Chickens and Unschooling

Boy called me to tell me he's turning in his 2 week notice today.

Two thoughts:

1: 'Bout freaking time.

2: Start of summer break may prove to be a challenging time to find work.

Oh well, filling out applications and doing interviews are good skill sets to practice before you have to worry about paying rent.

The boy got scheduled for 5 days next week.

Apparently that old adage, about being rewarded if you show up on time and actually work hard while at work, has another data point in it's favor.

Woot!


ETA: Okay, turns out he got extra shifts because lots of people wanted days off. He's back to 3 a week. Still, he demonstrated he can be counted on, so fingers crossed into the future. It's worth noting that 5 days kicked his ass, so for the time being he is happy to be back down to 3.

I'm so proud of my girls.

Both have drivers licenses. Both get themselves to and from classes at the community college and are maintaining good grades.

S started her first shift of her first job today (DQ for those keeping score).

H is still working 4 to 5 evenings at her pizza job and is on her second day of modeling for the Life Drawing class. She is also making plans to move out in February. If all goes well, she will be sharing an apartment with a friend she met at the pizza job.

Lady running teen group, "Do you want to join us over here?"

Me, "Naw, I'm going to be anti social today."

Lady running teen group, nervous laugh.

I'm not usually that honest, but as S pointed out when I was raging a wee bit more than normal at the idiot drivers in front of me on the way here, I've been grouchy lately.

Maybe it's because I'm still worn out from going to Ren Faire on Sunday. Maybe it's because my leg has been bothering me more lately. Maybe it's because someone on Facebook, with whom I'm not allowed to argue, has been sharing stupid memes at a higher frequency.

Either way, being social at this teen get together, isn't strictly necessary.

Realistically, I am not going to become long term friends with any of these ladies. Once my obligations as homeschool Mom are over, I will never hang out with the Soda Shop crowd. They like structure to their homeschooling, gardening, hiking, and the like. None of them value gaming enough to bring their kids to my gaming days, which might have given us a point of commonality. They also never show up to any get together I plan if there is not an organized activity attached. Plus, they are boring.

S is currently sitting with a group of girls, but she's immersed in her phone. C lucked out, and a boy he gets along with really well showed up. They are engaged in animated conversation.

School has taught generations of people in our country that separation by age is absolutely essential for proper socialization and the development of frienships.

Anyone who has lived with any level of self awareness for two seconds in the real world should be able to see how patently absurd such an attitude is.

You would think someone with the willingness to buck the system and homeschool their kid would perceive this even faster than the normal societally programmed individual.

And yet, I have been faced with people on my homeschool group who can type with a straight face, "I don't think too many 16 year olds would want to hang out with 12 year olds and vice versa". This came about because a 13 year old's Mother suddenly changed her girls hang out* age range from 13-16 to 12-14, so they can "make sure and do age-appropriate fun activities."

My displeasure was not well received by several mothers "grateful for this opportunity" this group presented for their daughter; yeah, well, of course, since their girls are 12 and the new age range benefits them.

I completely agree that the Mother going to the trouble to organize and host can have whatever arbitrary rules she wants. Heck, she could host cupcake decorating for only 13 year old girls who can bring a pet goose with them. That's beside the point. What caught me by surprise, was when I ran into a brick wall on the idea that frienships form from common interests, and arbitrary age ranges aren't neccessary.

Setting aside the fact that this process got my daughter excited about participating in an ongoing hangout with cool sounding activities, just to have the rug pulled out from under her at the last minute, I am still genuinely confused as to what 15 and 16 year olds are going to bring to the party that would translate to age-inappropriate, now that 12 year olds are involved.

Keep in mind, the hostesses' daughter, when 12, used to happily hang out and play games with my then 15 and 16 year olds. She was awesome. We loved her. She was one of the reasons I brought this whole clusterfuck up to S in the first place.





*I personally think girl specific/boy specific activities are weird, but we know the girl personally and realise she was having trouble specifically with some of the boys at our gaming group, so that particular limit makes some sense to us under the circumstances.

Lately, S's 3D creativity has turned towards "How to Train your Dragon" for inspiration.







These are running at 8 to 10 hours build time. Sleep can sometimes take a back seat to her muse.

Drivers liscense - check.

Crappy teen job - check.

Taking placement test to enroll in community college - check.

H isn't doing too badly right now.

While comparisons are never helpful, it's nice to be able to point to societally recognized achievements when asked how my kid's doing.


ETA: She passed the reading placement with a high enough score to be reading exempt and is now officially enrolled in Community College.

Arrow the Britney discovered a flaw in our fence, the hard way.

Current total $625. If he needs x-rays, total will be $850. On cursory exam, vet people think it's a clean cut, and doesn't go into the fragile bits below the skin layer. They won't know for sure till they sedate, clean, shave, wash out, and examine him while he's under. I expect a call within the hour on his status. Huge relief I was there when it happened, so turn around time for treatment is going to be fast enough to likely avoid poor healing. If he managed this while I was gone to the girls' social thing planned today, it might have gone unnoticed till dinner time.

Since H can drive, the girls still managed to get to their social thing while I delt with Arrow. H did have trouble finding it, but they had the presence of mind to remember money since I completely forgot to give them some. Small victories.

It has been a while since I've posted anything of substance. Sometimes if I go on my journal and point out that sort of obvious fact it opens the floodgates on the words trapped in my head and I end up with a decently written entry.

Trying to remember enough of last month, or even last week, or even today to reflect on.

S is still playing violin. She learned about half notes a couple of weeks ago; apparently they are much harder to play than eighth notes.

C is still taking karate. He earned his middle level orange belt. He has been spending a lot of class time instructing lower belts. He is usually very good at that sort of thing. He enjoys it, especially if it's one of his friends.

H is still on independent sleep scheduling. This morning she went into the front yard at about 5am and practiced guitar for half an hour, focusing on making smooth, fast, chord transitions.

Well, what do you know. I figured out something to write.

The kids have, for as long as we've played video games, created imaginary plot lines and characters, to play what came to be known as a game in a game. It began with me playing through the games the kids couldn't master themselves and eventually transitioned to the kids on the controllers, playing without needing my input. The various Spyro games were some of their favorites. So, from as far back as the kids can remember, they developed dragon characters, many with detailed appearances, personalities, back stories, and voices.

A few months back, H got bored with the game and added dice rolls to makes some of the decisions in the progression of the story. This immediately became a hit with S and C, and Dragons and Dungeons (what was originally a joke name, but it stuck) was born. H then spent a good deal of time creating character sheets, figuring out game dynamics, and generally preparing to transition the dragon adventures from a video game, to a table top role playing game.

She even made boxes to represent the two dragons S and C each rolled up to be their characters for the game. I made some alterations to the boxes, and our box dragons were born.



After a trip to Walmart for some magnet strips, they became refrigerator box dragons.



They still work for gaming figures, and after a long break because of being sick, H was finally ready to run a game for her brother and sister.