Rutabaga Dreams

About a month ago I was casting about for more audiobooks to listen to in the car with the kids.  We had listened to everything we own from Audible more than once, and it seemed like it was high time for something new.  I haven’t been all that impressed with the selection of Audible’s unabridged books that would be appropriate for children, so I was not really looking forward to perusing their catalog again.  At about this time a thread came up on the Latin Centered Education Yahoo group and someone mentioned LibriVox.  I had heard of it shortly before we moved and briefly looked into it, but with the chaos of the move and my lack of computer access, I had forgotten about it completely.  I took another look and so far we’ve listened to Call of the Wild and we’re about half-way through Little Women.  While the quality of the readers doesn’t tend to be as good as the professionals and the change in narrator at each chapter can occasionally be a little jarring, we’ve found the readers to all be at least decent and the quality of the recordings to be quite good.  The most common problem is that the readers read a little too fast, but having done some voice work myself I know how hard it is to remember to slow down when you’re reading for a recording.

I would love to do some recording for this project myself, but I need to have a spare $30 for a microphone and some time without kid interruptions in order to do so…  so I don’t think it will be happening anytime too soon.  But if you’re looking for audio material I would definitely suggest giving LibriVox a look.  Of course, everything they have is going to be older because it has to be in the public domain in order to be recorded, but there is a lot of great stuff out there!

And speaking of works in the public domain, I’ve been drooling over the Project Guttenburg catalog for quite some time.  There’s so much there that I’d like to read, but I hate to read at my computer!  I’ve considered printing some of it out to read, but that seems quite unwieldy.  What I really want is one of those neat e-book readers (not that I’m sure they would even work with the Guttenburg texts), but the price tag is way too hefty for our budget at this point in our lives.  And besides, doesn’t it seem a little silly to want something that costs several hundred dollars just so that I can read free books in the comfort of my bed?

Yay!  Tomorrow I’m taking a rather spur of the moment trip with the kids to my parent’s house.  We haven’t been since Christmas, and we’re all looking forward to going.  I particularly need it this time I think - I’m lonely and tired and I could use a break.  I’ve emailed some friends and I should be able to see at least a couple of them when I’m in town.  I’m very much looking forward to seeing them again, and to be able to go to our old homeschool park day again too.  I’m also looking forward to cooking dinner with my mom, having some help with the kids, and maybe I’ll even get to take a nap without having to listen for them!  I’m hoping to perhaps get to duck out for a bit and maybe spend a little time by myself too.  I really miss my old activities - well, not so much the activities themselves necessarily as the opportunity to get out and be someone other than Mom for a little while.  I don’t mean to slight my husband at all in this - after all, he’s working full-time (or more) and also trying to work as much as he can on the house in the evenings and weekends - but it does cut down on his ability to help out around the house or spell me for bit.

Someday things will calm down a bit and we’ll be in the house without quite so much work to do all the time…  but until then I’m very glad I can go visit my parents and have a break!

Emily over at Laundry and Lullabies just put up one of those nifty floating baby widgets and it made me remember that I’ve been doing that for ages. So, voila! If you look to the right on my blog, you should see an approximation of our new little one. And according to this, I have 100 days to go… not that due dates really mean much of anything!

Matt and I put down a deposit for a wood burning stove yesterday.  We’re getting a Harman Stoves Cast Iron stove (check out the grill you can put in the top ), and we’re very pleased with the stove and the local place we’re buying it from.  It should take about two weeks to get it to their location, and then we’ll have to schedule delivery.  In the meantime we have to put down the flooring the stove will sit on and build a 4×4 ft wall to protect the stairs and banisters from the heat of stove.  Which means I need to figure out what said items are going to look like and my dear husband has to find time to build it.  I’m sure we won’t be getting it delivered right when it is available, but hopefully we won’t have to wait too long.  We can get the stove finaled before the house is finaled, which means we can run it a bit and get the house warmed up and dried out.  That should help make the house more comfortable as well as with conquering the fuzzy stuff that keeps growing on the studs upstairs.

Oh, and our refund from the state and federal governments was more than I was even hoping we might get back - about a month’s salary!  Yes, yes, I know, this is our money to begin with and the government has just been holding it for us, interest-free…  but still, I think all and all I’d rather have it as one chunk right now than have had it bit by bit over the course of last year.  We’re good savers and all, but last year money stuff was just absolutely crazy.  And this year is looking even more *gulp* interesting…

Apparently 25 weeks is the point where I now look obviously pregnant to the world. I feel like a mama sow already, but I guess now I’ve crossed the line from the “well, she might be pregnant or maybe she just needs to lose a few pounds” to “boy or girl?” Even though this is my third pregnancy, I still find it rather startling to have perfect strangers in stores come up to me to ask me “boy or girl?” or “when are you due?” “Are you hoping for either a boy or a girl?” What on earth makes them think this is acceptable? On Monday I had a the person at the register at the hardware store shout out at me with no preliminaries and from about ten feet away, “boy or girl?” I honestly thought she was talking to someone else before I realized she was staring in my direction, waiting for an answer!

The somewhat sad part of this all is that people are finally beginning to notice my pregnancy at Faith Formation too. I’ve been there almost every Wednesday evening since mid-September (which, coincidentially is about the very beginning of my pregnancy) helping at various tables and generally trying to make myself useful. I had one teachers come up to me and ask me when I was due and she said she didn’t realize I was pregnant. The head of the program said the same as we were leaving. It is amazing how one can gain 25+ pounds and not have anyone notice! Really, it was quite despressing and I felt completely invisible. It immediately (and perhaps childishly) brought back memories of being in my 8th grade science class and overhearing one student say to the teacher, “Who’s Amber? I have her paper here but I don’t know who she is.” I had only been classes with this boy every year since 4th grade! *sigh* Apparently I am invisible, and I really need to find some friends up here - although even some people who might notice me slightly more than this would be nice at this point!

OK, Turbotax is done installing, so it is time to go work on taxes. I’m hoping for a big tax refund, because boy do we need it this year!  (And yes, I know, a refund is just a refund of our interest free loan to the government…  but really, I had no idea our income would be so different this year than it was from the year before!)

We’ve received our bid and our revised bid for our plumbing order, and we are quite pleased with what we are getting and at the prices.  From what I’ve checked against prices on the Home Depot website and in person, the prices are less than the big box retailers, sometimes significantly so.  And the selection is ever so much better as well.

We tried to choose items with a fairly classic and straightforward lines rather than getting particularly fancy as we looked through the catalog.  We’re mainly going with chrome finishes throughout, because it is so much cheaper than any of the other finishes.  We did decide to add an extra showerhead in the master bath, thanks to the advice we received from Valerie, Dy, and Mrs. Darwin.  (And thanks so much for taking the time to do so!)  The other place we are splurging a bit is at the kitchen sink.  We’re getting this sink in Iron Cobalt with this faucet in brushed nickel.  (and no, we are paying no where near retail on these items, thank goodness!) Will we be sick of it in 5 years or will it make me smile every time I see it, like my red/orange tea kettle?  Only time will tell!

is learning Latin.  And no, I’m not one of those parents, it is just happening in the course of our Latin vocabulary review.  For example, an exchange from today:

Me:  What is the Latin word for water?

Emma:  Umm…

Gregory: aqua, aqua, aqua

and a little later:

Me:  What’s the Latin word for I conquer?

Emma:  Um…

Gregory:  supero! supero!

Yes, Emma did not have a stellar Latin vocab session today as you can probably tell, but Gregory did pretty well, considering it is all absorbed from what is around him.  He’s also learning some of her memorywork too.  Younger siblings have a definite advantage sometimes, at least in homeschooling families!

Don’t you hate it when you remember hearing about some book or curriculum program a couple years ago that your child wasn’t ready for at the time, but now that your child is ready for it, you can’t for the life of you remember what it was, where you heard about it, or anything that might help you find it again?

I’m currently trying to remember a neat (and inexpensive) map skills/geography workbook sort of thing that I heard about probably two years ago. I did some searching for it yesterday, both in my notes and online but to no avail. Now I use a nifty little application called Yojimbo to manage and tag all my links, email snippets, PDFs and other random bits of data, but I’ve only been using this program for about a year. *sigh*

I’ve looked at a few other things out there but so far I haven’t found anything that really stands out as worth it. Some seem too easy, some too expensive, and others seem too basic to be worth the time. I guess I’ll either have to keep doing what I’m currently doing, put more thought into what I’m currently doing and make it better, or keep looking for a better third party solution. Any suggestions?

The diaper dilemma has been resolved.  It appears that Gregory will finish the rest of his time in diapers by using disposable ones.  I was up for the switch back to cloth (as with most things we dread, it wasn’t nearly so bad as I was making it out to be in my mind) but Gregory most emphatically was not.  He did not want me to put the diapers on him, and when they were on, he did not want to be wearing them.  He didn’t even want to admit that they were diapers.   They where “them”, mostly referred to as “No, not them!” or “them off!” as he threw them off the bed or tried to pull them off his body.  If Gregory were a more high strung or change adverse little guy, I probably would have tried a bit harder…  but he really is a pretty mellow, reasonable little person  which made me far more inclined to honor his desires on this matter.

This next little one isn’t getting a choice though!  And hopefully there won’t be any reason to make a long term change to disposables like there was with Gregory…

Eons ago, before we moved (ok, well, only 7 months, but it feels like far longer) I used to have a pretty decent study schedule going. I’m fairly sure I blogged about it at the time, so perhaps this will sound familiar to some of you. I was recently reminded of it when I came across my records in my home management binder (something else I haven’t used for 7 months either!) and I was both daunted and wistful when I thought about all I used to do.

A typical day would start with about 15-20 minutes of Bible reading, using the St. James Daily Devotional Guide, then morning exercise, as I prayed and then listened to a Teaching Company lecture series. I would come home, have breakfast, then study Latin for about 20-30 minutes. I would then get breakfast for the kids and do all the other usual morning stuff, then it would be time to do school work with Emma, get lunch for everyone, then settle everyone down for naps and quiet time. During this period I would study the Catechism of the Catholic Church and Kreeft’s Summa of the Summa, reading each, taking notes and summarizing, then reading again to make sure I understood everything.   In the evenings, after getting the kids to bed I was on a schedule of reading fiction on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, non-fiction on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays, and something Christian but a little lighter than Aquinas’ Summa on Sundays.  (For example, I read Welborn’s Words We Pray and  Pope John Paul II’s Crossing the Threshold of Hope in this slot).

At the time it really didn’t seem like all that much, although I was vaguely aware of how many balls I had in the air.  Now I look back at that and I am not sure how I got there, or how exactly I would go about getting back there.  I suppose the answer is one ball at a time…  but nonetheless it is still daunting.  Right now I’m hardly doing anything.  I’ve been praying part of the Liturgy of the Hours (Lauds, Sext, and Compline right now) every day for several weeks now, and Emma and I have been doing a small Bible reading together every weekday.  She says a couple prayers that she knows, I read a psalm at the beginning and the end, and I read a section from one of the Gospels (we’re in Chapter 9 of Matthew right now) and we talk about it.  She then reads a section from her Bible story book and I read a section from one of the Epistles (Romans, right now) and then she narrates her section when she’s done.  For those of you who glance at my LibraryThing sidebar, you may notice that I’ve been reading a selection of various classics, both for children and adults, because I’ve realized I’m horribly illiterate in that way.  I’ve been writing a little about each book in Journler, but really, that’s about it as far as studying goes.

I signed up for the Great Tradition Yahoo group (studying The Great Tradition:  Classic Readings on What it Means to be an Educated Human Being, edited by Richard Gamble) because I thought the book sounded fascinating.  However, I’m finding it difficult to find the time and the brain power to read it in enough time to participate in the discussions.  At this point I’m woefully behind (getting the book two weeks late didn’t exactly help) and I’m really not sure if this is where I should be trying to spend my time.

So what’s the point in typing all this out?  I guess I’m thinking out loud here.  I’m trying to decide if I want to try to make a better attempt at the Great Traditions group, or if I should just bail and take the book up another time.  I’m trying to figure out what my priorities should be, and how best to fulfill them.  I think that this perhaps is the most important question.  What are my educational priorities, anyways?  Without having a clear picture of that, I really don’t have any hope of being anything more than a dilettante, which is what I feel like right now.  I don’t expect to be an expert in all that I feel is important, but I would like to obtain basic working knowledge rather than just have a passing familiarity with the subject.

Well, enough of all this, time to make some frosting for Emma’s birthday cake.  Yes, our little girl is turning six today, and we’re preparing for a party this evening with both sets of Grandparents.  (An aunt and uncle were supposed to come, but the aunt’s fiance is sick and the uncle decided he would rather take his girlfriend out to dinner *humph* )  Emma has been looking forward to this for ages, and I think it is time to pay attention to the birthday girl and the birthday preparations again.