We decided to make Art Day Harry Potter themed in honor of the new movie and because the moms in the group love Harry Potter (and the kids a little bit too). So we had Wizard School and did a potions class. First, we tried out baking soda and vinegar together with a bit of food coloring, but the children were underwhelmed. I guess they just see us clean often enough that it's no big deal. The reactions were too quick to get photos of too. Or I was too busy hovering and over-explaining in my control-freakish way. Then we mixed some corn starch and food coloring and water, which only Bastian played much with. Finally, everyone was thoroughly impressed with the slime recipe.
1 qt. of water
1/4 cup Borax
1 Cup Elmer's glue
1 Cup water
In 2 separate containers: Disolve the Borax in 1 qt. water. Dissolve the glue in 1 Cup water.
Mix 2T Borax solution with 6 T glue solution. (Any 1:3 amount will work, of course.)
If you want to make different colors, add food coloring to the glue mixture. You can save this in a baggie.
I've become terrible at updating the blog as we've just been so incredibly busy doing things. So, here's some more photos.
City Fresh on Tuesday the 28th had funky, long peppers, with much confusion about the five medium hots since they came from two farms resulting in four from one farm that were long and skinny plus one from another farm that were normal and fat. Then the singular sweet banana pepper, which looked incredibly similar to the other two, but was, in fact, not. Counting all that out at distribution was a hoot. And the kids found a cicada. And stared and stared at it.
Nothing like walking three-and-a-half miles after protesting in the hot sun. Ice cream after made up for any ill will about all the heat and outdoorsness.
We went to a protest outside of the Jobs & Family Services building downtown to express concern over the county's tardiness in releasing federal funds earmarked to benefit HIV/AIDS patients with a housing stipend. The money has been late every year for a decade. This year, the money had still not been released after 5 months and the clients of AIDS Taskforce, who issues the money, were facing evictions and homelessness.
The AIDS Taskforce organizers had lined the sidewalk with giant cardboard boxes with eviction notices attached. The visual representation was jarring for most people. As the building has a constant stream of employees and clients entering and exiting, many many folks stopped to ask what was going on and get a flier. In the time we were there, two separate people contacted or promised to contact their colleagues to ensure that movement was made. By the end of the week (the protest was Monday), I received notice that AIDS Taskforce had received checks and begun to issue the funds to the landlords threatening their clients with eviction. For folks already engaged in tremendous struggle to have to deal with added fear and worry due solely to the inadequacies of bureaucracy is disheartening and depressing, though I'm sure not at all uncommon.
So our action worked! Plus the kids got to play in a box.
I love summer. I love that it doesn't take long to get out the door. I love that it doesn't take much to get dressed. I love that the kids can mostly do it themselves. I love that Bastian is suddenly way older than he was just a few months ago and is so much more able to be independent. I love that the kids listen, uh, better-ish, and that I feel more relaxed about getting them out and about. Is it their ages? Is it the weather? Honestly, I wish the weather would be hotter. We've had entirely too much rain and not nearly enough 85-degree days like I like.
Today it only threatened to rain a little bit, for a change, which made for a lovely afternoon for getting out and about. First, we stopped at a garage sale and scored some Halloween supplies and a lion costume. Next, we headed to Lee Road and the kids insisted on going into the coffee shop there, where I happened to know one employee and one customer. Aleks drew them pictures, as he's done at both the other Phoenix coffee shops he's visited, where they are hung up and he has become somewhat famous.
In fact, one night early in the summer, I went to a girl night thing where I didn't know hardly anyone. At the end, I bought a couple of handmade note cards from a girl, but felt that the money wasn't adequate, so I tore out a picture Aleks had drawn in my notebook and gave it to her as a trade (it was probably one of my all-time favorites and she promised to scan it for me). My friend HQ who was there saw the drawing and began to talk about Aleks' art and how great it is.
Then squeals burst from two or three of the other girls: they said, "You're Aleks' mom?!? The Aleks?!? Why didn't you say that to begin with!"
They had all seen and greatly admired Aleks' work that hangs in the coffee shop on Coventry. What's amazing is that these girls are all art students (or former art students) who major in drawing. And they love Aleks' work. He thinks that's pretty great.
Just the other day, I got this message from a local mama:
i remember you mentioning your littles' fantastic artwork having a prime spot at phoenix...is the "snow spider birthday party" the work of your little man? because either way, i definitely admired it over a few shots of espresso this evening.
Heck yes! Aleks is FAMOUS! Now to start up a Cafe Press store for him...
While Aleks drew and explained at length about Blue Whales and Evil Creatures and all manner of snakes, Bastian, hopped up on cocoa, spun upside down on the couch. We took our leave of Phoenix and walked to the library to see the Tri-C Orchestra play for free. I've been wanting to take the kids to see an orchestra, but know they'd get bored rather quickly. This was a nice, free opportunity to interest them in live music. The group played a lot of Duke Ellington at one point. We just stayed for two songs, then explored the library a bit (we normally go to a smaller branch). Afterward, we grabbed some lunch, dropped our leftovers at home and went on a hike at Shaker Lakes. I seem to require a lot of photos to describe our day there. Bastian has a tendency to try to go into the marsh. The cattails in yet a different state... As it turns out, the cattails are the wrong variety and the Nature Center is making moves to slowly restore the marsh to its natural state. Turns out, these are mostly invasive species of plants... Though quite similar to the native species, these invasive species have fundamentally altered the ecosystem. There is hope. And work to be done. Someone has begun to build a very structural lean-to, held together by metal screws and bolts... We'll wait to see how this unfolds. The boys practiced jumping. And we got bit by lots of mosquitoes in a very short amount of time. And then jumped some more. Bastian tried many times, but was afraid of the distance and his wee legs. Eventually, however, he made it. Then Aleks wanted to go over to the lake portion of the park to see the Herons, which he called Cranes. My father and I discussed on the phone whether Herons and Cranes were part of the same family, but a quick internet search reveals that they are not. Herons belong to the family Ardeidae and Cranes to the family Guidae. So there.
Aleks wanted to pet the Herons when discussing the matter in the car. Rather than try to explain the severe improbability of such an endeavor, I simply shut my mouth, nodded my head, and said, "okay, you can try." The Heron, was, as usual, on the opposite side of the lake from where people frequent (and can access the shore), so we made do with capturing him on 10x zoom. The boys threw rocks in the water. Bastian also threw some goose poop in the water, which made everyone, including my father on the phone, laugh a good deal. We discussed ripples as Aleks noticed them for the first time. Aleks dug out a bigger rock from amongst the dirt and goose poop, getting filthy in the process. They creeped their toes into the lake, finding rocks beneath the water and lots of snail shells. All of this made their skin stink immeasurably. I took them down the brook to find running water, but it too stunk. I rinsed their hands with my drinking water from the car and had them wipe their hands on the clean grass, but still, they stunk. We came home with lots of dire warnings not to touch anything at all and stuck them in the bath, where it took many different types of soap and peppermint essential oil to get the stink out. Ew. We won't be doing that again.
It started out innocently enough. We decide to take Natty to the Natural History Museum for the afternoon. There's an exhibit called "Surviving: The Body of Evidence" that's all about how the human body has been shaped by evolution. And that's cool. Bastian explores a giant body laid out.There's a video about how the ankle bends uniquely among us bipeds. I get him to bend his ankle. He wanders off again. We explore the giant clear plastic body for awhile. Cuz it's weird. I spy a lonely little acorn on the floor and pick it up and put it in my pocket (where later I cannot find it). And then this. And I start to stare at this and the accompanying video in disbelief, my jaw slack. I say out loud, "What the hell is this?!?!" No one answers. I point out to my sister how all these little facts, though not untrue, when tied together, become immensely misleading. I drop everything and head for the front desk in search of someone to complain to. It being very late on a Friday, Front Desk Dude has a hard time scaring up someone from exhibits. He calls everyone there. He asks a passerby who would know if the director of exhibits had left - he had not. He pages him. He calls the lady in charge of marketing. She doesn't answer. I explain my issue to him. I use fancy words like "scientific illiteracy" to get 'em good and shakin' at the knees. He is very kind and very helpful. He sees my point. He gives me direct numbers and the most recent newsletter talking about the exhibit, which has the name of the museum from which it originates.
So I go home and post on my facebook and write the following scathing letter
Hello,
I recently (7/17/09) toured the exhibit Surviving: The Body of Evidence on display through August 30th at the Cleveland Museum of Natural History. When viewing the section titled We Are Not Perfect, But We Are OK, and specifically the portion titled Big Brain Issues, I was heartily disappointed to discover information that I felt was contradictory and highly misleading. First, the display said:
Giving birth has always been - and continues to be - a risky and difficult process because there is such a tight fit between the baby's skull and the width of the mother's pelvis. Sometimes the mother or the child does not survive childbirth.
While this quote is not untrue, it is very misleading. Yes, birth is risky. Yes, it is made more difficult for humans due to our bipedalism and the size of our brains. However, this tight fit is not the primary reason that mothers and children do not survive childbirth, which is actually proven by two other quotes:
Every year, worldwide, four million newborns die: the leading causes are low birth weight and birth trauma. - United Nations Statistics
Low birth weight suggests the opposite of a tight fit, while birth trauma remains decidedly nonspecific.
Every year, worldwide, 529,000 women die from complications of pregnancy and childbirth. For every one of these, twenty more are injured in some way. - World Health Organization
What are the actual causes of maternal mortality and morbidity? This exhibit seems to suggest it has something to do with CPD (cephalopelvic disproportion) and that the solution is cesarean section:
Cesarian [sic] sections (an operation for delivering the baby) avoid the complications of the condition in which the baby's head is too large to fit in the birth canal (cephalo-pelvic disproportion).
In fact, the leading causes of maternal mortality according to the World Health Organization include haemorrhage, infection, high blood pressure, unsafe abortion, and obstructed labour, which may or may not be the result of CPD. Additionally, the leading incidents of maternal morbidity (uterine rupture and uterine scar, infertility, perineal or low abdominal pain, anemia, uterine prolapse, and fecal and urinary incontinence) seem to be primarily resultant from preconditions completely unrelated to cephalopelvic disproportion, namely prolonged labour, haemorrhage, sepsis, and preeclampsia.
The exhibit goes on to include this fascinating factoid:
In 2003, of all the births in the United States, 27.5 percent were by cesarean section. In 2004, the percentage increased to 29.1: the rate has been increasing since 1996. -National Vital Statistics Report,September 22, 2005
In conjunction with the exhibit's other quotes, this seems to suggest that CPD is rampant in the U.S. In conjunction with the entirety of the exhibit, I felt lead to believe that humans are evolving such large brains and heads that 1/3 of all American women have completely lost the ability to give birth. Even if taken as mere fact without making this leap, the inclusion of the American cesarean rate has nothing to do with an evolutionary trend and everything to do with modern medicine. The trends of modern medicine and their causes, however, were not an intended feature of the exhibit as I understood it.
Merely altering some of the quotes to include different terms would improve the clarity of many of the statements. Rather than childbirth being "a risky and difficult process because there is such a tight fit..." perhaps "a risky and difficult process in part because there is such a tight fit" would be more appropriate.
Unfortunately, the inclusion of the final quote regarding the U.S. cesarean rate could not really be clarified with a change in phrasing. It necessitates either much deeper discussion or complete removal. The rate of cesarean in the United States has little to do with head size, pelvic size, cephalopelvic disproportion, or the tremendous rates of maternal and infant mortality, primarily because "Of the estimated total of 536 000 maternal deaths worldwide in 2005, developing countries accounted for 99% (533 000) of these deaths." (from Maternal Mortality in 2005)
If a visitor to the exhibit is intended to understand that sometimes cephalopelvic disproportion does indeed happen and that this is related to our evolutionary legacy, perhaps a statistic about CPD would be more appropriate. See: http://www.ican-online.org/vbac/cephalopelvic-disproportion-cpd Also, "In a series of 1000 consecutive primigravidae, in which an active approach to labour was adopted, the incidence of disproportion was less than 1 per cent and there was notable absence of trauma, especially to the child." From: http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/119703236/abstract
Sincerely, Anna Kiss Mauser-Martinez Cleveland Heights, Ohio
Before leaving in a huff, however, we continued through the rest of the museum and Aleks and Bastian spent some of their money from Baba in the gift shop. Bastian picked a lion mask. Natty tried on an eagle mask and pecked his wee little head. Aleks chose a dinosaur painting kit. We still love the museum, even if they make mistakes sometimes (and besides, given the exchanges I've been having with the anthropologist who curated it from UPenn, my outrage is all directed towards Pennsylvania at this point).
Aunt Natty made a romantic connection at our very fancy engagement party and on Wednesday went on a date to the art museum (which just recently re-opened after the first phase of major construction). The boys got all upset about not getting to go, so I packed them in the car and headed over.
Couldn't take any photos in the galleries. I insisted on holding hands, but somehow Aleks still got thisclose to touching a painting. We walked around, both of them squirming, me trying to make a more meaningful (ha!) experience out of it by pointing out every artist I recognized and spouting off facts I remembered from when I studied Art History. I asked questions about the art, the colors, the texture - whatever I could - and still the boys weren't particularly fascinated. In the end, whatever, they'll have lots of chances to re-experience all of it again and again. Aleks would like to take an art class at the museum. I may ask an artist friend to do some drawing with him instead.
Afterward, we headed across the street (ever in costume) to Wade Oval to check out Wade Oval Wednesday. Considering it's a five-minute drive from our house, you'd think I would have gotten it together to have checked it out ever before. Alas, I am far too lazy for that. Well, that and dinnertime becomes problematic since I'm not the family member who cooks, and Wednesday tends to be a lazier day for us since Tuesday has been so busy for so long. While I told the kids I was positively not buying any of the offered fair foods since Papa was at home making local, organic, grass-fed steak fajitas (with whole wheat tortillas from scratch and local veggies), there wasn't much to do at Wade Oval Wednesday except sit down and listen to music (and eat). Aleks found a horse to pet while we waited in line for the port-a-potty. We also spoke to my friend Genna whose job it is to convince people that living in the area is tres chic and generally most excellent. Then we saw the fantastic steel gates to the Botanical Garden were open. I thought this meant that the entrance fee was waved and anyone could just waltz right in and peruse the Children's Garden, which I am told was at one time free and open to the public at all times - until it wasn't. I was, however, mistaken. While there was a discounted rate, the outdoor gardens were not free and open to the public. I took the opportunity, instead, to renew our lapsed membership and we entered freely, without hastle.
Inside, Bastian sniffed the bee balm like a good little bee. Then there was running amok, spying of flowers and newly growing things, and lastly, the climbing of the rock wall to practice jumping and chaos. Then we went home and enjoyed the local, organic, grass-fed steak fajitas (with whole wheat tortillas from scratch and local veggies (and yogurt) ) immensely.
After City Fresh, I got the kids ready for a Harry Potter party. We got to make two new friends who were both young boys relatively close to their age, which was nice, and Aleks & Bastian had a blast putting spells on everyone. I did have to remind Aleks that we do not use unforgivable curses against family or friends.
My sister, Natalie, had been visiting for the previous week, then had gone home and come back just to go to the movie at midnight with me. She neglected to bring a costume, so I put her in my Professor Trelawny costume. In descending order, we're Trelawny, Bellatrix Lestrange, Draco Malfoy, and of course, Harry Potter. The boys just went to the party and not the movie until later in the week, when I realized that I probably won't be taking Bastian to a movie again for quite some time. We're a little Harry Potter nuts around here. But it's just so much fun, we can hardly help ourselves.
After counting seven thousand fruits and vegetables from one bin to another, then loading them back on the veggie-oil-powered veggie truck, I bought three t-shirts for me and the boys from LJ, our City Fresh head honcho/slave. They only had Youth Small for youth sizes, so all three of us got one. Aleks and I got black with yellow and Bastian's was red and white.
I turned around to do something and when I turned back, I discovered both boys naked from the waist up, much to the surprise of all the other kids. Apparently it's weird to change your shirt in the church parking lot. Who knew? I managed to get my under shirt off and the new shirt on without exposing myself while in the car (at a red light no less). Again, we're freaks among freaks. Zena doesn't look like she minds at all though. On the way back up the hill to our Fresh Stop, I snapped this photo of Zena riding her bike. Good, brave girl that she is, making it all the way up to the Heights. Ayeyaeyae those hills are intense.
The aftereffects of the amazingly elegant engagement party: cupcakes for breakfast everyday for a week. In our dino slippers (and dino undies) no less.
Jon's been reading the Ishmael trilogy lately. In the last book, he discovered two chapters on education, which he thought was the perfect synthesis of arguments for unschooling. He spent an hour reading to me aloud (something only my mother does, and from the newspaper) at 3 a.m. last night. In the end, my reaction was something along the lines of, "Have you not heard what I've been saying all these years? I already said all this!" He did indeed hear me, but this morning it occurred to me to share it with all of you.
The story does what I've often done: it asks questions about what the fundamental point of education is and why we're so attached to our methods.
So what is it? Why do children need to go to school? One might say to learn necessary skills, to interact with other children, to be prepared for the world (or, at least initially, for more schooling). The point of education underneath all of our other reasons, underneath the need for creating people who are the same, who are part of the mechanisms of an industrialized and specialized society (via enforced conformity, skill assessment and the forced understanding of one's place in the social order - all of which are intrinsically interconnected) - underneath all of that education is about getting kids to adulthood knowing what they need to know in order to take care of themselves.
Ishmael points out many flaws in our system which change the real need for education into something else entirely - namely the regulation of the flow of workers into the competitive job market. Which just highlights the fact that there are too many damn people on the planet. Either that or industrialization, centralization, and a specialized workforce are fundamentally just bad ideas which disconnect us from each other and The Source.
When I say "The Source," I'm saying lots of things. I do indeed mean the planet, Mother Earth, Gaia, et cetera, but I do not really mean it in a spiritual or woo-woo pseudo-spiritual way. I mean literally The Source - the source of our lives, that whice feeds, shelters and clothes us, that which we most depend on and that which we have dumbed down to merely a commodity. Our resources are of course commodities, but they are not merely commodities and resources are more than resources.
The raw materials that we depend on to live are more than a tangible good to be bought and sold (or even the abstract representation of that tangible good as numbers in markets). The raw materials on which we depend are not merely a set of tools which we use at will. Our raw materials are finite and how we use (and more importantly, replace) them is just as important as that we can. To talk about these materials as merely goods is to reduce their meaning and to handle them as such is to divorce them (and ultimately ourselves as well) from the place from which they come, the work that was done to retrieve them, and the profound act of thoughtfully seeking to replace them or allowing them to replenish themselves.
These days, our source is the grocery store rather than the ground. It is no wonder there is a rise in religious fundamentalism - people are desperate for connection. And that is not at all what we are giving our children with our educational system. We do not seek to show children how to fully function in our culture that they might support themselves and future generations. We seek to actually stifle that ability. It is not a flaw in the system that high school graduates cannot sustain themselves. It is not a flaw that maintains impossibly low wages for the "unskilled" labor. It is, in fact, the design.
And thus I keep going off on philosophical rants and in the end I cannot tell if I'm discussing raising children or raising food. Ultimately, they amount to the same: we have done terrible things to both children and food and if we are to regain a sense of our place on this earth, we shall have to undo both. We need to raise children like weeds that they learn from the ground how to feed themselves. We need to raise food like weeds to regain an understanding of how to continue to feed ourselves.
Jon's dad was in the state, which meant near-ish, so we trekked over to see him at Baba's (Jon's grandmother's) house. As always, there was too much food. We hung out in the garage while Gedo grilled. Natalie (my sister, visiting while passing time after having just graduated from college but before heading to Kosovo) came with us. She's a linguist with a focus on Slavic languages and got to listen to Baba and Gedo speak Ukranian. Apparently she found it nearly indistinguishable from Russian, though there were slight differences. Bastian didn't much care. Jon checked out Baba's garden. He's becoming quite the bio/agrophile. Aleks learned how to golf. Then we did family photos before leaving. Jon doesn't look too thrilled and my lens was smudged, but whatever. Jon's dad is on the left. All the men in their family look exactly the same, so I always make jokes about knowing what my sons will look like at 18, 30, 50, and 80. I know what my husband will look like too, though the beard may disguise it a bit. It was a relaxed visit. Aleks drew lots of pictures for everyone and Jon's uncle Nick stopped by briefly. It's been awhile since anyone's seen the boys. We were just there at Christmas, but only saw Jon's Uncle Sam and his wife and their children. It's a rather large family.
So the kids didn't do much except look at bugs, steal flowers from people's yards, and hide their Lego to help prepare, but since I'd mentioned it several times, I figured it appropriate to post the results of all our hard work and my obsessive insanity. No, I didn't make the cake. I just designed the image (our amazing friend and sometimes babysitter Zena made the cake).We had bouquets of flowers all over the house. We drove around the city all day Thursday picking them from the yards of the mamas on my local message board. I only stole the tiger lilies, some black-eyed susans, and a couple of purple coneflowers, I swear. And those were from public beds anyway. We got hydrangeas from the yards of three different families. They were gorgeous! I've always wanted hydrangeas. We took the Yucca flower from a fellow unschooling mama's yard, not quite knowing what we would do with it, but appreciating the contribution. Then I remembered that otherwise useless 2-liter Pilsner glass... We've found quite a bit of use for the dang thing. The happy couple, rocking out. See, so much fun to be had. Too bad the boys were with their best friends having immense fun of their own at a sleepover. I'm sure they did their own jumping. Heather and me and Anna: my bestest Cleveland friends.
As we were preparing for our extremely elegant engagement party, this giant stag beetle fell off the back screen door while I was going to dump the compost. We called up the boys to come peer at it. From what I read on Bug Guide, I believe it is indeed a female Lucanus elaphus. I will submit to them to be sure. It's very exciting for us to have encountered both this and the rhinoceros beetle in such a short span of time and so accidentally. After observing it for a bit and of course photographing it, the boys deposited our friend in the compost pile so she'd have plenty to eat. Though I'm not sure what exactly they eat... Ah, yes, perfect:
Food Adults may feed on plant juices, rotting fruit (?), and aphid honeydew.
It's terrible, I know, but there was this swarm of ants. Right next to my newly planted mint for some reason. And, well, they keep getting into the house. Which is fine, except for when it's just too much, which sometimes it is. So I boiled some water. And then they were dead. And my justification for this heartlessness is that it's better that I kill in this totally natural way than if my landlord comes and sprays, which he might because he's like that. And we were a little bit fascinated, I'll admit, by watching to see if they were really dead. It's sick. I know. Forgive me and my possibly lame and decidedly non-Buddhist rationalizations.
Ever since our friend (and sometimes babysitter) Zena started volunteering with us on Tuesdays, Bastian has become incredibly, incredibly helpful during distribution. He moves vegetables from one bin to the next and slowly gleans from listening the subtle art of lots of counting. It truly is challenging to remember what number you're on while a room full of twenty counts out buckets of vegetables in rapid-fire staccato. After we've counted out our hundreds of shares, we head in caravan and carpool off to our Fresh Stop, following the veggie truck, who runs off used vegetable oil. This week, the endive in our grass bin looked as much like lawn clippings as anything. And also quite exotic and beautiful. The children seem to be off blackberries at the moment, though I cannot figure why. It seems to have something to do with my offering them as an option. If I just hide them away and forget about it, I find Bastian stained all about his mouth and hands. If I set them out, they mold and produce nothing but fruit flies. The beets will store for awhile an eventually Jon will prepare Borscht, which I hate. I love how beauteous our vegetables are. The subtle design, the twisted stalks, the even lines and veins... The red cabbage with its stunning purple leaves... The bright green of the kale and a touch of violet at the edges of its frills... A family share on display minus, somehow, the herbs we got (basil, chamomile, cilantro): blackberries, kale, baby endive, beets, purple onions, snow peas, romaine, turnips, onion, garlic, potatoes, and red cabbage. The single share got slightly less, but had a bag of pickling cucumbers (which worked quite well as eating-raw cucumbers). Aleks found a caterpillar and while I dealt with endless lines of shareholders, checking them off and writing receipts, he abruptly interrupted by dumping the poor thing right on the table in front of me. The fat little guy couldn't walk properly on the table and kept rolling around, trying to find a grip amongst the hard plastic. Toni and I thought it was hysterical and lovely.
All day, we made things. Things with grains and beans and glue and cardboard. Things with tissue paper and glue and glass. Things with paint brushes. And paint. Aleks made a Godzilla on the refrigerator out of the colored mosaic tiles.
I used the bean/grain cardboard to construct a frame for a postcard.
The glass tissue paper jars hold candles.
We are very serious about being properly prepared for this Engagement Party gig. I cleaned off the refrigerator (outside), removing all the magnets and scraps of paper, scrubbing it all down, then putting it all back up with new and improved art by the children. And it took all day somehow. There's so much more to do! Walls to dust! Cobwebs to catch! Mopping! Scrubbing! Painting! Repairing! Everyone thinks I'm pretty crazy to want to do all that (and buy new glasses too!), but I assure you I am merely thorough.
While everyone else rushed down to the beach to parades and to fireworks, battling traffic, crowds, and mosquitos, we stayed home and did our usual nothin'. We slept late and shlepped around the house for most of the day. In the evening, we had burgers on the grill with our neighbor Chris and ate Firecrackers Popsicles. I found an old bag of Snap Pops which we threw on the sidewalk, then we all watched the first Transformers movie together. And that was it. We did take a really lovely family photo too. Oh, and Aleks and Jon did talk a bit about it being the country's birthday, but nothing too elaborate and nothing contrived.
Aleks was taking his shirt off while standing on our front steps when he lost his balance and fell on his face on the sidewalk. Jon said it was a sickening thud. It bloodied his nose and gave him quite the shiner. Three days later, after he'd picked at his scab and it started yellowing.
I've been neglecting the blog. We were away and now we are back and there are so many photos from our travels, but not the time to do much more than to upload them. So if you scroll down and look back, I should have by now left a brief summary (in photo form) of many of our adventures. It's not much, but we're busy preparing for an engagement party we'll be hosting by doing lots of cleaning, lots of errand-running, lots of lazing about the house, lots of weeding of the garden, and some crafts. I'll update that as well here at some point and speak at length about the thoughts in my head when I get a moment to have them.
Okay, the best way to do this (if you're gonna) is to start after the Saskatoon post (my last, pre-vacation post) and work backwards, or forward in time. Wait, nevermind. I'll do it for you. Go in this order:
This blog is intended to chronicle the life-learning journey of sugarboot and weasel, the youngest members of our unschooling family of four: Jon, Aleks (7), Bastian (4), and anna kiss, the primary author. Jon is finishing his PhD in Environmental History. Anna volunteers in the local foods movement and birth activism. Aleks lives Lego and being an artist. Bastian dissects social interactions through imaginative play. We live in Ohio and are venturing toward the radical in every facet of our lives. One day, we'll build Hobbiton. For now, the Northern coast keeps us.
