“There is magic in sincere forgiveness; in the forgiveness you give, but more so in the forgiveness you receive.“ – Terry Goodkind ๐๏ธ
Last Week: Cleaned the bathroom, lost organization steam.
This Week: Gardening more than not at all.
HEALTH OVERVIEW:
Mental Health: So stressed, my husband is going to Florida, we are getting a house? Where? When? Moving? Together? We are pretty okay together, our health is good, our finances are okay. That’s all good, but we don’t know if we have a future living together or not yet or where. We have become displaced more or less.
Physical Health: Wanting to start exercising again. Starting to drink water, cook more, be more patient with the kids, yet I can feel myself close to the edge of getting stress hives.
Social Health: Went to a kid’s birthday party, but had a great time. All the kids went in a rocket tent all squished together, it was pretty adorable.
LIFE JOURNAL:
“Without forgiveness life is governed by an endless cycle of resentment and retaliation.โ
– Roberto Assagioli
โThere is no small act of kindness. Every compassionate act makes large the world.โ
–Mary Anne Radmacher
Saturday: Last week we got legos. We got large blocks this week, for some reason that made me feel at peace, it made me feel like my life made sense, like things were improving, and like I was a good parent. If those things were not true before the blocks, they probably weren’t true after, but logic doesn’t matter when it comes to “feeling” good, feeling good about yourself is fragile and separate than logical analysis of productivity or ethical analysis of values. It’s it’s own complicated kingdom with it’s own court politics. This week is the last week of school for first grade.
Sunday: Last week my daughter passed agriculture and theatre meaning all our bookwork is done and only projects are left. This week I went out into the garden tidied up the front garden where I wanted to put a veggie garden and made a trail through the ginger around the hedges, the ones I put in last year are only about a foot tall, I’m going to replace them with Mexican Sunflower soon. Making that trail means I can plant the cuttings. A chameleon landed on my hat and it felt good to get some sun after a rainy spring.
Monday: Tired and sick for four weeks in a row, this week I feel great, I’m so glad whatever it was passed be it physical or emotional or existential, I feel strong again. Two weeks ago I wrote some school notes: that I wanted to focus on enthusiasm, breaking skills down, patience, more enthusiasm, and changing the system as needed to fit the student and encourage the kids to study smarter so you can learn more and contribute to your own well-being and that of others. My husband stayed home so I also gave my daughter a break. This is the last week, she has done so much work this term, 6 kindergarten and 9 first grade courses, 15 courses in less than a year.
Tuesday: Last week we lost a pet chicken, just a small loss, but in what feels like a series of endless losses it felt a bit relentless.
TECH TANGENT: Last week I said I’m a fan of tech and games, but one needs to know how to live without them too, be a citizen of both worlds, and be a creative producer as well as a consumer. I’ve been teaching computer coding and robotics, so I have been learning more Java and Python, but also movie editing, audio editing, which I love, animation via mecabricks and Blender animation as well. I am not the best in anything, but I am starting to get around a lot faster especially thanks to Youtube tutorials. There is so much free stuff at your fingertips, but if you don’t have the background it can be intimidating. Lately we are trying to produce a play my daughter wrote, “The Successful Queen” she recorded half the audio, two songs, built two character models. I am trying to rig the animation, I think I need to manually rig the dragons by building an armature skeleton to pull like puppet strings. When I was doing that I was manually creating each bone and attempting to line up the bones on a 3D plane in Blender. Later I learned to toggle edit mode instead so the bones would extrude and be aligned well automatically… But doing the wrong thing taught me a few things, how to navigate 3D space with an emulated mouse wheel I don’t have, how to change my view via pan (shift, alt, left button) and rotate (alt and left button), and not to get away from the tutorial next time… Movavi and the science fair drove me further down the rabbit hole of digital sculpting to Blender and Blender seems endless right now. Anyways it feels good to know I can still learn, it feels good to feel like maybe I could even work in tech or art or digital art “someday”.
I made healthy, home cooked food today, it was bland, but at least it was three healthy hot meals. Life feels a bit messed up, cluttered, moldy, toxic, daunting, crazy, but I guess I am starting to have some hope I can stay strong until we get a new home and then take it easy a bit, and then start building something special with my life still. I’m feeling dark and hopeful, hark? Sounds better than dopeful. Grim and optimistic, groptimistic or optigrim? Got a new robot in the mail, welcome ACD2, and learned to rig a fishing pole for veggitarian fishing next week. Going to try to make oil and water charms tomorrow. Our scout group is one thing keeping me sane right now, also educating my kids. They both give me something to look back on and be like, yeah, I did something worthwhile no matter what the haters say, they will never take our “oil and water charms”.
Wednesday: Last week missed the beach and covered tons of school, math, music theory, coding, and general chemistry. This week a big birthday party, but also jumbo blocks for engineering and oil and water charm crafts for buoyancy. My son had jungle rot on his toe, hidden from view, so he hurt, so he screamed all night long Tuesday and I didn’t sleep. I struggled to get to the beach, but when I did I reached a deep zen like relaxation born of exhaustion coupled with a beautiful place. It was a day that made me happy to be alive and I felt good about myself and my choices and my family (yes, a rare day).
Thursday: Last week was very different than a normal week, I was so off-balanced. This week my son finished Foundations of Music, I was so proud. He took the final twice, once at 68%, then again at about 80% the auto review works pretty well by showing a quick recap of the missed sections. The Acellus system allows for hypercorrection by making tests not a problem to retake, it allows for interleaving by making it okay to fail and interval study by having it possible to retake the same class a few semesters or years later and see how it feels different. I like it, it’s not an elimination of tests, but using them more like quizzes and less dramatically or punitively. I’ve seen so much academic progress this school year with both my kids, I’m grateful my daughter ended up homeschooling, even though it was stressful to transition mid year and even though it puts me at odds with some people who think public school is better… which doesn’t reflect the data well in our area… it meant my son started a lot more school, pretty much full-time school, and that put less pressure on my daughter, but both of them did a ton, advancing in manual skills, writing for my daughter, using the mouse trackpad and keyboard for my son, my daughter advanced in CAD skills, acting skills (miming) and piano skills, my son in piano and music theory, both in reading and math, just a lot really. And thanks to the scout group Wednesday both are improving in and exposed to social skills. To be honest we don’t exercise as much as we used to, but at least they both swim once a week and eating well has our weight within where it should be. I would like to live a perfect world where music practice was fun and consistent and school was even (it isn’t even because my daughter is way ahead in math and science but barely pushing normal in English) and we exercise every day and take wonderful pictures and help the community go to the moon and build a utopia, but at least we made a lot of academic progress and didn’t kill each other during the pandemic.
Wednesday really pulls my mood up, because the group makes me feel like I’m doing good things, really good things, not things that would sound fancy or look good, but things that are actually good. Like a fruit pie, or a sunny day, or clean laundry, simple, but good things that make life bearable. Resting Thursday is great, having people Friday helps me not focus on not getting along great with my dad. The days are starting to have a flow again, which I like, even though I know things are going to change any time now, it’s nice to have a flow “for now”. Our group of friends keeps getting closer and closer, from strangers to acquaintances to friends, some of us are already becoming good friends, perhaps we are desperate for any company after the pandemic isolation, or perhaps I’m able to just allow people in better than I used to? But we are starting to be a whole “community” I never knew what that was before, I thought it was a number of people who fit a stupid and arbitrary demographic data point statistically, like everyone alive in X city, or everyone above the age of 65 in Y state, but it isn’t really. It’s a cool thing when it’s not toxic.
I did my daughter’s experiment write up for chemistry, I wasn’t sure if I wanted to, but she wouldn’t be able to do it and she was able to do the next steps, so I didn’t want to hold back her learning to write a science report that I remember in college a lot of people have trouble with. I will back assign it to her at the end of the class instead, I think it will make more sense then.
Friday: Last Friday we had some friends over it was cool, a little bloody due to a fight between a taffy and a dental spacer, but over all good. This week we had some other friends over, made some more bread, had chips, the kids had a lot of fun. I liked these people, other music people, other people who live in a multicultural family.
My week is ending, being around other people has been good for me this week, it motivates me to clean up, to try new things more.
Something new this week: I experienced a sense of community of not only friends, but friends who are friends, and a group looking out for one another.
Something good this week: Seeing my son dance to the music from music class, he especially liked rock and roll, but also swing/jazz, and African Music.
Something unexpected: How much I enjoyed the oil and water craft.
Born to Be Alive 