Motivating School

Homeschooling six kids means I can't sit down with every single child for every single lesson each day. The kids get slighted because I rush to finish so I can get everything done, and I get NOTHING done for me or the house. Just school.

That's why I started looking for low-impact homeschooling systems early on.  It's easier for me to create the whole curriculum for each kid than to teach them one day at a time, one lesson at a time, myself. Especially since the kids refuse to sit and read a textbook (and I don't blame them).

So we finally got settled on a free, low-impact homeschool system.

Then the problem became getting the kids to do it. They are not particularly motivated to stop what they are doing to do what's on the list. I totally understand this. How many times have I preferred to sit writing my novel to getting up and folding laundry?

But school is not optional. (I guess laundry isn't really, either).

The problem is, I have an unschooler streak in me--I have a really hard time telling the kids, "Stop writing that song for your computer game you're designing. I need you to take another timed multiplication test." It's not that I think multiplication tests are worthless--I try not to put things on the kids' curricula that are worthless. It's that I can also see the immense value in kids pursuing their interests and developing their talents. (For the record, I have no problem saying, "Shut down that computer game and do school.")

So I was searching for motivators. They have no trouble whatsoever finishing and staying on task once they get started (I created really good, interesting, engaging "school" for them, so they don't have to get bored or learn that learning is dumb.). I just had to find a way to get them started.

I tried reasoning with them.  They understood, but it didn't motivate.

I tried threatening them ("School is mandatory by law, so if you don't do it here, I'll have to send you to public school!"). It didn't work. I don't think they believed the threats.

I tried getting them started with me doing it with them. They just walked away to let me do it alone.

I tried forcing them. They sat there, but they didn't engage. Clicking through pages with your brain turned off is a waste of time.

I tried making a rule: You have to do school first, before you start anything else, so you don't get distracted . Nice try.

So I tried bribing them. "If you finish all your lessons for the year, you get to pick a bag of candy at the store. and when you finish the math book, you get another bag of candy from the store."

They were excited about that, but it didn't motivate them.

I needed something more immediate. So I tried weekly bribes: If everyone does school every day, they can play nintendo on Saturday.

That sort of worked, but not enough. So we started daily small bribes.

That worked. Sort of.

The specific bribe was "If you finish school, you get to choose a single treat from the candy bin." (Like one small tootsie roll). That worked. For 2 weeks. Then they started putting it off until bedtime, which really messed up our sleep schedule even worse--I was constantly being forced to decide between the value of sleeping on time and the value of getting school done.

So I added a bribe. You can have a treat if you finish school AND you can have another treat if you finish before it gets dark outside.

That sort of worked.  But I was still having to harass, threaten, plead, beg, cajole, nag people to get doing school.  They just didn't remember until after the sun went down, and then they weren't motivated because they missed the reward.

So I added one more bribe: If you start school without me reminding you or telling you to, you get a treat. That's a total of three potential treats per day of school finished (and the kids can do extra "days" of school if they want) if they do it without being asked before the sun goes down.

This was magic. The kids get up and race to do school before I get a chance to remind them so they will get their three treats.

I hope it lasts!

Drit

I am a sucker for funny photos--always have been. The internet makes it easy to feed this addiction.

Usually I get a nice chuckle and then move on.

This one had me laughing out loud for DAYS.

If you must post a sign, pray you don't live near competing copy editors.....

New VoIP system

So I've liked VoIP phones and have been using them for years now. In fact, I haven't had a landline on a phone since Tim and I lived in Salt Lake City 10 years ago. We did cell phones exclusively for a couple of years and then shifted to VoIP when we moved to Colorado in 2004.

We used Vonage for a while and were really pleased with it. But I didn't want to keep paying $30 a month for phone service--as far as I could see, the point of VoIP was having a cheaper phone with free long distance. Cheaper being the key here.

When we moved to Vegas, I ditched the Vonage device and bought a Magic Jack because I could pay $70 for the device and 5 years of service.  The problem we ran into was that none of our computers were new and fast enough to really keep that Magic Jack going strong. The Magic Jack uses the computer, and it competes for resources with whatever is running, so if you don't have a computer dedicated solely to the Magic Jack, the call quality is pretty terrible. Even when we got it running on my laptop, the call quality was terrible. After a half hour call (and I make LONG calls when Tim goes out of town), the Magic Jack would turn me into a robot and drop every other syllable other people said. It also tried to block background noises, but would mute the whole phone whenever the kids squawked. And there was this annoying pop-up softphone that insisted on popping up over whatever I was working on whenever I called someone or they called me.  For a while, Magic Jack disabled my screensaver for me, and they wouldn't fix it when I complained--I guess enough people eventually complained because they stopped doing that after a couple of months.

Next to the terrible call quality, the biggest problem with the Magic Jack was we had to keep it plugged into my laptop all the time if we wanted the phone on. Which we did. It got bumped and tugged on by kids every day, and finally it just broke a year before the subscription ran out. What good is paying for 5 years of service if you can't get five years out of the device?!

I was going to buy a Nettalk Duo as a replacement--it's basically a magic jack that plugs into your router instead of your computer.  Otherwise, it seemed to be the same. And you could plug it into your computer if you wanted--like if you were travelling.  It costs about $70 for the device and first year, and then $30 a year after that.

While I was doing research on all that, though, I decided it would be nice if I could just plug a phone into my computer and use Google Voice as my phone.

And then I found Obihai. They released a new little device this year that is an Analog Telephone Adapter. It allows you to plug a phone into the internet and use Google Voice as your phone service. And, while the reviews of every other device I've ever looked at were mixed, this one had fantastic reviews. It was so well-reviewed that tech-heads bought 85,000 units the first few weeks it was released, and the company had to produce a whole bunch more than they anticipated needing.

And it was a pay-once device.

Since I'm partially into VoIP for the cheap phone, that appealed to me. There is one other pay-once device on the market that is widely used--the Ooma Telo--but it costs $200 and it's not really pay-once (you have to pay taxes and fees once a year). They say it pays for itself, but if I were using the Nettalk Duo, it would take me over 5 years for that to pay that much.

So when I found the Obi100, it immediately caught my eye. You really pay just once for the device, and then never anything again as long as it lasts and Google Voice stays free.  And it only cost me $44, not $200.  And it plugs into your router instead of your computer. And the voice quality was "comparable to Vonage." That was my list of requirements, right there--better voice quality, plugs into router, inexpensive for life.

So, with fantastic reviews and instructions that sounded easy from NerdVittles, I decided to try it.

Bought one from Amazon.com. It shipped free and arrived today. It was easy to set up (hardest part was finding the long ethernet cable so I could put it on the opposite side of the room from the router).  It's tiny (about the size of a deck of cards).

And the call quality is Fantastic. Better than Vonage. Better than a landline, if you can believe that. Better than any cell phone I've ever used.

I am very very pleased.

Apparently this little Obi100 device does a lot of things that I haven't delved into at all--you can call it from your cell phone and route calls through it, but talking on your cell phone, for example. Not being a cell phone user, I'm not sure why you'd want to do that, but you can. If you get the upgraded Obi110, you can also plug your landline into the device and connect all your phones--soft phone, Google Voice, cell phone, land line....again, I'm not telco talented and don't know why you'd need to do that. I just want to pick up the phone and talk to my siblings or husband. I want to be able to make doctors appointments for my kids, call the ladies I visit teach. You know--have a phone.

And I finally think I do! And, now that I paid for the device, the rest is free. For real. I never have to pay another phone bill ever again. Can't beat that.

The Spoon Theory

http://www.butyoudontlooksick.com/articles/written-by-christine/the-spoon-theory-written-by-christine-miserandino/

People with Fibro have different challenges, but we have to do this, too.

So do people with ADHD.

So do people with sleep disorders.

So do introverts.

It's worth considering.

Ah, the labels question:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/02/23/AR2007022301785.html?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter

"Fame is a drug"

"Always keep in mind the difference between passion and fame; wanting to be famous just to be famous is a sure sign that something is missing from your child’s inner emotional world. Fame for the sake of fame is a drug that quenches one's need to be seen, to be heard, and to be important. Make sure your children feel seen, feel heard, and feel important in their own home life." http://www.themortonreport.com/celebrity/notables/child-stars-if-its-not-one-thing-its-your-mother/

Or yours, I might add. Not just parents should be asking this. Every person who thinks they want to be famous should be asking.

Honestly, the more I learn about fame, the more I see it as a curse. Why would anyone want that?!

Greek Yogurt

Since Greek Yogurt was on sale this week, I thought I'd buy several varieties and see what they were like.

It was astonishing the variety of products that are called "Greek Yogurt."

Some companies (Oikos by Dannon, Lucerne) seem to think that regular yogurt plus a little extra protein equals Greek Yogurt.  Not so.

Yoplait made a great Greek Yogurt--except the strawberry flavor was so hideously awful that I actually emailed the company with a complaint, which I almost never do. It was inedible. But the blueberry was great so....just don't buy strawberry?

FAGE was, hands down, the best Greek Yogurt out there.

So here's the kicker. I realized much much after the fact that there are two products on the market out there. Greek Yogurt, which is actually just thickened regular yogurt, often with cornstarch or powdered milk, isn't really that good. It's also high in sugar and carbs still, and is usually nonfat and tastes nonfat (and you know how I feel about nonfat yogurt--waste of space!).   This is not "Real" Greek Yogurt.

The other product is Strained Greek Yogurt, which is lower in sugar, lower in carbs, higher in protein, and still thick but without the help of thickeners. This is a whole different product than the thickened "Greek" Yogurt.

Really, the FDA should regulate the name "Greek Yogurt" to mean a single product like they do with everything else. In the meantime, read the labels. If it doesn't say "Strained" or if it does have cornstarch, pectin, or gelatin in the ingredients, don't be fooled. It's just regular yogurt. And they put so little thickener in it that once you stir it, it's just the same as other yogurt, but with fewer artificial colors and fewer preservatives (but still some).

The other thing I discovered in the process of all the taste-testing is that the fat content does matter, no matter how much the yogurt makers claim it doesn't. In fact, the cream top yogurts, unstrained but made from whole milk, are actually creamier and more satisfying a treat than the fake Greek Yogurts.

Also, I discovered that I really really prefer the fruit on the bottom yogurts--and then I just eat the yogurt part and throw the fruit part away. The subtle flavors are so much nicer.

Also discovered that plain Greek Yogurt, with a little sugar or honey added at home, is way better than the pre-flavored stuff. Although you have to beware. Some companies add sugar to their plain yogurts!

Potassium, the wonder-drug

I took potassium the other day. I have hesitated because when I talked to my doctor, she said she puts people into the hospital on a regular, almost weekly, basis for potassium overdose.  It is necessary for proper nerve function, but is also deadly if taken in high enough doses, especially if you have heart disease.

You can see why I stalled.

But the other day I was frustrated, frazzled, and angry. I had eaten sugar, and that almost always leads me to lose my mind and my temper (even though I love sugar).  I didn't want to yell at my kids because I had made a poor dietary choice, so I just took 2 potassium pills. Just two. Some people take up to six at a time.

Within ten minutes, an amazing thing happened.

Hard to describe, though.

It was like I had been able to see the light bouncing off in all directions, and suddenly I couldn't.  Like my senses were in overdrive, and they suddenly calmed down.  Like the world was a movie that had gone from being cut together from film taken at different angles into being shot with a single shot on a steady camera.

All my life, I've seen shadows skittering around in my peripheral view, like I just missed a mouse running by. All my life, every time I've closed my eyes, I could still see, etched inside my eyelids, the entire scene I'd just been looking at, rendered in light; and when my eyes were open, I see visual echoes of the thing I was just looking at when I look elsewhere. It makes for a lot of subtle, visual "noise" all the time all around.  It's really difficult to describe--almost like I can't see the light bouncing off the objects in all directions, but my eyes are aware of it anyway. Actively aware, not just passively.

When I eat sugar or breads (carbs), it gets much worse. MUCH worse.

And I became aware of it when I took the potassium because it went away. Just like if you always had listened to music on a record player, you wouldn't be aware of the scratches and residual noises that were playing along with the music--that record-player noise of needle on vinyl--until you heard the music on a CD. Suddenly, you'd be aware of the extra sounds. That's how it was for me when I took the potassium. Suddenly I was aware of visual and auditory "noise" that had been there all my life, so I didn't know it was abnormal. (I mean, really, who ever questions how you SEE the world and if that's normal?). I imagine the tactile senses were all calmed down, too, but I was so amazed at the visual sensations--that the world could be so calm and visually quiet--that I didn't bother to notice anything else.

It's so much easier to think when your brain isn't trying to process a million extra stimuli all the time. And that's without changing the children at all--they were still going everywhere, running and playing.

This is the third instance I've discovered that Potassium helped me. The first was when I needed moles removed, and the novicaine worked for once--after I took potassium. The second was when I discovered that exercising doesn't have to shut your brain off so you can't learn anything, and that it can be pleasurable--after I took potassium.  And now this.

I think that makes it fairly definitive. I have hypokalemic sensory overstimulation--a rare, hereditary metabolic disorder that, under certain conditions, causes your cells to suck up all the available potassium, so you're running at a severe deficit. The result is your nerves and senses all go into overdrive, sending way too much information to your brain. In practical terms, this means you cannot learn, you get grouchy and flustered, you're easily overwhelmed. Sometimes you experience temporary partial paralysis (my hand stops working for about 3-5 minutes), but this is a better-known disability called hypokalemic partial paralysis. Oh, yeah--novicaine doesn't work.

What are the triggers?

Sugar. Big time. In fact, my dad and I both find we just "need" a milkshake before bed--perhaps to shut our brains down on purpose so we can sleep?

Salt, apparently. I need to pay attention to this one in my life, but I have found I don't seek out salty foods (I never crave potato chips, for example, and never add extra salt to french fries), and I consistently add too little salt to food I cook.

Exercise, especially interrupted exercise (like jogging and then having to stop to wait for a light to change; or dance classes, where you dance and then stop for instructions and then dance again). I've found over the years that I love dance, love dance classes, and half way through every dance class my brain shuts off and I cannot any longer comprehend what the teacher is asking me to do or how to do the dances, suddenly I'm clumsy and flustered and emotional and I usually walk out because I can't function any more because I'm overwhelmed, angry, and my usually agile brain is just gone. (Potassium cures this!).

Obviously, because of the dangers, I wouldn't advocate trying potassium supplements on everyone. Luckily, there's a test for the disorder--if you go to the dentist, and the novicaine works on you, you don't need extra potassium. If the novicaine NEVER works, you might try it and see what happens. Unless you have heart disease. I mean, seriously--keep your doctor in the loop on this one.

But it is worth looking into--the disorder mimics ADHD, and apparently some people who have been diagnosed with ADHD but don't respond well to the medications benefit from Potassium supplementation. My dad, who has ADD, says potassium taken in conjunction with his ritalin clears his brain right up. And my son who always hated exercising (because it always made him angry or made him cry about half way through) likes it just fine if he's had potassium first.

Worth looking into.

Because who doesn't like a cheap, easy fix for what ails them?

Nathanael says,

I was getting Nathanael a bowl of cereal and turned around to find him lying on the floor in the kitchen eating a doughnut.

"Nathe, your cereal is ready to eat here at the table," I said.

He replied, "Yes, but my doughnut is ready to eat here on the floor."

Solar Power

Solar power was the big "cool new thing" in the 80s and 90s. But it never really caught on. Why? There isn't a reliable way to store the energy and then transmit it through the "grid" to homes.

And why didn't it occur to anyone to just eliminate the grid?

It occurred to this guy:
http://www.nokero.com/products/p101-solar-power-panel

That's a link to a solar-powered phone charger. That costs less than $30.

And here's the solar-powered lightbulb: http://www.nokero.com/products/n100

Nice idea, right?

These aren't perfect. You have to charge them outside, for one. And they are designed to be brighter than candles, but they aren't terribly bright. They don't last all night--only 6 hours.

But still, it's certainly looking in the right direction. It would be a fantastic camping supply, addition to your emergency kit, etc.  And it's also a fantastic starting point, if people will take it. Can they develop more efficient solar panels? Brighter LEDs? What if we all shifted from a local energy grid to a home energy grid, where each house was solar-charged for everything? Could they develop a system that can do that? We could still use the local, traditional grid as backup, of course. Instead of mass-market energy production, we'd be shifting to a make-it-and-use-it-on-site kind of system, and that makes a lot of sense to me.

I would be delighted to install lights in a nice row, embedded through the top of the wall of my house, with the solar panels outside and the bulbs inside, so they passively charge all day and automatically light the rooms all night (until we turn them off, of course). We have a solar light we got for a dollar at the dollar store that charges all day and then lights the front walk (or the car when we travel at night so the kids aren't scared) with a single, reflected LED. Surely you could make a giant one of those and embed it in the wall. And the parts are cheap, right? So I could, theoretically, light my whole house that way, right? It would require a paradigm shift (and a shift in our interior design ideals), but not a very big one. Goodness, with my flat roof, I could install them all over the ceiling, with the solar panels on the roof, and have light all summer (the snow would be a problem in the winter, though....).

Anda said the other day, "Why don't we use the heat that naturally hits the house all summer as the energy source for cooling the house?" Instead of electricity, she was thinking. In sunny places, like Vegas, that makes a lot of sense. She said she would get to work on developing the technology, and we talked about the list of things she needs to learn in order to get started.

The whole concept makes sense to me: there is energy all around us in nature, but it's unreasonable to try to collect it for mass consumption. But is it unreasonable to collect it for individual consumption? Could we harness the kinetic energy of falling raindrops, for example, with thousands of tiny water wheels, to power a generator or battery? Can we capture the heat and light? Can each house have its own windmill, powering what it needs (instead of the behemoths that terrify the livestock and end up being less effective than everyone hoped?).

Perhaps the key, as Anda noticed, is for the energy that surrounds the house to JUST power this house.

I know I'm not the only person who has entertained ideas like this before--Tim mentioned it almost a year ago after reading something somewhere.

I'm just wondering why nobody is working on it publicly?

At the very least, I'm going to be saving my pennies to get the $15-$20 bulb to put in our emergency supplies. That's pretty inexpensive for a really valuable thing to have in an emergency.

Still thinking about beauty

Suppose, for a minute, that what we say all the time is really true: that God grants us everything--all our time, our talents, our bodies, everything we have (including our money).

Doesn't it make sense, then, that He might want an accounting of what we did with the gifts He gave us?

I can imagine sitting down with God and having to report (since you can't lie to Him): "Well, I didn't like the body you gave me, so I spent a lot of my money and time modifying that body to make it look a way that would get me a lot of worldly attention."

I think I would be embarrassed to say that.

God: "What did you do with that extra $5000 I blessed you with? Helped a poor man go on a mission? Helped pay for a temple in a remote place so families could be together forever? Got a father some education so he could support his small family? Saved for a mission in your retirement? Built up your food storage? Paid off your house? Helped a family keep their home? Went to school yourself? Developed your talents? Made a great artwork?"
His daughter: "Uh, no. I got a boob job. The ones you gave me weren't big enough."

God gave us life to experience--as a gift. And our culture lately seems anxious to skip experiencing the childhood part, and then the teenage part, in order to get to the adult part as quick as possible. And then, when we get there, we miss experiencing the adult part because we're too anxious trying to reclaim the parts we skipped--including by doing everything in our power to refuse to grow older (or at least refuse to look like we did).

Do I really want my children and grandchildren to get up at my funeral and say, "Well, she had great breasts when she was 40" or "You know, I can't think of anything lasting my mother accomplished, but she looked young and thin until the day she died, and you should have seen how thick her eyelashes were!"

Is anyone remembered from generation to generation because they looked 30 when they were 65?

Nope.

Most of the people we revere, or even remember, are people who did great things for other people, people who had developed their talents, people who sacrificed, people who taught us wonderful things that have made us happy (and never have I heard someone say, "Oh, I will never forget my beehive teacher. She taught me how to put eyeliner on to make that cat-eye look."). Do we remember (or even CARE about) their bra size, makeup, skinny thighs, or the shape of their rear end or lips?

Nope.

What a waste of the chance to experience life. We're missing it. Blink and it's gone, and then what do you have? Silicon implants that will even be there after the rest of your body decomposes. And I don't think that counts as immortality.

Did I just read that--again?

From a different paper, a worse version of the same sentence:

"SALT LAKE CITY — When 10-year-old Anna Palmer was killed in September 1998, it seemed as if one minute she was alive and the next she wasn't." http://www.deseretnews.com/article/705389131/Mother-of-murdered-10-year-old-finally-feels-some-peace.html

It seemed that way because it WAS that way. Surprise!

Did I just read that?

"SALT LAKE CITY — When 10-year-old Anna Palmer was killed in September of 1998, it was like one minute she was alive and the next she wasn't." http://www.ksl.com/?nid=960&sid=16780570

Yes, well, that is what death is. One minute you're alive, and the next you aren't. Happens to everyone.

This makes me want to be a feminist

https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.193230777374742.45179.193209467376873

You need to go look at these pictures. No facebook account required.

These women have collected images of women before and after they were published--and clearly showing photoshopping.  The image we see of women all around us is FAKE. It's as fake as cartoon drawings.  And women all around us are going to great lengths and spending a lot of money trying to look like these "people" who don't even look like themselves! Or even like real women.

While I am adamantly opposed to that variety of "feminism" that claims women only have value if they act like men (and run from motherhood, sensitivity, femininity, and woman-ness in general), I am a staunch defender of women's right to be WOMEN. Not men. Not feminists with their mixed-up, contentious, self-serving ideals.

And that includes our right to be shaped like women.  Real women.  Women who have better things to do with ourselves and our resources than spend hours and hours and hundreds of dollars trying to look like photoshopped "ideals" that are naturally unattainable (and, really, undesirable).

(Personally, I think the feminists emphasis on sexual liberation has led, in part, to these phony "ideals").

Regardless of why this happened, I am scared to let my daughter see any of the modern media, with its emphasis on immodesty, selfishness, aggression, violence, sexuality, and unnatural body shapes and colors--and that's all just in women. It's as if we all aspire to be porn stars, and want our daughters to grow up to be that, and think it's great that men want that, even if it means they will never value women as equals.

What a gross, distorted world we live in.

Did I just read that?

"Siblings run from South ends in Colorado crash"  http://www.ksl.com/?nid=157&sid=16670791

Honestly, at first I could make neither head nor tail of this! The crash scared the crap out of them? Literally?

Nathanael says, "

Me: "Sunday, Monday..."
Nathanael, surprising me: "Tuesday!"
Me, now testing him: "Yes! Monday, Tuesday....."
Nathanael: "Innsday!"
Me: "Great! What comes after Wednesday?"
Nathanael: "The sun goes down."

Did I just read that?

Adult at age 2? I wonder if they would require you to be potty trained before you vote? Or get a drivers license?

Christmas Wish List

Right after Nathanael was born, I had a horrible night with no sleep, cried all day the next day, and can't remember a worse day in my entire life. That night, Tim was scheduled to perform at an open mic night. Normally, when I'm a wreck, open mic nights can be skipped, but Tim felt strongly he should go to that one.

So off he went, me in tears with five kids, including a newborn.

He came back later and said only 3 people were there in the audience: the lady who organized the event, the guy who was going to sing next, and a guy who was new to Vegas and just checking out the music scene.  This guy liked Tim's music a lot.

And he happened to be a honest-to-goodness big time recording engineer and producer, just relocating his studios from Boston to Vegas.

He and Tim got to be friends. They met a couple times just to hang out after that. He gave Tim some advice that completely changed the direction of Tim's music career--in a good way.

And then we moved.

A year later, I emailed the man to thank him for his advice, and sent him a few of Tim's new tracks to listen to.  He loved them and said he would like to work with Tim.

Tim wasn't ready for that yet, though, even though I thought he was. His ideas for his music were developed, but they were still maturing (of course, I didn't know that).

So now, a year later, Tim's music has matured, his recording knowledge had grown immensely, and he is ready to put his music out there.

So I thought for Christmas I'd get him some time with his producer friend down in Vegas to record an honest-to-goodness demo that we could possibly use to move Tim out of the regional market and into a national market for his music.

I contacted his friend with questions--how far out do we have to schedule? How much time does it take per song, given that Tim has to record vocals for the leads and possible backgrounds, percussions, etc, all himself? I sent him a couple of Tim's new tracks as a sample, so he'd know what I was talking about.

He loved the songs. He really likes Tim's work. (It's always nice to hear that!--we're so close to it and have heard everything so many times that we sometimes lose track of where we're at).

So now I'm searching out ways to save the money, now that I know how much I need.

Given that we still need to get a big van (or get my parent's van registered and find seats for it), pay mortgage and bills, etc., I'm not sure I can save the money by Christmas. I'm guessing this is going to be on the "someday Christmas Wish List" instead of the "Surprise, honey!" list. But I hope some day isn't so far out!

Did I just read that?

"I’ve been warning about this trend for a long time, noting, for instance, that clothing companies like Abercrombie and Fitch were selling padded bikini bras for 8-year-olds (without any boycott of their stores), that Spanish toymaker Berjuan is selling a doll to little girls that encourages them to breastfeed (while wearing a vest that has flowers instead of erect nipples) and that fashion house Juicy Couture has no problem finding parents who’ll buy their little girls tight velour sweat suits with the word Juicy emblazoned across their bottoms."
Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/health/2011/08/05/vogue-magazine-creates-pedophiles/#ixzz1UCGPiMXi

I have no problem being offended by the sexualization of little girls.

I have a HUGE problem with the sexualization of nursing. This man has issues that go far far beyond little girls wearing heels.

Did I just read that?

"The French edition of Vogue is rightly under fire for publishing a series of photos of Thylane Lena-Rose Loubry-Blondeau, a 10-year-old who appears in heavy makeup and a plunging neckline exposing her nonexistent cleavage and stiletto heels."
Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/health/2011/08/05/vogue-magazine-creates-pedophiles/#ixzz1UCFkqhzX

Either that's a really low neckline, or she wears her stiletto heels on her navel.

Hmmmm.

Turns out I grew up to be a homeschool geek. Who would have guessed?

Is there a Masters degree for that?

Homeschoolers online

My brother connected me to a bunch of homeschooling people on Google +, and they connected me to even more, and I'm really enjoying reading what they all talk about, what they do, how they named their homeschools (ours is "Starlight Academy"), what they do for a "school is starting" party to help their kids not feel left out when all the other kids are starting school for the year, etc.

I've also been interested to find some threads running through the discussions. Like:
    Homeschoolers who have to deal with school districts find the public employees are condescending, ill-informed about homeschooling, resentful, distrustful, and meddling. (My own experience bears this up. There is a lot of prejudice out there--one school district employee told me most homeschoolers do it for free babysitting all day and little education actually happens; I read online a Kindergarten teacher questioning the validity of homeschooling done without a "printed curriculum". As if the schools and their printed curricula are doing such a great job! And what is public schooling but the ultimate free babysitting service?)
    There is a real fear out there of being noticed because so many states try to take custody of your children if you homeschool--or at least that's what homeschoolers hear and are afraid of.
    Many many many religious homeschoolers assume ALL homeschoolers are religious. Or at least tolerant of religion being a factor in the education. (And while there are many secular homeschoolers, they are right about the latter--tolerance is much higher among homeschoolers than among the general population.).
     Homeschooling moms tend to be educated, curious, bright, stubborn, creative, determined.
     Many families were driven to homeschooling by very very bad school experiences. This is not an isolated every-once-in-a-while phenomenon. It's very common.
    Unschoolers are both passionate about their way of life and very defensive about it--even among each other, they spend time defending themselves. They also work harder than other homeschooling parents because they are always the teacher, always in the classroom, always on the spot.
      Homeschoolers tend to be hungry for resources (especially free ones), but not always sure where to find them. (That's where I come in).

I've also learned some things about myself. Like,
     I'm really good at finding resources for people. And I know a lot more than I thought I did about what's out there for homeschoolers.
     I actually have an educational philosophy! Who knew? I realized I believe in doing a split day--half unschooling, child-led project-based learning, half "generals".  Why both? I can completely see value in the unschooling way of educating. It allows the children to discover and develop talents, it teaches them the very valuable skill of educating themselves, it helps curiosity grow and develop instead of squalching it. It also frees children to pursue the things that interest them, that they feel passionate about, that they love, and teaches them that their interests, talents, and questions are valuable and valid.  So why not this exclusively?

Because I truly believe that there is a body of knowledge in the world that every person should have exposure to and that you will not cover completely if you don't even know the questions to ask. Unschoolers would counter that one thing leads to another and you eventually cover everything. That might be. But I want to be sure my kids know just a little (compared to experts, not compared to other elementary school kids) about things they might not know to ask about, like art, or chemistry, or music, or handwriting, or psychology. I want them to try dance, to learn to cook, to have experienced the great literature and art out there, to hear the myths and legends that shaped the art in our world, to know about science, at least a little, so they can understand the world around them. Because, quite frankly, some of us never do wonder how leaves make food for plants, but it's still good to know.

Interacting with the world efficiently requires that you know (or at least have heard of) certain things--how maps work, for example. Or that blood circulates. What the constitution says. What our rights are citizens are.

Life is not all about me and my talents and interests. It's also about how I fit into the greater world, and about other people's talents and interests. It's about building an effective community, learning to understand other people's ideas, becoming a good citizen. And some families can accomplish that with unschooling. I guess it's just the teacher in me, but I like to streamline the process and make sure we've covered what I think children should know.

Also, (again the teacher in me comes out), I want the learning to be efficient. I want it to proceed from one thing to another in a reasonable fashion (not haphazardly with pieces missing like when I try to unschool). I want to be able to show the kids the interconnectedness of knowledge, to suggest things they've never even thought of.

Unschoolers who are devoted to the lifestyle can do all these things, I'm sure. I'm just, in my soul, a teacher and curriculum designer. So I enjoy not only unschooling. And (go figure) my kids enjoy having "lessons," too. They like discovering new ideas and new things. They actually stand around my chair at least once a week and beg me to tell them more interesting things, to teach them and talk to them even more. Left to completely unschooling, Anda would never learn history, and Caleb would spend all day programming computers and never get the broader cultural context he'd need to make them really appealing to people. And neither of them would ever learn a stitch of math, even though both are going to have to take it in college to accomplish the goals they've set for themselves.

So we do both. Trying to get the best of both worlds.

Sure am enjoying interacting the the homeschoolers.

Curious about sugar again

I discovered that, while most Greek Yogurt has little to no sugar, Yoplait Greek Yogurt has a LOT of sugar. Even the plain yogurt, which should be sugar-free, had a lot of sugar in it. Also, it's not strained. So I think it can hardly lay claim to being Greek Yogurt. It's just thicker normal yogurt, as far as I can tell. Probably added more gelatin. That's my guess. Anyway....

That made me curious how a cup of yogurt ("healthy") compares to a snickerdoodle on sugar content. (Obviously, the sugar cookie isn't going to have calcium in it, but if you read the yogurt cup, there isn't much else healthy in there to recommend it. Just calcium; if you have Greek yogurt you also get protein, phosphorus, and vitamin A.).

So I did a little math:

2 c of sugar per batch of snickerdoodles. One batch makes about 5 dozen cookies. One cup of sugar has 48 teaspoons in it. 2 cups times 48 tsp divided by 60 cookies gives you 1.6 teaspoons of sugar per cookie. Kind of a lot. But yogurt is measured in grams. So I looked that up--4.2 grams (or so) in one teaspoon of sugar. That means one cookie has 6.72 grams of sugar. And one cup of PLAIN Yoplait Greek Yogurt has 9 grams of sugar--more than one cookie. And the strawberry Greek yogurt has 20 g of sugar--3 1/2 cookies.

Hmmm. That puts things in perspective, doesn't it?

Did I just read that?

This is an interesting sentence that would be hard to construct on purpose (but is magnificent accidentally). It can be read so that either of the events came first, depending on how you place the emphasis:

"They were attending a political youth retreat on a resort island when an anti-immigrant extremist opened fire, soon after setting off a bomb in the nearby capital, Oslo." http://www.ksl.com/?nid=235&sid=16591002

Did I just read that?

"Wyoming Paleontology Dispatch #3: How to date a fossil" http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/Wyoming-Paleontology-Dispatch-3-How-to-date-a-fossil.html

I guess dinner and a movie are out?

Did I just read that?

""We can't dictate how someone choses to drive behind a vehicle, but there are certainly things that we have done, and that we're willing to do, to make that area as safe as possible," said Nicole Martin, spokeswoman for Herriman City."http://www.ksl.com/?nid=148&sid=16558579

Most of us drive INSIDE a vehicle, not behind it. But hey, to each his own, right?

Did I just read that?

"In June 2008, an 8-month-old was injured when the baby's stroller was hit by a bullet bike. Dylan Stroud, 3 years old at the time, suffered a broken leg."  http://www.ksl.com/?nid=148&sid=16558579

Apparently, getting hit by a bullet bike makes you grow up really fast.

Why I'm not jealous of Obama today

If a bill gets passed by Congress, and Obama vetoes it, the default is his fault.

If a bill gets passed by Congress, and he signs it, he caved.

By his overly strong stand and absolute refusal to negotiate, compromise, or even listen (again), he set himself up for failure no matter what happens.

Makes me glad I'm not in his shoes. Again.

Kazoo Success!

I already chronicled the tries and fails.

Here's the success:

White chocolate clay, custom-made with my own tweaked recipe (6 oz white almond bark/candy quik/candy  melt, melted, plus 1 tbsp corn syrup), tinted with gel food coloring.

PLUS

Mold of a kazoo made by melting 3/4 bag chocolate chips and pouring them into a tray made from aluminum foil. Then I marked the center line on a kazoo, greased the thing, and pressed it into the chocolate. Into the fridge to set up, pry the kazoo out, and we have a perfect mold. It works even better when it's frozen.

So I use a paint brush to dust the mold with cornstarch. Then I knead a small ball of chocolate clay, flatten it, dust it with corn starch, too, and press it into the mold. If the mold is frozen, the clay is ready to pull out immediately. I have to make the kazoo in two halves. While one is stiffening in the fridge (so it won't lose its shape when I press them together), I make the other. Then I press the warm fresh side onto the cold side and smooth them together.

Voila!

An edible kazoo that looks like real plastic and can be eaten quickly on camera.

Also, they taste really good.

Interesting side note: You can make the chocolate clay and flavor it with Kool-aid powder, but it causes the fat to separate from the chocolate all by itself. Bonus points (and maybe a chocolate kazoo, but if you're out of Colorado, you'll have to wait for cooler weather before I can ship it to you) to the person who can tell me the chemistry behind this!

Chocolate Clay Recipe

14 oz candy melt (like candy quik or almond bark)
1/3 c light corn syrup or sweetened condensed milk

Melt the candy melt, stir in the corn syrup. There you have it.

The texture is improved with letting it sit overnight before you sculpt with it, though.

Really, any amount of corn syrup/sc milk stirred into the chocolate will make it have a playdough texture.

We did 1 bag of chocolate chips plus 5 tablespoons corn syrup, and that worked.

Also did 7 oz candy melt plus 6 tbsp corn syrup, and that worked too.

Makes into perfect tootsie rolls!

The Kazoo Chronicles

I've been married to Tim for long enough now that I didn't find it odd at all when he emailed me from the studio and said, "I need an edible kazoo."

It wasn't until several hours later that I thought, "Most men ask their wives for cookies. Or a loaf of bread. Mine asks for an edible kazoo."

So there was a little talk, a little "what is this going to be used for? Does it have to be playable?" kind of discussion, and I got the requirements:

Has to look like a real plastic kazoo.
Has to be able to be eaten quickly on camera.
Why? To be funny.

So I set to work.

First order of business--a real kazoo I could experiment with. This was easy to find--Tim has a drawer full of kazoos. I found one that lost its zzzz. I usually fix the ones that temporarily lose their zzzz--but this was broken beyond repair. So I adopted it.

Second, I needed a mold. And it needed to be made of things I had on hand, and it needed to be non-toxic (or at least leave no toxic residue). And, since my first thought was a lollipop kazoo, it needed to be able to withstand high temperatures.

My solution: Frosting. I made a batch of royal icing (the kind that is used as icing glue for gingerbread houses) and added enough powdered sugar that it turned into a nice dough. Pressed the kazoo into it and let it sit to harden.

It didn't harden.

So I froze it.

I realized I couldn't have standard lollipop concoction because it needed to not be see-through (or it wouldn't look like kazoo plastic), so I made a batch of lollipop sugar but melted a bunch of butterscotch candies in it. That worked. I dusted the cold mold with powdered sugar and poured in the hot candy, swirling it around up the edges, and then dumped out the excess, leaving a nice, half-kazoo-shaped shell. Then I let that set up.

It stuck to the frosting. Not a problem--I pulled it off. But it didn't come all the way off, even after I washed it.  It also didn't hold its shape well, so it was too narrow to be a real kazoo. It was still see-through (didn't look like plastic!) and the parts that weren't stuck over with frosting were shiny and looked like orange glass. Parts were too thick to bite through, parts were sharp when they broke, so it wasn't something you could eat quickly on camera. Plus, it stuck your teeth together.

Kazoo fail.

Made a batch of marshmallow fondant--too soft and drapey to look like a hard plastic kazoo. That will have to go on Caleb's birthday cake, I guess.

So I made a new mold out of tin foil. Looked good enough. This time, I made a new batch of icing, dyed it green with food coloring, and put it into plastic bags. Then I squirted it into the mold in a nice thin layer and set it aside to dry overnight. The exposed surface dried. The stuff underneath didn't. And it stuck hard to the foil.

Kazoo fail.

More internet searching and I went back to the kitchen and filled a small dish with cornstarch and pressed the kazoo into that. It was a nice idea--but a kazoo is too big to make a good cornstarch mold. Still, it looked decent, so I poured hot candy melt into it. The half-kazoo that came out didn't have a nice smooth texture, and the shape wasn't pristine. But it did take a painted-on coating of food coloring pretty well. Didn't look quite real.

Kazoo fail. Daniel ate that one (because candy melt is YUMMY). And the kids had a glorious time experimenting with cornstarch in the bathroom.

More searching, and I came across a recipe for chocolate clay, made from candy melt so it was white.

So I took out the other half-kazoo mold made from royal icing dough (it had been sitting in the freezer all this time), and I dusted it with cornstarch and pressed the chocolate clay into it. Let it set up for a few minutes, and pulled out a decent model of a kazoo. And then everyone devoured the extra chocolate clay because it tasted SO good. It also had the right "eat"--could be devoured quickly on camera, with a texture exactly like fresh tootsie rolls (in fact, I made a second batch from milk chocolate chips, and it tasted exactly like tootsie rolls, too).

So I found my material. But when I painted it with food coloring, it didn't take the coloring evenly.

So I made a new batch, mixing the coloring into the corn syrup in the recipe, but it ruined the texture of the chocolate clay.

New batch, split in two parts. One colored with gel coloring--worked great. One colored with orange Kool-aid powder. That was interesting. In the candy melt, it just looked lightly pink. But when I added the corn syrup and stirred, it blossomed into a nice orange color! Very cool. Anyway, that tasted good, too.

So I realized I needed a better mold for my kazoo.

And that's as far as we've gotten. Right now, I have a kazoo sitting in a pan of chocolate in the kitchen--we're going to try to make the mold out of chocolate (since I always work on this at midnight and can't just go buy plasticene, which is what I hear you're supposed to use, at midnight).  If that works, I'll press chocolate clay into the mold and we'll have a white chocolate kazoo, dyed blue with gel food coloring, that will look plastic and eat well.

If that doesn't work, we have had suggested to us to carve one out of a giant carrot and to try making one from fruit roll ups. So those are the next tries.

Can't wait to see what Tim has in mind to DO with an edible kazoo.

baby habits

Babies have this lovely habit of mouthing anything that becomes interesting. This generally involves lots of drool.

Elijah is a baby.

He recently became interested in my teeth.

Um...yuck?

I am learning to dodge. Quickly.

Things I Heard Today:

"Mom, are you making Rockamole?" (Benji)

Ah, cute!

"Mom! Lathie is playing with honey in the floor!" (Benji)

Ah, crap.

Fortunately, it wasn't honey after all.

Unfortunately, it was corn syrup. But only half a bottle.

Good thing we have wood floors. And a spatula. And a wet towel.

Phew. Hope I never hear that one again!

Did I just read that?

Really Really Fuzzy math on Rebecca Black's new video (http://youtu.be/6wB0y-0NIVE):

There are lots of other things I could say about that  video (including "stylist?" and "is there a girl under that makeup?" and "autotune?" and Why do young teens always pick such self-centered videos?). But we'll leave it at that: 8690+2241=302

Sorry not doing much here lately.....

I'm not posting much here lately. Sorry about that.

I'm neck-deep in links right now, trying to tease out a new-and-improved Kindergarten curriculum for Learning Lynx Classroom (https://sites.google.com/site/learninglynxclassroom/home). I'm also starting research to do a PE program on there--one of the things that are more difficult for homeschoolers to do at home because PE programs are all designed for group sports. Homeschooling families tend to  be larger than average, but with so many different ages of kids, sports are still really difficult to do on a daily basis at home. So I'm doing research on that. So far, I have the Presidential Fitness challenge, dance, challenge activities, and a few websites of family fun games/activities on my radar. We'll see how it comes out.

I've also started working on my novel again. Gotta get that one done and out of my sight! I can't just keep rewriting the first chapter forever. At some point I have to call it good enough and move on! (And yes, I did a complete rewrite on it yet again. I think I've redone (complete re-do from scratch) the first chapter at least a dozen times, but the whole book only once).

And I have a 20 lb baby who doesn't like to be put down. And he wiggles a lot and wants me to help him be involved in what the other kids are doing. So there is that.

Caleb Created a Web Site

https://sites.google.com/site/isodecomic/home

He's been writing a sprite comic on and off for a few years now, and the site he was hosting it on went to inactive status. Old stuff is still there, but no new stuff.

So he created a website to host his sprite comic, and he did a good job. I especially love the color scheme and the introductory paragraph on the home page. Kid's a good writer!

Did I just read that?

"Man accused of killing girlfriend, stuffing body in 
bin now deemed competent for trial"  http://www.ksl.com/?nid=960&sid=16390251

So the format of the headline really made the minor grammatical issue big.  On the page it was printed with a line break like above.

So now the bin is competent for trial.

Did I just read that?

"Theodory tries to real it back in, but her utter shock produces giggles and a shortness of breath (that might also have to do with the temperature of the water)." http://www.ksl.com/?sid=16360475&nid=1017

I guess she needs to real it back in because she got faked out?

Did I just read that?

I didn't screenshot this because the picture was nasty and my kids read my blog, but there was an ad on the sidebar of Picknzip.com that had a big picture of a woman in a bikini with a large pink "sticker" on it that says, "Make $$$$ shooting models."

Great!  Where's my gun?

Did I just read that?

"Boughey and her partner, Craig Hill, 27, an ambulance driver, had even planned Kian’s funeral.Kian has undergone dozens of operations on an almost daily basis since he was born nearly two years ago, including a risky operation when he was just over 7 years old which doubled the width of his windpipe."

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/health/2011/07/12/boy-born-with-organs-on-wrong-side-body-goes-home/#ixzz1Rw8oC6e6

Pretty tricky, being born nearly 2 years ago and being just over 7 years old!

And he has dozens of operations almost every day.

Preschool

I finished my free online preschool. It's geared toward kids 3-5 years old--pre-kindergarten more than preschool.

It's fun. It's free. It's online.

It's here: https://sites.google.com/site/learninglynxclassroom/preschool

Did I just read that?

""The last thing that employers need is further disincentives to not hire people, and that's what higher taxes would mean," said Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas." http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2011/07/04/earlyshow/main20076635.shtml?tag=re1.channel

I don't think that means what he thinks it means.

The opposite of "disincentives to not hire" is "incentives to not hire".  Or, you could oppositize it this way, "Disincentive to hire." 

So, following his logic, the FIRST thing employers need is more incentives to not hire people..... because they're hiring too many people at the moment, right?

Double negative makes a positive in math, and it does in this sentence, too.

Someone needs to give politicians plain-language lessons. Just say what you mean, folks. It's as simple as that!

Bad writing trend.

I read nonfiction. For fun.

Lately, I'm always in a hurry at the library, so I've been grabbing a few nonfiction titles from the "new books" shelves in the adult section of the library.

I'm seeing a distressing trend in the newest adult nonfiction. The authors are writing what should be compelling nonfiction works as though they are working on college papers. And not even good ones.

If I read the phrase, "In this book, I intend to....." one more time, I might scream. Seriously. Don't tell me what you're going to tell me. Just say it already! And telling me what you are intending to do makes it sound like you're doubtful you're going to do it. Well, since I know you read that manuscript a dozen times after you wrote it, you might just figure out if you DID what you intended to do and stop telling me what you intended.  And not only are the authors saying this, they're saying it over and over and over. And over. Again.  As a writing teacher, I always tell my students to avoid the word "I" for this very reason. It's not bad to put yourself in your writing, but it must be done judiciously. And telling me what you are going to tell me isn't judicious. Or helpful. I  KNOW it's what you're going to tell me when you just tell me. So just tell me already and stop cheapening your rhetoric by introducing places for me to doubt what you are saying. Confidence includes trusting that what you said made sense without you having to tell me what you were going to say first. And if you have no confidence in the topic, why are you writing on it?

Another definitely un-compelling habit I'm seeing: academic summaries of the entire book in a few pages. Why? If I'm going to read a thorough abstract, why would I then go on and read the entire book? Especially if you made the abstract so complete, you answered every question and solved every mystery in the first few pages? In one book I tried to read, the author included a 7-page introduction that just flat-out stated the answer to every mystery involved in the story. It might be useful academically, but it makes for a TERRIBLE reading book. Terrible. Such poor form! So I read the introduction and then, with no mysteries to keep me reading, couldn't force myself through Sarah Winchester's household receipts any longer. (Nor could I stomach the author's clear extrovert-centric view of the world when she was writing about an introvert (she kept trying to both dispute and prove, at the same time, that Sarah Winchester was eccentric. Really, she was an introvert.). Way to make a truly compelling, interesting character from history into something unbearably boring.)

Another distressing trend: starting over. Again. And again. The authors of these new books are putting in introductions that read like Wikipedia articles, complete with spoilers. Then the first chapter reads like a traditional introduction, complete with "In this book, I hope to discuss....." kinds of statements. Makes me want to knock on their computer screens and say, "Hello? The book already started. You're too late to make statements like that!"

Nonfiction can and should be told compellingly. And it's not that hard. Really. Life is a story. Facts and interactions are interesting. Why belabor your points? Why try to force a decidedly academic form on a commercial nonfiction book?

Good writing is good writing. And these new nonfiction books are not good writing. Or good editing. Who's buying this stuff anyway?! It reads like a mixture of academia and self-published junk. And it's supposedly neither.

I mean, can you imagine if a  murder mystery author started her book with an introduction that was a full synopsis (beginning, middle, and end with complete spoiler), and then a first chapter that said things like, "In this book, I'm hoping to tell you about Sarah Silk Smallbones, who everyone thinks is the murderer but who isn't. I hope to show you, through short vignettes and a few longer scenes, that, while she had motive to kill Buster Keaton, it was, in fact, his dog's mistress who did the dirty deed by providing Mr. Keaton with a cocktail in which she had placed rat poison."

I can't believe he would even HINT at this

Just for the record, I'm a pretty big fan of equal rights for all humans. I've even in favor of civil unions that grant the same civil rights to couples regardless of their gender-attractions.

But I'm opposed to gay marriage.

You want to know why?

Read this:
http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,2079861,00.html

It is a LIE (open, barely even veiled one) that "it doesn't affect anyone else" and "we just want equal rights under the law".

And as long as any person, for any reason, is trying to infringe on my constitutionally guaranteed right of freedom of religion (yes, even to believe religious doctrines that others find reprehensible--and for you to believe ones that I find reprehensible)...as I was saying, as long as anyone is trying to legislate my beliefs, I will fight that person tooth and nail.  I will never consent to or support laws that take away my freedom to believe in the Bible and to keep the temple a sacred house of God in keeping with His laws.

You don't have to believe what I believe. But you cannot take away my right to believe it. And say so.

Even if it offends you.

Read this, too: http://www.deseretnews.com/article/705375668/Gay-marriage-debate-shows-threat-to-religious-freedom.html?pg=1

I realize he acknowledges that "The state cannot force a church to change its beliefs. Even gay people realize that is wrong." Wrong to force a change of belief, he says, but notice he still wants to force a change of behavior--he still wants to be allowed to be married in the churches and temples, and he still finds it an incomplete victory because churches were not forced to join in.

The reality is this author, at least, sounds like he's anxious for us to stop saying he's sinning so he can get on with it with impunity. But even if they stop us from saying homosexuality is a sin, that doesn't stop it from being a sin. Say what you want--God will ultimately make the final judgments, regardless of what morality we try to legislate.

Did I just read that?

This might get the award for the best graduate school/program name ever:

"The Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics is comprised of the Summer Writing Program and the Department of Writing & Poetics, which includes the MFA in Writing & Poetics, and the low-residency MFA in Creative Writing." http://www.naropa.edu/academics/graduate/index.cfm

Did I just read that?

"Judge Belvin Perry has recessed court after the defense finished its closing statements in the Casey Anthony murder trial on Sunday, saying he wanted jury members to be "bright-eyed and busy-tailed." "
Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/us/2011/07/03/prosecution-defense-warned-by-judge-in-casey-anthony-murder-trial/#ixzz1R5pSafgs

Gives me a lot of confidence in that judge.....

What on earth is a "busy tail" anyway?

Google +

I liked Google Buzz, but nobody joined in.

I LOVE Google +. It's facebook, twitter, and google all rolled into one. Easy to use. Direct. Solved  a LOT of the facebook problems, and feels like it exists to serve me instead of me existing to serve it (FB is so egotistical).

So you all better go join. Right now.

Let me know if you need an invite.

Wandering with Melody Yellowvan

Tim had a gig in Laramie, Wyoming, and it was one of those that was set up just right that we could go with him.

So we went.

We left yesterday--the intention was to leave at noon, but that didn't happen. But we left by 2:00 or so and headed up to Fort Collins and then took the short cut (highway 287) up to Laramie, WY. It's a 2 hour drive, usually.

287 from Fort Collins to Laramie is one of the prettier drives around. Awesome rock formations. Broad, rolling meadows with big skies, fantastic canyons. There is one spot, not far above Fort Collins, where there are ridges on both sides of the road that look like someone broke the ground and tipped it up at an angle. On top of one of these ridges are two stone pillars--sometimes they look man-made, sometimes bizarrely symmetrical but still natural. Every time we drive by, I wonder if I hiked up there and walked between them, would I still be in the same world? It looks like a portal to another place or time....

Anyway, it was a nice, uneventful drive (except for Elijah deciding I needed to ride in the back with him half-way there).

We got to Laramie in good time. I have been through Laramie a million times, but I've never been TO Laramie before, so I was pleasantly surprised to discover a charming old town with BIG trees.

Tim took us first straight to the Laramie Plains Civic Center. The corner stone out front of the "new" section of the building says, "Laramie High School 1929". Inside, there is a giant bell, as big as the Liberty Bell (and looking enough like it that Caleb asked if it WAS the Liberty Bell) that says, "Laramie High School 1900" on it. One of the men who belonged to the building (I have no idea his role) said they tried to move the bell, but it was too big and heavy. So the kids climbed all over it.

Apparently, the Laramie Plains Civic center was the high school, and then downgraded to a junior high, and then, up until a year ago, was a "haunted house." It was deserted, beat up, and huge. So the city turned it into honestly the best civic center I've ever seen. And, in the process, they are restoring it.

And the building is gorgeous! The first thing I noticed was the theater, as Tim was unloading a few things in through the stage doors. BIG high stage area, nice sized stage, and a large theater (900 seater) with old walnut seats, which are being restored to have blue velvet on them in the lower level, solid walnut in the balcony. On one side are two-story-high windows. On the other, two-story-high murals depicting Wyoming history. They are apparently original to the building and look like gigantic Minerva Teichert paintings. Gorgeous.   The next thing I noticed were the fantastic floors--intricate tile work, mostly. Really cool. Then we noticed arched doorways, and restored paint. The theater's balcony lobby is not restored yet but is a beautiful space. Really great building.

From there, Tim dropped the kids and me off at the hotel and went back for his sound check. Later, Peter brought me the car and Tim called to say, "come to the show!"

So I fed the kids, changed the messiest of them into  clean clothes (we hadn't intended to see the show, so I didn't bring nice clothes for any of them. Oh, well), and went back to the venue.

We watched the second part of the first half of the show and the kids were good--but even good the lady in front of us kept turning around to glare at them. Sheesh!

Tim was doing something I wanted to see, too--integrating the solo live looping show with the Tim-singing-with-a-band show. This time it was Wonder Voice (a cappella cover band). It was coming across really well. I also wanted to sit and take notes on costuming (ongoing project, there--we haven't quite got the costuming right....). But no. After intermission, I sent Caleb and Anda and Dan in to see the show, and I took Nathie, Elijah, and Benji out. Right across the theater lobby from the theater was a gigantic open basketball gym, with more of those two-story-high windows. Within a few minutes, Daniel joined us. So, for the rest of the show, I had the kids climbing on the bell and running, running, running in the gym. Half-way through the second half, Anda joined us, too. When the boys got too tired and loud (mostly loud), we went outside and walked around and watched a bunny in a yard, and then went into the hallway that was 'back stage' but off the stage, and then everyone was worn out enough that we snuck back in to hear the encore.

It was really strange for me to sit in the theater and feel the vibe that the audience felt like they were watching "famous people" and it was MY husband up there on stage! So bizarre. It really was a good show, though, and the audience was really very pleased with it. So were the event organizers. That's all really good news, since Tim was sick!

After the show, I showed the kids the balcony, and they looked around and said, "Why is there a cannon up there?" I looked where they were pointing. "That's the spotlight," I said. "There's no light," They replied. "It's turned off," I explained. Benji looked at me like I was crazy and said, "Mom. Those are cannons."

The kids were hanging around while everyone broke everything down. Tim took them to the dressing rooms and let them look in the crawl space under  the stage. Even I wanted to cross through that low black hole to see where the light on the other side was coming in. Benji climbed right up into a chair in the dressing room and looked at himself in the mirror and was very happy to be there--he's my little music theater guy, so I should have guessed he'd feel comfortable and calm in a dressing room! Unfortunately, we couldn't stay--Nathanael was out in the hall trying to turn all the knobs and handles on all of the big under-stage pipes.

Despite his love of the dressing room, the bunny, the "cannons" and the gigantic gym, and the fun he had "painting" in the water he'd spilled on the stage floor after the show, Benji later said helping the sound guy put the "snake" (a giant electrical cable) away was his favorite part of the night. Had I included dancing in the list, he might have chosen that. He loved dancing to Wonder Voice, too.

While everyone was breaking stuff down, I went to thank the sound guy for doing a good job, and he said, "You're homeschoolers aren't you." What? Whoa. Yes, we are, how did you know? "We are, too," he said. I replied, "I guess you can identify other ones, then." He said, "Yeah. The kids are nice to each other, the play together, they talk to adults, they help each other out..." Oh. Yeah. Those same things I notice about other homeschoolers. It works!

From there, we headed to WalMart for food and then back to the hotel for dinner and bed. We ate microwaveable chinese food from the freezer section, and fresh fruit, and yogurt, and watched, "How It's Made" on TV (I love that show!). Then everyone went to bed except Caleb was having trouble breathing (a seafood allergy perhaps?) so benadryl was in order, and I needed a shower, and Nathie was picking on Elijah, so he had to get in the shower, too...

We did eventually all get to bed.

Then we got up early (8:45 am--can you believe that?!) and threw swimsuits and life jackets on the kids and took them swimming in the hotel pool. Benji took to the water eventually. So did Dan. Nathie didn't like it, even after I took him in carrying him. Elijah thought it was great, but cold. The kids played while Nathanael and I watched and played with Elijah. Tim took care of Benji.  It was fun.

We had to drag the kids out of the water finally because we had half an hour left to clean up and pack out. We almost made it--we were 15 minutes late....

Then we headed home. All six kids fell asleep in the car.

It was a gorgeous drive--wildflowers, rolling meadows, fluffy clouds, awesome rock formations, lots of places that made me and Tim both itch to get out and explore.

We tried to drive around and find the back side of the stone pillars, and, after some wandering, we did find the right place--but were afraid to take our old minivan up the curved, steep, dirt road while it was pulling the trailer. With a drop-off on one side, if we didn't find a turnaround at the top, we'd be in serious trouble.  So we abandoned that adventure until another day.

Had to stop at WalMart when we were almost home to put oil in the car, let the desperate kids go potty, and buy diapers. Gotta have those.

Now we're trying to cool our house back down and enjoying resting.

Cool technology, also the nature of revelation....

http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2011/06/29/algorithm-answers-who-wrote-bible/?test=faces

This article reports a computer program that can do a textual analysis and identify passages that were written by different authors (or different passages that were written by the same author). It has all kinds of fun potential applications--identifying who wrote disputed Shakespeare plays (or which sections of the collaborative plays the Bard actually wrote),  identifying "anonymous" writers, identifying is a work is collaborative or not.

And people are using it to identify which sections of the Bible were written by different people.

The concept of teasing out the authors of a scriptural selection are very cool. This could tell us, down to the verse, what sections of the Book of Mormon are quotes from even ancienter texts and what are comments by the editors--Mormon and Moroni. Provided it is accurate.

And provided the people who use it have a solid understanding of scripture, revelation, and the nature of writing.

Which the researchers in the above article apparently did not.

They have an underlying assumption that some passages were written by men and others dictated directly from God, using his words.

The underlying assumption way eye-opening for me. I often don't realize how much we know!

I hardly know where to start on this one!

For one thing, understanding the transmission of the Bible is important. We have no original copies of the Bible. In fact, the individual sections of the Bible were copied and passed along numerous times before the book was even collected into the form we now know as the Bible.  Any time a piece of writing is copied, there are transmission errors--even when the copying is done by careful, intelligent scribes.  Further, the copies we do have are translations--translations into modern languages, or modern forms of ancient languages. For this program to give you any kind of valid data, you'd have to feed in texts that were the oldest, most accurate you could find, and the program would have to be able to "understand" the ancient language forms. Further, you'd have to be aware of your own transmission errors as you fed the data in!

While we believe the Bible to be the word of God, we don't believe the translation inconsistencies, transmission errors, and excisions that muddy the doctrine to be the word of God.  There is also the possibility (in fact, probability) that the Bible was actually "edited" along the way--sometimes by institutions who needed the Bible to support their doctrines, sometimes by people who were trying to make it more accessible (but without a complete knowledge of the meaning of the scripture, this simplification unintentionally changes doctrine--that's why I don't read Bibles that were translated from older English into more modern English--especially when the work was done by religious do-gooders or scriptural scholars, who would impose their doctrinal understanding on the translation, instead of prophets or linguists).

Any change to the text can potentially affect the results the computer gets, of course. And, in a translation, the computer might actually be identifying the translators linguistic marks as well as the author's.

Separate from the transmission of texts, the creation of texts in general and religious text in specific has to be considered.

For one thing, authors do develop over time. If a prophet were writing revelations down over the course of 50 years, their writing style might change and develop. My writing style has changed over the last 7 years as I studied writing. I know lots of people who put on a different "voice" when they write different things (like religious stuff they write in an affected voice, while day-to-day activities they write in a very casual voice, and blog entries they use a more formal voice). My fiction certainly doesn't sound like my journal entries. And even within a journal entry, if I'm describing a dream I had, I write it differently than when I am recounting a conversation, or giving a rundown of my day. Before I could fully trust the computer, I'd like to see that it could properly identify an author even if he or she were using different "voices".

The nature of revelation changes this whole discussion, too. For example, we know that God speaks to each people in their own language and tongue. If the goal is for us to understand His instructions, he's not going to answer my prayers in Hindi, or a Russian woman's prayers in German. Furthermore, He's not going to answer a 4 year old's prayers in a way that only a college professor could understand, although He is masterful at putting so many layers of meaning into an answer that it can mean something now and something later--but always in keeping with our capacity to understand. Sometimes it does require pondering, looking up words, etc, but it's always still within our capacity to get meaning out. God is not trying to confuse us. He's not trying to show off. He is trying to teach us and guide us, and what good is a guide who you can't understand, even when you try?

So--the nature of revelation.  Even if you have a scripture that is dictated directly from God, He is going to use language that both the receiver of the revelation (the prophet) and the intended audience can understand. We might, for example, find Isaiah completely baffling. But, according to Nephi, Isaiah's early readers who were in the culture that produced Isaiah found his writing to be abundantly clear and easy to understand.

Further, while sometimes God does dictate revelation to prophets, sometimes he sends them visual dreams and visions that they then have to find a way to relate using the words they know, in their language. This doesn't make it any more or less from God, but it might change the linguistic tags. Sometimes prophets are given information and understanding, but left to teach it using the language and inspiration they get at the moment and someone else writes it down, adding another layer of complexity (did the student taking notes actually take dictation, or paraphrase?).  Sometimes they grasp a truth and then teach it repeatedly in different ways, adding clarifications and details and examples as they go--and this gets written down as prophetic speech.  Sometimes prophets are merely telling the story of their own life experiences (Elijah and the widow with her cruse of oil comes to mind, as does the Book of Nephi).  Sometimes they are relating a story told to them (Luke's versions of the Annunciation and the birth of Christ come to mind).  Also, prophets tend to quote and paraphrase one another frequently (1 Nephi comes to mind--he tells his father's vision in chapter one, and quotes Isaiah extensively later on). And sometimes prophets are quoting other prophets and then interject editorial comments in the middle of the quotes (like many many sections of Moroni). Commandments of God are recorded different than the text of ordinances (like the prayer said at baptism or over the sacrament) and different than a prophet's experience, and different than a vision, and different than a sermon given to a real live group of people, and different than someone else's recounting a sermon they heard. And all of those can be written down by the very same person--but it might affect their linguistic tags. All of these circumstances change the way we view revelation from being a static, scholarly thing to being a living, active, flexible things, without altering their status as the word of God. And that changes how you view the texts, and what our understand of "God's word" is.

It is not any less God's word for being among the "Priestly" (as the article refers to them) writings versus direct transcription from dictation from God. Nor do the dictated segments accurately identify God's linguistic "voice" because He would have been speaking in the "tongue" of the prophet taking the dictation (or taking the tablets that were written by God's hand).  It's much more complex than teasing apart who wrote which sections of a business manual written by a committee.

I can almost guarantee, though, that someone is going to say, "See, it says Isaiah was written by two people! Proof that the Bible isn't true." Or "Clearly different authors for the Bible means it's not the word of God, or it would all have the same author!" It shows an immense lack of understanding of the nature of transmission of ancient texts, of the nature of revelation, of the nature of God.

Take the example they cite of Isaiah. Apparently, according to the computer program, the Book of Isaiah was written by two different people, with the division occurring at chapter 33 (although content-wise the division is really at chapter 36). I can think of multiple reasons the program might identify this, none of which is faith-destroying:

1. Perhaps someone at some point smashed together the Book of Isaiah and one of the books that we identify as "lost scripture" (scripture that is quoted by other prophets but we don't have the book anymore). Perhaps half of Isaiah is actually the book of Zenock? or Zenos? Loose, unbound manuscript pages are easily lost or combined with other manuscripts. This may have been an accidental excision or an intentional editing decision. Both happen. (Personally, I don't think this is the case unless it happened right after Isaiah was around because Nephi quotes freely from both halves of the Book of Isaiah, identifying the sections as written by Isaiah as early as 600 BC.)

2. The Book of Isaiah was not written at one sitting. Perhaps one half was written so many years apart from the other that Isaiah's writing style evolved, developed, changed.

3. The content is different. The last half of Isaiah is stories of actual events and poetic, song-like verses about Jesus, and prophecies about the far-distant future of Israel, and advice for the future generations. The intended audience appears to be latter-day Israel rather than early-day Israel, which would change the way God would speak, and also the way Isaiah would speak (you write a letter to your mother different than to your as-yet unborn great grandchildren).  The first half of Isaiah is written more from a first-person "I saw this" kind of approach and contains more revelations that were given to specific people who were contemporaries of Isaiah. Where the last half actually feels like a handful of  long revelations, the first half is obviously a series of many short revelations given to specific people or groups at the time Isaiah was alive. Personally, I find the last half easier to understand--mostly because the content is more applicable to me, personally.

4. Perhaps the two halves, as we have them, were translated and copied by two different people. Notice the division occurs exactly half-way through the book--even half-way through a specific revelation, which seems to span chapters 32-35. That is absolutely the logic of two people assigned to copy pages who simply divided the work--and not the logic of someone adding on to the text or smashing two different texts together and calling it one. The possible translators/copyists left their linguistic tags on their different sections, and the computer picked up on that.

5. Perhaps the first half was written down by Isaiah himself and the second half is actually transcripts of lectures or sermons he gave. We speak very differently than we write, using different tags and markers.

6. Perhaps the computer isn't as refined as it thinks it is.

As always, a computer here is a useful tool, but it is no replacement for a brain.

Ultimately, the truth of the Bible cannot be determined by scholarly research anyway. It can only be determined by going to the source (whether He was the author of the exact words or not) and asking Him if it is true. That is one of the greatest legacies of Joseph Smith--the knowledge that we can ask God ourselves, and He will answer us.

Benji and Nathanael say:

Benji: "I want more of that chocolate bread!"
Me: "It was pumpkin bread."
Nathanael: "There are no chocolate pumpkins!"

Couple of things I feel strongly about:

http://www.foxnews.com/entertainment/2011/06/26/marriage-ref-contestant-blames-seinfeld-for-divorce/?intcmp=obnetwork

So this couple went on Seinfeld's TV show, "Marriage Ref," and the lady got the idea that her greatest happiness would come from "following her dreams" and "Becoming famous." So she deserted her family and bailed.

Most of you don't know that this show contacted us and tried to convince Tim that his kazooing (for his Kazoo Man video) must be driving his wife crazy and we should come be on their show. No thanks, Tim said, "My wife actually likes my kazooing." (I do. I think it's funny. And I love it when people say, "What does your husband do for a living?" and I can answer, "He's a YouTube viral video star and professional kazooist.")

So here's the thing this article made me realize: chasing your dreams is not in any of the instructions God has given us anywhere. Using our talents is, but chasing dreams? Becoming famous? Never. And we know that God wants us to be happy, and that the commandments and instructions He gives are to make us happy. Therefore, if He didn't ever say, "Also, pursue your dreams at all costs," but He did say to put family first (and then gave--and continues to give--us LOTS of instruction on how to do that), then, despite what pop culture tells you, chasing your dreams is probably not as likely to make you happy as forgoing your dreams to develop a stable, happy family.

Just something to ponder next time you start thinking fame and fortune are where it's at.

Second article and idea:
http://www.good.is/post/sweden-has-a-new-gender-free-preschool-is-this-the-way-to-fight-bias/

I don't see what's wrong with being different and going from there. I don't think gender bias is a good thing when it makes boys not allowed to play in the kitchen or girls ostracized from legos. I think paying people less because of their gender is wrong. But I don't think it's wrong for women to be allowed to be womanly, and to be given the support to develop womanly characteristics when they're young (and men, likewise, masculine characteristics).  Because let's face it: Men and Women are DIFFERENT. And while my heart goes out to transgender kids, I don't think it's okay to slight 99% of the kids so that the 1% doesn't have to struggle. Why? Because it will make it so 100% of the kids have to struggle instead of just 1%.

And for all the attempts to make gender roles "evil," biology cannot be denied--and men can't bear or nurse babies, and women can't father them.

So instead of promoting false gender stereotypes (like boys have no feelings and girls have no brains), we're swinging far far out the other way (boys and girls are not just equal, but the same and gender is culturally defined, not biologically defined unless you're gay, and then it's all biology and none culture).

I think all children would benefit from being raised in a culture where it's okay to be a feminine girl, and it's okay to be a masculine boy, where it's okay for women to have estrogen and men to have testosterone.  And where it's okay for both to want children, and to want to raise the girls to be good mothers and the boys to be good fathers.

Any thing else, no matter how good-intentioned, is the death of culture and society because solid families are the foundation. And going genderless promotes gender confusion, not healthy gender identity. Personally, I think it's empowering to children to be allowed to accept who they are and not be taught that it's not inherently okay to be what biology and their genetics made them.

I think genderless society is short-sighted, sterile, and created by the same fantasy-loving paradigm that tells women to leave their families to follow their dreams.

Neither is going to lead to happiness, stability, or good.

Did I just read that?

"Monday, Carson — with his blue mohawk, white T-shirt, brown shorts and green hospital socks — left the hospital and walked to his parents' car on his own power. "I'm very glad to be alive," Carson said. 

Carson looked like any typical 9-year-old boy..... "  http://www.ksl.com/?nid=148&sid=16147502

Because all 9 year old boys have blue mohawks.....

Did I just read that?

"Time-Traveling Sex Partners May Be Bad for Your Health, Scientists Say"
Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2011/06/20/time-traveling-sex-partners-may-be-bad-for-your-health-scientists-say/#ixzz1QUYpK1j2

Well, then, since that is a real threat around here......

The quest for cooling continues

I have this new theory. One contributing factor to the nation's obesity problems is climate control. Especially in the summer. When the weather is cold, mammals tend to put on fat to keep warm. They then use up the fat when the weather gets warm, right? So...we're mammals. And we are never triggering our bodies to shed the fat because we keep ourselves so climate controlled all the time--never get to the hot part. 

At least, I noticed that, since it's been 85 degrees in the house for 2 weeks, none of us has eaten very much, and eating meat seems absolutely disgusting (the Word of Wisdom's advice to eat meat sparingly and especially in times of winter, cold, or famine makes a lot more sense when your body is allowed to deal with heat!). So the heat very clearly puts our bodies in a completely different mode--a burn up the fat, load on the vitamins and liquids (fruit, which is in season--there's that Word of Wisdom popping up again) mode. Just being hot and dealing with that, I lost 5 lbs this week, not even trying anything special.

But the 85 in the house has been our reality for about 2 weeks now, and I can't function and would rather find other ways to lose weight. I can't cook. Can't clean. Can't get the kids to do school. Can't think. It's not fun. When I mentioned it to my parents, they said, 'Oh, we'll give you a little money to get the A/C fixed.'  Hooray! Happy birthday to us! Last time we got it charged, wired, and serviced was in 2007, and it cost about $85.  I figured, even with the pipes that were cut when the furnace was installed, it would cost at most double that.

So we got a guy to come give us an estimate. He was excellent. And they don't produce the kind of freon our central air uses anymore, so scarcity has driven up the price. $350 JUST for the freon, plus a couple hundred more for the repairs to the pipes, tightening everything down, checking for leaks....$600 total.

Yikes! 

Right after he left, I did a little research--we need either a 5000-6000 cfm swamp cooler or an 18,000-23,000 btu air conditioner for this house. Both are usually WAY over our budget, even used. Even with the gift from my parents.

Still, desperate for something to get us cool, I checked craigslist. Literally 4 minutes before I turned it on, someone had posted an 18,000 btu air conditioner for $100! The catch? It had a 230 v plug (like a dryer, or a stove).

But we had an unused 230 v outlet in the garage....

Tim went and bought it.

Because of the way the garage and bedroom are set up, with the top 8 inches of the garage wall being back-to-back with the bottom of the bedroom wall, I figured it would be a simple thing to move the 230 v outlet into the house.

It's never as simple as you think. It was a two-trips-to-the-store job. If you've ever DIY home repairs, you know what I mean. But it wasn't terrible. Not by a long shot. Especially after I got a spade drill bit to drill the hole between the bedroom and the garage for the wire to go through. (Before that, we owned exactly one drill bit, and it wasn't long enough to go all the way through into the garage.)

So today (and a little yesterday), Tim held the baby, handed out popsicles, handed me tools, and starched his show clothes (good thing he could do that himself--I have ZERO idea how to starch anything). And I used the tape measure and stud finder to locate the best spot for an outlet in the baby's room, cut a hole in the wall with a steak knife (and I eyeballed it exactly the right size and shape--I was pretty pleased with myself!), drilled a hole into the garage. I shut off the power in the house to move the outlet only to discover the power in the garage is on a different circuit on a completely different circuit breaker--outside. I didn't even know our house had two circuit breaker boxes, so it's a good thing I tested the outlet before I started taking it apart! Then I installed the new outlet in the baby's room, ran 20 feet of wire through the garage, spliced the wires, and covered the box where I'd spliced them so no little fingers try to copy me. I have now successfully moved an outlet from one spot to another, and it's not hard. (Maybe next I can move the light switch for the master bathroom INTO the bathroom so it doesn't wake anyone up to use that bathroom at night).

And then, while the power was still off, I changed out the broken light in Tim's office that's been broken since 2005 and put in one he bought a year ago that we had not gotten around to installing. It's a really nice one, too. Tim has excellent taste.

Then we carried the new air conditioner up the stairs (at about 150 lbs, that was no minor task) and installed it in the window, and plugged it in, and...the moment of truth....

It worked!

And Tim's newly starched collars looked fantastic, too. Good thing he did that part--I would have ruined them.

So then we switched roles back and I rocked the baby and nursed him while Tim took the kids out front to tidy up the front yard so he could mow, since I don't know how to do that, either.

And did I mention I did all of this in a skirt?

Yeah, sometimes, I'm cool. 

And now our house is getting cool, too, and it's SUCH a relief. And also a blessing.

Did I just read that?

"Feds Look Into Truck Driver Killed in Fiery Amtrak Crash
Published June 25, 2011| FoxNews.com"

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/us/2011/06/25/feds-look-into-truck-driver-killed-in-fiery-amtrak-crash/#ixzz1QHd4aspQ

Um...gross.