“It sounds a paradox, but kindness and good intentions can be an insidious path to destruction. Sometimes doing what seems right is wrong, and can cause harm.“ – Terry Goodkind 🕊️

Looking at this quote today, it reminds me of both making kids study too much or not enough, I try to stay within the middle of the two.

Last Week: Had people over on Friday for the first time, fixed my planner image, and edited 12 Science Fair videos.

This Week: Going to put the patio back in order and try to discard more to get ready to share the office better possibly…

HEALTH OVERVIEW:

Mental Health: Now that my dad knows we are moving, I feel better. He is okay to see us summers and I am okay coming back summers so, hopefully, that gives the kids more stability as we look for a new home and move to a new state.

Physical Health: Started boxing at martial arts, it’s very fun, wanted to start working out again but didn’t pull the trigger and do it yet.

Social Health: I am having fun teaching computer coding.

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LIFE JOURNAL:

“Without forgiveness life is governed by an endless cycle of resentment and retaliation.”

– Roberto Assagioli

“There is no small act of kindness. Every compassionate act makes large the world.”

–Mary Anne Radmacher

Saturday: Last week we went out to eat at a good burger place. This week we got legos, it was the first time in a long time I played with legos. 30 years later, I still like legos.

Sunday: Last week my daughter was going through her agriculture test again and cheated by just clicking 8 questions. This week she has passed agriculture and theatre.

Monday: Last week watering just the patio was kind of a struggle and it is again this week, tired since I’m still sick. This week is the third week in a row where I am tired and sick on Monday. But I’m checking in to Coach.me to help with productivity. By 8 AM I was so grumpy, I don’t like having kids that wake up early, I don’t like dog sitting my dad’s dog that isn’t house trained, I don’t like throwing away my husband’s empty beer bottles, I think I just want to live by myself, maybe someday my husband and I will get divorced and the kids can live with him?

Friday I did some cleaning, it only took 10 minutes to vacuum and mop the hall, clean the baseboards with vinegar and clean the hall walls with a rag and vinegar…

But then I started the office and it didn’t go as quickly. I guess since we do a lot of living in the office a lot gets moved around and due to lack of energy or time, not really put back in place…

As happy as I was how fast the hall went, I was sad at how slow the office has been going. The bathroom I wiped down the toilet, cleaned the diaper pail, started the laundry, wiped the mirror, wiped the sink, vacuumed and mopped pretty fast, but I didn’t declutter or demold, I had recently demolded or it would have taken a long time to do that. The livingroom and bedroom all I did was pick up major items, vacuum and mop. In the kitchen I wiped down and put away dry dishes and that was it, later that day I cleaned the oven.

It doesn’t look much different, but the chargers for the tablets got moved out, the tablets got moved to the bedroom shelves, the books got moved out to the bedroom shelves, the slime/science things were moved off the floor to the top storage, the trash was taken out and dropped off at the transfer station. A lot of little things were discarded or put back with like items. I kind of got a sense of what items I had too.

In school my son finished Kindergarten Science, he is only 3, so I was proud of him. At dinner he told his dad “yeah, doing good in science,” he has also said “having problem math” when he got to map reading. I find it so cool he has a good awareness of his own awareness at that age, it took me forever to notice that about myself, I would just go one page at a time through a book and never think about if I needed to review something else or if I understood easily or with difficultly.

After finishing Kindergarten Science he went right back to First Grade Math instead of asking for a break. Both my kids are smart, but my daughter would do the least amount of studying she could, whereas my son would do the most, just like my husband and I, one who likes studying and one who doesn’t.

My husband keeps making me mad telling the kids that if they get educated they will make more money, he makes more than my sister who has three degrees AA/BA/TC, and myself who has two AA/BA. We do fall near the chart, with my BA I have always made less than my husband who started and didn’t finish college. It makes me so angry that he tells my daughter the point of education is to earn more, she would earn more from a sex change than a BA.

There is some correlation between education and income, but it’s not the strongest factor or the strongest reason to pursue education and it continually irritates me that he doesn’t support education for education. Not to mention that I don’t support income for income, but only for life quality, so we disagree A. that education on an individual basis is the best choice towards stable income vs a solid business model and entrepreneurship or passive income, and B. we disagree again that money should be a key decider of life choices.

That chart makes me so mad because it reflects a lot of personal data, a woman with a BA will make 1.32-1.43 million in a working lifetime and a male high school graduate will make 1.53-1.54, so college won’t beat high school female to male, the less than high school jobs for females will make 0.51-0.59 while the men make 1.13-1.18 that is double. I choose to stay at home with kids, but I know a ton more working moms, I don’t know a lot of moms who stay at home, so is that enough to cause the difference?

I looked it up, and it is more than a parental difference, women choose/get jobs that are different in wage, women get part-time work more often, then there is the cost of 7% income reduction per child for women, but not men, who are parents, then there is systemic bias/injustice. * So sure staying at home by choice and having kids is a factor, but it’s not a 50% factor in most cases, there is still a lot of being offered lower-paying jobs or being the one given part-time.

I don’t like it because it isn’t fair, but I don’t care too much either because money isn’t happiness.

My friends just left the United States (16th) for Isreal (9th) I’ll ask them what they think some time, but I think actually that they are already happier there and that is why they went back.

So I’ve been reading a lot about what makes Finland the happiest place on Earth the past four years and I think it’s a few healthy habits, forest bathing, exercise, as well as not having to struggle. Education is paid for, not having a student debt would have made me happy, school children spend more time with their fathers than mothers (the only place in the world) that would have made me happy, women are in power together with men, not just the prime minister but also many others, that wouldn’t make me happy on it’s own, but I’m guessing women in power causes more benefits for women in general, the health care system is good and free, so that would have made me happy during the time I had untreated IBS because my doctors couldn’t figure it out and having free health care would have made me happy when I paid $10,000 for both my children’s deliveries. Free health care, free child care, free education, affordable housing, and a living wage. As an American, I’m only familiar with the last point, but for some reason, I’ve never been too nationalistic. I guess that comes from being Native American, the legacy of the native colonist relationship is kind of the opposite of fair treatment, good life quality, and mutual respect. So maybe happiness takes more than health care, child care, education, a home, and a wage, but having those problems solved probably frees up mental energy as well as financial resources, I guess with high taxes you pay for all those “free” things, but it’s hundreds of little bills and choices less to be in charge of, making more time for family and exercise.

Money isn’t happiness, and education isn’t earning power, but I still believe in education.

So the wage gap issue is similar in the US and Finland, but the happiness levels are not US ranking 16th and Finland 1st. So whatever lifestyle choices that push women in Finland to be happy are not directly related to more money and if we only focus on money distribution in the US, it isn’t going to be the most effective path towards well being or happiness, though for the bottom earners it’s still important to help them reach the middle.

Finland has been in the top 4 countries for good education since 2005 * and is often considered the best out of the “western” countries (excluding Hong Kong, Singapore ext). My daughter was born in 2015, so I did a lot of research about the differences between US vs Finland. One thing is the first standardized test is at 12, another no homework until 8, another is they have the same teacher for 6 years so there is a relationship there, they start preschool at 6 and regular school at 7, instead of 4 and 5, they spend 20 hours a week at school with no homework. What made me the most interested was that Italian students that didn’t speak Finnish did better with Finnish math textbooks than with Italian ones. So that got me obsessed with trying to hack the education gap, and I want to believe I have.

Even though I use a supplementary curriculum from the US, Acellus/Power Home School, it’s always been secondary to my own Charlotte Mason/Neuroscience ie John Medina’s Brain Rules, an inspired curriculum relying on outdoor education, movement, problem-solving (proven to go down each year in US public school) and recently “hypercorrection”, “spacing effects” and “interleaving.”

Watching my kids learn I really think I am able to accelerate their learning beyond what a small class or homeschool will do by going with the neuroscience says about learning vs the conventions of the educational field. This makes me happy, yet what doesn’t make me happy is when people say “study harder so you can make more money.” I prefer, “study smarter so you can learn more and contribute to your own well-being and that of others.“

Liam Thompson really inspired me by training his dog Max to play Twinkle Twinkle Little Star on the piano. He was really enthusiastic and broke the task down and then was patient and enthusiastic, he changed his system as needed to fit the dog. No offense to kids but I find that process is the essential process to teaching kids well, enthusiasm, breaking skills down, patience, more enthusiasm, and changing the system as needed to fit the student.

Tuesday: Last week I was sick and trying to rest. This week I’m tired, my daughter finished her Agriculture Final with a 75%, that’s fine the FFA stuff is hard to remember. My son and daughter got into animation with Flipaclip on their tablets, I wanted to, but I couldn’t quite decide what to do first, so, therefore, didn’t do anything yet. Made a Mood Meter Wheel today.

The first feeling that came up on the wheel was pessimistic, I feel that way about a few things right now. Pessimistic that I’m going to be stressed out when my dad comes back this Saturday, pessimistic that the car I drive won’t last too much longer, pessimistic that the scout group won’t keep going when I am gone, pessimistic that my husband will be unpleasant during the home finding process, pessimistic that I won’t be able to make a difference to this house and garden that they will get muddy, dirty, hoarded and overgrown when I am not here. I guess it’s all okay, whatever happens, is what I will have to deal with and I will find the strength to do whatever the best I can do is. I just don’t feel like it’s going to be easy, I don’t feel like we will be settled for a long time, I can’t see the end yet.

Wednesday: Last week, late Science Fair entries and a retry of bubble juggling: the recipe water 6, soap 2, corn syrup 1, and microfiber or wool gloves, it worked this time around. Another great day at the beach sunny, the kids played with the inflatable toys, we did boxing, karate, and MMA and decided to push the karate class forward in time to 1PM (still have to update the website), the kids all made slime together at the end, which felt good because some had won prizes and some had not, so it was fun to see the ones that had not won get to have the same amount of fun. One little girl said it was the best day of her life, I don’t know if it was true, but a lot of kids look really happy and engaged and relaxed so that makes me happy, some of it is the beach site, the ocean has a lot of power, a lot of it is the other kids, being able to play, being included, some of it is the science too, science you can touch is fun science.

Thursday: Last week decluttering, wondering about life, and making it through the end of the school year. This week made a results video and added space fire to an alternative version of a Science Fair Project. I started my dad’s laundry of his bed, wasn’t happy to do it. We have a sour relationship, I’m tired of him criticizing me and he sees that as how normal people talk and interact. I try to be grateful and patient, but I just lose respect for him each time he makes my life harder by being so unpleasant or paranoid, or needy when I’m already busy. That is how I see him now, unpleasant, paranoid, and needy. When I was growing up he wasn’t supportive, but he wasn’t demanding, he wasn’t warm, but he wasn’t critical, he is becoming more unlikable the past few years. I started cleaning the bedroom, the windows, the floors, the baseboards, the sheets, the toys, the closet. I was wiping down toys when my husband came home. I said I was tired and he said “you always were slow at cleaning.” And that’s why I hate him. I love him at times and hate him at times and I never have a settled feeling of which is dominant or if apathy is dominant to both. He isn’t faster at cleaning than I am, he just doesn’t do it, he doesn’t care about all the filth I removed being removed from the kids breathing and living space. He acts superior, but he isn’t. It used to make me sad when he would put down my cleaning speed, but the room I cleaned is cleaner than his room that he cleans. He was very grumpy, the trash wasn’t taken out and his laundry wasn’t done, but when I went to do it he said leave it, then he wanted to do it later and I was washing my dad’s blankets. That’s what you get for being stupid about things. I see some people I know in hostile marriages, mine isn’t that bad, mine is unromantic and up and down, but it’s not usually hostile. I’d rather go back to work and live alone than live like that, I’ve given enough in my marriage if it doesn’t work I won’t feel guilty, I’m just kind of not thinking that much about it until the kids are bigger, because they love him. Even though my daughter is starting to be sick of her dad picking on her, over stupid stuff, like he kept telling her she wouldn’t win the science fair over and over, which was stupid. But I tend to stay out of their relationship, I don’t want to feel like I’m splitting up kids, which I don’t tend to do often. I know I am less patient than I was before the pandemic, maybe my dad and husband are also worn down, but it doesn’t mean that they are easy to live with, I feel like they are both weights pulling me down and the kids are bigger weights pulling me down, but I’d rather help the kids, I’d rather if the adults swam themselves and if they don’t, I can’t respect them.

Friday: Last Friday we had some friends over for the first time, it was fun, we started a Krita Digital Illustration Class, talked about math and algebra, played with cars and blocks, and made bread together. This week I’ve got stuff to clean, but not as bad as last week. We are going to try math and computer coding summer camp.

My week is ending, and though I am frustrated I feel like I did a lot of good things, cleaned up somewhat, organized somewhat, my daughter finished Agriculture, leaving Coding and Theatre left. I helped my sister decide on where to put a home office it’s a small office, but it looks a lot better than the last one, which was in a loud area of the house and too high, this one is cozier and out of the main foot traffic of the house. The little chickens moved out this week to the play house.

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Something new this week: We started Summer School Coding Camp.

Something good this week: My daughter finished Agriculture, it was a hard class, but I know she learned a lot about many things, animals, disease, reproduction, the food chain, how many products come from animals, tools, and even arc welding. I’m proud of her.

Something unexpected: The whole table of kids making slime.

🖥️