Do Life Right

Today our tortico (Tortoise Shell and Calico mix) cat Fiona turns one. She was a shelter cat who had been found on the side of a road by a police officer. Her litter mate didn’t make it, but she did (burnt paws and all). Fiona has turned into a lovely full grown cat this past year, yet she is still “all kitten” in behavior. We love her so much. She’s made the perfect addition to our family.

If you are ever looking for a pet to love, please visit your local animal shelter.

My daughters surprised me two years ago by writing “Happy Mother’s Day” in rocks along our path. Over two years, their sign has faded (rocks sank, etc.). They revamped it as a surprise for me this year.

In no particular order:

1. My earliest memory is of my mother rocking me in a rocking chair. I was calm and content. I didn’t need to be rocked, yet she rocked me anyway because she wanted to. In my memory, the experience lasted a long time. How sweet is that?
2. My mother has always believed I could do or be anything I wanted. While she hasn’t always believed that for herself, she’s always believed it of her children. While she has encouraged me to follow certain paths, they were always originally my path ideas. She’s there for support along the way.
3. My mother has never considered herself infallible. I never realized just how important this trait was until I was a parent myself and witnessed other parents around me who did not have this trait. The ability to say, “I messed up, I’m sorry, and I’ll do my best to not do it again,” is extremely important as a parent. Without this ability, kids will never completely trust you (especially when you never admit to being wrong). How could they?
4. My mom thinks I’m beautiful. This one might seem silly, but it’s not. I’ve grown from an infant to a woman, through fat times, thin times, sick times, and healthy times. Even acne times and perm times. Yet, my mother has always looked at me and thought I was beautiful, no matter how bad I might have looked to the rest of the world or myself.
5. My mother grew up in a generation and environment that didn’t value the intelligence or worthiness of females. While she is extremely smart, she wasn’t made to feel that way as a child. Even so, she never let anyone treat me that way - ever. She’s always stood up for my right to learn whatever I wanted, even when it went against her family. This was an amazing gift.
6. Whenever I’ve dabbled in a new way of doing something (such as veganism, Unschooling, or any other of a thousand different things I’ve tried), my mom has always encouraged me. She’s never put me down for wondering about alternatives and she’s always emphasized the importance of continuing to learn more about everything.
7. My mom is fanciful in all the right ways. While a careful and cautious person, she’s never afraid to take risks and go on adventures. Whether it be a new restaurant, an early morning (or late night) outing, or visiting a place she’s never been, she’s always ready for fun. She also has the uncanny ability to turn what most people would consider a bad situation into a memory that makes you smile. Some of our “worst” experiences have become laughable moments we share together and enjoy thinking and talking about due to my mom’s positive outlook and attitude.
8. Art and beautiful surroundings are important to my mom, yet she is the least pretentious person I’ve ever met. My mother has never been afraid to pick up a new artistic skill whether it be painting, room arranging, t-shirt decorating, candy making, pin-striping on motorcycles, or any of a hundred different things I’ve seen her enjoy. She enjoys surrounding herself with living art - things created by herself and the people who she loves. Her tastes are eclectic, yet her style goes together perfectly. This makes her “not set in her ways.”
9. Whenever I’ve been somewhere with my mom (my whole life), I’ve always had someone tell me how pretty my mom is. Sounds like a silly thing to be happy about, but really, if she’s remained beautiful as she ages, won’t I? It’s fun to have a beautiful mother.
10. My mom has become an amazing grandmother to my daughters. Even from a distance, she’s gotten to know my children and who they really are. She’s never assumed she knows what they like or don’t like and she’s never offended when they tell her, “Grandma, I don’t like this gift you gave me.” She just takes those moments to learn more about who they are. Knowing them personally is important to her, even when it’s required skills she never thought she’d want to have or need to know.
11. BONUS since my Mom really is that great: Whenever I’ve wanted/needed a particular thing (for school when I was a kid, for a gift, for personal use then or now, for my kids, for any reason at any time in my life), she finds it. [She’s one to have gotten me an original Cabbage Patch Kid back when they were extremely difficult to find.] I’ve mentioned this quality to a few of my friends on occasion and they’d never heard of a mother that was so understanding about this sort of thing, let alone a mom that went out of her way to help get the desired items for her loved ones. My mom has a knack at really comprehending these, so much so that she frequently has already purchased these sorts of things before we ask for them! She just senses our wants and needs and accommodates to an amazing degree. It’s caused me to really think about what I truly want vs. what I just flippantly desire. I don’t want to overload my mom.

Enjoy your own Mom today and every day! Happy Mother’s Day!

Many people believe that deserts are barren wastelands. I’ve been to several and I’ve found them all alive with plants and animals. I’ll even go so far as to say I believe the Sonoran Desert is one of the most beautiful places on Earth. Currently, many cactus flowers are blooming here (and they have been for nearly two months now with no end in sight). I look around my yard and see bright yellows, startling pinks, creamy peaches, and vibrant oranges. Here are a few glimpses of this spring desert beauty. These are all wild, native, and completely untouched by humans (although the animals have been enjoying nibbling on the prickly pear pads lately). Expect more pictures later next week since I love to photograph these beautiful flowers.

Never be afraid or ashamed to admit you don’t know something.

The other day my husband asked my older daughter (11.5) if she knew what a particular word meant. It was conversational and light and happened in response to her asking us a question about a clue on Jeopardy! — his asking was not part of a lecture. She knew what the word meant, so they continued their conversation. My younger daughter (7.5), who had not been involved in their discussion, interrupted and said, “I don’t know what that means.”

How fantastic she felt comfortable doing this!

Neither of my daughters have any problems with admitting when they don’t know something. They also never hide what they do know (yet they don’t gloat). They are who they are, and they aren’t ashamed of themselves or their knowledge (or lack thereof). It would never occur to either of them to ever hide who they are. Keeping their self esteem intact is highly important to me and it is one of the many reasons we chose to Unschool them.

According to dictionary.com (my current dictionary of choice):

• ignorant means “lacking knowledge or information as to a particular subject or fact”.
• stupid means “lacking ordinary quickness and keenness of mind; dull”.

Many people mistake these two words. To me, the distinction is highly important. As an Unschooling mother of two, I realize how important not making my children feel stupid is. Every person on Earth is at a different place in their knowledge core.

There is nothing wrong with being ignorant about a topic. However, pretending you do know something when you don’t — well, that’s just stupid. It closes you off from actually becoming smart, how ironic!

Be smart and admit your ignorance. It’s the best way there is to become knowledgeable. Once you know what you don’t know, you’re on your way to knowing it.

Johnny Rockets is giving away free veggie burgers for World Vegetarian Week (May 19 to 25).  They seem to do this annually.  The Streamliner burger itself is a vegan Boca Burger.  Just order it with no cheese and no mayo and it is instantly vegan.  I’ve found this restaurant to be very accommodating to vegans (although there are very few options).  It’s a buy one + drink + starter, get one free burger deal, and you’ll need a coupon.  Here it is.

An overheard comment I heard recently: “I could never homeschool my children because they have too many drastically different interests and are completely different people.  They’d never manage to get through a day without beating each other up.  Only parents with similar children are able to homeschool and live consensually.”

This statement is sad, yet the tenet is completely believed by most people.

Of the Unschooling families that I personally know, not a single one would even consider that statement to ring true.  While my two daughters, who *look* very similar and dress nearly identical, are very different than each other in almost all other ways, I think to myself all the time: How wonderful that they complement each other so well. I even have a story to back me up. Their biggest interests are so different, yet they love seeing the other so happy. In some ways, I think having different interests is better (my daughters have never competed with each other).

The story:
Three or so years ago (my kids are currently 7.5 and 11.5), my youngest daughter, Teagan, declared that she was going to “Make a Book”. How cool we all thought. Zoë, my older daughter, had said similar statements previously and had written many stories of her own by that point, so we all just assumed this is what Teagan wanted to do also.

Since she wasn’t writing many real words at the time, I sat down with her and asked what she wanted to write about. She said she wanted to do it on her own and seemed confused by my questions, so I stepped back. A short while later, she presented us with a fantastic BOOK. She had MADE a book. She hadn’t written a story for a book, but she had taken paper, tape, scissors, and string, and she had PHYSICALLY made a book. It was beautifully constructed.

By that point in the day, Zoë had come up with a story to tell and, with Teagan’s happiness, Zoë wrote that story into the beautiful book Teagan had made. They perfectly complemented each other.

That moment made me realize that different interests really are good! I love it when someone else in my family enjoys doing the things I don’t care to do, and vice versa.

I thought school was supposed to be about learning, not order. Yet, order and control is all it seems to be about anymore. The administrators have lost sight of the real goal by bringing attention to all their “nondisruptive” circumventions.

The Chicago Tribune’s article titled “Neuqua Valley High School student can wear anti-gay T-shirt to school, appeals court rules” shows us that a school has decided to allow a student to wear a “message” shirt of their choosing, but only after a a court told them they had to. The student wanted to wear a particular shirt during a day of “no talking”. Despite my obvious question of “How in the world would the event the school planned even work since learning usually requires talking…”, I’m baffled to see this particular type of event even being allowed to occur in a public school environment. While I don’t disagree with the sentiment of the event and I do agree that the boy wanting to wear the t-shirt should be allowed to demonstrate his constitutional rights, the fact that both the event is occurring and the t-shirt wearing was questioned is baffling.

What is particularly confusing is that this easily could have gone a different way as demonstrated by the student who wasn’t allowed to wear a t-shirt that read ‘VEGAN’ (I think I might own it). This student was not allowed to wear his shirt because it was considered “disruptive to learning” as defined by the school administrators. How far can the administrators take their personal definition of “disruptive”? Would they be able to disallow dietary choices completely with the statement that the person’s food choices were too disruptive to the rest of the children at lunchtime? Scary thoughts…

Sometimes the world needs disruption!

For better or worse, here are some famously disruptive people that have changed the world:

• Martin Luther King Jr.
• Gandhi
• Galileo Galilei
• Albert Einstein
• Martin Luther
• George Washington
• Thomas Paine
• Charles Darwin

Go out there and tell your truths! Not everyone will agree with you, and that is okay. Be true to yourself and your knowledge! Parents, allow your children their freedom! Don’t force them to fight you or they will rebel. Start fresh today. Think through your actions, then follow the ethical path even if that means you are doing the opposite of the people around you. Think you can’t make a difference? You can! Your age doesn’t matter.

Photograph taken in Tucson, Arizona (west of I-10, near “A” Mountain), March 2008.

I’ve heard many parents say they limit their children’s television and movie viewing (both content and total “screen time“) because they are fearful their children will grow into zombie couch potatoes that essentially worship videos. It’s such an amazing sloth-like image, it intrigues me.

I’ve never seen this behavior happen with children who are allowed to watch whatever they want, whenever they want. I will admit though that children like this are rare. They are the few who have nothing to rebel against, nothing to escape from. These children are called Unschoolers.

When children have parents that are present and available (no, those terms aren’t the same), they are free to explore and experiment and make mistakes safely in their own time and in their own way. They do things that are stimulating to them. They are never bored and never “zombies”. They’ve no reason to be. Only people who spend the majority of their time forced to do things they don’t want to do will rebel; these are the people that “zone out” to relax (by using television as a drug). A balance of activity and inactivity naturally exists when people are allowed to follow their passions. It also is not a fact that television viewing is a sedentary activity — my seven year old proves that myth wrong!

My most popular post regarding television:

• “TV or Not TV, That is the Question“

A fabulous Sandra Dodd webpage on movies:

• “Movies as a Playground, as Tools, as Portals“

Recommendations of really great television shows and movies:

• “Top 10: Can’t Get Enough of Star Trek“
• “Top 10: Favorite Movies and Television Shows We’ve Seen in 2007“
• “Top 10: Favorite Christmas Movies 2007“

This entire blog post is a direct quote announcement:

Lovin’ Spoonfuls is proud to help sponsor Dr. Nathan Winograd, former director of the San Francisco SPCA.

Most of us believe that there are too many cat and dogs around, not enough homes and that we are therefore forced to euthanize the “excess”.  Dr. Winograd has implemented programs in San Francisco as well as other towns and cities that have eliminated the need to do so, through aggressive spay / neuter programs, trap-neuter-release programs, foster networks and other means.

We in Tucson can join those cities in eliminating killing of our “unwanted” pets.  You are invited to hear Dr. Winograd speak on this subject.  Event details:

Friday, May 9, 2008
6:30 PM to 9:30 PM
Marriott University Park Hotel Ballroom
880 E. Second Street
Tucson, Arizona
More info and reservations: http://www.savemoreanimals.org/winograd/registration.html

Dr. Winograd is the author of a book called “Redemption: The Myth of Pet Overpopulation and the No Kill Revolution in America.” He is an attorney and currently the director of the national No Kill Advocacy Center, whose “No Kill Equation” outlines the steps necessary for building no kill communities.