I'm FLYing!

At least I guess I am. I have routines in place, and they get done on a semi-regular basis. I'm not perfect, but in general the house goes from pretty darn clean to just somewhat messy over the week. Sometimes it gets worse than I can stand, and honestly we did about 4 hours of work this weekend to clean it up, but that involved a lot of re-arranging furniture to make the house for people-friendly.

Anyway, I think having more time helps, as does the lack of killer sinus headaches all the time. But really, you know what helped the most? Finally ditching all of my cool Web 2.0 ideas for tracking my to do list. I've tried Outlook's to do list, various calandars and to do list applications and web sites... and finally I just got a notebook and some clear folder and a dry erase marker. And you know what? It works best. It's simple and you don't have to do a lot of work if you've missed things. I always spent so much time trying to get my online to do lsits caught up with where I really was, or I'd forget to check things off, or whatever. I was so sure I'd like to have a graph to display and show myself improving, but you know what? I never had enough data or accurate data to ever do that.

But I do have a clean house and just a small notebook of tasks.

Test of the mail posting

This is only a test

Little Miss Muffet

So, here I am, minding my own business, working on tonight's dinner. I had the pan on the stove, heating some oil and getting ready to brown some meat for my famous crockpot chili. I turn around to dice some veggies, and when I turn back this pale little spider is dangling right above my pot! I turned around again to grab a cup so I could escort him outside... and suddenly hear a hissing sound.

You guessed it. And the poor spider lost a leg and started climbing up as fast as he could. I managed to rescue him at that point and take him outside. Then I scrubbed the pot in hot, hot water until my hands hurt. Ick!

But that's far preferable to the time that I made pancakes with old mix and ended up with a bowl full of pancake batter and some weevils floating on top. Ick!

Ever had anything weird wander into your cooking?

Stunned By the CA Homeschooling Decision

For those of you who haven't heard yet (or aren't obsessed with homeschooling news), on February 28th, a court made a very sweeping decision about a case involving homeschooling. The family wasn't a member of HSLDA, so pretty much no one had heard of this case until it was decided.

I wasn't concerned at first.... until I read the details of the decision, which pretty much interpreted the laws to basically make homeschooling illegal in CA.

It will be very interesting to see how this plays out. If I'm not compltely satisfied with any new decision made on this, I'm moving from this insane place, for certain.

Understanding Darwin

Well, I haven't angered anyone yet, so let's get controvercial.

I'm a biologist. Darwin's "On the Origin of Species" is an excellently written book, and his theory of evolution is wonderful. However, very few people in the world actually understand it. Part of it is bad teachers. Part of it is that no one actually reads the source -- Darwin lays out his argument very well, slowly progressing from the obvious to the less obvious, taking the reader on a slow journey that maximizes understanding. But most people remember the short, sweet, and unintentionally misleading phrase "survival of the fittest".

The word 'fittest' (and fitness) as Darwin uses it does not mean what instantly jumps to most people's mind. It specifically does not mean strong, buff, fast, etc.. Well, it can, but it doesn't have to. Fittest has to do with fitting in. That's it. Which ever animal fits it's environment -- the entire environment -- and manages to make more babies will pass on more geentic material to the next generation.

Some animals use strength, Some use speed. Others are more devious -- like apes that wait until the strong apes are out hunting, or fighting each other, then quietly sneaks into their mates homes and makes a few babies for the nice strong men to raise as their own. Cuckolds, as they are called, are quite frequent in nature. It's a great strategy for the weak one -- not only do you get to make babies you don't need to invest any time or energy in raising, you get the strongest guy in the tribe to raise him for you! What a deal!

I was reading a refutation of Ben Stein's recent atrocity (and I really like Ben Stein, so it was a dismal, sad day I watched it) at The Corner:

Stein wrote:

But it fell to a true Imperialist, from a wealthy British family on both sides, married to a wealthy British woman, writing at the height of Imperialism in the UK, when a huge hunk of Africa and Asia was "owned" (literally, owned, by Great Britain) to create a scientific theory that rationalized Imperialism.

Stein's entire argument makes no sense, if you read it with any understanding of the Theory of Evolution at all.

Derbyshire does a good job refuting it even though he doesn't even bother to point out the real meaning of survival of the fittest:

If that's what "Darwinism" (he means: modern biology) is, how does it happen that there are any meek, un-hardy creatures in the world? Yet in fact "hardy" … "stronger" … "dominant" describe only a tiny proportion of species. How is it that all those wimp species are still around after three billion years? Wouldn't the "dominant" ones have eaten them all? Oh, but wait a minute … then the dominants would have eliminated their own food supply … um …

Hair Distraction

From Why Homeschool comes a story of a girl who was told that her hairstyle was not allowed in school:

A Louisville mother is making claims of discrimination after she says her daughter's hair color got her kicked out of a school. Fatimah Osborne got her hair braided and colored over winter break. The hairstyle cost her $300. However, the principal at Carrithers Middle School said the student had a non-traditional color and that's against their rules. Administrators from Carrithers middle school told Fatimah to change her hair or she'd have to leave the school, permanently.

This doesn't surprise me one bit. When I went to high school, there was a kid in class who was a bit of a class clown and did occasionally get into trouble. One day he came in with his hair in a million little braids held at the ends by rubber bands with happy face beads on them. Was it distracting? Sure, a little bit. Everyone wanted to talk about it and it was pretty interesting-looking. The principal told him to take it out, or stay home until he did.

Want to guess which was more distracting, the hair, or the principal's decree? We wanted to chat about his hair for a few minutes before class. I'm sure it would have been old news after about 5 minutes. The idea you could be expelled for hair? That distracted us for quite a long time after that! And this kid now was on a quest to find out exactly what he could get away with and what he couldn't, to test his boundaries. Which led to one distracting weird thing after another, culminating in his bizarre run for class president.

Where Did I Think I was Going? -- Introduction

It's always nice to get to know about a person you read, so I'd like to post a brief introduction about myself.

I've lived a few different places. I was born on the East Coast, moved to Texas, spent a little time in Russia, and now I've ended up in California. My college degree is in Biology, with a near minor in Russian. I went to grad school for a year (before leaving, it just wasn't the right place or time) in biophysics, then became a technical writer. I ended up as my group's technical expert and moved to a full-time programming position to assemble a new writing system for the huge group of writers. After having my two kids, I realized that I wasn't happy, so I quit to stay home and homeschool my little kids.

Oh, and I'm only 31. I guess I like change a lot, even if it does cause me undue stress.

I was reading posts from the Unschooling Voices once-a-month blog post compendium, and came across this post, titled How Did We Get Here:

It compelled me to slam hard on the brakes, step out of the car, slam my head several times on the nearest guardrail, and ask, "Now where in the h*ll did I think I was going?"

I had to go. Something had turned on inside of me. Some place deep inside had gotten a taste and I craved more. I had always lived in my head, often analyzing and weighing and considering things far beyond what was necessary, to the point of obsession on certain occasions, but for once I felt I'd gotten an answer to a longing. A longing I knew I had, but didn't understand.

That's exactly what happened to me too. It took a while to realize, and for a year my husband was actually the stay-at-home guy, while I was pregnant with our second. But I realized that the crazy life of a two-income family was just too rushed, too crazy, too full of fast food and quick moments and no time to savor anything, or cook, or learn who my kids are.

I never pictured myself as a stay at home mom. But now I love it. I love being the boss of the house. I love baking bread and freezing crockpot dinners. I love being there when my kids learn things, and being the person they spend time with. I love not having to wonder if my kids are okay, or what their teachers might be teaching them. I know, because I'm her. I don't need to help them decompress after a long day away. We enjoy our house. We're exploring our neighborhood. We're not stressed out all the time. We have time to see the doctor and get our problems treated!

I just hope that we'll be able to pull through and keep it this way. It's expensive out here, and we chose the house we rent based on the school district, not based on affordability for a one income family! But it is a walk from the library, the grandparents and two parks. I hope we can find a way to stay nearby.

We've already met several wonderful homeschooling groups, and I've started to find my niche with our homeschooling philosophy.... but like everything, I know that my son is, in some ways, my opposte, so the ideas I have might not work for him and I'm ready to be flexible. Free inquiry. Reason. At home. It's going to be an amazing journey!