Friday fill-in

1. Wait! Wait, don't forget to do your Friday fill-ins.

2. Sleepless nights are followed at once by coffee.

3. The trouble is like the beauty: in the eye of the beholder.

4. Molly and my nephews are too many miles away.

5. With a faint pop, her daydreams about January traveling came to an end. Except for Non-Con. She's still going to Non-Con. Dammit.

6. Most days in the Pacific Northwest winter are shadowy and ominous.

7. And as for the weekend, tonight I'm looking forward to continuing my entirely passive participation in Buy Nothing Day, tomorrow my plans include doing just whatever I want, and Sunday, I want to watch the Hawks win for once pretty please!

Thursday 13

13 Things I Am Grateful For This Year

1. Frank's voice. Our conversations. His jokes. His singing. His writing. His quiet words of reassurance when I'm down. All of these have been threaded through my life for more than half my life, and I appreciate them more every day.

2. MJ's walls. Song lyrics and quotes in Latin. Her own art. Other people's art. Photos. Magazine clippings. Postcards. Posters. She's made her room into a temple of self-expression and creativity. Every time I go in there, I notice something new and get a lovely and intriguing little glimpse into her thoughts, dreams, preferences, or whims. It's fun and inspiring.

3. Chloe's imagination. Thanks to the discovery of an old notebook, we've been reintroduced to Chloeland these last couple of days, the place where everything works the way Chloe thinks it should. She started talking about Chloeland when she was very small, and we would regularly be visited by emissaries from there. It is a rich place indeed and but one example of how her imagination has added color to our lives.

4. Being laid off. It is more than synthetic happiness when I include this on my gratitude list. My layoff has led directly to a year full of personal growth and some much needed healing of some very old wounds. It has also given me the time for a year packed to the rafters with fun, family, traveling, and houseguests.

5. Having a job. It looks like I'll be returning to work sometime in December. Paychecks are good, too.

6. Stan Wilson. I wish this book were still in print so it would be easier for everybody to read it.

7. Friends. Above all, friends. So many people have helped make this year so fun. My gratitude includes (but is by no means limited to):

Exchanging e-mail with Steph. Steph is the one who loves me even though I share my lesser side with her.

Bra shopping with Dana. Finding the right support is important!

Making music with Shonna and Robin and Jacinta. My chicks! Even though Jacinta won't sing.

Visiting the gum wall with the Waynforths. Tasty!

Movie meetups with the Boswells. We are so compatible at the movie theater, we have even run into each other there accidentally.

Midnight concoctions with the Mayers. And everything that goes along with them.

Trick-or-treating Winkler style. This is SO fun!

Crashing in Corvallis. A home away from home with a ready-made unschooling community is a haven indeed.

8. Hard work by Flo Gascon and Mary Gold. Every unschooling conference I've been to has been special. The two I attended this year? Stunningly good! No year that includes LIFE is Good and Good Vibrations can be a bad year!

9. Hard work by cousin Sonya. Last spring, I helped in a very minor way to bring to a conclusion two years of effort by Sonya. The result? A lovely, lovely family cookbook, full of stories, photos, and some damned fine recipes.

10. Music and the people who make it. This year, we added three guitars and numerous percussion devices to our house, not to mention a variety of amps and cables and other paraphernalia. These represent a year of family musical learning and experiences that I will never forget! Discovering guitar with Chloe. Playing "I Don't Like Reggae (I Love It!)" with the family. The 2nd annual LIFE is Groovy drum circle. That first impromptu Greybeards performance. Several *extremely* fun Greybeards rehearsals. And then our exhilarating and hilarious dance party performance at Good Vibrations. Wow! Wow! Wow!

11. Facebook. I'm surrounded by friends every single day. It's amazingly fun. And the double entendres are hard to beat!

Poke!

12. Unschooling. Unschooling. Unschooling.

13. Relatively good news. Tom's cancer? Not grateful for that. That Tom's cancer won't be taking him from us? Very grateful for that.

Happy Thanksgiving!!

Conditional vs. unconditional friends

"In the long run, I find that the closest friends in my social network become more unconditional over time. My path of personal growth and exploration naturally weeds out the conditional connections, i.e. the people who are only willing to have me in their reality if I align with their particular prejudices." — Steve Pavlina

From his recent post about social networking

(Meme)nto mori

Frank helped get this meme going around again. You're supposed to post the sixth photo from the sixth photo folder on your computer. Well, my computer doesn't have six folders of photos, but I grabbed the sixth photo in the last (third) folder. It's a good one!



This was taken at the first Maier family reunion in Manzanita, Oregon, summer of 2007.

Front row left to right: Aunt Loretta, Aunt Helen, Aunt Ruth, Aunt Grace
Back row left to right: Uncle Ed, Uncle Ferd, Uncle Pat, Aunt Jorene, Uncle Morrie

Ferd, Pat, Morrie, Loretta, and Grace are Marty's surviving siblings. Ed is Loretta's husband; Jorene and Ruth are Morrie's and Pat's wives, respectively; and Helen is Uncle Paul's widow.

The Doings Report

Time flies. It's been two weeks since my last Doings Report. This means three things:

• My days and weeks are even more unstructured than I thought.
• Thanksgiving is in two and a half days.
• Christmas is really %*#(@# close.

But this is no time to panic!

We are really liking having an additional licensed driver in the house. MJ and Chloe get to go places, and Frank and I can stay home! Wow, wow, wow! They are no longer dependent on our energy and willingness, and we are guilt-free since they find going off on their own really fun! So far, we haven't had any car conflicts, but that might get a little trickier once I am back at work.

Which leads to that bit of news: It looks like I have a job. Nothing is finalized yet, but I hope to be returning to my old team for a longish-term writing project within the next couple of weeks. I have some mixed feelings, of course, because I LOVE being home with my family. But paychecks are good, too.

With their new freedom of the road, MJ and Chloe have been getting out and about some. They've done a little shopping, a little visiting of friends and family, and a little roadtripping. MJ has actually been up to Bellingham twice this week, once for an unschooler gathering at Village Books, and once with Chloe for a friend's music show at a coffeeshop. Due to some sort of mixup, the show didn't happen, but they had cocoa and a roadtrip together and it was all good.

The unschooler gathering MJ went to was notable because it was a visit with some women and their smaller children that was originally on my calendar. Then I came down with this cold and couldn't go. MJ decided to go up anyway, even though she expected to be the only teenager there. She had a good time and got to record her first solo roadtrip in her (imaginary) driving log.

Last night, the four of us went down to Seattle and had Thai food in Fremont. We met up with TJ, an unschooling dad from Vermont who has been here scouting out a new home for his family. His wife's brother Shane and Shane's girlfriend, Kalena, joined us. We missed Heather and the boys, but we had lots of good conversation and delicious food. It will be so nice having another unschooling family in the northwest fold!

MJ's NaNoWriMo effort continues. She announced this morning that she has to kill someone today. :-) Chloe has, I think, shifted her writing energy to the stage. She installed some script-writing software on the laptop, anyway! She's also been doing research into stage design. This included attending "Chasing Nicolette" at the Village Theatre with my grandma, and then returning on her own for a repeat performance. The set for the play is evidently pretty fascinating, being a rotating castle. She was thrilled at yesterday's performance when they experienced some technical difficulties with the set, and she got glimpses from her front-row seat of their busy repair efforts.

Frank has been writing, writing, writing. He's been blogging, beautifully, about things he's grateful for. I can't wait to see this Wednesday's effort! He's also been arguing a little politics and advocating a little unschooling, doing his part to make the world a better place. He's gaining quite a following in the unschooling community, something I find gratifying but he's not entirely comfortable with.

As for me, from one perspective, I have been doing next to nothing. From another, I have been learning a lot. It didn't really happen during our busy summer, but I think I've been discovering unschooling these last weeks, or at least deschooling. I read and read and read—a mix of fiction and non—and I watch a big variety of stuff on the television, and I look up all kinds of stuff on the Internet. I am aware of being idle, and a part of me (the schooled part?) is going, "DO SOMETHING," but I have never felt more engaged with my own brain. I think if I had more time without work demands I might move into the kind of creativity and activity that I see in my kids. Ah, well, maybe I can keep work from taking over too much.

Tom update: The radiation therapy is not agreeing with his guts at all. They have postponed his next round until his system settles down a bit. Please send him lots of "feel better" thoughts.

Christmas in November

Jessica has crossed the equator and is rounding Christmas Island, concluding the first month and first leg of her 8-month nonstop solo circumnavigation. Her blog is fascinating, especially to sailors, teens, and parents of teens.

This is Jess undergoing her traditional salt-water dunking as she crossed the equator:

Sunday system check

• What I'm reading: The Secret by Julie Garwood - an old favorite
• What I'm listening to: the banter of teenagers
• What I'm watching: the humiliation of the Seahawks
• In the meantime: dropping Chloe off at the theater to see "Chasing Nicolette" again, front row center on her own nickel
• What's for dinner: Jai Thai in Fremont with TJ

Friday fill-in

1. We need world peace and health care for all. Sad that both seem so far out of reach.

2. I finally saw "13 Going on 30," and it made me smile. "Juno" wasn't a fluke: Jennifer Garner learned to act somewhere along the line.

3. If you want respect from your kids, stop telling them what to do.

4. I had to cancel/postpone two unschooler gatherings this week because of this stupid cold.

5. Massachusetts has a proposed 5% sales tax on elective cosmetic surgery; I think it's silly to get worked up about it either way.

6. Happy kids makes for a happy holiday.

7. And as for the weekend, tonight I'm looking forward to hanging out with my family, tomorrow my plans include more rest so I can get well, and Sunday, I want to watch the Hawks and have some Thai food with TJ!

Joyce on chores

Wise words from unschooling advocate Joyce Fetteroll. The full post this comes from is on Sandra's site here.

Think about how you’d want a friend to ask for your help fixing a car or doing something you didn’t really enjoy. You could probably think of dozens of other things you’d rather do with your time. And that’s something your friend should realize and appreciate.

So how could your friend ask for help? And how should she treat you while you helped? And how should she treat you after, to acknowledge that she really appreciated you giving her some of your valuable time to do something she knew you really didn't want to do?

What if she asked you to keep her company and you spent a couple hours of pleasant conversation. What if she asked for you to hand her things and hold things while she worked? What if when you made a mistake or didn’t do something the way she wanted it done, she apologized for asking you to do something that wasn’t as easy or interesting for you as she thought it would be? What if she thanked you sincerely when she was done? And then invited you in for some tea and conversation or let you return to what you wanted to do or whatever she felt she could do as a sign of her appreciation? Would you feel like helping her again if she asked?

Now turn that around. What if you had another friend who demanded that you help her work on her car. You’re her friend and you have certain responsibilities. And what if you couldn’t help to her standards and she got angry with you when you failed? What if you really hated working on cars and wanted it over and done? And you felt like doing as little as possible so you could get out of there sooner? What if when she was done she was angry with you and said “You should be helping more and I shouldn’t even need to ask.

Which friend would you be likely to help next time?

Which friend is building a relationship with you and which is tearing it down?