The Elephant's Child

I Think Facebook Buries Outside Links: An Unscientific Investigation

Participate, if you will, in a little experiment. Like this post on Facebook when you see it.   (No actual endorsement of cats assumed on your part.)

I suspect that a lot of my blog post links on Facebook aren't getting thrown into the main Facebook feed algorithm and that Facebook is burying them.  Perhaps FB has decided I have little chance of going viral, since I'm not writing about any trending topics, and so doesn't bother with my links. 

Ten Ways To Avoid Homeschooling Burnout.

I've been homeschooling for a decade now. I made some n00b mistakes as I was getting started, especially in light of what kind of kid I have. Thanks to some older, wiser friends who had raised kids similarly wired to mine, and their willingness to share how they'd managed to solider through, I avoided most of the homeschooler burnout that results in homeschooling mommies throwing up their hands in despair and enrolling their kids in the local public school even though they really don't want to.*  That being said, these ideas are mostly my own (5, 8 & 10 are the ones most influenced by my wiser friends), and my friends shouldn't be blamed if these ideas sound dumb to you. 

Did you read my footnote at the asterisk? Go read the footnote. Ok? Now you can continue. 

1. You must get time alone or time with your adult friends, whichever is most refreshing for you, time where you are not responsible for the children. Ask your husband for ideas, or suggest something to him. A late night at Starbucks once a week while he puts the kids to bed. A solo library trip for yourself. He takes the littles to McDonalds for breakfast on Saturday mornings. Something. Something regular that you can count on. Every week if possible, every month at least. It should be a routine, a ritual. Part of his vocation as husband is the protection and care of you, and that's not just physical protection, but emotional care and protection as well. Let him do his job. 

2. Date night with the husband. It's a cliche, but it makes a huge difference. Make the time. If it's too dorky for you to call it date night (I hate that term myself) call it something else or make it a less formal thing, but make it happen on a regular basis, daily, weekly, whatever. Make it regular, and not spur of the moment, a planned-ahead, scheduled time. You need to be able to look forward to it. You don't even need to leave the house or spend lots of money. (Although of course you can if you'd like!) You need time where you are your husband's wife and you are not Mommy. 

3. Push as much of the housework together into clumps as you can so that you have a day or two each week where you don't have major housework hanging over your head all day. Not always entirely possible, but try to work it so you at least have a lighter day here or there. I've ranted before about laundry, and yes, I have a small family, but I'm still 100% convinced that most people are doing way more laundry than they need to. Menu planning means stacking the grocery shopping all on one day is mostly possible; a time set aside each week for cleaning means the house never gets hoarder/revolting even if you don't have the time in that weekly cleaning to get the house spotless. (and who wants to live in a "spotless" house, anyway?)

4. School all year. Take breaks when you need them and do not sweat the schedule or curriculum plan. Twenty-five percent of the reason you are homeschooling is so that you are not beholden to a school district's school schedule, right? (If it's not, it should be.) For example, we take off most of December because my husband is super busy during Advent. Then we get lots of school done in July and August when it's too dang hot to play outside. If you don't want to or can't school all year, relax your schedule other ways. It's ok. When is the last time a child in public school actually got to the end of the history textbook on the last day of class? Yeah. Never. Work diligently, but when life gets lifey and you get a bit behind, let it go. 

5. Admit you screwed up your curriculum choice. Probably the number one issue I see with beginning homeschooling mommies is a curriculum choice or scheduling plan or overall methodology choice that is so. obviously. not. working. but an utter blindness on the part of the mother to admit this. She will blame everything else first: the concept of homeschooling itself, her own teaching abilities, her child's real or perceived faults, her child's real or perceived learning disabilities. Everything but the fact that maybe, just maybe, the books she's using aren't very engaging, are boring, or are completely wrong for her kid's learning style. (My child simply does not learn the way the Classical model says children love to learn, for example. It would have been a nightmare methodology for our family!) But sometimes moms will bang their own and their children's heads against stuff that everyone hates for years before letting go of something that just isn't working. 

6. Make little rewards for yourself for doing boring or unpleasant tasks. "If I finish Math with Mathwillkillme Child, I get to watch another episode of Stupid TV Show." I swear this trick is the only way on God's green earth that I manage to get my husband's shirts ironed or the litter box cleaned. Alternately, save pleasant things for during the task. Podcasts and my favorite radio talk show are sometimes the only way I can force myself to cook supper. 

7. Possibly drink more adult beverages. Yes, I'm serious. (Obviously, if you're currently an alcoholic, don't do this.)

8. Relax the screen time rules. Video games aren't as bad for our kids as we've been led to believe, plus, kids need a sane mom more than they need strictly controlled and managed video game time. Kiddos playing something creative like Minecraft can be good for them, and it gives Mom some peace. A resource restricted is a resource desired more than it would be if it was free. Call it the DeBeers effect.  Make some basic ground rules ("Math & chores have to be finished first, and no fighting or I turn it off for the day") and let them figure it out. You might be surprised what your kids come up with as far as sharing the computer or Xbox, and how they work together to solve problems within the games they're playing.  

9. Eat more cheese, meat, eggs, and veggies and less bread, pasta, cookies, cake and other sweets. Protein + fat > carbs. Your hormonal system runs on fat. So does your brain. Don't starve them. Treating your stress with ample amounts of sweets sounds like a good idea, but feeling fat and gross doesn't really help your overall stress and happiness levels, does it? No. Find other ways to treat yourself, reward yourself, and relieve stress. If you absolutely must indulge, pick something high quality and quite expensive (think fine, dark chocolate here), and sit down and savor it. Stuffing it in your mouth on the way out to soccer practice doesn't count. 

10. Finally, talk to your kid. We say we want children to be lifelong learners, but we rarely give them a voice in their education. We pick the books. We pick the topics. We pick the method. We pick the order they study unrelated topics. We, we, we. Why are we surprised, then, when they go out into the world and don't continue learning and exploring? They've never learned that it's something they can do themselves; it's a task something other people give them to do. Find an overall framework, pick the books, but get your kids' input, too. Sure, you know best and you're the grownup, but your kids have desires, skills, and interests, all of which may be different than yours. Let them start to grow up by giving them gradually increasing responsibility for their own education. 

Related to choices, when your child balks at a school task, find out why. Ask what would make it easier for him to complete. The answer might surprise you. It might be as simple as changing writing tools. (My daughter could only do the writing needed for a Confirmation assignment with a fountain pen; a pencil was too light and she felt she had to press too hard, making her hand sore. I shudder to think the misery I'd've put her through if I'd pulled the standard, "Rules are rules and you're going to DO that sheet, right now! Because I said so!" thing. But I didn't. I asked.) It's not always because your child is just being a brat. (See #5 above.) Maybe she'd rather do math with Dad in a long session every Saturday morning instead of daily, with you. Maybe he's passionate about all things Irish and would rather study Gaelic than Spanish. Both are a foreign language, yes? But you won't know why your 13 year old son refuses to do Spanish unless you ask him and (I should add) he feels he can honestly tell you without you flipping your lid and going all parent-rage on him. 

There. Some of these are pretty common sense.  But some are downright rebellious, to judge by a lot of the homeschooling talk I see out there ("Not worry about not finishing?! Are you nuts?" "Stop restricting screen time? Do you want a school shooter on your hands?!") They are, however, all things that have made our homeschooling journey gradually more and more of a joy, even now that we are in the supposedly-dreaded Teen Years. 

If you're an experienced homeschooling mommy, what has helped you avoid throwing in the towel due to burnout or frustration?

 

*Clarification, because I know us homeschooling mommies can be with regards to guilt: I am not talking about enrolling a kid in school because you decide that's the best option for him, because she wants to go and you've decided it's ok, or really, any other educational option involving school. I'm speaking specifically about giving up on homeschooling because you think you can't do it, that you suck as a mother, and are a failure at homeschooling, and enrolling a kid elsewhere because of that.  That can be avoided. 

What Is Going Well: Bob.

I spent too much time this week fretting about things that aren't going well, so it's time to move forward and continue on muddling through the various difficulties. To that end, something that actually is going well.  This. You'll remember this guy from such posts as this one. 

New growth at both ends.

I tried to get my feet in the shot so you can get a sense of just how big this sucker is.  I could have divided it when I repotted it, but frankly, I'm a little scared of this thing, so I didn't. Now it's incumbent upon me to make sure Bob gets enough light and the right care so that it flowers again next year. Also slightly scary. 

Baking Poetry

I baked cookies this afternoon while I was avoiding making myself work on organizing this mess of miscellaneous poems left over from college projects and the little bit (oh, such a very little bit) of stuff I'm managed to eke out in the two decades since. 

I hate baking. 

I keep digging around in this pile of poems, hoping that they'll magically turn into a finely crafted angel food cake with spun sugar fairies on top, but the more I stir, the more they feel like a chipped mixing bowl from your hoarding aunt's kitchen full of broken pieces of Happy Meal toys and headless Barbies waiting on the curb for even the homeless guy who collects scrap to buy cigarettes to pass over. 

Between shuffling pans of cookies, it occurred to me that I should take apart the bindings on the two college poetry projects I did, in order to "de-sanctify" them and make them a little more willing to be rehashed and re-edited, but then I got all sentimental about my poetry prof's notes all over them and I couldn't make myself do it. 

Then, I thought, oh, I should just re-type them into a new manuscript where I can fiddle with them and edit them while leaving the the original papers in their silly sentimental format, so I opened Scrivener to start that, then realized that it's been so long since I worked with Scrivener on starting a new document (my book. My poor, lonely, unfinished mess of a book) that I wasn't sure how to go about setting up a new project.  I was about to go Googling to figure out how best to set up Scrivener for a poetry manuscript when I realized what I was really doing was baking cookies, or, er, "baking cookies" and what I should really do is get to work on that stupid manuscript even if I have to write it in Google Documents come here and 'fess up about ridiculous I'm being about all of this so you all can laugh at me. 

Now it's four-thirty in the afternoon, and tomorrow's a really busy day that won't allow any writing time at all, and I've basically nothing to show for my afternoon of work, okay, okay, "work" except a few self-deprecating lines in my journal, four rhyming phrases completely unrelated to each other, and this blog post.  

At least supper's done.  If you can call cookies "supper."

Restarting Poetry.

There's a poetry contest that closes in two weeks, on May 24th. I had it in mind to try to enter, just to make myself do it, with no expectation of anything coming from it. The prize is $500 and publication, which is a pretty substantial prize. Tempting. 

But I don't think I can manage it. I'm trying. I really actually am. I'm trying to sneak in writing here and there, which works better with poetry than with my Giant Horrible Unfinished Mess of a Book. But it's going too slowly. I need another month. Maybe two? 

Although I joked on social media this evening that a fountain pen's chief usefulness to a writer was the opportunities it presents to procrastinate, I'm finding that picking away at stuff, even with procrastination, isn't a bad way to go about it. Poems get scared away easily. It's best to sneak up on them. 

This not, however, a fast way to get much writing done. 

Beyond the Veils of Scarlet

“You could expect many things of God at night when the campfire burned before the tents. You could look through and beyond the veils of scarlet and see shadows of the world as God first made it and hear the voices of the beasts He put there. It was a world as old as Time, but as new as Creation's hour had left it.

In a sense it was formless. When the low stars shone over it and the moon clothed it in silver fog, it was the way the firmament must have been when the waters had gone and the night of the Fifth Day had fallen on creatures still bewildered by the wonder of their being. It was an empty world because no man had yet joined sticks to make a house or scratched the earth to make a road or embedded the transient symbols of his artifice in the clean horizon. But it was not a sterile world. It held the genesis of life and lay deep and anticipant under the sky.”

―Beryl Markham, West with the Night

More Done Than I Thought.

I'm approaching Chapter 26 in the book (there are 35 all together, so far) in this go-round of editing and re-writing. So far I haven't encountered any holes or great gaping places where I need to write linking passages. 

I'm shocked about this.  Shocked. Because I was sure that only the first 7 chapters or so were substantially complete. I think I can cautiously posit that at the very least all of Part 1 (chapters 1-19) and Part II (20-28) are basically complete. 

We'll see what happens as I get into Part III tomorrow. (I should be able to finish editing chapters 26-28 this evening.) 

I'm working hard to remember my goal of having this book done rather than having it a perfect. Or even good.

Playing 80s music too loudly while writing is working fairly well to keep me from taking the book, and myself, too seriously. 

Afternoon Person

I have the week alone, as kid and husband are away for business. My schedule is my own. I am working on two very big projects this week: one, remodeling our back hall, which requires very little serious thought, and the other, finishing my book, which requires hours of intense focus. 

It turns out that I am not a morning person. (Which I knew.)  

But I'm not a night person, either. (Which I thought I was, since I knew I wasn't a morning person.) 

I used to think I was a night person cursed with a deep need for a minimum of 8-1/2 hours of sleep a night. (Just a few nights of 7 hours of sleep and I experience personality changes and what looks an awful lot like depressive thinking.) 

But after a few days of only myself to worry about and nobody else to cook for, it turns out that I'm an afternoon person. I can turn on that intense concentration and focus beginning around 4 pm. And I can work until about 9:30pm, after which I need a break and I'm starting to feel like maybe I would like to start thinking about bed time. Knock off the heavy focus around then, goof around online a bit, unwind with tea and book, and get to bed by 10 or 10:30 or so.  I cannot, as many of my night owl friends can, work well past 10 pm with any usefulness.

This explains part of why I've found it almost impossible to write while kid is home. I can't focus deeply when I am worried I'm about to be interrupted or before the late afternoon. The late afternoon and early evening hours are the prime hours for meal prep, interaction with family, kid's bedtime, etc. 

Realizing this also relieves me of some of the guilt over "but I should be able to write while kid is home with me!" It means that maybe it's ok if I only do writing when I'm completely alone at home.  The tricky thing is, these opportunities do not happen very often at all.  But kid is getting older, and will be traveling more with husband for business as the years go on, so it should gradually improve.  Having kid travel with husband or to visit family and friends is certainly nicer than me paying big bucks to go away to a writer's retreat or a rental cabin somewhere to write. Cheaper, too. 

 

 

PS: Perhaps what I'm describing is actually a classic "night person" pattern, but all the self-described night owl I know describe working until the wee hours of the morning, somthing I cannot do. So I'm calling this an "afternoon person" pattern.

Blc Rob Schneider

The fragrance, which emerged about three days after the flower was fully open, has now changed, at day 12, from the light, clean scent of those cute little erasers from your childhood that had a bit of a scent to them to a more traditional "flower" scent that's just a teensy bit cloying, and a little more like lilies (although not that strong, thankfully. My husband's very sensitive to "stinky flowers" like Easter lilies and paperwhites and lilacs, but the orchid hasn't bothered him at all.) 

But, gosh. Oh. my. gosh. Look at it. 


How is such a flower even possible? I'm in awe. It's huge, too. As big as my hand, top to bottom. Amazing. 

I'm speechless: 


I know that cattleya flowers do not last as long as phalaenopsis, and this has been open an astonishing 12 days so far, so I suspect the change in the fragrance may be a sign that the flower is starting to decline. It's hard to tell by the stunning photos I was able to take today, but the color is just a hair faded over what it was yesterday; another sign.  There is another flower sheath on the plant, but I have not seen the bud inside (when you hold it up to strong light, as if it were an egg you were candling) change much in the last few days, so I'm preparing myself for the fact that that second flower may crash and burn. 

If so, I will live. I had this one to enjoy, I got many good photos of it, and six (!) of my seven phalaenopsis orchids are putting out flower spikes, including both (!!) my miniatures (Pictures of those at the bottom of this post) and Pirate Picotee, so there is more to come. 

 

 

What's Socially Acceptable for Women?

1815: You can be anything you want as long as it's a wife and mother... 

Alfred Edward Chalon, c 1815

1915: You can be anything you want as long as it's a wife and mother or schoolteacher or nurse, and not at the same time. . . 

One room schoolhouse, spinster teacher.

2015: You can be anything you want as long as it's not only a wife and a mother. . .

That looks fun for everyone.

 

We talk a big game today about how free modern women are to become anything they want, but watch what happens when a smart, promising, and talented college-aged woman declares that what she really wants to do is get married and have babies. (In fact, you can't watch what happens because most women who feel that way won't say it out loud, because it's an entirely unacceptable option, in almost every case.) 

If modern feminism was actually feminism it would celebrate all women who make free and unecumbered choices, those who work, those who work and have a family, those who have a family and choose to work at non-advancing or non-demanding or part-time jobs, and those who chose to not have a career, because it is a conscious choice, made by a free woman who has thoughtfully weighed her various interests, passions, and talents, and chosen what what she wants to do with her life.  

So my hat's off to women who don't "career" (if you'll permit me to use a current colloquial grammar-ism) and are "just a wife and mother." They are just as courageous as the first women to pursue graduate degrees, fly around the world, and explore Africa, because they are going against the grain of the greater culture around them in exactly the same way.