Books and Brownies

Mary is reading Beowulf  and came across a word she didn’t know. She looked it up in the dictionary and didn’t understand the definition at all. So she read it to me thinking I might be able to help.

“Canst: (archaic) second person singular present tense of can”

So I explained to her:

Second person means you are talking to someone – you in modern terms, thou in archaic terms.

Singular means you are only talking to one person.

Present tense means it’s happening now, not in the past or the future.

English used to have conjugated verbs and then we lost the endings for most of them.  So it used to be “thou hast” and “thou canst” for “you have” and “you can.”

An example is the Shakespeare quote: “This above all: to thine own self be true, and it must follow, as the night the day, thou canst not be false to any man.” In modern English: “Be true to yourself, and then you cannot be false to any man.”

German still has this ending for the second person singular: du kannst.

Sometimes it’s good to have a language geek for a mom, huh?

I’ve been rereading parts of A Mother’s Rule by Holly Pierlot and alternating between being annoyed and being convicted, which may possibly be the same thing.  School (my actual out-of-the-house-teaching-school) will be over soon, and I wanted to already have a plan in place that we could just start following.

I’ve realized over the years as the number of my children has increased that I am just really bad at forming a structure, sticking to it, and telling multiple people what to do.  This weakness is not a good thing when trying to manage six children and a household!

So, here’s the tentative plan. I haven’t run it by my older children yet, though.

7:30 AM: Wake up and do Morning Prayer and my physical therapy exercises.

8 AM: Work on improving my German.

8:30 AM: Have breakfast with the children in German.

9 AM: Do German calendar and lesson with boys.

9:30 AM: Exercise while kids play outside.

10 AM – 12:30 PM: Do school (All children do their workboxes. When I am not helping any of the boys, I will clean/do laundry/organize/declutter.)

12:30 PM: Straighten up house; make lunch.

1 PM: Lunch (speak Spanish with Ryan)

1:30 – 3:30 PM: School with the girls; boys play

3:30 PM: Set up workboxes for next day

4 PM: Homeschool planning for 2012-2013 school year; begin dinner if needed.

4:30 PM: School planning for 2012-2013 school year.

5 PM: Work on improving my Spanish.

5:30 – 6:30 PM: Make dinner/laundry/clean/talk to Roger when he gets home

6:30 PM: Dinner.

7 – 8 PM: Read to boys in German and Spanish/Baths/Family Time.

8 PM: Write current book.

8:30 – 10:30 PM: Watch something for current Unit Study with girls or for pleasure/spend time with Roger

10:30 PM: Evening prayer/Read current German book.

We’ll see how this works out.

I just made up a schedule for the summer! Let’s pray that this schedule is actually doable and not another pie-in-the-sky dream!

I’ll be back later to share it.

…and life has changed again.  Why do I waste so much mental energy on all of these alternative plans?

The main motivation for finding an alternative path for my career no longer exists, and I am quite satisfied with remaining where I am.  There’s a lot I can do, and I love being a part of a supportive, professional community. Also, I don’t think I have the energy for moving and for entering a PhD program now – I’m barely awake enough to watch American Idol in the evenings, I doubt I could knock out twenty page papers with regularity.

I want a settled life for a few years. I’d like to get into a semi-boring routine. I’d like to not immediately try to fill any free time I have with five thousand more things I could be doing.  A long time ago, I read a mediocre book called Margin, and I am recognizing that I tend to fill all available time and come up with even more things I think I should be doing even though there is no time to do them! (This also applies to money.)  Our schedule this year was too full – there is no room for extra, spontaneous activities. When it takes all your energy just to get through the week, anything that doesn’t absolutely have to be done gets shunted aside.

It also doesn’t leave time to deal with the things that come up, like our better van being smashed in by a woman who didn’t brake, injuring Roger and totaling our van.  It’s hard to deal with the consequences of that when, well, daily life already takes up all your energy!

It’s probably also not advisable to begin a PhD program when you still have four children under the age of 10.

So, here’s to sanity and routine and boringness and NOT rethinking every part of one’s life every single day – cheers!

While searching for a file on the computer this morning, I found something I’d saved called “2011 Goals and Hopes” which I did not remember writing. Curious, I opened it up and got to see how things had turned out.

I figure out a way to make decent money that is compatible with homeschooling 6 children.

Well, I did go back to teaching at the charter school, and I do think it’s decent money. It’s probably about as good as it gets while still homeschooling, with living in such a rural location. Goal met!

My aunt recovers from her recent problems and is able to go back to her assisted living place (she is 92).

Unfortunately, this hope went unfulfilled. My aunt was in the hospital over Christmas 2010 and then was sent to a rehabilitation center. She never went back to her assisted living place, and died in April.  I had planned to go see her in January 2011 but couldn’t because I had an attack of diverticulitis. I finally flew up to see her in February and had a nice visit. I promised to come back at Easter with the children, but she died the week before. We couldn’t have gone anyway, because by then I was suffering from a bulging disk. I missed her funeral because of it. My family on my mother’s side is very long-lived (my eight times great-grandmother lived from around 1629 to 1731, outliving most of her ten children!) and it was shocking to my sisters and me that our aunt only lived to be 92. We thought she had more time, and I miss her greatly.

I get to see my parents, sisters, aunt, oldest son, and mother-in-law.

I did see everyone except for my mother-in-law. On my one brief trip to see my aunt, I didn’t see my mother-in-law because she was sick, and she didn’t want to get me sick(er) or expose my aunt to anything, since I was mainly there to visit her. Goal met, mostly.

I don’t waste time on the computer.

I spent less time on the computer in 2011 than the last few years. I finally recognize the limitations of socialization via Internet. Goal met!

I finish writing the romance novel I’ve been working on, and – dare I hope?! – write another one.

I did finish writing the one I was working on, just before I was supposed to go see my aunt in January 2011. I still need to finish editing it, though, and submit it for publication. I started another one, which has more of a thriller feel, but I’ve only written one-tenth of it. I really would like to get a laptop so that I can write more, because currently I only write on the computer in the living room, surrounded by children and chaos, and that makes it hard to get anything done. So, goal basically met.

I read at least 60 books.

I only read 38, which I have been very upset about, despite the fact that people tell me that’s a lot. Being ill and on painkillers really interfered with reading. I was very scattered last year, and I realize now what that led to. I would pick up a book and start to read it, and then get interrupted and put it down and never go back to it, because, the next time I got a chance to read, I would pick up something else that looked interesting. This continued in an endless cycle.  I realize now that when reading a book, I have to reach critical mass so that finishing the book becomes inevitable. Or, as you could also say, the tipping point where it’s all downhill from there. I’m invested in the characters and want to know what happens to them (if it’s fiction) or I am so wrapped up in the subject matter that I have to see the conclusions reached (if it’s non-fiction). Then in August, my life became überbusy, and I just didn’t read very much. However, I’m glad now that I didn’t reach this goal, because it showed me clearly that reading is very important to me. Other people might have been satisfied with reading 38 books and that’s fine for them. They probably didn’t put the word “Books” in the titles of their blogs either! If I don’t want to feel this way at the end of the year again, I need to make sure I make reading a priority. So this year, I have spent even less free time on the computer, and have been reading a lot more, and have now read 16 books.  This year I also am trying to alternate fiction and non-fiction, which I never tried to do before.

So, how did I do?

Four goals met, basically: making money, wasting less time on the computer, finishing my romance, and seeing family.

One goal not met, but with a fire lit under me now, that won’t happen again.

And one hope unfulfilled -

And that’s the story of 2011.