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.