page books, and I'm keeping my mouth shut.

Some Good Short Stories

I am also reading Tabloid Dreams by Robert Olen Butler. Rarely am I blown away by short stories. In fact, I'd guess that my response to at least 80% of the short stories I read (which are already selected in some way or another to be "good") is "I'm not sure whether that's good or not." I suppose this is partly due to how stories are written these days, or what we value (inventive! unique! brilliant structual finesse!). It's rare to find a story that just hits you in the gut.

I've been reading Butler's From Where You Dream: The Process of Writing Fiction -- a transcription of his writing lectures, and I was curious to read some of his stories. I've read a lot of writing books: is he any good? Is there really value added here?

Each story in the book (yes, every single darned one) has so far made me say "Holy shit, I wish I'd written that." Especially Titanic Victim Speaks From Waterbed. How many people can pull of a story of an aqueously embodied ghost voicing its regrets from within a waterbed?

A Whole New Mind

I have just finished reading A Whole New Mind by Daniel Pink. It is basically about how we are moving from the information age to the conceptual age, and how our previous and current focus on only left-brained skills is no longer useful to us.

The reviews of the book on Amazon are pretty dead-on, I think: "upbeat, but overly simplistic view of globalization." My thoughts were a little briefer and perhaps less eloquent: "Well, duh." It used to be that being a doctor, engineer, or having an MBA was the way to get ahead in life. Now that information-age jobs are being outsourced to Asia, and the knowledge stored in doctors' heads can be found almost everywhere, this isn't the case anymore. But isn't that all obvious?

What amazes me though, is how even though this seems so obvious, we're either unwilling or unable to look at our educational system and realize it's a dinosaur. We still compliment our kids on mostly left-brain things: how much can you memorize, do you know your times tables in third grade just like I did, how much do you know? Yes, it's important to have basic skills. But it's harder to quantify and "prove" (and therefore praise and encourage) right-brained skills. We weren't taught to value them, and we're lucky if we still have any left. If we adults are generally ignorant about the nature and capabilities of the mind, how on earth can we presume to prepare them for the future?(getting out of the way is one good option).

Zombies Ain’t So Bad

It’s my personal opinion that games are a great way to teach, and if a game has zombies in it, well hey—that’s a bonus in my book. There’s nothing like a little undead to liven things up.

Zombie Fluxx is a riff on the original Fluxx, a card game put out by Looney Labs (www.LooneyLabs.com). The game starts out with only one rule—draw one, play one. There are four different kinds of cards: Keepers, Goals, Actions, and New Rules. Keepers are cards you place in front of you to help you win, such as “bread” and “the toaster.” Goal cards specify what keepers or conditions you need to have to win; for example, if you have the previously mentioned keepers in front of you and you can put down the “Toast (must have bread and toaster)” goal card, you win. Action cards let you do things like steal a keeper, or switch hands.

The real fun of the game comes with the New Rule cards. Each New rule either adds on to or supersedes the previous ones—so at any one time there are likely to be multiple rules (i.e. “Draw Three,” “Play Two,” “Hand Limit One,” “Dual Goals”) that you need to keep track of. The rules, and goals, change all the time. It’s great for encouraging reasoning, logical thought, and rule-processing skills.

Needless to say, this type of game appeals largely to boys and left-brained people. I’ve tried to play this game with a bunch of women on a girls’ cabin weekend, and nearly got chucked out on my head in the snow.

Zombie Fluxx is all this and more. In addition to Keepers, you have “Creepers,” or zombies—individuals, pairs, trios, and the occasional undead quartet. Part of the challenge is figuring out what to do with your zombies (isn’t that always the case?); do you keep them, try to kill them, or better yet, force some to flee to your neighbors? With some of the goals, you can only win if you have no zombies (for example: “Getaway Driver…You win if you have the Car and at least one Friend Keeper on the table in front of you…and no Zombies!”) For some, you must have Zombies (i.e. “Brain Baseball…You win if you have Brains and the Baseball Bat and at least one Zombie on the table” or my personal favorite, “Zombie Baseball Team…You win if you have at least 9 Zombies in front of you along with the Baseball Bat.”)

My nine-year old son and two of his friends (including one girl who, granted, is a rather left-brained fan of Norm from “This Old House”) had a great time with this game. At one point, they successfully juggled ten rules, full hands and multiple Zombies. “I’ve got Zombies and I’ve got Wood!” one of them cried excitedly.

In addition to Fluxx and Zombie Fluxx, one can get Eco Flux, Spanish Fluxx, and Jewish and Christian Booster packs. I’ve even seen a teacher-made version of “Music Fluxx.” If you’re up for a challenge, you can mix your games together. Can you just imagine—“Rosh Hashanah…You win if you have Friends and Challah…and no Zombies!”

My favorite part of Zombie Fluxx, however, is the New Rule “Zombies Ain’t So Bad.” With this card on the table, you can win with Zombies even if the current Goal says you can’t win if you have any Zombies. Sometimes, things just aren’t as bad as they seem—now isn’t that a great message to send our kids?

RIP Piggies

It's never going to be a good morning when your child wakes you up with "Mommy, there's something wrong with...."

Wiley's guinea pig Mystery died on Thursday. We made a heroic effort to bring her into the vet, and arrived just in time for her to die in his arms while he was taking a minute to say goodbye before we were going to put her to sleep.

We discussed that while he was very sad, and he was doing a hard thing, it was good that she died knowing he loved her, and that he got to spend her last moments with her, as well as so much time in general. The kids spent most every morning cuddling with their piggies, and it struck me many times that one of the great things about home schooling is that the kids got to spend time bonding with and loving their pets.

Teddy died on Saturday.

It's not clear why, though I have recently learned that green beans are poisonous to guinea pigs. Who knew? Rhubarb, yes--of course. But green beans? They did have green beans about a week ago, and I suspect this may be the cause of their demise. This was not in any of the books I'd read, nor have I ever heard it. I just found out from a "Guinea Pig Secrets" ebook.

You Learn Something New Every Day

Apparently if you try and roast an eggplant intact (without poking any holes in it), this is what happens. I'll add this to the list of completely random things that can interrupt home schooling.

Brain Day

Today was my third class in teaching anatomy to the younger group of children. I picked up a brain at Blood Farm on the way to the library, so we could poke at it. Here is a picture of me parked right next to the library dumpster for easy brain disposal. Maybe I should be wondering about people who park next to dumpsters.

Unfortunately my car has that nice, freshly-butchered smell to it now. You won't see Johnson & Johnson promoting a "Fresh Brains" air freshener anytime soon.

Resistance

Today someone said to me, in reference to home schooling (after the usual "I couldn't do that") "How do you deal with the resistance?" To being taught, specifically.

Of course, at the end of the day, I didn't have much of a brain to answer. But now that I have swept up some brains, I have what might be a few cogent thoughts. Really, I dont' think we have much "resistance" per se. I think a lot of kids resistance to learning is because they're either overscheduled and zonked, aren't interested in learning what someone thinks they should be taught, or aren't meeting the material in a meaningful or developmentally well-timed way.

I've seen the magic myself--I try to teach or explain something in the "basic skills" department. Big wall of resistance. I stop. A few months later, the kid does it on his/her own almost instantly. Or suddenly is interested after a snack. Or a half an hour later. I feel really lucky that we have the freedom to learn....I was going to finish that with something, but that's really it. The freedom to learn.

If The Universe Is So Abundant, Why Don't We Have Any Underwear?

These days one of the books I'm reading is the "Change Your Thoughts, Change Your Life: Living the Wisdom of the Tao" by Wayne Dyer.

The idea as introduced by Lao Tzu, I believe, is that the universe is by nature endless and abundant, and much of our shortcomings and feelings of failure are due to ourselves getting in our own way. Thank you, Mr. fix-it fancy-ass old chinese guy.

I suppose a wise old chinese man is more likely to be right about anything than I am. But screw him. I'm having a moment.

I find myself questioning the "abundance" part, and I suspect many home schoolers (admit it, or I'll yell at you in pretend chinese) feel the same way. Everyone wants something from me, there's not enough time for anything, I've done six loads of laundry today and there's still more, and I've just stepped on something and it feels like meat. The house is a mess, and the moment I sit down to write in the morning, before all the air has even squished out of the chair, someone comes in and says "can you find me some underwear?" It all seems like a zero-sum game.

Then a moment of enlightenment. I've got good friends, kids who I don't mind claiming as mine, and some amount of inspiration. Lots of people would kill for that. All my son's asking for is underwear.

I'm guessing it's a lot easier to ask the universe for underwear than it is to ask for friends, family, and inspiration.

Morning Pages, and Teaching Writing

Wiley and I have been doing "Morning Pages." I believe it was Julia Cameron who popularized this idea: first thing in the morning, you sit and write for a few minutes. It doesn't have to be good, or coherent, or anything. No rules, other than keep writing. Just butt on seat, pen/pencil on paper. It's a great way to clear out the cobwebs in your head and get your mind in gear to be creative.

So much of what we write in our lives is filtered through expectation and self-consciousness. Is it good? Can I say this? Is it interesting? Then there's the voice of the critic: "you're no good," "why are you wasting time doing this," "who are you to think you're a writer." No wonder the biggest challenge in writing is to have "a voice."

We spend most of our adult lives trying to find out who we are. Many, perhaps most of us, fail. Maybe even a greater number just don't try.

I think morning pages are a great tool for kids, and a great beginning to more "formal" writing. Hopefully they haven't learned yet that "writing" is just jumping through another hoop to please someone else. Frankly, mechanics, grammar, structure, this can all be learned fairly easily, *if* you have something to say. If you are merely doing an exercise, an assignment--why does it matter then, where the period is, whether a sentence is too long? If you have a voice, something pure and special that is truly yours, then nothing will stop you, and your words, and your life, will resonate, like a strike on a clear bell.

And, I suppose, this is why I home school.

In any case, this is what a morning page might look like (and I am typing in one of Wiley's, because it's riotously entertaining and much better than mine):

"I like potatoes. they taste good baked and in hash. baked Potatoes need butter, sour cream, herbs, cheese, and bacon bits. thereis a tick on my dog. I bet he can't feel anything. I hate having to sit here writing my morning page. Iwish I was in Florida sliding down a water slide at typhoon Lagoon in disney land my mom says I have to make spaces between words. Small intestines look like snakes when protrayed in a book. Our barn hypnotizes me when I look at it. I must remember not to overuse exclamation points!!!!!! We have a huge pop-up 3D human body on our wall. he comes with liver, intestines, bones,nerves, heart, etc, etc, etc. isn't it weird I have used the word "intestines" three times? I made breakfast this morning. darn. my yolk was too thick. I have an air condishiner and it works. Yay! I snuck six (maybe five) cookbooks into our library bag. this includes the norwegiean, mexican, hungarian, east african, and italian cookbooks."

Questions of the Day

From Wiley (9): "What's a tongue fetishist?" (Thank you, Bloom County).

From Kiran (4): "Mommy, can we hunt a deer and cut its skin off and then stretch it sometime?"

From Mira (6): "Can't anyone ever wipe the seat?"

Creation, and Following Your Instincts

We've been reading Pearl Buck's "The Story Bible" as part of our studies. I'd never read the Adam and Eve story before, and it's bugging me. I think it's the whole "the world was just perfect until Eve had to go screw it up" thing.

I've been working on a short story called "Geeta and the Horrible Sausage Factory." Or had been working on it, about two years ago. It never went anywhere. Last night--ZAP. I think I'm going to make it into a creation story.

Now, the part about following your instincts. I'm finding it hard to figure out where in this story there will be even a little link of sausage, never mind a sausage factory. Or a *horrible* sausage factory. This should be a a huge signal flag. But I really, really want to call it that. Which way to go?

Two Different Ways to Write About Bananas

I've been having my son do a "morning page" in his writing book each day. The idea is that you put the pencil to the paper, and keep writing until the end of the page. No rules, no standards, just write. The idea, I explain to him, is it's kind of like taking a morning dump, literally. You've just gotta get the *stuff* out of your head, and once you do that, some of the better stuff has more of a chance to get out. Besides, it's good practice to do a little bit of writing every day, not to mention without any pressure for it to be "good."

Amusingly, I've discovered this is a *great* way to "teach" poetry. Wiley has written several "poems," with excessive, but very creative, use of white space in order to take up the whole page with the minimum amount of effort.

On another page, he's listed the ten avatars of Vishnu. That took up half a page.

Today, I got off my duff and told him I'd do my own while he did his. Turns out we both wrote about how there were seven bananas on the counter, at about the same moment--a wonderful moment of communion. It was interesting to note that we both said the same thing, but the slightly different words made it sound different:

"We have seven bananas on the counter. I like bananas!"

"There are a lot of bananas on the counter. Seven bananas."

Hands-on-Math

We've been doing math with the "four friends"--from right to left Max Multiply, Minnie Minus, Patty Plus (she's had a sex-change since we did these with my oldest, and she's having a very bad hair day), and King Dominic Divide.

Mira and I worked with Miquon workbooks last year, and it was pretty obvious that none of it was having any resonance. I think all the operations were so abstract, and she couldn't really keep track of what all those signs were. And, frankly, when I tried to get into the mindset of a child (which isn't too hard first thing in the morning), it was hard for me to get it either. What *is* subraction. If you "take away," don't you have more?

So we brought these guys back out. The shiny glass stars were a hit. Suddenly the nature of the processes and their interrelationships were obvious. Even my four-year old gets multiplication and division now, after say, an hour of playing with these guys!

More writing

Managed to get done two columns and a short story, "The Places She Missed," done this weekend, hiding in my little room.

You'd think I was in here buggering the dog or something, with the looks I get whenever anyone comes in. And the door isn't even shut.

I sent the story into Writers' Digest. We'll see. Maybe I should be buggering the dog instead.

Rhyming skills:a great way to start the morning

We were at our chore board this morning, and I was rather brainlessly singing "Friday, Friday, time to..." and stopped because I really had no plan for the rest of the phrase. Kiran immediately chimed in , in perfect tune, with "...die day."

Hard to know where to go from that.

They must serve great beverages on planet Wiley

So I'm in here working on my next column for the paper, and Wiley comes in with a "special Rosh Hashanah beverage." We're studying the Torah for the next few months, and I'd gotten a book out on Jewish cooking (apparently that isn't an oxymoron, and I've eaten enough dessicated chicken in my life to have earned the right to make that remark). This is along with "Cooking the Hungarian Way," "Cooking the East African Way," "Cooking the Mexican Way," Cooking the Italian Way," and "Cooking the Norwegian Way," which were all smuggled into my library bag and checked out without my knowing.

The beverage is "Cinnamon Almond Milk," and damn, it's good. He apparently modified the recipe, wrote it out with an illustration, and rated it 5 stars upon my approval.

If anything, he'll have a successful future as a barrista.

Organizationally Challenged

At the moment, I have a sticky note stuck on my PDA. I'm sure the information will make it into the PDA, but unfortunately not by osmosis. I'm thinking there's a flaw somewhere in my data input chain here.

I've read that one of the most effective strategies for accomplishing your goals is to spend ten minutes a night reviewing the next day and making a to-do list. Something in me just rebels at this, though. Or maybe I'm just lazy. Ten minutes seems like such a *long* time. I could do ten minutes of art, watch a segment of "Dirty Jobs," do a Sudoku, feed the guinea pigs...there's so much I could do in ten minutes. Frankly, by the time I'm done with the day and ready for the next, I'm too tired to plan anything, and I've usually forgotten to charge the darn thing anyway.

The Muse in the Sterno

The first sentences of a story for the Writer's Digest prompt came to me on the way home last night after a Pu-Pu Platter at the Hong & Kong: "He’d been with Hector the one-testicled elephant for years, but not in that way. She was his one and only. But when she shaved her beard to fit in with the other soccer moms, he cried."

We'll see how this goes.

The last time I had any inspiration was when I saw the ad about Werewolf stories and I was in the mood to procrastinate regarding my novel.

But this reminds me--the muse only comes if you let her in, I guess. I rarely save any brain space for "I think I'll write a short story," or walk around with any "I'm a writer" receptors up. This is one of the biggest challenges I have. I've got so much on my plate--how do I remind myself that I'm (allegedly) a writer, when, for instance, my youngest has just peed on my foot or I can't even find a pencil?

This Month's Writer's Digest Contest Prompt

From Writer's Digest--write a short story of 750 words or fewer based on this prompt. Winner receives $100 in WD books and publication.

"After years with a traveling carnival, the strong man and bearded lady try to adjust to normal life as a married couple."

In the (Wrong Kind of) Flow

What I really love about writing is that wonderful state where all the neurons have had the time to connect and the right words jiggle together into something miraculous. Actually, anything can be like this--when you're somehow in the right state of mind, and conditions are favorable (no one yelling "wipe me!" for instance)-- suddenly you find yourself fully present and happy.

I get distracted easily, though.

There's lots of flies here. Darn them. They're landing on my legs while I try to write, or rubbing their little legs together on my pile of envelopes. Some of them are stripy and have big red eyes.

So I have discovered that killing flies is as much fun as writing, unfortunately perhaps more so. Last week I killed about twenty of them (the large, stripy uber-flies) with an old, paperback copy of "Statistics in Everyday Life." Once you kill a few, it's hard to stop. There's a strategy to it, almost a martial art. If you move too slow, they feel the movement of the air and escape. If they see your shadow, they're on to you. One good whack, and the luckier flies dance in the air until something in their little brains tells them to land again, and the process repeats. It's a dance.

Downstairs I have a standard-issue swatter, which I initially bought to use in an art project (along with the corn-holder nipples-to-be, but let's not discuss those) but is now my weapon of choice. I'm racking up the points. Land, spot, swat. Land, spot, swat.

I'm just about out of flies now, so I guess it's on to something else. If I'm really clever about it, maybe I can be distracted by chapter 1 of my novel.

There's a Chipmunk In My Toilet and My Hair is Turning Gray

I've decided that that's going to be the title of the next book I pitch. Barring that, maybe a country-western song. Barring that, that's what I'll be singing to myself holed up at my writing desk with a good beer, perhaps one too many.

Really, though, there was a chipmunk in my toilet.

Usually when you hear the words "and it's trying to swim" coming out of your child (in reference to anything living or previously living in some kind of perilous situation involving liquid), really what it means is "it's dead as a fucking doornail." But no! In this case, the chipmunk was very wet and exhausted, but definitely among our living chipmunky friends.

I did not get a picture of him in the bowl, as I was busy rescuing him. I will cite this to prove that I am a compassionate person.

The Day of the Cock

Yesterday we sat down after getting a lot of work done for some nice family time watching "Dirty Jobs" on the Discovery Channel (TIVO, actually). If you haven't seen it, you should--it's this great show where the (coincidentally really hot) host sees what it's like to do the kind of menial, awful jobs that some people do so we don't have to.

Someone picked the "Dirtiest Animal" show, which sounds pretty tame, right? Of course, one of the segments was on electro-ejaculating a bull with a huge rubber dildo-like thing about a foot and a half long. This is, I suppose, kind of tame next to someone shoving their entire arm up the bull's ass. No questions here, fortunately.

Then we head out to lunch and some errands. Right now I need to preface the rest of the story by saying we go out to chinese food too much, and my kids are intimately familiar (and I realize that after that last paragraph, the phrase "intimately familiar" sounds unclean) with the Chinese Zodiac menus they always have. The male chicken-mate is always called a "cock," which is just fine, until you realize that your nine-year old is still calling a rooster a cock.

So Wiley spikes up his hair and says "Mom, I look like a cock!"

And then we repeat the occasional "perhaps you should start using the work "rooster" like everybody else" conversation, which leads to me explaining what the colloquial meaning of "cock" is, and how one usually does not use it in polite conversation. Which, of course, leads to Wiley asking "so when *would* you use the word 'cock?'"

All I could think of was "In no conversation you'll ever be having soon."

Sigh. At least I got out of explaining what electroejaculation was :-)

Economics 101

The kids have been playing store lately with a tray full of play money. Kiran was excited to show me his hanging squash money-holder (which has now been expanded to three squash).

It's been fun listening to the kids haggle over prices, negotiate deals, and set up specials and discount tables. They're taking it extremely seriously, which is mildly unfortunate because when Kiran runs out of money he has a fit.

But even he understands now that if you charge $100 for a block of wood, no one will buy it.

Playing Bass May Make You Blind

The kids have been spending most of their time up in the boys' room listening to CD's and playing their various instruments along with the music: Wiley on rock ukelele, Kiran on strumstick, and Mira on the chanter.

Spidey here, who's meant to hang upside down, got to help out in his usual disturbing position.

As soon as I walked in the room, Kiran jerked Spidey's hands up and down and said "He's playing Bass!"

Our New Baby

We Interrrupt This Novel...

...to write two werewolf stories.

I just came across a post on Deborah Ng's freelance writing blog avertising for werewolf stories for a book...$750-$1000 each. Now that's tempting! Combine temptation with a fine dose of procrastination, and you get creativity. My goal is to have the drafts of both stories done by tomorrow. This ought to be fun. I've been in Revision Land forever. It's fun, and a little strange, to actually *write* something.

Those darned revisions

So I've finally gotten back to working on my novel. Now I know why people say it takes them years to finish one. While the kids were at camp this past week, I got to sit down with some very nice caffeine and figure out all of the plot kinks that I inherited from revision number 2 (lesson for all of you budding mystery novelists--never think "wouldn't it be fun if the body was missing it's head?" It's not.)

My big problem with this revision? After having the novel sit for a while, I realized I couldn't remember the name of one of the main characters. I'm no pro, but I can take a hint. That's a bad sign.

I reworked the first seven chapters this morning, and there aren't any drastic changes I need to make, short of adding a chapter. I'm hoping I can have the darn thing done by September.

Isn't this the coolest Jello mold? Rachel Ray, eat your heart out.

All those aliens do is sit around and watch TV

It took a whole day to inflate these guys, and are they grateful, NOT! All they want to do is sit around and watch "Die Hard." They should go back to their own darn planet and let us drink our own darn American beer.

(All apologies to the brown one. He is a citizen of this planet.)

Rock On

Wiley had a great time at the Groton Center for the Arts Music Mayhem camp last week. This is the first time he's really gotten to play music with anybody else, and fortunately they could accomodate his accordion, ukelele, banjo and cello. The ukelele was a big hit--it's a great instrument, and the one we have is lime green.

They had two music sessions a day, and at the end of the week they had a performance and came home with a CD of their recorded music.

It was his birthday, so he got to name the band: Sedna.

So here's "Rock On" by Sedna:

http://squidhenge.googlepages.com/10RockOn.mp3