Pink Prickly Pear

Cry me a river...a fast moving river swollen with snow melt.

I'm pretty sure I'm not going to be able to do this year's LIFE is Good conference justice with a blog entry.  I will say that I managed to take a couple of steps outside my comfort zone* and it made all the difference for me.  My family loves this conference, but until this year, I felt like the emotional roller coaster was a little too intense for me.  Way to make it all about you, Mama.  Bah.  I know it's not all about me, but at a certain point - like after Ronnie's excellent talk, which raised more questions for me than it answered, but in a most helpful way - one realizes that if one doesn't focus on oneself, everyone else is going to get shafted anyway, and possibly in a big, ugly, soul-crushing way.  Which is an obtuse and long-winded way of saying that while I've played everyone else's lay-therapist for years, it's really time to dust off the skeletons long banished to my rather insufficient closets and get my own house in order.  

At some point, I'm sure I'll write something substantial about the conference, but not yet.  I did feel prompted to write a treatise little something about the elusive nature of joy (whinge) this morning, but it's nowhere near ready for public consumption.  Maybe it never will be.  There's a reason I keep it short and snarky.  Harumph...and the like.

^{* Why is it called a comfort zone?  I'm not sure most people's comfort zones are particularly nice or comfortable, hence the need to step out of them.}

Kid's toys are so expensive.

We get a lot of mileage out of:

walks around the neighborhood, blowing bubbles, obstacle courses...and dried black beans and lentils.

This morning I almost stumbled over the phone books delivered to our front steps.  Who uses those anymore?  

 

My kids.  They don't get the opportunity to jump in leaf piles, so they made do with leaves of newsprint.  The play goes on and on and on and on... 

The girl rabbits are just for mating!

Nine.

Nine is when it really might start to hit you that your kid is going to be smarter than you ever were, or could hope to be.  

In addition to sharing a childhood favorite, I had an ulterior motive in picking Watership Down for us to read together; I was hoping I might wean her off that awful Warrior Cats series.  In the interests of full disclosure, I have not read more than a couple of isolated chapters in the series.  Initially, I was just irritated with the names and what a pain in the ass mouthful they were when reading aloud.  My disdain really kicked in to high gear when we discovered that Erin Hunter is not one person, but rather three women hired by Harper Collins to push out a seemingly endless series about semi-feral cats.

I thought the plight of a rag tag band of anthropomorphic rabbits would draw her in, and away, from those damned cats.

I was wrong.  My sweet little riot grrrl immediately noticed what I had never even picked up on.  

"Why are all the main characters male?" It having been a while since I'd read Watership Down, I responded that I was pretty sure there would be some female characters.  After all, we were only a couple of chapters into the story.

"But they've already mentioned the does.  They are just for mating, and digging burrows.  I doubt there's going to be lead female character in this."

Um...she's right.  I sort of feebly protested that it was still a pretty good story and maybe we should just, you know finish it?  It being a classic and all?

"Mom," said gravely, and with an inflection that suggested it pained her to have to educate me on this matter, "I really don't think...as a girl...that I will enjoy this book."

"Oh, uh...okay"  

Crap.  What a total FAIL.  On the other hand, feminist nine year old, WIN.  Too bad I didn't have much, if anything, to do with it.

Three things

 

While this may constitute flogging the proverbial dead horse, I have to share that my nine year old unschooler is invited to five Halloween parties.  I think we will manage to attend three of them, but will have to leave one of those early, because of the birthday party she's also invited to that evening.

I know this horn tooting bores the pants off you, but you can thank the opinionated old busy body* who interrogated us at the park the other day for my need to put it out there, yet again.

***

While certainly not the optimal arrangement, I discovered this morning that it is possible to use a sewing machine with a 1 year old in your lap. 

***

There are no more Almond Joys in the candy drawer.  Don't send me hate mail about fair trade chocolate!  I know, I know, I know!

I'm just not as evolved as you are...yet.

^{* She initiated our conversation by noting how "delightful" my daughter was and "how sweet she is to include the younger children in her game".  Then she asked where Mini-Pear went to school.  Upon learning the horrible truth, she gave me her educated opinion (as an ex-school teacher)  on socially maladjusted homeschoolers.  Instead of telling her to STFU, I merely nodded my head over to the field, where my daughter sat in the middle of a crowd, explaining the rules to one of her favorite versions of tag, "As you can see, she doesn't have that problem."} 

Playing catch up!

We thoroughly enjoyed ourselves at Good Vibrations, despite getting hit with the worst cold (I sort of wished I could crawl into a hole on Saturday - and, indeed, did not get out of bed until around ten o'clockish, while Mr. Pear got slammed with it on Sunday).  We hardly saw Mini-Pear, and when we did it was with a gaggle of her girlfriends, excitedly skipping from funshops to the pool to each others' hotel rooms and back out to the pool again.  Mr. Pear and I traded off time in the toddler room with d'anjou, and got to listen to some inspiring speakers, and to just hang out with new and old friends (and each other - awww).  And, as usual, it was just refreshing to hang out with that many unschoolers.  I think the below photo of one of my favorite small people sums it all up.  In the first place, Jonas is way cuter than me, and I did not get my face painted! Some sort of party pooper.

At some point, not staying at the hotel seemed like a good idea.  I didn't realize the Doubletree was pet-friendly until the week before the conference.  Boarding the dog, while staying at hotel 15 minutes from our home, seemed extravagant, until I was trying to get everyone up and out the door by 9 a.m. on Friday morning.  We never need to be anywhere at 9 a.m!  And we wouldn't have had to leave all the fun mid-afternoon, just to walk No No Bad Dog.  And I could have turned in early without compromising Mini-Pear's good time.

I vote we gently encourage Flo to do it all over again next year;)