End of year teacher work day

--print assignment books for next year
--watch LB overviews for high school, maybe language arts. Bring laptop and DVDs
--outline all writing assignments for 7th grade and when they fall
--watch Charlotte Mason narration tutorials from Alison.
--Grade end of Year assessments.
--Charlotte Mason book 7 in modern English?
--high school nature study at Weymouth
--summer read aloud list and book list for me
--create discussion questions for books the kids read
--outline prompts for analytic stage (incl 5th sci and religion)

#morningrun

You see yellow fog

slick, inexorable, insinuating;

I see God's fingertips. 

Everywhere I look, soft pools of pine pollen outline puddles in the road and puff as my feet run through the pinestraw. I made it out for a run before noon for once. My thoughts roamed.

Freedom of worship or freedom of religion. Return to fertility hormones. Pinecones, male and female He created them. Natural Law. Balance and false balance. The unexamined life. Pounding the pavement too hard. My knees. I wrote a poem. When will I die? How? Longleaf pines. "Infinite variety" as a trite phrase and a foundation shaking reality. Pink running shoes. Is it a haiku? Counting syllables. Fiddling with my stride. The necessity of nature study. Macbeth's Opinion. Reading Charlotte Mason for real. Michele Quigley. Elizabeth Foss. Pine pollen. First year pine cones. More of the poem. Could the ranger teach high school conifer study? Could we dissect pinecones? With what? Pine pollen in little polka dots on the lake surface.  

This school year I have not been pregnant. My baby is one and was breastfeeding all night until January. We are surviving, but survival mode looks very different from new baby before the new fiscal year, first freshmen in homeschool high school, #7 school aged kid learning to read. But something is lacking.

Of course I know my vices. I know where I am not excelling. These don't need reflection. What I don't know is how to combat my vices, how to overcome bad habits and begin to excel. I think about balance. Of course it is about balance. It is about balance and integrity and faith and getting up again and doing it every day. It's usually about balance. Then I thought of this picture:

It was meant to be funny, but today I think about it seriously. Because it isn't a picture about balance. It's a picture about false balance. The kids jumped so we could look balanced. Now I could take that in a million directions, but this is what I'm focusing on: "me time".

People love to ask a mom with "a lot" of kids, "How do you find 'me time'?" My response for years has been a thoughtful, "I don't think I believe in 'me time'." Because when I was a young mom with young kids, 'me time' made me resentful. It was expensive to hire a sitter or ask Bill to watch the kids for several hours so I could go be self indulgent. (And I pretty much think that if I am doing something for me, it's self indulgent.) And when I got back, I felt angry and fractious instead of renewed the way I was "supposed" to. I gave it up as a concept. I rejected the idea of 'me time'. My life was like this:

But I think I threw out the baby with the bathwater. I never considered that I was doing 'me time' wrong or that it might be different in different seasons of life. Lately I have struggled with my lack of memories. I can not remember chunks of my life. I don't feel this is a result of the sameness of every day, but a side effect of not taking the time to turn short term memories into long term ones. I have been pregnant/nursing/homeschooling/housewifing continuously for years and haven't created spaces for myself to be alone, to reflect on my experiences, to remember. I have been the river rushing forward, not the river leaving its mark on the landscape.

Briefly, I came up with these places where I messed up and should have created those spaces. I should not have allowed kids in the bathroom with me. Not to shower, not while I toileted, not when I was in a state of undress, not even talked to them from the other side of the door. I should have created a prayer time and space at home that they could not intrude in. I should have created a nursing refuge that I used once a day where I only nursed and enjoyed the baby without interruption. I should never have given up quiet time but instead turned it into uninterrupted computer time. I should have created a grading period in the school day. I should have built in teacher workdays every quarter and more. And I should have gone on a walk alone every day.

With those areas of space (perhaps this is what Elizabeth Foss wrote about when she wrote on "wide margins"? I never read what she had to say on that), I would have had opportunities to reflect on the meaning of my life experiences. I could have not only seen the world around me but observed it as I did today. I could have had the safety and peace to think for a while, to see where my thoughts would lead me and enjoy them, to work through intellectual struggles.

My run today have me that space. When I say run, I mean 20 minutes of walking and 2 5-minute wheeze and huff my way down the road. I don't have an answer for what I need to do next. I just needed to take the time to put down what I had come up with so far. To appreciate what today's morning run gave me.

Easter Sunday

With Easter on its way, I assured him that we do not serve our version of hot-cross buns even one day after Easter Sunday. We do sell them before Good Friday, but only for two weeks. The joy of eating with the seasons – fresh produce, religious or otherwise – is that it varies our diet subtly, yet profoundly. Seasonality teaches us patience and restraint during the lean months and educates our palates about what proper fruit tastes like during times of harvest.  -- Claire Ptak

Since the boys will be serving the 7am Easter Mass as usual, we need a quick but celebretory breakfast. I've decided to serve whole milk Brown Cow yogurt and make hot cross scones that I found on the blog post above, to be eaten at 5:30 am.

*****
I lied. I made the usual scone recipe but with Zante currants and hot cross bun spices. I'm sure they'll be great and won't require me to make mascarpone cheese. :)

What's the difference between Duke and hell?

Yesterday afternoon I took several of the kids to a local Oratory with one of our favoritest priests. Dominic especially loves Msgr. Ingham, and although Msgr. can sometimes be a bit reserved, he loves Dominic too.

Later in the evening I took all the kids to our parish mission, and Dominic began to cry because he hadn't hugged Msgr. goodbye. Tearfully, he looked at me and asked, "Are we going to the purgatory?"

***************************************************************************
The parish mission started with exposition of the Blessed Sacrament which is my favorite devotion. I go weekly, and Dominic first crawled in the Adoration chapel so last night's exposition was nothing new for him.

After the Eucharist was placed in the monstrance, he looked and me and asked, "Jesus can see me?"

"Yes," I assured him. "Jesus is right there and He can see you."

"Yesss..." Dominic nodded to himself. Then he looked at me and asked, "Will He wink?"

***********************************************************************
In hell, people want to go to purgatory.

Hand Me Down Closet

This is a project in progress. I couldn't find any images of what I was trying to achieve, so I gleaned some ideas and came up with this system. For the past 11 years/7 houses we have had the clothes stored in bins separated by size and gender. At a certain point, it became too difficult to put things away or climb through the attic to access the tubs. We knew we needed a new, faster and easier-to-keep-organized model.

When we decided that our master bedroom and bathroom and closet were ridiculously large for 2 people, we put 4 kids in the bedroom, divided the bathroom into a dressing room and a full bath, and turned the walk-in closet into a clothes and shoe store.

The clothes are divided based on how I shop:

Tape labels on the hangers seem like
the best method for making it easy to read
and knowing where to put things away. I am
thinking about a way to label all the clothes
this way. I tried dividers but don't like them as well.
This is to the right of the door as you enter. All the
boys' clothes fit on this long wall. The girls'
play clothes will all fit on the top rack on the
shorter side with church dresses on the back wall.

BOYS
Church shirts
Church pants
Shirts
Pants and shorts
PJs
Scout uniforms and Swim

GIRLS
Church dresses
Tops
Bottoms
PJs

This is the back wall as you turn left. There are more shelves back there too.
Everyone's coats that aren't in use are stored in the back of the closet.
I arranged them all by size since 6 months of storage and growth means
that by the time we pull them out again, they may fit the next child down the line.
Dress blues, my funeral dress, tablecloths are in the very back. 

Interestingly, I have always found having our church clothes arranged in separate bins by type (pant, shirts, girl stuff) to be the method that have saved the day most often. When you almost out of time to pull together a nice outfit, I guess you just can't pretend that sloppy street clothes are play clothes. I mean, maybe *you* think you can, but I assure you, you are not fooling anyone. ;)

We don't save many shoes and I want to put the baby (up to 1 year) and maternity clothes in bins since we have shelves, but I have to climb through the attic to get them. I'm about 1/2 done with organizing and labeling by size.

Tan lines

James: "Mom, you know what I like about white people?"

I started laughing right then.

Chimney Rock

My nephews are out for a visit and we are trying to plan some delights for them. First was a long long long drive to Chimney Rock, NC where they hiked to the top of Chimney Rock. 

John and Charles on Chimney Rock, NC. Fortunately, there is an elevator .

Maria, Thomas, Anthony, Gregory, Alan, Cecilia and Charles, but where is James?
Gregory and Charles ran up the 491 stairs. 

Also planned:
Backyard shooting
Special Operations Museum
Rosary Group
Redneck Regatta
Charleston, SC and Ft. Sumter
Manassas Battlefield
Washington, DC
Basilica of the Immaculate Conception

Maybe I'll remember this list when the rest of my family comes out!