Not Inadequate

I hit some good sales at the grocery store last weekend and got a little carried away.

Fridge Before -

20 pounds of hamburger, 5 pounds of cheese, 2 shredded rotisserie chickens, 6 pounds of ham, 2 pounds of sausage, 2 pounds bacon*, 2 dozen eggs. Everything bought on sale – the hamburger, bacon, and sausage were BOGO.

Freezer After -

3 Chicken Noodle Casseroles, 21 Breakfast Burritos, 18 Beef and Bean Burritos, 10 quarts of Ham and 16 Bean Soup, 10 quarts of Ham and Mashed Potato Soup, 8 Stuffing Meatloaves, 4 pints of taco meat, 6 packets of bacon pre-chopped to make Spaghetti Carbonara on a whim, and several pounds of grapes and raspberries. Plus the assorted pizza dough balls, bread loaves and muffins that I have to make constantly.

I keep trying to get my family to quit eating, but I’m not getting any takers.

Now I shall go watch The Real Housewives, guilt free.

Maybe even with a bowl of ice cream.

Yes, definitely with a bowl of ice cream.

* That’s a lot of pork products, isn’t it? I NEVER buy bacon or sausage – it’s too expensive, smells up the whole house, and is probably not what you’d call healthy. But it was all on SALE and I had COUPONS. So there.

After a couple of false starts, I finally made a hat that my daughter can wear with her ponytail!

Cute, right?

I put the instructions on Ravelry, if you want to check it out.

I have a craft project up over at Heart of the Matter - making Valentine’s Day Cards! If you are brave enough to turn your kids loose with glue and tissue paper, check it out.

Now then, peeps, let get to some more Ask a Homeschool Graduate Questions!

Kristy asked:

Did you like being homeschooled?

What kind of curriculum did you use? 

How was the transition to college? 

Yes, I did like being homeschooled. We slept in, went to the library in the middle of the day, and had jobs. It was a much more relaxed lifestyle than going to public school had been. When I was about 16, my parents bought a used 5th wheel. They took several months off from work and we traveled all over the eastern part of the United States. It was cramped and we were broke, but I have so many memories – fall in Tennessee, a campground right on Lake Ontario with the biggest spider webs I’ve ever seen, riding the subway in New York City, watching my dad see names he knew on the Vietnam Memorial… So yes. I did like it.

From what I remember, there were pretty much only two choices when it came to curriculum back then – Abeka and A.C.E. We used A.C.E. It was ABYSSMAL. I would never, ever recommend it to someone wanting to homeschool, even though it’s been over 20 years since I used it and they surely have changed things by now. It was just horrific. I remember specifically in math being given problems that could only be solved using concepts that had not been covered yet. French was the same way – they threw words around that I had never even seen before. And the memorization! Pages and pages of it. I hated that. And it was BORING – a thousand black and white workbooks that all looked the same. Gah. Just talking about it is bringing up bad memories.

It occurs to me as I write this how contradictory that is - I liked homeschooling but hated the curriculum. I never thought about it like that before. I guess the curriculum was such a small part of the homeschool experience that it’s not the most prevalent memory when I look back. My sister and I were pretty much done with our work by noon and had the rest of the day to do other things. We both worked with my dad who was a general contractor. I learned how to pour concrete and operate a sandblaster. We read a lot. I had a job working 3 or 4 nights a week in a restaurant from the time I was 13.

College was not a huge transition. Remember, I had attended public school up until the first few weeks of 8th grade, so classrooms and changing classes were not completely new to me. I was very lucky to make several good friends right off the bat and was close to them all through college. In fact, my friend Sarah is the one who invited me to the campus Bible study where I eventually met my husband. I met my Best Friend in some math class or other and we’ve been friends for twenty years.

(dude. how is that possible that I’m old enough to have done something 20 years ago - and I was IN my twenties when it happened? 

Oh, right. I’m old now.)

As far as feeling prepared, it actually wasn’t too bad. I’d had such a bad experience in high school with math, I was convinced I sucked at it. When I took the college entrance exam, my math scores were so low it changed my overall ACT score by almost 30 percent. But when you go to school to become an engineer, there’s not really a lot of room for a math phobia. So, I took a remedial algebra class, realized I didn’t suck at math – A.C.E. did – and went on to successfully take many, many, many more math intense classes.

The moral of the story is this: Life does not begin and end at 16, 17, or 18. Not doing something well or not liking something at 17 does not mean your kids are doomed to an entire life of sucking in that subject. If your kids don’t seem to be picking up math or essay writing or biology as well as you think they should, DO NOT let yourself feel like a failure. If you are making yourself crazy because you can’t find The Exact Right curriculum that makes advanced calculus or applied genetics a breeze…then stop trying. You can’t teach your kids every single thing by the time they are grown, and they won’t excel at every single thing, either. Many, many things can be learned after high school.

In fact, I’ll go so far as to say that virtually EVERYTHING we all know, we learned after high school.

In fact, there are times when I am convinced that the specifics of the subjects taught before the age of 15 are completely arbitrary and matter not a whit when it comes to anything that happens in real life. I want my kids to know HOW to learn and HOW to think. That way, when I miss something or screw it up somehow – they can fix it themselves.

Lookit. You teach your sons how to pee IN the toilet and not AROUND the toilet, and I say you will have accomplished everything you really need to.

You won’t just be doing your future daughters-in-law a favor - nay, you will be doing THE WORLD a favor.

These are pictures of my office at 8 o’clock this morning -

Help. Me.

* I rocked the Super Bowl snacks this year – I made Fried Mozzarella, Barbeque Meatballs, Cheesy Breadsticks, and Mini Calzones. All but the fried mozzarella were homemade. I am woman, see me fall down in exhaustion. The Volkswagon commercial with the tiny Darth Vader was hilarious!

* I overheard my daughter say, “My mom is soooooo HOT!” They were playing Rocket Ship to the Sun, so I don’t think she meant it in the conventional way….but still, I’ll take it.

* If you are a pregnant person and total stranger comes up to you and touches your belly, turn around and pat their belly.  I guarantee this will cure them.

* The search terms that lead people to my blog are sometimes really funny. Like this one: tiny little magical basement entrances. What is that? Have I talked about tiny magical basement entrances before? It sounds interesting. I want to know more about tiny magical basement entrances too. I get a lot of people who come here when searching for ugly stuff - Ugly Bag, Ugly Alpaca, Ugly Knitting. It’s very flattering. There’s another group who finds me by searching I Hate Potty Training. I hear that, yo.

BUT! The absolute best search phrase that landed some poor sap on my main page was skinny nude lying trash. Isn’t that just fantastic?

* This is funny -

Ooh, I am so excited that I got some Ask A Home School Graduate questions yesterday!

Okay, here we go – Tressa asked:

Are my kids going to hate me because I didn’t give them the “high school experience”? You know, they probably won’t go to the prom. They won’t have football games or German club. Will they miss it?

My parents were more concerned with staying out of jail for homeschooling (remember, it was the Dark Ages) than with our social lives, so my sister and I didn’t get ANYWHERE near the amount of socializing that homeschooled kids get today. Plus we lived in the boonies – a weekly trip to the library was an adventure. We went to church and both of us worked from the age of 13.  Even so, I had plenty to do and didn’t really feel like I was missing out. I hung out with my old friends enough to be reminded how hard school could be, and was happy avoiding it. The prom sounded stupid and filled with teenaged angst - waiting to be asked, spending money on a dress, drinking spiked punch and losing your virginity to some handsy guy in the back of a limo….blech. Besides, it cost a fortune and I wasn’t about to spend my hard-earned money on a wear-it-once dress. 

After we moved to civilization when I was 17, I worked and bought a car. I made friends with the kids at work and at church. Our little town had one public high school and my sister and I would often meet up with friends and go cheer on the basketball team. I remember being busy and having fun.

Nowadays (nowadays! check me - I’m a thousand years old), homeschooled kids have so many things to do – homeschool co-ops offer tons of clubs, activities, and parties; there are all kinds of sports teams, dance troupes, and musical groups not affiliated with public school; and kids attend church and have jobs. I kind of think that a one night event like a prom is going to be just another insignificant blip on the Public School Is Different screen. And anyway, there are dances and clubs and football games in college, so not doing those things in high school doesn’t mean that the opportunity is lost forever.

In conclusion, I am going to vote No, Your Kids Will Not Hate You.

Besides! The awesomeness that is Tressa is strong enough to overcome anything!

Now then.

To everyone who asked what my relationship is like now with my mom and sister… it ranges from very poor (sister) to total estrangement (parents). This situation does not have anything to do with school – I probably wouldn’t be brave enough to homeschool my own kids if it did - because things did not start to seriously go south until I was in my thirties. I’m sorry, I know that you’d all rather hear that we are one big happy family and have weekly Sunday dinners and game nights - I wish that too. Trust me, I have all the same fears that everyone else has – and in some cases they are Very Big because of my family history. 

But I know strongly that I am doing what I am meant to do. When I became a mom, I finally found myself. So even though some days end with me in bed looking at the ceiling counting all the ways I am effing this whole thing up….I have a tiny corner of certainty that can’t be shaken.

If anyone has any Ask A Home School Graduate questions, sock ’em to me. This is fun! I’ll answer more next week.

* Ha! This title is cracking me up. Narcissism is funny.

In the middle of a Twitter conversation the other day -

I love Twitter. It’s so stupid, but I love it so much. Twitter is my home school support group.

- I mentioned that I had been home schooled myself. This prompted the idea for an Ask A Home School Graduate post.

I don’t know that I would have anything valuable to say to people who are presently home schooling, especially since I finished high school back in the dark ages; but I would love to answer any questions or offer encouragement if any of my fellow home schoolers are interested in that sort of thing.

Here’s a little bit of background:

I grew up and went to public school in a very teeny-tiny mountain town in Colorado. When I say tiny, I mean the whole town had about 1200 people. The next town over was only a little bigger and was an hour away. In seventh grade, I cried every day when I got home from school. A few weeks into eighth grade (1984), my parents pulled my sister and me out of school and we started home schooling. I home schooled until I finished high school. When I was 17, we moved to another small town, but it was much closer to other towns and cities, and was not as remote.

After I finished high school, I worked for a year while I saved money and tried to figure out what I wanted to do. When I was 19, I went to college. I met my husband at a campus Bible study and we got married while we were both in school. We graduated at the same time, got jobs, blah blah blah, and lived happily ever after. Big was born a few weeks before our eleventh anniversary, and Little came exactly two years later.

Fast forward a bit and here we are - a merry little band of home-educating, wheat-grinding, work-from-home, weirdos.

It’s a little disconcerting to see that the last 39 years can be summed up in two short paragraphs, but there you have it.

Does anyone have any Ask A Home School Graduate Questions?

Throw a girl a bone, people!

(Am I the only one who dithers between spelling home school as one word or two? I don’t think “homeschool” is correct, but it’s the most common. Both ways irritate me. I’m a multi-tasker that way.)

After reading the third computer-related disaster story in the last few weeks, I just have to put this out there: GET CARBONITE.

As you know, I am not a paid spokesperson for anything.

Heck, I’m not paid at all. By anyone. For anything.

Dang it. 

HOWEVER.

After having random anxiety every time I uploaded new pictures of the kids onto my computer, I finally tuned in to those radio commercials and checked out Carbonite. It might be the best $50 a year I have ever spent. Even I - who rilly, rilly hates learning anything new - installed it in about 3 seconds, with no help from my husband/computer guy. I set the backup to run whenever I want, and now I don’t have to worry about carrying my computer around when the apocalypse comes.

Get it. Feel Relieved. Move on to worrying about the next thing on the list.

I found this amazing pizza dough recipe at Alli & Son, and have adapted it to my Bosch Universal. I make a huge batch of pizza dough every couple of months or so and freeze it. I’ve tweaked this recipe a little to suit our tastes and to make a ginormous batch.

This is, in fact, the best pizza dough you will ever eat. It’s yeasty, it’s crispy, it’s chewy….it’s perfect. It tastes like it came from a high end pizza parlor.

I am not kidding.

Beer Batter Pizza Dough adapted for Bosch Universal

To Bosch bowl, add the following and pulse to combine:

• 4 cups freshly ground whole wheat flour
• 4 cups all purpose white flour
• 1 cup ground flax (optional)
• 2 tablespoons bread salt
• 1 teaspoon dried Italian seasoning
• Dough relaxer (completely optional)

In a separate bowl, mix the following together and let sit until foamy:

• 4 cups warm water (110°)
• 1/2 cup honey
• 4 tablespoons SAF yeast

To water and yeast mixture, add:

• 2 12-ounce bottles of room temperature beer
• 1/2 cup olive oil

Pour beer/water mixture into Bosch bowl and stir on Level 1 until combined. Gradually add equal amounts of white and wheat flour until the dough is no longer super sticky (6 or 7 more cups of flour). Knead 3 minutes on Level 1.

Place dough in a large oiled bowl, cover, and let rise until doubled in size (about 45 minutes). Remove the dough from the bowl and knead it a bit on a lightly floured surface. Divide the dough into balls. Preheat oven to 425°. Roll dough out as thinly as possible and bake on a pizza stone for 7 minutes. Remove from the oven and top with sauce and toppings. Put pizza back into the oven and continue baking for an additional 10 minutes, or until cheese is bubbly and bottom is crispy.

This recipe will easily make 6 – 8 medium sized pizzas, depending on how thick you roll your dough.

Freezing Instructions:

Place balls of dough into freezer baggies and tuck into your freezer for later. Thaw in the fridge for a couple of hours, then let rest at room temperature for an hour before baking as above.

Alternatively, you can par-bake some pizza shells and freeze those. Preheat oven to 425°. Divide the dough into appropriately sized balls, and cover with a damp towel while working with one ball of dough at a time on a lightly floured surface. Roll dough out as thinly as possible and brush on a very light coating of oil (I pour a little oil in my hand and pat it all over the dough). Bake on a pizza stone for 7 minutes. Remove from the oven and cool on a baking rack until completely cool. Wrap in plastic wrap and foil. Stack and store in the freezer for up to 2 months. To make pizza, remove from freezer and top with sauce and toppings. Bake from frozen approximately 12 minutes, or until cheese is bubbly and bottom is crispy.

Go. Make some. Now.

Then come back and thank me.

I realize not everyone is fortunate enough to have an amazing Bosch. If you have a KitchenAid mixer, you could cut this recipe in half or even in thirds and make it in that machine. I have not made bread in a KitchenAid, and am unfamiliar with kneading times – maybe knead a minute or two longer?

This post is linked to Mouthwatering Monday, Tasty Tuesdays, Tempt My Tumy Tuesday, Tuesdays at the Table, What’s Cooking Wednesday, Real Food Wednesday,  Foodie Friday, Food on Fridays, and anywhere else I can find. ‘Cause I’m a ho.