Chickens and Unschooling

Boy has discovered the newest iteration of boffers. When he was a wee thing of barely over a year old he played boffers at a Convention. Much more of a free for all activity, and he was declared the world's littlest boffer by the organizers, when they declared to the room, "do not squish the world's littlest boffer!"

Now a hulking 6ft he has entered the world of leagues and teams and rules.

Today was a sort of boffer LARP. He has decided to be an assassin, and has acquired two short swords to that end.

I have told him I'm happy he has found a way to people. I have told him he needs to figure out, more of less on his own, how all of this is going to work. This is of two-fold importance: he's old enough to learn to organize important things in his life, and I need the reminder to let go.

Bonus points if I don't have to people for him to people. He is, after all, ths extrovert in this equation.

I had an oddly satisfying day of social isolation today.

I chatted with H on the phone for 20 minutes.

I called to check on a friend from out of state and even though the conversation had to be brief, she sounded cheerful.

With the use of technology, S and C from our house, H from her apartment, and the 2 other members of their Saturday D&D group from their house, played a reasonably fun installment of their D&D campaign together.

M and I took Pete on a long walk. I've been playing PokémonGO again, since the quarantine started, so we walked down to a pokéstop in our neighborhood. It was a longer walk than I usually take him on, so poor Pete was really worn out by the time we got back.

Since Consonance was supposed to be this weekend, and old filkers tend to be reasonably tech savvy, they managed to live stream several concerts performed on many different livingroom couches. I got to listen from the comfort of my bed full of heatpads.

Interspersed through most of my day, I used the magic of iheartradio to stream an oldies country station out of Houston. Oh yeah, R.I.P. Kenny Rodgers; throughout the day that radio station was playing a tribute to him followed by a different one of his songs each time.

We also ended up having to bury a duck today. The one C started calling Spackle, because while she was supposed to be a brown duck she grew a very large number of white feathers instead. C and S chose rocks to put on her grave. They were trying to make them look like a runner duck.



Earlier in the day, I freshened up the hay in the chicken laying boxes and started on the insurmountable task of cleaning up the horse poop in the yard. Weird thing, someone threw a large bag of trash in our garage can. I wouldn't have minded if it was last garbage cycle, my container was nearly empty then, but I really needed the extra space this time around.

After coming back in from my evening animal stuff, I discovered M in the midst of a virtual filk circle with more than 40 participants. Oh, I didn't mention that Consonance is a filk Convention.

Thursday: Karate.
Friday: Glass with S and C, C's first time.
Saturday - Monday: CokoCon.
Tuesday: Gaming day, karate.
Wednesday: Prep for flood day, payed C to mow kids' yard.
Thursday: Flood day, karate.
Friday: Pointless trip to Discount Tire for tire pressure sensor that refused to throw code while there, paint shopping with H, S collecting job applications with M, music lessons for 3 kids, glass.
Saturday: Making brownies with S for her open studio ceramics potluck, open studio glass with C.
Today: Down day?

I've definitely used too much Tylenol lately.

Yesterday M and H worked on getting a couple of new tires for H's truck. This included H rescuing M when the spare broke apart 2 miles from the tire shop.

S and I went to open studio glass. Since this was likely our last open studio on a Saturday for a while, we stopped at a QT on the way home for 50 cent soft serve.

LepreCon was on Easter weekend this year, so I only prepped 6 eggs for a mini egg hunt. It took till yesterday evening to finally get around to that. C was particularly pleased that the eggs were filled with Cadbury mini eggs.

We managed to watch Megamind last night. M had never seen it before so he joined us. He was surprised that Will Ferrel could be in a movie and not ruin it. I posited that maybe the key was it was a voice acting part and not live action.

H has been watching YouTube shows dissecting and discussing the final season of Game of Thrones, so yesterday she she felt compelled to share.

I'm glad today is only Sunday, I have lots of laundry to catch up on.

The kids all had fun. They spent a lot of time in the gaming room, and each kid won a t-shirt (C won two).

Each of our kids ended up spending a good deal of time with a friend's three year old. A few times she played with C by running the halways, and they went swimming Sunday morning. I've been told she referred to C all weekend as her best friend.

C attempted to attend all the D.R.E.A.D. fleet panels, including learning sword fighting techniques with ballon swords and the treasure egg hunt they sponsored because the last day of the Con landed on Easter.

H went to several panels involving a local artist drawing, then painting a big cat. He gave her the graphite drawing at the end of the painting panel. She also went to a writing panel on including religion in your world that she found interesting enough to excitedly talk to me about it after it was over.

S went to several costuming panels, but what seemed to spark her creativity the most was a conversation about horns in the Consuite. She dived into a creative endeavor as soon as we got home and was still working at it when the rest of us went to bed. Some glorious cardboard horns were waiting on the kitchen table when I got up this morning. I have yet to determine exactly how little sleep S actually got last night.

M got to show off his new, two necked Chimera guitar, made by Emerald. It took only four days to ship from Ireland. M was super lucky that it arrived at our house during the approximately two hour window on Saturday when I was home dealing with the animals before picking up S from her ceramics class and heading back to the Con.

There was some small amount of filking each night. M and I helped voice a Firefly radio play - M was Wash, I was Kaylee. On Saturday, before heading to the filk, I hung out at the Manticore Navy's room party, which being conveniently located next to the pool, allowed me to let C swim for a couple of hours.

I had a panel where no one showed up, so I played to an imaginary circle of children and figured out three Tom T. Hall songs I can comfortably play on the ukelele. Later that day I went to a harmony panel that was very informative and enjoyable.

On the last day of the Con, M and I split forces. He went home early and let the birds out for me, then made sure there was some food waiting for us when got there. I stayed till 5pm so the girls could do more panels and C could squeeze every last drop of fun out of the gaming room. He wants to buy an old X-Box and an X-men game now.

Tomorrow is prom.

Sunday is County Fair.

I still have to figure out if the gaming store, we meet at every week, is closed next week to resurface it's floors. That one is challenging, because I have no real control over when it happens or even how much advanced notice I'll have for when it does. One of the Mothers of the group offered to host at her house as an alternative, and while wonderful of her to do it, it leaves me with one more person counting on me in a situation where I basically have zero control.

Fun.

I really need to clean out my car before hauling three kids to prom tomorrow. At least it's far less of a herculean task than when they were all under the age of 10.

Maybe I can convince hubby to come with and we can have an actual date night.

Next weekend is LepreCon and Easter.

Wheee!

I managed to set up the animals to go for the whole weekend (Fri, Sat, Sun). My hip/left leg is still bad enough I knew I wouldn't be able to drive back and forth, or even drive myself down to the Con on Saturday which I might have done in previous years. C was a huge help setting everyone up and doing the after Con animal care. We should be able to do the same thing for LepreCon, since they've moved it to Easter weekend when the weather will likely still be mild enough.

C had lots of fun LANgaming, per his new usual. There were enough Cosplay and writing panels to keep S and H, respectively, happily occupied. All three kids got to swim with the mermaid. The hotel pool was wonderful, heated and salt.

Besides filking, which we made happen by sheer force of will, and the fact that our family makes critical mass anywhere we go, there was little else to interest M and me this weekend. M currently has hopes to skip TusCon next year, and instead, fly out to OryCon with the boy. We'd let the girls go to TusCon on their own, and under those circumstances, I would, of course, hold down the fort.

I enjoyed the filking, we had a new someone visiting from Colorado, and they had a very pleasant voice. I also aquired some original art by Sarah Clemens from the art show.





Picking up original art is one of my new favorite things to do, now that our walls are getting crowded and we have more disposable income than when we started this Con going journey so many years ago.

Each of the kids picked up a print that they liked and C and I bought many buttons.

The biggest disaster of the weekend was when S forgot her gryphon in our hotel room. He wasn't noticed missing until we got home. Several calls to a very uncaring hotel staff member and more calls to our amazingly helpful friend who was still on site, led to the recovery of S's one of a kind, very special puppet.



It made for a very late night for M and S when they drove back to the hotel to retrieve the gryphon. On the up side, S got in a good 2 hours of night driving practice.

Aahh! I haven't posted all month!

Ok, only 7 days in, so not really that bad, and I have been posting on Instagram regularly, if you want to get a more visual, less wordy idea of what I've been up to lately. Admittedly, it's mostly photos of the animals, though I've become rather fond of posting cloud pictures, as well.

So, since this is about the only format where I'll discuss the kids, I should get on to that.

H commented to me yesterday how busy a week this had been. Since she started counting from last Friday, when the SciFi Con the family went to started, I can see her point.

Con, con, con, con, work, class, work, work, break day, work, and class. (That nicely takes us from Friday of one week into Monday 10 days later. Chances are, that week will be filled fairly full of work and school as well, but at least it won't have a Con in the mix.

I'll save discussing the Convention for another time, best to leave something to motivate me to write on here more often.

LepreCon this weekend. C dressed as Naruto for a little while today. H did a steampunk she and S developed for her. She got several compliments on the necklace she made last year, and on the hat S made for her out of a coffee container.



S, being our cosplay master, brought four outfits for this three day Con. She was an alicorn yesterday, steampunk and Kobold today, and will finish the Con as Little Red. She entered the Masquerade as Kobold and won honorable mention.



Both girls got photographed, Kobold several times. The attention they garnered made C wish he hadn't ditched his Naruto gear so early on in the day.

Today is technically the last day of WesterCon, but our entire family is just too damn tired to bother going back for it's anemic final day programming. They didn't seem to take full advantage of this being the Fourth of July; they ended the Con normal time and I think they're hoping the dead dog will take them through to the fireworks. Even the Art Show organizers seemed to think this would be a throwaway day and let us pick up and pay for our art yesterday.



I got this, an original acrylic, for 60 dollars. Since I'm nowhere near as broke as I was when I first started going to conventions, I've been trying to slowly collect more than just prints (though the vast majority of what comes into our house are still prints, since the price point on originals is often clutch my hand to my chest, have trouble breathing high). We have a lot of this particular artist's work, mostly hanging as small prints in the girls' rooms.

We did have three long days at the Con that we did participate in (holiday weekends often warrent 4 day Cons), involving a lot of the gaming room for C (including a LARP), two hall costume awards for S (Zelda and Little Red), an instafilk by H, S, and me, Regency Dancing, some entertaining room parties, a stressful mistaken identity complaint about my most polite kid (he didn't do it, turned out to be someone else after I already had a Con muckety-muck on my ass about it), a long string of concerts (including mine where, even though I felt like a spazz, was running on three hours sleep, was still calming down from the false complaint incident, and fought with the mike, I got lots of compliments), and late night filking. Thank God M was driving.



Tonight we will go to our normal park for fireworks, and turn C into a glowstick fairy again.


ETA: Fireworks were seen, magikarps were caught, traffic was directed, giant geometric climber was perched in, and glowsticks were distributed. H found a way to be a glowstick fairy again; by being seated she successfully combated her tallness and people seeking glowsticks came to her.