Pink Prickly Pear

Who needs Back to School Clothes?

I guess that's a "No".

This afternoon we are having a massive sort-through of her closet though.  If you see us with any regularity, you know that Mini-Pear wears the same 2 shirts and the same 2 pairs of pants over and over and over again.  She's always been a bit sensitive with regard to tags, seams, itchy bits, etc.

That's fine.  I'm not going to make her wear itchy, uncomfortable clothes.  However, despite her clothing sensitivities, she is, at heart, a bit of a clotheshorse.  Most mornings, she tears through the closet, tries on at least 4 outfits, before finally appearing in either the pink no-sleeved shirt and her comfy grey cropped sweatpants, or the pink and brown 3/4 sleeved shirt and her comfy brown cropped sweatpants.

The end result is a bedroom floor carpeted by clothes that have never been worn.  They may have been tried on, over and over and over again, but actually worn, for the entirety of a day?  Hasn't happened.  So, today, we are going to cull the clothing stash.  Mini-pear's little sister already has the largest stash of never worn hand-me-downs ever accumulated, and it's about to get bigger.

Speaking organizing and such, we have a finalized schedule for the fall.  "Finalized" meaning that no matter what new cool activity finds its way into my in-box, we must, in the interests of sanity, say "No, thank-you".

Mondays: Circus Arts class.  Mr. Pear was totally enthusiastic about this one, so he gets to make the drive all the way downtown with her first thing Monday morning. 
Tuesdays: Choir (same one she participated in this spring), but it's only a five minute drive down the road, and a friend has offered to drive Mini-Pear if we ever need it.
Wednesdays:  Science club - there is a meeting once a month, and an associated field trip once a month.  We found out about this at the last minute and it sounded too good to miss. 
Thursdays: Gym, but yesterday Mini-Pear's instructor stopped by to offer to pick her up and drop her off.  He lives just around the corner and his kids are in the class, so it's no big thing for them to grab her on their way.  Yay!
Fridays: Karate (this also meets on Sunday morning).

And of course, we can't leave out park day!  Alternating Mondays and Tuesdays with our unschooling peeps, and then there is another one we usually hit on Wednesday afternoons.  We're back down to one book club which meets once a month.

Somewhere in there we'll find time for a new baby. 

Morning routines are for suckers.

Talk about a self-fulfilling prophesy!  On occasion, upon hearing that mini-pear doesn't go to school, a new acquaintance will respond with some variation on the following theme: "Wow!  I could never do that!  I'm just so glad to get them out of my hair all day!"

And I usually think, "Well, sure, if you're kid is at school from 8 - 3 every single day, and brings home a couple of hours of homework, where's the fun in that?  You play drill sergeant in the morning, rushing them through breakfast and out to the bus on time, and then later on that day you have the pleasure of greeting  a kid who is either exhausted or needs to release all the energy they've had to contain all day long, and then you get to hustle them through hours of homework, dinner, and all the prep for the following day.  I don't think that sounds like the type of relationship I'd want any more of either!"

Well, Mini-pear is at day camp all week and I am so over it.  If we had to do this every week, I think we'd have a completely relationship.

My job, every morning, is to repeatedly remind her to:

• finish her breakfast (she hasn't managed to actually finish it all week)
• just put on the clothes we laid out the night before, as opposed to trying on four different variations of outfits inevitably retrieved from the dirty laundry pile (dirty clothes are more comfortable)
• brush her teeth (three times is usually a charm, even if accompanied by scowls and vicious eye rolling)
• wash her face (she'll do this when she brushes her teeth, I suspect this is what the dramatic sighs are related to)
• pick up the bagged lunch I've made and actually bring it with us
• pick up her extra bag of gear (this changes every day depending on the activity)

It's so sad!  I'm having a hard time keeping my decibel level from going up with each reminder.  I suspect I'm guilty of some dramatic sighs and eye rolling myself.  By the time we actually get in the car and on the road, I am so ready to just drop her off.  Because then I can relax and and I no longer have the responsibility of shepherding her through some externally mandated schedule.

By three o-clock, I'm looking forward to picking her up, but when I do, she's tired.  She's also pretty hungry and usually spends the drive back home eating the lunch she didn't manage to eat during lunch time.  When we get home, she's grouchy and irritable.  I manage to coax the barest minimum of details about her day. 

I want my happy little girl back!  And I'm sure she wants to see the last of Bitchmother.

In which I fail to indoctrinate my child properly *pats self on back, nurses shot foot*

The other morning, our new social worker paid us a visit.  No, CPS isn't after us, this was just another step in the protracted process of renewing our orphan visa.  She took a little tour of our house (hopefully she didn't notice the removed smoke detectors - mini-pear cannot sleep in their presence) and noted the the family-friendliness of the neighborhood before we sat down in the kitchen to review our paperwork.  Hopefully at that point she unconsciously noted the smell of the banana nut muffins we'd made (pretty much expressly for the purpose of our house smelling "homey", although we certainly liked eating them as well).

We chatted for a while.  She asked us lots of questions and hopefully I didn't talk too much.  I think her eyes widened a little when I started rapturously going on about how I'd still be lactating when we traveled to China!  And wouldn't it be great if our little adopted baby could experience all the benefits of extended breastfeeding?!?!

Then she asked if mini-pear could join us for a couple of minutes.  Of course, mini-pear had long bored of the excitement of a new visitor and was now very involved in something on the computer.  She reluctantly joined us in the kitchen, answered the first question and danced merrily off.

"Uh, mini-pear?  We still want to chat with you for a couple of minutes!"  She returned, even more reluctantly than before.  The social worker asked her if she was looking forward to the new baby, and also still looking forward to the adoption?  Did she know anything about China?  What does she do for fun? And then - "So how's homeschooling going with mom?"

"Good."
"Yeah?  What's your favorite subject?"
Mini-pear frowned, "Well, since we don't really do any of that stuff I don't really have a favorite.  I guess..."

Oh.  Crap.  I mean on one hand, this is great.  We've achieved one of our primary objectives - life and learning are seamlessly integrated for her.  On the other hand, this is a social worker sitting on the other side of the table, and from her perspective, I'm sure this looks like a big red flag.

I wrap my arm around mini-pear's waist, "I think if I had to guess your favorite subject, I'd say it was history, huh?  You really enjoyed learning all about Elizabeth I, didn't you?"
"Yeah.  Okay.  History."

Social worker's pen hesitated a moment before she neatly added "History" to the little list of interests she'd compiled.

Yikes.  Or as mini-pear might say, "Shikes!"

I suppose next time I need to prep her a bit.  Maybe explain that those happy hours in the backyard, creating new habitats for woodlice?  Those are Science credits.  So are all those times we spend kicking around the tide pools.  Karate?  That's something called P.E.  Hey, you're even picking up some Foreign Language skills at karate.  Writing to your best friend back in DC?  That could fall under English.  I suppose for a rising Third Grader like yourself, it's still called Language Arts.  Same for those short stories you write.  Those creative stories you tell?  Those don't really count, because there's no evidence of the work.  When you got out that fraction game we have, and used the pieces to play "cake shop"?  That was Math!  Especially when you tried to see which combinations of pieces made a whole cake!  We did a lot of Math on our trip, when we kept trying to figure out "how long 'til we get there".  Oh, and when we made chocolate chip cookies last week?  That was Math too.  When we were reading together the other morning, and we stopped for a minute to look up Jamaica (the location for the story) on a map, that was Geography.  Watching six Simpsons episodes in a row?  Your dad and I suspect you are working on your comedic timing, especially given your recent interest in memorizing complete comedy routines (I love your very dry delivery!).  But hey, maybe we're wrong.  Maybe you're just relaxing and there's certainly nothing wrong with that.  If you were in Film School, we could categorize watching The Simpsons, but you're only in Third Grade, so it's just vegging out.  It might even be very, very bad for you.  The American Girl book club?  History (U.S History).  Watching Cate Blanchett as Elizabeth I?  That's History too!  It probably doesn't count though, because British History isn't required for Third Graders in California.  Reading everything Beverly Cleary has ever written?  That's Reading with a capital "R".

I could prep her, but I think it might suck the joy out of it a bit.  All she knows is that she spends her days exploring what interests her.  No one's ever told her that it's something she has to do.  Nothing is required.  Nothing's out of bounds either.  It's all fun, because it all has meaning.  What else would she do?

We had a quiet long weekend.  Oh, wait, it's Wednesday already!  Weekend's long gone. 

At any rate, I did not feel much like leaving the house and mini-pear had a little sniffly/scratchy throat thing happening.  As she was looking forward to day camp at the humane society this week, I thought maybe hanging around the house and resting up was a pretty good idea.  Mini-pear was not so sure.  She likes her running and jumping and climbing time at the park.  We managed to get a little of that in, but not for hours on end (as is her preference).  Our faux-Kapla blocks made an appearance, and that is always a good way to while away the hours.  We bought a set of 100 at IKEA a couple of years ago, and they are the coolest blocks ever.  Except now they've stopped carrying them, and if we wanted to add more to our collection, we'd have to buy the real Kapla blocks which are significantly more expensive ($45 for a 100 piece set, as opposed to $6 or thereabouts for the IKEA version).

So as I said, mini-pear is at camp all week, and I'd hoped to organize the house a little, find some way to manage the ever growing stacks of artwork and other mini-pear output, sort through some baby clothes, etc.  I'm doing a little tiny bit of that, but mostly I've been "ponderous", as Mr. Pear puts it.  I feel like I have so much on my mind, I might explode.  We're updating our home study for our adoption, and so I've been scheduling appointments and organizing paperwork.  It feels a little odd to be gathering all that information at the same time as I'm trying to reconfigure my prenatal care. 

That's where my "ponderous"ness comes in.  I'm compiling a list of questions to ask my new OB, but I'm also interviewing midwives and having a good long think about all my options.  So think-y!  I am not the type of person who enjoys this sort of decision making.  It overwhelms me, and being in a state of indecision wears at the old brain.  I sometimes find I rush the decision-making process, just so I can breathe a sigh of relief, "Well, that's all decided..."  I also don't have all the information I need yet.  I can't really decide until I actually meet the OB and see what he's got to say for himself, and I need to meet some midwives in person.  Not having enough information, and wanting to make a decision sooner rather than later is burning holes in my skull.  Patience is not a virtue I've spent much time cultivating.

I need a break from it all.  It's a little grey here this morning.  Perhaps a good day to knit in front of some deliciously bad television-streamed-over-the-internets.

Sometimes it would be nice to do just nothing...

Mini-pear has a new friend who won't be going back to school next year.  Of course, the little girl's mom has a lot of questions and concerns.  She's particularly worried that her daughter won't get to socialize as often as she's accustomed.

I have to smile at that.  A wan, exhausted sort of smile.  Exhausted because mini-pear's social calendar is insane!  She'd never get this much time to socialize if she were in school.  Please stop talking to your neighbor or I'll have to separate you two!  Girls, we're not here to socialize!  I want to be able to hear a pin drop in here!

I haven't blogged all that much over the past couple of weeks.  Partly because I'm just not here all that much.  We are very busy socializing.  In the last week, mini-pear and I have:

Spent 8 consecutive hours at our local Unschooler Park Day!
Went to see her good friend's dance recital, with some other friends, followed by ice-cream (not to mention a sugar fueled exploration of the Whole Foods in La Jolla).
Had a friend over for a few hours of one on one play.
The whole family got together with several other families for dinner and to talk about the possibilities of hosting an Unschooling Conference in San Diego next year.
Karate, karate, karate...
More time at the park with friends!
Book club with 5 of her girl friends
A pottery workshop organized by another homeschooling family*
A picnic, sleepover, and all day play date with another friend and her family
Followed by another park day

And then yesterday, we met up with a different set of girl friends for the American Girl book club.  The girls are reading through the historical novels.  Yesterdays meeting had a Victorian theme in keeping with the Samantha series.  Everyone loved the elaborate tea party - crust-less tea sandwiches, fresh fruit and loads of dainty little cakes - charades, and making their tussie mussies.  Of course, I forgot my camera, but I managed to snap the above picture of mini-pear putting her bouquet into a bud vase at home.  Then she noticed the camera and ran away, having recently developed an aversion to the camera.

So, yes, socializing - I think we've got it covered.  We're trying to stay home all morning, but it's hot, so I think we'll have to accept that invitation to hang at the beach this afternoon.

_{*Actually, here's where I hit a wall and just couldn't handle the social whirlwind anymore.  Luckily, my friends noticed and shuttled me off home with promises to make arrangements for mini-pear to get dropped off later.  I went home and slept like the dead.  And then one of the friends from pottery asked if they couldn't just take mini-pear home with them and I could just reconnect with them at park day the following afternoon.  So then I got to sleep like the dead some more.  Which is something I was apparently in dire need of.}

Math. I can do it. But it is really boring.

Are there people who get all excited at the prospect of crunching numbers?  I know part of the creative process for me is problem solving, and so I suppose it's possible that there are people who get a gigantic grey matter hard-on for arithmetic...it just seems so improbable to me though.

We're getting a new insurance plan, which is very nice indeed, but I need to crunch some numbers and do a cost/benefit analysis of the various plans.  Labor and delivery is covered by all of them, but we have various options for room and board, as it were.  It's nice to have options, so I shouldn't complain, but while options usually leave me feeling slightly overwhelmed ("Too many choices!") in this case, I know there is one option that will save me money and I need to commit some arithmetic hurdles in over to figure it all out.  Boring!  Like if I get the plan that requires I only pay $300, no matter how long I stay in the hospital, but higher monthly premiums, will I end up paying more in the long run than if I pay less per month, but a percentage based fee based on the length of my hospital stay (if all goes well, 48 hours, if they have to stick a knife in me, 96 hours, if all hell breaks loose, we got bigger problems anyway)?

Who knows?  I've done this much homework - called the Birth Center at the hospital and asked how much they charge for a semi-private room per day, and how many hours I'm legally required to remain in the hospital for both a c-section and a vaginal birth.  I probably could have crunched the numbers in the time it took me to compose this stupid post about it, but procrastination is way more fun than MATH, even if it is the kind of math that will save me money.  Besides, I know I can do this kind of number crunching, because despite my math anxiety and every teacher I ever had through 11th grade telling me I had no head for numbers, I used to do this particular kind of number crunching back when I had * insert sarcasm* a real job, except back then the numbers were much bigger and it wasn't my family's checkbook I was balancing, but a really big checkbook for a really big institution.  They paid me to crunch numbers and I did a very good job too!  So there, no head for numbers naysayers.

Still, I didn't like it.  Am I going to sign off and go crunch the numbers? 

No.  I'm going to go to the freezer and see if there's any Ben and Jerry's Karamel Sutra (with the caramel core!!!) left and then I'm going to watch my homeschooling homeboy, Will Smith, in I Am Legend (a PG-13 film which I am, nonetheless, too chicken too watch when it's dark outside).

Friday's full of Yays! and Boos!

Another reason to road trip though lovely Oregon?  Free coffee courtesy of the Methodists!  I don't know if the coffee came with strings attached as I'd already had a small clandestine coffee much earlier that morning.  I'll also have to admit that after witnessing the horror of the rest room stalls at this stop, I studiously avoided any subsequent "Free Coffee" stops.  Just in case, you know, the free coffee was in lieu of a generous scrubbing of the facilities.  It certainly seemed so at this particular stop.

Onto Yays! (and Boos!)

Yay! Swimming this morning!  Floating in the sun feels so very good!

Boo!  We stayed at the pool long enough to hear a swim instructor bring not just one, but three successive students to tears with her constant haranguing and "Be Brave!"  and "You HAVE to do this!"  So, it's bad enough that she basically sucks, for lack of a better word, but I can't imagine what possessed three successive parental units to sit poolside and allow this woman to bring their children to tears. 

Boo!  Hey Fax Machine!  Why you try and call me at 6:38 this morning?  Hmmmm?  And why you try and call me again ten minutes later?  I was sleeping!

Yay!  Quiet time with a cup of tea and my book before anyone else woke up (although, to be perfectly honest, I'd have appreciated the sleep a little more).

Yay!  I think our dog learned some manners at her fancy pants doggie dude ranch!  Yesterday I chatted on the driveway with my friend, not realizing that the front door was open.  When I headed back inside the dog was attentively laying down on the door mat and did not get up until I told her she could!  And she was much calmer on our walk today (longtime readers know she's a beast on her leash).  And when we returned from the pool she greeted us in the hall by calmly laying down and wagging her tail (as opposed to punching us in the groin and frolicking excitedly underfoot). 

Yay!  Sleepover for Mini-Pear with one of her best friends.  Most uneventful!  They get on with their play and work out their issues on their own!  Little Friend is polite and not in the habit of wandering off opening drawers and nosing in closets (like Mini-Pear's other little friend, Mary Lennox*).

Boo!  Who will fill the void left by the impending move of Little Friend?  Please, not Mary Lennox!!!!!

Yay!  I read on the couch for an hour this afternoon and ate lots and lots and lots of cherries.  Here on the left coast, cherries are well within my grocery budget for months on end!

Yay!  We got to karate this afternoon for the first time in too long!  Mini-Pear had a great class and I got my knit on.

Boo! It's seven o'clock.  Where's Mr. Pear?  It's time to get this weekend party started!

^{* Uh, Mary Lennox is not her real name.  I wouldn't be all stealthy and avoid using our own real names on the internets and then out some poor kid due to her inherent disagreeable-ness.  Ever read The Secret Garden?  She's just like that Mary Lennox, only without garden tools and her ensuing sense of purpose.}

Yesterday I was down at the library looking for a book on the latest crackpot educational theory to capture my interest.  For the first time, I noticed that literature on incarceration/corporal punishment/prisons happen to be shelved right next to the books on educational theory.

Just something to consider...

In which she is too clever by far...

PPP:  Want to finish up that Pompeii book?

Mini-P mumbles something non-committal, possibly "Nah".

PPP:  I really want to find out what happens!

Mini-P [with dramatic eye roll and dead pan delivery]: The volcano explodes.  Everybody dies.

PPP:  I guess that's a no, huh?

Mini-P heads out of the kitchen shaking her head.

Spring is as good a time as any to discuss the birds and the bees.

Thanks to a set of high flyin' truck nuts on the highway this evening, mini-pear and I got a jump on the ever procrastinated sexual education discussion.  BTW, if you didn't follow the first link, I must insist you follow the second one - it illustrates just one of the myriad of reasons why we're pretty confident we're not going to f**k the kid up for life by not sending her to state sponsored schools.

Just the high-lights (I dunno, maybe they're low-lights)...my innermost thoughts in italics.

MINI-P: Woah!  Did you see those testicles dangling from the back of that truck?!?!
PPP: How does she know they're testicles? Uh...no, I didn't.
MINI-P:  Wait, they really are testicles?  If you didn't see them, how come you believe that they're really testicles?
PPP: I've, uh, seen them before...

She is silent for a while.  The wheels are turning.

MINI-P:  Why do people put them on there?  Don't they know that they might offend...
PPP: ...old ladies and small children?
MINI-P: ...men?
PPP:  Men?  Do you think a woman was driving that truck?
MINI-P:  Of course!  Why would a man put them on there?  A woman might though.
PPP:  Really?
MINI-P:  If she wanted to tease a man.
PPP Obviously she means "tease" in the primary school sense of the word.
MINI-P:  It would make fun of them.  But that would maybe offend some men.  It might hurt their feelings.

I will have to paraphrase the next few bits.  I was laughing so hard, I could hardly drive.  The ever sensible Mini-pear noted that another good reason not to hang truck nuts from your rear bumper would be to not distract drivers like myself.  We might laugh and drive off the road.

Somehow she introduces the term "sexy".  I take a moment to point out the difference between organs which aid in the mechanics of sex and the term "sexy".  We both agree that testicles, in and of themselves, are not sexy, although they are intrinsic to procreation.  And this leads us directly to the nuts and bolts - sex as it relates to peopling the earth, as opposed to sex as it relates to just having fun with someone you care about.

Sex for fun inevitably leads our discussion on birth control...

PPP: Well, the man can wear something on his penis to stop the sperm from even entering the vagina.
MINI-P:  What?
PPP:  It's sort of like...a sock.
MINI-P [uncontrollably giggling]: That sounds awful!
PPP [considering, revising]: It's made out of the same material as a balloon.
MINI-P [getting down to important business]:  Do they come in all different colors?

Okay, so yes, they do but we talk about how really, you just want the thing to work.  It's kind of like how a sensible person wouldn't buy a car just because they liked the color.  You don't want to get stuck on the side of the highway, and you certainly don't want that condom to break.

MINI-P:  So what color are most of them, then?
PPP:  I guess they're this kind of see through-ish creamy color.  Like a clear band-aid.
MINI-P:  Really?  I just thought the regular ones would be black!
PPP: Uh, well, I suppose since they come in many colors, some would come in black, but for the most part, they seem to want to just blend in with the penis...
PPP [inserts foot in mouth]...as opposed to this big black penis coming at you...
MINI-P [oblivious to my faux pas]:  Well, yeah, but what about that big white penis coming at you?  [affects a big growly voice]  Big white penis comin' atcha!  Big white penis comin' atcha!  That would be crazy!!
PPP:  Indeed.

Yikes.  I suppose that's just the way it goes.  By the time we reached the house and settled in on the big lurid duvet to finish the conversation we were earnestly discussing the germ theory of disease (yet again!) and what kinds of bodily fluids carry disease, etc.

And now, I do not want to even talk about sex or testicles (shudder) with anyone for quite some time.  Hopefully, she won't either.