Chickens and Unschooling

My goat looks dead when he sleeps fully on his side with his head on the ground.

Boy is well into his second week of working the grown-up job. Today they gave him work shirts, and on Monday he gets to go off-site.

I did flood-day for the first time in several months. On the one-hand, I love being surrounded by green, on the other, I'm dangerously close to declaring "I'm too old for this shit."

M and S are having a friendly competition writing/recording songs for FAWM (February Album Writing Month). S is winning.

H's boss had a stroke in December, she has been interim manager ever since.

She has a really pretty voice.

FYI, that whole sentence up above is a link to a YouTube livestream mini concert from a few days ago. It reminds me a lot of the Filk concerts we've been listening too, but with better sound quality and a much better singing voice.

I'm going to try something new this year. I will endeavor to post something, however small or seemingly inconsequential, on here, every day, for the next year.

Welcome to 2020 folks.

Last night we went to, what has become, the traditional New Year's Eve house filk. M took C and our friend K out first, then I brought up H and S after H got off work. New Year's Eve is an all hands on deck pizza holiday, so the only way H could join in the party was to arrive very late. It turned out not horrible timing this year, since one of the hosts also had to work and made it home only a few minutes before we showed up.

We sang a little, white elephant gift exchanged, sang some more, toasted the New Year, then even managed a little more singing.

We got home around 2am, everyone got to bed by 3am, so we slept in today a little more than usual.

I went to a local SciFi Convention with the kids this weekend, while M flew off to go to a different one. His was larger, and more fun for him, so other than the 8 hour delay on his return flight he might have wanted to do this again next year. Best news, he got to be present for the handfasting of some dear friends; especially nice since we were not forewarned of the impending nuptials.

The kids and I had a good time at our Con and have aleady registered for next year. C spent most of his time in the gaming room, though he did go to a couple of panels which he enjoyed. He cosplayed as Rapunzel and Little Red Riding Hood.

H and S helped me make critical mass for filking. H played Hope Eyrie on flute while the whole room sang along and it sounded wonderful. H was her necromancer cospay on Saturday, with her assistant Doctor Plagious the white rat.

S cosplayed her Tiefling, complete with red makeup. We lucked out on her work schedule: Friday 10-2, and Sunday 7-10. Three weeks on the job and she accidentally got a schedule conducive to going to the whole Convention.

At gaming day, H, her friend S, and most of the mothers, play tested a game called Sing For Your Supper. Seeing as you had to guess the name of a song to progress, I figured that game was close* to my worst nightmare.

It did remind me of Encore, a game I picked up when the kids were too little to play properly. We used to just make up songs to fit the word categories and played cooperatively.

The winning card.

Last night I pulled it out way later than I should have and the kids and I played till 2am. We played teams: H and S vs C and me. H and S won, but it wasn't as big of a shut out as I would have thought. We played fairly relaxed home rules, but it was a proper competition. The game mostly involved each team taking turns singing a line from a song, at least six words long, either containing the proper necessary word or fitting the category indicated by the space you landed on on the board.

Part of my motivation last night was to play test it to see if it would work at gaming day. Since we tended to pull out lines from filk songs more often than not, we decided it would work better as a home game, or maybe to bring with us to the next house filk.


*proper worst would be like at M's work parties where your table had to guess song title and singer faster than any other tables to be released to eat the buffet.

S and I were reflecting on why we felt like we hadn't had a down day in a long time. She pointed out that if we started counting from Wednesday last week, we really hadn't.

Wednesday: 8 hours fire/glass, because we did back to back open studio then class.

Thursday: S took C swimming at the local pool and did enough diving to make herself very sore. I woke up at 7:20 (trust me that's about 2 hours too early for me), cleaned out old boxes, met H to buy art supplies for a painting class next semester, and went grocery shopping at one of the big box stores.

Friday: 7:15 start for me and the kids to go to CPR/First Aid training. S had to meet a new violin instructor while sore and tired (that did not go well). More cleaning.

Saturday: Cleaned all day in preparation for visitors. C had a makup piano lesson. M and I went to Walmart to get a box fan and a new vacuum.

Sunday: S and I went on a last minute trip to the Pet Supply store to get fresh cat litter. We had a super fantabulous 9 hour visit with my brother and his oldest daughter.

Monday: S had a job interview with Subway. We shopped the 75% off sale at the closing grocery store. I drove up with C to the feed store to get bird food and hay, then stopped by the closing store again so he could buy cards for flicking and magic tricks.

Tuesday: Gaming day. I unloaded the hay in our high heat and humidity. We found out about a kerfuffle at gaming day.

Wednesday: Flood day. 6 hours of glass.

Thursday: This was going to be a down day for me, but instead involved two food shopping trips and another trip to the art store. H and I managed to get 4 paints and two brushes at 50% off, though. S was finally in the clear.

Friday: Bank. Music lessons, including me going in with my ukelele to play with H during her lesson and S having a second try, more well rested and less sore, with her new violin instructor. We went to a house filk, which included me watching C and the 3 year old swim for a couple of hours. I also had a poorly timed reminder that you have no control over the family you are born into*.

Today: C has his first piano recital. I should go to the closer feed store today or tomorrow to buy dog food before my coupon expires. If I go today, Sunday might be the closest I've had to a down day in almost two weeks. The thing is, since I still have to pick up the horse poop before garbage day, I may be better off just having that down day on Monday.


*That one hit me with enough emotional impact, it's going to take way more than one down day to work through.

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.

It's been raining a lot today. It's still raining. We are very wet, muddy, and cold here. Upside, maybe that will keep the fireworks to a minimum; our dog Pete would sure like that to be the case. He taught himself to be scared of loud booms, after observing our dog Hazel for several years. We're pretty sure he forgot he was faking it a long while back.

S had a bonfire shindig cancelled due to the health of the host, but given this rain it may have ended up cancelled due to weather.

She is, instead, joining the rest of the family at what appears to be becoming an annual tradition of a house filk on New Year's Eve at a particular friend's house.

H has to work, but her shift ends at nine, so she may manage to make it to the shindig for a couple of hours.

We have an out of town friend (K) and an in town friend (A) who are being collected by M to join in the singing and fun.


ETA: I did manage to get H to the party for the last couple of hours.

We had two unexpected additions to the filk. One was an out of town flute player (1/2 of Echo's Children), who ended up giving H some pointers, including the fingering for the beginning of the Star Wars theme. The others, a local couple who used to host the majority of house filks in the area, but had been scarce for at least five years due to health issues. I had gone to their handfasting when pregnant with C, and apparently they just made it legal with the state this past October.

I missed most of the last Con we were going to, because I threw out my back. I would have really liked a chance to participate in at least one evening filk. The Music Guests of Honor seemed like fun folks and we had half of Echo's Children there, as well.

I had to drive up late Friday (M went earlier with H and C), so S could go to a Birthday party. We just missed that night's filking by a few minutes; they went from filking to pumpkining in the time it took us to unload the car.

The next morning I had to take my max dose of acetaminophen to get through my concert. Despite the pain, the concert was lots of fun and I am really pleased with how it went. I got blanket permission from that one half of Echo's Children to sing any of her songs at any time (I had purposely avoided putting her songs into my concert, since I knew she would be at the Con; an unnecessary precaution as it turned out).

I went home after the concert to take care of the animals. I decided to stay at home afterwards, to rest my back, since I knew my back couldn't take another night on a hotel bed. At that point, I was still hoping I could make it out the next day.

Yeah, no, my body had other plans. I'd pushed it too hard and my back shut me down. I spent the next two days basically bed bound.

Fortunately, M and the kids could still stay at the hotel and enjoy the Con.

During a panel called "instrument petting zoo", S got to play with an electric violin and H discovered she's not half bad with a penny whistle. The two of them played together to entertain the baby in the room. H said she would make up a tune, and S could follow along on violin.

The girls filked every night, but C was too busy doing other things to join in. By the last day of the Con, he was worried he'd missed all chances to filk, so he was very happy to discover that there was filking going on at the Dead Dog. He even got a compliment from the one half of Echo's Children on his rendition of "The Seventh Horse". S said it was adorable. The cutest part to me, is C didn't realise who the "nice lady who complimented him" was, and that it was one of her songs. He was just pleased to have gotten the positive feedback.

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.