The old man is snoring...

It's raining here, which would be no big deal anywhere else in the country right about now. But here? It hasn't rained in about three weeks. Seriously, THREE WEEKS. I keep walking in from the garage and freaking out when I "hear" something frying!! Uh, sorry, that's the rain on the sidewalk. Again.

The Boy is down with a cold, which is impressive considering he never leaves the house if he can help it. *sigh* The Girl spends her days doing school work, watching TV, and asking if we can go to the science museum, which I can't do without taking The Boy. But there you have it. Life as we know it.

We're into the last twelve weeks of school. I know, I know, there *is* no "end of school" date when you homeschool, but we need goalposts. Big time. I laid it out for The Boy yesterday. You have six weeks of school, two weeks of vacation when The Aunts visit, then six weeks. If you stay on track, you'll be off by the 4th of July; otherwise, you'll be working into July. Your choice. ;) Anyone want to take bets on whether we'll get summer vacation?


In more interesting news, Trouble is brewing in The Husband's family. Tee hee. Those people put the "drama" in drama queen.

First, a little background is in order. The Husband's parents died about five years ago, leaving a small but dear little house to their six children, along with a little cash. The $60k was disbursed a few years ago, but the $60k house won't sell. Not that anyone really wants to sell it. See, in 1950 his parents bought a half acre and built a cellar to live in. After 10 years, they had saved up enough money to build the house on top, and they lived there until they died.

Anyway, the siblings agreed to give one of the nephews a five-year lease with an option to buy. Since he was married to his high school sweetheart and had a two-year-old boy, it seemed like a great way to sell it and keep it in the family at the same time. The hitch? He's now getting a divorce! Bwaa-haa!! Oh sure, his lease doesn't run out until December, and he might be able to afford a mortgage on his own, but does that stop the whining? Oh no, no, no. Mostly, it's the youngest (and least financially responsible) one who's causing trouble.

And the KICKER? We have a family reunion in May. The girls are coming down from Up North and meeting up with the boys who all live in the southeast. So they're travelling a long way to see us, we'll be driving up with them to see the three others -- to either get into a fight with the youngest or to be ignored by the youngest. Oh joy... When my family just can't provide enough drama to keep me happy, The Husband's family steps into the breach. Yeahh...

Hey, kid!! Yeah, you!

"Yer feckin' welcome!!"

Doesn't everyone have days where they want to scream this at the kids by 10:00 pm? Today, I've provided you with clean clothes, clean sheets on your freshly-made bed, three meals, sixteen snacks, hot and cold running water, comfy furniture, and entertainment. I provided you a safe, clean haven -- clean carpets, furniture, towels, bathroom, kitchen. You live in a safe neighborhood in a house with people who love you and understand your unusual neurological configuration. You are richly blessed.

So why won't you quit whining and complaining? Y'know, before I kill you?

spring "break" -- hah.

Well, we're on officially on spring break this week. Tragically, The Girl doesn't believe me. I'm thinking Michaelangelo did not have to stop painting to teach homeschool.

Seriously, I had big plans for my week's "vacation". It's only a vacation in the sense that I wasn't planning on teaching this week, but at least it was supposed to be a change of pace. I wanted to trim the shrubs, shampoo the carpets, paint The Girl's room. But so far, I haven't even been able to keep up with my chores. *sigh*

Maybe tomorrow, things will look up.

Did I mention it's gloating season?

Have I mentioned that the weather has been nice here? Yeahhh. If I'm going to complain about summers here, I really should give it its propers now.

We've had the heat/AC off for about two months now. The high has been in the 70's with the lows around 50 just forever. This week, the highs have been in the low 80's. *sigh* Lovely. The kids have been lolling around in shorts since mid-January.

The bikers showed up about a week after the Daytona 500, and the weather was Chamber-of-Commerce gorgeous for both events. The bikers left, and now the college kids are here. (They've gotten much better behaved since MTV moved out!) The Husband's college is giving us spring break this coming week, and we've got a ton of house-related stuff lined up to do.

Tomorrow, in honor of the closest full moon in 20 years, we're going out for frozen cheesecake on a stick dipped in chocolate (cheesecake-sickle?) on the way to watch the moon rise over the ocean. Oh yeahhh. Florida.

My treatise on housewivery (part 3)

So, a final installment of Housewivery is due, and then I'll let it go.

It seems that once the kids are all in school full time, we housewives may have to find something meaningful to do with our extra time.

One option is to take up a hobby, but I doubt I could scrapbook that much.

Another option is to volunteer, which can be enriching. But frankly, I'm really too selfish to work at something no one else wants to do without being paid. I'd be a stretch.

Another option is to make housework more time-consuming by decorating, gardening, cleaning obsessively, and making brioche from scratch. Again, no one would be impressed besides me.

Many women have home businesses, such as selling crafts on etsy.com or Pampered Chef. Others write books. My brother harbors delusions of doing editing work from home once his kids are all in school.

Fortunately (hah!) for me, I'll be working my tutoring job here at The Verge Academy for the foreseeable future. Hm. Maybe we've cracked the mystery of why so many women are homeschooling... (Danger! Run away!)

I have to say that I enjoy homeschooling, but oh, how I wish my kids could go to public schools. I hate that they're missing marching band and that crazy synergy that smart kids make when they learn. But then what would I do?

So, good luck y'all. You'll need it. We all do.

My treatise on housewivery (part 2)

(If you haven't read part 1, go ahead and read it first; otherwise, this'll all seem crazy.)

So, we've established that, to borrow a phrase from Green Girl, "Raising kids well and keeping a safe and clean haven is a noble job." But many women, including the two of us, still have trouble reconciling the whole concept with our view of what it means to be a modern woman.

Where does the re-emergence of the housewife leave us? As modern women, we can't afford to limit ourselves to being housewives with aspirations for nothing else. (Honestly, women never could. How many women stayed with abusive men for the sake of food and a roof?) And seriously, does it really take all day to keep a house clean once the kids are in school?

I understand that housewives do the bulk of the volunteer work in our communities, and I appreciate their shelving library books, organizing the science fair, and folding church bulletins. But with modern conveniences, how hard is it really to keep house?

My grandmother washed clothes with a wringer, clothesline, and iron, had a tiny gas-powered refrigerator, washed dishes by hand, and fed the scraps to the chickens. She shopped when she could drive my grandfather to work -- because she had learned to drive. Back then, everyone heated their houses with coal, so dusting and sweeping was serious work. The kitchen floor had to be scrubbed with a brush. And she cooked. All the time. There was no fast food, no Tuna Helper, no frozen pizza. She knew my grandfather's job was to bring home the bacon in the depression era, and her job was to make ends meet. She sewed all their clothes, mended what was torn, and still had time to look lovely for church on Sundays. She was awesome.

I use a washer and dryer on my permanent press clothes. I rinse my dishes into the Disposall and drop them in the dishwasher. I cook with Teflon pans. I shop when I want to at the huge grocery store around the corner, and and then put weeks' worth of food in my freezer. I damp mop my no-wax floor with a Swiffer.

As far as actual housecleaning, I have a big burst of activity in the morning, a few chores on my lunch break, a little tidying up, and a serious hour of housecleaning in late afternoon. After dinner, I watch The News Hour and blog. At 8:30 the kids get baths, and I'm done. My grandmother would have killed for this life.

And she would have been bored and dissatisfied. Where's the solution to that?

My treatise on housewivery (part 1)

Okay, I've been reading "Happy Housewives" blogs, and I've decided I'm not typical. (Who finds this a surprise? Really?!) Here's what I'm talking about.

When my grandmother was growing up, men wanted to be men -- get a job, support a family, buy a house. Women wanted to be women -- get married, raise kids, keep a house. It wasn't a choice. Men often worked at the same job for 40 years before retiring. Women kept house for those same 40 years. Simpler times.

But times have changed. Men often change jobs every two years, and not just job locations, but entire careers. Why wouldn't women need to be prepared to do the same? A woman may start as an x-ray technician, become a mom and housewife, return to working at a preschool, re-train and return to x-ray technician, and return to being a housewife -- all within 15 years. Wouldn't we need keep our options open?

And, seriously, isn't it our responsibility to our families to be this flexible? What man wants to have the complete, unending burden of being chained to a job to keep the family fed? (Okay, some, but I'd think the burden would get old and stressful, especially in this economy.)

Here's what I think went "wrong" between 1936 and now. Women have become independent of men. We simply don't need men in order for us to become adults. We go to college, get jobs, make friends, buy cars. Any second-grade girl who, during career week, writes, "I want to be a mommy and housewife," will be counselled otherwise.

And since women no longer need men for survival, men have discovered that they can remain children for their entire lives if they want. Who would want to get a steady job and support kids if he didn't have to? Call it male liberation. (Men's lib?)

The conservatives plan to solve this problem by re-enstating women in their "appropriate" dependent, domestic role, and recasting men as the dominant protector of the race. Will this work? No. Of course not. The genie is out of the bottle.

Yes, we should be keeping the houses clean and well-maintained. We should be making homes from houses and making neighborhoods from nearby houses. We should be rearing decent, well-fed children. But it is extremely difficult for families to do this when no one is home 10 hours a day. Two-income families often spend all their evenings and weekends trying to catch up. Sometimes, this is fun -- a challenge to be met as a happy bunch of adventurers. Sometimes, it just sucks.

"Bless it to our use..."

I have come to the strange realization that I may have hit a major life milestone. Seriously. I have finally come to realize that I am a housewife.

Now, you have to understand that my mom was a career gal, and I have never lived with a housewife, so I've never really known what it means.

When I was ten years old, we did spend our after-school hours at the Sawyers' house. Their mom smoked cigarettes and sat around listening to the radio and trying to get her teenagers to clean their own rooms. Here's how I remember her, except for having a dark tan. The strange part? Her house was immaculate.


The housewives I knew in the 80's were all hippies, and God knows what good causes they worked for while breastfeeding in public. The other moms I knew from the 90's were working for pay and trying to keep the filth from piling up too high at home. The moms I knew from when my kids were small were taking the toddlers to Starbucks while the maid cleaned the house. God forbid we should clean it ouselves.

Now, my kids were born at the cusp of the millennium, so you'd think over the last 10 years, I'd have seen this identity crisis coming, but no. I was always either working part-time, planning to work part-time, or figuring out when I had to go back to working full-time. The time I spent at home with the kids was as a mom, trying to teach the children not to pee on the couch. I was not a housewife; I was a mom. (I looked just like this. Really.)


See, I was raised by a feminist in the 70's -- whatever the men had, it was better than what we had, and we had to have it. Equal pay for equal work? Yup. The independence to choose our own way in life without having to depend on someone else? Yup. The choice to avoid pregnancy as long as possible? Yup. The ability to make our own dreams? Yup. All these things were part of my lexicon. The idea that I would end up being a housewife was inconceivable. The last generation to do that in my family was born in 1912.



Someone once asked my mom at which age she most enjoyed her children. It had never occurred to her that she was supposed to "enjoy" them. Sure, she loved us dearly and we were an important part of her life, but "enjoy"? Heh?

So here I am. I've been homeschooling for two and a half years. It's almost like a full-time job with these kids, so I never considered myself a housewife. After all, housewives treat their houses like an extra child, requiring work, washing, and planning. I was just trying to get around to vacuuming when I could.

But you know what I just figured out? I like being able to open the futon and not find a big fat line of corn chip crumbs down the center. I like being able to lie on any floor in my house without checking it first. I like having my shit together. It's awesome!

Call me crazy, but I kind of like it. It's a big part of how I nurture my family. Flylady calls it "blessing the house". Other people put it more simply as a way to stay organized.

We had an old dinner blessing that went something like, "Bless it to our use and us to your service."

Yeah, something like that.

(Just don't tell my mom.)

Sod off, sod!

Saturday again. And we're laying sod. Yeah, we're having Some Fun Now. Seriously, it's only half of the front yard, but you'd think I was building the pyramids.

See, by this spring, there was only dead grass and living weeds in the front-right yard of our house. I sprayed the weeds dead, just to maintain that even well-groomed look. I spent about an hour raking up the dead grass and weeds. Then I ordered the flat of sod. Yes, 500 square feet. By my calculation, that's 167 door-mat-sized pieces of sod, stacked up to about four feet. I put in some of it Friday afternoon, and The Husband and I put the rest in this morning. Now all we have to do is remember to water it for the next two weeks. If the nice weather holds, I may try another 500 square feet in about two weeks. Provided I've healed from the muscle strains by then.

Just to make us feel better, the guy across the street came over and watched us work for a while. He said things like, "Yeah, I had to re-sod my yard in Vero Beach three times. Five pallets each time. I'm done sodding." The Boy snickers every time he hears the word "sod" but he doesn't really know why it's a bad word on the BBC. (The nursery across from us has signs out front: sod, sod, sod!) I think it's best we keep it that way for a while, don't you?

Fire!

Well, first a shout-out to the midwestern sistahs today. Sorry about those tornadoes. Hm.

I'm-a gonna let you finish, but first I wanna say... See those cars?

One of them was mine. Apparently, as Brian Williams tells us, "A wildfire is sweeping across central Florida tonight... 16,000 acres already burned, with the fire only 25 percent contained... Even I-95 was closed for a while." Tell me about it. I was on my way home from The Big City (and speech therapy) and ran into this. FOUR hours it took me to get home. Fortunately, the area is mostly swamp land. The fire runs over land like this and doesn't build like it does in a redwood forest. The other side of this fire being in mostly swampy land is that there are no other roads to get around it. I-95 and US-1 were both closed Monday evening, and I had to drive back almost to The Big City again before I could drive north. *sigh*

Still, shouldn't complain. It wasn't headed toward my house. And that's a good thing.