Not Inadequate

Last night, my son was peppering me with questions while I was making dinner. Why this? Why that? Why, Why, Why? It’s like being in the path of verbal machine gun.

Finally, I broke in and said, “WHY do you ask so many QUESTIONS?” and he goes, “Mom, the inside of my head is just full of question marks!”

Which I thought was very cute and probably accurate. He went on to say, “I want to know everything, just like YOU do, mom!”

My leaflet-dropping campaign is starting to bear fruit.

In other news, I have a recipe to share. It’s not a freezer recipe this time. It’s just a good old-fashioned, middle of the week dinner with like, three ingredients. Big and I were watching America’s Test Kitchen about a month ago and when he saw this, he wanted to try it immediately. We’ve been making it once a week, and even though it doesn’t come out of the freezer and get re-heated by Jim while I sit on the couch, it’s still dang easy. AND it only dirties one pan. I was scrambling to get down all the ingredients so this might not be entirely accurate, but this is how I make it and it’s yum.

Behold -

 Skillet Ziti

• 1 tablespoon oil
• 2 teaspoons garlic paste
• Pinch red pepper flakes
• 1 28-ounce can crushed tomatoes
• 1 28-ounce can water
• 12 ounces dried tube pasta
• ½ teaspoon salt
• ½ cup milk (or cream)
• ½ cup grated parmesan cheese
• 2 cups mozzarella cheese

This recipe needs to be cooked in an oven-proof skillet that is at least 11″ in diameter.

Preheat oven to 425°

To a cold skillet, add oil, garlic, and red pepper flakes. Cook on medium about one minute, until fragrant. Then add tomatoes, 1 can of water, pasta, and salt. Turn heat up to high and bring to a simmer. Cover and reduce heat and continue to cook at a simmer.

Cook for about 15 minutes, stirring occasionally, until the pasta is done. When the pasta is done, stir in milk and parmesan cheese. Top with mozzarella cheese. Transfer skillet to the oven and bake for 10 – 15 minutes, or until cheese is bubbly and brown.

* Yet another super-lame Blog Post Title. It’s the middle of the night, I can’t waste all my Alone Time thinking of clever titles. Get off my back already. Jeez.

I was linking around the internets the other day, as I am wont to do, and I came across this link to Oops, I Craft My Pants (which has to be one of the best blog names EVER).

When I switched to Google Reader, one feature I did not like was that I couldn’t see everyone’s blog designs. I like seeing the themes and the sidebars, and it helps me keep track of who is saying what. Sometimes I want to go back and find a post I read, but they all sort of run together in plain text and it’s hard. Plus, if I want to comment, I have to link over to the actual website and it’s kind of a hassle. And sometimes bloggers only show a paragraph of their posts on readers and I have to click over to read the whole thing. But mostly I don’t. Because I am just that lazy.

HOWEVER, with the Google Reader Feature of Awesomeness, I can see everything! I can see the whole post! I can comment on every blog without all that additional extra clicking! Follow the instructions at Oops, I Craft My Pants, and basically all you have to do is open Google Reader, go to Settings, then Goodies, scroll down to the Next>> button, copy that to your Favorites Bar or whatever is the equivalent in your browser, and you are set! Just click the Next button when it appears on your internet-linky-toolbar-thingamajig and it automatically brings up the next unread blog post in your reader - you see the actual post, the actual layout of the blog, AND you can access the comments section just as if you went directly to the blog itself!

I am probably being totally incoherant here, but Erika explains it all really well and has screen shots and all kinds of fancy-ness to help you out. And listen, if I can do it, anyone can do it. I don’t go out of my way to learn new stuff, yo.

Try it, you’ll like it.

On the other hand, maybe everyone in the universe knows about this and what we have here is the equivalent of me making a big announcement like, “you GUYS, GUESS WHAT? You can put music on this little thingy called an iPod! You should get one!”

So last night we were sitting on the couch, innocently eating dinner and watching some teevee. As I went to fast-forward through a commercial, I was assaulted by this:

I mean seriously. Do these companies not have focus groups? Who is the pea-brain who thought, “Hey! Maxi-pads and mechanical bulls! Those things go together!” Was it a man? Was it a girl who maybe went out to a cowboy bar and had a little too much to drink? “Keeps you in the saddle?” Who wrote that?

Lookit. I’m a girl. I’ve been one my whole life. I’ve been experiencing Aunt Flo for . . . oh jeez, I think it’s been over 25 years.

(How can that be right? I should just delete that. Twenty-five years? That’s just obnoxious.)

ANYway, that is to say I am not unfamiliar with the Feminine Hygeine Product.

However.

I do NOT want to see advertisements for this stuff! In fact, I don’t really want to think about the whole thing at all. Every month, I roll my eyes and go, “oh right. this again.”

And don’t even get me started on that pregnancy-test commercial with the gigantic stream of pee raining down on the space-ship sized test stick. That’s just wrong.

Look. Look at the wrongness:

Do they realize that we have giant, high-definition televisions now? I don’t really need to see a stream of pee that looks like it was poured out of a five-gallon Gatorade bucket at a football game to get the idea.

Some of those pitch meetings must have been freaking  hilarious - “well you see, what we have here is a tiny mechanical bull, see, and the maxi-pad is RIDING the bull, and well, we think it’s a winner.”

I have some stuff to say about that weird Quizno’s commercial with the three stuffed cats playing mariachi music, but I’ll save it for our next session.

Today, the 4 Moms are inviting people to join them in talking about bedrooms. I LOVE looking at pictures of other people’s houses. I get every furniture and decorating catalog known to man, and my late-night fantasies often involve winning the lottery and redecorating my house to within an inch of it’s life (much to my husband’s disappointment). One of my favorite blogs is Catalog Living, and I recognize every single picture and could name the catalog it came from. I want to live in those pictures.

So I can’t resist the opportunity to join in this sort of bloggy activity. I have taken some pictures of the kids’ bedrooms, which are cute; and not the master bedroom, which isn’t. Plus also, I don’t know if I am strong enough to move the gigantic pile of laundry that inhabits our bed all the time.

Little’s Room – The color is not showing up very well, it’s actually the same green that’s in the shade, not yellow. And pink – lots and lots of pink.

Big’s Room – with a headboard I made myself so we could put his bed up against the built-in bookcase. Somewhere online I found construction bedding (there’s a cute comforter for when it’s not eighteen-thousand degrees) AND matching wallpaper decals, which are each individual pieces that I painstakingly put up, one by one.

So there you have it. Don’t think the rest of our house is as neat and coordinated at these rooms are – there’s a reason I am posting these pictures and not ones of the hovel I affectionally refer to as our bedroom.

I know these pictures are not great – our camera is crap. I have been lobbying for a new one, but Frugal Deb is a tough nut to crack.

I have been doing a lot of thinking lately about my educational philosophy. I sense a shift within myself, and am trying to figure out what exactly is happening and put it into words. 

I was homeschooled myself, from 8^th grade onward. At the time (1985), it was illegal in my state – I vaguely remember my parents talking in low voices about people being arrested and their kids being taken from them. My mom did not want us to even be seen outdoors during school hours. There were not a lot of curriculum choices available back then. We used A.C.E., like the local Christian School; and I also remember hearing about Abeka.

They shielded us from what had to have been a lot of stress; because it’s only now, looking back on it as a parent that I can imagine what that must have been like. I suppose we were almost pioneers, though I have no memory of feeling like anything monumental was happening. 

Strangely, even though pulling my sister and me out of public school was a huge decision and almost unheard of at the time, I do not think they put very much thought into the actual education itself. We were given our workbooks and left to our own devices. My mother was not what you’d call a natural teacher, and anytime I struggled with the material (which was abysmal, in my opinion), we had relationship-altering arguments. 

It’s a wonder that I chose this route for myself, frankly. 

Obviously, I want to give my kids an entirely different school experience. One filled with togetherness and traveling and good books and the natural learning that happens through adventure.  I see my role as being part facilitator, part teacher; providing them with a banquet of possibility and giving them the freedom to choose what they wish and gobble up as much as they want. 

Good grief, I sound like a crackpot. 

But I FEEL this weird yearning within me – it’s in there, growing, nagging, and generally on my case constantly.  To do more, give more, be more for my kids. 

I have a friend who tells me I am going to end up an unschooler. But I don’t think so. For one thing, I don’t like that word. “Unschooling” sounds too much like “nonschooling.” For another, I am not the kind of person who can be all “yeah, they’ll learn how to do algebra when they want to” or whatever. Nobody wants to learn algebra. My people will learn maths, and how to read and write well, the end. 

But other subjects? I don’t see why history, science, geography, literature, art, music, sports, and everything else can’t be largely interest-led. Surely I can give them the power to study what they are interested in, within guidelines that I set. 

The thing is, I don’t really know HOW. How do I implement this idea? How do I balance a quality education that at least partly satisfies my need for checking-things-off-a-list but also gives my children the freedom to pursue their own interests – without squashing their desire under a pile of worksheets? 

Most importantly, can I do it so it doesn’t interfere with my teevee viewing?

Children make large demands upon us. We owe it to them to initiate an immense number of interests. Thou hast set my feet in a large room; should be the glad cry of every intelligent soul. Life should be all living, and not merely a tedious passing of time…that is to say, we should be in touch wherever we go, whatever we hear, whatever we see, with some manner of vital interest. We cannot give the children these interests; we prefer that they should never say they have learned botany or geology or astronomy. The question is not, how much does the youth know? when he has finished his education, but how much does he care? and about how many orders of things does he care? In fact, how large is the room in which he finds his feet set? and, therefore, how full is the life he has before him? 

Charlotte Mason

• The other day, I gave my kids goldfish crackers for breakfast. In the car. Because I just needed to go to Starbucks that badly.

• I overheard some mom the other day complaining about laundry stains. Here is what I do about that: make my kids strip to the waist before every meal. Ta Da! Problem solved! You’re welcome.

• My mother-in law is coming for a visit next week. The last time she was here, Little sat on her lap and exclaimed, “I didn’t know GIRLS could grow MUSTACHES!”

• I let my hair guy wax my eyebrows. It was weird.

• I found an adorable pink cardigan for my daughter at the thrift store. It was in great condition. When I got it home, I saw that it was Calvin Klein. CALVIN KLEIN. For a THREE YEAR OLD. I’m sorry, but whoever originally bought a designer sweater for a child is a sucker. Which is, in fact, the nicest possible thing I can think of to say about that.

• I got a very weird spam comment the other day. It said “Another tragedy in the making. I guess we won’t stop unless we have destroyed everything.” I guess I should apologize that my post about the kids’ little garden aroused such a strong response. Who knew cucumbers could set someone off like that?

This week on the Blog Hop, the topic is A Day in the Life of our home school!  

The following represents a pretty honest account of our typical day…

7am

The kids start thumping around and throwing open our bedroom door every five minutes to make various announcements – “I have to PEE!” and “I’m HUNGRY!” 

I put my pillow over my head, then plant my foot in Jim’s back and shove him out of bed. He gets everyone dressed and chucks food down their beaks while I hang onto every last possible second of sleep. I know what you are thinking - he’s swell and I’m not. It’s okay, luckily I’m fine with that. He does laundry too. 

7:59am

I stagger down the stairs and head directly for the coffee pot. Jim refills his mug, kisses everyone and heads to his office in the basement, where mysterious computer geekery happens. The kids follow me around, peppering me with questions until I threaten to put a baby gate up in the doorway so I can drink my coffee in peace. I check my email and cruise the internets for an hour or so, occasionally hollering settle down! and  NO! you can’t have the hammer! in the direction of the playroom. 

9-ish am

I drag myself away from the computer and herd everyone into the school room. 

9:01am

Big begins his morning negotiating session. “No, not Ma-ath! Math is the WORST. How about if I pick, then you pick?” and “how about if I skip all theseones?” and “Little gets to play with bugs? I want to play with bugs TOO” and so on and so forth. Mostly, I find this amusing. It’s interesting to see his powers of persuasion developing. We usually compromise, with my conditions being something like, “okay, but if you whine even ONCE, you have to go back and do them all.” At some point he realized I would not negotiate with him if he didn’t hold up his end of the deal, and he now honors his agreements like a little gentleman. 

9:02am – Noon

We begin with Handwriting Practice, then I let him choose between Math and Reading/Phonics. After that, it’s his turn to pick, then mine, and so on until our work is done. In the past I kept a 4 day school schedule, so I could keep a day for paying bills and shoveling out the kitchen. It was too stressful for him, so we moved to a 5 day schedule, limiting ourselves to 3 or 4 subjects a day. Math, Reading, and Spelling are on Mon/Wed/Fri; and Geography, Science, and Vocabulary are on T/Th. Handwriting Practice is daily. Yay for being an understanding schoolwork scheduler, Boo for no time to bill-pay or kitchen-shovel.

So mornings are filled with schoolwork, intermingled with lots of “wait your turn” “lower your voice” “pay attention” “quit doing that” “get off the floor” “where did you get that?” “quit making that noise” etc, etc, etc. 

Actually, there is quite a bit of “quit making that noise!” now that I think about it. 

Some days he buckles down and gets all his work done by lunch, and some days he needs lots of play breaks and snack breaks.

Some days we get absorbed in chemistry and our weekly experiments go on all afternoon, and some days Someone has eaten all the marshmallows we were going to use for molcule-building and I have to be evasive about why we can’t do our project. 

Some days I spend a lot of time either comforting him when he’s struggling or sternly telling him to quit whining and get with it. I call that Character Training and tell myself it’s just as important as book work, so I don’t get too discouraged at how behind we are falling. 

Some days I have to make bread or go to the grocery store or pay bills or lie on the couch with a bag of chips and the remote (not really, but doesn’t that sound great?), and school gets minimized or pushed to the next day altogether. 

Noon-ish onward

Jim comes up and helps make lunch for the kids. He fills me in on the latest thing Microsoft is doing to mess up his life, and I ask him if skip-counting by fives really seems that important. 

After we finish schoolwork, they do the things kids do and I do the things mommies do, sometimes getting exasperated and saying things like where did you get that hammer? and how about watching Word World and being quiet for a few minutes? Jim comes home around 5, and they wrestle with Daddy or read aloud; and I take a break before starting in on dinnertime, bathtime, and bedtime. 

Eventually, about 13 hours after the day began, it’s time to sink into the couch and relax with some teevee. 

And get ready to do it all again tomorrow.

I love to peek in other people’s windows, so link over to the Blog Hop and tell about your Day-in-the-Life!

So, I went Hey-I-Can-Still-Rock-The-Cool-Boots shopping yesterday. There have apparently been some new developments in the footwear industry since the last time I shopped.

What IS this?

Is this actually “in”?

Are there people out who suffer from hot toes and cold ankles simultaneously?

Is there a gladiator subculture I don’t know about?

In related news, I spent an hour trying to figure out how to get the picture OUT of my camera. While I was at it, I also rescued pictures of my daughter’s first haircut.

That have been trapped in there since 2008.

‘Cause I rock at being a mom like that.

I’ve been watching Project Runway this season, because I hate reality television and all. Plus, Real Housewives of New Jersey is only on once a week, and I need to fill in the gaps. Out of the whole crowd of designers, the one I am rooting for is Peach. She’s the oldest at 50. But she’s the one I relate to the most. I feel like this reveals something about me. 

I’m pretty sure it’s not revealing that I have some secret fashion intuition, because I thought her first dress was cute and the judges thought it was “matronly”. I thought the winning outfit was hideous and reminded me of those awful Charlie’s Angels jumpsuits. The judges thought it was “edgy and fashion forward.” So probably I’m not a heretofore undiscovered brilliant stylist or something. 

No. 

Project Runway, with its young, cool, edgy creative people is whispering something else that’s entirely unpleasant in my ear. And that is that I am not young and hip anymore.

Perhaps I was never hip, but I know I was young once. Sometimes I think I should venture beyond the Birkenstocks, jeans and $2 white t-shirts that comprise my daily outfit, but really – what’s the point? Anytime I wear something Not Crappy, I either spill something on it or a tiny person does it for me.

Maybe I should go buy some kicky new boots to cheer myself up. Or is it hot? Cool? Phat? Sick? Ill? Stylin?

Whatever. The main thing is I need to quit trippin’ and get some bangin’ boots up in this here crib.

Yesterday, I washed about a billion red plums and chopped them up.

The color was incredible.

After about two HOURS of chopping golf-ball sized plums and cutting my thumbs on those stupid razor-sharp pits, I told my husband that this was probably going to be a one-time event. All that chopping was sapping my will to live. Or at least my will to make jam.

Then I added a bunch of sugar and some apple juice, and set it on the stove to cook down and soften, mashing them every so often with a potato masher. 

Then I read the directions on Angie’s recipe and it said to measure the sugar very carefully or it won’t set right.

Oh.

Huh. 

I shrugged and got out my little stick blender, then puréed the plums and strained them.

And got the most spectacular, the most delicious, red plum syrup I could have ever imagined.

We immediately poured some over frozen blackberries and ate them for dessert. We kept thinking of things we could do with this syrup. Pouring it over pancakes was a popular choice, with mixing it into iced tea running a close second.

After letting it cool in the fridge overnight, I added pectin, lemon juice, and corn syrup.

It is slightly less jelly-like than store-bought jam, so maybe there’s something to that whole “measuring” bit after all. But it is DELICIOUS and we made it ourselves! AND we got 10 little containers of jam for only $60! It’s a bargain, people!

Clearly, I excel at this homesteading thing.

* Lamest Blog Post Title EVER