Not Inadequate

• On Sunday, Big came up to me and said he needed a Question Notebook where he can write down all his questions (and lo, they are many), and I can spend every Saturday researching the answers. He’s a giver that way.

• When I went to my daughter’s room for a final tuck-in before going to bed, she sleepily turned to me and said, “You’re my heart, Mommy.” And then I cried.

• On Saturday, Jim took the kids to the zoo so I could have more than five minutes in a row of peace to schedule school. I was able to get the first 5 weeks worked out, which is significantly less than I usually schedule. But at least we have a plan. Besides, I always have to redo my schedules fourteen times a year because we get behind ditch stuff lose interest are flexible. Maybe this will help with that. Or at least waste less paper.

The following is the actual text message exchange between Jim and I while they were at the zoo:

Jim: Attacked by squirrels. Retreated to car.

Me: They wanted your lunch?

Jim: Yes. They came right up on the picnic bench.

Me: Are my babies ok?

Jim: They are ok now. Little screamed, “Run for your life!”

Me: At least she is not dramatic.

Jim: Now we see a peacock. All is good.

Jim: The peacock is attacking b-day party kids. They are crying.

Me: Peacocks are deadly.

And then they had a jolly time at the zoo, where the kids MADE their dad take a picture of cockroaches.

And email it to me.

Because they think they are funny.

You’re Welcome.

Several weeks ago, my friend Hortense called me to say Merry Christmas and catch up. She told me about her Education students at the university and I told her I hadn’t had my foot peed on in weeks.

That didn’t seem very glamorous, so I switched to blathering on about planning our school year and tried to get in a few plugs for the awesomeness that is homeschooling. She talked a little about training your brain to work, and how important it is to persevere when solving tough problems.

At least I think that’s what she was talking about. Professional Professors seem to have their own lingo and I might have gotten lost in a couple of places.

I was inspired to mention that I am planning on teaching my kids Latin. Trying to impress people always bites me in the ass, I should try to remember that. I rather thought a professional teacher-of-teachers, who just five minutes before was talking about the importance of complicated reasoning, would think Latin was a cool idea.

I was mistaken.

In fact, I was completely nonplussed that a person who has dedicated her whole life to learning and teaching would argue rather strenuously against learning something. Even if you could successfully make the argument that Latin has no practical value at all (and I don’t think you can), what about learning for learning’s sake? What a boring life we would lead if we only devoted ourselves to knowing the bare minimum. I would not knit, lunatics people would not climb Everest; and sports, music, and art would disappear completely.  

Unfortunately, I hadn’t practiced any speeches, and I embarrassed myself thrashing around trying to make a coherent argument. I have reasons, but I don’t thing I communicated them very effectively - Big is very verbal and into language and I think he would dig it; a huge chunk of the English language (50%) comes from Latin (not to mention the romance languages, which base 80% of their vocabularies in Latin); learning Latin develops precision, logic, analytical and reasoning skills, and helps students better understand English grammar; and of course the least significant reason, that people who know Latin positively KILL on the SATs.

I find this Memoria Press article by Cheryl Lowe to be very convincing, as well as this bit from Climbing Parnassus by Tracy Lee Simmons (which I have not read yet)-

“Every lesson in Latin is a lesson in logic…Taking the simple two-word Latin sentence Vellem mortuos (“I would that they were dead”), … this sentence aright requires fourteen intellectual turns. A student must know (1) the person, (2) tense, (3) voice, (4) number, (5) mood of the verb…, (6) it comes from volo, meaning (7) ‘I wish’; and that (8) the subjunctive has here a particular shade of meaning. As to mortuos, he must know that it is (9) the accusative, (10) plural, (11) masculine, from (12) mortuus, meaning (13) ‘dead’; (14) the reason why the accusative is necessary…. A student who slips up on any one of these steps is bound to make a lovely mess when he comes to translate… In Latin you must be absolutely right, or you are not right at all…

Can anyone seriously maintain that such stiff training in just expression leaves no salutary marks upon the intellect of someone who, having successfully run its gauntlet, becomes captive to the habits of the precise mind?”

I am more concerned with training my children HOW to learn and HOW to think than I am with WHAT they learn. Accidentally forgetting to include Colorado history (I have a whole rant about state history, actually) worries me far less than sending my kids into adulthood without the tools they need to make good decisions and problem solve; decide what they want to do, and figure out how to get there.

Jim is taking this week off from work, so on Monday I had a day all to myself. I went out and shopped, perused and browsed.

I even had lunch. By myself. In a restaurant. And did not have to cut anyone’s food but my own.

I hit one of my favorite places, a warehouse that’s been turned into a warren of crammed-full antique booths.

Wasn’t it just the other day I was talking about getting rid of stuff? What poor timing.

I was sorely tempted to buy this as a birthday present for my sister, because I think it would be hilarious. Maybe in another year, when she turns 40. I’ll bet you wish you were on the receiving end of such thoughtful gifts.

I also thought seriously about this -

But not this, even though he’s a steal at $480.00. He’s alarmingly well endowed, isn’t he? What are you supposed to do with this? He’s either mighty proud of himself or very uncomfortable.

This picture does not do this thing justice – it was waist high, and must have weighed hundreds of pounds. I’m guessing it’s some sort of cave formation, like a stalactite, but to me it just looks….wrong. Sadly, there was no price tag, or I would’ve loaded her right up.

But the absolute BEST find of the day was this table, carved out of a huge tree root, for only EIGHT THOUSAND DOLLARS.

See the elephants? Simultaneously awesome AND hideous.

It was fun skulking around, surreptitiously taking these pictures. I left feeling triumphant, because not only did I escape the notice of some muscle-bound security dude…

I also resisted the siren song of that statue.

I was positively inundated with requests to give more details about making my padded headboard, so for those who have not watched four thousand hours of HGTV, here it is.

Fine. I got one request. Haven’t you ever heard of artistic license?

First, I found a piece of 1/2″ Medium Density Fiberboard in the garage and asked my husband to cut it down for me. Cost = $0.

We have a king bed, and the space between the mattress and the window sill was 21″. We cut the MDF to 76″x20″. If you want to make fabric covered buttons for a tufted look (super easy), you need to drill holes in the MDF now, before you attach the foam. Find the center of the wood by making an X from corner to corner and work your way out from there.

Then I went to an upholstery store and bought 2″ thick high-density foam. You can also get a big roll of this at Hobby Lobby or JoAnn’s. I went to the upholstery shop because I knew she would cut it to the exact right size and charge me by the square foot. I didn’t have to try to cut it myself (which is a huge pain in the butt. HUGE) and it cost a little less. Still, the foam was $40, which was more than I remembered.

Get some spray glue and glue your foam to your board. Do this part outside. Seriously.

At this point, you can cover your headboard with some quilt batting to soften the edges; then top that with plain muslin (or an old sheet – whatever). This helps keep all your foam in place, and you can shape the edges by pulling on the muslin instead of stretching out your nice fabric. This is a bit tricky, since you are working blind. You have to lay your muslin down, then your batting, THEN the headboard (foam side down). You pull all this around to the back and staple it. I always staple at the half point, then the quarter points, then the eighths, and so on (does that make sense?) This way you are not pulling it at some weird angle that you will only notice when you are done and have stapled a bazillion staples and the thought of pulling them all out makes you want to cry. After it’s all wrapped, you staple on your pretty fabric.

Since I elected to use a pre-made coverlet which already consists of fabric and batting, I skipped that part. I was indecisive about this, but when I went shopping for fabric and added in the cost of the batting, it worked out to be roughly the same price as hacking up a $60 store-bought quilt. You need a sturdy fabric, nothing too stretchy or sheer. Or, hack up a quilt you already own. Depending on the direction of the pattern, you can easily use a twin sized coverlet, and those are pretty inexpensive.

Speaking of pattern, try to avoid stripes. Just trust me on that.

The corners can be tricky, too. I had to redo mine because I wanted nice square corners. I had too much fabric when I folded it over and it looked misshapen. I had to take out all my corner staples (a teeny slotted-head screwdriver inserted under the fabric AND staple works great to pry them out), and trim it. Mistakes happen – it’s all part of the adventure.

Right?

Now – mounting it to the wall. There are several options here – you can get a piece of hardware called a Z Hanger, which looks like it works great; or if you have a table saw, you can rip a 1x 4 at an angle and make something similar. 

If you’re too lazy to go to Home Depot and also too cheap (hypothetically speaking), you can do what we did. We found a 1×4 in the garage and decided to make legs. First, I found the wall studs, figured out where that was on the headboard, measured some other stuff, did some thinking, and screwed the leg on with very short screws that were too short to go into the foam.

Then we tipped the whole thing up, hoped we had the legs in the right spot, and screwed the legs into the studs.

Scooted the bed back into place, and voila! One modern, padded headboard for $100.

If any of these directions are confusing, let me know and I can walk you through the stud finding/leg measuring part.

Or you could look on one of the ten-thousand other websites out there that describes this better than I did. Either way.

If anyone makes one of these, let me know!

The other night we were watching teevee and a commercial came on offering to sell me a special two-dollar bill for thirty dollars. And if I called RIGHT NOW, they’ll send me a SECOND bill for free! (separate shipping and handling charges may apply).

TWO $2 bills for the low, low price of $30? Is there a limit on how many I can buy?

And then right after that, this commercial came on -

Here’s the thing.

I do not want to see commercials for feminine hygiene products.

I do not want to see commercials for erectile dysfunction pills.

And I DO NOT want to see commercials featuring ANIMALS going POTTY!

GAH.

Here we are at another new year.

I don’t do resolutions, because those are just an invitation to feel like a failure. I suck at enough things without making a whole NEW list of stuff to suck at. 

I have a couple of goals, though. The key to making goals is to keep them vague. That way, when you’re reviewing them in December, you can spin them in a way that looks like a raging success.

“How did you do on your goals last year, Harold? Did you eat better?” 

“I totally did, Wanda! Remember that time I accidentally bought the low fat cottage cheese?”

See? Like that.

My first goal for 2011 -

(what are we calling this, anyway? Twenty-Eleven? Two-Thousand-Eleven? Ought-Eleven? No, that one wouldn’t be right. Shouldn’t we have reached a consensus on this by now? Honestly, it’s irritating.) 

- is to Simplify My Life.

Lately I look around my house and feel like I am drowning in STUFF. That’s a little generous. It’s more like CRAP. And it makes me unhappy to look at it.

Scrapbooking crap that reminds me that I don’t scrapbook.

Cross-stitching crap that reminds me I haven’t finished the one project I DID start – NINE YEARS AGO.

Sewing crap that reminds me I don’t know how to sew, books I’ll never read, gifts from people I don’t talk to….

It’s all becoming too much.

I think I might be a minimalist at heart. Empty surfaces please me. It’s hard to maintain, because I’m surrounded by pack rats.

(Yes, even though all the stuff I listed is MINE, that’s neither here nor there. Stop getting sidetracked. This isn’t about blame. Get off my back already. Jeez.)

My son will try to pick stuff OUT OF THE TRASH because he might need it someday. I find little bobs and bits secreted all over the house. It is simultaneously cute and aggravating (that sentence pretty much sums up my parenting experience, actually).

Not to mention the fact that we all live, work, and attend school in our house. We are all here, all the time.

The amount of toilet paper we go through is staggering.

That’s gross. Forget I said anything.

ANYway – to that end (the getting rid of stuff end, not the toilet paper end – keep up!), we cleaned out the laundry room yesterday! Go us!

Before (I swear, half this stuff was from the original owner. I was embarrassed for us, keeping someone else’s trash. I mean, really. Who does that?)

Eight-thousand old lightbulbs; a zillion gallons of paint; obnoxious, eye-level shelves holding stupid empty boxes…blech.

After – so! much! better! We tore down half the shelving, took out the trash (what a concept! tell Martha!), and laid carpet squares we had from our last house.

Now, if only SOMEone will volunteer to keep it that way.