Score! Today we got a Dipsy doll (the green Teletubby) and a play slide (Little Tykes Easy Store Jr., retails for $35!) for Ulysses at Savers. We also got a nice area rug for the carpeted area by the couch where he eats (and hence makes a mess).

Rug: $5. Slide: $4. Dipsy: $3. While Don was at the checkout and U and I were elsewhere in the store putting back a big stuffed Spongebob Squarepants and U didn't seem interested in (far less than Don and I were), I suddenly remembered! -- and then scooped up U and went   more »

OK, as promised, here it is: the best stuffing I've ever eaten!

This was influenced by some stuffing recipes in Joy of Cooking, 1975 edition. (Not the nasty, upscale-designer-y New Joy, updated, tamed and eviscerated for the new, "lighter," modern lifestyle!) No fear-mongering about the dangers of food poisoning from stuffing cooked in the bird that wasn't cooked to a high enough temperature. You just make sure to cook it long enough - duh!

The other influence was the recipe on the bag of Brownberry stuffing bread cubes, unseasoned.

In Joy, I learned that oysters were once a staple feature in   more »

This was our first Thanksgiving at home together as a family. (It was Ulysses's second TG; last year we went to a dinner at James Reeb Unitarian Universalist Congregation.)

Don and I have cooked Thanksgiving dinner at home together plenty of times, and even had people over. But somehow, because of Ulysses, it was a family thing.

Even though all he ate was a ring of canned cranberry jelly at dinner and some of my homemade pumpkin pie later, at dessert.

The food was incredible! The roast turkey with olive oil and fresh marjoram and laurel was the best turkey ...   more »

Ulysses and I were hosing off in the showers after our usual Saturday morning swim at the Princeton Club. From 10 a.m. to noon is their so-called "Family Swim," one of two scheduled times in the week when the lap markers are hauled out of the water and parents with kids of all ages can get in and splash around. Unstructured fun and adventure.

In the shower across from us, a mother and daughter were in conflict.

The girl was behind the shower curtain. The mother was outside, still in her swimsuit. She was reaching in and applying shampoo ...   more »

Today is the first day of my new job. I am so excited. I feel like -- somehow -- it's my first real job out of college. You know, that expression people use: "my first real job out of college."

So what have I been doing for the past twenty-plus years? Good question. Well, let's see, there were several years of unstructured adventure, including that handmade jewelry business that involved street vending and town festivals. And college student unions. And beloved Jazz Fest in dear, magical New Orleans. Also those years at the ashram. Somewhere in there was the performance ...   more »

Ulysses and I went to Tenney Park. I had planned to go to Rev. Darryl Richie's installation as settled minister at James Reeb Universalist Unitarian Congregation this afternoon, but Ulysses was having a rough day. It would have been too agonizing for him to sit through the event in the sanctuary, where it was happening, and too pointless for me to sit through it playing with him in the nursery.

U and Don have been sick with colds since last week. Somehow I dodged that bullet. U seemed pretty much recovered from his cold, so I got him up earlier ...   more »

We had had a swell time swimming at the Princeton Club. Ulysses rode on my back as I used a double layer of blue kickboards to take the strain off my neck as I kick-propelled us back and forth through the big pool. In the hot tub, he stood on the tile bench, his chin just above the water, and absolutely unafraid as I disappeared under the surface and came up spouting at him. When it was time to go, he turned and pushed the heavy glass door shut behind him when we left the pool area and headed to ...   more »

Ulysses and I visited our friend, Talia.
 We used to work together at Dr. Zhou's House of Horrors, I mean the East-West Healing Arts Institute. I was supposedly the school administrator and she was supposedly the office manager of the acupuncture clinic. I say supposedly because we were each micromanaged so meticulously that neither of us really did anything but follow tiny little orders. But that is another story. Don and I put a bunch of U's little things in boxes and gave them to T for her coming baby, Chase. He will be coming any day now!
   more »

Ulysses's first Happy Meal. There's a milestone for ya.

On a day where there were many occasions to take him out of the car and put him back in, he was exceedingly miserable with getting in. We'd drive a little and then have some reason to get out, and then putting him in to get to the next place was a screaming, tortured nightmare. It didn't help that his midday nap had been cut short by a soaking wet diaper and he never managed to drift back into it again.

Finally, errands out of the way  -- and    more »

We went to the Northside Farmer's Market today. We were chatting with a volunteer we know who was staffing the Northside Co-op info table. Conversation turned to Ulysses -- how's he doing, my, how big he's getting, and so forth.

"Is he a good eater?" she asked.

"Oh, yeah!" I answered immediately, nodding.

I was thinking of how much he enjoys eating lemon and lime slices, the toppings and sauce off his pizza before tearing up and hurling away the crust (and after discarding the pepperoni), how much pleasure he gets from munching on green onion stalks, basil sprigs, and ...   more »

More fashion direction: I was wearing a nice skirt and top while we were out, for the first time in maybe a couple of months. But I peeled them off on coming home. I was planning on heating and eating some of that beef and pork biryani I made the other day -- delicious, and loaded with Indian spices of high stain potential. In anticipation of the possibility that U might join me in a bowl of stew -- literally -- I got down to underwear.

Ulysses found the clothes in their pile on the floor and picked them up, ...   more »

Ulysses was pushing his toy shopping cart across the bumpy lawn towards the sidewalk. Not easy. With about a third of the way yet to go, he backed away from the cart. Then he reached up towards me, a cue for my hand. He grasped my wrist and placed my hand, palm down, on the cart handle. He made little high-pitched grunts of dissatisfaction until I was stationed properly behind the cart, both hands gripping the bar.

Then he walked behind me, placed his hands on the backs of my knees, and pushed. Squeals of delight as I began to ...   more »

UnschoolingDiscussion · UnschoolingDiscussion@yahoogroups.com


From: "Vesna" <duonexus@tds.net>
Date: Thu Sep 8, 2005  1:54 pm
Subject: Accusations -- a student's reward for good work [Was: Re: I need some help]
Glena,

I can relate! Similarly, in the seventh grade I was accused of
plagarism because my book report seemed (to her) so good that it had
to have been copied from the dust jacket. The teacher didn't bother to
look at the dust jacket before leveling her charge.

At first, I thought it was a compliment. I was trying to write the way
"real writers" wrote, so being compared to the pros ...   more »

From: "Vesna" <duonexus@tds.net>
Date: Thu Sep 8, 2005  7:18 am
Subject: Re: I need some help.....(sorry it's long)

Sandra,

I totally agree with you. I'm sorry, I didn't explain the point of the
book right. The book "Homeschooling Our Children, Unschooling
Ourselves" does not justify pressing lessons on kids. The whole book
is about just the opposite. It shows how disastrous it is to press
lessons on kids.

I agree, and the writer of the book would agree, more than twice IS
just too much. If she could go back in time and take back whatever
efforts ...   more »

UnschoolingDiscussion · UnschoolingDiscussion@yahoogroups.com

From: "Vesna" <duonexus@tds.net>
Date: Wed Sep 7, 2005  11:25 am
Subject: Re: Not First Day of School   

Robyn,

--- In UnschoolingDiscussion@yahoogroups.com, "Robyn Coburn"
<dezigna@c...> wrote:
> Today would have been Jayn's first day in mandatory school (in CA)
if we had
> not been so fortunate as to have been led to Unschooling.


That's great!

My son is not "school age" yet. Yesterday I was visiting a friend
whose son just started kindergarten last week. We walked to the bus
stop together to meet him coming home. She said, by way of calculating
when he would ...   more »

From: "Vesna" <duonexus@tds.net>
Date: Wed Sep 7, 2005  11:10 am
Subject: Re: I need some help.....(sorry it's long)

--- In UnschoolingDiscussion@yahoogroups.com, "Kim J. F…"
<kim@t...> wrote:
> I need some advice on what to do with my kiddos. My kids are 8,7,5
and 8
> months. My concern is really with the older ones. We have been
unschooling
> for a long time. Though periodically we have tried using a
curriculum, but
> always stop after like 2 weeks.
> My problem is that though my 8 year old does seek out some
information, they
> really just play most ...   more »

Today we all went to the Union Cab picnic at Demetral Field. The candidate's forum was at 1 pm. Don is running for the Board, so he was there for that. He made his statement and answered questions with the other seven candidates. That lasted about an hour and a half. For an hour and a half, I chased Ulysses around the Demetral Field picnic shelter and kept him off the hot grills, out of the dog poop, and away from Don's lap.

Every time Don started to talk, U screamed with happiness and ran straight for him. I would ...   more »

I dreamed that Captain Jean-Luc Picard of the USS Starship Enterprise was the size and shape of Ulysses. Some crisis was in progress. I picked up the captain and moved him from one spot to another.

"Come on, Captain!" I urged. "The lives of a thousand crewmembers are depending on you!"

Captain Picard started to wail.

   more »

Don has been on vacation from Union Cab this week. One project he's been looking forward to is getting the tools and learning the method for making
a New York style pizza: thin, chewy crust with a good, firm body, not too much sauce, not too fancy on the toppings. Just good tomato pizza sauce made from scratch, natch, with mozzerella and pepperoni. He got a pizza stone for baking on. Must have a very high temperature, around 500F. And, to build the pizza on, and to slide it in and out of the overn, a wooden peel -- one of ...   more »

Lake View Elementary School playground, home of lots of jungle gym slide sets, and the only playground I know of in town that's shaded at midday, thanks to a stand of lovely old oak trees. Far less than a mile from home, it's an easy bike ride.

So quick a bike ride, in fact, that U is usually not ready to get off the bike by the time we arrive. He grabs at his helmet, clutches at his bike seat straps, and otherwise shows that he wants more riding. So around the grassy field we go, threading our way through ...   more »

Ulysses was working at one his favorite tasks, scrubbing the toilet in the front bathroom. I left him happily at it for a minute or two, but when I came back to see how he was doing, he had added a new element.

He looked joyfully up at me as I approached, glad to show me what he'd done: he'd put his life-sized toy biscuit into the water, and it bobbed gaily in the bowl as he plunged the toilet brush up and down. But his pride quickly dissolved into confusion and shock.  Instead of praising his cleverness, I cried ...   more »

Today around noon at the oak-shaded playgrounds of Lake View Elementary School, Ulysses for the first time showed cognizance of the rungs of the jungle gym. One had curved rungs along a concave arc. He stood both feet on the first rung and looked towards the next, about the same height from the ground. He stepped off onto the ground and walked to the next rung, and slung his legs around it, looking to the next rung, a little higher up.

He spent some minutes contemplating the rungs and threading his body under and around them, sometimes stopping to crouch ...   more »

Overheard at Woodman's East grocery store. I'm shopping for canned tomatos. Whole, because I heard enough people on the Food Network saying they're closer to the goodness of fresh because they're the least processed. That makes enough sense to me. Lately that's the only kind of canned tomato I get, and I pour the can into a bowl and crush it with my fingers, rustica, for those nice naturalistic tomato chunks, a la Mario Batali. And unseasoned, natch.

Anyhoo.

Teenage girl is talking on cell phone, trailing behind her mother, who is pushing a cart. "I'm still not done ...   more »

This morning we all went to the Henry Vilas Zoo. This is one of the only free zoos in the country on this large of a scale. The aviary just opened last summer, I think. Don and I went once before. We also visted the Herpetarium, where U liked to look at the fish and the giant Galapagos Turtle. We couldn't find the iguana today, though.


There is a section called the Children's Zoo, but that is closed for the year. They're digging it all up and making something ...   more »

Tonight Don's mother and sister came in on the Greyhound from Savannah, Georgia. They were exhausted and hungry. Janice, Don's mother, phoned from the bus station in Beloit at 8:15. She read off a list of Chinese food menu items she wanted us to get when we picked them up: egg foo yung, shrimp fried rice, egg rolls, and broccoli with chicken. We stopped at the China Wok on Fordem on the way to the bus for a menu, to make sure they had it all. Then ordered by cell phone on our way back. All good. We feasted on ...   more »

The other day Teletubbies aired a film clip about a girl, about 5, making a whimsical face out of a pumpkin. She was in what was apparently the basement of a home. All the craft supplies had been laid out for her, presumably, by some unnamed adult. There were muffin tins of glitter and dry beans, piles of colorful dry leaves and felt, and so forth.

"I'm going to make a pumpkin head," says the girl, and she comments on what she's doing as she glues on leaf ears, straw hair, bean eyes. mouth and nose made of something crafty. ...   more »

This is Ulysses's favorite picture. It came from Ocean Meir at James Reeb Unitarian Universalist Congregation in May, along with a thank-you card she sent me for making baklava for the month's International Lunch, Greek theme. You can see where he's affectionately sucked on the edge of it. He carries it around in the seat compartment of his Sesame Street rider. Every now and then he takes it out and holds it up to admire, looking at the faces of the three animals and saying his word that means "animal": a baby-pitched "Woof, woof!"   more »

Look who appeared coming down the hallway, with his favorite new toys. He loves to scrub at the toilet with the brush. Who can stop him? Yesterday I found a missing toilet brush while emptying the diaper pail into the washing machine. I figured it would turn up sooner or later.
   more »

Today Ulysses and I went to the playground at Berkeley Park around 7 p.m., after the heat of the day had subsided a bit. That is, it was only 89 degrees.

U wasn't interested in climbing the stairs and going down the slides today. A few steps after we walked onto the gravel, he fell to his knees and happily started digging in the rocks with a stick he had found there. I picked him up to carry him to the base of the stairs. He began to wail. I put him back down. Except for one foray up the ...   more »

We had been playing at the Warner Park playground for at least an hour. Ulysses headed to the far end of the jungle gym/slide contraption, whatever they call those things, the location of the only set of stairs that led up into it, presumably so that he could traverse back along its length and go down one of the slides. He had done this several times earlier in the evening.

But since our last trip to the stairs end of the gym, a trio of loud-talking teenagers had migrated there from the nearby picnic table where they had been sitting. ...   more »

Ulysses and I went to the Lakeview Library. There he fell in love with the fish in the tank in the children's section.

A girl of about 5 was also watching the tank. "What a nice fish tank!" I said to her. "Look at all the pretty fish!" It turned out I was way out of my league with these simplistic comments.

"It's not very clean," she replied.

She went on to point out how green residue was built up in several areas of the glass. I could see streaks where a scraper had been. But I didn't know enough ...   more »