Not Inadequate

My birthday was a few weeks ago. I’m holding onto my thirties with my fingernails. Jim is very put out that my birthday and Mother’s Day are so close together. I like that May is The Month of Deb, but I’m the only one. Jim asked me if it was ok if he took the kids out to do a little shopping. I was like, Wait a minute – you want to take the kids out on my birthday and leave me ALL ALONE in my own house BY MYSELF for entire minutes in a row? Where it might be QUIET? With the remote all to myself? AND you’ll bring back presents?

This would bother me why?
 
Big really gets into these kinds of events. His little sense of humor just cracks me up no end. A few weeks before my birthday, he asked me what I wanted. I told him I want the biggest cake possible, a cake so big it would barely fit through the front door. So he starts coming up to me and saying “look mom, I drew you a picture of your cake” and it would be this miniscule little circle with a candle on it. Then he made Jim drive him to the store where he proceeded to buy the tiniest sliver of cake he could find. He was practically BESIDE himself, dancing around with glee at how funny he was. It was hysterical. Naturally, I am now on the hunt for a broccoli-shaped cake pan for his birthday. 

It was a very nice day. My mother-in-law showed up with the best present ever - something I actually want (usually she gives me scented candles, probably a hint). A Bosch Bread Machine and a NutriMill! I am going to start grinding my own wheat and baking my own bread! So! Excited! Who doesn’t love homemade bread? My people go through a LOT of it. It will be so much healthier and cheaper. I know, it’s weird – go ahead and roll your eyes. My mother-in-law, when she gave it to me, kept making her How Did My Son Pick Such a Weirdo face, all ”is this really what you want? are you going to start growing wheat in the backyard now?” Which of course threw the kids a thought and now I am having to fend off all these brilliant farming ideas.

Once upon a time, like last year…

I really liked the girl. She was super nice. Once when I was there, I interrupted the engrossing saga of her boyfriend troubles to ask her to cut my bangs a little shorter and she sliced another two inches off.
 
The next time, I did not ask her to cut my bangs shorter. Consequently, they were too long the instant I left the salon. I did not encourage any boyfriend conversation. I did however, tell her to take off as much as she liked in the back, as long as I would still be able to get it in a ponytail. That was my only hair rule – do whatever you want, as long as it goes into a ponytail. Apparently the term “ponytail” was too vague. She chopped it off right at my jaw (like an arrow saying the double chin is RIGHT HERE), and took a HUGE and mysterious chunk out of the back. After I came home to wash the obligatory three hundred pounds of product out of it, my husband said, “What did she do to your hair?” (seriously? That’s what you’re going to lead with? Have 16 years of marriage taught you nothing?). Later, when I was out of the shower, his eyes flickered to my hair and he casually asked, “You’re not going back to her again, right?” When it dried it looked like a triangle. With a chunk missing.

At least it happened two whole weeks before a visit with my tall, skinny, blonde, glamorous cousin from California.

I suffered through growing it out for the next eleventeen months. I hacked at the bangs myself and got the occasional trim at the place that does it for six dollars. Then around Christmas, I had the weirdest dream that I got it all cut off and I loved it. I couldn’t stop thinking about that dream. I was so happy…so carefree… so thin… 

Around here, these kinds decisions have to be run through the Committee Opposed To Change. I started dropping hints about getting my hair cut and brought home a few of those outrageously expensive hair magazines that promise ten thousand looks that will make you gorgeous!  My husband said I could cut my hair if I let him shave his head. So then we had to take a time out to fight about that for two months, because one of us thought that getting a haircut was the same as going from hair to no hair. Eventually, we called a truce and I won. I still had to make my presentation to the junior members of the committee. I brought out the magazines and showed the kids pictures of what I was considering. 

Big didn’t seem to care about the length of the hair at all, he was busy looking at all the blonde models.

I love felted bags. The first one I made took forever and I wasn’t thrilled with it.  When I was ready to try again, I cast on Friday night and had it finished and ready to be felted by Saturday night. Super! Exciting! I gave that one away to my knitting proselytizee friend to use as part of my campaign to bring her over to the dark side a knitting bag. I loved it so much I immediately cast on another one for myself. And then I took a Fair Isle class and my felting got a little derailed. BUT THEN! Why not make a felted bag using Fair Isle techniques!  

I know! 

One of the biggest challenges for me in Fair Isle is keeping the tension loose enough. It kind of goes against my grain to stretch all my stitches out and have sloppy loops in the back of the work. But I figured that if I were making something to felt, then it would be no big deal if my floats were too tight because the whole thing would shrink anyway! Plus, I wanted to be able to Fair Isle by carrying one yarn in each hand and this way I could practice. It wouldn’t matter if my gauge was off because it would be felted! It would be perfect! I would love this bag so much; I would use it as a purse! Total strangers would ask me where I got it and I would smile modestly and say “I made it”, and they would be envious of my creative knitting prowess. It could be that mythical Life Changing Fashion Accessory. You know, like the Swatch watch in junior high that I never had but all the popular kids did and they were on ski team and sometimes had more than one Swatch to color coordinate with those polo shirts with the little alligator that I also never had but if I did it could have changed the course of my life.

Like that. 

I sketched a pattern of polka dots. I knew I wanted to have three rows of large-ish black polka dots on a background of gradually changing color. I scoped out the stash, and came up with some Brown Sheep Lamb’s Pride for the polka dots and found some Noro Silk Garden Chunky that I ripped back from a scarf I was attempting but didn’t like. The Silk Garden said “hand wash” on it. Why would someone want you to hand wash it unless it they were warning you against the possibility of felting? I don’t know about you, but I am not all about hand washing garments just for the fun of it. 

Perhaps you can see where this is going. 

I had a very specific picture of this bag in my head. I knit the base separately (more than once to get the shape and size I wanted), and picked up stitches all around to begin the body. I began my polka dot Fair Isle pattern, knit like mad and finished it in a couple of days. Unfortunately I ran out of the black, which I wanted to use for a stripe at the top and for the handle. But who cares? The polka dots were a-freaking-dorable and the Noro background was deliciously murky. 

I couldn’t wait, and threw it in the washer the minute I was done weaving in the ends. I have a front loading washer, which I love for laundry purposes, but felting in it is not a five minute process. When I took the bag out for a check, it was apparent that the Lamb’s Pride was felting much quicker than the Noro. No problem, the Noro will catch up. I threw it in for another cycle. Hmmm. The black Lamb’s Pride was felted to within an inch of its life. The Noro…was not. Imagine if you will, what happens when one part of the fabric shrinks and the other part does not. Puckers! The Noro was puckering in between the dots! Which was not entirely unpleasant when I thought about it more. But (why does there always have to be a “but”?), the puckering (obviously) only occurred where the dots were, and the dots were pretty much centered on the body of the bag. So the bottom and the top of the bag flared out, and the middle pulled in. It was hideous.

And also not the Life Changing Fashion Accessory it was supposed to be.

Ugly, Ugly, Non-Life Changing Bag

I know. For some reason, the shape of it reminds me of one of those wooden Dutch shoes. 

I have a plan to cut it open and seam it to eliminate the flare. And do something different for a handle since that little buttonhole is kind of sissy looking. This plan involves me acquiring a sewing machine and learning how to sew, so it might be a minute. On the other hand, maybe I’ll just cut it up and frame it as a random knitting art piece. Or maybe I’ll just run it through the washer until the Noro begs for mercy and felts. Or maybe I’ll cut it up into a really expensive and funky pot holder. Whatever. 

Now that I know about the puckering, I kind of want to do it deliberately on something. I don’t love failing at one of my first knit designs, but I don’t want to be a quitter either. I still love the polka dot purse idea, but next time I am going to do something more sensible, like knit it with the same yarn throughout (duh).  And maybe not use expensive silk yarn and then deliberately ruin it. (see also: duh).

So Big was complaining about his dinner (as usual). He actually had the temerity to be offended when I called him picky, and said he liked lots of things. I told him that if he came up with 10 reasonably healthy meals that he liked and would eat, that I would be happy to cook those things and we would never have to have food arguments at dinner again. His ideas were Noodles, Noodle Soup, Noodle Pie, Pizza, Quesadillas, Pizza Pockets (basically a quesadilla with pizza sauce), Grilled Cheese, and Grilled Cheese Sandwiches. Oh, and Peanut Butter Sandwiches.

Jim: Comes home complaining of a tough day at work.

Me: Did anyone at your job PEE on your actual FOOT today? Twice? No? Well then, I WIN.

Why have we chosen to home educate…

To begin with, I firmly believe it’s my job as the parent provide my children with the highest quality education, in the healthiest environment possible, and that they end up with the tools they will need to succeed in a variety of areas when they are grown. I can totally squeeze that in between Tivo’d episodes of General Hospital and The Real Housewives of New Jersey.

So when I was getting started on this Putting Into Words Why I Home Educate mission, I realized that all the reasons I had could pretty much be boiled down to fit into two categories – Academics and Environment. Frankly, I don’t think that public school can give them a quality experience in either. 

I think I can give my kids a much more academically rigorous education than they could receive in public school. That education can be specifically tailored to their needs and interests and learning styles; and it can consist of so much more than the basics of reading, writing, putting condoms on bananas, and duck-and-covering when the school bully is nearby (or is it stop-drop-and-roll?) Academics are extremely important to me, but I don’t feel that public school is a very efficient means of delivery. 

The Environment category is a little more complex, with lots of subtle reasons, but basically, I do not feel that peer-centered socialization is (in general) a positive thing, or that the social experience you get in school is relevant to real life. The whole S question gets so tiresome. Do all public schooled families get issued a memo or something? Here Is What You Do If You Meet A Home Schooled Person. Do they hand it out along with copies of the fire escape plan? Why is that the first thing out of every person’s mouth? And how do they manage to fit both surprise and accusation in those three little words?  “What about socialization?” Like you seemed so normal before, what with your church-going and your block parties and aren’t you people supposed to wearing denim jumpers so we know who you are? and now they may as well have found out that you swing a dead cat over your head in the backyard at midnight. 

Anyway. 

I feel that living life and interacting with a wide variety of people is a more real and relevant social experience. It allows me to be there to guide them, giving them tools and encouragement. I find it interesting that so many people associate public school with diversity, as though it’s the only place kids will meet someone different from themselves, AND as though it’s a given that they will do so. The reality is 30 kids, all from the same neighborhood, all from a likely similar socio-economic status, and all having birthdays within the same arbitrarily pre-determined 9 month period. The much-touted diversity of people does not appear to me to actually happen – or at least not to a hugely significant degree.  

I have been looking for the words to explain why we home school, and I have finally found them:

We keep the kids home to run our potato-whiskey still, and they don’t need no fancy book larnin’ for that.

We have lived in our current house about three years. A few months after we moved in, we started hearing this horrible noise coming from the fireplace. Like water pipes rattling, but there are no water pipes in that wall. I was v. freaked out by this and thought maybe something was wrong with the gas line going to the fireplace. Finally one morning, I decided to investigate, as turning the radio up was no longer working as an avoidance technique. I went outside to sniff around and see if I smelled a gas leak. And what was it? A lovesick woodpecker hammering away on the flashing around the chimney. 

I don’t like nature. Nature would kill us if we gave it half a chance. That is why we live in houses. And have bug spray and sunscreen. “Camping” is nature’s plan to lure us into the woods so it can kill us. I don’t even like to drive my car off pavement.

We home educate our children. Granted, they are only 5 and 3, but we began when Big was four and a half and will continue to the end of high school. I always knew I would home school. I was home schooled from 8th grade onward. That did not play a huge part in our decision, other than knowing home schooling existed. I probably home educate my children in spite of my experience, rather than because of it.

When we decided to home school, it wasn’t because we had debated the merits of public vs. private vs. home school and made lists and graphs of the pros and the cons of each and then reached a decision. It just came from my heart. I could not imagine sending my precious boy off on a big bus to a total stranger. It made me feel a little sick, to tell you the truth. No offense to the total stranger, I’m sure she’s lovely. But she’s not Mama.

The first few times someone asked me why we home school, I was caught off-guard and stumbled around like an idiot. Once, a woman asked me about it right after she spent ten minutes telling me how bratty her 6 year old had become since entering 1st grade. I was at a loss as to what to say – Well, I don’t want my kids turning out like yours? That’s a little rude, even for me.

I have a new friend who is considering pulling her girls out of public school. She has lots of questions, and needs encouragement and support.

And then recently, I reconnected with an old friend from elementary school (I shall refer to her as Hortense to protect her anonymity. She hopes to become big in obscure education journals). I haven’t seen or talked to her since before I was married, but I was cruising around Facebook one day and found her (side note: am I the only one who feels like an idiotic fourteen year old girl when on FB?). It turns out that in the last 15 years or so, she progressed from elementary school music teacher to full blown PhD in Educational Psychology. She had lots of questions about home schooling. And lots of rebuttals.

All these things have piled up and left me with this intense desire to be able to articulate the reasons why I home school. I would, obviously, like to turn my old friend into a fan, if not an advocate. That seems unlikely, but I will be satisfied knowing that I made my points in a coherent manner and that she could see the validity of some of them. Trying to hold my own with someone who was educated in public school, became a public school teacher, and then went on to become an education researcher? Very intimidating.

Home schooling is my passion. It’s…that thing….that thing I was meant to do with my life. I count myself as very lucky to have discovered my purpose. I am also very fortunate to have a husband who believes in it as well, and is willing to shoulder the financial burdens so I can stay home with our babies.

My husband had to go on a business trip a few weeks ago. My sole goal was to just trying to keep everyone alive until he got home. Bathing became optional. Naturally, the minute the car cleared the driveway, the kids started devising ways to kill themselves. First, Big jumped off the fireplace hearth and bashed his head on the corner. One big bloody gash and a goose egg on the temple. Then Little jumped off the same hearth and bit her tongue. All was fine until she noticed the blood. “I’m bleeding, I’m bleeeeeeeeeeeediiiing!!!!” Awful Mommy was primarily annoyed that now I had to rethink my dinner plan to accommodate a sore tongue. Little managed to impale the soft spot under her chin on the corner of an open desk drawer, they both fell off the stool while brushing their teeth, and something else happened that gave Little a huge bruise on her cheek. By the time Jim got home, they looked like they had been in a tiny cage match.

Whenever he has to go on a trip, I notice all the little jobs that we have unconsciously divided up. There are things I don’t even know how to do. I had to ask Jim how to operate the coffee maker when he called one morning. And I had to carry the laundry downstairs to the basement. I don’t like to be carrying stuff. The light bulbs burned out in the bathroom.

On the other hand, I didn’t have to deal with those What Should We Have For Dinner conversations when he was gone. Several nights after I got the kids in bed, I had microwave bacon and cookies. Is that wrong? If I were single, I’d probably eat cereal every night.

The other day at WalMart, I went down the aisle to get brown sugar, and you know how the white sugar shelf always has sugar all over it because the bags leak? Well, there was a little boy, 6-ish, crawling all the way into the shelf, scooping up the sugar AND LICKING IT RIGHT OFF THE SHELF.
 
Dude. Nasty.