Category: Castle News

Utterly Immersed

It’s all good.  But regular life has been trumping internet lately.  Here’s a quick rundown, in the event that I manage to finish this post before something else presents itself:

Contagious Illness Unit Study at an end? I’m hopeful.  No one has developed an illness in over a week.   We even managed to go camping over the weekend – yay!  Pretty much been a record year as far as minor-but-disruptive afflictions go.  That’s been my number one reason for internet silence; not so much a case of too-ill-to-post, as that caring for whichever family member has the latest strain of plague sucks up just that extra bit of time and energy.  So we’ve held together the larger part of normal life, but some of the extras had to give way.  Gives me lots of fodder for the homeschooling book . . .

. . . On which I am making progress. Albeit more slowly than I imagined.  But it is a much richer work for all the real-life enrichment I’ve been handed.  And very fortunately I have amassed a small group of people I can’t bear to disappoint, so it will get written.  At this point I’ve got the bulk of an outline (quite detailed), one lousy opening chapter that needs to be scrapped, and one middle-area chapter that is getting full but still has a few more salient points to cover.  (Topic: Housekeeping.  And those who know me will assure you, when I say I am writing a book about realistic expectations while homeschooling, you can be entirely confident my housekeeping chapter will not set any unobtainable standards.)

Speaking of which, I am trying to clean out the house.  Just way too much stuff.  (All good – but more of it than we have house.)  I finally figured out that all the cool things my neat, clean, clutter-free friends give as hand-me-downs?  If I want a house like theirs, that stuff is the first to hit to the road.  Luckily, such friends understand the need.  The place does look better, but still needs a lot of work.

But I’m hopeful, because wow my yard is awesome. In addition to contagious illnesses, we’ve also been doing a gardening unit study this spring.  SuperHusband built us a privacy fence, effectively giving a real back yard to our corner lot that was previously 90% front yard.  I had been working on cleaning up that front yard anyway (mostly out of love for my neighbors, who have suffered long enough looking at our debris), and then after the fence went up we put in some blueberries and figs for landscaping in front of that, and meanwhile had been making headway on vegetable gardening and general civility in what is now the back yard.  It is all very cottage-y, in an I-like-tall-grass-and-trees-the-birds-plant kind of way, but we’re pretty happy with it.  And the front yard I’m trying to keep moderately civilized.  Don’t mind the woodpile.  (A real functioning woodpile — we will burn it next winter.)  So all that to say: if I can tame the yard, perhaps I can tame the house as well.

Latin Watch: Verb conjugation is killing us.  Same story in French.  Oh, we’ll get through.  But the pace has definitely slowed to a crawl.  Mr. Boy and I were checking his homework on Verbix today, and I clicked on the Kreyol  option just to have a look-see, and we observed that conjugating is much easier in that language. Mr. Boy immediately wanted to change his course of study.  I told him not ’till he has plane tickets to Haiti .  (Hint: We have no such plans.)  And plus he’d need to know French anyway, so no getting out of it.    But I will observe that the girls are absolutely loving learning ASL, which is, it should be noted, a non-conjugating language.  I begin to see a pattern.

Concerning my own education . . . I finished the Sex Book. (This one).  Good book, recommended for those who fit the target audience.  I will get a review up here shortly.  Summary: I’m glad I signed up for it, and it’s one I’ll be keeping on the shelf for my own reference.   An interesting counterpoint has been reading Love and Control by Cardinal Suenens (The Newman Press, 1961), a find from the parish library.   I’m about halfway through.  Timeless observations, if, again, a little more theoretical than a married lady might hope.  On the other hand, one doesn’t want one’s clerics getting too terribly practical concerning the details of the workings of someone else’s sacrament.

Also culled from the parish shelves:  The Rule of Saint Benedict. Wow, you should read it.  Surely it’s on the internet somewhere.  The translation I had was very readable, quick to digest, and makes a great combo-pack of spiritual and historical insights.  And as it happened, I also brought home St. Odo of Cluny (Sheed and Ward, 1958), which is a translation of the Life of St. Odo, written by his contemporary John of Salerno.  Total page-turner.  I kid not.  One fascinating vignette after another, constantly making you wonder what zany anecdote is coming next.   Lots of pillaging norsemen and monks who are fed up with eating fish.  Just finished the segment on the armed standoff between a house of slacker-monks and the party of civil and church authorities trying to force the foundation to accept Odo as their reforming leader.   Definitely need to read the rule of St. Benedict first in order to understand the action.

That’s enough news for now. I’ll check back with that book review. Happy June.

Mater et Magistra (et other news first)

The big news first: I’m out of the hole! Yay.  I can do things like check my e-mail, or water the garden without getting out of breath.  Actually the mowed the lawn Monday, which involves more miracles than we need discuss here. (But, note to self: When in doubt, marry a man who can maintain heavy machinery.  One more reason we call him the SuperHusband.)  Was back to fighter practice yesterday after about a month off — won’t say I was 100%, but wow it sure cheers me up, getting out and trying to stab people for a little while.

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Now for our topic: Mater et Magistra magazine. My first issue arrived right when the baby was up with croup — she and I went out in the early morning hours to fetch the newspaper, and look, I’d forgotten to check the mail!  New magazine!  Which said 3-year-old immediately claimed, and for the first few hours I was okay with that.  Until she hid it in her room someplace to keep it safe.

But we eventually cleared up that little misunderstanding, and wow, I had no idea.  This is a great magazine!  Written by actual homeschooling parents (as the better homeschool magazines are), the tone is very practical and honest.  When you read an article encouraging you to respond to God’s grace, or persevere through a struggle, it is written, you discover, by a person who openly admits to dirty laundry.

The articles in this issue ran the gamut — encouragement, general practical tips, specific study ideas, and lots of reviews.  The style is Catholic Lay Intellectual — this is the place where all the catholic nerd moms gather to compare notes.   So think of articles a little longer, a little deeper, than what you find about anywhere else in the publishing-for-parents industry.

The Catholicism seems to me to be just normal catholic Christianity — I didn’t detect a particular strain to one extreme or another, other than a sincere desire to follow God.  In my opinion, a non-catholic who was comfortable with Catholic-y stuff might also enjoy the magazine.

The format is small — half-size, like a Reader’s Digest — and very reflective-feeling.  Lots of words, smallish print, no hype, a few pictures, mostly traditional artwork.  Interior is all black-and-white or black-and-special-color-for-the-unit-study-insert.  (Curiously: the color scheme and general format remind me a bit of this blog . . . I suppose if you hate this place, you might hate looking at the magazine, too.)

This is a small, low-budget production.  But a really nice magazine.  If you like to read here, or places like Darwin Catholic, Eric Sammons, or anything by Amy Wellborn, and you homeschool, you will probably like Mater et Magistra.  Highly recommended.  Maybe ask someone to give you a subscription for Mother’s Day?

Croup

We seem to be running a ‘healthcare’ theme to fit the national mood.  Trying to predict what will happen once everyone has affordable, decent health care coverage?  Here’s our experience:

-When a small child nearly sheared off her pinkie, why yes, we did spend two surgeries, PT, etc etc to get it back in order.  Knowing full well it was was only a pinkie.  Felt a little extreme, but on the other hand, we’re glad to have a pretty useful little finger in exchange.   If said finger hadn’t survived the attempt, we’d feel like we had been extravagant.  But it did and is faring quite well, so instead we feel like it was money well spent.   That said, sincerely doubt anyone — us or doctors — would have put such an effort into the little finger if we lived in a place where we expected to pay the full cost out of pocket.   We are quite grateful for insurance.

-When a much smaller child came down with croup in the middle the night (4th child, but our first run-in with croup), the first instinct was to run to the ER.   Which is close to home, well-run, and for which we have insurance.  But, would have involved being out for hours, and probably would have ended with “Your child isn’t on death’s door.  Go home and put her in the shower”.  Luckily we had a handy baby book  and DH remembered a co-worker telling us what to do for croup. Between the two, we were set.  Shower did the trick first time, out into cool wet night air did it the second time, and in between we (I) just stayed with her through the night to make sure nothing worse developed.  Next day I considered calling the pediatrician (no charge) for some advice and reassurance, but decided we had it under control and didn’t need to speak to the nurse in order to be told what we had already figured out.  Croup summary: Even with a kinda scary incident and inexpensive or free healthcare, the hassle factor outweighed the need for reassurance.  [I assure you, we’d be in the ER in a second if the baby was showing signs of distress.]

My brilliant economic analysis based on those anecdotes: I don’t have any idea what will happen post-Obamacare.  I know that good insurance does encourage us to seek treatment we otherwise might decline.  I think in many cases we end up with a better health care decision as a result.  More accurately: we end up with better health.   I also know that “just because it’s free” doesn’t always mean we’re going to seek the treatment or professional advice.

My best guess on health care usage is that we”ll see an increase in visits for more “minor” situations.  Including much more preventive care, which means we’ll see a corresponding decrease in last-minute emergency care for people who put off going to the doctor.  I think on the whole, this will help with our nation’s overall physical health.

I’m hopeful that the health care exchanges will help the economy by allowing individuals to start small businesses without the fear of losing corporate health care.  I’m concerned that this will be run about as well as we run our other government functions: sometimes quite well, but sometimes quite badly.

I think that financially it is all very much part of the current national habit.  Take a look at this year’s 1040 forms.  Have you noticed the creep in complexity over the past decade?   (Have you noticed that an awful lot of people don’t do their own taxes anymore?  Um, excuse me?  How have we gotten to the point that a worksheet of basic arithmetic has generated an entire profession?)  I think we have reached a point where we expect our government’s work to be complex and burdensome, and we expect to be in debt.   As long as we think all that is normal, we should not be surprised our economy isn’t so healthy.

Which reminds me, I need to go clean my house.   Happy Holy Week.

Just added the Baby Name Wizard to the links.   Which to my knowledge I do not need for nine months from anytime, but did need to check on a character name.  Pulls name data from the Social Security Administration, so you can find out, for example, whether anyone was naming their daughter “Erica” in 1914.  (They weren’t.  We went with Erna.)  Handy for historical fiction.

BTW for the new readers, I happily take link suggestions for anything that remotely fits with the theme of the blog, and if you read here, I’ll gladly link you.

Now off to go continue getting my rear whipped at the writer’s conference.  Aria’s finger is doing great, and now has two fewer paper clips stainless steel surgical pins than it did a week ago.  Yay!

castle news catch-up

General update for you on doings at the castle:

The smashed finger keeps us busy. Surgery #2 appears to have gotten all parts into their proper places, and Aria goes for a follow-up this afternoon — hoping for good news there.  Poor girl, our surgeon (with whom the parents are very happy) is so excited to have salvaged the pinkie that he goes on and on with long technical explanations about just how bad it was.

(And in awe he asks the question we all have: How did you do this?  Which no one knows.  I did my best Br. Cadfael imitation, following the blood trail to the scene of the crime, but was unable to find that one clue that unlocks the case.  Note to self: Have children pay more attention when they are involved in freak backyard accidents.)

Anyhow, progress is good, but I am reminded that even relatively minor medical crises (it is a pinkie, after all) can sure suck some hours out of the week.

Back from the Beach We all slipped away over the weekend to say at the beach house of a generous benefactor.  In which we learned that:

  1. Children do not like shopping at outlet malls for adult shoes.
  2. Children think the woods are for playing in, not for listening in hushed silence to the many fascinating shorebirds that nest in the coastal woodlands.
  3. Adults are surprisingly resistant to the news that they are parents now, and that “family vacation” does not involve the same quiet, reflective activities adults used to associate with “beach vacation”.  Slow learners, those parents.

Sleep deprivation has sneaked up on me. Not sure exactly when — one of those half-hour here and there things, gradually adding up to a grumpy, depressed mother whose willpower is gone, gone, gone.  Oh so lenten there.  The Olympics are probably in part to blame, and sleeping in an east-facing, lightly-shaded room at the beach house didn’t help on the other end.  So we’re in homeschool-rescue mode, where we modify the usual routines to get the mother back to human.

A book is underway! Try not to laugh.  (Yes, I *always* have a book underway. But this time it’s different, really.  Really.)  Ties directly into the smashed finger, beach trip and sleep-deprivation.   Have an idea (and an outline, and some lousy initial draft material that needs to be scrapped) about a homeschooling book I want to write.  Reality-checked with some off-blog internet friends– so people who have been reading my thoughts on these topics for five or ten years now — and got the go vote to give it a try.  Nice to have a cheering team.  So that’s the latest hobby.

Conveniently timed, since the Catholic Writer’s Conference starts tomorrow.  (Which means the kids were slated for a week of educational videos and independent projects already.  Yes, they do learn quite a lot that way — you can’t tv-school all the time, but in rationed doses, it is a legitimate part of the toolbox.)

Meanwhile, have to catch up on some real-life chores, pop into an SCA event, and finish up my latest Catholic Company review book, Saint of the Day.   Good book, and I’ll go into more detail on its strengths and weaknesses when I post the review.   Did I mention how much I love the review program?   Yay Catholic Company.

torture, surgery update

Entirely unrelated tidbits:

The Coalition for Clarity has two historical quotes of interest posted here. The first is St. Augustine, writing at the end of the Roman Empire of course; the second is Pope Nicolas I, writing in 886.

So many times history books try to sum up an entire society by what happened most.  Peering into the detailed lives of individuals gives a more accurate picture.

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And our other topic: For those who are looking here for an update: Aria is doing great, little finger is pinned back together and she’s a happy girl.  Especially since this whole event has been associated with the aquisition of new clothes.  Prayers for good results at the follow-up appointment Feb 8th much appreciated.

Castle News – January 2010

Time for our first moment of posting here what used to go up over at the other blog, in this case the periodic general update.   Enjoy.

[For those who never read at Greencastle:  We have a green castle in our backyard.   It is for this castle that our homeschool was named.  And hence the name of the ol’ homeschooling blog.  And thus why I refer to what is going on ‘at the castle’.  Because there really is a castle. ]

School: December devolved into unschooling by mid-month.  All good, but it was an abrupt return to the routine after the new year.  For this spring the big push will be penmanship, walking, math, penmanship, math, penmanship, math, ack — science! — and a holding steady on all the rest.  That walking bit mostly about the Bun, now five and not a strong hiker.  The current routine is to do our first hour as a group (as per the fall: weather calendars, penmanship, ASL/French, religion), then head out for a walk in the neighborhood.   Enthusiasm varies.

In a change-up that is going well so far, I’ve been giving the kids a snack after the walk, and doing read-alouds during that time.  Which solves two problems — children getting hungry before lunch, and not wanting Mr. Boy to miss out on the girls’ read-alouds, because a lot of the books I read really are good for older people too.  From there, back to the same old schedule:  send the girls out for a break while I work with Mr. Boy, then he works on his own while I alternate between girls on reading and math.  Andabelle (now 3) is very happy to be allowed to draw and play with math blocks during this time.  On a good day, we’re done by lunch — yay.

SCA:  We haven’t done a whole lot, but we’ve had fun doing it.  I’m slowly becoming less laughable as a rapier (fencing) fighter, and am nearly fully-equipped.  Fun sport.   Aria & I went to a 12th Night event this month that was heavy on the dancing (yay!!), and the baklava.  Oh my goodness I have never seen so much baklava in one place — and it never ran out.  I was floored.  Just floored.   Difficult to believe I’ll see a feast like that again in this lifetime.

Speaking of which: Death still packs a fair sting in this life, even after accounting for the vast and unfathomable richness of the next.  Please pray for the repose of the soul of my grandfather, Hank Holder.  Thanks.

Latin Watch:  The boy and I are learning to conjugate.  Very slowly.  We’ve been stuck in chapter six for over a month, and no end in sight.  It’s that ugly moment in learning a language where you can’t cruise anymore, you have to stop and force yourself to work work work.  I need to carve out some time to work on that.

Annual writing binge: Why yes, it is winter, I do have tendonitis.  Not helped by the encouragement of the SuperHusband, who went and got me my own computer for Christmas.   And I’ve been neglecting the blog while I’m at it.   Nothing publishable at this point.  I write the way other people knit: it is a vacation, not a vocation.

Around the house: SuperHusband and Mr. Boy have been renovating the castle yard, so that it begins to look less and less like barbarians own the place.  (Barbarians do own the place, but we are trying to conceal that fact).  Landscape timbers, flagstone walkway, new fence across the back.  I moved some ivy already, and soon I will get to put in a bunch of plants.  Yay.

–>  There are, by the way, no ‘before’ pictures.  You don’t want to know.

Everything else: I think normal.   Mostly the goal for the spring is to hold steady on regular life.   That should be plenty.