Today

K and I walked to Humphrey's twice for a variety of groceries. We played kickball twice, amounting to about an hour total of running around. We went to the library, returned books, looked for specific books, found some additional books, startled Ms. Lisa with a good BOO!, colored a few coloring sheets, built a log cabin with lincoln logs, looked up a book on the library catalog computer and requested a copy. I finished reading The Celery Stalks at Midnight to her, and we started on Nighty Nightmare. We hauled in firewood; when I want to laze on the couch, and she says "Dad! Let's go get some wood!" how can I not accept that offer?

And K learned to knit!

Off the top of my head

(I posted this on Little House in the Ghetto, when I meant to post it here. Here's where's been needing an update for a while!)

Off the top of my head, what we've been doing lately, as far as unschooling. Reading about Halloween. Going to the Farmer's Market twice a week. Attending the Food Not Lawns talk on the bee crisis, learning a LOT about bees. Saw Compania Flamenco Jose Porcel at Sangamon Auditorium, that was very nice. K liked the twirling dresses and fancy footwork; I liked the music, a Spanish Gypsy melange with some Arabic influences. The footwork was quite impressive, too, though!

Kaleigh got a (disgusting) American Girls doll catalog in the mail. She's paged through it many times, oohing over stuff, and wowing at how much they want for something. Get your doll an outfit for more than I'd spend on an outfit for myself! So, she's experiencing firsthand, and hearing from us, about how advertising creates desires for things you didn't even know existed, and how conspicuous consumption works. American Girls is partly about history, though, so we can work some history lessons into looking at a catalog.

We attended Super Saturday at the Illinois State Museum, this time the topic was migratory birds. So we learned some about migratory birds that appear in Illinois, and made the usual cut-paste-n-color crafty things. (One of which was an owl puppet, but owls don't migrate!) We also poked around in the Changes exhibit (creationists beware!) and played the video game that illustrates how evolution by natural selection works. We watched the Changes movie for the umpteenth time (10 or 15 minutes of Illinois geological history and how Earth forces affect everything).

We got the woodstove going again, entering our first autumn and winter with it. K has been helping out with retrieving wood from outside, and loading the stove. Considering wood is the only carbon-neutral fuel, and hypothetically could be used sustainably, stove skillz are now leading-edge.

Halloween dress rehearsal

Vote for your favorite costume. All modeled by the very fashiony posing Kaleigh.

Cinderella, with extra fashiony arms and smirk.

Little maid Kaleigh.





Cheerleader.

Princess.










Prom Queen.

Unfinished late 60's girl (need some brown polyster pants to complete).











Witch with (lazy!) cat.

State Fair time!

Today Don and Kaleigh went to the Illinois State Fair. Don wasn't eager to go on the first Saturday of fair week, with the weather all nice and everything, expecting major crowds. But he decided if they got going as soon as they could in the morning, it could be all right. And it was. They got off the bus at the fairgrounds at 9:00, and got on the bus to go home at 5:00!

Kaleigh wanted to go on the canoe ride at Conservation World, but Conservation World didn't open until 10:00. They looked in some nearby livestock barns, with goats and sheep. They saw some sheep getting sheared. Baaas of boredom and annoyance resounded throughout the sheep barn. Like consumers waiting too long for something not worthwhile.

Finally, Conservation World opened. But it turned out the Voyageur canoe ride didn't start until 11:00. Sigh! Don and Kaleigh poked around in various tents in Conservation World, looking at replica mastodon and giant ground sloth bones, playing in a water table (where you make channels for water and toy boats to course through), and pedaling a bike to see how much it takes to light an incandescent bulb vs. a compact fluorescent. There was probably more that Don can't think of right now. Kaleigh petted a bluegill fish, and a crawdad. (crayfish? crawfish? craydad?) They decided to take the fairgrounds tram over to the food area and come back later for the canoe ride.

After eating their day's worth of trans-fats, white sugar, and white flour, they moseyed over to the kids' area. Kaleigh rode the bicycle course several times until Don got bored of waiting around. Kaleigh did a little putt-putt golf in a 4-H food bank tent. Then Kaleigh climbed into a smallish but real Cat brand digger, working levers and observing the air conditioning controls.

They went to the fire safety area and Kaleigh slid down a firefighter's pole a few times. Then they went through the fire safety house (more like single-wide trailer) and learned different safety tips for different rooms in the house. The event culminated in the mock-second-story bedroom with a smoke machine pumping smoke into the air, and the closed bedroom door feeling what. What to do?! Get down on your hands and knees, and climb out the window and down the emergency ladder, and in real life you'd go meet your family at the prearranged meeting place.

Then the tram pulled up, so they saw the chance to go back to Conservation World. They FINALLY got to go on the canoe, with about 20 other people. It was a BIG canoe. Kaleigh and everyone else seated on the outside got to help paddle. A fiberglass canoe through a machine-built lake.

It's time to go put her to bed, and I haven't even gotten to the chemistry tent yet!!

reading and raspberry riots, and other news

Yes, that's Kaleigh! She's reading her first chapter book to herself. She's almost done, after working on it for a couple of days. She signed up for the library's reading program, and we're almost finished (over 18 hours in six days, and counting...). We've been reading good books by Robert Burch (one of my new favorite authors), and Clyde Robert Bulla. When you have good books to read, and it's hot and mosquitoey outside, it makes for a lot of reading time! Kaleigh picked up the Boxcar Children, one of her favorite books, and found that it wasn't so hard to read those intimidating chapter books after all. And we parents are enjoying much appreciated quiet and down time.

The raspberry patch is starting to yield. We are about 10 inches of rain above "normal", and everything is lush and large this year. Kind of makes up for last year, I suppose. Kaleigh has enjoyed raspberries in her yogurt, and her parents are looking forward to raspberry wine!

Yesterday, Don and Kaleigh went to the Juneteenth celebration (for more info on this holiday, see http://www.juneteenth.com/). It was within biking distance! They had fun, and Kaleigh bought a bracelet with her own money. It's her good luck bracelet, and she's never taking it off, not ever, until the next time she gets a new bracelet.

Kaleigh moved her bed into her room a week ago. She has enjoyed waking up with Cozy the kitty snuggling at her feet. She also enjoys waking up and being able to play without worrying about waking up her parents. Ah, freedom! Her parents are enjoying this also, especially the part about sometimes sleeping later than 7 a.m.

Through the library's summer reading program activities, Kaleigh attended both a cheer clinic and a pom pom clinic. She had fun learning about these fun sports, and took home a white t-shirt (mud girl says, "I've never had a white t-shirt before!) and a set of silver poms. She also had fun playing Little Sally Walker.

the recital!

Kaleigh was very excited to have the opportunity to take ballet and tap lessons this year. She danced with 10 other girls. They did their ballet recital to the song Dance Your Dreams. They did their tap recital to the song I Love a Rainy Night. They had fun, did well, and Kaleigh got to stay up extra late!

Yesterday I went to Super Saturday at the Illinois State Museum. I did one of each project. The projects were a butterfly mailbox, a mailbox, a travel tic-tac-toe, and all of those three were made out of film canisters with punched holes in the lids and ribbon put through them. I got two pink ribbons and one blue ribbon. I made a tree out of a little paper bag and I decorated it with tissue paper. It's a redbud tree like the one in our yard. I colored two pictures on an Earth Day card. I colored it with crayons. I learned that Earth Day is every day. I glued garbage onto a big U.S. map that didn't have much on it. It was a collage project. I learned to save water, reuse and recycle everything I can, use both sides of paper, turn off the light when I'm not using it or when I'm not in the room.

I am getting into jump rope rhymes and I can jump rope better now. I wonder if I'll ever be better at it. I bet I will! Do you think I will? My favorite rhyme is right here: Cinderella dressed in yella, went downstairs to kiss her fella. How many kisses did she give? 1,2,3,4,5... Yesterday, I got to 7, but I messed up on the 8th one.

My mom went to a junk house and picked up some stuff for me. I am wearing some of it in this picture. She got me a makeup mirror with one side just a mirror, and one side a magnified mirror. I also got a white sequined purse, beaded fancy lady gloves, a blue cowgirl hat a little darker than the color of this writing with flowers around the brim. I also got a beaded cashmere angora sweater and a paddle ball.

My kitty Cozy is sick or something. He has a raw spot on his tail and he keeps licking it. He acts crazy at times, walking quickly around the house, jumping and then licking furiously. If he is still sick tomorrow, Daddy is going to take him to the vet.



These egg sandwiches say BOO!

red sky at night, zomban delight

There was a rainbow opposite in the sky, which we did not see, but--what a beautiful sight, after a day of steady rain. Kaleigh took this photo, shortly before Don arrived home from a 12-hour stint doing exams at SIU. Kaleigh and I left home this morning to attend swimming class at the Y. Afterwards, we went to the book club hostesses' home to play and chat until book club started. The girls read The Birdwatchers by Simon James, made birding journals, and then played long and hard, having a great time.

Kaleigh and I finished and started another book in the All of a Kind Family books series by Sydney Taylor. It's some good kid adventures, with a lot of girls. The book provides an interesting view of New York's East Side prior to WWI, and a social history of Jewish family life and customs of the time. I have learned a lot I did not know about Judaism.

Tomorrow is Kaleigh's ballet and tap class, practicing for the Big Recital. I have a feeling she would enjoy the class more if it was a plain old dance class, but she still likes to dance, likes her teacher, and her classmates. Afterwards, Don and Kaleigh and our friends Grace and Shannon are going to attend Toying with Science. As I explained to my mom, it's not-school for kids who go to school, but school for kids who homeschool. Don, called upon to answer all questions science in our house, is looking forward to it. I like science as an adult, but my knowledge is pretty limited. My junior high science teacher used to make up a lot of answers to questions he did not know, which I found out the hard way. I feel like I'm learning alongside Kaleigh now, and it's fun! I imagine she'll be able to teach me a lot after tomorrow's show. After the show, Kaleigh and her friend Grace are going to play imagination hardcore for a while. They always have terrific fun together.

We've had a stretch of decent weather, warm enough to be outside and time to be there. Don strung up the newest grape arbor, also a fence to protect the tulips and daffodils from kid feet. Kaleigh and I put a fence on the lowest 15" of it, and planted peas by it. We also planted Kaleigh's pink seedless grapes, plus two red currant bushes. I'm excited.

Seedlings are starting to come up in the seed trays. I have asparagus, rhubarb, arctic kiwi--much cheaper from seed, although they take a little longer that way. Also coming up are the dozens of open-pollinated heirloom tomatoes, seed saved from our friends' Gus and Andy's delicious tomatoes. I hope to have enough to keep me supplied with pasta sauce and ketchup, plus share with anyone who wants to grow their own and rediscover what tomatoes taste like.

Kaleigh has been enjoying the warm weather. Yesterday she grew, overnight. She woke up huge yesterday, and clumsy. First thing, she fell down the porch steps, and somehow managed to trip and stumble all day long. Poor kid. Today was better, fortunately, especially because gymnastics class was this morning. We also went to the library and were recommended the All of a Kind Family books, which are great so far. I love to see the pictures of old wood and coal stoves, people sitting around enjoying each other with no tv in sight. This book also has a lot about Jewish culture in New York from the turn of the century, so we're both learning a lot. This picture is Kaleigh with her friends Destini and Tink. They made a birthday cake. Can you see the candles?

Our friends Mike and Abby are back in town for a couple of weeks visiting. It has been great hanging out, talking, sharing ideas and information. They've been having a great adventure the last couple of years, getting a good education without indenturing themselves to enslavement to pay back overpriced loans. They are learning so much about gardening, herbs, living off-grid--so much. I'm glad to have them as friends and I'm really glad they can come back and visit!

Never go to Work

Unjobbing and unschooling, they might be giants, knitted puppets, and good kid music, all in one convenient You Tube video at http://youtube.com/watch?v=m3Kgj6EiZtw. I love the old folk song Hallelujah, I'm a Bum, and this is a good one for a new generation.

No cross needed to celebrate the arrival of spring for those who worship at the Church of the Open Sky, or the Church of Beauty. This holiday is dedicated to Patti Smith: "Jesus died for somebody's sins, but not mine."

We first saw a robin today. Although it's cold outside, the green reappearing outside is uplifting. We have garlic sprouting, along with a collection of spring bulbs, garlic mustard, clover, and dandelion greens everywhere. We can eat some bitters, and get some good nutrition once again.

Kaleigh is excited about the sugar-free candy Easter egg hunt, and the schlock she gets. So weird and hard in this culture to not participate when it comes to kids and their candy, corporations and their profits. I'm not sure what the commercialized American holiday has to do with Jesus anymore.

Sppprrriiiinnnngggg!

Today is the official start of spring, and what a beautiful day. After gymnastics class, Kaleigh and I went to the park with her friend Cecelia, and her mom JoAnn. The girls had a great time running around the empty park (too bad all the other kids were in school).

These pictures are from the weekend, when it was also warm. Here is Kaleigh, putting soil in the seed trays. We have been getting a lot of seeds and plants through the mail, and I saved seeds last year, so we are set! In the seed trays, we planted one whole flat of open-pollinated heirloom tomatoes, another flat of rhubarb and asparagus, and the third flat was mixed herbs and veggies. I have room for another flat, but we haven't gotten back to putting dirt in the last seed tray. I know, it's getting late to even bother starting seeds, but last year I did it way too early, and the record cold March didn't help.



Here is Don, sharpening his chainsaw. He has made really good progress on the giant American elm in our neighbor's driveway. Half of it was small enough that he could shove it into our yard, and the other half might be small enough to shove as I type this. Progress! The other picture is me, cutting up mulberry sprouts to fit into the kindling bucket. They should be nice and dry by next winter. I'm attempting to keep up with all the brush, keeping stuff like this on our property to be used for something, rather than putting it out in a brush pile for the city to ignore.

We spent yesterday cleaning out the play room and the catch-all closet. We got rid of a lot of stuff! We found a VCR! What?! We haven't had a tv in a decade! It's nice to be rid of all that useless and unneeded crap. Of course, it's still sitting around, waiting to be picked up by excited freecyclers.

cause for excitement

This is quite an exciting morning in our house. Kaleigh started doing this yesterday, unprompted: reading on her own, silently. Yeah!!!!

Yesterday, Kaleigh went to ballet and tap class, and then played with her friend Grace for many hours in the afternoon. They cleaned up like responsible girls.

We had about 5 inches of snow yesterday, which fell in about 4 hours. It was really beautiful, and thick!

I started reading another Kim Stanley Robinson book called 40 Signs of Rain. It is about now. I don't know why I like this author so much. He has an uncommon way of taking the everyday and mundane and describing it in striking detail. He's my favorite Sci-fi author next to Saint Phil (KD).

Today is going to be a fun day at home for Kaleigh and I. Don will be gone most of the day, first to SIU for a dry run, and then to IBR to sling some plasma. We're going to do chores, and do things we haven't had time to do with all the socializing we've been doing!

kissed by sunshine

Ah, a beautiful 72 degree day in central Illinois in the beginning of March yesterday. What a blessing! We spent the day outside, working and playing, kissed by sunshine and cranking out the Vitamin D. Here are Kaleigh with her neighborhood friend, Marco, hauling firewood in the new firewood stacker we acquired. A few hours later, Kaleigh was in t-shirt, skirt, and bare feet, complaining how hot she was. We saw many Vs of geese flying over to the northwest.

First cleaned up the firewood and bark left over from our hydraulic log splitting day in November, in preparation for moving the wind-prone shed to a more sheltered spot. But Marco just wouldn't stop! That boy can work! He hauled wood and bark for the better part of five hours, and stacked up this log rack with split wood 4 and a half feet high. I felt bad that I only had a dollar in my wallet to give him, but I think he felt a need to be needed and appreciated. And that he received in abundance!

Kaleigh got into the unstoppable act by sweeping the sidewalk around the porch, and helping Marco in between rope swing tricks. Don sharpened his saw and cut some more elm, to the encouragement of the neighbor in whose driveway it sits. I hung out some laundry, including some pillows that got rather gross by being stuffed in unsuitable places during a bout of Pillow Pirates. (We really need to do some spring cleaning!) Then, I smoothed out the sheet-mulched bed we prepared last fall and sprinkled on the greens seeds. I put the mini-greenhouse frame in place, but left the cover off until the rain and snow cease. We had thunderstorms last night, cold chilly wetness today, and snow is predicted for tomorrow. Yes, March in Illinois, hold the tomatoes (tornadoes) please.

Today was a cold and drizzly day, and I couldn't find my hat. We spent most of the morning at the Y, where Kaleigh had a culture club class featuring Eskimos. I walked the track, and I tell you, there's nothing like the jumping fiddles of bluegrass to keep me moving almost as fast as the joggers. Then swimming class followed by an hour of free swimming and playing. Then we traveled northeast many blocks to the library on foot (what were we thinking?), and spent an hour coloring and reading. I am reading the Grandma's attic series to Kaleigh, and although it's more religious than she'd probably like, it's not disgustingly though. I was surprised to read a chapter about the Gypsies, about the stereotypes held by this small farming community, and how this family was Christian, and said God loved the Gypsies as much as the Christians, and who were they to judge or badmouth? It was cool. It's great to find real Christians as they are such a rare breed.

After the bus home, we found our friends waiting for us, Jed and Amanda, and two of the three kids. Kaleigh played with her friend Kimmy, dress-up and singing, and pretend out the wazoo, while we grownups hung out with the baby Rahlee who is recovering from bronchiolitis. It was fun. The rest of the day was spent with Don or I reading to Kaleigh, who could barely keep her stiff body awake after many hours of play and activity.

It's a beautiful evening in Zomba.

carey

the years of rice and salt

This is a book I read, that Don is reading now, by Kim Stanley Robinson. Love history, sci fi, and feel an overwhelming need to change your self and the world? You will enjoy this book, and 600 pages will not be enough. The premise is that Europe's population has been wiped out by plague. The rest of the world keeps happening, and in a much different way than white people taking over everything. The characters are a band of souls, inhabiting different but same characters though a journey of reincarnation, learning and changing, always attempting to live life to the fullest, and giving the human spirit a lift from civilization's never-ending oppression.

I went to a small school, and my knowledge of world history, excluding Europe and America is scant. I felt like I learned a lot, even if much of it didn't happen. The book is definitely plausible, and because it brings up the same themes of this life in this time, it also provides for a lot of brain-poking questions. What are the keys out of the black iron prison? Passion, bravery, love, care, nurturing, knowledge, experimentation, slyness, being true to one's self...

We are illuminating the walls and trying to find what we are seeking: our escape into the world we know is possible. I am sure many of us can feel it in our bones. There has got to be a better way for us all. It's a challenge, but we're human. We have big brains and we can use them. Changing seems to be a key. If we keep doing the same things as previous generations, what are the odds that we'll wander out of the black iron prison that is also the cave of treasures? Either way you look at it, we're trapped. But we can smell the paradise outside the prison walls. We know there has to be a way out. But I am getting very off-topic from discussing the book.

If you have read The Culture of Make Believe by Derrick Jensen, you will recognize it in this book, as it catalogs civilization's wars, and all the cruelty and depravity they engender. It is simply history. I also was reminded of Fredy Perlman's Against His-Story, Against Leviathan, in that it was a history of some of the same places in the same times, and the themes show a cycle of war, suffering, empires rising and falling, which also is simply history. Not that this book is anything like those, but you will see some of the same themes.

I think I recognized my friends in the characters in this book--the magicians, the jesters, the sly foxes, the lovers, the mothers, the warriors, the engineers, the healers, the wise women and men. Did I forget anyone? I have always felt like an underdog, living life against the odds. My own mother will tell you that I have a really rotten birth star chart and it's no wonder I'm not a raving success. When I was a kid, I always rooted for the Indians to shoot John Wayne, and that was before I found out I'm only about 90% white. This book was written for me, for all of us who find ourselves at the bottom of the pyramid, wandering around and thinking there's got to be a better way, while rowing the galleys of MacDonalds and getting coffees and credit cards, watching tv when we get home because we're too tired to think about it, likewise for our fast non-nutritious food.

There is a better way, many of them. There are so many paths, I can't even begin to tell you of them. Actually, I can only see my own fairly clearly, and it has something to do with throwing of the shackles of not good enough, something to do with nourishing my body with nutritious food, laughing heartily, and caring a whole lot, sharing my everything with everyone I love. I still reside in the black iron prison, but I can see the garden popping up here and there. Fractals! as Kaleigh would say. There's the rise and fall of empires, bell curves of empires, empires of civilization. And here's the big 10,000 year long bell curve of civilization that is skidding down on wars, their technology, and our ignorance in killing off our host.

It's not going back, but forward, on the path that will take us into...something so beautiful maybe we'll never be able to name it.

Yesterday's quote from the zomban calendar, from February 29:
When the day comes that the sky is emptied of stars, and the sun is black, and the distraught winds have only the void for their lament, I am sure that somewhere [people] will be merry together, somewhere good hearts will greet good hearts and somewhere our dreams of unbroken love and good talk and laughter will have come true. This is a glorious Somewhere, and it is nearer to us than the stars.

sharqi

field trip to Chuck E. Cheese's

Yesterday, I went to Chuck E. Cheese's and had a lot of fun for many hours. And I met a little boy named Colton. I went on the big kids' roller coaster ride (virtual), and we took almost every adventure offered. We laid down on these two yellow chairs, and hung onto the handles. We chose which adventure to go on, and then we hung on. The screen showed a roller coaster, and the seats jiggled different ways, and moved side to side. And it was fun, but sort of scary in the fright night and the haunted mine. I liked the toyland one best. I went up in the tubes with Colton, and had a lot of fun. Colton shared his tokens and tickets with me.

--heart fairy

we all scream for ice cream

Here's Kaleigh, in her cuisinart ice cream maker hat, to which she attached a leaf clip (from Hawaii!). Kaleigh's been wearing this hat a lot. Our ice cream maker is our one pointless consumer splurge from our tax refund. Actually, it's not quite pointless, but I have been getting out of the habit of buying things with cords attached.

The ice cream maker is quite useful, naturally! Kaleigh is lactose-intolerant, and also cannot handle sugar. Where else can you find dairy-free, sugar-free, chemical-free ice cream? Nowhere that I have found. So we make our own. This is based on Aunt Marie's recipe. We start with a base of coconut milk, and a dropperful of stevia, and go from there. You can add fruit (berries, bananas, etc.), or chocolate, or probably a lot of things we haven't tried yet. You can add tofu also, to thicken it and add some protein. Blend it all in the food processor until smooth, then put it into the ice cream maker to harden. The only problem we have is that it gets awfully hard in the freezer, so hard we can't scoop it. We have solved that problem by letting it freeze, then placing it in the very coldest spot in our refrigerator, which seems to keep it somewhat firm, at least for a few days. Kaleigh really likes the ice cream, and has been eating it with cones.

We have also been using the ice cream maker to make sugary creamy ice cream for ourselves. It is a treat! Since our food stamps increased, we can afford to buy things like cream, that we wouldn't normally eat. But I am enjoying myself after a winter of beans and bread.

all in a day's work

This is not a real accident victim; he only plays one at work. Don had a long afternoon at work, bruised up beyond belief, in his time as a simulated patient. Yuck. His face was apparently this bad as well, before he hurriedly wiped it off to run to catch the last bus. It would have been interesting had he not wiped it off. I wonder what people on the bus would have thought!

--sharqi

this was an exciting day

I made these horse heads out of plaster of Paris, and I haven't gotten to painting them yet, even today that's maybe even a week after I made them. And the horse heads even have reins that show. You might be able to see them in the picture, but I don't know. There were little molds that came in a kit, so I put the mixture of water and plaster of Paris in the molds, and it took overnight for them to dry. And someday I will get to painting them.

I experimented with making molds out of egg cartons. I put the plaster of Paris mix in the egg carton molds, and popped them out and now they are paperweights. And sometime I will paint them.

Here I am opening a box from Rainbow Resource Center, full of homeschooling surprises. And mommy made a game for me so I can open one of them every morning, because she wrapped them as presents. We made a game out of it. On each present is an answer. To find the question, I pull a piece of paper out of a box that has a question on it in French, like "Ou est le salon?" I got to the living room, and take down the sign that says le salon, and on the back is a question. Today's question was, what is 100 minus 90? Using my abacus, I figured out that it was 10, instead of 80 like I thought. I opened the present that had the number 10 on it, and it was a solar experiment kit. My favorite things I've gotten from the box are the abacus, the electronics experiment kit, and my calendar book.

Here I am with Daddy, doing a flip off mommy and daddy's bed, onto the floor, with Daddy, as you can see in the picture. This is a gymnastics show. I do a somersault on my bed, then get up with my feet against the wall and do another somersault sideways onto the floor. Then Daddy lifts me up with his legs and flips me over into a supported backbend, and gently sets me on the floor. Ta-da! Mommy can't watch because it scares her.

--heart fairy

cat in pony house

That cat in my pony house is Snapper. I have another cat that looks just like him, but he wasn't around right then. So, you can't see him in the picture. My other cat that looks just like Snapper, his name is Cozy. And the kitties, both of them, like to go into boxes and crawl out of them.

--heart fairy

pony castle made out of blocks

The pink and blue spots are Pinky Pie and Rainstar, my ponies. They are standing in the pony castle made out of maple blocks. They were Daddy's blocks when he was little. I made the castle with Tio and Daddy. We used ALL of the blocks. And Pinky Pie, the pink one, is my biggest My Little Pony. She has long fixable hair, and counting her, I have 11 My Little Ponies.

--heart fairy

pony house

This is a pony house that we made and guess how it is made! It's collaged! And how did we do it? We cut out pictures from seed catalogs and glued them onto a box. We cut out windows and a door from the box to make a pony house, as you can see in the picture. Hooray mod podge!

--heart fairy

lighting our fire

The search for a wood cook/stove turned fruitful today, as we found a wood stove dealer hiding in a lighting store in far west Springfield. They have the beautiful Jotul stoves. We are interested in the economy model, the Jotul F 602 CB. We found a separate bake oven that goes on top of a wood stove. So that's our option one. Option two brings us into the realm of actual wood cook stoves. First, there's the Sheepherder, a small heat and cook stove that is very affordable. The upgrade looks nicer, but would toast our small (750 sf) house. There's also the Baker's Choice, another economy model, but bigger and more expensive. Choices, choices.

The guy at the lighting store told me that he's sold more wood stoves this last year than the last many years combined. Could it be rising fuel prices, coupled with an unstable climate and subpar utility grid? Hmm, that's some of our reasons for getting a wood stove. We also have several winters of wood laying around the yard, some of which is actually split and stacked now. Our neighborhood has a lot of downed trees that could provide us for firewood for plenty of years to come.

Our decision to cook on a wood stove seems natural, as it seems like a good idea to combine functions like that. We'll have to figure out something for summer cooking. Outdoor kitchen would be all right til the mosquitoes get bad, and maybe an electric burner after that. Or, invest in bat houses and get the outdoor kitchen cannery of my dreams!

There are a lot of really beautiful wood stoves and especially wood cook stoves out there. I have read that the prices have been driven up lately by demand, partly because of an increased desire of self-sufficiency and also by the antiques market, since an old ornate wood cookstove looks so nice sitting under the pretty pictures of one's ancestors. We actually have a wood stove already, one I got from my mom last year. But our insurance requires certain things, and a familial fondness isn't one of them. But that one might do well for a good outdoor kitchen.

We are grateful to have received our income tax return, thankful to all you hard-working Americans for supporting us while we are taking our slack, raising our kid, investing in our communities and futures. We're planting the trees that will feed your grandkids of the future, and sharing knowledge and skills (and starts and seeds) that might otherwise be scarce. It's an investment in a different lifestyle.

And thanks also to our President, who knows how to buy off the little people at just the right moment. We'll be putting that stimulating money to use setting up some water catchment from our roof to soak into our soil for our gardens. We're going to invest in a garden for Kaleigh, whose heart desires strawberries, blueberries, raspberries, corn ON the cob, and a few other miscellaneous fruits. I'm going to get a new pair of glasses, so I can stop having to look through white blurry spots all day, and some new shoes for my feet that walk. Kaleigh's going to get a giant box of goodies from Rainbow Resource Center, a homeschool store. And Don might go to Goodwill to get a second pair of "nice" jeans.

It's weird to think about shopping at a time like this. But we have had a lot of time with no money to think about what we're going to do, a lot of projects in the works, forever picking up pieces of the Zomban homestead and putting them back together (or, realizing the weeds know what they're doing and learning to leave em alone). Every bit we can cut ourselves free of the tentacles of Leviathan, we're going to do. So much for not having any ambitions, goals, or plans for the future.

sharqi

all purpose blah blah blog

I figured at some point, I ought to write something about why this blog exists. Its starting point was a homeschool blog. We're an unschooling family, and if you've read anything by John Holt, you'll know what that means. If not, it means that we all of us follow our passions in life, learning about what we desire to know about, acquiring skills, making friends, having good times and exciting experiences, spending time with each other, etc. In other words, living life to the fullest we can.

We are also an unjobbing family, and if you haven't read Michael Fogler's book on the matter (I've heard it's out of print), that means that we do the minimum we have to, to get by. We do have jobs, but we don't have careers. We are not attached to them. And we have a lot more time to live life as described in the unschooling bit.

It's weird to say unschooling and unjobbing, because those are negations, and what are we really for? Well, we stress the relationships we have, with each other and our community of friends and families. We have fun and spend our time doing things we enjoy and with people we enjoy, as much as we can.

Years ago, Don and I wore suits for most of our waking hours (he constrained in tie and me in bra and hose and required high heels), and we spent time away from our office/cubicle in other giant boxes lit with fluorescent lights furiously spending our lives away, or in our combustible engine machine flittering to and from all the fluorescent lights. We got deep into debt, and we were unhappy living that way. But we didn't see any way to make things change. We read a book by Daniel Quinn, and later Derrick Jensen, we found CrimethInc. literature, and made friends with people who were interested in a different way, far from the work-consume-die lifestyle. We read the book Unjobbing right before Kaleigh came to live with us, and the rest is a glorious history.

We halved our income, then halved it again, and now half it again. And despite cutting our income, we managed to pay off our large middle-class debt. Now we live in "deep poverty" according to the government, but I don't feel impoverished (at least most of the time!). In fact, I feel quite rich in community, wealthy in passions, full of my family and friends. It is a contented life we lead, even if we don't do all those things that we are supposed to do in this American world.

I guess that is more the history of how we ended up in this weird place rather than the purpose of this blog. This blog, I suppose, is to show people who are looking for a different way that there are many other worlds possible. For people who are already living full lives, I am interested in sharing my experiences, and reading the experiences of others.

I enjoy living a fulfilling life and following my passions and interests wherever they may wander. I seek to become delirious, to leave the rut, the cultivated furrow. Surely there is a broader world that lies outside of middle-class suburbia and urban or rural ghetto. I aim to find it, and if I'm lucky, discover I am already living in the garden of eden.

--c

weathering the weather, part 3, FLOOD

As Kaleigh and I left ballet/tap class, it began raining cats and dogs. A playdate with Grace was canceled, unfortunately, due to the heavy rain and near-freezing temperatures. Here is Kaleigh, in her rain boots and umbrella, exploring the rainy terrain as her friend Mana gets off the bus in the background. We acquired this lake today, which has been dubbed Lake Zomba. According to Kaleigh, it is as deep as the tops of her feet in her boots. It was about twice as wide as this mere puddle when it became dark. Wow. That is a lot of rain. Our rain gauge said 3.75", and that's for the last 24 hours. We have trickles in our basement, and the sump pump is running (hooray, Don, for getting it going!). I'm glad we have that low spot, so the water can slowly seep into it, filling the ground with moisture. No wonder that big elm is so big and still alive.

Today I noticed how much work we need to do fixing our gutters, and also digging swales to channel water away from the house, basement, and former cistern (which I fear may overflow any time now, and drown the basement) and into the gardens to soak in. It seems we are getting more rain in the wintertime than in the growing season, and swales seem to be an idea to work with, especially since we seem to have this natural swale already in our landscape. It's a trick, too, to figure out what to do with runoff from the road. Maybe line a ditch leading to the storm drain with plants with bioremediation properties. Although, I guess that water would still be useful to keep in the landscape, even if it is TOXIC!

Here is Kaleigh, sewing for the first time by herself on the sewing machine. This was Gramma Dorothy's sewing machine, a Viking Husqvarna, a college graduation gift from Dorothy's parents, if I remember correctly. It's a fine machine, and I'm glad we inherited it. This is Kaleigh's first attempt at sewing, and of course she chose something difficult to start on. Here she is sewing hearts onto a felt purse, a birthday present for one of her friends. Kaleigh did the design, and I helped with the sewing. It's a nice present! And a nice distraction from the cats and dogs howling down outside our windows.

We're supposed to get another inch or two of snow tonight, and then it's getting really cold. I am wondering if we will have a neighborhood ice rink for a while, out on Lake Zomba. And hopefully we'll be meteorologically boring for a while, and I can report on other news in Zomba besides the weather.

weathering the weather, part 2, SNOW

So, yes, central Illinois is so boring that the weather is the most exciting thing going on (unless you have a tv and are plugged into football and politics, that is). We had twelve inches of snow, more than ever since Kaleigh was born seven and a quarter years ago.

Here is Kaleigh, standing proudly on the only thing that is remotely a hill, the sawdust pile, where our old American elm tree once stood. For the flat land, it does pretty good. Kaleigh was intently interested in the snow, eating quite a bit of it, walking on it, trying to find good sledding spots--in addition to the sawdust hill, there was some good sledding off of downed trees, with a little snow packed up to fill in the gaps--just generally walking around, trying things out--learning! Don buried Kaleigh in snow, at her request. Some neighborhood kids came over, and they took turns sledding down the slide. Kaleigh was the only one who fell off, and she landed on her cheek. Kaleigh took off her coat, because sledding was so warm, and thankfully none of the neighbors called me in for neglect because my daughter has a high metabolism.

Kaleigh's friend Grace and her dad Mark picked up Don and Kaleigh the next day and took them out to their farm ( www.hickorylick.com ), which borders a creek. A creek in Illinois means...a hill! They had a good time sledding for quite a while. I had a magnificent time being stuck in the house for the weekend, sewing. I ripped apart the quilt I made for Kaleigh last year. The fabric is good for curtains, but not good for quilts, too ravelly. It's a loooong project, but the end is near.

Kaleigh and I tromped through the thick fog on Monday to the YMCA for culture club (discussing Chinese New Year) and swimming. The fog was so thick, we couldn't see our bus stop from the next block! Later, it was freezing fog, which made for a pretty winter scene, and I was glad to be home.

a weird weather day

It is going to be a weird weather day: that was what Don wrote Kaleigh in his morning note. Kaleigh went to ballet class today, and rehearsed the tap and ballet numbers for the recital to be held this spring. It was a balmy 64 when we left ballet class. We did not go to a play held at the local college, because our friend with a car was sick--get well soon, Shannon! In about an hour's time, the temperature dropped 30 degrees, the wind started howling, and ice pellets began raining from the sky. Picture at left. The heavy rain with thunderstorm a bit earlier turned into a sheet of ice on the ground when the temperatures plummeted. The wind was roaring outside. We heard some things bump in the yard and saw our little shed tipped up in the air. The wind lifted it up and the frame bent. As it came down, it got hung up on the things formerly inside it. All our valuables, locked up safe! Ha! Don brought the chainsaw inside, and we are hoping no one steals our bikes, as the shed is continually tipped up into the air. As Don says, good thing that tree is still standing there, or we'd have no shed.

Kaleigh whirls like a dervish in the circle skirt I made for her. She likes to spin!

Kaleigh poops out at last, landing on the couch, dizzy as a drunken pirate.

Don and Kaleigh look at an old National Geographic with 3-D lenses. I think they're looking at Mars.

I point out the patch of snow still on a log, despite the warm temperatures. Kaleigh says it's probably because the log is in shadow and the sun doesn't shine on it is why it hasn't melted yet. She likes to climb on the downed trees like a goat. The weeds hanging around have caught a lot of leaves blowing through, creating soil in all the "rough" parts, of which there are many. Today we have had a lot of howling wind, and the weeds caught garbage instead. Too bad we can't convince the litterers to give up convenience foods, and eat fruit instead. Then garbage wouldn't be annoying, and compel us to pick it up, put it in a nice petroleum bag, and send it the landfill forever.

warm days

Enjoying a warm sunny day in January, Kaleigh makes supper for us all. I had raisins with sauce, and then cookies with frosting and topping. Delicious!

pictures

here is a picture of snapper and me