I learned something new!

Well, okay. I finally found a software to do it right. UnFreez by Whitsoft, an animated .gif maker. It is so easy to use. It won’t do anything fancy, but it does what I want. And it is free!

So, I changed my blog header to what I had envisioned to begin with when I actually sat down and took pictures of mixed nuts. See how each of my fruit is a nut?

I also made this blinkie, which is next to useless now that I don’t do message boards, but I wanted to play more. Tee hee. I used it at Scrapbook Bytes, but that is all. Hmmm…I’m wondering how fun this could be!

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Poetry, Birds, Blogs, and Dairy

“How beautiful your feathers be!”
The Redbird sang to the Tulip-tree
New garbed in autumn gold.
“Alas!” the bending branches sighed,
“They cannot like your leaves abide
To keep us from the cold!”
—John B. Tabb

I decided that we just couldn’t wait until we could order books and gasp we would have to simply get by for the summer with the books I already own. I know, I know. It is a novel concept – one which I’ve oft considered, but rarely put into practice. Like I said, seven years of stable employment has a way of spoiling a gal. So I cracked open that wonderful, informative, and beautifully written “Handbook of Nature Study” by Anna Botsford Comstock.

The first section is about birds, which is a lovely lesson to begin at the start of Spring. As I read to the children about feathers, F1 found two feathers, which he had scavenged in the yard, sitting in his notebook. So we were able to demonstrate visually and kinesthetically the three parts of a feather: the quill, fluff, and barbs. The fruit were really interested in that and enjoyed showing one another that they now knew what the parts of a feather were. They were also interested in the raincoat usage of the feathers. At the end of the first lesson (which we couldn’t do, since we didn’t have any hens handy), there was a poem.

I read the poem out loud and the fruit all looked at me, fairly baffled. “I don’t get it,” F1 finally declared.

So I read it again, and asked what the redbird is. “A cardinal!” F5 shouted.

“Indeed,” I said. “Do cardinals stay here or do they migrate in the winter?”

“They stay here.”

“What keeps them warm?”

“Their feathers.” I could see understanding dawning on their faces. So I read it again, this time asking what “garbed in autumn gold” meant.

“The leaves were yellow?” I read it again, and this time they all had it under control. They appreciated the juxtapositions of leaves of the bird and feathers of the tree.

I asked them who wanted to memorize the poem and found that F3 already had it under her belt! F1 definitely didn’t want to, but while F2, F3, F4, and F5 all drew a picture representing the poem and copied it down (or I wrote it down on their picture for them), he looked up what a tulip-tree was. He printed off a couple of documents describing it (Indiana’s state tree, also known as the yellow poplar tree) and I read them aloud to the fruit as they finished their drawings.

I also got in a little plug for memorization, and the effect of good literature on one’s thinking and communicating skills. I’m hoping that, by September when the new school year starts, my propaganda crusade for memorization of poetry and passages of good literature will have developed in the fruit a desire to actually do so.

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I found a new, absolutely wonderful, educational, and inspiring blog. The Classical Scholar Diane is doing an excellent job defining a classical education and how to implement it in a homeschool. I spent all weekend reading her various articles. She has articulated much of what I’ve known instinctively, but have often failed to initiate. The whole poetry discussion was my attempt at a Socratic Dialogue, and although I’m sure I didn’t really get it right, I think the fruit really did learn something from it all and were very involved in the discussion. I also started some serious reading aloud, something that I must shamefacedly admit that I have allowed to fall by the wayside. This is all thanks to Diane’s excellent inspiration.

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Dairy. As in produce from a cow. I’m pretty sure that F6 has an intolerance to it. He’s been drinking goat’s milk for over four weeks now. He hasn’t had any cheese, except for some goat cheese I found at Stuffmart. I’ve checked ingredients (red dye 40? high fructose corn syrup? BHT? but no milk, whey, or caesin? Great! Put it in the cart!) and he hasn’t had any milk products or by-products. And he doesn’t have any red, inflamed eczema patches and most of the just dry spots are cleared up. The question is, were the eczema patches from the dairy or because the house was dry from furnace air? When he runs out of his goat milk this week, I’m going to give him cow milk for a couple of days and see if it causes his patches to be irritated. If it does, I’m going to assume a definite intolerance/allergy to cow’s milk and proceed to give goat’s milk to F2 and F5, to see if it helps them out, too.

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A New Old Adventure

Well, Mr. Nutt was informed this afternoon that his services were no longer needed by his employer. Honestly, somewhere in the back of our minds, we knew this was coming. I’m still reeling, however, since I’m the one who pays the bills. Mr. Nutt hasn’t been unemployed for over seven years now, and I have to admit that I was enjoying the stability of it all. Our first few years together were a hodgepodge of trying to find our niche in the world, much of that time unemployed. God took care of us in unbelievable ways and I am trying to keep my eye on that history instead of worry about the future. He will take care of us, has been taking care of us. Mr. Nutt is again seeking his way, relying on God. I’m praying that God will make it possible for us to keep our new house and sell the old at no loss. Please pray with us and for us as we embark on this new old adventure.

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Math Me

So this morning, while doing our Bible verse memorization – Simon Peter answered, “You are the Christ, the Son of the Living God.” Matthew 16:16. Each of the fruit, beginning with F1 and on down the line, recited the verse. After F5 had finished, F6 looked at me expectantly. “F6,” I said (actually, I used his real name, but you don’t need to know that), “Who is Jesus?”

“Spleter…Liv God. Math Me, 16.” Obviously, he’s getting to know how to use his personal pronouns!

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A Little of Today

So, after watching a bit of Dancing With the Stars, and hearing me comment that Marlee and Shannon were both pencils with no hips (and so it was difficult for them to swing their hips like some of the other ladies), F1 said, “Mom, you’re like a pencil with a grip.” I haven’t laughed that hard in a long time! Guess I still have a ways to go in losing my baby hips.

I instituted a new habit-former tonight. I had first read this idea in a pamphlet put out by George Wythe College, which was founded by A Thomas Jefferson Education author, Oliver DeMille. Then it was mentioned by another mom a couple of weekends ago at the mom’s encouragement homeschool group I attend here in town. I’ve been noticing that not only have the fruit not been acting on apparent needs without being asked (or begged, or threatened), but I haven’t been noticing or mentioning the good things they have been doing. So, we now have a bean jar. Whenever any one of the fruit do something that garners my attention in a good way, a bean goes in the jar. To start out, it is a just a little jar…maybe about a pint. When the jar gets to-the-brim full, we’ll all get a treat and we will also perform some act of community service as a family. I’m doing this to make the habit in all of us to do the things that need to be done and be nice to one another, as well as so I will pay more attention to the positive things the fruit do. F3 said, “But Mom, we’ll be doing things to get a treat, not to be helpful or nice.” Just as I was about to respond to that, F1 jumped in and said, “Yeah, but this helps us to form the habit of helping and being nice.” Before I was even finished speaking, F4 was off doing chores that didn’t belong to her. I think we’ll be seeing a full jar soon!

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Comfortably Numb by Charles Barber – A Review

I have just finished reading Comfortably Numb: How Psychiatry is Medicating a Nation by Charles Barber. Mr. Barber spent several years as a counselor to the addicted, mentally ill homeless, as well as several more years as a researcher at medical schools. This book is filled with study conclusions, statistics, anecdotal evidence, and the personal opinions of Mr. Barber and several other researchers, scientists, and psychologists/psychiatrists. I have found it to be thoroughly eye-opening in regards to the use and efficacy of psychiatric drugs, psychotherapies, and social involvement.

Mr. Barber begins the book with an expose of Big Pharma. He explains the true effectiveness of many of the psychiatric drugs – a truth not even the FDA sees before it authorizes a drug’s sale. He also outlines the massive direct-to-consumer marketing techniques that Big Pharma has used to convince multitudes of Americans that they need to the rescue offered in their little pills. A short history of psychiatry is also offered up, detailing both the positive and negative outcomes of each era in mental health history.

The next section of this book discusses alternatives to psychiatric drugs. The pros of cognitive behavioral therapy, Motivational Interviewing, peer involvement therapies, and community/social involvement are reviewed at length. Mr. Barber also discusses the revolutionary idea that our brains can change and grow in response to mental stimulus. This idea has far reaching implications and combines the heretofore at odds fields of neuropsychology and psychotherapy.

Throughout the book, Mr. Barber makes the distinction between the “worried well” – those of us who have mild to moderate depression – and those with major depressive disorder. This is an important distinction in regards to resolving the mental illness. While therapy can work well for both types of depression, antidepressants tend to only offer up side effects to those who are only mildly or moderately depressed.

One of the therapies Mr. Barber describes in detail is cognitive behavior therapy. This is a process in which the client makes an effort to become aware of the automatic thoughts that filter on a constant basis through the mind. In becoming aware of these thoughts, the client can then replace the negative ones with realistic ones, thereby effectively stopping their depressive tendencies. Although Mr. Barber spent a deal of time comparing this therapy to eastern religions such as Buddhism, I think it has much to do with Christianity. This is the same process that God wants us to do to keep our minds pure. We must “think about what we are thinking about”, as Joyce Meyer puts it in her book, The Battlefield of the Mind. We must then cast down wrong thoughts that are not in line with what the Bible says.

I recommend Comfortably Numb to everyone in the American public. Mr. Barber has offered up a well documented argument against the over use of psychotic drugs in the “worried well”. But he didn’t just leave it there. He offered an alternative in the forms of psychotherapy and acceptance of the fact that it is normal for us to be mildly depressed in light of the world in which we live.

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Dinner Tonight

So, I managed to cook a full-blown meal tonight. Not that I don’t cook most nights, but tonight just felt like more work for some reason. We had Shake & Bake chicken breasts, roasted asparagus, to which I added lemon juice (a few squirts from the bottle) and minced garlic, mashed potatoes, and cole slaw with pears and apples. I wasn’t sure if I liked asparagus and had no idea how to cook it. So I hopped online and found that recipe and also read many of the comments, which is where the garlic and lemon juice ideas came from. I really liked the asparagus cooked this way. The fruit didn’t really care for it except for F3. But SB chicken and mashed potatoes are always hits with them, so I knew they’d be getting some nutrition tonight.

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Changes

For the past couple of weeks, I’ve been going through a spiritual crisis of sorts. I just felt so far away from God and I knew that I knew that it wasn’t Him that moved, but me. I didn’t want to admit that however, because that would mean that I needed to do something about it. My general mode is “keep the status quo”. During a good discussion with Mr. Nutt (in which I did not cry, amazingly enough), I realized that I really needed to get myself straight with God. So I prayed. God let me know for about three days straight that I had to make some changes in my life.

Via some external sources, I realized my need to change my habits. Many, many times, through different avenues, the word habit came up, referring to several different areas of life. At the encouragement for homeschool moms meeting on Saturday, we discussed the idea of habits and training one’s children in them. Several web sources mentioned habits Friday, Saturday, and Sunday in regards to time spent with God, homekeeping, and homeschooling. Emails from a couple of different Yahoo! groups mentioned habits. Speaking with my children, the topic of habits came up.

Internally, God was speaking as well. I’ve known for a long time that I spend way too much time on the computer. Not to the exclusion of all else, but enough so that my family life, my homekeeping, and most importantly, my time with the Lord suffer. I’ve always done just enough to get by as a homemaker, but I used to be a better mother for sure, and I think a better wife. God let me know, in absolutely no uncertain terms, that my time on the computer had to be cut drastically. The places where I spent the most time had to go.

Message boards. I really only frequented two. One of those was new to me, so it wasn’t too difficult to give up, especially because one of the ladies on it is a dear friend in real life. The other however, was difficult to leave. I felt as if I were moving away from my best friends, who I’d gotten together with for coffee every morning for nearly four years. These ladies had sustained me with love and prayer through several difficult things in my life and celebrated with me the joys and blessings. I have made dear friends, learned so much about being a wife, mother, and child of God from these wise women, and I hope, helped them to learn and grow as well. Many of those ladies blog, so I plan to keep up with them via their blogs and mine, but in many ways that feels akin to promising to write letters and make phone calls to keep in touch after a cross-country move. It just isn’t the same as that morning coffee in my kitchen. I will miss the daily interaction.

But it is a God thing. In spite of my sorrow, I am excited. I know that God is moving in my life, and I am finally listening and letting Him. Now comes the really tough, yet fulfilling, part. I need to form some new habits in my life.

Habit #1
I actually started this on Thursday, before I had made any decision about cutting computer time. I began walking on my treadmill again. While it has nothing to do directly with being a better mom, wife, homemaker, or child of God, it does make me feel better – more awake, alive, and alert – throughout the day if I can walk for about 30 minutes in the morning. I’m not overdoing it at this point. I’m happy if I do a 20 minute mile at the fastest rate and my highest incline has only been 3%. But it does the job, and I can already feel my hips in particular getting stronger. That first morning, I read my Bible while walking (my treadmill has a handy-dandy little book holder on the console). The last few mornings, I’ve been listening to Joyce Meyer presentations on my cd player. I’m trying to find the right time of day…perhaps not a specific time, but point in the day. For example, I would like to do it right after I eat breakfast in the morning. In order to do that, I’ve got to either get up before F7, or wait until after she’s had her first feeding and go down after that. But I’m not going to let scheduling mess up getting it done, as I have so often in the past.

I think that perhaps that has been my biggest hangup in the past with getting things done. I always want to wait until it is “time” to do them. Or get my schedule all figured out before hand. Yet I’m also telling the fruit on an almost daily basis that I want them to get to the point that if they see that something needs to be done, they will just do it and not wait until official “chore time”. That way, things are maintained much better and they have less work to do in the end (like cleaning up jelly off a table before it dries and requires a jackhammer). But I seem to have the same hangups that they do. Surprise, surprise. I want to wait until the right time or a nice paper to check off and I never do anything. So, as far as implementing the habit of walking goes, I’m just going to do it, and trust that God will work it into my schedule. He didn’t lead me into this grand excursion just to leave me to fall flat on my face, or develop new bad habits, as I am prone to do. He is with me and will sustain me, guide me, and love me, even if I fall back and have to be lifted up. I am so thankful for His grace, love, and teaching in my life.

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BC Comic Revisited

Yesterday’s Post

Okay. This was really bugging me, so I Googled and Googled yesterday. I came across two different theories. As well as an extra one that Wayne posted in my comments section.

The first cliche is about sticking one’s head in the sand. Obviously, this caveman stuck his head in the wrong sand pile and the tide came in. The meaning: Sticking one’s head in the sand to avoid problems doesn’t work out very well.

The second cliche would be “sticking it where the sun don’t shine.” As Curls is walking along in the first pane, he is looking at the sun. In the second pane, he is behind the caveman with his head in the water. Apparently, the caveman with his head in the water is Clumsy Carp; he has always got his head in the water watching the fish do their thing. We usually see him from the fish’s viewpoint, but not this time. As Curls walked behind him, he saw where the sun doesn’t usually shine on Clumsy, therefore finding no use in the cliche.

And thirdly, Wayne thought it might have something to do with an early bird getting the worm. Except Clumsy Carp has his face in the water, getting fish. Or something.

After reading all this, I decided that I’m going with the “sticking it where the sun don’t shine” version. It seems to make the most sense to me. I still don’t think its very funny. It just makes sense. I’m also happy to know that I’m not the only one who didn’t get it.

Thanks for all your ideas and help.

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BC comic for today…I don’t get it

Sorry. I needed to tell someone. I just don’t understand. What cliche?

BC – April 8

Can you help me out, here?

The answer, I think.

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