Puzzling Conversations

 

Colin has always been a puzzle, but lately that has taken on new meaning. The boy loves to do puzzles. He will drag them off the shelf and put them together, one after another. He is starting to dive in to the more challenging ones. He takes after his mom and his grandma. He starts with the edges first....

You make me proud, son!!

 

The other day he pulled out this frog puzzle, (pictured above) and proceeded to lay out the top and bottom edges. All the while, the puzzle pieces were having conversations back and forth as they were being fitted together. Colin provided all the speaking parts - including different accents - as the conversation went along. The discussion centered around who (which puzzle piece) was sitting next to so-and-so.

 

Colin has a favorite puzzle - a large floor puzzle of a fire truck, that he got for Christmas. He put it together, on his own, first try, and can now do the whole thing in under 5 minutes. There is a dog pictured in the fire truck, so each time he puts it together, the conversation is with the dog who is saving some unseen burning object with his 'race car fire truck'. The puzzle is about five feet long, but he will push it all around the floor as if the fire truck were driving to the fire. This is great fun for everyone else to watch, but the poor dog and cat have had enough of being chased by the big flat fire truck.

 

It fills my heart with joy that he has discovered puzzles. None of the other kids have really taken interest, except for Jordan in just the past year, when we put together a large Springbok puzzle at Christmas time, or when we go to my mom's house to visit. She has a puzzle table with a puzzle in the making at all times. Some of my happiest childhood memories are of sitting with my favorite puzzles, listening to music and entering a trance-like state as I focused on its completion. There is a Zen-like feel to putting chaos into order. Perhaps Colin senses that too.

 

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Selling your soul, one box of girl scout cookies at a time...

You know how I 'quit' the other day?


I've got a couple of other things I want to quit...


Pardon me while I get the formalities out of the way...


Dear Girl Scouts,


I am formally handing in my resignation.  I will no longer sell your cookies.  I also will no longer sell your boxes of chocolates, containers of nuts or magazine subscriptions.  I will no longer spend my precious time, wracking up the hours while I constantly update my spreadsheets, chase down customers, chase down parents, chase down $$ to balance our accounts, chase down wayward boxes of cookies, acquire more boxes one week, only to return them the next, constantly bug my friends and family as I push cookies on them, and endure long hours in the cold and the wind.  This is not fun.  My daughter is not gaining anything by engaging in selling for you, other than a very crabby, stressed-out mother.  I quit.  I quit.  I quit.  Effective immediately.  (Well, just as soon as I deposit everyone's money, make sure we balance out, make sure the girls get the awards they earned and so on and so forth...)


Thank you.


Dear Boy Scouts,


I despise selling popcorn for you.  My thirteen year old son does a fabulous job at it, but only after I remind him 29 times that the sun will only shine for so long, and that the entire neighborhood has probably already been picked over, in the time it took him to get out of the house.   I also have to drive all over town and back, making his deliveries and hitting new neighborhoods.  He writes down the address in illegible handwriting, so we can't deliver after all, because he can't remember where the house was.  He loses his forms, can't keep track of the money, and leaves the chocolate popcorn sitting in the car to melt.  I hate popcorn.  I. will. not. go through another season of popcorn.  I don't care if this is his main source of money to pay for your ridiculously over-priced high adventure trips.


I also hate the spaghetti dinner silent auction.  No business will donate anything as a potential auction item.  I have, for the last time, given up my last season of afternoons making endless trips around to the various potential small-business targets, only to get turned away again and again.  Stupid.  Senseless.  A. waste. of. my. time.  All for a child who has no inclination to get the ball rolling on his own.  How on earth did it become MY job to do this to raise money for the BSA?  I swear I did not wish for this... and yet it is my sad, sad reality.  I quit.  Effective immediately.


Thank you.


Dear boys and girls youth organizations of America,


Your 'business model' stinks.  You do a damn fine job of passing this off as an opportunity for kids to become 'entrepreneurs' (whatever...) but you are selling the kids a lie.  The kids don't spend the hours doing the paperwork, making the phone calls, writing the emails, paying for the gas for the endless car trips... the poor parents do.  Parents that simply do not have the time to begin with.  Our time is so precious with our kids, and instead of our kids learning worthwhile lessons within in the confines of your organization, you send them out on the streets to peddle your products.  You are capable of so much better.


Thank you.



Do I sound a bit...frazzled?  Why yes.  Yes I do.  When I sat down to think about how many hours I have spent in the name of scouts - Girl Scouts and Boy Scouts combined: the cookies, chocolates, popcorn, paperwork/form signing, meeting planning, meeting attending, patch-procuring, gear-replacing, errand running... all in the name of scouts...it is more hours than I have spent homeschooling my kids this year.  Yes.  You read that right.  More than I spent schooling.  I'm a total sucker for every volunteer job that has ever come along, because it is always my first inclination to step in and offer help, yet I never think that it will be as hard, or as time-consuming as it truly is.  No wonder nobody ever steps up to take their turn or lend a hand.


So, I am reclaiming a bit of my soul.  I don't know what our future in girl scouts will be, but as far as this co-leader, treasurer and cookie mom goes, I'm out.  Out, folks.  I had high hopes for this experience.  It is not our troop parents, the girls or anything like that... it is the lack of organization at the council, state and national level, the poor choice of programming available for the girls and so on and so forth.  I would rather just get together with our 'scouts' and ditch the programming, patches, cookies...everything.  Get the girls together and do service projects and get outdoors, all in the name of fun.  For free.  Without the expensive vest, annual registration, books, patch kits, and God-forsaken cookie booths.  Just please don't ask me to coordinate this.


I am feeling so....so.... liberated!?

The sick season

I have lots to write about... Christmas (!), Colin's birthday, a trip to the aquarium, Valentine's Day, and a host of other things... But right now, I can't. We're in the sick season. Just as soon as we get over one bug, it's on to another. It's been a long nine solid days of sniffles, coughs, snot explosions, fevers, double ear infections, and lots and lots of breathing treatments. No one has been spared, although it is effecting each of us to a different degree. It's been a struggle to just get the basic stuff attended to. I think we are on the mend, though. There aren't piles of used Kleenex to wade through anymore, and the house is a lot quieter this morning than in the past. Six family members all coughing at the same time is quite loud, actually. And, in a way, amusing. Almost.

 

 

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The Day I Quit... (on the inside)



This is the day I quit.


I quit caring about all the sucky people that whine and complain about creating 'community' in our homeschool group, but expect somebody else to do it.  I should care about you, but I don't.  What I do care about are my children, who are getting into mischief and not learning anything while I am trying to work on YOUR issues.


I quit giving up an ENTIRE day that I could have spent working with my kids just so that I could stay tethered to my computer while you had a meltdown over how our group is not working out for your social needs and I searched my archives in vain trying to work on YOUR issues.


I quit counting calories today after I ate THREE pieces of Colin's chocolate birthday cake, as I stressed over how you were stressing me out as I worked on YOUR issues.


I will now quit talking about YOUR issues.


I quit being the one to pick up all the Legos.  They are the toy from hell.


I quit trying to stay warm.  It's cold and no amount of hot coffee will change that.


I will quit writing now.

A boy turns 4...

Colin has turned four.  Our last one to be four.  This is sad for me.. I love four.  Four is my absolute favorite age.  I will savor this year.  During our video chat with the Oklahoma grandparents, Colin tried to show on his fingers how old he was now.  I said...'tried'.

Then he opened some presents.  Among them was this little gem - a Minion with a foam dart gun.  You would have thought Colin had won the lottery.  This grin says it all.... like I said - this little boy has a thousand different facial expressions, and I love. them. all.

Seasons

Evidently this is not my season for writing.  A great many thoughts swirl through my head, but most are best left unsaid...  I am not tired of winter.  I love watching the snow fall outside the window.  I love the feeling of wearing multiple layers, topped off with a soft knit hat.  I love the heavy, secure thud of snow boots as I trod through the deep snow.  I do love winter.  But I struggle with SAD, so winter does not exactly love me back.  I'm back on my antidepressant.  I went off of it in October when I had my surgery, and I felt really great until about mid-December.  It's been a little rocky ever since.  A couple of posts were written, one I even posted, and then regretted about an hour later.  See?  Never write when you are emotional.  Well, yes - write for goodness sake, because that is good therapy, but just don't post it for all the world to see.  Yes, this is most definitely not my season for writing.  I'm having the greatest difficulty getting the right words onto the page, lately.

I prefer to read what will uplift me, inspire me or intrigue me.  I am sure that applies to most of us.  I haven't felt any of those things lately, so I figured it was best not to write.  I do have a few updates that I suppose would fit into the 'uplift' category, so I'll share.

* Colin is potty-trained!  We celebrated those wonderful days that stretch between Christmas and New Years - the days where you don't really need to even leave the house - with towels, wipes and Lysol at the ready as Colin prowled the house naked.  Within the day he left the training potty behind and made friends with the big potty.  He was by far the easiest child to train.  No qualms about pooping, he can hold it for a surprising amount of time and he is totally tuned into his bodily cues about when he needs to go.  We aren't ditching the diapers completely yet, we still have a ways to go before he is dry through the night.  Besides, Dean bought an entire case of diapers just days before we decided to do this, lol...  I have to say that after changing diapers every. single. day. for the past seven years and 7 months, I don't miss it a bit.

* Rylan is regularly reading to herself now.  The Mr. Putter and Tabby books are a current favorite.  It warms my heart to hear her reading out loud as I wrangle the boys through the bedtime routine.  When they are finally in bed, I enjoy my favorite time of day - reading the Little House series with Rylan.  We are currently working our way through Farmer Boy.

* I recently attended a reception at the elementary school I taught at just before I made the "transition" to homeschooling SAHM.  For those who don't know, it wasn't a transition.  I taught there for three years and always did well on my teacher evaluations, but I got into trouble in my third year when I was accused of talking to a child (which is akin to "cheating") during a high-stakes test. (I was simply encouraging the child to pick up his pencil, think about the way we had practiced in class and finish the stupid thing) The principle notified me a couple months later that he was not going to renew my contract (fired).  It was a huge blow to me.  My teaching career was essentially over.  No other school in the district would hire me because I was a third year teacher - to do so meant that I would receive tenure as well.  I also was without recommendation from my principal, because he was hell bent on hanging me from the highest tree since I had brought 'shame' to his school by having a test invalidated.  The biggest blow, however, was that my closest colleagues basically threw me under the bus and distanced themselves from me.  These fellow teachers had shocked me, with how they had behaved in regards to testing.  I'm talking about telling a student to erase their answers and do it over.  Making photocopies of previous test booklets and using them to teach from.  My integrity had been called into question, yet these "cheaters" got away with what they did because they didn't get caught.  I have struggled all these years not to walk into my ex-principals office and rat them out.  To just stand before his desk and have my say... in a rather loud and tearful manner.  I am proud to say I never did.  These fellow teachers will never know how close I came to ending their careers  - simply because I could never treat someone like the way they treated me during those final weeks of the school year.

This reception to was mark the 50th anniversary of the school.  My mom taught at this school for over 20 years, so I have a lot of history with this school, in addition to just teaching there.  I have not been back since my last teaching day seven years ago.  The evil principal left at the end of last year to take a position overseas.  I would have never had set foot in that school otherwise.  I had to steel myself before I walked in.  I would be nice.  I would hold my head high.  I did nothing 'wrong', so why should I feel guilty??  There were a surprising amount of my former colleagues that asked where I was teaching 'now'.  They obviously didn't know the details.  Those who did were polite and genuinely happy and surprised to see me.  The guilty ones avoided me.  I'm glad that I went, I wish that I could just lay this demon the rest and be done with it...but it still stings, as you can undoubtedly tell.  Nobody likes being branded a cheater when it just simply isn't true.  I think it has bored it's way into my psyche and I just have to work all the more harder to feel confident about my teaching skills and good about myself in general. 

One last thing about the reception... I did get to visit, briefly, with the teacher that I student taught under as I was working on my degree.  She is a first-class teacher.  Mrs. C's methodology is like no other - she has high expectations of her students, she is thorough, she is prepared and takes the utmost care to maximize the time spent in the classroom.  I learned so much from her, all those years ago.  I was on my way out when I ran into her, and she gave me a big hug.  She asked about the kids, and we talked 'shop'.  I mentioned my misgivings about homeschooling Owen and Colin, given their oppositional character of late, and she launched into a lengthy explanation about teaching to a child's strengths, and isn't that the beauty of homeschooling?  You already know your children so well.. and in the end - homeschooling isn't for everyone, and they may benefit from being in the classroom.  I felt like I was instantly pulled back in time and we were once again in her classroom, having those long conversations after the school day.  I was glad it ended on that note.  I am a teacher.  I always will be.  I may not earn a paycheck anymore, but my rewards are different.  Rylan can read, sew, and cook, Jordan can work algebraic equations, Owen can paint and Colin is learning his letters because I taught them how.  I hope that I can teach them how to have confidence too.  That deriving one's self-worth from the opinion of others is not the way to go...

And I will leave it here.. busy days are ahead of us.  Colin is turning FOUR tomorrow.  I just can't believe how fast time is going by.  I need to take a crash-course in badminton because that is the topic in tomorrow's homeschool PE class, and it is my turn to lead.  We have our girl scout cookie booth this coming weekend and I need to prepare for that.  And the Olympics are starting in a couple of days, huh?  I guess I need to work in some school stuff about that too.  Right now it is snowing out, it is time to start lessons and then have a nice lunch of hot tomato soup and grilled cheese sandwiches.  I do love winter.  :)