A Boy and His Sister 2

The hardest thing about homeschooling is surprisingly not the school work itself but dealing with distractions. Like, for example, when your baby brother crawls into your lap, grabs the pencil, and scribbles all over the paper.


Then proceeds to wad it up and throw it on the ground
Or pester you with a book until you finally give in and read to him

The New Racism

This whole fervor over Obama has made me think more about racism the last few days. People are acting like the old guy who God allowed to survive until Jesus was born. I know it's notable that Obama is the first black president, but you'd think he's the Great Black Hope, that we've been living in KKK times till now. Is it so hard to believe that everyone, even Caucasians, would find him impressive? He's an eloquent speaker, classy as anything, and one of the smartest people there is.

The way black people are reacting, it's like they didn't expect the rest of us to be able to set aside prejudices and choose someone based on his real worth. When Michelle Obama said early on in her husband's campaign that for the first time she was proud of her country, I know exactly what she meant. She was surprised by how everyone voted for her husband. She had become used to the notion of a racist people who would never vote for a black candidate no matter how qualified he was. When he started to lead in the primaries, she thought, wow, people are really getting it, they are seeing below the surface. And she said, "For the first time, I am proud of my country."

I thought it was impressive myself that a man with a Muslim family background with the middle name Hussein who also happened to be part black had a chance of being president. I remember thinking at the time, we've come a long way. Here in Southern California it's no big deal because diversity is the norm here. But people from Kansas, Alabama, Nebraska all voted for Obama. It means the majority of Americans are not racists.

What's more interesting is the black community's reaction. They've come to expect the worst from us. They think, oh she's not black so she's ignorant or she's racist. Granted, they've had to deal with a lot of persecution but I would hope they've learned just by being the victims not to victimize someone else in the same way. There's nothing worse than a bully victim who becomes a bully.

Now everyone's preparing for an assassination attempt on Obama. They're doubling the protection and planning for the inauguration. Once again, they're expecting some Caucasian person to be so racist that he would sacrifice his family, life, everything. Even the Caucasian officials are expecting this. They should just keep him in a bullet-proof box like the Pope.

It's great that Obama will be president. Now can everyone please stop the weeping and get on with life?

By the way, I'll start using the official designations of African-American when they reduce it down to a 3-syllable word (ie. Asian or Latino or Jewish).

Spotty and Meltdown Days

We have a new pet. He/she is a ladybug named Spotty. Walking home from school yesterday, my oldest found him crawling near our front stoop. She immediately scooped him up, to prevent her baby brother from squishing it. Then she proceeded to run around the yard foraging for leaves, which she stuck in a little pail, Spotty's new "home." Now, whenever she goes out or comes back from anywhere, she first checks for Spotty. Yesterday he left for awhile but actually returned. Either that or he was hiding somewhere when they looked the first time. Whatever happened, it's given her hope. Just this morning, she checked and found him gone. She said,"it's okay, he'll be back, just like yesterday." We also have a "pet" spider in our tree named Max. My daughter wisely put Spotty's pail far away from Max. Of course, if anything happened to Spotty, we could always get an ant or something to replace him.

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Our son's Bible lesson this weeks was about turning to God when you're having a bad day. I asked him,"can you think of a bad day you've had?"

He had no idea what I was talking about. "No, I don't have bad days."

His older sister piped up,"I can think of lots of bad days he had. Almost every day is a bad day for him. He has bad days a thousand times."

TGIF

Week 3 of my new schedule has just ended. I think that's sufficient time for me to say, my life is insane, and I do not ever want to do this again. I am gone 4 days out of the week teaching.

My students are starting to think I am the laziest instructor ever, because I tell them, no I do not have time to post this slide online, just copy the dang thing down. Or, no I will not photocopy your study guide, just download it and print it out yourself. And finally, heck no, I am not assigning an extra credit report because I don't want to waste time grading some report that was plagarized from the internet.

Thankfully, we are in the home stretch. We will be starting Ecology which is infinitely easier than Photosynthesis. Ecology is otherwise known as the Duh Unit because it's made up of principles like this: when one species of prey declines, the predator switches to another prey species. Anyone who has any amount of common sense can figure out ecology. Except that common sense is not very common.

Interestingly enough, my mother-in-law met one of my students in the library. When my MIL saw the student studying, she went up to her and asked her what subject she was studying. Nancy replied, and of course my MIL then said, "oh, my daughter-in-law teaches that." So then they find out that I am indeed Nancy's instructor. Immediately Nancy bombards the MIL with questions about me, so much that my MIL clams up. She apparently wanted to know my age and weight amongst other things, because she told my MIL,"she's so young and trim." By the way, Nancy is a grandmother.

Now she's calling up my MIL on the phone and talking about who knows what, although I've told my MIL that me and the family are off limits as conversation subjects. Let's just hope that my MIL actually listens. Meanwhile, I face the unprecedented dilemma of flunking my mother-in-law's BFF.

The Real Meaning of Boyfriend

During lunchtime this week, my oldest daughter had an interesting conversation with her classmate. I forget how, but the subject came to rest on boyfriends.

My daughter: I have boyfriends. Luke, Anthony, Jakey, Daniel... I like playing cars with my boyfriends.

Madison: No, you're not supposed to have boyfriends. You're supposed to have one boyfriend, and he's only your boyfriend if no one else is around.

Daughter: That's not true.

Jared, who happens to be sitting near them: Yeah, you're not supposed to have boyfriends.

Madison: Except if you're 11 or 12, then you can have one.

My daughter ended the conversation by going to sit next to Anthony. She told Anthony about the exchange, and Anthony said,"I don't know what Jared is talking about. He has 20 girlfriends!"

They both agreed that Madison and Jared didn't know what they were talking about, then went back to looking for bugs.

Candy Plea

How about them elections? Not nearly as exciting as say, the Bush/Gore election, but still something. I'm more excited about the shift in people's attitudes than about the man himself. Suddenly, everyone is hopeful and involved, and that can only be a good thing. I'm just glad the thing is over. I can maybe go back to checking my mail regularly instead of letting it pile up till it no longer fits in our mailbox, and then bringing it in. On second hand, nah, we've still got those bills coming in.

I would like to use this opportunity instead to thank all those parents out there that handed out something besides candy, like stickers or pencils. Yes, the older kids hate you and will blackmark your house for life (which as I see it, is a perk), but the younger kids like them, their teeth like them, and most importantly, the moms love them.

Because we now have a big bag filled with candy. It's amazing how much candy 3 trick-or-treaters will generate. We even went through it and gave away everything except our favorites, and there's still too much leftover. After 3 days of munching on candy, I've realized it's easy to prevent the kids from eating the candy (just hide it up high), but it's impossible to stay away from the it myself. So someone please come and take this candy away from me. Anyone. Anyone at all. Because I can't do it myself.

The Soccer Scoop

It's time for the highly anticipated soccer game recap. Except I did not go this week because the game was at 8 am, and I did not have the heart to drag all the other kids out of bed. We knew beforehand that the other kids would sleep in and that one of us would have to stay behind. I debated having the husband stay behind while I went to the game, but in the end I let him because he missed last week's exciting game. That's the kind of tough compromise a marriage is made of.

Of course, I quizzed them to death when they returned. We won 2-0, so it clearly wasn't as nail-biting as last week's game. More importantly, my daughter stopped 3 balls as goalie, which is awesome. There is nothing worse than watching your daughter let in a goal. As a mother you think, it is all her fault for losing the entire game, which means it's all my fault for not going out to practice and kicking some goals for her.

For certain critical people's information (you know who you are, stinkers), my son did not have a game yesterday, so I am not being biased in coverage. The soccer league apparently had mercy on us and gave us a soccer-free week, at least for the younger age group. Hey, we'll take it. His games resume this coming weekend, although I can pretty much describe it now. They'll run around like a pack after the ball, bounce the ball off each other's shins, block their own teammate's ball, and kick a ball into their own goal. It's absolutely hilarious. I'll be roaring on the sidelines the whole time.

That's it this week for another exciting edition of The Soccer Scoop. This is your sports writer in training, signing off: Go Kick Some Balls!