Gettin' it Done

Today is one of those (knock on wood) days where the kids have been playing for hours and haven't needed a thing, except for treehouse supplies. I love these days.

The quiet house (their rooftop treehouse is over by the toolshed) and the chilly day outside are making it easier for me to plow through some of this paperwork. It also helps that a friend is bringing us lunch in a bit......am I lucky, or what?

The trick will be to not spend all of my computer time blogging or cruising FB . Man, that's a time suck....but oh so much fun.

So, I'm forcing myself back to work.....here goes. No really, I am.

Back on the Horse

The problem with taking such a long break from writing is that it's hard to remember that it ever came easily at all. I've been composing posts in my head for weeks now (a good sign, I think), but actually sitting down and typing out the words is a whole different story, as they say.

Lotsa stuff has been goin' on around here. Good stuff, mostly. I'm up to my earballs (as my friend Brigid says) in prospective budgets and board meeting agendas and federal paperwork mumbo jumbo. I wake up in the wee hours remembering the e mail I meant to send the previous day. I daydream about what it will feel like when all this preliminary work is done and my project is actually up and running. And I toss and turn at night wondering if I am completely bonkers and doomed to fail.

With the excitement of getting funded and potentially carving out a job for myself it's been hard to for me to figure out how to strike a balance through it all. Getting out of balance is not such a good thing for me. I get mono-focused and grouchy and irritable and tend to treat those closest to me badly. Up until last week, I hadn't been on a run in weeks. Not a good sign! But Tuesday I laced up those sneakers and forced myself out the door before the kids woke up. I had a feeling that writing would follow just a few days behind.

I'm feeling a bit better. Like I'm taking better care of myself, but I'm still pretty baffled as to how I'm going to tackle this project without abandoning my children and our unschooling life completely. Transitions are hard. I've been working toward this for over a year. I suppose the only way to figure it out is to take it one step at a time.

Checklist for the New Unschooler at LWoS

I've got a new post up at the Life Without School Community Blog. All this back to school business got me thinking about why we do what we do......let me know what you think.

International Car-Free Day!

Happy Car-Free Day everyone!

If you are able to be car-free today, join thousands (millions??) of us, all around the world, celebrating healthy transportation choices. If you can't be absolutley car free, at least think about what it would take for you to ditch the car and walk...or bike......or take the bus...or roller skate....or whatever, even for just one day.

The kids and I will be tabling at our local CFD celebration downtown. It's going to be a fantastic event.

Go ahead. Park the car.

Sore Tongue

Ouch.......I've been biting my tongue a lot this week.


Lately I've been doing a lot of thinking about the parts of my life which feel inconsistant. At park day last week a few of us got to talking about housework and chores and who does what. As the conversation carried on, I felt really clear. I've written here about my struggles with expecting (premeditated resentment, right?) help around the house on my terms. Most days I'm able to keep the nagging at bay, and take responsibility for my own needs for "neat and tidy" without demanding it of others. I ask for help or make my needs known and let others pitch in and help without demands, bribes, nagging, whining....whatever. But a few days passed and the conversation haunted me a bit.

I hadn't actually been walking my talk lately. It's not that I had suddenly assigned chores, or demanded made beds by noon or anything, but something about the whole housework situation wasn't sitting well with me. Mostly, I think it's about expectations. I've been carrying around an expectation that everyone else in the house has the same level of need for "neat and tidy". Not true. I think I've also been carrying around a beilef that if I remind sweetly (rather than nag loudly) that dishes go on the sink or remind someone (who will remain nameless, of course) that shoes go under the bench (for the one millionth time today) that one day I would wake up and these little annoyances will be gone.

The kids and I talked about it yesterday and I explained that I didn't think I was doing such a great job letting go of my need for control in this area and that it didn't feel respectful. I had lots more to say, but their eyes were glazing over and Charley suggested I just pay him for chores like at his dad's house and they'll get done real quick. Whatever. It's not so much a conversation that needed to happen but a shift on my part. More alignment with my beliefs, I suppose.

Therefore......I've been biting my tongue A LOT today. Shoes are not under the bench (ghastly!). Dishes didn't make it into the sink (horrors!). But I think I'll live. And it feels a bit more peaceful inside me.

That's a good thing....right?

Living with a hormonal pre-teen is taking all the patience I can muster these days. I find that when I hear Janey's footsteps coming down the stairs and into the kitchen, I often feel like hiding, or pretending I'm on the phone. It can be grim.

Tonight, I got home from the grocery and she was upstairs listening to music with Charley. I didn't hear any screaming or ranting, so i breathed a sigh of relief and started dinner. Then i heard the footsteps. I braced myself, but continued making pesto (yes, it was delicious, thank you).

Janey walked into the kitchen and stared at me. Her face went from grimace to look of confusion in a split second.

Janey:"I can't remember if I was mad at you before you left for the store."

She looked perplexed. After a moment of strange silence, we burst out laughing.

Me: "That's got to be good thing, right?"

Thank god for the laughter!

Blech!!!!

We're all recovering from the stomach flu around here.

Yuck.

Thank goodness I wasn't sick until after I had to scrub vomit out of the carpet at 2:00am...that would've sucked. Today was actually a sweet day. We were all in varying degrees of recovery, but done with the puking. We watched movies and napped and played card games and read. macy made Jell-O. No one really needed to eat until tonight, so it was an easy, and low energy day.

Looking forward to tomorrow.