Home Schooling

Not since the invention of Pine-Sol which my mother bought by the gallons and subjected us kids to on a regular morning basis, has such an idea not only been accepted by polite society, but embraced. At least with Pine-Sol, the effects of your brain slowly shrinking due to lemony fumes and the gradual rupture of your nasal membranes could never be on par with a full day of your own children at home with workbooks and any sort of organized teaching arrangement. Of course, it has been done by noble, fearless parents and only by following the National Homeschoolers Guide to Getting Ready: 1.obtain a clean clutter free work space for optimal studying In our case, we'd have to move to the washer/dryer in the garage or Dick & Eileen's house next door. They have the same decor since 1972 and refuse to put anything but faded deer coasters atop their Montgomery wards coffee table. 2. Purchase sturdy and colorful supplies and pencils Unless someone has gone miniature golfing recently, you'd be lucky to find a stub of a pencil anywhere in the general living area of the house. Of course, the attic and crawlspace have ample areas to search for once sharpened pencils and such. You just have to put on pair of blue coveralls and risk getting bit by a brown Recluse Spider while on your search. 3. Remove all distractions A humming refrigerator in our house is a distraction. Forget about the phone ringing, no one under 20 knows what a landline is anyways; but place the kids within eye site of the kitchen, and they'll need trips to get an apple, water or just to slam the vegetable crisper for amusement. We'd have to sit out on the grass with a camel-pack water bag strapped to their backs to keep them remotely undistracted. 4. Encourage any progress your children make though small by rewarding with field trips to the library, zoo and Juvenal hall. Don't waste money of pricey reward stickers most party stores sell at a premium, rather make your own from banana stickers and just explain to your children that Chiquita means excellent in spanish. This would be a good lead-into a foreign language. Yes, there are many great reasons to home school your own children, saving gas, commute frustrations, clothing battles and the endless lunch packing; but the best incentive has to be the lack of restrictions on what you can use for art supplies; the evenings uncooked macaroni, old wastebands on dad's old underware and small pellet cat or dog food perfect for little fingers to create a memorable collage.

Medical Malaise

Unless you have a medical story to tell with vivid details, you might as well hide behind a curtain at your next social gathering. No one wants to talk to a medically boring person with no eventful tales of blood poisoning, near misses, close encounters with a crazed billy goat, or at least injury to a major artery. If you think your experience of going through labor and delivery is going to earn you accolades , forget it; it doesn't matter if your were in labor 12 hours and your baby had the head and shoulders the size of a Buick, and you did it w/o any pain meds, forget it sister. Unless you developed toxemia or had a on-call delivery doctor that resembled Ernest Borgenine, and spoke to you only in Cantonese, your story's' about as interesting as German shoe styles. The only medical excitement that I can even mention let alone hold an audience captive, is my regular fainting bouts anytime I'm on vacation in a foreign country. Most of the time its unexplainable except for low blood pressure, food poisoning or elevation change. While my family poses for tourist pictures, I'm spending time filling out forms in the local ER or clinic trying to communicate to the staff that I want my pants back. Yes, people want to hear how you removed a splinter the size of your femur from your palm while working on restoring the neighborhood church's pews. Go ahead, tell them how you nearly lost an eye from a flying sandbelt, and you'll have an audience pour their drinks on their shoes. Tell them how your Habitat for Humanity construction job nearly caused you to electrocute yourself while installing vanity bulbs into the Boys & Girls Club locker room; you'll get a phone call from the mayor with that story. You can try to mention how you were bit by an unknown insect and your throat swelled up the size of a toad while driving an 18 wheeler full of dairy cows; but unless you were aiding Homeland Security on your CB radio at the same time while following a suspicious car full of over dressed church goers in Utah, you might as well tell them you inhaled Press-On Nails adhesive, they'd laugh so hard.

A Book, for my Face

I believe I held the world record for shortest amount of time with a Facebook account. My last attempt to have an active account lasted 14 minutes. That was in 2006. Because i wanted a place to tell people about the similarities of my 10 year old haircut to Clarisse in Silence of the Lambs, pictures included, I re-opened my Facebook account. Its been about 3 weeks which for me, is a record though several times during the day, I am urged to quit, log off, delete and deactivate my account. If I knew how to do the following right now, I'd not have these urges; but here are a few things I want to learn how to change or do in order to remain an active FB person. 1. How can I remain friends with someone but not see their idiotic posts that are usually accompanied by several pictures with the captions written in another language? 2. How can I tell someone that the picture they posted of themselves isn't Vogue Cover caliber though they might be in a wind-blown nature scene while looking reflective and timid while gazing down at their knees? 3. How can I find a picture on the internet, say, of Clarisse in Silence of the Lambs, or Chris Farley singing Eres Tu, and attach it to a new Post? There are very simple things I'd like to achieve on FB and none of them involve pictures of me; ha, I'll spare you. 1. I'd like to having the song "The Inquisition" play, every time someone visits my FB 2. I'd like to have the word "shawerma" played outloud in Arabic whenever someone clicks on a button near my name. 3. I'd like more buttons of some sort, to play quotes from my favorite movies: "That's okay, I make you lamb", "Button, button, whose got the button", "Cosmo, I just want you to know, that no matter what you do, you're going to die, just like the rest of us", "Get your hands off me you filthy ape", "Miss Eliza Bennet, let me persuade you to follow my example and take a turn about the room. It's so refreshing. - Will you not join us, Mr Darcy? Sure I'd also like to change the picture in the background but last time I tried somehow the picture of the alarm on my phone appeared? Tech-related tasks have always befuddled me and I know someday I'll actually call the Pentagon hotline by accident and/or open Spam from the nice man from Ethiopia asking for $6000 so he can catch a flight home to Bermuda. In the meantime, I'm going to go take several pictures of life around me with my smartphone because those are the only pictures I know how to transfer to FB without error messages and/or warning triangles appearing on my screen. Watch for an upcoming, inspirational photo of me buying parsley at the local farmers market...and I'll see if I can look reflective while placing my head on a pile of tangerines for artistic affect.