Not Inadequate

I saw this guy last night at the entrance to WalMart -

(He saw me take a picture of him. If my lip-reading is even remotely accurate, he was a tad bit miffed.)

Today we are back to school after a fleeting summer break.

So far we have spent the last 3 hours on a Giant! Math! Hissy Fit! brought on when I chirped we would be cutting back on our workbook pages and doing a Fun! Math! Activity! instead.

Last year I found a great (FREE) website with math drills – Math is Fun.

See? SEE? It even says FUN in the name! Don’t you wanna have fun, you little turkey butt?

Fun Online Math Drills = Worst Mom EVER. ARE YOU TRYING TO KILL ME OR SOMETHING?

He actually said he’d rather do flash cards than Math is Fun. (Flashcards which he announced I could make myself. Obviously.)

I mean, come ON.

He also suggested maybe I could find a better, FUNNER math website.

Sure, I’ll get right on that.

Which I did, grudgingly.

After sifting through tons of math TWADDLE, which I did not even realize existed, I finally found another terrific math website that he DOES like - even though it’s practically THE EXACT SAME as the first one, EXCEPT this one costs EIGHTY DOLLARS A YEAR.

I swear.

It looks like a great site with a HUGE variety of drills from Pre-K – 8th. I told him we’d sign up for a one-month trial to see how we liked it. Because I am a Super! Sucker! Homeschool Mom!

I even braved my husband’s basement lair and emerged victorious with a teeny-tiny mouse that fits his hand perfectly.

It’s now 2:00 in the afternoon.

I have not checked anything off my shiny new schedule.  It’s the first day, and I’m already behind.

And I’m wondering if taking my kids through the liquor store drive-thru would be wrong.

What’s that? Oh, sorry.

I mean HOMESCHOOLING IS AWESOME! We sang hymns for one hour this morning, then we baked cakes for the elderly, and this afternoon we will be making dioramas depicting the entire works of Homer! Which we read in the original Greek!

• I got up this morning, excited and ready to make some Red Cabbage Indicator.

Yay.

Here’s the thing. I love science, but I suck at the experiments. The materials lists are nine miles long and I can never get motivated to get the stuff together. Last year, we got completely derailed from Chemistry because I never made the indicator. I even bought 2 cabbages and all they did was rot in the fridge. I’ve heard this cabbage-boiling process is unpleasant. I don’t like things that are unpleasant, yo.

However, I have decided to turn over a new leaf (leaf!), and assemble all the materials for all the experiments before we head back to school next week (Super! Homeschool! Mom!) I even got up early, so I could shred the cabbage and get it soaking while we are at swimming lessons.

But then.

The instructions say I have to use distilled water. Not tap water. Distilled water.

And I am once again derailed.

• The other day, my daughter was racing around nekkid after her bath, and I (naturally) chased her around and threatened to bite her butt. When I scooped her up, she turned serious, wagged her little finger at me and said, “mommy, you can only have the cheeks. You can’t have the butt crack.”

And then I died laughing.

• Also the other day, I finally broke down and decided to buy new bras. I gotta hike these girls back up where they belong, ifyouknowwhatImean.  I shop online if at all possible, and since I knew what I wanted, I went to the Hanes website. While I was there, I saw they had pajama capris! Now, you KNOW my love for capri pants. And jammy capri pants? It’s nirvana. I bought a test pair, and loved them so much I bought….well, I bought eleven more pairs.

Lookit, I’ve never had real pajamas. I usually get through the winter on ratty sweatshirts and longjohns; in the summer, I wear cut-off sweats and a men’s white t-shirt.

It’s Project Runway over here, people.

Or maybe it’s more like What Not To Wear.

Anyway. I love my new, soft, pajama capri pants. That is the point of this story.

It’s not that great of a story, though….. I’ll try harder.

• Have a good week, peeps! Think kind thoughts about Red Cabbage Indicator.

After scolding my daughter to quit picking at her butt for the last 3 weeks, I finally realized that she was doing it because her underwear were too small.

Yet another Super Mom Moment. Poor thing. So I went to Kohl’s and bought her the next size up.

The new ones are too big.

She was wearing a 4, which is too small. The 6′s are too big. That is unacceptable because she will still pick at her butt, just for different reasons. And besides, should anyone have to suffer with ill-fitting underwear? That’s not necessary. However, there is a gigantic difference between a 4 and a 6, which the clothing people apparently do not realize.

(note: I took a picture of the aforementioned giant size difference, but then thought perhaps posting my daughter’s underwear was not the Best Idea Ever.)

There is also a big difference between girl’s sizes and boy’s sizes, which I know because there were all those times there was that one time when all her underwear were dirty and I had to stick her in a pair of her brother’s (good gravy, did I just admit that? It’s why I buy everyone, like, 25 pairs. Because we are so on top of the laundry around here), and her brother’s undies fit just fine. The difference between boys and girls clothing sizes is something I could rant about for hours. It’s so aggravating. I shall try to restrain myself.

So now I have this dilemma whether to buy a separate batch of boys underwear for her, hoping somehow to be able to keep them separate, because I may not have many lines, but I will draw one at group underpants; or search high and low and spend a bazillion dollars to find little girl’s size 5 underwear.

And while we’re on the subject (apparently interminably, poor readers), why do I have to hunt so hard to find underwear that is not emblazoned with Hannah Montana? Or High School Musical? Or SpongeBob, that cretin?

I googled Little Girls Underwear, with my hands over my eyes, a little apprehensive about what sort of results that combination of words would yield.

Per the internets suggestion, I took myself off to Old Navy, armed with my wallet, iPhone, and a purse stuffed with representative panties that are too big/too small.

That’s right, gentle readers. I am the lady in Old Navy surreptitiously opening little packets of impossibly tiny underpants and holding them up against other underpants that I fish out of my purse.

I am a class act, people.

In the end, I decided against the girl’s extra-small bikinis that would probably fit her, because I have an aversion to putting my 4 year old baby into bikinis. She’s four! I might be willing to go with a hipster or slightly low-rise brief, but not a bikini. I swear, the day I see thong underwear in the little girl department, I will have an aneurysm.

I found some non-bikini undies in the toddler department and they fit just fine.

And that concludes this endlessly fascinating foray into underpants shopping.

Or maybe it was just endless.

Ah, well. They can’t all be winners.

But I do, in fact, need to get rid of some homeschool stuff we won’t be using. It’s all brend-new, never been used; and cost enough of my husband’s hard-earned money that I can’t in good conscience donate it all to my local thrift store.

I have placed a few ads on Hip Homeschool Moms - one for Primary Language Lessons and one for Intermediate Language Lessons, both by Emma Serl. This is a gentle Grammar/Composition/Language Arts program, very much in the Charlotte Mason style of teaching. PLL is for use in grades 2 and 3, and ILL is for use in grades 4, 5, and 6.

You can read reviews of Serl’s program on Home School Reviews and on Cathy Duffy Reviews.

I also have the full set of McGuffy’s Eclectic Readers (Primary through 6th – Revised Editions). These are also very sweet and gentle. These books have comprised a learn-to-read program since the 1800s. You can read the 30 five-star reviews this set receives on Amazon.

Anyway. Email me if you are interested in purchasing. I am pretty flexible on price, especially if someone wanted all four Serl books.

(Gah! I feel so dirty now…)

• So I installed stupid Internet Explorer 9 and it screwed everything up all over the place. My computer said there are new updates, would you like to install? and like a dummy I said Sure, why not? and then two hours later everything was a big mess. Excellent. Why do they have to make it look different? Do they think we need a new style every year? Like they do with jeans or cars? ‘Cause I’m here to tell you I do not need my stupid browser to get a fashion update every 6 months.

Anyway. I found a way to blame it all on my husband, so it’s all good now.

• I read the Freedom to Learn blog at Psychology Today, and last week Peter Gray talked about a new book out called Wounded by School. According to the description, “…the way we educate millions of American children alienates students from a fundamental pleasure in learning…”

As someone who is interested in education, as well as someone who wants to be able to articulate my reasons for homeschooling my own kids, I am intrigued by this book. So far it is not available at my local library, but I might see if they can get it somehow. Has anyone else heard of this book? Read it? Let’s discuss.

• I feel like I have been the victim of some new racket recently.

I ordered a Cook’s Illustrated cookbook, and when it came, I paid the $19.95 bill that came with it. Then I got a bill emblazoned hysterically with SECOND NOTICE!! for $4.95, which was apparently the shipping cost. Why did they not include that amount with the first bill? Also, why are they threatening me with Second Notice like I’m some kind of non-bill-paying scofflaw? It most certainly was not the second notice.

THEN, the exact same thing happened with something I ordered for the kids from Highlights. I got my package, paid the bill that came with it, and then received a nasty Second Notice bill for the shipping amount. Is this some new con? It’s a small enough amount that I would normally pay it and move on with my life, but now I am suspicious and aggravated. I’m going to call about it as soon as I work up the energy to navigate one of those annoying phone trees and sit on hold for 35 minutes.

• Speaking of phone trees, I don’t know who invented voice recognition, but I’d like to smack him in the face. Am I the only one who gets agitated and screeches Just Let Me Talk To A Real Person For Crying Out Loud! and then unleashes a string of obscenities? Maybe followed by even more cursing when the calm-voiced computer lady says “I’m sorry, I did not recognize your request”?

• That was a lot of whining and complaining, wasn’t it? Sorry. Actually, that reminds me – a few weeks ago, I read somewhere that two handfuls of cashews has the same therapeutic effect as a Prozac. I was all, Come ON, that can’t be true! But then I googled around a little and saw that same information on a couple of different websites.

It was on more than one website? It must be true.

Anyway, I was telling this to my husband and practically before I even finished, he got up, ran to Sam’s, and came back with a GALLON of cashews.

A GALLON.

Interpret that as you will.

It’s worth a try. Maybe I’ll at least get some kind of placebo effect.

One mother-in-law shawl.  Eighteen inches wide and about eight feet long.

Finished last night at 8pm.

Anyone who doubted me can suck it.

(oh my gosh, I can see a mistake from here! crap.)