Simple Woman's Daybook

Outside my window... Another hot day.  So, so sick of the heat.

I am thinking... About how to celebrate the upcoming Fourth...

I am thankful... That there are no swim lessons this upcoming week.  We will go out every morning and have some fun before the heat of the day sets in.

From the Learning Rooms... An awesome week of schoolwork under our belts last week - we are just hitting the essentials - math, reading, spelling and writing.  And lots of nature study.

In the kitchen... Dean is at it again - Sunday pancakes with blueberries!

I am wearing... standard blogging uniform - pjs.


I am creating...a shopping list. I know. boring!

I am going... to the store and maybe over to grandma's pool in a little bit.  (Hint-hint)


I am wondering...When the monsoonal rainflow will start. What an icky, hot summer so far.

I am reading... I just finished Elizabeth Noble's Things I Want my Daughters to Know, and I loved it.  I haven't read in a few weeks, and I just picked it up again and finished it in two days.  I think I was in some serious need of distraction.  Now I am on to finishing The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest, which I began in January.  I'm only 45 pages in, and I already forgot most of what happened.  I'll have to start over.

I am hoping... For rain, rain and more rain.


I am looking forward to... The Fourth!  We are changing it up this year, since fireworks aren't exactly popular in our region this year...

I am learning... About collecting water/soil samples and what they can tell us.  I will be (finally) posting on our nature study blog about what we have been up to!


I am hearing... Birds chirping, but it is time to shut the window. The heat is on, and there is a smokey haze this morning.


Around the house... prepare to be excited - balancing the checkbook and hashing out the monthly budget!  wohoo!

I am pondering... If it is time to hill my potatoes yet.  I need to look on the web, because I have no idea.  My plants are getting huge, so the time must be getting close.

One of my favorite things... Kids enjoying popsicles and sprinklers.

A few plans for the rest of the week... Several more excursions to places that involve water and shade, schoolwork except for on the Fourth and laundry.  Lots of laundry.  I still have one more load of stinky boy scout camp laundry from LAST WEEK queued up!


Here is a picture for thought I am sharing...

Summer Solstice... and an evening walk around the lake as we did a nature scavenger hunt.

To read more Daybook entries and visit a variety of other blogs, go here...

"The 'Stuff' in the Stuffing" Therapy Session 4: Communication

Word Vomit

Do you know the email message that makes you feel like you were just assulted with a bunch of words that really should have made some kind of coherent sense, but you just can't figure it out?  That is what I call word vomit.  I have a strong dislike for word vomit emails.  Life is busy enough without me sitting in front of the computer - in total frustration - trying to sort out a sentence so that it makes grammatical sense or parse out an apparent stream-of-conscious thought put into words.  World: Please leave the free-writing for your journal (or blog), don't include it in an email that was supposed to give information.

Then there are those that are just plain poor writers.  Before you think of me as some heartless bitch, let me give you some background.  I had an average public school education.  Not an academic standout, mind you - just average.  I went on to college and loafed around for a couple of years because I really had no idea what I wanted to do in life.  And then it hit me.  Actually, a car hit me.  Well, not specifically me, a car hit my car.  A lady decided to window-shop and drive, and I was just in the way.  My head snapped forward and back like a marionette doll, and there you have it.  My life was suddenly derailed.  For like ten years.  My mushy brain got battered around and all of a sudden I couldn't read like I used to.  Or write.  Or be able to watch a sitcom and not forget what happened during the commercial break. 

Life didn't really begin to get back on track until a couple of years later when my mom made me get a job.  She handed me the classifieds and said that so-and-so restaurant was hiring servers.  Let me just tell you now - the best therapy for an individual with a closed head injury with short-term memory loss is to hand them an order pad and force them to be a waiter/waitress.  No, really!  The first few months certainly sucked, but then I started to get the hang of it.  I leaned heavily on the mental crutches that my therapists had tried on me to help me with remembering sh!t, and it finally clicked.  I waitressed for twelve years.  The best/worst job I ever had - so thanks mom.  (I really mean that)  Ten years post-accident I went back to school for six semesters to get my degree in El. Education, and I graduated magna cum laude, with a 3.97 gpa.  I'm not saying all of this to brag.  I am saying this because even though I had enormous difficulty stringing together semi-intelligent thoughts in the beginning, I was able to come back and learn to effectively communicate again.

So back to poor writers.  Maybe some people just. can't. write.  Possibly.  What I think the real problem is is that people either don't care, or are too lazy to reread anything they write before they hit the 'send' button.  It is like they give no thought to the 'readibility' of their message, or the impression it might leave its wake.  In the homeschooling realm, impression is everything.  (Unless you truly don't care).  You will be judged more harshly than the rest of the world about the correct usage of to/too/two and there/their/they're.  Same goes with refusing to capitalize a single sentence or writing repeated run-ons (aka word vomit).  If your writing skills are poor - what about your kids'?

I work on my writing everyday.  Some days it flows, other days I have to do several rewrites, and still other days I don't even dare touch the keyboard.  Those are the days when my mind is tired and up to its old tricks.  I am not perfect.  My mom and my husband tip me off when they catch a typo here on the blog.  It is almost always a homophone... and that is a typo I catch others making in their posts and blogs - so it is nice to know I am not alone.  And lest you think that I gnash my teeth at every typo I come across - not so - only when it gets to be so bad that it interferes with the intended message.

We have a large homeschool group - almost 150 families.  We communicate via a Yahoo group.  When you send an email out to the group, all eyes will read it (that want to).  It irks me to no end when an unintelligble email goes out to the group.  Followed by two or three more, because the first one wasn't clear enough.  Time is precious - especially to our lot - and to waste it again and again, almost on a daily basis trying to decipher these messages wears me thin.  There are mulitple authors in question here, but one stands out.  This was the crux of my problem all year.  How do you delicately put - "Please leave the parent communication up to me because nobody can make sense of your word vomit emails?".  How do you say that sending out 4-5 semi-related emails in quick succession (on a regular basis)  is not the way to a win over a crowd?  How do you convey that the group does not need to be reminded 6 separate times that a field trip is coming up?  You can't.  I tried to be nice.  I tried to explain how frustrated some parents were becoming.  I tried to bring it up at mediation and was immediately shot down.  That pissed me off.  When parents can't trust the information that is coming to them - there is a problem.   And this is not my perception alone.  This is not me being a nit-picky bitch.  When you've got the parents complaining - there is a problem!

Obviously I've stopped the delicate approach.  The message is falling on deaf ears anyway, so I give up.  But today, as I close this series, I brought my most problematic issue (communication) to the table, because it was the one that caused the most grief and it will be the one that will continue to cause issues - I can already tell.

The world should be kind to each other.  Given my stream of posts in the past few weeks, I'm sure you can tell that I am not in a very kind-hearted mood as of late.  That is what happens when you stuff, and stuff, and stuff, and stuff and stuff the frustration down.  The summer heat and the wildfire smoke have only added to the misery.  I know I have singled an individual out and made a point of airing my frustrations - but you haven't walked in my shoes for the last year, so please don't judge.  Stuffing down strong emotions does quite a number on my psyche, and it takes a while to decompress and come down from that elevated level of irritation that I have been operating on for quite some time.  I went through the same thing the first year we started homeschooling.

I'm feeling like I've rounded the corner.  Decisions and changes have been made, I've finally had a chance to delve deep into my emotions and discuss - ad nauseum - personal stuff - and I worked in a political rant (yesterday) as well.  Now all that's left to attack is religion.  ha!  Okay - so here's one for you:  If Pat Robertson even dares to say on television that the Colorado Wildfires of late are a direct message from God that he is displeased with the blasphemous heathens who live here, I will personally punch him in the face.  I don't think I can communicate any more clearly than that.

The Loudinator

I imagine a loudinator would look like this.

I need one.

To all of my Facebook family and friends (and their friends and their friends) who dislike Obama and anything to do with his presidency...

I like you...

BUT,

The sheer amount of hateful - fearmongering - homophobic - closet racist - tea bagger-loving - gun toting  - closed-minded - staunch conservative - liberal-hating - BS that has permeated my Facebook feed lately has left me in, well... a 'bit' of a mood.  Your hate is evil.  Mulitply that by the same mindset as half of the nation and now you have your answer as to why this country can't seem to right itself.

You hate Obama.  I get that.  But can you people understand that he IS the president of the United States and that that title MEANS something?  Your utter lack of respect for the office and for the court just leaves me (almost) speechless.  The contempt with which the conservatives of this nation regard this president (and his party) is without precedent.  Unbelievable.

I like Obama.  A lot.  I think he has great ideas, for the most part.  I don't agree with the way he would like to address our nation's educational woes (Universal Preschool and the acheivement gap), but the way he holds all of the people in our nation in such high esteem is a lesson to everyone else.

Spend a few minutes thinking back to the way the right-wing conservatives have mistreated those who are unlike them: the immigrants (legal/unlegal), homosexuals, women who exercise their right to choose, people of color, the community organizers of the world and those who's religious views are more moderate or diverse.

Think of the hate that has spewed forth from such unworthy individuals as Rush Limbaugh, Michele Bachmann, Sarah Palin, Newt Gingrich, Rick Santorum and the entire FOX news network.  Just listen to them for five minutes and you would think that an outright war was going on - with target practice graphics and all.  Shame on them, and shame on you for giving them an audience and repeating their hateful rhetoric.

I just want to stand on a mountain top, with my loudinator, and scream to the world:

DAMMIT PEOPLE!  GIVE OBAMA A FIGHTING CHANCE TO LEAD THIS NATION FOR ONCE!  HE (WE ALL!) COULD HAVE ACHEIVED SOME REALLY GREAT THINGS THESE PAST FOUR YEARS BUT ALL YOU (THE CONSERVATIVES OF THE NATION) COULD DO WAS SNUFF OUT EACH AND EVERY SPARK OF HOPE FOR CHANGE WITH YOUR ANGRY RHETORIC AND REFUSAL TO COMPROMISE.  THAT WAS YOUR ONLY CONTRIBUTION TO THIS GREAT NATION.  YOU DESPISE THE PRESIDENT SO MUCH THAT INSTEAD OF ACTING ON BEHALF OF THE NATION'S CITIZENS TO STEER OUR COUNTRY TOWARDS BETTER ECONOMIC AND WORLD POLICY, YOU JUST CONCENTRATED ON DEBILITATING THE GOVERNMENT EVEN FURTHER.

OUR NATION'S PLIGHT IS ALL YOUR F^*#ING FAULT!

I think I have had all of the Obama-bashing I can take.  I am sure there are conservatives out there who think I am just as guilty of conservative-bashing.  I am a moderate.  I share some policy views from both sides of the aisle. I will point out wrong when I see it.  Fast and Furious was wrong and I am disappointed that the president evoked privledge over it.  That is not transparency to me.  See?  I don't think the president and his cabinet are infallible.  But I do think he deserves a chance to actually lead this nation as we elected him to do.  I know that the individuals who really need to read this won't, or they are unfriending me as fast as they can.  On the upside, my Facebook feed will be a much more enjoyable experience.  On the downside chance meetings at the park and Christmas dinner might be uncomfortable.

This is going to be a long election season.

One last bit - kudos to Chris (you know who you are) Your pizza comment made my day.  I honestly don't know which way you lean politically- and its your amibiguity that makes me smile.

Pop!

That was my head exploding in the heat yesterday.

"The 'Stuff' in the Stuffing" Therapy Session 3: Filters and the Art of Listening

Filters

Do you have someone in your life where, no matter how you phrase it or explain it, they will always hear 'B', when you've said 'A'?  Perhaps you have a filter too?  A friend might be mentioning how she bought a new sundress because she lost a few pounds, but all you hear is, "You could have a new sundress too, if you would lose some weight!".   Your mom comes over to visit and says, "Wow, the kids have sure been having fun around here!", and all you hear is, "When are you going to clean this place up?".

Filters can be so frustrating because they totally skew the message you want to convey.  It is even more difficult when the conversation is not in person.  It is difficult to clarify your point, and you are not sure what filters you are up against.

I know I have a lot of filters...

1. Weight

2. The house is a mess

3. I am always late and forgetting something

4. I feel frumpy

5. I am a SAHM and do not earn a paycheck

That last one is especially painful.  My husband will occasionally make a remark about something to do with bringing home a paycheck - and is totally innocent in doing so - and all I will hear is that I don't contribute.  That is me feeding a negative message to myself - because of the non wage-earner status I have placed on myself.

Art of Listening

A few months ago the leadership disagreement led me to request a mediation meeting with the council.  Two women from the council sat down with us and allowed us to discuss one side and then the other - all within the respectful guidelines of a productive meeting.  Sounds good in theory, but I came away from that meeting thinking, "Why do I feel like nobody is really listening?".   All these months later, I still feel that way.  So what makes for good listening?

I don't equate good listening with getting my way.  This isn't about winning/losing an argument.  The act of letting each side be heard is only the beginning.  Being allowed to present evidence, clarify feelings, and motives should promote better understanding between the two sides.  Unless, in fact, there are insurmountable filters involved.  It helps to have your point repeated back to you, and vice versa - and above all - EMPATHY.  An empathetic listener can sooth ruffled feathers like nobody's business.

I use the technique all of the time with my kids.  "I know you want your brother's train - it's a lot of fun, isn't it?  But your brother is using it - how about the green train instead?"  I owe my thanks to Dr. Laura Markham over at Aha! Parenting for teaching me this skill.  I wish I could remember that it would work just as well on an adult.  Adults are faced with harsh disagreements all the time, and would probably LOVE to feel like someone actually listened to their problems and empathized with them once in awhile.  What a different place this world would be!

Cooking up a mental vacation...

http://www.5dollardinners.com/

For years I have been stressing over the menu planning/grocery shopping issue and struggling each and every week to come up with something.  The result is a late Sunday-night shopping trip to get us through just a couple of days, followed by rather expensive eating out the rest of the time.  It has become a vicious/expensive cycle.  We need to keep to our grocery budget - and reduce it if we can.

Today I came across the $5 Dinners website, and it is like the heavens opened up and the angels sang...  Not only does this awesome lady post recipe after frugal recipe, she creates a weekly menu AND has a handy-dandy shopping list creator - for each and every menu.  Just click the items you actually need and print.  The archive goes back for ages, and it is all for free.

I am taking a well-deserved break from the menu-planning department!  And go figure, I found the site through a recipe link from a 'Camping with Kids' Pinterest Board, linked from the Handbook of Nature Study site.  Some days I really love where a rabbit hole leads to... 

"The 'Stuff' in the Stuffing" Therapy Session 2: The Victim Mentality and Control

The stuffing's coming out...

 

There are people in this world that will always hold on to a victim's mentality as a way to explain away their failures, or to gain sympathy in a play for greater control.  'Victims' are quick to blame others when things go wrong.  I confess that I have difficulty getting along with the 'victims' in this world.  I am very much of the mindset that you don't let life 'happen' to you, and you don't wait around for others to fix it for you.  If you do, then your unhappiness is your own fault.  It only takes a few minutes of conversation for me to figure out if I am dealing with a victim, and then I spend the rest of the time trying to figure out how to distance myself.

Control is an elusive thing for those that think that life is unfair, because they so often let others call the shots in the first place.  But if given the opportunity to be in charge in some small degree, it is especially important to predefine with that type of person where the control lies and define roles.  In my case the problems arose immediately and then from there it was a constant tug of war.  I never agreed that my control was up for the taking in the first place, but as the rope was yanked and pulled harder and harder, I let go because the stress was too much and it was clearly not worth it.  In letting go, I think I also made it clear that the control issue does not lie with me. I have spent hours over the past year wondering whether or not I am indeed the one with the problem. I care deeply about the trust that had been implied when I took a leadership position. With that trust came the promise that I would keep things safe, organized, fun and educational for the girls and communicate effectively with the parents. When I saw a breakdown of that trust because of the actions of another, I stepped in and did my best to rectify the situation. Is that controlling? Even when it was my job in the first place?

Shared leadership among women can be so contentious, yet it can also be very supportive and affirming.  I've been a part of many teams over the years, and the ones that get the nod are those that take the pains to line out the role of each member and stick with the plan - with no one individual demanding more or doing less that the rest.

If I am to take anything away from this, it is that it is imperative to know who you are working worth.  Really know them.  And to never take organization and planning for granted - it is best to be clear from the beginning who does what - and to write it down.