Why do I keep turning down work?!

As you know, we need moolah! 

Twice within the past month, I have been offered work. Paid work!

And twice I have turned it down.

WHY?

I literally applied for that job at the library. I'm not afraid of work. Believe it or not, I've worked before!

Technically, this wasn't a job; it was a volunteer thing. But I worked!

But I didn't take either of these opportunities because I realized that I really just don't have time for a steady gig right now.

The first one was something that I could have done from home, but it would have required many hours of intense concentration, and it's a challenge to get that in my house. D has a room, Mal has a room, James has an office. I do have a bedroom, but I share it with James and it's kind of open for business when anyone wants to hang out. I don't really have a space where I can put up a "do not disturb" sign and get things done. So I had to turn down the opportunity for a gig in the writing field. I just wasn't confident that I could give it my best.

Then the other one was something here in town, walkable like the library, but would require a couple of full days per week. It was flexible; I could pick what days worked for me. But we have things almost every day of the week and, ironically, I've lined up even more stuff over the summer when Mal's friends are often out of pocket, and when some things like open gym take a break until the fall. He's still young enough that I need to be around at least somewhat during the day. And James's schedule is so random that we can't plan for me to work when he's off; we never know what that will be until a couple of weeks in advance.

I guess this means we're not desperate yet? I do have three mystery shops tomorrow, which is the most I've had in one day in YEARS. We'll get three free meals, and then there are actually shopper fees on top of that. That used to be the norm, but I guess the market is such that companies can basically say, "You'll eat this free food and you'll be freaking grateful!" until they can't get jobs scheduled and are willing to throw more money at it. 

I am also doing gimmicky things like opening a new credit card to get a bunch of on-board cash for the cruise so we save $300 on gratuities. It's not income, but it prevents outgo, so that's kind of the same thing, right? And it's not taxable! Huzzah! My credit score is suffering a bit, but it will rebound.

Do I know Spanish?

In August, I'll have been using Duolingo for 3 years.

James will hit 4 years at the end of this month. He started studying Spanish in June 2021. I decided to go with French at first, just because that's what I studied in high school and college and I figured having some momentum from the get-go would keep me motivated.

We planned a trip to Montreal, which we took in spring 2023, and after we got home from that, I switched over to Spanish, too.

Living in Texas (and, really, anywhere in the US), this is a much more practical language. I wish I'd studied it in high school rather than French, but I think French seemed so much more romantic.

In terms of practicality, ASL would have been the most useful to me, but I shudder to think how it would have been taught, especially given how I was taught French in high school. I had to take remedial French for a semester in college, because I was functionally starting fresh. Sigh.

Now that I've been studying Spanish in Duolingo for a couple of years, I've attained a score that indicates I should be able to have basic conversations in Spanish.. but I don't feel like that's the case at all.

We're planning to visit Mexico next year, and I've started listening to an immersion Spanish podcast to see if I can gain some confidence in this regard.

What I think is happening is this: I am really good at taking tests. I can usually do pretty well in challenges and stuff, but that doesn't always translate to learning with me. I have surpassed James's "XP" within the game, and I'm further along than he is. But I'm 100% sure that he's better at actually speaking Spanish than I am.

This is a part of my personality that I wish I could turn off. I'm trying to stay focused and learn to learn, but sometimes the "gamification" here is counterproductive to why I'm actually on the app: to learn a language.

Cool Miners

Mal and two of his homeschool friends have an online "club" called Cool Miners.

Cool Miners cerca 2023

Caleb moved to the Pacific Northwest last year, and Kona lives close enough that we can almost see her house from our house except for one hill and a bunch of trees.

Today, I had an errand to run and Mal was going to go with me, but he ended up being on a call with his fellow Cool Miners, so he elected to stay home.

He just got off of the call, which lasted about three hours. 

It reminded me of when I was about Mal's age and my dad was the president (or some "cabinet" position)  of the local Chamber of Commerce. This was before we could afford call waiting, so my sister and I had a 15 minute limit on phone calls, in case urgent business from the CoC needed to come through. 

I'm glad Mal has made a few groups of close friends here in the homeschool community. We moved when D was about his age, and that middle school time is a difficult one to break into a whole new social scene.

I mentioned our "field trip" yesterday where Mal got to hang out with his one-day-a-week school friends, including a friend he made who no longer goes to the school on Wednesdays, so Mal rarely gets to see them anymore. 

And Mal has his post-church friend who's been meeting him almost every Sunday for the past maybe 3 years. 

It's fun to see my younger kid coming into his own, and figure out who he is outside of us. 

What can I say? Nothing much...

The "school year" is almost over, which affects us as homeschoolers more than I would have thought before I started doing it. 

Mal's one-day-a-week school and homeschool open gym both break for the summer. I'm looking into other things to keep him busy... but hopefully low-cost/free things because it's now been a whole freaking year since James got laid off, and he doesn't seem much closer to finding a job than he did a year ago. Difference now is we've obviously blown through the severance package, and his unemployment ran out quite some time ago.

I'm doing some mystery shopping again, and that's been kind of fun. This weekend, James got to go to this fancy barber shop and have a bunch of cool treatments. 

If you're wondering, "Hey, is that paraffin wax on his hands?" Yes. Yes, it is.

Mal and I did a trampoline shop a couple of weeks ago, I ate at a nostalgic restaurant with D last weekend, and I've done some visits to places like day cares and dog kennels that have paid pretty well. It's not a lot of money, but it's more than nothing.

Today is Mal's annual well checkup, so we're getting ready to go see if he's still on the growth arc he's consistently followed since his first checkup. Allegedly, he's on course to be 6 feet tall!

Speaking of Mal growing up... He posted his first animated video the other day! I'm not embedding it here (you have to click this link) because if you see it, we want it to "count" as a view, and it only does that on YouTube. I think it's pretty great!

What a difference a decade and a half makes!

This morning, Mal wanted me to come sit with him while he woke up. I love to do that, but I'd already been up, walked, and made breakfast and I was ready to sit somewhere comfortable, which his bed is not (it's under a window, so there's nowhere to rest my back without the window pane cutting into my upper spine).

I asked if he'd sit on the couch with me instead, and he said it was too cold. So I got him a blanket, he covered up, and we snuggled for a bit.

After he was up and around a bit, I started to fold up the blanket to put it away. 

"I still need that! I'm a little chilly."

I suggested that he turn off the ceiling fan, which he did.

Now I'm going to interrupt this story to go back in time to the late aughts, then we will return to this morning.

When we were living in Sherman ("we" being D and me), we'd had a fellow homeschool family over for dinner. Their three kids and my one were alternately playing in D's room and hanging out with us adults. As their departure drew near, the dad went back to get his youngest, Rebekah, from D's room. Rebekah was on D's top bunk, which was very big and only about 2 feet from the ceiling.

Rebekah was talking to her dad over the side of the bunk and said, "Watch this!" She then proceeded to manually turn the fan, whose blades overlapped D's bed by several inches (we never turned the fan on when it was bedtime!). The dad started to reprimand her, then said, "Oh! Dust doesn't fall off of your fan blades." 

I didn't say anything, but the reason it didn't was that I dusted the fan blades every single week.

I dusted everything every single week.

Bookcases, end tables, the fireplace mantle, door frames, air conditioning vents, computers... I dusted once a week, every week.

Coming back to the present time, I have to confess that when I turned the fan off this morning, I was appalled by how much dust was on the blades! I cleaned it, and dust definitely DID sheet off of the blades. It was too much for the wipe to hold, and it all fell to the floor like giant dust-bunny snow.

Things have changed. 

At some point, I stopped my old cleaning routine where Monday was bathrooms/kitchen, Tuesday was dusting, Wednesday was vacuuming, Thursday was sweeping/mopping, and Friday was laundry and catch-up on anything else that needed to be done. 

At some point, I stopped having families over for dinner. 

I guess what I'm trying to say is that I would *love* for my house to be super clean. I enjoy looking at old pictures and seeing how tidy and spotless everything looked. But I don't have the will or energy anymore.

I don't have a kid who wants to help Swiffer anymore, either!

Also, I remember from the time always feeling "behind" in house-cleaning, like I couldn't keep up. Once, I expressed this frustration to my ex-husband and he said, "The house is never clean, so why are you stressed about it right now?"

I guess maybe I decided to stop worrying about it so much and just sit down and play on the Switch sometimes. I still want my house to be very clean as much as I ever did. I just don't feel like it's possible so I don't strive as much. And consequently, my house gets dusty. If you're ever over and it bothers you, you are more than welcome to fix it!

A (pre) Christmas Miracle!

Hiya, toots!

This summer in central Texas has so far been seasonal from the before-times of the late 2010s. It is just now consistently getting into the 100s during the day, whereas last year that started in May. We were saved from like 10 weeks of the blistering heat of the recent past, and I appreciate it!

We've had enough rain in the general are that the lake is 8 feet up (though it's still just under 40 feet low) in the past 2 weeks. 

Mal and I have been taking advantage of our PogoPass, glad that we paid for those before James got laid off. 

Last Sunday, Mal's friend was out of town so instead of meeting him like we always do, we went to Typhoon Texas. It was raining when we arrived, and there weren't a lot of people there. We were able to have the place practically to ourselves!

 

I got to use my awesome new shrug to protect my scar from sun exposure!

Then later in the week, we went to the LBJ Library. That one wasn't on the PogoPass last time we had it, so this was the first time Mal's visited. He loved it as much as I expected he would. Given his Five Nights at Freddy's obsession, the LBJ animatronic was one of his favorite parts.

We've gone to Indigo Play, Inflatable Wonderland, The Thinkery, James took Mal to Pump It Up Round Rock... we still need to get down to Wonder World to take the cave tour, and to San Antonio for the Witte and Zoo. Did I mention that I only paid $50 per pass? Just going to the water park and kids museum paid for it!

One down side to the great weather is that the mild temps and rain have super-charged the grass. I mowed on a Tuesday, and needed to do it again by Saturday. Then I made it until yesterday (Friday) and mowed a third time in under 2 weeks! I was thinking, "That's it! It's all going to go dormant now!" because we're heading into 100s every day and no rain in sight. But then this afternoon, it poured rain out of nowhere for an hour. Good. And bad. But mostly good. And also, I should be grateful for an upper body workout; pushing a giant battery up the hills of our back yard is not a joke (and, yes, it could be self-propelled but that drains the battery faster).

Mal's homeschool gymnastics class starts back at the end of next week, and his classes start back in just over 4 weeks. He's ready to get back into his schedule and so am I.

Of course, he'll miss a couple of weeks of everything when we go on his 10th birthday trip. Please send us your good vacation mojo because our travel is exactly as far out right now as it was in 2020 when we realized that Covid was going to cancel everything. And, yes, I got travel insurance this time! We were lucky to get back every single penny we'd paid 4 years ago, but I don't anticipate businesses doing that again. (Also, the CrowdStrike outage freaked me out about flight stuff; fortunately, for this trip, we're on Southwest.)

 

 

Food Freedom, Kids' Edition

The other day, Google photos showed me this li'l gem from 14 years ago.

This is D with their friend Morgan (in the background) at the Dallas Zoo. I noticed that D was holding a long twisted marshmallow (a much better choice than when we bought a popsicle in June at the San Antonio Zoo, and its rainbow immediately melted all over D and me, and then it just fell off the stick entirely), but what really struck me was the fact that Morgan also had one. 

Morgan's mom Susan and I were different in a lot of ways, but we got along well and I always thought she was one of the most genuinely kind and encouraging people I've ever met. This picture made me appreciate the ease of parenting in Susan's vicinity. One or both of these kids saw the marshmallow and wanted it, and we both got them. Simple.

Mal has so many good friends whose parents very heavily influence what they eat. If we're somewhere and Mal gets a bag of cookies, those kids also want cookies... and it turns into a whole "thing." They ask their parent, the request is declined, they beg, the parent gets frustrated.

I'm sure the other parent really wishes that I wouldn't let Mal get whatever he wants. But letting my kid eat intuitively is a parenting philosophy I decided on when D was very, very young. I didn't want my kids to have weird food stuff to unravel when they became adults (or if they did, anyway, I didn't want to be the cause of it).

The more I thought about the ease of feeding D and their friends when they were small, though, I realized that relaxed eating was the norm pretty much everywhere we went. When we had lunch at enrichment classes, people had all sorts of stuff, and no one really commented on what anyone else was eating unless it looked good and someone wanted the recipe.

In fact, I remember vividly the exception to that rule when I was watching D's friend's sister once, and she was hungry. I asked if she wanted a grilled cheese sandwich, and she said, "I don't think my mom would want me to eat that much sugar." I was flummoxed. What did she think was in a grilled cheese?

I've heard this from one of Mal's friends many, MANY times. The thing is, I'm very good friends with her mom, too. We just have different food philosophies. But it makes her and Mal's together times around snacks and meals more stressful.

Whereas another friend of Mal's would come over here and eat whatever regardless of what her mom might think, this friend will often reject certain offers by saying her mom wouldn't like it. The other day, after she said no to a banana, an apple, and string cheese, I offered her a Lunchable. She said, "Oh, no, my mom wouldn't want me to eat that. She said they're so bad that even the creator wouldn't let his kids eat them!"

Mal asked me if it was true that they're "bad" and I just indicated that we weren't going to talk about it. But I had to know if that was the truth, so I looked it up. First, I did find a couple of websites that indicated that Bob Drane, who was one of the Oscar Mayer employees who developed Lunchables to help them sell more bologna, didn't let his kids eat the kits (which are not enough food to be a full lunch, in my opinion, but they're adequate in a snack situation) but they were all URLs like "healthvalues" or "eatingcleanforlife," etc. Not what I consider reliable sites, with zero citations. 

I finally tracked down an article from Popular Science entitled "Industry insiders don't use their products like we do. That should worry us," It's a bunch of elitist crap, like the fact that Steve Jobs's kids didn't use iPads. Listen, if I could outsource my kids' every moment, what they do in a day might be vastly different. But this isn't an instructional article for me. It's just saying, "Wealthy people don't have to live the same way that most of us plebes do."

Furthermore, it doesn't say that Drane didn't let his kids eat Lunchables. It says that one of his two adult children doesn't let her kids eat Lunchables because they're "junky" and "awful," and "we eat very healthfully." Barf. Or high five. Whatever.

Here's why I don't really pay much attention to "nutrition" guidelines or diet fads: I've seen them change too much over my lifetime. Eggs are terrible. Steaks are death. Butter will murder you. No, wait! Those fats are good, and protein is great, and margarine is fake and IT is the real danger! Don't eat fat and you won't be fat. Nevermind. Fat is good and satiating, but added sugar is something to avoid. Processed foods and things that are ultra-palatable is what's causing the downfall of our food society! Heck, even salt, which has been vilified for years, has recently made a comeback when studies have shown that the recommended intake of sodium that the American Heart Association publishes is actually associated with WORSE health outcomes than consuming moderately more sodium. 

When D was a baby and couldn't breastfeed, I fed them a bottle of formula. We'd only been home from the hospital for a couple of weeks, but initially, D was losing weight and becoming jaundiced. They were also very frustrated because they were literally starving. I made a bottle, which they slurped right up and were so content. I had been contacted by lactation consultants who offered to come help me figure out the breastfeeding thing, but I was just exhausted and ready not to have to worry about my newborn's health. The threat of being re-hospitalized was too much. I just wanted to know that D was getting enough to eat.

We visited the pediatrician a couple of days into formula-feeding, and I sheepishly admitted that I didn't have the will to try too hard to go back to breast-feeding, and did he think that D would suffer? As he continued D's exam, he asked me, "Is your baby gaining weight? Does your baby seem content? Is your baby thriving? Then I don't care what you do. Keep that up."

I guess that's been my feeding philosophy since. 

Fundamentally, there is a difference between "nutrition" and "health." Nutrition is literally a measure of the nutrients in any given food item. You might say that spinach is more nutritious than a slice of cake, and that's probably true (if it's a real cake and not a fake "hide 'healthy' ingredients" recipe). However, calories are important to consume! And joy from having a treat is a mental health boost that goes a long way toward a total "health" picture. Health isn't just about maximizing every calorie for its narrowly-defined benefit to the mechanical function of your biological components.

Food is about joy and family and socialization and meeting your needs in a specific moment in time. I love a good salad! And I also appreciate a Cinnabon. There is literally no time when I could switch one out for the other. Nor would I want to seek out a "more nutritious" version of a cinnamon roll in order to biohack my body's performance. And I'm certainly not putting that weight on my kids' shoulders. When they're hungry, I want them to listen to their bodies, not to have my voice in their brains knocking around, nor to see my side-eye even if they can still that voice. 

So... here's to those two kids in the picture with uncomplicated relationships with the stick of spun sugar and corn starch that they're carrying around during a fun day at the zoo. They and their moms are my heroes.

Flags of the World! (a thing about unschooling... but maybe not what you're thinking)

I posted several weeks ago about Mal's obsession with flags.

Since then, he's stayed pretty consistently interested. He's constantly saying things like, "Did you know that Chad and Romania have the EXACT SAME FLAG?" And the answer is always that no, I did not know that. 

I've actually learned a lot from Mal's interest in flags, as well. I've always loved maps and globes, and since he's into that now. In fact, after having bought Mal a beach ball globe a couple of years ago because we didn't want to shell out $50+ on a passing interest, I did buckle down and buy him one that will arrive tomorrow.

But I digress... One thing I've learned is that South Africa has three capitols because its executive, legislative, and judicial branches are in separate cities. That's pretty cool.

One thing we did get him recently was a foam map puzzle with a bunch of flags. He knew a lot of the flags, anyway, but since having put it together a couple of times, he knows all of them flawlessly. It's kind of a bummer because they didn't include any of the Central American or Caribbean countries (save Cuba), so we'll have to pick those up somewhere else. I did show him the Haiti flag immediately upon seeing it was snubbed.

Anyhoo, all of this exciting stuff to get around to my main point here.

One of my friends mentioned recently that unschooling never worked with her kids because they didn't take to "academic" stuff like what Mal is doing right now.

Now that I think about that statement, I see how a big idea in body liberation melds perfectly with the unschooling philosophy vis-à-vis the moral neutrality of most stuff in life. I believe it is Ragen Chastain who says something to the extent of "Running a marathon and having a Netflix marathon on your couch are moral equivalents." The world at large might celebrate running a marathon as the summit to a virtuous endeavor, but why? Vegging out, being lazy, and listening to your body when it says that you need a break is awesome. Running, if you like it, is awesome. Choosing to do one of those things over the other doesn't make you a better/worse person. It's just different people doing different things.

Getting back to unschooling and Mal: He has always taken a deep dive in the things he's interested in. His earliest obsession was probably the Disney Cars franchise. After we'd watched the movies once or twice, he could listen to the score and tell you what scene a piece of music was played. He knew the names of ALL of the characters, even background ones that might be shows once for three seconds in one of the three films. He collected hundreds of cars, he played with them almost every day, talked about it all of the time, found Cars shorts on the Disney Channel app on his own, noticed that some music was featured both in the movies and in the cartoons. It was two years of that.

He's also fixated on Unspeakable (which he still watches but not like when he was 5 or 6), Henry Stickman, NumberBlocks, Super Mario... and last year, Encanto. We actually have the play sets out on the kitchen table right now. He does bring them out to play and make scenes with occasionally. When the movie came out, though, he literally studied the songs until he knew all of the lyrics. In fact, his friend filmed him for almost half an hour once (she's a better audience than I am!)

When Mal finds something he likes, he has the space to take the time he wants to pursue it. With NumberBlocks, he learned a lot about how numbers work together. Since he got over that obsession, he's lost some of the multiplication tables, but I know that since he learned those things at 5 and 6 years old, he can remember and/or relearn them again in the future. He's learning a lot of geography and kind of civics with flags. Many times he'll act out a superficial version of relations between, say, Russia and Ukraine or North and South Korea using their flags as almost action figures. He'll probably forget a lot of this when he moves on to his next big interest.

The question is: Are those subjects superior to the strong relationships he formed with Cars and Encanto or a YouTube channel or a video game? Or all they all valuable pursuits for the pursuits' sake? Is the only reason I or others see unschooling as justified because Mal is learning something that some educational decision-makers out there who have never met him have decided is "important"?

I would argue that this cycle of finding something enjoyable and then wanting to know more and delve into it more is worthy in and of itself. It's what makes life worth living. My sister likes plants. My dad likes trains. My mom likes to read. Some day James and I will have time to figure out what we like again, I'm sure of it.

But my point is that, as adults, we get the option of pursuing interests without the baggage of "but what use is it in life?" My dad can watch Virtual RailFan and plan vacations around trains without people accusing him of "playing" and suggesting that he reads more books, like my mom does. We get to like what we like.

I'm enjoying this geographical path we're on right now, but I loved Cars and Encanto, too (he was on his own with Unspeakable). Mal is who he is and he's becoming the person he will be. Without anyone telling him what is really important and what he SHOULD be spending all of his time on. I love that for him.

Yet another installment of Things Mal Said

My sister texted me yesterday as she was watching "Shiny Happy People," a docuseries about the Duggars  specifically and the IBLP more broadly. Although we didn't choose to homeschool because of the reason a lot of super conservative Christians did, I was certainly adjacent to the Quiverfull movement and swam in the waters of top-down authority (like God, Father, Mother, kids; or God, male church leadership, female church leadership, members, etc.). And although I might have paid lip service to authoritarianism both as a parent and within the patriarchy, I always chafed against it and was pretty bad at submitting myself to basically anyone.

In honor of this most recent exposure of Bill Gothard and this whole establishment (I'm not linking because, honestly, let's not give them any more eyeballs), I wanted to share two things that Mal said this weekend that these people would consider a failure due to my parenting. Have I ever been more proud? It's hard to say.

Friday, we were at Urban Air with some friends. The kids pick a table where they can enjoy snacks and hanging out when they're taking a break, and the parents sit together at a different table. Mal had been jumping and come back with one of his friends for a drink. An 11-year-old girl was sitting where Mal had been sitting earlier, and he asked her if she could get up so he could sit down. She moved to a different table alone, and he just plopped down at the edge of the booth. 

I said, "Mal, will you scoot over so that Abby can sit back down?" He just looked at me like I'd asked him to stab himself, and turned back around. I said, "Malcolm, you need to move over so Abby can have her seat back." Mal announced, "Mom, I'm not listening to you." I said, "Hopefully you'll start listening to me soon or you're not going to have any friends because you're being a jerk." He said, "Mom, I've listened to you my whole life, and today I'm just not going to do it."

After he left, the mom of the girl he had asked to move said, "I know it's not funny, but it's also so funny."

The next day, we went to see Spiderman: Across the Spiderverse (so good!) and at one point, I thought I saw something fly in the air in front of the screen. A couple of minutes later, I noticed it again and it was just a moment after Mal had gotten a piece of popcorn. I realized he was eating around the kernel then just tossing the kernel into the row in front of us (where someone was sitting!) I said, “Mal, you can’t throw stuff like that.” He looked at me pointedly and said, “You’re not supposed to talk during a movie.” I said, “DO NOT THROW ANYTHING over there. If you have a kernel, just drop it in the floor and they’ll sweep it up after. Okay?” He just blinked and said, “You. Are. Not. Supposed to talk during the movie.”

I'm almost certain that I would have gotten a spanking for responding either way to my parents when I was Mal's age. It just never would have occurred to me. And I guess some people might say he's being disrespectful and shouldn't talk to me like that. But for me, the problem behaviors were the ones I was addressing, and I don't want to take focus from those by insisting on a perfect response to me, at the expense of having him think about what I was actually telling him. In the case of the movie, anyway, he didn't throw any more popcorn. 

Plus, I don't always respond to people in a completely measured way, and I don't actually have a problem with his being frustrated with me and expressing it. So I guess I'm failing as a mom, but it feels right. I'm going to keep doing it.

Summer School

Mal will be nine years old soon, and would be going into third grade if he were in school (his birthday is late in September, so he'd be one of the oldest amongst his grade cohorts). He loves homeschooling and unschooling specifically, and has so far resisted any suggestion I've made about taking ANY kind of class, even something fun like dance or martial arts. In his brain, "classes" equals "school" and he wouldn't then be a homeschooler. He has little idea that his homeschool friends have at-home curricula and structured enrichment programs.

I am fully confident that he knows that he needs to know at his age, and he's obviously happy and opinionated about his educational path. But recently D has expressed quite a bit of resentment about how they feel I just threw my hands up and "Jesus, take the wheel"ed their later school years (which isn't how it went on my end, but I know that intent isn't the same as impact, and I am very sorry and regretful that I didn't, I guess, push more forcefully... which was my bent as a mostly "authoritarian" parent at the time, and which seemed to be making our relationship worse... but I digress. I should also add that I'm fully confident that D can succeed in anything they want to do; but they are on very insecure footing because of how I conducted things). 

Also, I've been thinking a lot about how Mal is just quickly dismissive of trying things that he thinks sound "too involved" or of sticking with certain things. So James and I decided it would be a good idea for him to take something, anything, just A class next fall. Once a week is fine. And he freaked out when we told him. I brought up dance again, and he said, "I know how to dance!" I told him, "Sure, but there's something neat about learning specific steps, practicing them with friends, and then getting to perform a whole dance together." He was unconvinced. 

He's since told me that he'd cry every single day of his life once he was enrolled in a class, which sounds exhausting. He's said that he doesn't want to take any classes until driving school (which is ironic since D just practiced with James and me and otherwise was self-taught). He has asked me why I want to ruin his life.

However, recently he's taken an interest in, of all things, flags of the world.

I think it all started when he'd seen a YouTuber "rating" various countries' Emergency Management System alarms. That got him to look up the countries and see their respective flags. Now he has so many countries' flags memorized.

When we were Montreal, we saw flag shops everywhere.

We dropped into a little pizza shop on the McGill University campus, and it had a bunch of international flags hanging from the ceiling. Mal was able to name just about 70-75% of them. Then yesterday, we went to visit Nana and Pappy; they pulled up a video on YouTube where you try to guess what country a flag is from, and he was able to peg 37 of the 50!

So he has said that if I can find him a geography class, he's interested in that. He's very into continents, where countries are in relationship to each other and their continents, which countries are allies and which are enemies, and other things like that. Please keep your fingers crossed that we can find a robust elementary-aged geography class in the fall!

Also, just because I was curious, I bought a Brain Quest 2nd/3rd grade summer bridge activity book. D used to love Brain Quest books, and we did a lot of them (pretty much every one through 6th grade). Mal's completed the first section so far and he's actually enjoying it. I just call it his "activity book," and he has some of the same hang-ups D did ("Why can't I do it this way instead?" Doodling all over the place so it's hard to see what he actually did. Kid stuff), but he's able to do everything easily. Even things like commas and apostrophes, which, again, we've NEVER "studied" because we don't, he understands how to use them. We'll finish the book because he's having fun, and so am I. I did get to spend quite a bit more hands-on time with D as a kid because of our "doing school" a couple of hours a day.

All of that to say: The kid is all right. It's fine. I actually got him to go to an "open gym" by basically making him (I've asked all semester and he always said no, so I just did it), which he liked a lot. This week is the last session until fall, but that's another thing he can look forward to. 

Our summer is getting busy, already. Lots of activities, movies coming out, musicals, fun stuff. Hopefully it all involved a lot of a/c or a lot of water to get into, though!

Another cheap adventure with Mal

We're still about 2.5 months away from our big family vacation, and this past week, D was really having a hard time with noise. Meanwhile, of course, Mal is the source of all noise in the universe. 

We were already planning to attend free admission day at the Zilker Botanical Gardens today (Monday, Presidents' Day), and it turned out that I had a free night at a Wyndham Hotel. SO it seemed like a good time to get Mal out of the house for a bit, go to a hotel (which is his favorite thing in the world), and give D a good quiet 24 hours.

Sunday morning, we usually meet up with one of Mal's friends for them to play and have lunch at McDonald's, but his friend's grandmother is in town so instead, we went with James to his usual (except it was unusual, because we drove a ways and he usually stays pretty local) Sunday brunch.

We chose Garbo's Seafood ft. Maine lobster. 1) Maine lobster. 2) Small outdoor play area for kids. Everyone was happy, especially my belly.

We got one Cincinnati lobster roll, and one Main lobster roll. OMG.

Mal made a new friend, as usual, and they had us parents exchange phone numbers. Then James headed back home, and Mal and I set off for adventure.

Our first stop was the Tyler's outlet, which was having a huge sale. I was particularly looking for a pair of flip-flops to replace D's favorite shoes... they've had them for at least 8 years, and we bought them at Tyler's back when they had a storefront on The Drag and we could just walk over. Anyhoo, they didn't have the brand in stock Sunday. I figured I'd look for a cool tie-dyed "Keep Austin Weird" shirt for Mal, but he found another shirt he really wanted. It, of course, was not among the $5/$10 sale clothes, so we ended up getting a $5 t-shirt for me and a $20 t-shirt for Mal. Sigh.

Next on the agenda was to go play mini-golf at Peter Pan, which is Austin-famous. Unfortunately, on a holiday Sunday, it is PACKED, and we couldn't even turn in to its tiny parking area, much less actually park. We ended up skipping it and going down to South Congress to visit Big Top Candy Shop. That involved a lot of driving around trying to find 1) an available spot that 2) wasn't neighborhood-permitted parking.

I've been to South Congress on the weekend, but not in many years. It was packed. Once we got into the store, it was fun to look around. We both picked out a couple of things. But the sidewalk was just walls and walls of people. We were more than ready to check into our hotel at that point. We drove through a McDonald's because, of course, Mal hadn't eaten any lunch at the seafood place.

This is a weird stand-alone LaQuinta just off of Mopac, kind of in the middle of nowhere. I think I redeemed a free room there almost 3 years ago, after a few months of the pandemic "lock-down." We were going to visit my sister for the first time in months, and decided to sleep in a hotel the night before just because we were going stir crazy. 

After we got comfy and rested a bit, Mal was ready to go to Windmill Run Park, where we used to visit when we lived in the apartments in Oak Hill. Mal didn't remember it at all, but still liked it just as much as he used to.

We had a free pizza at Domino's, as well as a $3 "tip" from our last carry-out order. I used that to get a 2-liter beverage, so we had our dinner back at the hotel completely gratis!

We walked around a bit, defaced a poster that Mal got with his Happy Meal, and watched some TV before I fell asleep super early. Mal said he ended up going to bed about an hour earlier than usual, as well.

This morning, we had a free breakfast. Mal's "hotel breakfast" staple is Froot Loops. He also had a left-over slice of pizza. Then we checked out and went to the botanical gardens.

Zilker doesn't have any greenhouses, and it's just gone from being below freezing (last week) to over 80 degrees today, so there isn't much in bloom. But the grounds are pretty, and Mal really loved the Japanese garden. I did, too... especially the place where they had a bunch of native Texas trees pruned in the bonsai style. It was extremely beautiful and thought-provoking, even though most of the trees didn't have leaves.

We were going to play at Zilker Park for a few, but Mal said his legs were tired. So we drove around to the Austin Science and Nature Center. Admission there is always free (not just Presidents' Day!). Mal wasn't super enthusiastic about going -- "You lost me at 'science'." -- but he ended up having a good time. His favorites were playing with the small, smaller, and nano magnets; seeing the rescue birds and bobcat; and playing in the dino dig, which he took very seriously. He also was able to look into a microscope for the first time.

By then it was approaching noon and getting pretty warm. We were ready for the half-hour+ drive back home. The afternoon was pretty low-key. Back to our routine tomorrow, with our homeschool library/park meet-up. Then Mal is having a friend over to play after school lets out. 

Roots in the Time of the Pandemic

It's official: James put in paperwork to work from home for the foreseeable future. Of course, the question then is (as VRBO's ad campaign so poignantly puts it) when you can work/school from anywhere, why not make it somewhere you want to be?

First, we LOVE our home. We love the yard and the location. We dig the neighborhood, and the trade-offs for increased construction/density is a more diverse demographic of neighbors. When we first moved in, it was largely older white folks and now there are families of all stripes and a bit of melanin. So that's good. 

What we do not love is the heat. Pretty much four months of unmitigated heat, often paired with humidity... not Florida humidity, and not even Houston humidity, but still pretty damp grossness. And we know D is going to move away ASAP, but with the pandemic, who knows when that will be? Still, it'd be nice to be somewhat close by to... wherever that is.

We looked at Temple, where my parents live, because housing is so much more affordable there. We also looked at Wilmington, Delaware, because it's cooler than here and not likely to have a natural disaster, which is a plus. We'd just rent if we went there.

The thought of getting our house ready to sell and move is overwhelming, though, and we've put so much into it that we wouldn't get it all back out. 

But as I was thinking about it this weekend, I realized something: I've agreed to be on 3 committees that require my presence here, and I really hate to bail on that. So I guess we're hanging out for a while.

Further (Non)Adventures in Dentistry, and also Homeschooling

In case you're wondering, Mal has not lost his tooth yet. Nor has he gone to the dentist. It got loose enough that I canceled a tentative appointment I had scheduled for yesterday.

I have a friend who'd highly recommended her kids' dentist, saying that her older child is a lot like Mal, and that they managed to fill his cavities without his really even noticing. I looked them up, though, and they had a lot of 5-star reviews, and a fair number (maybe a third) of 1-star reviews. A couple of the 1-star reviews said things like, "The technician was taking x-rays and wanted my child to get her tongue out of the way, but wasn't explaining it in a way that a 6-year-old could understand. Instead, she got impatient and shoved her tongue out of the way. My daughter didn't say anything, but had silent tears pouring down her cheeks." Uh, hard pass for that one.

I found a closer dentist with all 5-star reviews, save one who was charged by his insurance more than he expected for an extraction, and I'll deal with surprise billings all day long over having my kid's trauma at the dentist's office magnified by personnel who don't deal well with children. The receptionist was extremely kind, and I'll take Mal in eventually. If I didn't think his tooth would fall out on its own, I would do it now. But the COVID waiver we had to sign, specifically noting how dentistry uses spray that creates more water droplets and therefore increases the risks, gave me pause about visiting for a non-emergent situation.

In other news, we've visited Lakewood Park a few times since we went to the grand opening. Mal told me yesterday that it's "my new favorite park!" We met a homeschool family there one of the days, and... Maybe it's just having been home for so long with just a simpatico family, but, man, people are a lot.

Since we've been social distancing (which has now been in excess of 6 months, for those of you reading this in the future who do not have the context that all of the present-day pandemic-weary readers have), there have been two times that I've just thought, "WHY. Why do I need to know people?" And the real reason for now is that I want Mal to have friends, and without my driving and organizing, that won't happen.

But in one case, a child's adult caregiver said something to me that was SUPER racist. I, of course, immediately pushed back on the idea, and in time this person acknowledged the mistake. But good grief! I know this person and cannot believe that's truly how they think. Or thought? Hopefully it's in the past now.

Then another time, it was with a newish friend Mal was making, and Mal was playing well with both the younger daughter and the son. At one point, he wanted to go into the girl's room, and she didn't want him to. He complained to me, and I said, "That's fine. Just play in his room." And the parent said, "You wouldn't want to play in there, anyway. It's just a bunch of girl toys." I noticed that the girl had a Peppa Pig camper van, which also has. 

Later, I overheard Mal say something like, "That makes you sound like a girl!" I remarked to the parent, "He will say things like that, and I'm always on him with, 'What does a girl "sound like"?'" Then the parent said, "Oh, I always show them girl and boy stuff because I don't want them to be... you know..." Now, I know what I thought might be coming, and it was not this: "Gay." I almost exploded laughing. I wanted to say, "That's not how it works!" or "You don't get to choose that!" But then I was immediately saddened because I realized that it would be very hard to have our children grow up together with such divergent views on gender roles and child autonomy.

Or maybe I'm just too emotionally spent to put out any further energy on dealing with people I don't have to deal with.

Which brings us back to the family we met with last week. 

They were very focused on academic achievement. VERY. The things that their objectively adorable and bright child said made it clear that excelling in this area is a badge of honor in their household. Also, the child mentioned to me that the parents do not allow one of Mal's favorite shows to be viewed in their home. Wheee. Fun.

Fortunately, these kids AND their moms get along just fine.

I definitely want to have a variety of friends who don't necessarily think exactly like I do or believe the same things I believe. But here are some things I have problems with: First off, excluding anyone out-of-hand isn't okay. And I don't want to talk negatively about others, especially in front of kids. Like, cool that the way you're doing things works for you and your child is thriving. We can talk about that. But I don't want to talk about how miserably the public schools are failing everyone, because they're a great choice for a lot of parents and kids. Public schools can be good, and private schools can be good, and homeschooling can be good. It's not a zero-sum game. 

Secondly, the way you school, and the way you eat, and the amount of hands-on/hands-off parenting you do, etc. is all great. I'm glad it's working for you! But I also don't want to judge other people or feel judged because I'd be nervous if my kid climbed up an open-air 40-foot structure that was not intended to be climbed, or because I brought soda instead of water, or because I do not care at all that my son just misspelled "egg" aloud. Whatever. I'm not going to look down on anyone because of what they're wearing, or what their hair looks like, or the fact that their elementary-aged child still doesn't know how to tie a shoe.

I don't assume that I have the parenting thing cornered, or the schooling thing cornered. But I know myself, and I know my kids, and I know what works best for us. It's true that I breastfed longer than "normal" and that my friend who decided that once her kids turned 4 that she was out of the butt-wiping game would be horrified to know how much help Mal still needs in the restroom. He also has, as you well know, some "issues." But he also refuses to "learn" how to brush his teeth. And it's not like we can just say, "Fine, then; we just won't do it." Because I'm concerned enough about dental decay and neglect that I'll brush his teeth until he's 8, if I have to. That's my choice because of our circumstances, and maybe that seems repellant to others (it would have to me 10 years ago, too!), but... we're all on our own journey, and I'm not going to look upon with disdain parents who are choosing to send their kids to school where they have to wear masks all day and be exposed to "noxious chemicals." We're all trying our best!

That's it. I just don't have patience to deal with creating arbitrary hierarchies where the choices I or a group of which I am a part are making happen to be at the top of that structure, with everyone else well below. And sometimes it takes several times of meeting and conversing for that to pop up, but sometimes it's just right there on the surface. Those are a lot easier.

To end on a positive note, I'm super grateful for two friends I have, one a parent and one not, who like to talk about ideas and about getting better and about being humane and gentle with each other.

Now I have to go because Mal wants to flip over me because the phrase "almost 50" means nothing to him. 

Some Observations from Social Distancing

Yeah, I know. We're all doing it. So let's compare notes, shall we? (Plus, when people view this blog in 20 years, it will all be very quaint and interesting to them, I'm sure.)

THINGS WE'RE DOING MORE OF

Laundry

Dishes

Losing money in the stock market

Talking to each other

Talking on the actual phone

Paying active attention to Mal*

Trying to find places to buy things we need

Staying up and sleeping later

Trying to find things for James to eat for breakfast/lunch

Going on walks

Eating on the front patio

Seeing neighbors walking by, driving by on golf carts, or and sitting or piddling in their front yards

THINGS WE'RE DOING LESS OF

Showering/bathing

Paying tolls

Travel planning

Much of ANY planning more than a couple of days into the future, actually

Spending money on leisure activities

Checking the stock market

Make-up (but only me; James is using the same amount of make-up as before)

THINGS THAT HAVEN'T REALLY CHANGED

Homeschooling

Cooking/baking

News consumption

Internet use/movie- and television-watching

Taking pictures

Also, everything kind of has a weird-feeling overlay, and the other day I used spray deodorant on my hair instead of dry shampoo. Could be worse.

I'm also doing some more intensive baking projects than I'm usually wont to do, like making homemade Oreos and gnocchi. That's been fun. There's nowhere we have to go in the middle of those things to interrupt the rhythm of the process.

As I've written this, I've seen three families walk by at 10:00 AM on a Wednesday. That's not "normal," but I really do like it! Hopefully this will lead to more families walking around the neighborhood and saying, "Hi."

*James pointed out that Mal is being a lot more affectionate with him since he's working from home.