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A year or two ago, my father bought me the book "Writing a Romance Novel for Dummies."  This is something I had flirted with about a decade ago.  Then last year when my husband and I decided I should work, one of the things he kept telling me was that I should write romances.  At the end of the school year when my teaching job was ending, I began to seriously consider it.  I had planned to start writing before Brogan was born, but then late pregnancy inertia kicked in and I didn't feel like doing ANYTHING. 

So, I have been thinking about the plot of the romance I started writing ten years ago, and there was a character I just couldn't get a handle on.  So I haven't started writing.  In the meantime, I got another idea and really like it.  And then I saw some information about the NaNoWriMo contest.

NaNoWriMo is short for National Novel Writing Month.  In November people all over the world commit to try to write 50,000 words in the month.  It's a way to make you turn off your "inner editor" and just get writing.  In December you can go back and edit and polish.  I had heard of this before and thought it might be just the thing to get me going, even if I can't make 50,000 words (you know, the pesky details of life: 7 kids, homeschooling, housework, they all want to eat several times a day...).  But I am going to try my darnedest!  My husband has assured me that it's not insane to do this. And coincidentally, the series I would like to write my romance for requires a 50,000 word manuscript.

I feel like I really have a chance now to try this and see if I can do it.  Roger is covering all our bills, I am home and don't want to go out, and while I liked teaching and would do it again if necessary, it's draining and I have my own children to teach.  And at this point, I don't want to leave Brogan at all. However, eventually I will have to start earning some money again, so if I could actually write romances and get them published, I could make money that way.  I also like that, by writing romances, I can use all my life experiences and interests.  It's always been difficult for me to narrow things down and choose one thing to focus on.  This way, I wouldn't have to!

So I might not be blogging much in November.  Maybe I'll just post my word count.  If you are interested in doing this yourself, the website is www.nanowrimo.org. I do intend to blog a lot this week in preparation for starting on Saturday.  So wish me luck, or if you don't believe in luck, then pray for me!

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What I'm NOT doing:

Reading 500 page tomes in order to blog about them

Teaching outside the home

Speaking much German to the children

Going out by myself

Exercising

Dieting

Sleeping

What I AM doing:

Watching Dancing With The Stars (and enjoying it!)

Enjoying spending lots of time with my two girls

Decluttering

Trying to keep up with the housework: Laundry, High Finance (otherwise known as juggling accounts so nothing bounces, kind of like AIG, just without the $400K junket or $700B bailout), Dishes, Diaper Changes, etc

Nursing and staring at his sweet face

Marvelling at the myriad of messes three year old twins can make

Practicing my alliteration skills

Enjoying football (check out those Tar Heels and Panthers!)

Calculating how many children I will have in college at once (and ignoring the concept of how to pay for it)

Traveling vicariously through my oldest son (he just got back from NY and is preparing to spend next semester in Poland!)

Listening to Enrique (por supuesto!)

Loving my five year old's eagerness to learn

Writing a novel! (don't worry, at least 2 people have assured me that I am not insane!)

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I've become one of those people I used to hear about - "Can you believe it?  She has four children four and under!!"  Even saying it another way doesn't sound much better - six children 12 and under.  That makes it sound like I have a baby every 2 years!  Seven children spread out over nearly nineteen years is slightly better - that ups my average to one baby every 2.7 years.

My husband went back to work today, and next Wednesday my oldest son leaves for college.  Brogan will be 2 1/2 weeks old, and I will be on my own.  Is it okay to admit that I am a little intimidated?  I have gone from thinking, "Should I teach 2 days a week at the charter school?" to "Will I even be able to shower?  Will we be able to get anything done in the mornings?  Will I be able to meet the very distinct needs of each child?  Will I have any energy in the evenings to work on my own projects or should I just scrap the idea of even having my own projects?"

So I have one week to come up with a game plan for surviving life with four children four and under. And in a month it will be four children five and under, and that just sounds much more doable, doesn't it? Honestly, though, I thank God for all my blessings.  There was a time when I thought I would never have more children, and I used to wonder if we would ever bring home a new baby to this house.  Now I just need to pray that I am equal to the task of raising them well!

Posted in Me

Even though I love Enrique and ABBA and various other groups and genres (from Latin to country to classical to whatever), I don't make you listen to them.  I invite you to, I might provide a link, but then it is your choice to click it or not, to listen or not.  It's your loss if you don't want to listen to Enrique, but again, I'm not going to force you into it.

This is my new pet peeve.  When I visit a blog, I don't want music to play.  Ever.  No matter what music it is.  I don't know how to turn it off - I don't know if I can turn it off.  Very often, I am already listening to Enrique and the blog's music then goes over it.  That is annoying.  Decorate your blog however you would like, give me any links you love, but please, don't put music on.  I visited a blog for the first and last time tonight, where the writer had put a youtube link of a scene from Mamma Mia!, but I couldn't even click on it and listen to it because her other music was playing!  And let me tell you, Pierce Brosnan's voice does not improve with other unrelated music on top of it!

And if you wonder how I am doing at 38 1/2 weeks pregnant, I am hot, tired, grumpy, huge, and prone to finding new pet peeves! ;-)

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Anybody who has spent even five minutes in my company over the last several years knows that Enrique Iglesias is my favorite singer.  For my birthday this year, my husband bought me his latest CD: a compilation of his Spanish language number one hits.  As my oldest son pointed out, my husband was probably the only almost-40-year-old, non-Hispanic, straight man to buy the CD!

There is a song on this CD that I wasn't familiar with that is so beautiful I wanted to share it with somebody.  So finally I decided to blog about it.  It's called "Experiencia Religiosa."  Even those of you with no Spanish background can probably figure out that the title means "Religious Experience."  It is a long song.  The lyrics in Spanish follow, with my English translation after each verse.  KEEP IN MIND that songs ALWAYS sound better in the original language!

UN POCO DE TI PARA SOBREVIVIR
ESTA NOCHE QUE VIENE FRIA Y SOLA
UN AIRE DE EXTASIS EN LA VENTANA
PARA VESTIRME DE FIESTA Y CEREMONIA

(a little of you in order to survive this night that comes cold and alone, an air of ecstasy in the window, in order to cover me with celebration and ceremony)

CADA VEZ QUE ESTOY CONTIGO
YO DESCUBRO EL INFINITO
TIEMBLA EL SUELO
LA NOCHE SE ILUMINA
EL SILENCIO SE VUELVE MELODIA

(each time that I am with you, I discover the infinite, the ground trembles, the night lights up, the silence becomes melody)

Y ES CASI UN EXPERIENCIA RELIGIOSA
SENTIR QUE RESUCITO SI ME TOCAS
SUBIR AL FIRMAMENTO PRENDIDO DE TU CUERPO
ES UN EXPERIENCIA RELIGIOSA

(and it's almost a religious experience, to feel that I revive if you touch me, to rise up to the heavens caught with your body, it's a religious experience)

CASI UNA EXPERIENCIA RELIGIOSA
CONTIGO CADA INSTANTE EN CADA COSA
BESAR LA BOCA TUYA MERECE UN ALELUYA
ES UN EXPERIENCIA RELIGIOSA

(almost a religious experience, with you every instant in everything, to kiss your lips is worth an alleluia, it's a religious experience)

VUELVE PRONTO MI AMOR TE NECESITO YA
PORQUE ESTA NOCHE TAN HONDA ME DA MIEDO
NECESITO LA MUSICA DE TU ALEGRIA
PARA CALLAR LOS DEMONIOS QUE LLEVO DENTRO

(return quickly, my love, I already need you because this night so deep scares me, I need the music of your happiness in order to quiet the demons I carry inside)

CADA VEZ QUE ESTOY CONTIGO
YA NO HAY SOMBRA NI PELIGRO
LAS HORAS PASAN MEJOR ENTRE TUS BRAZOS
ME SIENTO NUEVO Y A NADA LE HAGO CASO

(each time that I am with you, there is no shadow or danger, the hours pass better in your arms, I feel new and I pay attention to nothing)

(verses repeat)

And here is the link so you can watch the video.  I am not wild about the video, I usually just listen to the song.

***sigh***

Such a beautiful song!

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I'm really bad with plants.  Really, really bad.  Which is a shame, because I have a huge yard that somebody could really do a lot with.  Just not me.

I also have no indoor plants.  I will not ever remember to water them.  I need a living being that will cry, bark, or follow me around if it needs to be fed.  Otherwise it will not happen.

In my ideal world, though, I would have a garden.  I finally gave in two years ago and decided to have a vegetable garden.  My daughter Gabrielle had been wanting a garden for years, and I mistakenly thought it would save money.  So we planted tomatoes and peppers (lots of peppers because I like them), zucchini, and radishes.  Nobody likes radishes but they are supposed to grow quickly and I thought it would be motivating.

We attempted the Square Foot Gardening method, and my friend Renee served as consultant and advisor.  When we went to harvest the radishes, there was nothing there.  I have no idea what happened.  Most of the pepper plants produced nothing.  We got some cherry tomatoes and some regular tomatoes before some disgusting worm/caterpillar thing infested the tomatoes.  The zucchini plant looked wonderful and was flowering and then completely died.  All that time and effort for a couple tiny peppers, a few banana peppers (which only Robert liked) and few tomatoes.  Not really worth it IMO.  Plus gardening is getting just a bit too close to nature for my comfort level.

For my birthday this year, my daughter Mary wanted to give me a tiger lily plant.  I really like tiger lilies.  My husband warned her that she would have to help water it.  Unfortunately, she drowned it.  It started to die, and I let the soil dry out (which took days).  Then I was going to start watering it at an appropriate level.  I was, I swear.  But now I think it's completely dead and the twins have broken the stalks, so it probably needs to be thrown away.  She probably won't buy me any more flowers!  What people need to get me (although it's most likely a waste of money anyway) are cut flowers that are already destined to die.  Then there is no guilt involved!

This year my daughters decided to resurrect the garden.  It is entirely their project.  I haven't even gone near it.  All I have done is buy them the seeds they wanted.  We'll see how it turns out.

But I have made the decision - and plants everywhere are applauding - to leave gardening to other people, ones who actually have some clue what they are doing.  As Kenny Rogers said in The Gambler, "You have to know when to fold 'em."

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For years I have read Mothering magazine whenever I got a chance: while waiting at the birth center, rare chances when I was waiting sans kids at the library, etc.  I bid on a year's subscription twice at a silent auction (I didn't win).  But I never subscribed.  Why?

Well, because I didn't want to subscribe to something that had a lot of views I disagree with.  I am not into environmentalism.  I do vaccinate my children.  While I have used cloth diapers in the past, I don't now.  I am not vegetarian nor will I ever be - one of the few things I have consistently liked this pregnancy is veal!  So I never wanted to give Mothering my money.

On the other hand, there are things that I am absolutely 100 percent in agreement with.  For example, a recent editorial decried the fact that babies are no longer carried in people's arms, something that has bothered me for years.  If you go to a LLL meeting, you can barely walk because the floor is littered with car seats!  I felt so strongly about this that I did not buy that kind of car seat for my twins.  Nowadays people take the car seat out of the car and attach it to the stroller and hardly touch their baby.  And I am a firm advocate of exclusive breastfeeding, to the extent that neither of my twins ever had a bottle.  Mothering also supports natural birth and homeschooling.

So it's like a Venn diagram with about 50% overlap.  However, last year, something pushed my thought process over the top and so this year, I decided to give myself a combination Mothers' Day/birthday present and subscribe.  Last year just before my husband lost his job and we decided that I would work, I read a book published by LLL called Hirkani's Daughters: Women Who Scale Modern Mountains to Combine Breastfeeding and Working.  Despite the really unfortunate title of that book, it taught me that it is possible to work and still be the kind of mother that I want to be.  I never really tried before because I didn't think it could work.  Of course, as all my avid readers know, I found out that I could actually be a happier/better mother by allowing myself to have interests once again.  This book highlights Mothering magazine as being one of the pioneers of employees bringing their children to work with them and combining both working and parenting.

At my first prenatal appointment this year, I searched the waiting room for copies of Mothering and was disappointed not to find any except an old one which I had already read.  And that's when I thought, "Why don't I just give in and subscribe to this magazine already?!"  So I did.

My first issue came this week.  I started reading it and immediately thought, "Ugh.  Why did I get this magazine?"  But that's because this issue seems to be highly focused on the part of the Venn diagram that doesn't overlap.  Hopefully the next issue will!  In any case, I am sure I will learn from it, and either I will finally get wanting to read Mothering out of my system or I will enjoy it and keep subscribing.  I'll let you know about this time next year.

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Maybe I am being a little hard on myself, but the last week or so I have been feeling like I really should know what I want to do.  But I don't.  So far this past year has shown me: that I don't want to teach high school unless my family is on the verge of starvation; if I had to get a full-time public school teaching job, it would be middle school; I can still get an A in a class; it is possible to improve language skills even in one's late thirties; I really like teaching German; I can't handle an everyday job; having more money is nice; I still have a desire to be a professor; I still find conferences interesting; I know that I could contribute to the academic world; I miss writing papers; I need immersion in both Spanish and German; I need some travel to a Spanish-speaking place; I will stop this now.

For a while it seemed I had settled on a PhD in Second Language Acquisition, to be gotten whenever it actually seemed doable - most likely about 10 years from now.  For a while I thought, "We'll pay off our debt and then I'll do Middlebury's one year MA in Spanish program.  We can all go live in Madrid for 9 months, and then we'll come back to the US and I'll get a community college Spanish position."  Then I think, "How on earth would we take 6 children to Madrid for a year????"  Then I think, "It would be worth whatever it costs."  Then I saw my dream job advertised - fulltime German professor at a community college - and realized that I couldn't apply because the baby is due just before the fall semester starts.  Then I further realized that the baby being due also meant that I couldn't contact my local community colleges about teaching German there this fall.  And since languages are typically the first part in the fall and the second part in the spring, that probably means not starting in the spring either.  Then I look at the German PhD program I really liked at the University of Arizona, because it has the second year in Germany, and again I think, how on earth would I do that?  Then I go to a conference at my local university, where I got my MA, realize that the department is a lot different than it used to be, and start thinking about going part-time to get a PhD there.  For what purpose?  I don't know.  Then today I finally find a university that has graduate level Spanish courses online - something I searched for last year - and think again, I could take the courses I need to have 18 credits in Spanish and then find a community college Spanish/German position.  And then realize that I still don't know when I would do all this or exactly what the point would be.

But I really like working.  There's no way I am going back to not working, even if we could afford it.  It just seems like all the opportunities I see are for full-time teachers or students, and so I am not eligible.

Apparently I cannot quench my desire for further education!  I like studying and I like having the money to do things, go places, buy books, etc.  I just don't know what would be best!  For now, my plan is to hopefully teach a few homeschool classes this coming school year and possibly tutor.  And continue thinking about what to do, I guess.

Posted in Me

I recently found this website which applies your Myers-Briggs personality type to your mothering style: MotherStyles.  I don't recommend that you take their quiz to find out your style - go somewhere else online and take a longer test to determine your personality, and then look it up on this website.  Their "quick quiz" is a little too quick.  It consists of an either-or choice for each letter.  For the "J" or "P" choice, I do NOT sound like the "J" at all and I sound like the "P", but my type is INFJ and that description fits me better.

Here is my personality type:

• Sensitive and family-focused, the INFJ mother looks for and encourages the unique potential of each child. Self-knowledge may be her byword. Her aim is to help each child develop a sense of identity and cultivate personal growth. In fact, she may value the mothering experience as a catalyst to her own personal growth and self-knowledge.
• The INFJ mother spends time observing and understanding each child. She is drawn to intimate conversations and seeks a free exchange of feelings and thoughts.
• Sympathetic and accommodating, the INFJ mother strives to meet the important yet sometimes conflicting needs of each family member in harmonious and creative ways
• She is conscientious and intense as well. Probably no one takes life and child-raising more seriously than the INFJ. She approaches mothering as a profession requiring her best self.

I believe this fits my mothering style very well.  My husband sometimes thinks I am too accommodating and care too much about the preferences and desires of the children.  I do try to understand each child and what they need, and I think that is why I feel so strongly about individualizing each one's education. 

Post a comment and let me know if your type fits you!

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I know that the burning question in your heart is, "What annoys Jeanne?"  So I decided to answer that question so you can move on to more important topics!

My list can be broadly categorized into Radio, Sports, Commercials, Technology, Languages, and Other.  You may think then that I spend my time watching sports and listening to the radio, surrounded by electronic gadgets while speaking German and Spanish.  But  I don't really.  Honestly! 

Radio would not even appear on this list if my van had a CD player or even a cassette player!  But because it does not, and because I live miles from anywhere, I have a lot of time during which radio can be my pet peeve.  The biggest one is morning radio.  Where did radio stations get the idea that people want to listen to strangers talking in the morning?  I don't.  You can give me the weather, the time, the news if you must (and by "news" I don't mean Britney Spears' latest escapade), and I do recognize the need for commercials.  But I hate practical jokes, off-color jokes (told when many parents are driving their children to school), or vulgarity in any form (and they really can come up with a lot of forms of that).  Also, in this age of the Internet, no one needs summaries of what was on TV last night or what will be on tonight.  I really just don't want to hear it!  PLAY SONGS!

My second pet peeve with radio is playing songs out of season.  Just as summer clothes get put away in the fall, and Christmas songs aren't played in May, obviously summer songs should only be played in the summer.  For example, country stations should not currently be playing Alan Jackson's "Summertime Blues" or "Red Neck Yacht Club" or whatever Kenny Chesney's "Summertime" song is actually called.  A couple of days ago I heard Justin Timberlake's "Summer Love" (a song my oldest can't believe I like!) and it's just really hard to enjoy it when I am sitting in my van with the heat on trying not to freeze because my children insist on playing outside at ballet when it's 35 degrees!

This brings us to Sports.  Most people who know me know that I love football and watch it, as my husband would say, religiously.  I love the commercial for the NFL where the lady says, "I pledge to only watch football on Saturday and Sunday (pause) and Monday (longer pause) and sometimes Thursday."  That would be me (if I had cable, but more on that later!)  So what could possibly annoy me about my favorite sport?

The biggest one is ignoring the proverb "A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush."  Why do things become proverbs?  BECAUSE THEY ARE TRUE!  Ignore them at your own peril!  I have been a Panthers fan since the team was created in 1995.  The worst season ever was in 2001 when they set the NFL record for most consecutive losses in a season (15) with only one win.  So your comment is, "Well, they must have been a really bad team!"  But they weren't a bad team.  Seven of those losses were by 5 points or less.  But George Seifert, then head coach (a name I cannot type without grimacing), desperately chased those birds in the bush, despite having one of the best field goal kickers in the league.

Let me explain for anyone who might be football-challenged: you have 4 tries, which are called downs, to go 10 yards. After you get that 10 yards, you get another 4 tries to go another 10, and so on down the field until you are near the end zone. There are two main ways that a team scores: they get the ball into the other team's end zone, thus scoring 6 points and getting to kick an extra point to make it seven.  Making the extra point is pretty much assured. However, if you need more points, you can go for two instead of kicking.  That means you have the ball into the end zone again. If you get close to the end zone, but haven't gotten in, and you only have one more try, you can kick a field goal.  The closer you are, the easier it is to make it.  That's worth 3 points.  Usually that is what teams do.

But what Seifert did repeatedly that season was decide to go for it on fourth down instead of kicking easy field goals.  Then they wouldn't get the yards they needed and the other team would get the ball.  Or, after they scored a touchdown, he would decide to go for 2 instead of kicking and then not get it.  And then they would end up losing by a couple of points, when if he had kicked the field goals and extra points, they would have won.  I'm surprised I didn't actually attack my TV watching those games.  They drove me crazy!  I would tell my son repeatedly (and he was very glad I fell asleep during Pittsburgh's playoff loss a couple weeks ago, because they did the same stupid thing and lost), "The only time you should go for it instead of kicking is if there is less than 2 minutes left and you are losing!"  Remember, coaches, a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.  With my kind of coaching wisdom, I'm expecting a call from Atlanta any day.

Now, the Panthers are my first football love, but a close second is the Green Bay Packers. Why?  Well, besides Brett Favre's great playing and looks, this is why: "Today the Packers are currently the only non-profit, community owned major league professional sports team in the United States" (wikipedia).  I truly believe that the cities should own the teams that use their names.  They bring in huge revenues that could help our cities greatly.  Instead, they are held hostage by greedy owners who threaten to move the team unless the city bankrupts itself building them a new stadium when they already have a perfectly fine one. And then, the stadium gets named after some corporation.  Like in Philadelphia, the old Eagles stadium (which - gasp! - they had to SHARE with the Phillies! How did they ever manage?) used to be called Veterans' Stadium, thus honoring those who fight for our country.  The new stadium is Lincoln Financial Field.  Let me tell you, Lambeau Field (the Packers' stadium) will never be called "Kraft Cheesehead Field."

Which brings me to my next sports-related pet peeve.  EVERYTHING is sponsored by some company!  We used to just watch a football game.  It may have been "brought to you by..." and then featured that company's commercials predominantly.  I'm OK with that.  But now we have the "Toyota Halftime Show", the "UPS Leaderboard" where they tell us who's playing well, like we couldn't figure that out for ourselves.  Every little petty detail of the game is now sponsored by somebody! ARGH!

My final Sports Pet Peeve is the newly created "Sunday Night Football."  What happened to Monday Night Football?  Oh, it still exists, just on ESPN.  Did I mention before that I don't have cable?  But don't worry, Al Michaels and John Madden moved to NBC to do Sunday Night Football.  Well, honestly, I don't care who commentates the game - I just want it to be on Monday night!!!!  I may love football, but I can't watch 3 games on Sunday!  I mean, who can watch 3 games in a row?????  Not having Monday Night Football on ABC means I don't get football on Monday.  And then, they also started having occasional Thursday and Saturday night games on - you guessed it - the NFL network.  Did I mention that I don't have cable????  How many wives tell their husbands that they need to get a satellite dish so they can watch more football?  Not many, probably.

I have two pet peeves related to Commercials.  MESSAGE TO COMPANIES: If I remember the ad, but not what the product was, YOUR AD HAS FAILED.  Go call your ad agency and fire them!  The whole point of a commercial is to get me to buy your brand of whatever it is you're selling.  The brand name must be an integral part of the commercial.  After writing this part yesterday, today a perfect example came up.  I mentioned to my son how the dollar was not strong against the euro, and he said, "But the dollar is looking strong."  This reference was about a commercial that is currently airing, where a bunch of coworkers are sitting around bemoaning the falling dollar.  Then another guy comes in with a double cheeseburger and they all start saying how the dollar is looking good, looking strong, because the cheeseburger cost a dollar.  So I knew immediately what commercial my son was referring to, BUT I DIDN'T REMEMBER WHICH FAST FOOD RESTAURANT IT WAS FOR!  My first guess was Wendy's but I should have realized it wasn't them because they are currently running horribly disturbing ads with red braids superimposed on guys' heads.  It would have been so easy to work McDonald's name into that commercial (my son told me they were the culprits in this case).  Just have them say, "Wow, the dollar is looking strong at McDonald's!"  I'm just going to state it again for all my Madison Avenue readers: the point of a commercial is to sell your product, not your product type in general!

And, now, my last pet peeve relating to commercials (ok, these are just the commercials that REALLY annoy me - I had to limit it in some way!): animals are not interested in beer or soda.  OK?  A Dalmatian is not going to jump off of the fire truck to go chase a beer truck (and, no, I can't remember which beer that commercial is for either! and neither can my son LOL!) and bears do not drink soda, etc, etc, etc.  Can we please just put that whole genre of commercials to rest????  Robert is arguing that the polar bear and Coke should be allowed, but I don't agree.  The only animal drinking a beverage that could possibly work for me is a commercial for milk where the cats prefer it.  But there aren't any milk commercials on TV.

As you know from previous posts, I am technology-impaired.  Thankfully I have two resident tech support guys!  But the thing that REALLY gets my goat (who is drinking water, BTW) is when the computer switches fonts on me for no apparent reason!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  WHY DOES IT DO THAT??????????

The foreign language dictionary is about as low-tech as you can get, but I even have problems with that.  I constantly look in the other language section for the English entry and the English section for the other language entry!  And this was not helped by the fact that last summer when I did the immersion program, they gave me a Spanish dictionary that has the English first and the Spanish second, the exact opposite of every other foreign language dictionary I have ever looked at!

Actually, since I love languages so much, there are very few things I find annoying about them.  One problem I do have is only being able to think of a word in German or Spanish.  I need the German word, and all I can think of is the Spanish word for that same thing (or vice versa)!  Aggravating!

And finally, Other.  I am not a big fan of using the father's name and adding Junior to it (just ask my husband!).  I am not a big fan of naming your children after yourself in general.  It always seemed kind of egotistical to me, and also just not a very practical idea. I had a friend in high school who was a Junior , and he was always complaining about not knowing who the mail was for, him or his father.  It just gets confusing!  But what further annoys me about the whole thing is when people always leave the Junior off, like with Martin Luther King, JUNIOR!

And there you have the lead-in for an upcoming entry that will commemorate Martin Luther King, Jr.  I hope that you enjoyed my list of pet peeves, and have had your eyes opened to the rightness of my positions on all these important issues!

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I was thinking the other day that it is ironic that my username is "cathmom," yet I rarely ever post things that are specifically Catholic.  I've seen other blogs where they post about every saint's feast day and holy days of obligation and write about Catholic theology.

So I wanted to share why my username is cathmom.

I remember exactly the first time I used the Internet.  It was August 21, 1998.  Mary was born 2 days later.  Then I didn't bother with it again until early summer 2000.  I decided to check out some websites listed in the back of the book A Catholic Homeschool Treasury. Somehow in my searching around I found an email list for Catholic mothers and signed up.  The list is called, appropriately enough, cathmoms.  I still belong to it.

When I joined, I was pregnant but miscarried a month later.  I lost a lot of blood and recovery was long and slow, further complicated by the fact that our household was out of control.  My daughters were 4 and 2 and had no routine and I was getting very little sleep.  Desperate for ideas and help, I posted to the cathmoms list about the situation.  One mom told me about a book called Managers of Their Homes by Teri and Steve Maxwell, and also mentioned their website.

I bought the book (which helped me immensely) and joined a message board they had, which no longer exists.  Most of the ladies on there had their real names as their usernames.  Then they got a little more security conscious and asked everyone to use a username.  Because I had 3 living children and 3 miscarried children, I chose 3and3, and that's what I was known by for several years.

Most of the ladies on that message board were Protestant, but I found that I had more in common with them than many Catholics that I knew IRL - homeschooling, letting Christianity be a large part of your life and not just a "Sunday" thing, wanting a large family, etc.  And I would share things with them about Catholicism as they came up. Eventually the Maxwells made a rule that no specific denominations could be mentioned, and that helped protect me from more entrenched anti-Catholicism.

Many of the ladies had also chosen names with the number of children in them, and many of them (including mine) were now out-of-date! So, the Maxwells decided to do a big name-change.  Anyone who wanted to change their name was supposed to submit their top 3 choices.  I wanted to have a Catholic reference in my name, so my top choice was "cathmom."  I honestly did not expect the Maxwells to approve it, but they did.  So I became cathmom.  I have been "cathmom" pretty much since then.  However, many people didn't realize that the "cath" meant "Catholic."

So there you have it, in case you have ever wondered why my name is "cathmom."  Later on, I plan to post a bit more about Protestant/Catholic issues.

Posted in Me

Last night was my presentation for my class on "Methods of Teaching Romance Languages."  My topic was "Teaching Foreign Languages to Students with Dyslexia."  I have no trouble speaking in front of people, so I was never actually worried about that, it was the technology surrounding the whole event that got me so worked up that I feel like I ran a marathon yesterday!

Most people did a Power Point presentation, but some just used a word document or whatever you call it.  I played around with PowerPoint for about 5 minutes and decided that I just didn't have time for that.  I had never used it before and I wasn't going to learn now.  However, I did have to use my husband's jump drive to put the document on the computer on campus so it could be projected on the screen, and I had never used a jump drive before.

I have been working on this presentation for several weeks on and off, but on Tuesday night it was crunch time.  I typed up all my notes and had way too much material.  So then I cut it down more yesterday morning.  I had emailed my professor to ask him a question about citations and he didn't respond until just before I had to leave to go to teach at the charter school.  I had been going to make copies of my handout at school, but then I decided that I needed to change a few things, so I didn't.

When I got home from teaching, I made the changes based on what my professor said and made my bibliography.  I thought about going back over to my charter school to make the copies, but 1) I didn't know if anyone would still be there and I don't have a key and 2) it seemed unethical to go over there for the express purpose of making copies that aren't for the school.  So I didn't.

I drove up to town and went to a shipping store that had a copier, but the copier was scratched and they looked horrible so I left without my copies.  I now had one hour until my class.  I drove to the post office but the copier there only took change.  That doesn't really work when you need to make 15 copies of a 6 page document!  On my way to town, I had the thought, was the corrected version of the document saved to the jump drive or the main computer at home?  I called my son from the library, and he said that it probably was on the jump drive, but to just use one of the computers at the library to try it.  So I tried.  Nothing happened.  Nothing was like what Robert had told me it would be with the jump drive.  So I decided, I don't have time for this and I removed the jump drive from the computer.  Then I was worried that I might have wiped everything off the jump drive!

I drove towards the university and wasted 10 minutes driving around a new shopping center to see if there was a Staples or Office Max or something, but there wasn't.  But I did see a yellow Lotus with great acceleration, so if I cared about cars at all, that might have made it worth it.

I then decided to just drive to campus and use the copiers in the library.  I got to the library at about 5:40 and my class started at 6.  That should be plenty of time to make copies, right?  Wrong.

Apparently there was only one copier that took money, and the others required your ID card, which I have never bothered to get.  And someone was using the one copier, and someone else was waiting.  I left to go use the ATM (the only thing that DID actually work!)  When I got back, no one was using the copier.  But it wouldn't take a twenty, so I had to get change from the desk.  There was a big warning label on it that they didn't recommend using the document feeder on top.  So I decided to make one copy the old-fashioned way, and then use that copy in the document feeder to make the rest. But, every four or five copies, the copier would jam.  I had to get the girl from the desk to come over and fix it 3 times.  She said, "Well, it's been used a lot in the last hour."  And yes, it was definitely 6 PM by now.

So then she revealed to me that they can give me a guest card, which I can take over to some machine and add money to and then use it in the other 2 copiers.  I was about ready to strangle her - she couldn't have told me this before?????  So that is what I did.  I put in one sheet at a time and made 15 copies of it.  While the machine was copying, I was collating and dreaming about the wonderful copier at work, which would have done the job in less than a minute, and they would have been all collated and I would only have had to staple them and go on my merry way.

While copying the bibliography, I ran out of money on the guest card, so I decided that all of my fellow students did not need copies of that.  I stapled them all and booked to class.  While I was stapling, I realized that I had made the same mistake I made earlier in the semester - I didn't type my name onto the document!  I was mentally kicking myself, and briefly considered trying to come up with some kind of cover sheet but dismissed that idea quickly. I was on the verge of tears over to my class. I missed the entire first presentation.  I was so annoyed at all the time I had wasted searching for a copier and making the copies.

But, even though I had my copies now, there was still all the anxiety related to the jump drive issue!  My presentation was second to last, and we took a short break before it, so the girl who was going after me wanted to put her PowerPoint on the computer too.  So she did the whole jump drive thing for me, which was wonderful.  But it took her like 4 tries to get it to work, and I was standing there thinking, "I know I ruined my husband's jump drive!"

I had some examples I was showing during my presentation and there is an overhead monitor thing that will project it onto the screen so everyone can see, but I didn't even bother with that.  I just did it the old-fashioned way and held it up!

It is really amazing how academia has changed in the last 10 years.  Everything is so technology-oriented, and I am stuck in using the computer as a typewriter!  I mean, I do use the Internet now too, but this is too much! Although I did find a free bibliography website that I used.  You just put in the information and it formats it and alphabetizes it, so that was helpful. 

By the way, I slept very well last night!

Posted in Me

I am not going to complain about anything or whine about being overwhelmed or anything negative in this post.  I just wanted to share that I am halfway to my weight loss goal!  As of yesterday, I have lost 25 of the 50 pounds I wanted to lose! 

Isn't that great?  I feel much better, I think I look better, and my clothes certainly fit better.  It's exciting that some of the new clothes I bought in the spring as work clothes are now getting loose.

I am hoping to reach my goal of 160 sometime early next year.  It's taken me ten months to get this far!

Posted in Me

My friend Emily wrote recently in her blog that her Myers-Briggs test pegged her very accurately.  A long time ago, my husband and I took this test together.  The counselor who gave it to us was an old friend of mine (she actually was my second grade CCD teacher!).  Roger was shocked when we came out as exact opposites!  I was an INFP, and he was an ESTJ.  Our counselor assured us that this was actually a good thing, because we would help balance each other.

Well, that was about 16 years ago, and Emily's post inspired me to take an online test to see if I had changed.  I found this test and here are the results: