My Livejournaling impacting phone conversations.

It's funny talking with a friend who has obviously not read my livejournal even though she promised she would. We get conversations like:

Them: "What have the kids been up to?"

Me: "Well, the girls are really enjoying 4-H."

Them: "Oh, you decided to do that, what are you raising?"

Heh, well I did discuss my ideas about maybe raising an animal way back in August. Though we ended up choosing non-animal related groups instead. Maybe I should call that particular friend more often.

It does make it easier to fill phone conversations, than with someone who does read my blog though:

Them: "How are you guys doing?"

Me: "Well, the girls are really enjoying 4-H."

Them: "That's the impression I got from your blog."

Me: "Oh, well umm, the ducks are laying!"

Them: "Oh yeah, I read that on your blog, too."

Me: "So how are you all doing?"

I don't want to break up how they are living into pieces for show and tell.

Sometimes it's tough for me talking with other homeschooling families. In particular those driven to have more structure and lessons and such in their homeschooling journey than I have (mind you, not hard to do).

Them: "So what are the kids interested in learning lately.

Translation: What schoolish related ideas are the kids interested in lately.

For C, recently motivated about letter names, sounds, reading, counting, even variables, it's easy to answer in a way that makes sense to the questioner.

For the girls, recently interested in My Little Pony: Friendship is magic, both Youtube videos and toys, playing online games, finding videos on Youtube, it's not so clear cut. I can translate what they do into separate chunks that will more or less resemble schoolish things, but then I feel like it's missing the point. I feel put on the spot, and like I'm coming up short, especially when I don't want to break down their fun and living into disparate pieces. What they get by living in freedom is learning woven together in everything they do. Hopefully they will create a very satisfying whole someday.