Good Impact

I consider myself to be fortunate to have wonderful friends. I'm always learning something new from them, forever expanding my horizons and changing my way of thinking.

One friend suggested having a documentary discussion group at our weekly park days with the homeschool group. We selected the film No Impact Man, but then didn't discuss it much. We will probably talk about it more at a future park day. I'm glad I watched it. While I don't think I could go so far as to stop buying toilet paper, the film made me think about how big of an impact my family has on the environment. Yes, we regularly spill over our five recycling bins each week, but wouldn't it be better to not have all that stuff to recycle in the first place?

The movie made me think of all the ways I used to be better about reducing our waste and how far I have slipped back into the mainstream in the past few years. We used to have worms eating my garbage. We had an indoor electric composter for a while. We have had pets that eat our vegetable scraps. All those have gone by the wayside - the worms were freed when they ate too slowly, the composter died under the weight of our bread crusts and banana peels, and we are on our last rabbit. She has lived two years beyond her expected life cycle.

Between No Impact Man and the Polar Bear lecture a week or so ago, I'm going headlong on a bender about our consumption and waste. My benders are seldom pretty.

Today's target is our food. Actually, that has been a target for a few days now. We've been eating more meatless meals and less processed food. Or trying to. I decided we should be making our own bread again. Back when we had just two kids and when they were less busy, I made bread all the time. Complicated breads and simple bread machine loaves.

Today, I opted for a bread machine loaf. Yesterday I made foccacia on the grill, which got me on a roll. I found a recipe someone gave me that I had been meaning to try. When I got back from taking Small to his one hour dance class, I ran out again to get the strange ingredient - mashed potato flakes. I had a little guilt because I am capable of making my own mashed potato flakes in my dehydrator, but wanted to ride the wave of the desire to use the bread machine.

Nothing is simple or straightforward in a house with three kids, so getting the ingredients (while scoring a clearance sale on Italian sausage half off, there goes the meat reduction thing) was easy enough, but I pushed the envelope on the time factor. I asked Large to water the outside pots while encouraging Medium to practice her 4th half hour of piano for the day, and scurried off to the kitchen to put in the ingredients for the machine. But, the rain barrel was full and strangely off its cinder blocks with the spout smashed in, so Large needed more help. The phone rang and a new assignment fell on my lap. I picked up a weeping Small who was worried about me being five minutes late, did a little more cooking, had a non-text conversation with Mark, another dance class for the older two, another round-trip to the north side and came home to a sleeping house and a completed four hour bread machine cycle. This is what I found inside.

A failure to add yeast. It is a large hockey puck. Or maybe a shot put. Waste. Impact.

On the other hand, between runs to the dance center, I managed to put in a double batch of granola. I left instructions with the men of the house for completion and after discovering the bread disaster, I found this.

Breakfast! And I have my friends to thank for it.

Give and Take

Ever since my Mom moved back to our area, we have been taking her to her house on the Indiana dunes every couple of weeks. This means that one or two weekends every month we lose time to spend on our house, yard, garden. It means a much longer drive to Large's dance classes at the Academy of the Joffrey downtown. It means we have to arrange for someone to take care of our menagerie. In general, it is a disruption and has added another layer of complication to our lives.

On the other hand, we get to spend time in one of the most beautiful places in the Midwest. We get to stay in a comfortable house at least twice the size of our own. We get to cook dinner in a kitchen that affords us the opportunity to see an amazing variety of birds out the window. We wash dishes while watching hummingbirds at the feeder. In summer we get to see lizards run around outside, frogs perch on the windows at night and enjoy our selves for hours on end on a deserted beach.

So, we don't complain. We are learning how to work around the disruption to our domestic routine. As long as the house is important to my mother, she should be able to keep it and visit it whenever possible. She wants to have more big family gatherings here, even if her days of cooking dinner have passed her by. She gets confused in the house, misplacing things. But she knows it is hers and it reminds her pleasantly of my father. Just after he died, it was hard for her to be in the house he built. Too many ghosts of his long decline were lingering to disturb her sleep. She focuses more now on the happy memories now that some time has passed. As do I.

It is always a big homecoming to my mom when we drive up. She thinks it has been months since she was there, when really it has just been a few weeks. She marvels at how clean everything is, forgetting my efforts to tidy up when we leave and ignoring the dead bugs everywhere. She checks on the fish, who are always happy to see her and be overfed. She asks me to build a fire. The house brings her a lot of pleasure, but also some anxiety. It's size is overwhelming, she's always looking for clues around the rooms to remember what she is supposed to be doing. She's always anxious about leaving, about getting the day and time right to leave. In a way, it's probably a relief to her to go back to her apartment, to her other home which also doesn't quite feel like home.

The kids enjoy their time there. When it rains, they read, use my father's art supplies or play wii. When it doesn't rain, they are outside exploring or on the beach. It's a magical place for them, an integral part of their childhood. They are so lucky.

Unexpected Moments

This past Saturday, I had an unexpected addition to a planned visit to the Art Institute with Medium. We sometimes hit the Art Institute with Large is at his Joffrey class. Small decided at the last minute that he really, desperately wanted to come along. I suspect he just really, desperately didn't want to go with Mark and my Mom on their walk, to a plant sale and shopping at the Jewel. He pleaded his case impressively while we were hurrying to get Large to class on time and we brought him along, full of conditions.

Medium and I wanted to do the audio tour of the King, Queens and Courtiers exhibit, did he understand that? It's a half mile walk to the Art Institute from the parking garage near the Joffrey and he wasn't to complain on the walk. We were going to go to the plant sale at the Lurie Garden afterwards and he couldn't complain about that either. Yes, yes, yes, he got it.

For being only 7, Small did very well with the audio tour. No, he didn't make it to the end. Yes, much of the time it seemed like he was only interested in using the device, announcing "Done!" each time he got to the end of a segment. But he got what he could out of it. Because we were 45 minutes into it by the time we got to the Da Vinci, he was not all that impressed. And he didn't like the chicken fingers at lunch, but my fish and chips weren't all that great either.

What he loved was being with us, having his big sister explain things, hold his hand while crossing the street and gripping mine when he was afraid of the bridge going over Monroe to the Modern Wing. It was an unexpected group of happy, tender moments.

Schooly

OK, so I don't have kids in school and am not really aware of the complications and issues that arise in that situation. Lately, though, I have been channeling my inner 1970's era stay-at-home mom.

The last two weeks we have had early morning field trips to programs at the College of DuPage. Early morning means we had to plan to leave by 8:45 and hit pavement by no later than 9:00. This was a major problem for my family. Significantly worse than getting to the library by 11 a.m. when it is five minutes away, although some weeks even that takes herculean effort. Thanks to homeschooling, most of the time my kids can sleep until they are no longer tired. Most days that means 12 to 13 hours after they go to bed. Sometimes longer, sometimes shorter. It's a healthy set-up. Upsetting the system is nearly catastrophic. Luckily, the field trips have been worth the upheaval.

We also have had our first ever report card for Large, now age 12. This came a few months ago, but was only significant to me. Large has been taking classes in ballet and jazz at the Academy of the Joffrey Ballet in Chicago. He received straight A's. It was meaningless to him, the only accomplishment he feels is in his own improvement and the enjoyment he receives from his classes. He would have felt the same way about himself had he received straight C's or D's.

With my Mom, however, I have had both the call from the Principal and the Nurse's office. My mother is not a child and is not treated like one. I received a call from her Assisted Living facility telling me she was a security risk because she tried to take a walk with another resident and got lost. It felt very much like I imagine the calls to the parents who's kid punched another kid on the bus feels like. (Hey, wait. That was me in the 8th grade!) Except that in addition to breaking the rules, they were mostly concerned about my Mom's safety and well-being. I suppose that could be the same case in schools, but tend to believe it is not. The Assisted Living folks were really concerned that she could just wander off and get lost. I know it all came about because I was gone for four days and wasn't able to take her out for walks. In a school setting, probably, the whole issue would have been about the rule infraction.

When I got a call from the nurse because my mother still does not feel up to a full meal because of a head cold, it was like all the times my mother was called when one of us had thrown up at school. Except that my mother is a frail elderly adult, not a child with a stomach bug. Kids with a fever or vomiting at school are a threat to everyone else. An elderly person with a cold is primarly a threat only to herself.

Through much negotiating, with assistance from my brother and paying someone to take her for walks, we were able to secure my mother her freedom again. And now we will work out a system to get her some cold medicine to ease her discomfort. I will get her more groceries. Life will be good again, spring will come and illness will pass.

My kids will continue to get the sleep they need. They will continue to feel about themselves what they do and not take much notice of outside evaluation. They know what they are good at and what they like to do. When they were younger at park district programs, they couldn't understand why the instructor gave them candy for a correct answer. Now they just think that grown-ups are weird with school-aged kids, unless the adults are homeschooling parents.

I, on the other hand, have been reliving my nightmares of sitting outside the Principal's office preparing a passionate speech about my justifications for slugging the brute on the bus. Trust me, it was a good speech

The Wringer

My family has been through the wringer lately. And we've come out safely on the other side. I've been thinking of just how many times we have been through this wringer in the past few years, how difficult some of our more private moments have been and how we wished our lives to be different when we were in the middle of them. Yet, somehow we always come out on the other side. Worn out a bit, but dusting ourselves off and ready for more.

Whatever it has been - illness and death, adult sibling near-warfare, foundation shattering questioning of our life's path - we have come out whole, as a family. We go through it together, although sometimes in different ways and from different vantage points. We come out together.

My children experience life differently than I did at their ages. My parents shielded us from the "real" world, from disagreements and difficulties. My parents also were in a new country, with no siblings, parents or other relatives anywhere near them. Perhaps because I didn't have a model for how to deal with life on the outside of the insular family, perhaps because we homeschool and have chosen to spend the majority of our time with our children, my kids have gone through the wringer with me.

I think they are stronger for it. They understand financial distress in a real way - not just in "we can't afford that" terminology, but in an understanding of the family's debt to income ratio, our comfort level with risk, and our long range goals. They have a better understanding of old age, illness and death. Most of all, they know that the world isn't going to come to an end each time a roadblock is thrown in their path. They know they will come out of a difficult time, perhaps changed or scarred, but they will emerge on the other side. I think I was in my later 30s when I truly understood that.

Sometimes Parenting is Hard

I started out this morning thinking that homeschooling is wonderful. Small breezed through his reading today and allowed me to read three books to him without getting all squirmy. He was cute and cuddly, and now has an eagerness to become a fluent reader that he didn't have before. We've been waiting for that spark, holding off on instruction until he was ready to be instructed. Sparks are good things. Struggles are not.

Then I changed my thinking and realized that sometimes homeschooling is hard. Large and Medium were not getting along. Not getting along in a loud, angry, insulting kind of way. They could not agree on who would read the history chapter first. Why this led to an all out struggle is unclear, but it wasn't pretty.

We were going to Park Day, meeting a bunch of homeschooling families for a nice afternoon of play and parents chatting. Last week's Park Day ended with Large whining that we had not yet done history. In response to that, this brilliant parent decided we should do history first. We are on a survey course of history, the kids want to finish it to move on to more in depth study of periods that particularly interest them. I suppose we could just skip the step of finishing out the 19th and 20th centuries together, but they don't want to.

So, I decided that sometimes homeschooling is just hard. I waited for the storm to pass, they worked it out, ending in a few giggles. We read the history, discussed it and moved on with the day. Later, a friend helped me to see that this really was just a parenting issue, not a homeschooling issue. It could have been anything that set them off, they are siblings after all. And close siblings, just a bit over a year apart. They do nearly everything together and probably get sick of each other several times a day.

Sometimes families are hard. But as homeschoolers I think we tend to hold ourselves to higher standards. We aren't allowed to have bad days. We could, after all, just send the kids to school and get some time to ourselves in the middle of the day. I sometimes fantasize about the wonderful projects I could get done during the day if they weren't with me, if I wasn't driving all over the 5 county metro area to get them where they needed to be. But I would be just as unproductive if they were in school as I am with them out. And I'd miss the fights and the reconciliations. Those are some pretty important life skills.

The Art of Doing Nothing

We have been mostly unscheduled this summer, for perhaps the first time ever. Large and Medium both really hoped to do an art camp and an archery camp. Small wanted to do gymnastics and needed swim lessons. I had an urge for long car trips to the Badlands and Mount Rushmore, out to the Jersey Shore and back, along the Louis and Clark trail. Unfortunately, an unplanned home improvement project cut into our funds deeply and cancelled all but the already paid for.

We've still had things on our calendar. Homeschool park days and bowling days are favorites. Dance and piano recitals. Museum visits and family reunions. And responsibility for my parents' house has brought us to the beach happily and frequently.

But mostly we are just being still. Medium has learned to act on her boredom by finding what truly interests her, which seems to be everything. Large and Small have had endless days of play with the block boys. I've developed a plan that will hopefully bring in more income so we aren't in the position of telling the kids they can't do something again.

I have memories of summers like this. But really, it was probably only for August that we lived the life of the unscheduled, unplanned. We swam competitively, with daily workouts and weekly meets. As we got older we had two workouts a day, taught swimming and coached activities. So my memory of the endless summer days of play and fun are either from before the age of 7 or from those August days between the swim team awards banquet and the start of school. Three weeks, tops.

But such sweet memories they are! I can't remember a single swim meet, they all blend together. But I can remember entire conversations I had with my best friend, hours of solitude along the creek at the edge of the meadow, reading whatever I liked, long weekends at the beach.

I hope our kids have that memory, not just of summers, but of their yearly schedule. It makes me want to pull back even more on our activities, precisely at the time when Large's dance schedule is becoming more complicated. We will still have days with nothing on board until the evening, days to follow our own interests and inquiries, evenings devoid of homework an paperwork worries.

It's hard to not sign the kids up for classes, club and activities as they come along. Some many great homeschooling parents are bring together kids in such exciting ways, that it feels like we are missing out if we don't participate in everything. Now I find us wanting to pull back not just for financial reasons, but because we want some time alone together. Homeschooling is an evolving adventure.

On the Beach

We have been fortunate lately to be spending some time on the beach. The beach near my parent's house on the dunes is quiet and mostly deserted. Some days we see no one, others we have occasional joggers, walkers or see other families playing in the distance.

Most of the time we hit the beach after a days worth of errands or cleaning the house. It's a great respite, especially as I find the time spent in the house to be emotionally draining. I often bring a book and don't touch it, preferring to sit and think.

Lately I've been thinking a lot about how my parents handled the job of parenting and how it is the similar or different from my own methods. The beach we handle in the same manner. The kids carry whatever it is they want on the beach, usually that is nothing. Sometimes the take a towel. I take a water bottle and my beach chair. When they were younger, they each took a bucket and shovel, or yogurt cups or something to create sandcastles with. Then they realized they needed nothing on the beach to amuse themselves.

Typically we climb over the dune, the kids running up the hill on the hot, hot sand to get to the shade at the top. Then they scamper down the stairs, dash across the sand to the water and go right in. Now that they are older, they have to wait until I'm on the beach before going in beyond knee depth. I used to be able to match their speed.

If it's windy and they can ride waves, they stay in the water a long time. I sit and watch, the water still being too cold for me to go in on all but the hottest of days. Then they come out and each do their own thing on the beach. Large lately has been creating structures out of driftwood, which is why he wanted the towel. Medium sits right on the edge making sand sculptures with the wettest of sand. Small digs holes, makes mountain shaped "lake houses" or slides down whatever ridges the latest storms have left behind. It's a magical spot where they can be and do what they want to, as unstructured or complicated as they want it to be.

My parents let us have a lot of this kind of time in my childhood. We went to this very same community, but to a different beach. We walked along the road or through the sand dunes, carrying our own stuff. Usually nothing at all, except for our teen years when we concentrated on our tans. But even at home, we had a lot of magical spots where we could go and just be with our own selves and the thoughts in our heads. They lived on five acres in a not quite yet suburban sprawl area. Even as small children, my mother would pop us out the door in the morning and expect us to come home when hungry. Or hurt, or tired. We weren't watched over as closely as parents tend to do now, and we certainly weren't scheduled to tightly, especially in our younger years.

I wish we had more opportunity for this kind of life, the magical solitude and freedom to just be. We don't live in the same kind of setting, but we seek it out and take advantage of it as best we can.

Weathering the Storm

We've had some stormy weather lately. I'm not sure if it's unusually stormy, but it sure feels like it. The storms have been pretty severe as well, with lots of rain and more than a lot of wind.

Last night we had the privilege of riding out the storm in my parents' house. It's in the part of Indiana where the lake is mostly north and a little bit west. They built the house on top of a very high and steep sand dune when they were 70 years old. The the lot was available because the previous house had burned down, in no small part due to the lack of water pressure in the town's fire hydrants. My parents were risk takers.

The house is built to maximize the view. Most of the living takes place on the second floor, which puts you nearly at tree-top height as you gaze out at the lake. The entire mostly north facing side is floor to ceiling windows, the living room and library have sliding doors leading to decks. It is stunning in the spring when the dogwoods are in bloom, and in the fall when the oak leave change colors. The house is curved a bit on each side, offering a more panoramic view. This picture is looking more to the west than north.

It rained all morning yesterday, torrential downpours with flash flooding as we ran errands to maintain the house and cars. There was a break in the late afternoon, so the kids and I went to the beach. After a while, looking northwest across the lake, I saw Chicago vanish in a sea of darkness. we heard distant thunder, felt the winds kicking up and headed back to the house.

We sat down to dinner and my angle from the kitchen island was a mostly westward view of the storm marching towards us. In minutes the trees you see here were bent nearly in half, wet with rain and crippled by the wind. We watched the wind open locked windows on the south side of the house. We felt the water bashing the windows. We watched the lights flicker on and off several times before going out all together.

And then I had a chance to reflect again, as I have often done these past few years, on just how smart a man my father was. I grew up knowing of his scientific genius, witnessed his limitless skills in maintaining, designing and constructing houses, barns, room additions, etc. I was in awe of his ability to draw, photograph and sculpt. He could explain anything, and sometimes I could even understand it.

But I had also seen his failures. I had watched him calculate the exact angle and force to hit a cue ball in order to get the object ball into the correct pocket - and then seen him execute the shot and miss entirely. (This was a move named the "Grande Crewe" in the billiards room at the University of Chicago's Quadrangle Club.) I had also seen him, with my brother, cut down a tree that was threatening to fall on a neighbor's house. Again, they calculated the angle to avoid hitting the house and then proceeded to drop it right on the roof. My father was more than human.

Last night, as the lights shut off and the wind battered the house, I felt safe and like a glass in a dishwasher. I knew my Dad had put in an emergency generator to beat all emergency generators. He had foreseen his physical decline and knew he would face the end of his life with some medical equipment that would need a constant energy source. His generator is not based on a tank that needs refilling, but was hooked to the main gas line to the house. He was ultra-prepared.

So, when it failed last night, it came as no surprise to me that the variable he had failed to factor in was human maintenance after his death. The motor oil that lubricates the engine had run out. Mark was able to refill that, managing only one wasp sting, and get the thing running. My father kept a lot of things is his head. Like the knowledge of which outlets are powered by the generator in an emergency. Last summer we had to get the HVAC guy to come out and tell us which ones would be able to provide power to his bed and oxygen machine.

My father spent a couple of years trying to convince his carpenter and window installer that the windows and doors in the library were going to leak. He knew the house had settled, creating a slightly steeper slope to the deck. He could feel the air flowing under the doors when no one else did, could anticipate the rate at which the water was gaining ground. He designed the solution to the problem. But until it leaked, he couldn't convince anyone to do the work. It was an expensive job, and the leak was spectacular when it burst through.

Last night we also witnessed the next failure Dad had anticipated. The entrance to the house is a two story atrium with two sets of floor to ceiling windows stacked on top of each other, forming a bridge to the two arced halves of the house. The top center window showered water in rivulets onto the window sill and carpet on the second level and down to the slate first floor via the open spaces in the bridge. Not as spectacular as the library leak to the bedroom below, but it wont take too many more rains for that to come.

Just as my father correctly diagnosed himself with Parkinsons' Disease a few years before a neurologist could confirm it medically, he lives on in his predictions concerning his largest last masterpiece, this house. When I called the carpenter this afternoon, he choked up. The carpenter had a 12 year relationship with my father and misses his wisdom and humor. He knew exactly where the leak was before I told him, knowing it was what my father was worried about. He told me it took him a while to realize my father was a genius and that he misses him.

Last night's storm was more than just weather.

Privacy Week

I found this video to be interesting and informative. Thought I would share.

Choose Privacy Week Video from 20K Films on Vimeo.

Getting it Back

The first thing to come back as I have been working through my grief and getting accustomed to a life where my responsibilities are focused more on my children than my parents was my ability to read and respond to emails. I go through about 100 a day, with the work on the conference, my science lab, Roots&Shoots group, homeschooling support group and family group. For a while there, I couldn't even open my email unless it was from one of my siblings concerning my father's health, his death, my mother's progress, the planning of the upcoming service, the obituaries circling the globe. Slowly, I was able to read, respond and act on messages that came through. Just in the nick of time, given the conference is six weeks away!

The second thing was my organizing mojo. In my real life, I'm a stickler for loose ends being tied up and good at follow through. For the past year and a half, since my father's condition worsened in the summer of 2008, organizing anything other than my parents' life has taken the back burner. I'm glad to say that is behind me and I can multi-task organizing homeschooling, our household, finances, my mother, the conference, our increasingly complicated activity calendar and everything else life has thrown in my way.

Then my love of exercise came back. Hallelujah! While I'm advised not to get on the treadmill anymore, I can spend 45 minutes on the bike and come away feeling happy, rested and relieved. I've rediscovered my connection between wheat and inflammation and hope to get back on that treadmill very soon, or at least mix it up with the bike and the elliptical.

And now my knitting has come back! I did nothing but easy things for the past year, ever since Mark's last cabled birthday sweater was finished. Many socks, a baby hat and cardigan, lots of stockinette and ribbing. Now I'm brave enough to tackle brain-feeding knitting. I bought the yarn for this sweater vest for Mark's birthday in July and started it last week. It's been a wonderfully quick and interesting knit so far.

Hoping for my weaving mojo to kick in soon, I still have a few minutes left in each day.

Brain food

I read an article last week in the Chicago Tribune about breakfast cereal and it stuck in my head. The Tribune investigation shockingly revealed that the food industry had found a way around regulations requiring more nutritious breakfast cereal by fortifying it's sugary cereal and offering more "adult" cereals. The Tribune was also amazed that children seem to prefer the sugary cereals and that consumption can be correlated to advertising on children's television programs.

I don't know if it's because we homeschool or because we don't have cable TV, but my kids have rarely eaten sugary cereal. Our allergies might also be part of it, but we've never shopped for cereal. We bought the kids cheerios when they were babies and toddlers, a perfect, portable snack. We buy puffed rice when we want to make "gooey cookies." Other than that, we don't really eat cereal. Small once had fruit loops from a breakfast buffet at a hotel. And I can recall Medium pointing to Lucky Charms and saying "That's just strange."

We don't need fast breakfast. Today the kids made pancakes together. Small regularly eats bacon. Medium makes herself an omelet or oatmeal. Large will have last nights' leftovers, a hot dog or fried eggs with no toast. Some mornings we are more pressed for time than others, most mornings they can follow their taste buds and fend for themselves. Small can microwave bacon and oatmeal on his own - he prefers steel cut oats.

It used to be that when the kids were exposed to cable TV, they would stare and stare at it, more interested in the commercials than the shows. Now they talk back at the commercials or skip channels. We don't need cable for reception and are able to watch all we want (including Spongebob) via Netflix. So, we've never had that to cut out of our budget in lean times.

I can imagine the repetitive advertising could get kids begging. But most kids are reasonable. When mine watched a lot of PBS kids, they would occasionally ask for Juicy Juice. I explained the packaging problem of individual juice boxes and the unit cost.

I don't have anything against sugary cereals, but it's never been part of our budget. Along the same lines of kid products and advertising, we did get the strangely flavored Dora and Spongebob toothpaste for a while, but we have now graduated to Aquafresh and all are happy.

Marketing to kids is here to stay. So are parents.

True Words

Meet Doug

Medium received a bird cage for Christmas. The poor child is allergic to every possible furry animal, but really wanted a pet who would play with her. Reptiles seemed out of the question, not only because they aren't particularly cuddly, but also because of the mold and/or heat.

So, we decided on a bird. We went to the pet store for food and toys, looked at the parakeets there and then headed off to a local shelter. This shelter is really a cat place, but they take in small animals and birds.

I'm always appalled by shelters. So many animals in one place. This was a small store front with probably 50 cats, several rabbits, gerbils, hamsters and tons of birds. Doug was found in a cage with 20 or so parakeets, all dumped by the same guy, who gave the shelter little information about them. Doug was mostly off by himself, he has a couple of bent tail feathers and was definitely the under dog of the cage. Shunned and picked on. And that made him Medium's first choice in a pet.

The shelter also had 10 or so zebra finches in one cage, a pair of conures, a macaw, several sets of African doves and more parakeets further down. The cat cages were stacked three high and birds were placed on top of them. They had one center aisle with a double row of cages and then two side aisles. The small animals lined the front, also stacked two and three high. Is it that when you run a shelter, you just can't see when you are full? Or is the need so great and the options so bad that they take in more and more animals?

All these animals came from homes. I can't imagine taking my rabbit in, saying I don't want it anymore (even though we have good allergy reasons) and turning it in, seeing the overcrowded conditions right in front of me. Maybe those people are hoarders too? Maybe the shelter has to euthanize every once in a while? Why do people buy pets in stores when there are shelters overcrowded with pets? I know the pets, particularly birds, can come sick or diseased because of the overcrowding problem. But isn't it better to take that risk than feed the breeding and pet store systems?

Doug is doing fine. A little quiet. Definitely freaked out. He's warming up to Medium, letting her take him out to play every day, although he isn't quite socialized yet. Funny, a homeschool kids socializing a bird!

Watch this!

Back to our regularly scheduled programming, courtesy of my sister:

Complicated Question

I have often been asked lately how I am doing. It's a difficult question to answer. On the face of it so simple, but when you get right down to it, extremely complicated.

Am I really "doing," for example? What am I doing and how am I doing it? A short glance around my living room or bedroom shows that I am not doing much. Not physically anyway. Some days I don't even shower. I am usually dressed by noon, though, so maybe that is something.

The kids get to their scheduled activities. Most of the time. They see their friends, attend their classes, get their basics done most days. They could be doing more. There's that gym class I want to enroll them in, the play dates I never get around to scheduling, the allergy shots that are supposed to be twice a week and sometimes we go two weeks between, the swim team and swim lessons, museum day - all these and more I have failed to organize and do.

My three siblings and I cannot seem to have a discussion over my father's care without someone getting angry and belligerent. We can't agree on the simplest of things and some refuse to even take a part in the discussion, preferring to criticize from the sidelines. I have been unable to forge a truce or maintain the peace. On the contrary, because I am the closest, I am the target.

My mother now needs more help than ever. I am able to help her twice a week. This I can say that I "do." Writing checks, buying groceries and supplies for my father's caretakers, making her appointments, managing her calendar, listening to her fears and worries. I get to go home, to put some distance between me and my dying father. My mother is home and the love of her life, the man she has been married to for 60 years, is slowly dying before her eyes. It's no wonder she needs more help, the emotional and physical strain on her is unbearable.

And then there is my father. I can help him try to stand up, he isn't able to do this on his own anymore. But he wants to try and I can hold one side while an aide holds the other. He was a tall man, but now his legs wont straighten and he is shorter than my 5' 8" frame. Not nearly as wide, though, his body isn't tolerating much in terms of calories. I can try to interpret for him, make sure his medicines are ordered and sufficient, help the aides with their questions, distract him when he is agitated.

So, I am "doing," or at least am active. I am not, however, doing anything particularly well. It took me a long time, probably a month, to realize that my kids were no longer active and engaged in their math program and that it needed to be changed. Little is still not a good reader, he is reading things that his siblings read a full year ahead of his age.

The friends still willing to talk to me - and there are several who cannot right now because their own grief is too fresh to be cut open by mine - are probably bored out of their minds when they ask how I am. I feel I have become a lead weight in their presence. So, when I am in town, I stay inside my house and limit my outings to the kids schedule. Yesterday I took Small to dance and then went to the library to reserve the room for our science class. After those two brief encounters with the outside world of small talk and business, I was exhausted. They simple act of smiling, so natural for me normally, is draining.

So how should I answer? Fine. OK. As well as can be expected. Or just smile.

Complacency

Complacency is an evil thing. I've been tooling along the past year thinking things with my folks were improving and that we could continue along this path for a while. It's what I wanted to believe, what my own family needed. Complacency is why I took on the board of directors position for the InHome Conference (well, that and the sheer desperation I heard from friends who needed help), why I started teaching a physics lab for homeschoolers, why I branched out looking for new opportunities for my children.

And it's why I'm smacking myself on the forehead now. Just over a year ago, my father was admitted to the hospital. His EMS ticket read "failure to thrive." One of those medical terms like when I was pregnant with Small and the nurse told me he had a condition "incompatible with life." Last year, however, my sister and I convinced my father to have a feeding tube inserted. His Parkinson's had advanced to the point that he was malnourished and dehydrated. Without the feeding tube, he would starve to death. It wasn't hard to convince him, my mother needed him. And he wouldn't abandon my mother to her dementia. Just as last week he agreed to a partial hip replacement, after a struggle, so he could help my mother continue to have some independance.

My father's Parkinson's was diagnosed 8 years ago, but he suspected a few years prior to that. I remember him being jovial when a neurologist told him there was "nothing remarkable" about his brain. That's funny for a genius. Over time the disease has robbed him of his booming voice, his ability to move predictably, and his ability to swallow. After he had the tube inserted, he became almost robust, gathering strength and a quality of life he hadn't had before. Between that and the botox treatments he receives in his cheek, he was reading, participating in daily routines, taking care of my mother and their enormous house overlooking the lake, debating politics - this frail old man left the house to vote for Obama ("the first intelligent candidate in a long time") in Indiana, a state that really counted!

A week ago he tripped over his feet and broke his hip. It has been a week of anguish and frustration, a week of struggling to get the best care possible and a week of managing my mother. There are a lot of funny things that happened too and I'll try to share them soon, not to make fun of my mother or of dementia, but to point out that there is humor in crisis.

My father and I had what I would consider to be a strained relationship for most of our lives together. Like most people, I have felt not quite smart enough to be sharing the same space with him. Now I can see he has respected me all along, I just wasn't willing to accept his love and admiration. The strain was mainly on my side, this is an unspeakable loss. Now I stand armed at his hospital bed with his DNR and the Power of Attorney, telling everyone who walks in the room that he is not deaf and has no mental impairment. The no mental impairment part often has to be repeated, nurses and doctors just assume some level of dementia in an 82 year old who cannot speak. I hand out the spread sheet of his medication and feeding schedule, translate his concerns and worries from whispers to a roar and generally become a thorn in the side of people unable to adjust their prejudices. I am my father's daughter.

It has been an incredible strain on my own family, this past week. They have rolled with the punches, done their thing, taken time off work and play to help my father out. I've missed out on a week of their lives, and will miss some more in the weeks to come as my father becomes stronger. We have been shocked out of our complacency by this horrible disease and need to become ever more vigilant. And ever more efficient in our work to accommodate for these intermittent crises. They are only going to increase as nature takes its course for both my parents.

I am grateful, however, to be homeschooling my children and including them as active participants in my parents decline and death. Already wise, they are more aware of the world around them because of our care taking role.

Getting to Know You

I've been mulling over an article in this past Sunday's Chicago Tribune titled "School's Out. Now What?" My children have never been to school, so I'm not familiar with the trails and anxieties of summer. The third paragraph reads: "Summer is wonderful, but it takes time to settle in."

Really? I guess we have trouble at time adjusting the the abrupt weather changes here in Chicago. And the sudden explosion of children on the block, in the neighborhood and at our museums. But really, summer is just an extension of spring, which comes after a long winter, preceded by fall. It's just a season for us. For some of us, it's our favorite season, for others, it's before or after their favorite one.

The author interviewed a developmental therapist who worked on a TV show I've never seen, "Super-Manny." He says that kids have "very little freedom" during the school year and that "They even have to ask to go to the bathroom." Well, yes. The kids on my block are gone from between 7:30 and 8 and arrive back home between 3:30 and 4. No sleeping late because they stayed up watching a documentary, no lounging around with a book because they have a cold.

But the most disturbing part of the article for me was the description of how the siblings have lost touch with each other, have done a lot of physical and developmental growing and "In a sense, they have to get to know each other again."

If that isn't one of the strongest arguments for homeschooling, I don't know what is. The picture Mark took above on a bike ride this weekend was of Large holding back Small while he was throwing rocks into the canal. Large was protecting his little brother, he wasn't asked to do it, he just knew Small's ability to get into precarious situations and wanted to make sure he didn't slide down the rocky slope to the algae-infested water below. Our kids know each other. Sometimes they know each other too well, they know exactly which buttons to push, and also how to use their strengths to help each other out.

The article went on to explain how to get the kids to know each other again. Who older kids can read to younger kids, how they can prepare meals together, where to find those "teachable moments" to form a community with other children in the neighborhood. Honestly, do parents really need this kind of advice? I'm hoping they don't.

What's Next?

OK, so in the midst of all the craziness my life has become - taking care of my non-compliant parents, the upcoming dance recital, making big decisions about whether or not to have a homeschooling conference next year, etc., etc., etc., I have to suffer through failing equipment that is supposed to make my life easier.

The dishwasher. Would cost a total of more than $400 to repair. We can replace one for nearly that. But we can't find the time to replace it or do the research to buy it.

The vacuum cleaner. Perhaps the most used appliance in the house, my trusty Miele Solaris. We've had it 8 years and this is the first major problem. I use it every day. On Saturday, I called a friend across the street hyperventilating and asking to borrow hers. She made me promise a solemn oath not to break it. She understands my pain.

The car. The Volvo with 120,000 miles on it - shouldn't it just last forever? For over a year now it's been doing this strange thing where the ABS system clicks in when accelerating, turning corners and occasionally while braking. Over the past week it's become loud. And then Saturday it was loud, refused to accelerate and showed that arrow signal that it was time to up shift, even in reverse. Transmission, you say? Likely, we dropped it off last night.

After losing the tree and shelling out a whole heck of a lot of money from the emergency fund for that and other tangential emergencies, our emergency fund is positively groaning. No longer do we have that nice cushion of 4 months living expenses saved in case Mark loses his job. Two, maybe. And we're in a recession here.

Maybe I can send Large out in his double breasted thrifted suit to look for a job? His hair is ever so slightly shorter now...

Back Home, Part Two

Returning home from vacation always leaves me longing to be back on vacation. Reality has a tendency to just smack me in the face. Today I find myself wanting to see some of the friends we made at our campsite and in the state park. The Cooper's Hawk was a favorite, coming by frequently to find a meal, possibly for his young. He started the Orioles off screeching each time and then would just hang out, scanning the weedy area on the slope down to the lake for easier fare. He wasn't so easy to photograph and was majestic when the swooped through the campsite.

Reality hit in the form of a broken dishwasher.

Oh, let's not wash the morning dishes. We can just put them in the dishwasher when we get home. Except that that dishwasher, a trusty 9 year old thing with far more bells and whistles than we need, wont wash. It dies mid-cycle. All that crusted on scrambled egg had to be washed the old fashioned way. The repair guy came out one afternoon and the thing worked just fine for him. Then he left, running an empty cycle and it didn't work. Sputtered through part of the wash and stopped. Red indicator lights angrily blinking "Wash Cycle!", "Energy Saver Dry!", "Rinse Aid Empty!"

When there was no satisfactory response, it would start up again, get to another point in the cycle and start screaming at us again in it's red light way. Next morning the repair guy, Alan, came back and pronounced we need a new heater element/on board computer kit that would cost $310, in addition to the $98 I had already spent for the service call. At least our debt-free living allows us some wiggle room of cash in our emergency fund. It feels wasteful, but I think it's time to get rid of the fancy dishwasher. We bought it when Medium was a baby and I insisted we needed the anti-bacterial wash and sanitary rinse. Hot water = higher gas bills so we don't use it.


See why I'd rather spend my time with a bunch of loud geese angrily defending their many, many goslings? Even the fox snake was more fun, gobbling up caterpillars on the bike path. Gnats are impossible to photograph, but there were lots of them too.

Aside from that I have conference things to do, issues to resolve, decisions to make. All volunteer positions can get so personal, I'm learning. I have been endowed with all sorts of new responsibilities to accomplish with one hand tied behind my back because there isn't an efficient system for knowledge and responsibility transfer. No succession plan. Bad. Would never work in the business world, at least not successfully. There is no doubt that it will all work out, and I have plans to fix the system so that the whole she-bang doesn't depend solely on the dedication of a few kind-hearted souls who eventually burn out from the pressure and burden of it all. That's the plan anyway. We all know about roads paved with good intentions.

So, I took refuge in the comfort of friends and enjoyed that so very much that I organized a whole slew of park days and outings for our little homeschooling community this summer. Turns out everyone had an idea of where we could happily spend our time and all I had to do was gather the information and post it. Now that's the kind of job I like. Plus, I'm ensuring my social needs are met. Oh, and I guess the kids social needs too.