Why Space Is Called "Space"

A long time ago in a county far, far away
we built a model of the solar system.

(This was before Pluto was demoted.)

Most models of the solar system put either
~the planets' distances in scale to each other, or
~the planets' size in scale to each other. 
But not both. 

So we went out on an isolated country road, and made ourselves a scale model of the solar system, with the planets' sizes in scale to their distances from each other.  We made 1 inch equal to 50,000 km.  This is awesome.  When you plunk down a couple grains of rice and a few lentils and a marshmallow or two across the space of nearly two miles, you really see why we call it "space."


The next time we laid out our scale model, several years later, I realized that the planets aren't lined up in a nice, neat row.  So our model shouldn't be in a row either.   That time, we placed our planets in two dimensions:  Pluto was about two miles to the west of the sun, Neptune 1.5 miles south of the sun, and Uranus a mile east of our 20" sun.  That really shows you the vast nothingness that's out there.  This project also gives you a really good grip on the difference between the inner and outer planets!

 ~  ~  ~  ~  ~  ~  ~  ~  ~  ~  ~

If you're interested in trying this out yourself,
and if you don't want to bother with the arithmetic,
these are the numbers we used:

Sun  20" diameter
draw it in sidewalk chalk, or use a smallish laundry basket as your model

about 96 feet away
(I took 22 paces, which are about 4.5 feet each, 
calling a "pace" a set of right & left steps, 
but I have long legs)
Mercury   1/10" (we used a crumb of rice)

about 180' from the sun
(another 18 paces)
Venus   1/4"  (we used a dried pea)

about 250' from the sun
(another 15.5 paces)
Earth   1/4"  (dried pea)
with the moon 7" away
1/16"  (a pin head)

about 380 feet from the sun
(another 29 paces past the earth)
Mars    1/7"    (a small lentil)

Then we went back to the sun, and drove,
using the car's odometer to measure distance.
Sun is your zero point.

Jupiter   (3" -- a baseball)
0.25 miles from the sun

Saturn (2.5"  -- a racquetball)
0.2 miles past Jupiter
or .45 from sun

Uranus  (1" -- large marshmallow)
0.45 miles past Saturn
or .9 miles from sun

Neptune (also 1")
0.5 miles past Uranus
or 1.4 miles from the sun

Pluto (1/22 "  -- a pin point)
0.45 miles past Neptune
or 1.85 miles from the sun



 ~  ~  ~  ~  ~  ~  ~  ~  ~  ~  ~


Have fun!

The Passing of a Homeschooling Era

This morning I purchased postage stamps.  The artwork is exemplary.  Half the sheet is full of quotes and history-tidbits. 

And nobody will say, "MOM, let ME see!!"  "No, me first!"  "Wow!"  And my favorite: "You aren't going to put those on letters and send them AWAY, are you?  Do you HAVE to?"

This morning was a huge reminder of a life that's been left behind.

Reading Lesson

The older kids would play or color or build-with-Legos while I read aloud to them.

The older kids would read books to themselves on their own.

The doctors told us Maggie would never read for fun, for enjoyment.  They told us that kids with VCFS learn rudimentary reading skills, but their comprehension is abysmal.  Well, phooey on that.  Maggie continued to increase in her reading ability.  Then, a couple of years ago, she accidentally discovered something that helped even more.

If someone reads aloud ... and the listener has her own copy of the book -- two things happen.
a) The listener's reading skill increases.  ("Oh, that's how you pronounce that word!"  Also, a better understanding of how words are grouped into phrases.  And much more.) 
b) The listener's comprehension of what is heard-with-the-ears increases because of what is seen-with-the-eyes.

Now we're to the point that Maggie always wants to search out of second copy of Anne or whatever-we're-reading. Hooray for a big library system!

Music Appreciation

Oh, the grand plans that homeschool moms come up with!  And how hard to execute all those lesson plans!

I was intrigued by the program used by our congregation's school.  The Brummitt-Taylor Music Listening Program includes 131 music selections.  The concept reminds me of the Five-in-a-Row curriculum for little kids:  choose something good [be it kiddy-lit or a piece of classical music] and repeat it daily for a week.  I've been wanting to develop my own list of music to be used in a similar way:
just a few minutes a day
just listening -- no projects or study
repeated exposure

This is what I've come up with.  Our plan at this point is to use each piece for half a month, and not necessarily in the order listed here.  I'm including you-tube links, but there are multiple places to find the pieces, online or through purchased CD's.  We will not have the script offered with the B-T program, nor their comprehensive list, but I'm telling myself that familiarizing ourselves with some classical pieces is better than nothing.  At the rate of 2-3 pieces per month, I've got two years worth of plans here.

Rossini:  Barber of Seville -- Figaro's Aria

Britten:  Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra (2-minute intro)
(full version)

Vivaldi: Four Seasons -- Summer
Vivaldi: Four Seasons -- Autumn
Vivaldi: Four Seasons -- Winter
Vivaldi: Four Seasons -- Spring

Bach:  Air on the G string

Handel:  Xerxes -- Largo

Purcell:  Trumpet Tune and Air


Charpentier: Prelude in D-major to "Te Deum"

Handel:  Water Music Suite #1 -- Air
Handel:  Water Music Suite #2 -- Hornpipe 

Chopin:  Minute Waltz

Rossini:  William Tell Overture -- Finale

Mozart:  Eine Kleine Nachtmusik, Serenade #13 for strings in G minor

Bizet:  Carmen -- Overture

Bach:  Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring

Clarke: Trumpet Voluntary

Copland: Rodeo -- Hoe-down (beef commercial)

Bach: Toccata and Fugue in D minor

Tchaikovsky:  1812 Overture

Beethoven:  Fur Elise

Sousa: Stars and Stripes Forever

Liszt: Hungarian Rhapsody
Tom & Jerry's Hungarian Rhapsody

Bach:  Wake, Awake

Mendelssohn: Wedding March
Wagner: Wedding Chorus  (Here Comes the Bride)

Wagner: Ride of the Valkyries

Gershwin: I Got Rhythm

Mouret: Fanfare Rondeau  (Masterpiece Theater theme)

Brahms: Lullaby
 
Levine:  Fanfare for the Common Man

Grieg:  Peer Gynt (from Mountain King)
Grieg:  In the Hall of the Mountain King  (another version)

Offenbach: Can Can Music

Bach:  Bouree from Lute Suite -- BWV 996

Debussy:  Claire de lune

Schumann:  The Merry Peasant

Delibes:  Sylvia -- Pizzicato

Shastakovich:  The Second Waltz

Albinoni:  Adagio in G minor



Tchaikovsky: Swan Lake Ballet
Tchaikovsky: The Nutcracker Suite -- March
Tchaikovsky: The Nutcracker Suite -- Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy
Tchaikovsky: The Nutcracker Suite -- Waltz of the Flowers

Handel:  The Messiah -- For Unto Us a Child Is Born
Handel:  The Messiah -- He Shall Feed His Flock
Handel:  The Messiah -- He Was Despised
Handel:  The Messiah -- I Know That My Redeemer Liveth
Handel:  The Messiah -- Hallelujah Chorus

Vivaldi: Double Concerto in D minor for two oboes

Mozart: Symphony #40 in G minor K 550

Mozart:  Piano Concerto 21 -- Andante

Pachelbel: Canon in D Major

Mozart: The Magic Flute -- The Bird-Catcher

Beethoven:  9th Symphony, 4th movement

Prokofiev:  Peter and the Wolf March

Ravel:  Bolero

Mendelssohn: Song Without Words

Dvorak:  New World Symphony, part 1, 4th movement
Khan Academy on Dvorak's New World Symphony

Beethoven:  5th Symphony
Khan Academy on Beethoven's 5th Symphony, part 1
Khan Academy on Beethoven's 5th Symphony, part 2
Khan Academy on Beethoven's 5th Symphony, part 3


Haydn: Symphony no. 6, movement 1
Listening guide to Haydn's Symphony #6

Stravinsky: Firebird Suite Finale
Khan Academy on the Firebird Suite




Glenda steered me in the direction of Harmony Fine Arts that could be used to supplement and deepen the simplistic list I've gathered.
Cheryl offered some ideas, as well as pointing out "52 Most Important Classical Works of All Time" which may expand your own list of pieces to include as you learn more about music.

Toward the End of Summer

Now, THIS is the way to do schoolwork!  (Although her chair was in the shade, mine was in the sunshine.)

But, ... but, ... but ... hostas and sedum aren't supposed to be blooming anywhere close to the same time.  They should bloom two months apart.  This is SOME weird weather.

PS: In case anyone cares [Cheryl] this is blogpost #4000. 

Teaching Cursive Without a Book

Lowercase cursive, in a logical order.

Before teaching each letter, show the child where the printed letter is "hiding" in the cursive letter.
Also have a strip or poster of nicely-written cursive letters on the table or on the wall, for the child to refer to.

These first seven letters can be taught individually and then easily connected to each other.

e, l

i, u, t

m, n

Write some combinations:
Men.  Let.  Net.  Eel. Mutt.  Mile.  Time.  Et cetera.


Now they get a little harder.
Also show how some letters connect to each other at a higher point instead of on the baseline:
o, b, v, w.

Teach the grouping:    c, a, d, o
All four begin the same way.


You know "u."
Build off it to form v and w.

You know "l."
Build off it to make h, k, b.

Use "a" and "i" and "u"
with the below-line loop
to make g, j, y.

Teach the backward, below-line loop
to turn "l" into f
and "a" into q.

weirder ones:
p -- starts sort of like the end of a skinny "g" but then circles
r  -- starts sort of like "i" but heads off to the side and then turns a corner down
s -- starts sort of like "i" but finishes with the southeast quarter of "8"
x -- half an "n" and then cross it
z -- starts like an "x," but add a corner and then end like "g"



Make sure lower-case is well-learned (with words too, not just individual letters) before adding capitals.

Capitals that are generally like lower-case cursive, but bigger:
a, c, k, m, n, o, p, u, v, w, x, y, z

Capitals that are very like the printed letter:
b, h, l, q, r

Other capitals that will need a bit of teaching:
d, e, g
i, j
f, t
s

Music Appreciation

A lot of us middle-aged people learned about classical music more from Bugs Bunny than we did from school.   Even without formal and systematic instruction, though, the simple exposure to music made those pieces seem comfortingly familiar when we bumped into them again.  (Of course, we may imagine Elmer Fudd or Wile E Coyote when we hear certain pieces of music, but that's not necessarily a bad thing.)

I love what the headmaster of our church's school is doing with the kids.  Simple simple simple.  But an idea I wish I'd known about earlier.   She has an assortment of great music pieces.  I forget how many -- maybe 100 to 200?  One piece per week.  Play it every day. 

That's it.  There isn't necessarily any study of the composer's life, or his other music, or anything.  There could be.  But the point is simply for the kids to HEAR these pieces over and over.  So it takes 3-5 minutes a day.  It requires little prep from the teacher.  But it does a lot to expose the kids to all sorts of important pieces of music. 

And the kids seem to enjoy it even without Bugs and the Taz.

School Accountability

"Private and voucher schools do not have the same accountability standards that exist in the public schools."  This time the quote was from the Pewaukee school board president, but you've heard that talking point a gazillion times before.

"They don't have the same accountability!"  They say it like it's a bad thing.

Why doesn't anybody ever respond, "Darn tootin'.  And maybe that's actually part of the reason they provide a better education than do the public schools"?

Labeling Your Homeschooling Method

Not only do we separate ourselves from other homeschoolers when we label our methodology, but we also mess with our own minds.  "Can I use this textbook for science?  It wouldn't really fit with my unschooling perspective."  Or "It seems like the kids would prefer choosing their own books to read, but I'm a classical homeschooler and therefore the kids must read the books on this particular list."  Just teach your kids already!  What works for others may not work for you, and what works for you may not benefit another family.  And what works this month may not work for you next year.  That's okay.  Just teach your kids.

My friend EC explains it beautifully!!  Really.  Go read it.

Skittle Bowl

Watching one episode of Downton Abbey, we gasped when we saw the family playing Skittle Bowl.  "Hey!  We have that!"

It belonged to my cousins, and it came to us when my aunt (Katie's godmother) was moving and thus decluttering.  Seeing the game in the show reminded Maggie of its existence.  She hauled it out and has been playing a lot.  She's figuring out how to "roll" the ball to obtain better scores.

And she's learning to score bowling.  Tsk tsk tsk -- the kids these days don't get to learn how to keep score in bowling because the computers do all the work for them.  But she seems to be figuring it out nicely this week at home.

I love the clatter of those wood pins falling -- it's such a pretty sound!

Being an Interested Person

In responding to Cheryl's comment in the previous post, I was reminded of a story from Andrew's class this spring.  The assignment was to give a speech.  The speech was supposed to be "relevant." 

Andrew picked the topic of Norse mythology.  He had all sorts of interesting things to tell.  But was it "relevant"?  No.  In a stretch for relevancy, he discovered that there were 20,000 people in the US who practice that religion.  So we, uh, need to be informed so that, uh, we can understand those folks.  Yeah.  That'd be it.  There's the relevancy.  Yup. 

Apparently, the teacher didn't buy the pitch for being relevant.  But the speech was good.  It was [ta da!!] interesting.  Andrew said his classmates paid attention and asked questions!

This illustrates that sometimes a person is interesting because the listeners are interested.  People who are curious and who are excited to learn... these folks will often find others interesting. Some people find almost everything to be interesting!


Maybe "interesting" is in the eyes of the beholder.

Is That Kid Paying Attention?

Philip was one of those kids who would've been kicked out of school unless we put him on Ritalin.  He was bright.  He had an awesome memory.  He could problem-solve like nobody's business.  But he wiggled.  He touched everything.  He bounced.  He had to move.  If you're homeschooling, it's no big deal.  "Hey, Philip, go run across the field out back, and run back."  Some large-motor use, some exercise, some calories spent, and he was ready to play with Matchbox cars while I read some more history to him.

His father knew this.  And yet, even his father came home one night from confirmation class, frustrated as all get out that Philip couldn't sit still during class.  (Now, I realize that some people think that it's far more important for kids to learn to sit still, behave properly, and not be a nuisance to others.  But I am a bad person, and at home I cared more about whether he was absorbing the books we were reading and whether he was learning to think critically.)

Back when Philip was about 9, Gary would try to drum up discussion at the dinner table on Sunday about the sermon.  What did the kids hear?  What was the story?  What did Jesus do for us?  One Sunday, Gary directed his first question to Philip: "So, what was the sermon about today?"  The quick and innocent answer was, "I don't know; I was being good today." 

Gary looked at me quizzically.  What was this all about?!

I knew!  I was surprised Gary didn't.  It took SO much effort for Philip to sit still, to stand still, to not wiggle wiggle wiggle his way through church, not poke his sisters, not turn around and check out where everybody was sitting, etc etc, that he couldn't listen and be good.  It was one or the other. 

Is that good?  Probably not.  Do lots of people disapprove?  Probably so.  But that was the reality of his childhood. 


So, now Katie has said things to Alia's Sunday School teachers, expressing appreciation for their efforts.  The teachers don't seem to think Alia pays attention.  She is the youngest one in class.  She sometimes walks around during the lesson.  To all outward appearances (especially if the observer expects calm, compliant, classroom behavior) Alia couldn't possibly be getting anything out of class.  Her outward behavior is not consistent with what most teachers expect from a child who is paying attention.  But what she says at home to her mommy shows that she's absorbing the stories fabulously.

Yesterday the children processed with palms while they sang "Sing Hosanna to the Son of David."  Alia didn't exactly stop right where she was supposed to in the line-up.  Alia sang sometimes and didn't sometimes.  I'm sure many people would've thought she was clueless.  But just before the kids sang, "Wave your palms and sing your praises; blessed is the king who comes," Alia began waving her palm branch vigorously. 

She knew where they were in the song.
She knew what the song was saying.
And boy, she was ready to wave her palm!


(Guess what?  She's paying attention.)

Assessing a Child's Reading Level

We're making arrangements for Maggie to be evaluated by the public school.  It's one of those things we never wanted to do, but we suspect that we're going to have a hard time accessing services from the county and the state if she has not ever been in The Government System, proving her need for assistance and accommodations.

Before she goes in for their evaluation, however, I want to have a sense of where she stands on their scale.  As a homeschool teacher, I know my students.  It doesn't matter how they compare to others, ahead or behind.  It doesn't matter what grade level they're at.  I'm not going to learn any useful information from a standardized test.  By simple observation and knowing my students/kiddoes, I have what I need to help them continue to learn.

However, that's not how the school views things.  They want grade levels.  They want test scores.  They want percentiles.  They want to compare children and line up a pecking order organize them into skills-groups. 

So how does one determine a kid's reading level?  I have a sense of what Maggie can read easily, what she can struggle through, and what's too hard.  When I hunted for online reading tests, they were stupid.  They had lists of words for kids to read.  That's not a reliable way to test reading!  So I'm having her read to me some chapters of books with an assigned grade level.  If she can read it correctly and understand what's going on in the story, that tells more way more than having her rattle off a list of unrelated (and increasingly difficult) words.

But how do I know whether Little House on the Prairie is a 3rd-grade book or a 7th-grade book?  Guess what?  I found the Scholastic website.  You can type in the name of a book.  If Scholastic carries it, you'll find both the reading level and the interest level.  (By the way, Laura's story is rated as grade 4.3.  I'm skeptical about the interest level, though.  The website says 3rd grade.  I say my 3-yr-old granddaughter likes it, my 8-yr-olds liked it, my teenagers liked it, and I still like it!)   Another graded list is available from a Massachusetts school.  This one can be sorted by reading level, by title, or by author.

So far, it looks like my guess of Maggie's reading level is likely to pan out according to this in-depth test.  I wonder if the school's test will be as realistic.

Homeschool Story

At last Saturday's graduation ceremony, Milwaukee School of Engineering gave the Very Influential Person Award to some homeschooling parents.  The award usually goes to a high school teacher.  Logan Gill, whose parents homeschool(-ed) all 17 of their kids, chose his parents for the VIP Award.  The Journal-Sentinel had a lovely story.   More pictures are at another link.  Looky there, a happy, functional family, Christians, successful at school, and they even like each other.  And it showed up in the newspaper!  Cool!

Thought Paralysis

You know how you're at a loss of "What next??" after you finish a big project? I've noticed that, since I started my part-time job, I've lost a lot of ability to keep myself going with the homemaking. Some jobs (like being a mom) allow for lots of self-determination with regard to priorities and schedules and methods. But other jobs (like being a bank teller) are quite set, and there's very little to decide for yourself about how the job will be done; you do the work the way the boss tells you to do it.

I'm finding, though, that this affects how I think. Being told what to do and how to do it at the bank makes it much harder to arrange my work at home and have the motivation to dive in and do it. On my days off, I struggle to figure out which pressing task is the most important. Sometimes it's easier to bail and not do anything. (Not a good solution!)

This makes me wonder about kids. Does this have something to do with the motivation of homeschooled kids, particularly unschooled ones? Is this why people who are accustomed to conventional schools --with teachers calling all the shots-- simply cannot comprehend how homeschooled kids could arrange their own study lives and dive in to learn all sorts of things, even when nobody is cracking the whip over their heads?

So I had a couple of days in a row without being scheduled at my job. Saturday afternoon we babysat the grandkids. Sunday morning was church, and Sunday afternoon was talking to Philip. Monday was ... well ... what would Monday be? Cleaning? Cooking? Errands? Baking bread? Laundry? Yard work? Or attacking multitudes of little tasks on the to-do list? How would I ever decide? It all is important and needs to be done soon.

And the paralysis sets in.

Luckily though (??? did I just say "luckily"???) when I arrived home from chapel and some brief errands, the cat had made the decision for me. Rosie went in search of water, jumping up on the kitchen counter (a major no-no), tipping over a pitcher of water, and knocking stuff around while lapping up the water. A big splash of sweet-tea concentrate hit the floor (and under the stove and the vent above the stove and the counters).

Guess what? I spent a much of today cleaning the kitchen.

I think it would be good if I chose for myself how to spend my next day at home instead of depending upon the cat's prompting.

Naming Nature

Could you possibly be as clueless as I was back a few years ago? I could identify cardinals and robins. I knew what dandelions were. But naming a tree? Not likely. Wildflowers? Ha!

Mary Blocksma was clueless too. She wanted to start learning about the nature around her. This book is her diary. It not only documents the birds and trees and grasses and flowers she learns about, but her journey demonstrates to the reader how to learn more about nature. It's perfect for those of us in Michigan, Wisconsin, and northern Indiana, because the climate and geographical location is perfect for what we're experiencing along with the author.

Reading this book was one of my favorite homeschool projects. The book begins on January 1, so now is the time to buy yourself an el-cheapo copy of the book. Then you'll be all ready to spend a whoppin' 5-10 minutes a day with a tiny dose of nature study. It's so encouraging and empowering to read a nature book by someone who's not an expert, but who is a plain old normal dummy but is undumbifying teaching herself. I caught the bug that year and spent the summer ID-ing a lot of wildflowers (aka, weeds). After getting our feet wet, we turned around the next year and re-read the book. We've read it periodically. I think this January would be a great time to reprise it.

Homeschooling Camelot

In short, there's simply not
a more congenial spot
for happy-ever-aftering
than here in Camelot.

Kate Fridkis writes about going to college after a lifetime of homeschooling. My heart melted over this article. I didn't know whether to laugh or cry or shoot HOORAY. One tidbit about "the real world":

For my whole life, people have been telling me that I must not know what the real world is. People always think that home-schoolers live these small lives in a constricted little world. I don’t know how to explain my life to them. I don’t know how to clarify the open-ended world of my childhood, in which the rules made sense and I worked hard because it was fun to be productive. What world is that? It isn’t normal. There are no grades.

Kate also blogs, and I'd love to delve into everything she's written there. Let's just say that the parts I've read really resonate with me! But it probably would mean even more to my kids and some of their homeschooled friends, like the article about not being "for" homeschooling but being it.

I'm not suggesting that homeschooling is a bed of roses. (Well, maybe it is, but that means it comes with some thorns, right?) I'm not suggesting there is a one-size-fits-all decision about where to send your child to school -- or not. I'm not saying that people can live in that lovely World Of Unschooling for decades upon decades.

But for one brief shining moment -- the moments that make up a childhood, the moments that are so influential in how we see ourselves, how we view work, how we view family, how we view our peers -- there can be joy and freedom, there can be learning for the sake of the sheer joy of learning, there can be a life for a child that is lived in the here-and-now and not merely in preparation for the some-day.

It may not be perfect.
But honestly, I really don't think there is a more congenial spot.

Timeline

Teachers "do" timelines in different ways. Some teachers don't consider it important enough to bother hanging on the wall. Some buy a pre-made timeline. Some have the students develop a timeline.

None of those worked for me on a regular basis. Occasionally I'd have the kids build a timeline. But after many attempts at keeping timelines, I settled on one simple plan. I made a bare-bones timeline. It was a pair. The timelines were about 5-7' long each, made of adding-machine tape or something similar, about 4-7" wide. One timeline covered the years 4000 BC to the present, with an inch (or 1.25") per century. The other zoomed in on the final 8% of the first timeline, covering the years 1500-2000, on a scale of 1.5" per decade.

Few events were listed on the timeline. On the full timeline, we listed creation, flood, Abraham, Moses, David, Israel's fall to Assyria, Judah's fall to Babylon, Jesus, fall of Rome, Columbus. On the more detailed, modern timeline, we included the Reformation, Pilgrims coming to Massachusetts, Revolutionary War, Civil War, Laura Ingalls, birth of great-grandparents, WWI, birth of grandparents, WWII, birth of parents, and birth of the kids. This was our skeletal framework. We might pencil in other events: the 7-Years War or the Wright Bros' airplane or Alexander the Great. Even when the timeline wasn't used to record events, it was essentially our map through time. We repeatedly go to the world map to get a feel for where something is happening, be it in a story or in current events. We used the timeline the same way: it was a framework to locate something in history. Because it was a simplistic timeline, it was easy to whip out a replacement when the current timeline was too worn or scribbled too full of additional events. We never had to be without our little map of time.

I Could Use This

"I could use this."
"I need this."

Those are not the same thing. [Surprise!!!]

I have such good intentions. So few of them are fulfilled. What I have a hard time with, though, is letting go of repeatedly unfulfilled good intentions. There are realities that I just don't want to admit. Cleaning the basement, the attic, the garage, are times when that truth whops you anew.

"I should start roller-blading. I need to keep those skates around. Maybe I could use them." Yes, I do need to get back to exercising. No, I'm not getting around to it. And if I do, will my aging body take well to roller-blading? Seriously? Roller-blading? On hills? Good golly, last weekend I could barely go up and down the stairs to the basement. The injury that precipitated that difficulty would be a mere foretaste of what I'd bump into [hee hee hee] if I took up roller-blading.

For your information, the roller-blades all went to Goodwill.

But I play this game over and over. I lose weight; I gain weight; I keep clothes around in various sizes. Same thing goes for yard tools, kitchen tools, sewing tools, workshop tools, etc. "I should keep those German resources around for when I have time to get back to studying the language."

The best luck I ever had with decluttering was when I removed everything from the living area of the house. I brought back in only the furniture, decorations, entertainments, etc, that we needed. I didn't weed out. I got rid of everything (but only into the garage) and then started afresh. That showed me what I needed. Then everything else had to be disposed of.

How many times are we weighed down by "I think I could probably use this" instead of "I need this"? As important as the nostalgia may be to me, the bigger dragon to slay is how I'm not ready to let go of the ideal in my mind, nor the goals of my heart. Sometimes getting rid of "stuff" means admitting that I cannot or will not ever do that thing I've been meaning to do for ever-so-long. It's admitting defeat. And that is hard.

Progress at Work

The paid job: When I started balancing my drawer at work today, the balance sheet came up $1 off. My first response was "So where did I make a mistake on the balance sheet? Did I count one too few $1-bills? Did I put an extra $1-bill in my 'rag' pile and forget to change the entry for mutilated money on my balance sheet?" It didn't cross my mind that maybe I'd counted wrong when I was taking in cash or giving out cash to a customer. That's a good sign! That means I so seldom make cash-counting errors that my assumption is simply a problem with the balance sheet and not the actual amount of cash in my cash drawer.

The unpaid job, the main job: I've been forcing encouraging Maggie to work with me more in the garden. She has been, and she's finding it not as abhorrent as she expected. We're getting the garden put to bed for the winter much faster than if I were doing the work alone. She's learning something. She's being helpful. And on top of it all, it's been very nice to work alongside her, talking as we go. Besides, could you ask for a more gorgeous week to be working outdoors? As unbelievable as it seems to me, most of the garden work is done, and there is actually an end in sight within the next few days.

But the tomatoes are done. The sadness of eating the last tomato is so so sad. It makes a person desperately yearn for next July.