Plummeting without parachute

I know this is insane talk. But I'm relieved it failed. I have no idea what is coming next, but I believe strongly the market needs to correct itself without intervention.

Bailout plan fails in House

First day of 40

Tuesday 23 Sept was my birthday, and I thought I'd give you a play-by-play because it makes me laugh whenever I think of it.

We went out for dinner last Saturday in pre-celebration, knowing that Tuesday night was already taken. The fourth Tuesday of the month is cub scout pack meeting, and Blaine is presently the Pack Leader. So Saturday evening Blaine and I went out for dinner to P.F. Chang's, my favorite restaurant in the world and just about the only place I eat out anymore because once you have a favorite place and three favorite things there, seriously why spend money on anything else? And we also went shopping and I got to pick out two of my birthday presents myself. :)

So I already knew that my birthday dinner was going to be a hot dog/hamburger barbecue out in front of the church with the other cub scouts' families, and I was OK with that. Since B's in charge he bought our vegan dogs and Boca burgers so we could actually eat along with them this time.

On Tuesday Blaine woke the children up early, 6:15 a.m., so I could open my presents before he left for work. I got the X Files series (seasons 1-7, the Scully and Mulder years) on DVD and, most excited about this one, a new keyboard for my laptop. The letters had worn off my keyboard within a year of buying it and like a dolt I didn't get the keyboard replaced before the warranty was up so I've just been working with a blank keyboard for three years now. Luckily I know where everything is. It drove Blaine nuts and kept everyone else away from the computer. But now I have letters! And the keys work so smoothly. I love it. And I also unwrapped the pants and shirt I'd chosen on Saturday evening.

One of my sisters phoned me while I was working on breakfast and we chatted. She asked how old I am, and when I told her she said, "I'm quite shaken. I'm really, quite shaken. That's...that's...You're really 40?" I could hear the smile in her voice when she said it. But I could also hear the resignation underneath. "My little sister's a total geezer now. So what does that make me?" My mom had roughly the same reaction. "I guess this means I can't claim 40 years old anymore!" Guess not, Mom. Sorry 'bout that.

We did homeschool as usual (well, I might have given myself a few more recesses than a normal school day ahem), practiced the piano, tidied, and got shoes on and prepared for pack meeting. Then a friend called to say that his wife, driving home along the same route Blaine would travel, had been detoured because of a head-on collision. He was hoping I'd get to Blaine before he headed up the canyon, so he could detour earlier and not lose much time. But when I called Blaine he was already on his way up the canyon.

He got to the turn-off leading to the emerald land of Fairview, only to be halted by highway patrol as we were warned. They said it would be at least an hour. He knew he had about an hour until pack meeting. He knew our friend (the wife of the friend, who is also a friend) had gone an alternate route he wasn't familiar with, but it was a few miles ahead. He pressed onward, after asking directions from the highway patrol.

Long story short, every time he asked he got bad, bad directions. His detour, which should have been about 40 extra miles, ended up being 250. He was driving on my birthday night for four hours trying to get home to me while the kids and I faked our way through a pack meeting we hadn't planned. At the end of pack meeting Macklin's finger got closed in a heavy church door and for the next hour or so I was convinced it was broken and was only trying to get all the other children settled, pajamaed, and headed to bed before we went to the ER. But Mack finally settled down (yay Motrin!) and fell asleep and I stared and my uncut, uncandled cake (which is actually a pumpkin pie, hey, it's what I wanted) and waited for Blaine's long detour to come to a close and for him to get home. Emma still had a lot of homework to do, so even after Macklin was asleep and Blaine was home we stayed up to support her.

It was a great relief to climb into bed at last.

But it wasn't a bad day. Even at pack meeting I was surrounded by good friends, joking with me and calling Blaine on their cells to give him directions on the unfamiliar roads and wishing me happy birthday. They sort of even wiped off their spatulas before turning our vegetarian meat-replacement products on the grill. And after pack meeting while Macklin was wailing about his finger and I was trying to get everyone ready for bed, one of them dropped by with an armload of chocolate and more happy birthday wishes, "Because I know Blaine isn't home yet and I still want you to have a happy night." And all of this is why it brings a smile to my face. Not a bad birthday, really.

So here I am, forty years old, and I feel fine. Not much different than 39, truth be told. ;) We're going camping tomorrow, to Kodachrome State Park with my sister's family. The fun never ends! We'll call this part of the extended birthday celebration. How lucky can one girl get?

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Now playing: Altered Images - Happy Birthday
via FoxyTunes

More on the economy freefall.

Just trying to make sense of my world.

Links to a CNN article from Ron Paul, former candidate for President.

"They seek to prevent the liquidation of bad debt and worthless assets at market prices, and instead try to prop up those markets and keep those assets trading at prices far in excess of what any buyer would be willing to pay.…Using trillions of dollars of taxpayer money to purchase illusory short-term security, the government is actually ensuring even greater instability in the financial system in the long term."

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Now playing: Muse - Map of the Problematique
via FoxyTunes

At least we won't have to change the flag colors

How We Became the United States of France

Economic upheaval—sigh. And I thought B's salary wasn't stretching far enough before.

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Now playing: Muse - Apocalypse Please
via FoxyTunes

Life is beautiful

It would be hard to feel more deep-seated peace than I feel at the end of every weekday. I go to pick Emma up from her school at 4:30 p.m. and we chatter, chatter, chatter away like we haven't seen each other in weeks about everything she's done since I dropped her off at 7:30 a.m. I'm always so excited to see her, to listen to her, to connect with her again; I don't at all mind driving twice a day to get her.

She is doing so well. She is thriving in every class.

• She has the highest grade in her Latin class.
• She got 100% on her geometry unit 1 test today on the first try (he would have let them retake it once, and would have counted the better grade of the two tries), she's gotten 100% on every daily geometry quiz (he lets them retake those three times, keeping the final try; she's gotten a few 80s or 90s or 95s on the first try that she was able to bring up to 100% on the second taking).
• Her English teacher is a pussycat and not a particularly scary grader, but she loves loves loves his class and is doing very well.
• Her art teacher is enthusiastic about everything she does, so encouraging and excited. I don't know if she's equally excited about everyone else, but I know Emma is thrilled.
• She hardly even mentions science, I have to ask about it. Why? "Because it's so easy, Mom. I understand it before he even explains it. It's, just, not a challenge at all."
• The thing that thrills me most: her Global Studies teacher gave her the only A in all of his classes for her five-paragraph essay. I did read it and gave her pointers—"This doesn't sound like a thesis statement to me" or "You need to clarify who 'they' is in this sentence" or "I had to read this sentence three times to really figure out what you meant, can you reword it to be clearer?"—but the things he gushed about were all her comprehension and ideas and the way she strung it together. The only A. Out of all the classes, all the grades he teaches. SQUEE.
• She's learning guitar, and totally picking up on it so quickly and well. She says it's her violin training that's helping her, though I play violin too and it hasn't helped me learn guitar at all.
• She is making friends, but still loves her family best. :) She's so happy to have a school-free weekend to spend with us. I think it's adorable.

Do any of you remember the opening sequence of The Mary Tyler Moore show? She's crossing the street and throws her hat and the lyric is, "You're going to make it after all!" That's how I feel. She's on grade level, she's ready for this work, she's bright, she's determined, she's capable. She's going to make it after all. *tosses hat*

Homeschool is going well, too. Kids are doing great, growing, learning. Christian and Libby are buzzing through math and their writing ability is skyrocketing. I'm just so UP. I feel happy. I feel satisfied. I feel like all I've done, all I've given or set aside all these years to raise and educate my children, is totally worth it. So glad. So proud.

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Now playing: Muse - Take A Bow
via FoxyTunes

How could I not, when asked by Linda?

I just love it when friends' wives become friends in their own right. Linda has always made an effort to keep in in the loop of my college pal Matt's life, and in so doing I know probably way more about Linda than I do now about Matt. *skwunches Linda* So when she tagged me to bore you all with info about me, how could I resist? Looks like I get to tell you about myself in threes.

Joys:

1. Children. I have, and do, give up so much for these sweet young ones of mine. I do so willingly. I love to see smiles on their faces, listen to their laughter, and share their lives.
   And husband. You know why women read novels containing romance? To see unconditional, consuming, supportive, redeeming love. Like Blaine has for me, completely evident to anyone who cares to notice it. I'm so lucky.
   
2. Rare personal time. Which I often spend reading, or outside walking/jogging so as not to let my first joy interrupt my second. ;)
   
3. Food. I have to eat three times a day, I might as well freaking enjoy it, right? Nom nom.

Fears

1. Injury/death of children or husband.
   
2. Personal failure, not achieving all I can do in my life on earth.
   
3. Leaving my children motherless.

Current Obsessions:

1. Physics. It's our physics year in homeschool W00T.
   
2. Muse. It's really, really saying something when a single group comes out on top of my huge "favorite music" list and stays there as long as Muse has.
   
3. I'm sort of back to Twilight for the moment, having just completed what's available of Midnight Sun yesterday. But definitely reading in general is an obsession, and always has been.

Surprising Facts:

1. It's only the second week of school, and already I'm an hour late starting the school day. What's up with that?
   
2. I have almost no pictures or art up around my house. Took 'em down to paint, never bothered to put 'em back. I guess we'll have to call those sofas "art".
   
3. I love clogs more than any other sort of shoes. It's lucky I don't need good arch support right?

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Now playing: Duncan Sheik - In Between
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All is busy, all is busy.

Wrapping up last week:

ACADEMY: Emma had a great first week of school. She enjoys her teachers and classmates, every day she comes home wreathed in smiles. She's already learning so much—I double, triple approve of her teachers' goals and methods. Her two most time-consuming classes are going to be Global Studies and Geometry. No surprise on the math there, it's always homework-intensive. Her global studies teacher is smart and funny, and he expects a 3- or 5-paragraph essay from them almost every time they meet. He expects them to have a good question, just one, about any topic they're discussing, and to be willing to state their opinion in front of the class. He's like those make-you-think teachers we see in the prep schools in the movies, and I'm all YAY about it.

CHRISTIAN: The birthday boy turned 13 on Saturday. We had one heck of a chocolate cake, went out for pizza, he went to see Iron Man, and without shoes standing back to back he proved to be taller than his mother. That's my boy. Keep it up, Christian.

FRIENDSHIP: Sofie, a good friend from Canada, was here visiting with her grandson Kyren in tow. In the middle of going back and forth to Emma's school to drop off or retrieve her, of getting my children established in the work of their new grades and trying to recommence school, of just the craziness that is life here, it was lovely to have quiet moments (while making meals, while driving hither or yon—wherever we could grab them!) to chat. Made her read Twilight, and we talked about writing and plotting and characters and... So fun. And she gave my kids all a wonderful art lesson one day when we spent a few hours in a little campground and drew the quaking aspens and other plants/rocks/bits of wood and listened to the many cows moo over the fence. I hope her bus ride home with her bundle-of-energy goes well!

HOMESCHOOL: Ethan's in first grade, Jackson is in third grade, Libby is in sixth grade, and Christian is in seventh grade. It has changed our dynamic a bit not to have Emma here. In other words, it's a little freaky. But we had a great beginning. I've coordinated our school year schedule with Emma's so when she has her breaks and vacations we also have ours. My evil plan has already had a great effect—Libby and Christian are hopping through their math books because they know they have only six weeks to get through the first 30 lessons plus tests. No more sitting back and procrastinating! We started off with a bang.

And I've made a change in my methodology this year, regarding writing for my very young students. I've decided that it is totally enough for me that we read history and do a couple of hands-on activities (coloring, looking up a picture and printing it out for their notebook, building a model). I'm no longer going to try to make the young ones narrate history lessons and remember names like Nobuyasu and which part of Japan the feudal system was working in. Exposure is enough at that age, "perfect" comprehension only brings on frustration and makes the lesson overly long. And for Libby and Christian, I'm not forcing history write-ups in outline form anymore. A good paragraph about the page is really sufficient for me. I'm going to work more on building their short essay (like, one paragraph) writing skills than their outline skills. We'll save the narrations for science. I'm so happy about this change I can't believe it. It is appropriate to grade level, it relieves an artificial pressure I'd put on me and my young students, and it builds skills differently, but in a way I want them built. Hooray for me and changing the system. ;)

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Now playing: Gnarls Barkley - Going On
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