Wanna Know Something Else?

The film business is not family friendly. Maybe you already knew that. Or maybe you didn't. But I'm here to tell you it stinks for families. Yes, the travel is cool. Jerry has seen more of the world than a lot of adults but the trade off is that his dad is never home for dinner, works a lot of weekend, and goes out of town fairly frequently. Can you tell I just tried calling him (iChatting him, actually) and he was too busy to talk to me? He's got to hurry up and make a tape so some producer can let it sit on his coffee table for five hours before he watches it. I'm a little bitter. And even though it's going to be awesome to be in New Zealand it's going to be me and Jerry alone most of the time. Any traveling we do will be without Warren, except a few weekends here and there if he manages to get both days off.

Geez. I'm in a funk, aren't I? I think it's the stress of leaving.

Let's think about happy things:

1.) I bought a new lens for my camera today. That's cool. I'm planning on taking lots of beautiful photos in New Zealand and sharing them with you all on my blog. I may even splurge on a wide angle lens. I need to talk to Warren about it first because it's not cheap. He already said we should get one but I'm not sure if he realizes how expensive they are.

2.) We had another fun day at circus class today. I hung upside down on a trapeze and did a split thing with my legs and arched my back and it was awesome! Of course, I couldn't repeat it. The next time I tried it, well, let's just say it wasn't very graceful.

3.) We spent the afternoon with our homeschool friends at the book store. The kids found books they liked and sat at a table reading while the other mom and I chatted. Her kids showed me lots of their favorite books and I bought a few new ones for Jerry and I. This is what we got:

Dragon Drive 6 (It's a manga series Jerry LOVES.)
The Sea of Trolls by Nancy Farmer (She wrote The House of the Scorpion, which I really liked.)
Holes by Louis Sachar (We've never read it.)
Coraline by Neil Gaiman (Zach, my friends 12yo says it's the "freakiest book ever.")
Thirteen Reasons Why by Jay Asher. (That's for me--even though it's YA.)

4.) I'm going salsa dancing again tomorrow!! Woohoo!

5.) I'm going to see a play on Saturday with friends from waaaaaaay back in the day when Warren and I first met. We met at a Grateful Dead show, by the way. That's how Jerry got his name. He was born a couple months after Jerry Garica died. It's a funny story, the way Warren and I met, which I'll tell you sometime--even though it involves illicit drug use (sorry Mom and Dad--I still turned out fine.).

But, now that I've found my happy place again it's time to get to work on my taxes and editing the newsletter and cleaning my kitchen and making dinner. Ick. When I put it all together like that it sounds so oppressive. Let me rephrase that: Now that I've found my happy place again I'm going to move forward and accomplish the goals I've set for myself so that I can go to bed tonight with a sense of accomplishment and satisfaction. As if.

Wanna Know Something?

Crying doesn't change the cost of building a deck. Neither does pouting. I had a meeting with our architects this morning and I cried (mostly unnoticed) but that didn't change the fact that the deck we want to build off the back of our house will cost $37,000 (yes, that's thousand) before we even get to the above ground part. No kidding. That's just for the foundations, pilings, cement and all the crap that will never see the light of day. $37,000!!!! So now we have to eliminate the part of the deck that I was most looking forward to. The part that goes all the way across the back of our house so I can step out from any upstairs room and be outdoors, enjoying our lovely view. We'll have a deck off our kitchen but it won't be sweeping and grand and I won't be able to fit a long table to seat twelve people on it. My entire vision of the future of our deck has been ruined. Bahhhhaaahaaa!

And you wanna know something else? The city of Los Angeles is determined to make our deck as plain and ugly as possible. They won't approve our railings, which were going to be really cool. And they keep asking for more money. And I'm wondering who exactly at the city permit office I need to sleep with (sorry Warren) in order to get our permits approved in a timely fashion without all these inane restrictions. Ughhhhhh!

See. This is what the deck was going to look like. This is a preliminary drawing without the cool railing so you just have to imagine a railing going all the way across the house just above that beam.

But now that entire section on the left has got to go (unless we discover $50,000 that we didn't know we had), so it's really just going to be the small upper deck with the stairs and then the lower deck, which comes off our bedroom downstairs (that's the part where you can see those orange curtains).

I know. I know. It's only a stupid deck. It's not important in the grand scheme of things. I'm going to New Zealand for three months for crying out loud would I just stop wallowing in self-pity. I know. But I'm not ready yet. Maybe I'll be ready to stop wallowing in an hour or so. For now I'm mourning the loss of my stupid deck.

My Blog Is Excellent!

It's been a week since Laura at Wistful Wanderlust was kind enough to give me the Excellent Blog Award and it's just been sitting on my shelf collecting dust, getting buried under to do lists, bills, unread books--you name it. But I'm finally breaking it out, dusting it off and placing it front and center for your viewing pleasure.

Isn't it lovely?

Thanks Laura. I think your blog is excellent, too.

But now I have to name ten other excellent blogs. Only ten! Here they are:

1. The Parenting Pit - The very first unschooling blog to win my heart back in the early (uh, earlier) days.
2. These Go To Eleven - I love her sense of humor.
3. Swiss Army Wife - How can a blog with a name like that be anything but excellent?
4. Cocking A Snook - Because JJ and Nance are both so smart and funny and knowledgeable. And because I feel like they're my own personal unschooling fairy god mothers.
5. A Life Worth Living - I've followed Lynn's blog from the beginning and I love her honesty.
6. Medieval Affair - Again, it's the honesty I like, and the fact that we're on this journey together.
7. Just Enough and Nothing More - I don't know where Tammy gets the energy to do all the things she does but I'm green with envy.
8. Embracing the Strange - Heather's blog is honest and thought provoking.
9. Happy@Home - I love that Sally takes the time to explain the relationships in her household and shares ways in which she's trying to make things run smoother for everyone.
10. Bodhicitta - Talk about joie de vivre! Diana's got it in spades and her family prayer has become one of my favorite mantras.

If someone hadn't already given these blogs the award I'd be giving one to them, too:
The Road Less Traveled
Unschool Days
An Unschooling Life
Wistful Wanderlust

Attitude Adjustment (Mine)

As usual I have waited until the last possible moment to start getting things ready for our trip. In addition to that, I've suddenly decided I need to see all my friends before I leave. Since most of my friends move out of Los Angeles within a couple years of meeting me (I know. I'm beginning to think it's me, too.) this is something I can manage in a week. The problem is, now I have to squeeze in shopping, packing, doing our taxes, cleaning my house, visiting my grandmas, interviewing people for my column, editing a newsletter, going to Lego Land (a super bowl Sunday tradition), taking the animals to the vet, driving my dog to Sacramento, with seeing my friends.

Hold on a minute! It's not a problem, actually. What am I saying?

Okay. Rewind. This is reminding me of a conversation I had with my sister yesterday. I was talking to her on the telephone (she lives in Ireland) as I looked out our window at four days worth of rain puddling in my backyard and I said, "I can't get over this pounding rain. It's been going on for days!" She just started laughing. She lives in Ireland for crying out loud! Four days of rain is nothing to her. Four months of rain might not even be enough to garner her sympathy. So I said, "Right. I guess I'm complaining to the wrong person." She said I was and pointed out that I would be leaving the rain for a New Zealand summer in a week and that I'd be there for three months. Basically she was telling me to shut up.

And now I can hear her laugh in my head again telling me the same thing. I have nothing to complain about.

There. Attitude adjusted. I still don't want to clean though...

A Bad Movie & A Good One

We watched the second worst movie I've ever seen yesterday. Dragon Wars. It was painful, but not nearly as painful as the Thomas the Tank Engine Movie, starring Peter Fonda in the single most pathetic performance ever.

But, luckily we followed it up with a good one, Mr Holland's Opus. Throughout the first hour of the movie Jerry kept saying, "I can't believe you thought I'd like this." Or, "And you thought I'd like this because?" But when I suggested we turn it off, he insisted we finish it. Because the film went through so many decades it provided the impetus for conversations about the Vietnam War and the draft, John Lennon's assassination, and school board budgets. This struck me as a good example of how something you think isn't educational at all, can turn into a real learning experience in a very natural way. I think I'm getting the hang of this unschooling thing.

Brief Political Interlude

1/27/08 update - So the letter to the German president is legit. This was confirmed by my German friend as well as Daryl Cobranchi from HE&OS, who said he's been in direct contact with unschoolers in Germany. Feel free to click away at that little plus sign, but maybe do some research before sending any money to HSLDA just to be sure the leaders of that organization share your values.

Note as of 1/26/08 - After I posted this it was brought to my attention that HSLDA isn't always on the up and up. I confess to knowing nothing about the political world of homeschooling and the organizations that represent it, but I did find this interesting discussion about the HSLDA and unschooling at Home Education & Other Stuff. It's from 2003. If you're in the dark, like me, you might want to check this out. If I find out that there is something weird going on with this I'll just remove the post entirely. I'm also asking a friend of mine to translate the letter on the German site so I can be sure we're not adding pluses to something that we don't really believe in. Stay tuned.

This is from the Home School Legal Defense Association:

Help Germans Ask Their President: ‘Why isn’t Homeschooling Allowed?’

German President Angela Merkel has a website where it is possible to ask questions of her directly. It has been reported by Germans that those questions that receive the most number of “plus” signs will receive an answer. German homeschoolers are asking homeschoolers from all over the world to vote in favor of this question. Click here and then click on the plus sign to register your vote to have President Angela Merckel answer the question “Why is homeschooling not allowed in Germany?”

Germany is a federal republic in which states are responsible for education. In all of Germany, states treat homeschooling as illegal, and parents are fined thousands of dollars, put in jail or have child custody taken away by the government. Incredibly, federal courts have chosen to interpret the federal constitution against parents and have ruled that it is an “abuse of parental rights” to homeschool. The only solution will be if German states change their laws. In order for this to happen, public officials, including Angela Merckel, will have to realize that German public policy regarding homeschooling is out of step with the rest of free democratic societies that embrace pluarlism in education and recognize that parents have the right to homeschool their children.

Thank you for helping homeschoolers in Germany seeking freedom to educate their children at home. Your vote counts!

It's really fast and easy to help. Just click the above link and look for the plus sign on the bottom right hand side of the page, then click on it. That's all there is to it.

Salsa Update

Ow.

Ow.

Ow.

I can hardly walk. But boy did I ever have fun! And I didn't humiliate myself--much. I started to get a little sloppy towards the end of the evening because I could hardly stand, let alone keep my balance while twirling around the dance floor, but I opted to make a graceful exit at that point--if you can call hobbling down a flight of stairs graceful.

The lesson was no problem, really. The other dancers didn't seem super advanced (some of the guys in the class were beginners, too) and I was able to follow along pretty well. There was just one step that made me panic a little--oh, there were two, actually, but by the end I was looking forward to the second one because I had to throw myself across the guy's knee and arch my back (kind of like a dip but with no hands), which ended up giving me about three extremely welcome seconds of rest. The other step required that I do a fast cross-over-step-thing (which looked really sexy when done the right way) and then slide my right leg between the man's legs, bending my left knee so that I was crouched on the floor with one leg extended. Getting down wasn't really a problem, aside from the sexy walk thing, but getting up! Now that took some work. Whenever the guy widened his stance I knew he was expecting me to do that stupid sexy walk and slide to the ground so I always panicked. I think I only managed to do it right once the entire evening.

I think it's safe to say that was the best workout I've ever had in my life! This was largely thanks to the fact that my friend, David, is a really good dancer. If I'd been dancing with someone that only knew a few moves I'd probably be able to walk today, but it wouldn't have been nearly as much fun. So, I'm going back next week! Woohoo! I hope my body has recovered by then.