I Love Living Here!

Today was one of those (many) days that I’m so appreciative of. It was one of those perfect Corvallis days. The weather was unbeatable – low 70s, the sun alternated with the clouds just enough to not get too hot, there was just a hint of a cool breeze, and there was fun stuff going on.

Yesterday Beka decided to plant a garden, which is something that Steve’s been contemplating since we moved here. But when Beka decides to do something, it usually gets done quickly. I had already figured out what needed to be done because Steve had asked for that information well over a year ago, so we were able to go get most of what we needed. I realized after we got home that I had forgotten a few things, and we had picked up some games at Blockbuster, so we played and watched a movie last night, deciding to finish up the garden today.

This morning I was reviewing the Square Foot Gardening book to make sure I know what we still needed and one of the lines really struck me, “Once limits are placed on almost anything, you will find it much easier to take care of it and therefore you will be more comfortable with it and enjoy it more.” Of course, I immediately thought of all the sparkly, gloriously free unschooled children I know and compared them, in my mind, to all the children I know who have no limit to the limits set upon them. Much easier to take care of? Hmph, not the traditionally parented kids. Enjoy more? Definitely NOT! I’ll take our sparkly, gloriously free kids over the limited kids any day!

So, back to our beautiful day… we went back out to get the rest of the stuff we needed for our new garden and picked out our seeds, too. Back at home we built our box, mixed our magic dirt, cleaned out the stinky, slimy compost that I’d left to rot since we filled it with fallen, wormy apples from our neighbor’s tree (I’m really, really hoping I can get the new and improved bin really hot really fast, ‘cause it was so gross, I’d have a hard time even describing it!), and almost got it all done before I needed to get cleaned up to go to the “thea’ta”.

One of the things I LOVE about living here is that we are blocks from OSU and all the fun and funky happenings there. Tonight I met Jon & Mary at a benefit for CARDV (Center Against Rape and Domestic Violence). The show was “The Dark Side of Abbey Road” – an excellent performance by many, many artists who got together to do Abbey Road and Dark Side of the Moon – both albums all the way through.

After the show, I was once again completely impressed by my fellow Corvallis citizens – the traffic jam wasn’t in the parking lot, it was at the bike racks! It felt like half the people at the show had ridden their bike to the theater! I really love it here!

Many months ago, Jon started what he calls his “pathetic social life”, and Steve and I are happy to be included in it, since it is way better than our “non-existent social life”! So Saturday night is Squirrel Burger Saturday for our little group with nothing else to do. Tonight as I was biking home from the bar after the concert I was thinking we might just have to rename our Saturday outing, because it sure didn’t seem very pathetic tonight!

Did I mention that I love it here?

Happy Conference After-Glow

Ah, the incredible experience of being surrounded by unschoolers. Joyful, authentic unschoolers!

It is late Wednesday night after the LIFE is Good NW Unschooling Conference, and I have a living room full of conference stragglers. I’m so happy they are here.

How did I end up with a living room full of stragglers you ask? (Well, even if you didn’t – I’m gonna tell you!) My husband’s sister and her family came up from Northern California for the conference, but her husband had to work on Monday, which meant that they had to leave on Sunday. Well, we weren’t even CLOSE to being done having fun, so Steffi and her cousin Andria figured out a way to extend the conference. They found some other families leaving later and arranged for all three of the cousins to hitch a ride! So tonight I have the three cousins, and the kids they are riding with (fabulous new friends from the Bay Area).

I’m very happily tired and I’m so glad that everyone didn’t leave all at once – that would have been such a let-down. But they didn’t leave all at once and I am very joyful!

Balance Among Busyness

(Note: I wrote this back on April 6, but when I realized what I should be doing at the time, I stopped writing and worked on it instead. That's what I get for "shoulding" on myself!)

I thought life would calm down after the cookie sale was over! Ha! The girls exceeded their goal, selling 3152 boxes of cookies between the three of them! So immediately after the cookie sale ended, we started planning our trip to Washington DC!

So now I’ve got at least as many balls in the air:
∑ Trying to help my friend with the LIFE is Good NW Unschooling Conference (and don’t think I’m doing a very good job at it)
∑ Co-coordinating the UU Services Auction (and realizing that I’m always a little late in contacting who I need to contact to get done what needs to get done)
∑ Running our new GS troop (okay, I’m feeling a lot of success around this one – it is going really well and the girls have gone from meeting for three hours to meeting for four hours every Thursday!)
∑ Trying to get all of our lodging and activities lined up for Wa DC (which is what I SHOULD be doing right this minute!)….
∑