After long years of absence, I decided to go back to school and finish my degree. It’s taking a while. You might say I am earning it…by degrees.

So I sit here studying English history, trying to sort out all the Henrys and Williams and Edwards and can’t they come up with a new name for the royal heir once in a while? I contemplate the sad course of Charles I’s rule, the various angry Parliaments and armies. And the Levelers, who had a great idea that wouldn’t catch on very well until a bunch of rabble decided to build a new country on the other side of the sea centuries later.

Wait a minute…the Levelers. That sounds familiar.

*brief pause for Google search*

Of course it does. The Levelers were also an English band I used to listen to.

In college.

Ha!

Yesterday, after years of hard work fitting classes around deployments, family and job demands, and the whizzing pace of time, Mr. MG got to cross the stage and graduate from college. Fifteen years we’ve been married, and the entire time he has been working for the day he could get his degree. That’s a long time to wait.

I love that he never quit. I love that he is never satisfied with the status quo. Just enough isn’t enough for him and that is so very cool. I teased him about his planning for his masters and he said, “Well, you never know.”

I love you, sweetie. Congratulations.

I had forgotten how much I love Shakespeare. In the day-to-day hurry of things, I lose track. A gigantic pile of laundry doesn’t whisper to me in iamb. (Although it is, technically speaking, a tragedy.)

Then came my newest adventure in college, a survey of Shakespeare’s plays, and I have fallen in love again. Oh, how I wish people really talked like that. I wish my life had such a well-composed plot. On the other hand, I’m glad I have never known anyone who got revenge by feeding someone her own children in a pie. Ew.

My biggest hitch is the same problem I had in last semester’s English lit class – I would like to have a little peace to stew over each play, but there are these assignments that the syllabus says must be done. Here I am, pondering away like Tom Cullen (M-O-O-N, that spells Hamlet), and then I have to snap to it and write a paper. Even with a year to complete the course, I’d better get going.

All in all though, it is a wonderful problem to have: gulping Bill’s brilliant words instead of dainty nibbling.

Halfway through the first month of the new year is a good time to return to blogging, right?

Now I have time! (If there is ever time to do anything that does not involve wiping behinds and folding laundry, grading papers and driving people all over creation.) I have time now because school! is! out! Mwa ha ha ha ha!

It is a good thing my distance learning program allows me a year to complete courses, because it took me all of that. It was foolish to jump into two radically different classes at once for my first semester back. I have not felt such brain-blistering tension since… Actually, I don’t know if ever. Last time I did this drill as a young person, I didn’t give a rip – there was life out there, waiting! Now when I take a class, I see the money floating away and bursting into flame midair if I fail.

I learned crazy things to do with numbers, how to dice them fine, toss them (carefully) into the air, perform a little breakdancing, and end up with a model for supply and demand, lightly toasted. I relearned how to research for a paper and focus like a laserbeam on a tiny facet of a subject and write about it (very unlike the rambling I do here). And by the end, I figured out that it is probably a lot less painful to work hard as soon as possible, instead of seeing the deadline coming like a bullet train and having actual nightmares about the assignments.

Now I am – briefly – without homework, without the constant feeling of  conquering the next thing. It is only a small respite before beginning the next task, an intensive study on Shakespeare. As soon as the syllabus and text get here, I am off to the races again. As much as I love the subject matter, it is still work and I would really rather sit on the couch with a pile of candy and watch Doctor Who reruns.

Life moves at such a brisk clip sometimes, and yet it seems way too mundane to post.

• How is The Project  coming? Slowly. The sanding is done, and that’s a huge plus. (Although I have heard that I will be finding drywall dust all over for years to come. What a happy thought.) One of our fur people is apparently asthmatic and was having a dreadful time because of the dusty mess – not that it kept her from pushing past the barrier and going upstairs to roll in it. All the plastic has been taken up and we are now on to the stage of trying to wipe down everything so we can hang more plastic and shoot orange peel texture on the ceilings. I still hope to someday paint and perhaps even move back upstairs to sleep. I know…I’m a dreamer that way.
• The cat. The bald, psychotic cat who refused to poo in the litter box (who happens to be the same one mentioned above) is mostly better. After spending a few nights locked up in a bathroom with her catbox, she has gotten the right idea. The kids also got a life lesson about prayer: they had been asking God to please help Emma with her “little problem” so that Mama would not get rid of her nasty self. Now they know that God not only covers sparrows and lilies, but cats with elimination issues, as well.
• We just finished our third week of school, and life is good. Well, mostly. The new has worn off, so the usual whininess has kicked in. But most of our trouble comes when someone has down time – the school aspect is pretty great. Mostly I am struggling with my own attention span. But when the Bear is begging to do his math, and I overhear the Princess singing the praises of her new language arts program, I figure things are pretty well on track.
• As for my schooling…hmm. It is a good thing the distance learning course gives me a year to finish, because I am going to need all of that. I am starting to appreciate the genius of numbers and what mind-blowing things they can do (seriously, forget about all the biology stuff – the grand complexity and order of mathematics speaks to me of an intelligent Creator) but it still takes forever. English Lit is delicious fun, but I need to get myself in gear and focus.
• We need to plant some trees soon. Last spring we took out about a dozen alders, and the yard looks naked. Fall is the best time to pop them in the ground, so when I get a break in my busy bon-bon-eating schedule, I’ll get right on that.

Not exciting, nail-biting events. But add them up together, and whew!

Being a student again is teaching me a lot.

I am having to learn priorities. Reading three different translations of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight for a short reaction paper is overdoing it. And spending a couple of months ruminating on how it compares to Beowulf  is not using my time wisely. I have to learn that college does not mean savoring literature – it means gut, process, and produce a result in a hurry. But, my, it is wonderful. Now I am delving into Chaucer and fighting to stay on task.

Of course, if literature was all I had to do college would be a snap. But there is this nasty thing called Finite Mathematics (aka The Devil’s Bottom) that I have to tackle as well. I haven’t even tried algebra for twenty years, and now I am having to deal with statistics and corollaries and least common squares lines and I want to die. It’s a good thing I have a year to complete the course, because a semester is not nearly long enough for me to wade through the material. It’s a 100-level course and I feel like a failure every time I open the book.

I forgot to get the mail today, so I wandered to the box around ten this evening. Inside was the return envelope with my first math assignment in it.

I got 100%.

!

I want to wake the Princess. I want to hug her for all the times she has hated her math book and hated me for making her do it. I want to wake the neighbors and show them my grade. I want to call the local radio station and request that they broadcast the news. I want to frame my assignment, hang it over the fireplace, and stand there with one elbow resting on the mantle as I gaze lovingly at it.

Most of all, I want to ignore the fact that I have to work on the next assignment tomorrow.

I am thrilled. I am recharged. I am exhausted. This weekend I lived through my first homeschool convention.

Honestly, all those books. It was marvelous. For the first time, I got to see and touch and page through curriculum before buying. We explored products, manipulatives, and doodads. I got to talk to authors about their books.

I got to meet Jessie Wise! She was gracious and sweet. I also attended a lecture of hers called, “If I Could Do It Over Again.” She pretty much blew my socks off.

There were remote controlled model boats. There were animals from the humane society. There was a guy in full armor with a broadsword. I had worried a little bit that the hooligans might get a little bored, but they had a riot. They even held up admirably during lectures. (And when they couldn’t, Mr. MG took them out in the main area and chased them all over the place. By the end of the weekend, every vendor knew the tall bald man with the two crazy children and the toddler with the squeaky shoes.)

We were attending both days, so the hooligans got to stay in a hotel for the first time. The Bear does not like new things, and was teary for a couple of days beforehand. All that was a distant memory when he got in the room. “I want to live here!” he sighed. As for the Princess, it confirmed everything she hoped for and then some. No making beds, no vacuuming, and free cookies in the lobby.

After supper, we came back and went to the hotel pool. For the first time, Moo was in something bigger than a tub. After slowly working our way in, I got her in the water up to her shoulders and then it happened: she started flutter kicking and paddling her arms, I kid you not. She loved it! I held her waist and zoomed her around in the water while the Bigs horsed around with Mr. MG. It was one one the highlights of the entire trip.

Of course, no one really slept. And then we spent all the next day exploring the convention some more. And then the looong drive home. But you know it was a good time, because the kids all cried when we had to leave. Moo wailed, “I don’t want to go home!”

The last kid was tucked in their bed at ten thirty last night - happy, tired, and impatient for next year. And here I am today, dozing at the keyboard with a stack of new books next to my chair. I’m impatient for it, too.

For a brief, tiny moment today, I peeked over the wall of extreme math phobia. For a teensy space in time, I had a glimpse.

For just a second, I gazed at my algebra/finite mathematics homework and it made sense to me.

Thank you, God.

Mental Multivitamin has re-posted from the archives: Feed a cold; starve a (spring) fever? It is just the thing to feed your brain during the mid-term crazies.

When addressing the assorted problems that can occur when one spends most of her life in the company of young humans, a parent-teacher can look at the problems through bifocals of a sort. Glance through the top and see your children with mother vision. Glance through the bottom and see them through teacher vision. Most of the newfangled “invisible” bifocal lenses come with a center area of vision, a sort of middle distance. Consider this the place where parenting and teaching intersect. Now. Before reacting to this math lesson or that messy room, ask yourself, “Through which lens am I seeing this?” That smidgen of reflection alone may help you avoid unnecessary conflict and stress. If not, try this centering technique: If I were a teacher in a traditional classroom setting, and my principal were observing me, how would I handle this interaction?  It wouldn’t involve shouting or a Snickers bar now, would it?

Go read the whole thing.

I’ve been meaning to, and I’m only about five months late. Now in the sidebar is a link to what we do in school. So if you were curious, or if you needed something to cure your insomnia, there it is.

I haven’t tried everything (yet) and I’m not an authority, but right now, this second – this is what works for us.