Not Inadequate

• One of the things I am worried about with this Adventure is my hair.

Obviously.

I have my guy, Jeff, trained how to cut it. Maintaining Lesbian Cop Hair is not as simple as it sounds. A certain way over the ears, texturized a little on top, and my bangs have to be long enough so my eyebrows don’t feel naked, but short enough so they don’t poke me in the eyes. If they start poking me in the eyes, I have been known to go after them in the bathroom with my Lady Schick.

And then who suffers? We all do.

• I am super excited to have arranged a FABULOUS give away at Heart of the Matter! A 24-volume set of Great Moments in American History! Click over to read more about it AND to take advantage of the amazing coupon code they are making available to homeschoolers. It’s a great deal, and one I will be taking advantage of myself.

• I was so geeked last week to discover the famous Life of Fred math series has expanded to include elementary books! I ordered the first 4 and am already a tiny bit in love with Fred.

The Life of Fred, for those who don’t know, is a series of math books written expressly for homeschoolers. Fred is a 5 year old math professor at KITTENS University. Each chapter is written in story form, telling the adventures of Fred in his every day life. He encounters needs for math, then works on solving the problem - to avoid that neverending “WHY are we learning this exactly?” question that is so prevalent in every math class. Fred is fab. I like him a lot.

• Happy Monday!

Why is there always a lake on the bathroom counter?

How is it possible that my children are both so vehement and so ineffective with handwashing?

You guys are all so nice! No one even really called me crazy (to my face at least)!

Selling our house in this market has been a horrible, soul-sucking venture. So while we are determined to go SOON, we have not nailed down the time frame yet.

No worries, though, because this leaves me lots of time to obsess publicly about how many shoes to take.

oh my gosh, y’all, you don’t EVEN know how bad I wanted to tell this secret while dithering over what to sell/pack/store! I need a committee of some sorts – “Deb, seriously, when are you going to ever wear Hammer Pants?”

My biggest concern is, of course, the kids. And all their stuff. Lots and lots of stuff. The books alone! They are too young for Kindles, and books are an even bigger necessity than clothes, practically, so we will be trying to figure that out. There could be lots of indecisive whinging and whining in your future, so brace yourselves.

Here are some more details about our plan:

We are not going to buy an RV, because that would be VERY EXPENSIVE when we don’t even know how long we will do this – what if I cry all the way to Wyoming and change my mind?

Actually, when we moved from Colorado to Seattle with no job and no place to live and a paid off credit card that we pretended was the same thing as money, I DID cry all the way to Wyoming (see? it’s not my first Crazypants Rodeo).

Plus, even though Jim works from home doing mysterious computer geekery, he spends a lot of time on the phone. A LOT. A 4 year old, a 6 year old AND a daddy on the phone 6 hours a day talking to other basement-dwelling geeks in a tiny RV does not seem like the ideal situation.

We are planning on buying a small cargo trailer and loading it up with all our most prized possessions. We will tow that behind our SUV and stay in Vacation Rental by Owner houses. We want to stay in each location for a month or two because a) we can see and experience everything each place has to offer; b) I want to make sure the kids do okay with this and moving every week seems more chaotic than they could handle; and c) Jim does not want to be loading and unloading all our stuff constantly. I mean, he does have to work and stuff.

We rented a tiny UHaul last weekend to take some stuff to storage and I drove the car and totally did not hit anything! I even backed up the trailer – twice! AND one of the times other people were watching and I still did it without hitting anything!

Listen, backing up a trailer is a skill. Not hitting stuff is a pretty important part of it.

We spent the rest of last Fall talking about what was quickly dubbed The Adventure. We weighed all the options, pausing occasionally to decide if we were just plain nuts.

The lure of possibility, though, was irresistible.

There are two reasons why we can do this - we homeschool our children, and my husband is very fortunate to work from home. All he needs is a high-speed internet connection and we can still get a paycheck. The paycheck is obviously a key component to…well, our whole life, really. The only thing standing in the way is our house.

There is no way we can afford to do any amount of travelling and still hold on to our house. Even the thought of a typical two-week vacation to Disney is out of reach. My husband makes a nice living, but we are a one income family and there’s certainly not enough extra to finance a year-long trip around the United States and pay the mortgage. My Amazon habit is a money hole as it is.

Of course, daydreaming about knitting on the beach whilst my kids dig in the sand and conjugate Latin is one thing. Getting ready to embark on this journey is quite another.

After Christmas, we realized that if we wanted to put the house on the market in the spring (in the worst real estate market in decades – yay), we needed to get to work.

We sold our second car, sorted through our junk, had a gigantic garage sale, and rented a storage unit for the stuff we were keeping. I opted out of catalogs, let my magazine subscriptions lapse, and got as close as I could to one hundred percent online banking. We purchased identity-theft protection, paid off our credit cards, and tried to figure out what to do with our mail.

And then we sorted through even more stuff, sold it on Craig’s List, and tried to calculate how many Legos we could bring. We got stressed out, grouched too much at the kids, and bickered about whether or not to sell the sofa.

We painted the bathroom, fixed a doorknob that had been broken for 5 years, and called a realtor. We tormented the kids about keeping their toys picked up, argued about whose turn it was to clean the kitchen, and parked down the street to spy on any house-hunters who toured our home.

I planned the school year around the idea that we’ll actually be living a geography study and bought several field guides to help facilitate a nature study. I printed all my favorite recipes to create a traveling recipe binder and packed up all my cookbooks. I sorted through my yarn, decided which projects I wanted to take, and packed up the majority of my giant yarn stash in huge zipper bags.

And then my yarn got lonely and I brought it back home.

Minor setback. Luckily, I’ve taught myself to crochet and crocheting uses, like, THREE times the amount of yarn that knitting uses. So far I can only make tiny creatures that look like Pac-Man ghosts.

But they are cute.

Okay, here’s what happened.

It all started around October of 2010.

We had just paid a fortune to get the air conditioner fixed and I was feeling disgruntled about it. The kids had been squabbling a lot and seemed bored with everything. A mild sense of discontentment lurked in the corners of the house.

One day, while the kids were outside, digging in our boring old suburban back yard, I caught up on my blog reading. I came across Zach Aboard, a blog written by a homeschooling mom whose family lives on a catamaran. I read one of her typical posts about life on a boat – perhaps it was about collecting seashells and making candles out of them, or visiting a neighboring boat at the marina where they were moored, or maybe she just posted some pictures of a beautiful ocean sunset – but it struck a chord within me and I thought “I want to do that.”

Seriously, it was like being struck by lightning.

I was bizarrely moved to tears, consumed with a deep longing that came out of nowhere. It filled me up and within a matter of hours I was trying to figure out what the heck was going on with me, why I suddenly was so dissatisfied with the life were were living. We just bought a sofa from Potter Barn for crying out loud! That cost more than my first and second cars combined!

Eventually the longing resolved into a desire to give my kids more – more experiences, more adventures, more of everything.

Looking back, I can’t believe how quickly the vision for a new way of life took shape. By that evening, I was outlining an idea to my husband:

“Hey, how about selling our house and everything we own and traveling the country with our kids, giving them an education grounded in adventure and experience?”

I must have sounded completely off my rocker.

Or at the very least, in the throes of some estrogen induced breakdown.

Astonishingly, he took it pretty much in stride. That’s the benefit of seventeen years of marriage - he’s used to my crazypants ideas.

So that’s what we’re doing.

Selling everything we’ve spent our entire adult lives acquiring.

Leaving the only house our kids have ever known.

Going nomad.

It’s gonna be scary.

And awesome.

And that is the reason behind the garage sales and endless effing basement cleaning.

Okay, on Monday I am going to reveal the Big CrazyPants Idea that I alluded to the other day.

But I would like to be entertained by your guesses. What do you think would be a crazy thing to embark on as a family?

Now you – go.

(ps, I am NOT PREGNANT, so you can all just bite your tongue on that one!)

Because this should be a Random Monday post. Ah well. I’m 40 now, you know.

• Last weekend at Sam’s, we bought eggs.

This apparently threw a thought to my son, who wanted to know how a regular chicken egg turned into a chicken.

Which I explained in the least graphic, yet most accurate way possible.

Right in the middle of the store.

Obviously, this led to questions about how other kinds of babies are made.

Which I answered.

Right in the middle of the store.

Hold me, people.

• I have a knitting friend who has taught herself to crochet and makes the cutest little toys for her kids. This inspired me to drag out my ancient Learn to Crochet in One Day! booklet and try my hand at it. I did okay with the single crochet and the double crochet and some of those other stitches that really just look like weird lumps. I wanted to do the Magic Loop way of making a ring, and found some instructions. I followed the first and second steps all right, but step 3 said, “continue as usual.”

I was all “what usual? I don’t know how to do this, that’s why I need DIRECTIONS, you stupid piece of paper!”

• I had some other stories about a trip to Ikea and cleaning out the garage, but after typing them out, I realized they were even more boring than the crochet story. Sorry. It’s very mundane over here lately. Hopefully things will liven up soon, because we are in the middle of trying to make a Giant! Life! Change!

Wha..?!?!? A cliffhanger? On a blog? That’s right, peeps. One day - hopefully soon - I will be able to tell you about the craziest thing we’ve ever decided to do.

Can you stand the suspense?

OR  In Which I Am In LOVE…with my iPhone.

So. I’m one of Those People now. A smug iPhone-using elitist.

Previously, I was a pay-as-you-go phone user and looked down my virtuously frugal nose at those snotty iPhone users whose phone was more like an appendage than a device you needed in case of an emergency.

Besides, I married someone who has made a career out of knowing the intricate details of every Microsoft product there is and have been brainwashed to hate Apple.

But I’ve seen the light.

And also the App Store.

Angry Birds was the very first thing I downloaded, in the car on the way home from the store.

Angry Birds is the best thing ever.

Next was Words With Friends, so I could get my butt kicked by Kristy and Green V-Neck (or as I call her, Other Deb).

Of course I’ve got the Facebook and Twitter connections – I tweeted from Hobby Lobby the other day! Amazing! (And endlessly fascinating, no doubt.)

Other favorites are:

7 Little Words, a word game I downloaded just this morning. I like it already.

Springpad, a great list-making app which enables me to keep track of all sorts of stuff I would normally scrawl illegibly on the back of a WalMart receipt keep neatly in a little notebook. I can keep track of what size and brand of underpants fit my daughter and how many pairs of shoes are in the Future Kids Clothes box. Plus, you can download it onto your desktop, do all your editing and list making on a real keyboard, then sync it with your phone.

Data Vault, an encrypted password manager. This one is pretty self-explanatory and maybe a bit boring, but I am very happy to have found a secure place to store the eighty-seven thousand passwords I inexplicably have. Plus also, now I don’t have to frantically text Jim to tell me the ATM password while the machine threatens to eat my card. A desktop version of Data Vault can also be purchased and synced with your phone. And when Jim told me that one of the übergeeks at work raved about it…I was sold.

I’ve got stuff for the kids – Highlights for Children has a Hidden Picture App! We love us some Hidden Picture up in here, yo. Also Stack the States and Stack the Countries, both educational geography games. Or at least they would be educational if I ever let the kids near my phone. Whatever.

There are several that I don’t use like I thought I would – ShopSavvy, a barcode reader isn’t quite what I expected, and ShoppingList isn’t going to replace my written grocery list any time soon. I like the idea behind AllMyRecipes, but I need to spend some time typing in my favorite recipes to make it work for me.

What am I missing? What apps do you love? Inquiring, app-loving minds want to know.

PS – If anyone wants to play Words with Friends, I am Not Inadequate Deb.

PPS – If anyone, such as my husband, wants to give me an iPad, I will graciously accept. Angry Birds on a bigger screen can only be More Awesome.

We took the kids out for breakfast this morning.

I have avoided this sort of thing for years, because taking small children to restaurants, you know, sucks.

Today it was good, though. They can feed themselves (mostly), AND we are now past the age of needing booster seats!

It’s a new day, people.

There was a small-ish incident wherein my daughter needed to go potty, and when I was getting her situated, my sunglasses fell into the toilet.

This freaked her out a little, if by “a little” I mean she rocket-propelled herself off the toilet with her pants around her ankles, pinged around the filthy stall for a minute and then made grabby motions at getting them out.

Grabby motions ONLY, no actually grabbing thank goodness, or I would have been the one flipping out in a dirty bathroom stall.

When I got back to the table, I told Jim what happened and that the manager was waiting on him to come fish them out.

He didn’t even blink an eye.

I must be losing my touch.

Thank goodness it wasn’t my new iPhone (that I love so much I want to marry it). That’s the stuff of nightmares.

I know it’s not Monday, but work with me here.

• Firstly, after homeschooling for two years even though Big is under the compulsory education age, I filed my very first Notice of Intent with the school district. I am a little nervous, since now The Man knows who I am. After waiting in line at the post office for 20 minutes, I paid almost $6 to get a signature confirmation card thingy. SIX DOLLARS. Jeez.

• Secondly, I have a friend on Facebook who has changed her FB name for some reason and the new name she chose is a combination of her grandmother’s names. To which I said: BORING. I mean if you are going to be all dramatic and change your name because you are a fancy doctor now and don’t want your patients stalking you, then at least be a little more creative. Here are some names I suggested:

Plenty O’Toole, Honey Ryder, and Tatiana Goodnight – all ripped off from Bond Girls. Excellent names nevertheless, doncha think?

Alternatively, Audacious Smack, Eel Skin Sophie or Three Legs Gabby.

Three Legs Gabby is my favorite. That just plain rocks.

I don’t know why I can’t make a living naming stuff. I am so awesome at it. Anyone pregnant?

• Thirdly, I shall attempt to bring the level of this conversation up with an interesting article on the Scientific American blog – The Educational Value of Creative Disobedience.

The article is a bit dry, but there are some thought provoking ideas about how school and directed learning damage creativity. There is more in this Slate article by a researcher – Why Preschool Shouldn’t Be Like School. I found myself agreeing with most of what the researchers conclude. However, I also wonder what the point of this sort of research is, since the public school system in the United States is an unyielding juggernaut, (to my view) incapable of change and frankly not that interested in children as individuals, but rather as parts on an assembly line.

I mean, certainly we can all see the value in discovering the answers for ourselves as opposed to merely memorizing and regurgitating information, but I don’t understand how our current public school paradigm can even begin to foster creative thinking when you’ve got one guy at the front of the classroom trying to wrangle 30 or 40 kids with the hot breath of standardized tests on his neck.

And that is sad, because we have all these great researchers and all these great ideas for fostering learning and creativity and nowhere to implement them.

Well, us smug homeschoolers can. But for some reason, educational researchers don’t notice us.