Closet Philosophy

Most trends operate by reaction, and the common reaction among those who have lived too far down the impossible rabbit hole of "Women must dress in a way that prevents men from lusting," tends to be, "Women should wear whatever they $&*# well please." Which is an understandable feeling, but clearly a reactionary one and therefore limited in scope by its own reaction.

What I would like to do is set that whole sloppy mess aside, and start off in a different direction. I shall not attempt to address any theological questions; I am not a theologian. But anyone with  a place to sit and a space to stare off into can philosophize.

So the question I would like to ask is, "What role does clothing play in the expression of our sexuality?" (There are, of course, plenty of other reasons for clothing, such as sunblock and tick protection and frostbite avoidance, but those are far less philosophically interesting--although the fact that our hides are such tender things that we need clothing for such uses is itself suggestive.) And, more specifically, "What and how should children and young people be taught on such matters?"

First, one can note that in any culture or setting where clothing is worn at all, there is universal agreement on what areas are top priority for coverage. (At least as far as I've heard of, and though not an anthropologist, I was a pretty diligent student of back issues of National Geographic as a child.) There's not a culture where kneecaps or necks are strictly taboo but reproductive organs are appropriate for public display. What extra areas come in for mandatory coverage is, of course, widely variant, but the basics always come down to the same.

Why? I suspect is that this is a way we demonstrate our humanity by distinguishing ourselves from animals. Truth be told, the mechanics of mating and birthing are pretty similar for humans and for other mammals. Which is exactly why we, as humans, must undertake them in distinctly unmechanical ways, surrounding them with ceremony and even secrecy.

It is analogous to the way we handle eating . . . we could simply grab and stuff whatever semi-edible substance was lying around, but doing so is considered an act of desperation, not humanity. We surround our eating with ceremony, we prepare our food. There is a huge variety in what ceremony and in how we prepare, but a great universality in our need to make a simple, animal act into a production.

And it is the same way with our reproductive capacity. Various efforts have been made to approach such matters in a simple, natural manner--and they inevitably fail to gain any sort of traction. Nothing is so unnatural to humans as acting natural. Try as we might, we must have ceremony, and if we do not pursue beautiful ceremonies, we will have ugly ones.

What we want and choose to wear is, in many obvious and not-so-obvious ways, influenced by our culture. At the same time, culture is us. It comes from many things, all interacting and playing off each other: universal elements of human nature, practical matters of our geographic location, history and experience, and individual choices. A huge variety of the panoply of human cultural choices are morally neutral: simply part of the beautiful diversity of human experience.

But the fact that many variations are morally neutral does not mean they all are. (Was foot-binding a practice without moral significance?) And the difficulty in drawing a bright-line test does not mean that there is no better or worse to be found. Beautiful music is hard to define, and impossible to fully quantify, but that doesn't mean it doesn't exist or that there is no distinction between fingernails on a chalkboard and the Moonlight Sonata. (Or, for that matter, a simple folk tune sung without accompaniment--I am not arguing for elitism here, in music or clothing.)

To move from this to the practical level, I am willing to bravely stand with most of humanity and endorse the cultural convention of covering reproductive organs in public. It's a good rule. It acknowledges that we are not just animals, that we need ceremony and privacy. It applies with equal force to everyone out of infancy, regardless of age and gender. It is about dignity, not shame.

On a matter more specific to cultural trends, I think it's a reasonable extension, which I will impose upon my children, that one should attempt to prevent one's underwear from being visible in public. (While acknowledging that accidents happen, especially when one lacks hips.) Occasionally it becomes fashionable to ignore this convention, but, honestly, I think it's a bad fashion. Defiance for the sake of defiance, usually, or simple carelessness. The tricky thing is that some clothes may be quite adequate for this task for some movements and not for others. But there's nothing inherently shameful about pointing this out, nor even gender-specific: men in kilts should be careful how they bend over. Anyway, squatting is better for your back.

After that, things get fuzzier. Yet I don't think that means that every ideal must be thrown to the wind. We are getting into areas of art, not science or law. But art can still be informed by what is good. It seems worthwhile to suggest that scraping the bare minimum of propriety is seldom a beautiful act. There is both a beauty in subtlety and a wisdom in realizing that one cannot have the fun of breaking taboos forever. Pleasures are to be savored, and overindulgence in anything leads to boredom even if nothing worse.

Especially for the young, dressing is often part of the worthy and important task of attracting a mate. As a human pursuit, this needs ceremony and discretion, without attempting to entirely deny the bald physical reality.

While the often-repeated claim of modesty culture that "men are more visual" may be groundless, it is a scientific fact that the reproductive capacity of women is advertised in a very visual way: there is, for instance, a high correlation between hip/waist ratio and fertility. For this reason, women's clothing choices inevitably have a more direct sexual connotation than men's clothing. (Women may admire a nice set of pects, but they are not sending us any subtle messages about sperm count. We have other means of detecting a good mate, such as smell.)

Dressing to express one's sexuality while maintaining the decorum and subtlety that acknowledges that human mating is about much more than physical desire is, again, an art, not a science. But it is an important art, and one that should be taught, not simply left to the experiments of fourteen year olds in the first flush of newly discovered hormones. (Like most arts, it is best learned from its practitioners, i.e., more experienced women, not its audience.)

So you will notice I am not going to make any further judgment calls about which specific fashions are appropriate or inappropriate. For one thing, I don't need to make that for the world at large (though I retain the right to make it for children who are clothed with my money). There is a great deal of variation possible and I am not the fashion police. But the lack of hard and fast rules does not have to mean the lack of ideals. Aesthetics may vary in application, but deliberately denying the human need for beauty, for privacy, for ceremony is inhumane and, for that reason, immoral.

The Still Not Ending Story

It's been a year now since DOB first started having what we have come to term "episodes": incidents where his body, to some greater or lesser degree, just stops working. Sometimes he can't move, sometimes he jerks uncontrollably, sometimes he cannot speak or his speech is slurred or stuttery.

We spent many months making the rounds of doctors, first the local ones, then the big university clinic. He went through all the tests, MRI, EEG. They eliminated any possible medical cause. His brain proved to be "perfectly healthy and juicy," a description by a neurologist which gave us secret doubts about his predilections.

So the stumped experts sent us to start looking at psychosomatic causes. We got a possible diagnosis, although even the disorder is not that well-established. It's called conversion disorder, and the layman's description is simply that his body is fed up with his propensity for ignoring exhaustion and pushing on through and just stops cooperating. Sometimes good character costs too much.

That's been our treatment focus for the past several months. He's learned to relax into the episodes, take life easier, rest. The episodes diminished--and except under exceptionally stressful circumstance, they only happened at night, causing little disruption unless he got frozen into an uncomfortable position. (I had to learn to wake up from his grunts and give him a karate chop to break him loose.) The doctor had him taking medication to help him relax even better and it seemed to be working. We also moved to another house so that he could get around the house without assistance, diminishing some of the constant stress. He was back to driving and working pretty normal hours.

After all that, this was supposed to be a post of progress. He had gone two weeks without even a nighttime episode. Well, there was one, but it seemed to be tied to an unexpectedly long day at work, and everything was making sense and things were, if not quite better yet, at least on the cusp of getting better.

Until this past weekend. Sunday was the annual church business meeting, and we were all sitting around finishing up the potluck and watching a video on the year's activities. I heard Duchess call out for me and turned around to see DOB falling like a tree. I got him into a more comfortable position and watched, but he was out cold, though his eyes were wide open. Somebody called the paramedics, but by the time they arrived ten minutes later DOB was coming around and all his vitals were normal, although he was still unable to move for another 30 minutes or so. His memory had stopped a few moments before he had tried to get out of his chair. (This put an end to the church business meeting, unfortunately so early in the proceedings that we'll just have to have it over.)

It was kind of like the preexisting episodes, but different. He'd never gone unconscious before. (Sometimes he had been unresponsive, but I could see in his eyes that he was still conscious and he would remember everything afterward.) He'd always had enough warning that he could get himself to a safe place. And there was a pattern--or we thought there was--that this just didn't fit.

We hoped maybe the psychiatrist would have answers at his next appointment, which was Wednesday. Maybe it was just a medication reaction. (In the meantime he had a couple more, though he didn't pass out because he stayed seated. According to his paralegal, who was driving him through one of them, it was like he got suddenly, totally, and very crankily drunk. And then got over it and to the hangover stage, all within twenty minutes.)

Unfortunately, the psychiatrist has no idea. It doesn't sound like anything connected to the medication or within the scope of the current diagnosis. She said it was time to go back to the neurologists and tell them to try harder. Maybe we'll have to do the stay in the hospital hooked up to gizmos until something happens. (Which could be a very long time--nothing exciting has happened since Monday night now.) In the meantime, he's supposed to reduce work hours significantly and refrain from driving entirely.

And in between, everything is fine. He argues cases and negotiates cleverly. He plays pickleball and looks good doing it. He hugs the kids and designs gaming worlds.

And then suddenly it's not OK, and now we don't know why any more and we already exhausted all the questions there were to ask.

I want this story to make sense, but it doesn't.

In Which I Venture Into Matters Of Which I Know Very Little

Diary of an Autodidact is doing a series on Modesty Culture that is well thought-through and quite interesting. I have some thoughts on it and I'm probably going to do two posts, one on some additional factors and one an essay (in the original sense, writing as an adventure to uncover my own thoughts) on a philosophy of dressing to share with my children.

Personally, although I grew up in the veriest hotbed of modesty culture, I never internalized it in the way that seems to have affected many other women who did. I never felt ashamed of my body. Maybe this is because my parents were sane and didn't make a big deal of it. We certainly dressed very conservatively, but it was just what we did. Maybe it was because I just never got that kind of attention, for good or ill, in any setting. I don't know whether it was my complete lack of physical grace or my overpowering nerdiness, but I always felt, with much regret, that the only way I could prove a stumbling block to men was to leave my feet in the aisle.

I knew perfectly well it wasn't my dimensions, which fit nicely into the ideal (back in the days before twins), but still, there it was. I did not think I would ever even get anyone to notice that I was female at all. (True, I did manage to catch a man eventually, but it was by years of political debate online and personal attraction was entirely an afterthought.) So although I probably should feel more incensed and more empathy with those who were shamed for matters beyond their control, my ability to actually feel such empathy is, alas, held back by the envy of one to whom feminine allure has always been a hopelessly closed book.

I have, therefore, instead of personal experience, more abstract thoughts on factors that may have affected the popularity of modesty teachings among people with more noble (or at least, not creepy) intentions.

One is the fashion arc from the 80s through the present day. I'm no fashion expert myself, but Duchess checks out books on historical fashions by the dozens and leaves them lying around, and when books are lying around, I read them. One book had an appendix summarizing the changing predominate silhouette in women's fashions as the defining feature of each decade. Since the beginning of this century, the predominate silhouette has been form-fitting from head to toe. This is a fairly unusual look: usually the silhouette is pinched in somewhere, but loose elsewhere. But in more recent fashions, it's been figure-hugging everywhere. (This is finally starting to let up a bit as maxi dresses come in. The one constant about fashions is that they change.)

Now, this interplays with ideas of modesty in several ways. For one thing, it was a huge shift (taking place gradually through the 90s) from the bouffant 80s look. For fun, check out an 80s movie or TV show. Odds are, the leading lady, no matter how young and alluring she is meant to be, will be wearing a high-necked, baggy top for pretty much the entire time. It's just what people wore. Even if she wears a low-cut evening gown (and even evening gowns might be turtlenecks), it will be cut and worn in such a way that cleavage is minimized. (Quite different both from modern eras and from many earlier ones.)

What this means, is that the middle-aged enforcers of values during the 90s and 00s were naturally going to have their mental fashion senses already set to a very different, less body-conforming style. The shift to a slimmer profile, drawing more attention to the actual shape of the body, was that much greater of a shock--and, if one was dubious about the propriety of drawing too much attention to the body in the first place, all the more likely to lead to the conclusion that modern fashions were downright sinful.

Of course, the corollary is that the fashions of the immediately preceding era are the ultimate in frumpiness in the current era. It's the natural tension between old and new ratcheted up and given a moral dimension because of the direction fashion happened to shift just then.

Further, the streamlined silhouette is extremely hard to wear successfully. There's no hiding the less than perfect figure, and especially the no longer young figure. So that gives an extra oomph to the Snow White syndrome. Not only are young people's clothes scandalous, they very pointedly and painfully showcase the shortcomings of the old.

Finally, although there have been a few prior eras of a trim silhouette, I think this is the first time it's been attempted through completely ready-made clothing. A gentleman of the early 19th century wore a very form-fitting outfit. And he had it specially made by a skillful tailor to actually fit him. (Someone who was not a gentleman and therefore couldn't afford a tailor didn't try to wear fashionably form-fitting clothes.) But very few use tailors any more, or are capable of sewing for themselves at that level.

Instead, women are all trying to wear off-the-rack clothes that fit perfectly all over. This, of course, is nearly impossible. Except for the lucky few who find a brand whose fit model matches them, and celebrities who can devote their lives to perfect clothes, most women wearing current clothes are stuck wearing snug clothes that don't quite fit. (The agonies I undergo in the area of jeans alone are enough to blight my existence. I cannot find a pair that will stay up but not pinch. I think my hip bones are the wrong shape.) The end result is that it is absurdly difficult to find clothes that fulfill their basic functions of coverage consistently, and many people just give up, resulting in more exposure than people really intend or want. 

The other thing I want to address is the broader cultural milieu, which is just as disturbingly obsessive as modesty culture. Like the number of times I have to refrain from showing my children an interesting article about science because the entire sidebar of certain news pages is filled with "news" articles critiquing how women celebrities look in (or out of) their various outfits. (And it can't be avoided at the grocery store.) Or the way, just when their body has achieved the one great thing that in all the universe only the female human body can do, give life to another human, the instinctive reaction of most women is, "My body is totally ruined." Something is seriously, seriously wrong in the way we think and talk about women's bodies, and it is not just modesty culture.

Ironically, the tabloid culture and the modesty culture are basically the same, even though the popularity of the latter is in many ways a reaction to the former. In both, the point about a woman's body is the effect it has on the (male) observer. Or the female observer for purposes of comparison. Either way, it's there to be looked at, not to do things with. Just goes to show how much attempts to be counter-cultural tend to be highly overrated--the act of reacting is itself defined by what it reacts to.

A Lack of Milestones

It's been one of my cardinal rules that school is optional until age 6.

It's easy to stick to this rule when you have children who, like Duchess and Deux, teach themselves to read by age five. Or if you have smaller ones who beg to be included in what the big kids are doing.

But Dot and Dash are not interested. Oh, they could read, if they had a mind to. They can tell you the sounds in a word, and if you sit them down to it and ask them to read off the letters in a word they can figure out what it says, and if you show them the word in one spot on the page they can see it in another. But the task interests them not a smidge. They know how to spell their own names, and how to spell Garfield. They check out stacks and stacks of books from the library and sit poring over the pictures for hours. But they do not want lessons.

Reading is such a nice, tangible milestone. It's like sleeping through the night and potty training. It feels good to announce that your child has reached the mark, and of course they should all do it a little ahead of time.

But, they can't *all* do it ahead of time. And it really doesn't matter, nor does it say anything about how smart they are. There are plenty of other interesting things to do with your time when you are five, especially if you have a twin who is ready to put on a cape and go out to adventures in the backyard while the big kids are busy at school.

They memorize poetry and Bible verses by the yard. They listen to Longfellow and Bunyan and Kipling with evident comprehension. They can tell you the plot of any Narnia book at length. They can add and subtract up to seven without even a glance at their fingers. They ask questions and give explanations during science lessons that floor me. But they don't read.

At least not that I've caught them.

I promised no required lessons until the fall after they turn six, and I'm sticking to it. Their desire to mimic the big kids is more than satisfied by doing a maze every morning. On rainy mornings this fall they'll sit down and we will do the work and they will read.

Well, that's my theory. Or, you know, maybe they'll be illiterate all their lives and curse my theories.

The Voice of the Unknown

A few days after we moved in, we were awakened one morning at an hour that might not necessarily be that early except that we had just moved and we didn't have to get up yet by an unearthly electronic voice of doom saying something we couldn't quite make out. I thought it said, "It's Wednesday," which was plainly wrong because it was Tuesday. Or maybe it said it was Tuesday and it was Wednesday. Everything was kind of a fog, anyway.

I got up and hunted through the house, but the voice had ceased and we couldn't quite make out where it had come from. Several days passed with only the normal child voices interrupting early morning slumber. But on another day, it happened again, though not quite at the same time. And over the next several weeks, the Voice again spoke at random times, saying something garbled and impossible to make out, especially since it was a total shock each time it began to speak. We did manage to deduce that it was coming from somewhere in the hallway, and that whatever it was saying at the beginning concluded with, "Consult the manual." This was unhelpful as we did not know what manual to consult, nor why.

Finally one day I decided to fry potatoes for breakfast, which, as usual, led to filling the house with smoke. This set off the smoke alarm, and to our astonishment, in addition to the horrible screeching, it spoke to us. "The hallway is full of smoke." Well, we knew that, so it wasn't very helpful, but at least we recognized our spectral Voice at long last. The more immediate problem was that the alarm was sounding, hungry small people were going into hysterics from the noise, and there was no silence button--at least not one that works. I finally managed to pull it down off the ceiling and take it outside. Unfortunately, in the process, I managed to break the fastener that would have allowed me to put it back on the ceiling. Nonetheless, DOB insisted it needed to be *somewhere* high up, so we wound up hanging it on a magnetic hook which we stuck to the corner of the wall near the top, sticking out into the hallway at a weird angle.

Now we know which manual to consult, but we still have made no progress in figuring out what we are to consult the manual for. The shock of the voice speaking is too much to allow for concentration on the synthesized message. I suspect it's batteries; it usually is with smoke alarms. However, I looked at the battery compartment and it looks like in the process of getting the batteries out I'm going to break that just like I already broke the ceiling fastening, only without any way of getting around it.

Thanks to moving the door into our bedroom, there's another smoke alarm in the hallway anyway, so if I do break it permanently, I won't regret it much. And if it wakes us up at 7 a.m. on a morning when we are sleeping in, I may just make an example of it. With the ducklings watching, just in case they wonder what happens to those who dare such deeds.

Sorting

Now that the most essential sorting and unpacking is done here, it's time to return to work on the other sorting and packing, at my grandparent's home. My grandmother named it "Alto Vista," and it has borne that name on the welcome mat for 25 years, grating against my admittedly limited, but better than that, knowledge of Spanish the whole time. We always just called it "The Hill." The Hill does indeed have a spectacular view, of The Mountain (Rainier) when it is "out," and of the Sound except in cases of extreme fog.

But we--Wondergirl and I for this task--are not admiring the view, but sitting in the back office sorting through dusty papers and loose screws. Even a fastidious housekeeper like my grandmother had a few odd corners--or perhaps those only accumulated in the last few years when she couldn't get around any more. It's hard to explain to a housekeeper what to do with the papers on the back of the desk and my grandfather, while not a slob, kept everything that might or might not come in handy. In a book this task would be enlivened, depending on the genre, by hunting for the concealed fortune or uncovering a gruesome secret, but in real life it is just long piles of old lists and receipts and loose change.

Every single thing needs a decision made; every single thing we choose to part with or dispose of is a piece of their life and existence forever severed. So many things are mysteries, but mundane mysteries that cannot be solved and do not need to be solved. (Why the shopping list--and definitely a one-time shopping list, not a weekly one--neatly typed on a card and enshrined forever in a plastic sleeve?) So many things are memories, but one cannot hold on to every memory. So many things could be useful, but there is too much usefulness all at once. I have already hauled home three boxes of office supplies and my closet is nearly full. I am starting to just pick up things and say, "The kids would love this--let's get rid of it, quick."

Today is another day of it, and then there will be another, and another. I don't want to do it, and I don't want to be done, and I don't want it to drag on any longer. So I must keep on doing it, because I am one of the grownups now.

A Day in the Life at our New and Improved Home

7 a.m. DOB's alarm has gone off. We procrastinate getting up for a bit. (OK, the house has done nothing to make alarms more pleasant or procrastinating less pleasant.)

7:30 a.m. I go for a brisk walk down quiet country roads while DOB gets ready for the day all by himself. (More or less. It will be even better once we can get the motorized wheelchair running. It's not an electric chair. I keep forgetting that.)

8 a.m. I prepare breakfast. DOB is clear at one end of the house, finishing getting ready to go. The children are all upstairs, nearly out of earshot, happily absorbed in a massive train spread which is now encompassing the entire playroom because they don't have to pick it up every night. They have also gotten dressed, with no fighting over the precise sequence and location, since everyone can just get dressed in their own room whenever they want.

8:30 a.m. The children finish up eating breakfast at the counter while I see DOB off. (Still waiting on a few adaptations to streamline that, especially getting the doorknobs replaced and keyed to a single key, so that it is possible to get into the garage from the ramp without someone opening the door in advance.)

9 a.m. I sit down to eat breakfast and check Facebook in peace in the dining room while the children start in on their schoolwork in the schoolroom. I start the laundry. (OK, this is not improved by the new house. It's a long way from the bedrooms to the laundry room, and today a massive city stands in the way.)

9:30 a.m. We have our group time in the schoolroom (memory work, singing, poetry, Spanish). All our school materials have been left out on the table, so we don't have to get anything out. It's sloppy but it's faster and we can close the door when I don't want to see it.

10 a.m. The twins run off to play while I read history to the big kids and then we do math. I can write it all over the board without messing up my to-do list, because I wrote that one on a different white board, in the kitchen.

10:30 a.m. We stop for snack, Bible story (Moses striking the rock, the Rock played by Dot with rather more lines than Rocks usually get) and laundry. Then we take a walk down some more pleasant country roads during a break in the rain.

11 a.m. The big kids curl up in my chair to do their independent reading, The Landing of the Pilgrims today. (This is a special privilege for cooperative reading.) I go upstairs, out of earshot, with the twins to read them a story about birds. When I come back down, the big kids are drawing comic strips of their story. I help Deux finish up his map study and we pick out a science experiment to do later in the afternoon, as it requires some prep time.

11:30 a.m. The kids return to their massive train city and I putz around the schoolroom getting ready for tomorrow while lunch heats up.

12 p.m. The kids eat lunch at the kitchen counter while I read The Peterkin Papers to them. The mess stays in the kitchen and does not get entangled with dropped school papers.

12:30 p.m. I eat my lunch at the kitchen counter while reading; Duchess and Deux have commandeered my computer to write a play. They are in a different room and don't bump into me once. When everyone is done we do our science experiment, which can be done without clearing away the other schoolwork.

1 p.m. The kids have their computer game time. I tidy the house without tripping over them and then sit down in my nice, comfy, far-away-from-other-bodies chair and read intelligent books.

2 p.m. I send the kids out to play and take the computer back to catch up on billing and correspondence.

3:30p.m. Toolboy and B5 come over to fix the electric chair motorized wheelchair. Everybody gets a snack. I make some experimental breakfast cookies for DOB to take to the gym. I leave them out to cool without getting in the way of fixing supper. Kids do chores. (The new house has not improved doing chores.)

4 p.m. The neighbor boy shows up, and after he admires the massive train city and the catapults in the backyard everyone settles down to reading Garfield in the living room. I start a supper of lentils and rice. (The menu may or may not be inspired by the shiny new mortgage payment.)

5 p.m. I finish folding the children's laundry and they put it away and return to the train city. I sit down to rest while supper simmers. Even though it has been pouring rain nearly all day, I do not feel like I am going to lose my mind.

6:30 p.m. I realize DOB is going to be late and have the children go ahead and eat supper. Afterward, they go back upstairs to play. I do not go crazy.

7 p.m. DOB arrives home and I don't even notice because he comes all the way inside by himself on the shiny newly-running electric chair motorized wheelchair.

7:30p.m. The girls do the dishes while I take DOB his supper and hang out in the alcove. The children are somewhere far away. And quiet. Playing with trains.

8:30 p.m. We have good night hugs and prayers. The kids have been reading and I graciously permit them to keep reading for another half-hour.

Bug juice

We have a sliding door with a sliding screen that gets left open frequently. And we back on to a swamp. The other day Dot screeched at someone who had left the door open, "You are letting six million bugs in!"

This naturally led us to wonder if six million bugs would, in fact, fit in the house. We determined, based on a loose packing of ten mosquitoes per cubic inch, that we could fit 172 million mosquitoes in a modestly-sized home. Thus, letting six million bugs in became a real and disturbing possibility.

In a Slump

Sometime about the time of clearing up the dishes from Easter dinner, the Slump came on full force. It's been a long, long . . . month? Season? Year? Existence? Anyway, it's been a long, hard push, and I'm tired. And now I have the time to feel tired. Really tired. Tired that creeps out from the deepest places and puts a chokehold on. Tired that spreads like syrup and sticks my fingers together.

When you're in a Slump,
you're not in for much fun.
Un-slumping yourself
is not easily done
~Dr. Seuss

I want to go to bed and pull the covers over my head and stay there for two weeks. But the children keep getting hungry and the grass keeps growing and what we really, really need, maybe even more than sleep, is things being Normal. Whatever that is. Meals that taste like real food and not prepackaged from Costco. Lessons that start before 10:30 in the morning. Bedtime that starts before 10:30 at night. (Isn't it weird that the more exhausted you are, the harder it is to get to bed on time? But there's just so much to *do* before bed.)

So I'm trying to take my slump in small doses. Lay in a stock of utterly effortless reads. Play mindless computer games while listening to music on my headphones to block out the noise. (There still is *some* noise from children playing, even in this house.) Take slow walks with the little kids even if I don't feel up to taking runs with the big kids on bikes. Take naps when the children are occupied instead of getting the housework done. Accept that right now, productivity and efficiency are my enemies. And keep hoping that there's another side to this slump, that someday I'll wake up and actually want to get out of bed, that someday the sun shining outside will feel like an invitation and not a taunt.

Actual Pictures!

Not *too* tidied up, because then you would not ever see them. And not of everywhere, because some places are not even tidyable enough for this. (The master bedroom still needs drywall, and texture, and paint, and . . . ) And there is still a great lack of Things On The Wall and color in genera. But there's enough to get the idea.
 

Kid desk area in the playroom

Girls' Bedroom. They have, unfairly, more pillows than anyone else.

Playroom. Still needs more bookshelves.

Boys' Bedroom. The most presentable angle.

Living/dining room. (A child is in MY chair!)

Back entry and piano. This is right opposite the kitchen.

Kitchen. Even messy it's still pretty roomy.

Schoolroom. It's honey, not cantaloupe

Backyard. This is the view from the kitchen window. There's a pond down there, with a rowboat and ducks.

Back deck and ramp. So far DOB has not driven off the edge, but it would be nice to get the rail up.

Slow Takes

Because it's been a long time since Friday. But there might be more than seven.

******
On Friday I decided I had better file the tax extension. (The thing about filing a tax extension is that it's almost as hard as filing taxes, because you have to estimate if you owe any taxes, but you don't have to actually be able to find the paperwork to prove it. Since the filing cabinet only arrived yesterday and the files are still all out in the garage, this was looking like the better option.)

I couldn't put my hands on the kids' social security numbers, but I plugged all the other numbers and a wild estimate on medical fees into the software. To my horror, it showed us owing thousands of dollars in unpaid taxes. I emailed DOB to see if this was correct, but he was out of the office most of the day. When he was around later in the afternoon, I messaged him and we both freaked out for awhile. I remembered that I had a digital copy of last year's tax return, so I pulled it up for comparison to see if I could find my error.

Aha! There were the kids' social security numbers. Might as well plug those in while I was at it. As I did it, I noticed our owed taxes melting away. Pretty soon it was replaced with a modest refund. Apparently the software calculated the children as dependents for a modest tax reduction based on just their birthdates, but we had to enter social security numbers for the full Child Tax Credit.

Whew.

******

In addition to moving in over here, we're still working on getting my grandparents' house ready for the market. I'm about cleaned and organized out. On the plus side, I got me a comfy old recliner which is *my* chair and no child is allowed to touch. (This is horribly cruel, in their estimation.) And a nice end table next to it which is now full of books and notebooks and pens and a spot for a tea mug. It's next to the heater for winter and the window for summer. I am very happy about this.

*****
On Wednesday Rocketboy brought the truck to the cedar lumberyard and we got the wood for the rail around the ramp. (A large part of everybody's life lately seems to be calling up Rocketboy and saying, "Hey, can you bring the truck over for . . . " But he has started actual college classes now, in addition to baking his own casseroles, so we are trying to tone it down.) Nothing in the world smells as good as a cedar lumberyad. (At least, nothing without calories.)

We still don't have it up, though, so DOB continues to risk life and limb on the ramp. But hopefully we are at least past the last frost.

*****
The new house setup is amazingly better on game nights. Before, we had eight people eating in a very small kitchen, and then all cleanup and setup for the game had to happen in the same kitchen (where every dish in and out of the cupboard required rearranging half the chairs) and then seven people all trying to fit around the same small table to actually play. Now the kids eat at the kitchen bar, the grownups eat in the living/dining room, and then kitchen cleanup can go on without having to move anyone's chair. And some people can even sit on the couch. It's a whole new world, and none of us have yet died of the disease that turned everyone to flourescent green goo.

*****
It's time to get back to normal life. Which means we need to start school on Monday. I am so not ready for this. I did spend a couple of afternoons last week planning school. (This was because I sat down and discovered I was too tired to get up again, and it felt more productive than playing Faster Than Light.) But that was for next term, and we still have nearly three weeks left of this term, and I have *no idea* where we were. Better find out tonight. At least I can do it without tripping over everyone!

*****
I may be speaking too soon. But so far the neighborhood seems very nice. There's a boy next door who plays very well with the ducklings, and his mom is very friendly and reasonable and even though last week was spring break things fell into a nice reasonable pattern of playtime a couple of hours every afternoon, mostly outside when it wasn't pouring down rain. There are a lot of teenagers in the neighborhood at large, but so far as I can tell they mostly engage in Wholesome Recreations like walking the dog and tossing footballs and digging in the garden, and not in Obnoxious Pastimes like revving cars blaring loud music at ungodly hours of the night. And there's a teenage girl just up the road who has horses that she has invited Duchess to come and help her curry tomorrow.

*****
Deux probably hates moving the most, as he always has. (For some time after we moved from Cincinnati when he was 5 he insisted that his real family had died and though he was grateful to us for taking him in, it wasn't quite the same.) However, the availability of a room on which he can set up a game and leave it out all weekend (or all spring break) is beginning to bring him around. The twins seem to be adjusting pretty well, and Dash is even having a few less irrational food aversions. Duchess, of course, is totally thrilled.

*****
The piano tuner's appointment software messed up and so he did not come last week, but he is coming on Tuesday, and thereafter I can hopefully start teaching the kids music at last. (We've had the piano for some time, but it was out in an outbuilding. Now it's in the entry.) I have actually started on rhythm. As I feared, they have little more aptitude for it than I, but I persevere.

In

We made it in! And although everything was not done before we did it, and there was still a lot of dust causing DOB to spend the first two days sneezing, still here we are and getting unpacked. It doesn't quite feel like home yet, but it does feel like a particularly nice and spacious vacation place. With a few stray boxes.

Since moving in, we have added the ramp, and doorknobs to the two most critical doors (thanks to His Majesty discovering that two of the old doors had lever handles and not the nasty bumpy round ones.) And I've hung some things, mostly crooked. And cleaned out the garage, so DOB can park there.


For the first few days, you aren't really unpacking so much as questing for one item after another to conduct the most basic tasks. Then you can start really digging into the piles and feel like you are Accomplishing Something. I've given myself the rest of this week to get as settled in as I can manage. Because at some point you have to return to normal life and figure the rest will get sorted out someday. Which most of it does, except for the last few boxes that never get unpacked and will be found either in your next move or by your heirs. (Apparently one of *those* contains Rocketboy's sunglasses, which I was keeping a close eye on where he had left them right until the moment when they disappeared.)

From the backseat: A lesson in patience

Deux: Arrrghhh!

Duchess: Stop that, Deux! You are so picky!

Deux: I can't help it, Dash is being so annoying!

QOC: What are you doing, Dash?

Dash: I'm putting on my coat.

QOC: Well, Deux, if someone is not trying to bother you and it won't cause you permanent harm, it's best to just ignore it. Life is much smoother that way.

Deux: I can't ignore it when it bothers me!

QOC: The trick is to think about something else. Like how many prime numbers there are smaller than 100.

Deux: How many prime numbers smaller than 100 . . . most odd numbers are primes . . . except the ones that end in five, like 15, 25, 35, 45 . . . .

Duchess: Arrrrrgh!

Boxed In

The house is full of boxes. Empty boxes. It should be full of full boxes, but I have been over at the other house painting.

The twins helped me pick out the color for the library. (It was going to be the schoolroom, but doesn't library sound better? Besides, I don't think the piano is going down that hall, so we're going to have to have most of the bookcases in there.) We took a curtain to the hardware store to match. I kept being timid and picking the lighter versions, but they insisted on the more intense. I wanted something warm and honey-colored and so finally I just went with them.

Then I started putting it up on the walls. Against the existing ice blue. It didn't looked honey-colored. It looked orange. (This, by the way, is why I don't bother buying a sample and painting it on the walls. I *still* can't be sure what it will feel like.) I was terrified, but I painted grimly on. I finally got to the rolling part, in which the ducklings gleefully participated (only later did I reflect on just how many tiny spatters I would be scraping off the laminate flooring, but then, they probably weren't any messier than I would have been solo). And behold! When it covered the wall entirely, it was honey-colored and all was well.

Although with that color and the name library, I'm thinking the room really needs a walnut table and some wing-backed leather chairs. But I have a feeling that I'll have to settle for a folding table and chairs for a good long while.

Then I did DOB's new alcove, for which he chose chocolate brown and light gray. It's a bit gloomy, but the brown really is tasty looking. Especially on the trim, which looks pretty much exactly like a very long chocolate bar.

Anyway, it's all mostly done now. At least the part that might be covered up by furniture. Flooring is going down and new wider doors are going in (and I'm sure I won't get *those* painted, but then, they'll never have furniture in the way of painting them).

And now I've really, really got to finish packing. According to the plan, we'll be in the new house by this time next week. I don't see how it will all happen. But it needs to happen.

A Sense of Closure

This is the week in which we had Better Close, Or Else. We have permission to stay in this house until the end of the month, but there are several modifications that must be made to the new house before we can move in (ramp, wider doorways, hard flooring). So we need time, and help. And then we have to move itself. This is the first time we have bought and sold all at once and the back-to-back remodeling is grueling.

While waiting around I have been trying to pack, with Rocketboy's help when I can get him. (Wondergirl is also moving this month. And then he's moving after her. And then he starts school.) Progress is slow and boxes are elusive, though family members and friends in distant parts of the country have volunteered them if we come pick them up.

Anyway, we did manage to get documents signed and our current house sold. Right after it closed, the sink clogged completely during the dinner dishes. A late night trip to Walmart for Draino had no effect, other than making the house smell like bleach and shining up the sink.

In the morning His Majesty came and disassembled the plumbing to disclose a mysterious white spongy substance blocking the entire pipe. Then I helped him load the truck to go to the dump. Then I started in on the belated supper and breakfast dishes and started the dishwasher.

Finally we sat down to start school (yes, we're plowing on with school, partly because I'm stubborn that way and partly because it's rainy so what else will keep them out of trouble?) and just as we got some momentum going, the dishwasher started spewing white suds all over the floor. I shoved some towels underneath and we carried on.

Then DOB called to let me know it was time to sign documents for the new house. So I fed the kids a quick lunch and we dashed off and signed away. We returned home and I disassembled the dishwasher enough to clean out the clogged drain and started in on the rest of the dishes. We had snack and story and the kids were settled down to computer time and I was starting supper when I happened to glance at my phone and see I had missed a call much earlier in the afternoon..

I checked my voice mail and it was the title agent. She had skipped having me sign one document. Could I come in and sign it by five? I looked at the clock--it was 4:50. I told the kids to pause everything and get in the car. We zipped out, took the long way around to avoid the left turn of doom at rush hour, and pulled into the title agency with three minutes to spare. The agent had left but someone else found the paper for me.

Then we finally went home again, and found I had even remembered to turn off the stove.

Presidents and Denim

We've been working on taking President's Day Weekend as a weekend getaway, thanks to Their Majesties (possibly assisted by Walt Disney and Maxwell Smart). We've done it three years running now, which is pretty impressive. It's a better time than our anniversary, which is in early September, a time when whole-family trips to the beach sound like a good idea. In February, cabin fever makes everyone happier with a break from each other.

It's always been President's Day Weekend with us, back to when we were first courting. We don't do that mushy Valentine stuff. We sit around and talk about dead presidents, as we have done from the first. Indeed, I am reminded of a chat early in our acquaintance. I forget how the topic came up, but DOB asserted that he had learned valuable lessons from each and every president.

"Oh, really?" I replied, "So what did you learn from William Henry Harrison?"

"Don't make a speech in the rain without your hat," he replied.

This year we didn't actually go anywhere--we stayed home and bought flooring while it was on sale at Costco. And we went to used bookstores and I found the entire Kristin Lavransdattr trilogy for $6 and a beautiful copy of Robin Hood and many other fun things.

DOB decided he had better stick to his usual exercise schedule, so while he was at the Y on Monday morning I went to Target and decided to spend some time learning how to find jeans that fit. Someone recently posted a link on how not to buy mom jeans, which I read without much enlightenment. Since I wore grandma jeans as a pre-teen (technically my great-aunt's, but I think that counts), just wearing mom jeans is fashion progress for me. Still, I tried a number of different ones on to see if it would enlighten me.

What I have found is jeans in two categories: the ones that seem to fit OK in the dressing room, but are pinching unpleasantly by the end of the day, or the ones that seem to fit OK in the dressing room, but are sliding down awkwardly by the end of the day (and usually finding somewhere to pinch along the way). Trying on a dozen or so did not reveal any that seemed likely to defy this categorization, but I did definitively decide that jeggings are not for me. (Duchess looks quite good in leggings and long tops, but then, she is nine and streamlined and I am neither.)

Anyway, after all that trying I didn't buy anything, but later we went to the thrift store and I found two pairs of jeans that seemed to work pretty well. One of them pinches a bit at the end of the day and the other one slides down a bit at the end of the day, but they will do. They may or may not be mom jeans. I'm still fuzzy on that concept.

The Thing That's Been Keeping Us Up Lately

Because it's always something else's fault that we can never get to bed on time . . . this one, at least, doesn't cry or mess up the carpet.

It's Lutheran Satire. If you're not Lutheran, then you probably won't find it quite as funny. (Indeed, being a different flavor of Lutheran, we don't laugh quite as hard as a few of them. But hey, that's what satire is all about.)

Still, I think almost anyone could appreciate How to Have an Official Position. Or How to Start a Cult. And I am sure it is not only Lutheran pastors who suddenly find themselves part of the Feast of 156th Fruits.

If you're Calvinist, you probably shouldn't watch this one.

Democracy on Sale

Democracy the game, that is.

I've never posted about a game before. This is not about my favorite game (that would be the late and much lamented Glitch), nor is it about the game I play the most (that would be Magic: the Gathering in its various forms).

However, this is the first game I've encountered that seemed to have sufficient non-gamer interest to warrant a blog post.

It is, as you might suspect, a game that simulates politics. You get a country with taxes, policies already implemented, policies you might implement, voters with various degrees of commitment to various philosophies and interest groups. And you have to try to keep the country going and make yourself popular enough to get reelected while taking into account that every policy change will have all sorts of consequences, and they're never all good.

You can adjust the philosophy of your voters on two continua: economic (socialist--capitalist) and social (liberal--conservative). You can also adjust the difficulty level, which is good because on the normal setting you start with everyone hating you and a large deficit.

Of course analyzing the accuracy of the simulation is half the fun. Compared to real life, it's way oversimplified. And you never get a chance to get up and explain to everyone why your wonderful policy would be such a great idea (or even make up your own policy, unless you know how to do mods, which I certainly don't).

Still, there's plenty of things that seem pretty accurate. Such as the way *nobody* cares that you balance the budget. I'm so good at balancing the budget, and no one even notices. Except those nasty credit rating bureaus. However, debt spiral is no fun at all. And it's pretty hard to keep the budget balanced and the socialists happy.

There are many various goals to seek, extremes of one policy style or another. This is a lot of fun. "Bwahahaha! I've turned Germany into a police state! I gave everybody school lunches and nobody blinked at the universal wire tapping!" "I've diminished the Canadian military to "ceremonial" status. They don't need a military, do they? Isn't that what the US is for?" (Note: Do NOT try to eliminate the US military. It's too big of a chunk of the economy and the whole country falls apart.)

The people who do know how to create mods have created models for even more countries, such as Greece and Albania. However, for now, it's plenty hard enough to govern Canada and Australia.

The Well at the World's End

If folk tales can be divided by age group, then The Well at the World's End is definitely a "youth" tale: the king's youngest son sets forth on a quest, finds a bride, and returns home in triumph.* Only it's a whole lot longer than the longest fairy tale.

The Well at the World's End (the location, not the book) is a surprisingly modest goal: it doesn't convey immortality or invincibility. Some people, apparently, have made the journey and returned home only to get promptly stabbed in the back. At best it conveys, in role-playing terms, a bonus to all stats: those who drink of it are stronger, healthier, longer-lived, healed of all past hurts, more loved by their friends and feared by their foes, better-looking, and just plain luckier. If you go when old, it will make you young again. But given the rigors of the trip (which, after all, takes you out to the world's end), few can make it in old age, so it seems safer to go while young. (Technically you can go back indefinitely, but few seem to manage that feat, even should they wish it.)

 Ralph himself seems to be luck's darling before the trip begins, not to mention so handsome he practically has to beat women off with a stick, but that's the way of it. You can't even make it to the well unless you already have a lot of advantages. The Well is not an equal-opportunity quest. (Ursula, though not royalty, is certainly not without advantages either.) The question is not, can everybody get there, but what do those who get there do with it?

At one point on their journey, a sage who has made the trek himself gives them a caution before guidance:

"I will say this much unto you; that if ye love not the earth and the world with all your souls, and will not strive all ye may to be frank and happy therein, your toil and peril aforesaid shall win you no blessing but a curse. Therefore I bid you be no tyrants or builders of cities for merchants and usurers and warriors and thralls . . . But rather I bid you to live in peace and patience without fear or hatred, and to succour the oppressed and love the lovely, and to be the friends of men, so that when ye are dead at last, men may say of you, they brought down Heaven to the Earth for a little while."

In other words . . . don't let this quest go to your head. Come back home and live a good life. And in the end, that is what they do--Ralph returns to his little home kingdom, clears out the robbers, and takes back on the tasks he fled from at the beginning of the book. In the end, what the great quest equips him for is simply to do his duty.

At the same time, there's a subtle counterpoint story that is more of a midlife tale. At the beginning of his quest, Ralph is given a set of beads that will serve as a talisman to guide him, a gift from his "gossip" Katherine. ("Gossip" is, apparently, an obsolete word for "godmother," and Morris won't use a modern word when he can dig up an obsolete one.) Katherine is no elderly fairy, but the middle-aged wife of a local merchant, who held Ralph as a baby when she was a teenaged bride, and retains for him an affection that is a trifle too warm to be strictly maternal. She's had no children and although she and her husband are fond of each other, there's a hint that the humdrumness of their life is wearing on her. She's still pretty and strong and active enough to take her turn on the walls when the city is threatened, but you can feel the big 4-0 is staring her in the face.

When Ralph comes back in triumph with his new bride, she tells the story of the beads . . . how she obtained them, how she was to give them to a man not of her blood in need and they would lead him to the Well at the World's Men. She'd tried to give them to her husband, Clement, a few times, but he thought the whole thing was a myth (though he later gave much help to Ralph in his quest) and preferred to stick to his regular merchant runs. And so they were saved and given at last to Ralph, who was young and crazy enough to think the tales true.

After the great battle when Ralph sweeps away the invaders and restores the kingdom, he runs to tell her the news.

Quoth Ralph, "Rejoice, gossip! for neither is Clement hurt, nor I, and all is done that should be done."

She moved but little, but the tears came into her eyes and rolled down her cheeks.

"What, gossip?" quoth Ralph, "these be scarce tears of joy; what aileth thee?"

"Nay," said Katherine, "Indeed I am joyful of thy tidings, though sooth to say I looked for none other. But dear lord and gossip, forgive me my tears on the day of triumph; for if they be not wholly of joy, so also are they not wholly of sorrow. But love and the passing of the days are bittersweet within my heart to-day. Later on thou shalt see few faces more cheerful and merry in the hall at Upmeads than this of thy gossip's."

Behind the scenes of Ralph's youthful triumphs, Katherine must come to terms with the end of her own youth; that fairy-tale romances and quests out of dreams are past for her, but she can take it with good grace and pass on what she could not use herself. She puts off meeting Ursula at first, but in the end, it says, " . . . she loved and cherished Ursula and lived long in health of body and mind."

* There are also midlife tales, which tend to be about losing the magic of youth, and elder tales, which I think are about dying. And, although I've never seen anyone else use this classification, there are nursery tales, which, in contrast to the message to the youths: "Go forth and seek your fortune," convey the message to smaller children: "If you go out in the world, things are going to try to EAT you."

Color Me Incompetent

I come from a line of women who can decorate. You know, the kind of people who can take a room and make it look like everything is supposed to be there, instead of like some random furniture was taking a walk and paused to catch their breath. The kind of people who can make colors who weren't on speaking terms sit down to tea together. And take eclectic and turn it into a style.

I wouldn't say I completely missed out on this talent. At least I got enough to be discontent when the walls are plain white. But somehow things never come out on the walls they way they do in my head. When I put a bunch of mismatched furniture together, it doesn't look "eclectic," it looks "bunch of mismatched furniture." When I put colors together, instead of reinforcing and highlighting, they just glare sullenly at each other.

But hope springs eternal and every house is a new chance. I wasn't going to paint anything at the new house just yet, as the walls are in good shape and resources need to be devoted to the flooring and door widths, but then I realized that the room that is ideal for the schoolroom is also painted powder blue. While I can tolerate plain white with sufficient stuff on the walls, powder blue I cannot tolerate anywhere for any length of time. So I'm going to try again, and see if this time I can get a color on the walls that doesn't turn into something else as soon as I get it up there.

I try reading books about color design, but they all start out with the first-grade color wheel, and then they start talking about how colors next to the main color can coordinate, or colors on the opposite side, and then my eyes glaze over when they start talking about hue and saturation and I go away with the impression that you can put together pretty much anything and it will look great in a decorating book and terrible in my living room.

One thing I haven't actually tried yet that I do have some hope in: I'm going to try matching my paint chips to the curtains and pictures I already like. It doesn't require me to read about hue and saturation, for one thing.

We Interrupt Our Regularly Scheduled Programming . . .

If the words “Bill Gothard,” “IBLP,” or “ATI,” don’t mean anything to you, skip this and I will return to the regularly-scheduled programming of kid quotes and domestic disasters tomorrow.

If they do, then let me preface this by saying I know that many good things have come out of this program. Hey, I’m one of them. There were many good people involved who sincerely wanted to serve God. There were some teachings that, on their face, sounded helpful. And I know there’s a place for private confrontation and private repentance and not spreading unnecessary gossip.

But when someone has engaged in a pattern of abusive conduct for decades, unmarked by any genuine repentance, despite countless attempts to confront them privately, and when, at the same time, their core teachings are a false gospel that has been destructive to many lives . . . then it is time to speak up and put a stop to it.

If my parents had been aware, back in 1980, of the true scope of the scandal that was hushed up then, I don’t think they would have continued their involvement. Unfortunately, it was successfully hushed up and now there are dozens of witnesses over multiple decades to the same pattern of misconduct. Thousands of witnesses to the damage of the false gospel. A good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit, neither can a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit.

I’m including two links. One is one (of many) victims of the misconduct—with corroborating testimony by someone I know personally. (There are many, many more parallel stories on the site—this is not an isolated tale-bearer.) The other is my own testimony of the effects of the bad teaching. (And again, there are many, many more on the site.)

http://www.recoveringgrace.org/2014/02/charlottes-stori/#more
http://www.recoveringgrace.org/2011/12/we-must-not-be-trying-hard-enough/

A Book Post to Fill Space

It is the last day of January and I have not yet filled my goal of two posts per week, nor have I made as many posts as last January.

So I will write about books, which are handy, but which I have always felt rather shy about posting about.

Books Read in January:
The Lost Gate and The Gate Thief  by Orson Scott Card

Quite enjoyable new fantasy series I picked up on a whim at the library. Looking forward to reading the third.

Areopagitica by John Milton. Read on Diary of an Autodidact's recommendation. I really enjoyed it. 17th and 18th century English political writings are sort of weird comfort reads for me. Despite the hopelessly obscure title, it's an excellent defense of freedom of the press whose arguments foreshadow many later incarnations and a sterling example of the kind of gentle and reasoned argument that seems to be forever gone from politics.

The Year of the Boat by Lawrence Cheek. This was for the church's book club (a selection strongly influenced by the utter lack of old people with Alzheimer's, which featured too prominently in some of last year's selections). On the one hand I felt considerable sympathy with the struggles of a clumsy wordsmith to construct something in the real world. And who does not love a sailboat? On the other hand, I found it full of the sort of pretentious navel-gazing I would expect from a suburban Seattleite. Who cares if your wooden boat building is a morally significant activity? You are not a significant person. Just build the boat and stop angsting over it.

Books Still In Process at the end of January:
The Living Page by Laurie Bestvater. This is my schoolteacher read, as recommended by Brandy at Afterthoughts and others on Charlotte Mason lists. It's about using notebooks in education. I'm only mediocre at notebook use. For one thing, I can never find a pen that matches and then I get annoyed at the mismatched pen color. But I am trying to start my own commonplace book again and we have actually done some quite nice work in timeline books this year.

The Nothing that Is. I think Diary of an Autodidact's suggestion, also. History of the concept of zero. I always enjoy books about math that don't require me to do actual calculations.

Our Culture, What's Left of It. by Theodore Dalrymple. Classic curmudgeonliness for modern times, and in a culture where people still confuse change with progress, a good dose of curmudgeonliness is always necessary. I saw this on someone's blog, but I forget whose.

The Well at the World's End, by William Morris. Saw this mentioned on a Facebook discussion of influential fantasy novels. Slow to start and sometimes that 19th century faux medieval language gets old, but increasingly gripping as it goes on. Some amazing writing and characterization under the quaint words. I may do a full blog post on this one, when I get to the end. It makes me want to reread George MacDonald's Phantases, a book of similar vintage that I read a long time ago and probably wasn't ready to understand yet.

Paradise Lost, by John Milton. Since I had the Milton volume down anyway, and since we are reading about his era in school, I thought it was time to tackle this. Long poetry intimidates me and I'm not so good at reading it; I start skimming and then I realize I've read twenty lines and have no idea what's going on. However, there are certainly some striking lines in here and vivid pictures (and a bewildering heap of mythical allusions; however, no one could have figured the place of sin so vividly and nastily without them). I haven't decided if he paints Satan too much the hero; I think he rather realizes it, but also realizes that all good things come from God and Satan couldn't do much if he didn't retain many admirable qualities after his fall. But we'll see how it unfolds.

Home Improvement

One of the joys of selling a house is finally being required to do all that stuff you vowed you'd do to the house when you moved in.

This is the first time we have moved straight from one house to another, so there is also all the stuff to be dealt with before moving in: quite a bit in this case, because of the need to make the entrance and master bedroom and bathroom wheelchair accessible, at a minimum. There are a lot of other things that would be nice to do, but can wait, like putting a full bath in the master bedroom or repainting the hideous 80s dark wood flat-front cabinets. 

DOB proposed that we divide and conquer--I would handle the old house (a few random handyman projects that I could either do or be here when kind friends and relations came to help with) and he would handle the new house (getting bids, making lots of decisions, and hunting up funds). It was a logical system, but the lines invariably blur somewhat.

I am not handy. This is not a gender thing, it's a complete physical ineptitude thing. Still, I want to do my part, besides just calling people up and fixing sandwiches.  For the most part, I stuck to demolition. I managed to rip out the old wallboard in the basement stairwell without poking through into the laundry room or breaking my leg on the stairs, so that was an accomplishment. Also it involved burying two rats that had drowned in one of the garbage cans.

Two more big-ticket projects were replacing a broken window and painting under the eaves. Fortunately a friend suggested I check out the Habitat for Humanity store and there was, amazingly enough, a window that almost exactly fit in our very strangely-sized window slot for a third of the price of the special order from the hardware store. Also cheap paint in a color that didn't match, but no color would have matched. The color of our house is unique in human history. So it all came out much cheaper, which always makes me happy.

For a few brief moments I felt the glow of handiness and visions of improvements on the new house, planned and undertaken solely by me, danced in my head.

Then I returned to earth, where the children had reorganized the house, there was nothing to eat, and I was so exhausted I wanted to spend the entire next week in bed. I may decide that 80s dark wood cabinets are just fine.

The Presence of Children

There were a few posts that were arousing lively discussion on Facebook feeds this week. I'm not going to bother to look up links, because if you were lucky and missed them, you have undoubtedly seen their like. One was a columnist whining about how his extremely expensive dinner was interrupted because some fellow diners had the gall to bring their 8 month old along, and the baby cried. Another was some random blogger ranting about how she despised people who had children because that was, like, so lame. (OK, I confess, I didn't even bother to read that one.)

That doesn't really concern me. There are always going to be some cranks in the world who cannot stand being made aware that other people are doing their part to perpetuate the species. What bothers me is the number of conscientious parents who respond with statements that amount to, "I would never inflict my children on other people."

Not just explaining that they taught their children to behave in public . . . no, acting as if they must apologize for their children's mere presence, and keep them out of the way of other people and never, ever expect other people to suffer even a moment's awareness of their children's existence, in any setting not specially designated as being for children. Asserting that they understood that just staying home and away from various settings was the price they paid for indulging in having children in the first place. Claiming that it would be "selfish" to expect other people to deal with the presence of their children.

This is itself a symptom that many good and dedicated parents have internalized the message that children are a private hobby of the parents, for which they alone are responsible, and with which they alone must concern themselves. But children are not puppies nor appendages of their parents. They're people in their own right. If they are in a public setting, whether onlookers think it was wise to bring a child to that place or not, it is only asking simple human courtesy to expect them to be treated with decency and respect, instead of resentful glares.

I don't take my children to fancy restaurants or symphony concerts because fancy restaurants and symphony concerts aren't my thing . . . but if they were, I certainly would. How do we expect to perpetuate our culture if we exclude the next generation from participation? You only learn culture by participating in it; if you wait until people are cultured enough to participate, it will already be too late as they will have been getting used to something else in the meantime.

People may rightly complain about the bad behavior of some children; honestly I see more parents feeling a need to crack down on their children than I see children running wild, but I'm sure there are some hooligans. But in a way, this private hobby approach to child-rearing only makes the problem worse. Modern parenting is a lonely job. Facing skeptics at every turn only makes it worse. It's hard to stage a production when everyone's a critic instead of a support cast.


What I don't understand is why there should ever be this hostility. I certainly don't look down on people who don't have children--my children's lives and my own are richer for knowing other adults whose lives are not consumed with child-rearing. My children are better behaved for being reminded of proper behavior from other adults--when their right to exist and be present is not questioned. And the people I know in real life without children, unlike the internet cranks, seem to appreciate the fact that other people are making sure they don't have to grow old on an empty planet.

And here's something I will bother to link to: G. K. Chesterton (who, by the way, never had children) on Baby Worship.

Push! Push!

When I was in labor with Duchess, and had been pushing for an hour or so, I got rather tired of the whole process (no wonder, I'd been at it for three days!) I finally begged the doctor, "Can't we *please* make it stop for a while?"

She just said, "You're not going to feel any better until you get this baby out." And I got back to work.

Looking back to 2009, I can see that selling a house *always* reminds me of labor. I can't believe, looking back to 2009, that we did weeks of showings with four preschoolers. I am deeply grateful that we only needed one this time. And that we found a house to move to so quickly.

Two weeks from first talking to our agent we had a contract to sell and a contract to buy. The new house will be closer to the freeway, has a master suite at one end of the house, an open floor plan for the main living area, and a two-bedroom, one bath, big playroom kid zone upstairs over the garage. It's twice the size and twice the yard of this house (and twice the price, but what does one expect?)

Even everything going smoothly is almost too much. For months now, we've been just barely surviving. But there was no way to make things better without moving. And there is no way for moving to be completely stress-free. So, nothing to do but push and keep pushing. And hope it really does make things better.

Because nothing can fix everything. Not walking is still not walking, and it's still a completely different world than not walking very much. Right now, we just are hoping for a place where we can sometimes think about something else.

A List of Good Manners

The ducklings have been compiling this on the board:

1 don't talk with your mouth full
2 say "Excuse me" when you leave the table
3. be quiet in the house
4. don't put your elbows on the table while your eating
5. chew with your mouth closed
6. don't turn lights off on people
7. don't walk into the bathroom on people
8. do your chores without wining
9. sit in your chair during the meal
10. don't stuff your mouth during a meal
11. say "please" when you ask for something
12. Say "Thank you" when somone gives you something

So now you know how to behave around here.

Run for your life

Why yes, I am going to bother to deconstruct a harmless Facebook meme, why did you ask?

This cropped up in my news feed a couple of times last week, posted by some very well-meaning and nice people:

Now, what's wrong with this? Rather a nice idea. Keep God first, and all that.

Well, for starters, it suggests that marriage (and relationships leading thereto) are for spiritual overachievers. First get your spiritual life in order, then find someone. (Without actually looking for anyone, because that would be unspiritual. It has to look like an accident.)

It's the churchy parallel to the theme in our culture: get your financial life in order, your career started, your nice house bought, then get married. Marriage becomes the crowning achievement of personal and spiritual life.

Except for the most part it works better the other way: Marriage helps people behave in responsible ways, leading them to greater financial stability and spiritual involvement. (Indeed, does the Bible ever suggest spiritual maturity is an essential prerequisite for getting married? Kind of the opposite--it suggests that having trouble keeping your pants zipped is the primary reason for getting married.) Raise the bar for marriage too high and you prevent the very goal you're trying to achieve.

Now, it is helpful to date and marry someone with some basic shared values. That's just common sense. If you want to raise orphans in Africa dating someone who yearns after the corporate high life is not going to work out well. But spirituality is not a competitive sport.

And that's the deeper problem--the idea that we can somehow chart our own or someone else's spiritual growth and measure how close we are getting to God. That our spirituality is measured by the intensity of our efforts. That we should reject as inferior anyone who can't keep up with us. When in fact the intensity of our efforts may be leading us farther from resting in God. And the more spiritual we think we are, the more in danger we are.

Paul spoke of running the race, but he never suggested that the race was a contest to get closer to God--Jesus ran it too, and he already *was* God. The race is just the journey of life, and God is already with us on that one.

Just as a practical measure, it's not that great of advice for young people. If you've been on the planet long enough you've known people--probably lots of people--who were all set to be spiritual superstars in the early years, but who burned out, washed up, or just walked away. (And on the other hand people who came to spiritual devotion late but strong.) The intensity of a person's visible fervor at 21 is not a strong indicator of what kind of partner they'll be in twenty years. Really, none of us know this for ourselves, either.

I wish I could come up with some sort of pithy counterstatement, but I'm no good at dating advice. Although "It is better to marry than to burn" could possibly serve as a Facebook meme. With the right picture.

On the Move

I thought I might set a goal of blogging twice a week this year, which would double my posts over last year.

I'm already behind. Also, I haven't started on any of the end of year and end of quarter paperwork which is the (very, very) dreary side effect of having my own practice.

On the other hand, I *did* clean and reorganize the house from top to bottom last weekend, which wasn't on the schedule at all. DOB thought it was time to start looking at selling our house so we can move to or build one in which he can get to the bathroom without summoning assistance. The real estate agent (who sold us this house) said, "Actually I know somebody who is looking for a house just like that. How about Monday?" So we'll see if it works out. Otherwise I have to *keep* things clean, which is nearly as bad.

Someday, I'm going to deep clean the house without having to move out of it. But first I think I'd have to live there more than three years. Maybe this will be the time. Or rather, the time after this, since we're probably going to rent for awhile.

Lists of Five for 2013

These are, of course, things in MY life for 2013. So don't expect, say, movies or songs that were actually released in 2013, because I don't move at that pace.

Five good things:
1. Kids being bigger. Bigger kids are always good.
2. Getting to actually go to court. I think I like being a lawyer.
3. Still being alive and all together.
4. Staying on track and organized with school. I'm not sure who I'm channeling with teaching school, but it's certainly not me.
5. Role playing games. They're fun, we can do them together, and they don't involve major exertion.

Five bad things:.
1. & 2. Grandparents dying
3. DOB's health problems
4. House not magically becoming wheelchair accessible when we needed it to be.
5. Feeling exhausted, overwhelmed, and sad because of items #1-#4.

Five books or authors that stood out:
1. Anthony Trollope!!!
2. Wild Coast, by John Gimlette. A vivid travel memoir/history about an area I knew next to nothing about.
3. The Island of the Day Before, by Umberto Eco, where I finally found a reference I had been looking for for a decade. Also, the title of the book makes me happy.
4. The Lost World of Genesis One, by John Walton
5. The Count of Monte Cristo, which I had put off reading for far too long.

Five movies or TV shows I will probably watch again someday:
1. Barchester Chronicles
2. The Dresden Files
3. Inception
4. John Adams miniseries
5. Gunless

Five songs that stuck in my head:
1. "Go No More A-Roving," Leonard Cohen (and Lord Byron)
2. "Caravanserai," Loreena McKennit
3. "Hounds of Winter," Sting
4. The Three Ravens, old folk song
5. "Every December Sky," Mae Robertson

Five thoughtful posts:
Dorothy Sayers on Why Life is Not Like a Detective Story

"Old-Fashioned" Courtship?
A Different Thought on Giving
Beauty and Brains
On Ends, Means, and Obedience

Five funny posts:
Waiting for the Apocalypse (the humor in this is much darker, in retrospect)
Toy Stories
The Grammar Commando Takes the Stage
Twin Time
In Which I Stay Out of Trouble (except nobody laughed at that one. I think I shocked everyone.)

Let the children come

So we got invited to help out at the "Celebrate Jesus" walk-through down the street last weekend. DOB was in trial preparation mode (which at that point on Saturday night mostly meant not talking to anyone), so it seemed like a good time to get out of the house.

We were overprepared. Remembering the previous weekend, when we froze our toes and fingers off just walking through another church's event at twenty degrees, I put everyone in two layers of everything under their coats and hats and mittens and then our (very roomy) Bible-time costumes over that. (Something you can learn from Christmas walk-throughs throughout the north is that people in Bible times all ate extremely well.) However, last weekend it was 45 degrees. We were in a nice little shelter and running to Jesus every two minutes. Pretty soon there were hats and mittens cast aside vanishing into the hay. It's a small miracle that we made it home with all of them.

Duchess of course wanted to say all the lines from the start, and Deux soon warmed up to it. After a while the twins joined in, along with a little boy whose father was playing Jesus a few scenes over. Pretty soon the chaos made the disciple's line, "Woman, quiet your children!" entirely justified. Deux also, for some reason, decided the best way to run to Jesus was to trip and then dive headfirst through the hay. He did it every time.

The idea was to have two families alternating every thirty minutes or so. However, the other family never showed. So our first shift was over an hour long, and by the end everyone was beginning to wear thin. Duchess and Deux had absorbed enough of "the show must go on" from theater classes to keep the action going no matter how long we waited for relief, but they relieved their feelings by storing up hay while Jesus gave his brief lecture, and then pummeling each other the instant the scene ended.

They finally scared up a replacement family and we went inside for soup and cookies and to shed our surplus layers. It was, of course, just then that Their Majesties showed up and walked through looking for us in vain. They met us and we went through the whole thing again and did a special demonstration for them. Then we were back on duty. Dot and Dash spent a lot of the last shift curled up in the hay, but there was still plenty of tumult for the disciple to object to. By the end we were hitting that point of exhaustion that works like hypothermia--the tireder the kids are, the wilder they act and the more they insist they are not tired at all and will never ever need to quit.

They asked us if we wanted to come back for a repeat performance on Sunday, but I thought one day was quite enough. Besides, on Sunday night, DOB was at the point of trial preparation that involves getting everyone to bed early.

Cabin Fever

I've been building a playlist of winter-themed songs to vary the diet of Christmas music. There are quite a few wintry songs on the theme of "I've got my love to keep me warm." There are, if anything, more on the theme of, "I'm cold now that my love has left me." But there don't seem to be any on the theme--which I would most identify with--of, "My love and I made a lot of babies and I think they're going to tear the furniture apart before spring."

It really hasn't even yet been a bad winter for being stuck inside. No one has been noticeably sick so far (we'll see how long THAT lasts)--we even managed to forestall a sinus infection for DOB by the hasty application of all the remedies we learned last winter. We had a week and a half of deep cold, in which we went down to the walk-through Life of Jesus at the neighborhood church and skated on the Sea of Galilee. Now it's back to 40s and drizzly which, although uninspiring, is really not that bad for getting outside. It was a matter of great disappointment that we didn't manage some snow at the intersection of those two weather patterns.

But darkness still comes way too soon and the children who used to be cute little toddlers bouncing on the couch are now posing a serious danger to the springs. I guess I should have put a stop to it sooner.

While we were wandering through the walk-through we got invited to come take a turn being Jesus Blessing the Little Children. Duchess naturally jumped at the opportunity, and everyone else naturally followed Duchess. I figured anything that would get us outside after dark was a worthy endeavor.

Sermons and shootouts

This week DOB and I watched Gunless, a very funny western parody about a gunslinger, the Montana Kid, who stumbles into a remote Canadian hamlet and tries to get in a gunfight with an enormous but peaceful blacksmith in a town where the only pistol has been broken for years.

At one point he gets asked why . . . why can't he just let it go? Why, after a brief misunderstanding, does he need to make the blacksmith the twelfth man he's killed?

He answers: "Cuz if I let it go now, then I shoulda let it go when them 3 guys in Missouri called me a cheat. Now you tell me. Did they die for nothin'? And if I let them guys in Missouri go, then I shoulda let it go when that man was whoopin' that dog. Now does that sound right to you? Beatin' on a helpless dog? If I was able to let that man go for beatin' on that mutt, then sure as hell no reason I couldn'ta just walked away when I was called out in Wyoming, or Santa Fe, and twice in Arizona. If I was so damned smart to walk away when I was called out, then I should have the wherewithal not to use my gun in self-defense, twice. And if I shoulda been able to avoid that, then there's no arguable reason why I couldn'ta just gone to the sheriff, insteada killin' the man that whipped my pa."

 The Montana Kid has inadvertently stumbled into an Advent sermon. He's begun to realize that he needs to change, that he wants a different life. But he can't have change without repentance: without admitting that his former choices were wrong. Sometimes, that's a lot of wrong to face.

The need for repentance is not an arbitrary call. John the Baptist doesn't call for repentance because we need to grovel a lot before Jesus will deign to come; he calls for repentance because it's the logical precondition for change. Because until we can face up to what has been wrong, we won't be able to accept things being made right. The change has to come from outside us . . . but we have to be made ready for the change.

The trouble with parenting advice

Suppose you were growing tomatoes, something I try to do and fail spectacularly nearly every year. This alone would suggest to you that you should not ask me how to grow tomatoes. However, you could probably find someone in your neighborhood who had a bumper crop in tomatoes and ask them how to do it. And you would probably get pretty good advice, although your results would vary because your soil would have a little different composition and the sunlight would strike your yard a little differently.

But tomatoes are an annual crop and the desired result is pretty easy to define: plenty of tasty tomatoes. Kids are . . well, not a crop at all, and different people hope for different results and it takes a whole lot longer than a year to raise them. Results vary.

And people have very fuzzy memories. When it comes to our own lives, we're always rewriting our own histories, casting things in a different light as new events come. By the time a child has been alive long enough to show some kind of evidence of how their parenting was, the parent has already forgotten what they actually did. Much of what we do we don't even know we are doing. I might think my children's love of reading is attributable to my stellar educational program, when it might in fact be attributable to their desire to be out of sight when chore time comes.

I am amazed at how quickly forgetfulness happens. A couple of weeks ago I took my three year old niece for a walk along with the twins. I had already forgotten how short three year old legs are. Five year olds look small, but they can keep up with a leisurely adult stroll. Three year olds just can't. You have to slow down to wedding march slow. And I'd forgotten. I've forgotten what it's like to be awakened all night long, to watch for a chance to dash to the bathroom, to have dinner prep interrupted thirty times (we're down to ten), to have nothing in the house happen without my direct involvement, to know that my child could be in a life-threatening or house-destroying situation within twenty seconds of turning my attention elsewhere. I remember that these things happened, but I have no idea how I actually coped with them, or what I might have done to deal with naps and pickiness while all those were occurring.

So, even though I am currently the parent of four school-aged children, anything I might say about parenting infants or toddlers should be taken with great suspicion. On the other hand, anyone who's currently in the trenches doesn't really have any idea how their actions are going to pan out over the long haul. (Wow, how many cliches can I pack into one sentence?) Then there are the parents who have multiple stages, but any older child from one of those families can tell you just how fuzzy their recollection of what they did with the older children is.

Not to discourage asking for help when you need it. But most of it boils down to: Do the best you can and wait for them to outgrow it.