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!)….
∑

Keeping Up

I don’t know how my blogging friends do it… keeping up… it seems that when I’m living the spirit of my blog I don’t have time to write, and when I’m in a funk and not living joyfully, I don’t want to write!

At this point in my life the house is a mess – Girl Scout cookies EVERYWHERE! We’ve been in and out so much toting cases of cookies that there are leaves and mud clods everywhere.

But I love seeing what happens with the girls when they set high goals for cookies. Steffi can now count back change in any cookie situation as can her two friends. They’ve gotten so good at this whole cookie thing that their booth sale last night came out to the penny (which, if you’ve been involved with this thing, almost never happens – what with donations and three people buying at the same time – lots can happen!). They can now pick up the phone and make a pretty professional sounding call to a customer. They are working so hard and learning so much. It’s very exciting to see.

(They’ve sold 1300+ out of their 3000 box goal (not sure how where that gets them on the map – if you know an easy way to figure that out, let me know!) and have gotten over 300 boxes out of their 500 box goal donated for the Food Bank.)

Beka (who just recently took a “K” out of her name) is getting ready for the LIFE is Good NW Unschooling Conference by making lots of beaded things to sell – really great things! The project is all over the living room floor – right up against the disaster of cookies staged for delivery.

But I love seeing the creativity! She is taking beads and wire and making it all beautiful.

In the midst of cookies, my friend and I are starting a homeschool Junior Girl Scout Troop – are we crazy??? But it’s going to be so great – they will be meeting every Thursday for three hours. There is so much we will be able to do with three hours a week! It will be so much fun.

I’m also trying to work on the local UU Services Auction, help my friend with the LIFE is Good Conference, become a Master Recycler, grow my Creative Memories business, learn Irish Step dance, get in shape, and keep all these crazy balls in the air and not drop any of them!

The journey is joyful, whether I’m keeping up on my writing or not!

New Kitten!

Back in December my oldest talked me into taking her to the Humaine Society. All the way there I reminded her that we were not bringing anyone home with us. As we got out of the car I reminded her that we were not bringing anyone home with us. As she sat in the kitten play room I reminded her that we were not bringing anyone home with us.

Also as she sat in the kitten play room the cutest, sweetest, little black kitten kept curling up on her lap and purring just as loudly as he could. He would jump down and eat, then curl back up on her lap again. A few minutes later he would jump down and use the litter box, then jump back up. Then another few minutes later he would jump down and play, then jump back up. Basically he was showing us that he was absolutely the most perfect kitten ever!

Of course, we had to bring him home. We knew Serafina (our two year old cat) would hate him, but she hates all cats. We were hoping, however, that our two one year old cats would accept him. Well, accept him they have! The three of them are buddies! They curl up an sleep together when we are not holding the kitten.

Tamwyn and Sirius curl up on my office chair

Tamwyn, Rafiki and Sirius barely fit!

Sirius!

Big Goals

My youngest is 10 and in Girl Scouts. She and her two friends (also homeschoolers) have decided that they will each sell 1,000 boxes of cookies and they are doing it together - which means that they are selling 3,000 boxes!

They are wanting to go to Washington D.C. in June to attend the 95th birthday celebration. Since Washington D.C. is about 3000 miles from here we picked up a US map today so they can track their progress - 1 box = 1 mile. They've sold about 600 boxes so far - 600 miles - they've just passed Boise, ID and are almost to Twin Falls.

They are also trying to get at least 500 boxes donated to the food bank. They've gotten over 100 boxes donated so far - so I think they are doing GREAT!

They've been taking orders since Jan. 6. They get their cookies Feb. 9 and then the race will really be on! At that point we will be living and breathing cookies!

Writing with Meaning

At the beginning of this month I started off writing like crazy for NaNoWriMo. I had told several people about NaNoWriMo and had inspired some of them to try it. I even gave a speech about it to my Toast Masters club. It was a fun speech full of enthusiasm, and by the time I finished the speech I was 90% there, actually doing NaNoWriMo.

When my pacing partner committed to doing it, I knew I had to try, even though November would be an insane month for me to do this this year, since I would have only 20 days (which breaks down into 2500 words a day).

My pacing partner is struggling with her mother’s imminent death and decided to write a book about the lessons she is learning through helping her mother and how she is expressing that learning into her relationship with her daughter. Wow! Talk about writing with meaning!

Inspired by her book, I thought, well, I’ll write out into the future about our annual getaways – the two of us plus our life coach. Long about year five, projecting our getaways became pretty uninspiring! How much can this event change and be interesting. I started writing about how each of us changed from year to year, but it became so outrageous that I scrapped the whole thing.

I know I could have pushed through week two because they say it is the worst – pure crap, but I really, truly could see no end to the crap that was spewing forth onto my computer screen.

Some would say I quit. I say I stopped the insanity that was becoming my November. Some would say I failed. I say there is never failure when learning happens.

When I stopped writing my NaNoWriMo, I started writing this blog. I decided I would rather challenge myself to really think about things that were churning around in my head and put them out to the universe (which is really scary to me – to know that just about anybody can now read what I’m writing – I have this little perfection hang up which is how I became involved in NaNoWriMo in the first place).

So my coach asks me this morning, “what is the meaning you are needing to write about?” She always has such good questions! I wish the answers were always forthcoming. Some times it takes patience to find the answers. I’m learning to be more patient.

But when I think about it, the meaning is this – this Journey of Joy. This is not a nonfiction NaNoWriMo book! This is life and how we choose to live it. And if I can help just one more person live their live as a Journey of Joy, then that truly has meaning for me.

Homeschooling - Job or Joy?

Real, natural learning is in the living. It's in the observing, the questioning, the examining, the pondering, the analyzing, the watching, the reading, the DO-ing, the living, the breathing, the loving, the JOY. It's in the joy. ~Anne Ohman



After unschooling for eight years, I'm finally realizing that just about the only thing that is important to be successful at homeschooling is to enjoy being with your kids (that, and making it a priority to be with them). If you enjoy being with them and exploring/talking/playing with them, they can't help but learn.

We have successfully surrounded ourselves with wonderful home/unschooling families here in our hometown, and the kids are so incredible because their parents enjoy their company! These kids are so alive, and they really know who they are and are so confident. They don’t need to seek approval, because they get it for free all the time! What a wonderful gift to give your kids!

Teaching school is a job, homeschooling is a joy!

Random Joys

really great chocolate, the smell of rain, camp songs, dancing, being respected, learning/growing, writing, using my bike for transportation, being on time, road trips, old houses, challenging myself, sunshine through the clouds, traveling, conferences, email, brainstorming, crunching through leaves on the sidewalk, pacing partners, listening to music with good lyrics, self improvement, creativity, new leaves, helping people, staying up late, color, friendship, the first smell of fall in the night air.

daisies, peace, rich hot chocolate, singing in rounds, water color, Powell's books, Sudoku, my comfy chair-and-a-half chaise, pondering, life coaching, Google, comfort shoe stores and the shoes they sell, organizing, photo albums (with journaling!), unschooled teens (they are so real), s’mores, potlucks, my incredible kids, big cities, going out to eat with friends, the internet (what DID we do before it???), shopping in funky little shops, authentic people, balance, downtown, laughing, talking, the smell of the forest, dark beer.

harvest moons, stars, iced tea and lemonade, fall, ATCs, microbrews, NVC, down bedding, great photography, smart people, the first snow, real people, creative spaces, smiling, celebrations, hanging out, crocus, unschooling, conversations, cameras, being real, alt culture, farmer's markets, motivation, gardens, clotheslines, cool restaurants, spring flowers, having dinner company, cooking with friends, cats.

Live & Learn Conference

After years of traveling on our unschooling journey, we finally went to "the" conference. My friends had encouraged me to go for several years, and we would have last year, except that we were moving into our new home and our new community (and we are SO glad that we did!).

So at the beginning of September we piled in the car and drove down to Albuquerque, NM for the big conference.

This was one of the best events I've EVER attended! It was full of happy families engaging together. I loved that people of all ages were welcome to partake in any offering that struck their fancy. There was no age segragation at all! It wasn't ever "children" and "adults", and not once did I hear the term "student". We were all just people there to explore and expand our world.

The conference impacted my life in so many ways - the way I am with my kids, the way I am with other people, the way I view unschooling, and it increased the joy in my life immensely!

I've never been around this many authentic people in all my life! It was incredible!

I choose happiness!

A few weeks ago, I spent the weekend with some women who were truly unhappy with their lives. They spent the weekend complaining about their jobs, their spouses, and their children. It had been a long time since I was in the prolonged presence of people who were unhappy. I have insulated myself, pretty successfully, from being around deeply unhappy people. The unhappiness of these women seemed to stem from their perceived inability to change their circumstances and from their actual inability, at least at this time in their lives, to see everything in a different light.

Sometimes seeing what you don’t want can clarify what you do want!