All In A Day's Work at Home Educating Family

Ever wonder how to decide on which parent stays at home to teach the kids and which parent goes to work?   I shared some of the questions we used to make that very decision in my monthly blog post "All in a Day's Work" at Home Educating Family. 

A Short Homeschool Production of Henry IV Part I

From November of 2012 through early March of this year, I taught Shakespeare's Richard II, Henry IV Parts 1 & 2, and Henry V to my sixteen-year-old son Noah and another homeschooler, Nathan.  At the end of Henry V, I gave the boys their choice of one of three final projects: writing an essay, taking a written test, or staging a scene from one of the plays.  They chose the latter, and below is their effort.  Please invest ten minutes and look at their work.  Enlisting the aid of their brothers and sisters, and with no help from any adults (except for taxi service to the set), these boys planned, choreographed, filmed, and edited the final battle from Henry IV Part I.   I cannot begin to tell you how happy I am with their work.  It is a pleasure to see two high school students enjoy Shakespeare this much!  Direct your comments to Noah and Nathan, please.  This is all their work.  

 

This Is NOT How You Measure Electricity

So, I walked in the door and The Boss stared at me.  "Did you get my text?" she asked.

That's a moment for a gulp. 

"No.  I leave my phone in the car when I'm in karate, " I explained, wondering whether or not I was in trouble. "What's up?"

"Just check your texts," she told me.

I grabbed my phone, opened the text, and saw this

Yikes!  That's my kitchen!  That's one of my wall sockets.  It's the socket where my radio is plugged in.  Then I saw the second picture...

"Are you okay?" I asked.

"I'm fine," she replied.  "Your Bears tape measure, however, is not."

Leave it to the Packers fan to ground my Bears tape measure while measuring the kitchen.  Apparently, she lost control of the tape measure, and it slid onto the plug for our printer.

The teenager saw the large flash of light and came running.  Instinctively, the Boy Scout grabbed his phone and took a picture.  Glad to see his priorities are straight.

Half the outlets in our kitchen were dead, as was a radio and our microwave.  Luckily, they all survived.  I flipped the breaker back to "on" and everything came back to life.  All I had to do was reset the time on the microwave and the radio, and all of my presets.

And the Boss is alright.  Amused, but alright. 

It's Time To Write Again

I've had the audacity to dedicate most of my time each day to teaching my children.  That has left very little time for writing a blog.  I know.  I need to get my priorities straight.  I've neglected this place for too long.

Since last December, all of my writing has been for Home Educating Family Magazine and their accompanying website, Home Educating Family Association.  I was blessed with the opportunity to write a regular column for their magazine, and a monthly blog entry for their website.  The magazine comes out four times each year.  The blog entry is the first Monday of each month.  This opportunity is a dream come true. 

I've been struggling a bit when faced with selecting topics to write about, as well as finding my usual style for presenting my ideas. The problem is that I haven't been writing enough. Writing is like any other activity: you have to practice if you want to get better.  There's no better place to practice than write here. 

Melissa commented to me the other night that some of my funnier blog posts were answers to questions presented in memes that flew around the blogosphere a few years ago.  She found one online and posted it to my Facebook wall.  It was a public challenge.  I picked up the gauntlet, tucked it into my belt, and sat at the keyboard.  It was fun. Here goes...



ONE OF YOUR SCARS, HOW DID YOU GET IT? Some people have cool scars from bar fights or spectacular car wrecks.  I have a scar on my right forearm from a box of fish.  But it was a big, heavy box of fish. It had been shipped into Kanas City from Boston, and when I picked it up from the belt loader as it came off the plane I sliced open my arm on the corner of the box.  It was so cold out that I didn’t feel the cut, so I shrugged my shoulders and kept on working.  Apparently, it needed stitches. 

WHAT’S YOUR WORST FEAR?  Being eaten by a shark.  In my underwear.  I don’t know how the shark gets into my underwear, but it’s still pretty frightening.  (It's an old joke, but be honest. You smiled,)

WHAT KIND OF HAIR/EYE COLOR DO YOU LIKE ON THE OPPOSITE SEX?  They have eyes?  I never noticed. 
 
FAVORITE PIZZA TOPPING?  Beer.

ARE YOU DOUBLE JOINTED?  No. I can only smoke one joint at a time.

FAVORITE CLOTHING BRAND?  Fitz.  “Do you like it?”  “Yeah, it Fitz.”

SAY A NUMBER FROM ONE TO A HUNDRED:  There.  I said it.  Out loud.  Everyone in the kitchen heard me, too.  Bet you wish you were here, don’t you?  I guess you’ll never know.

FAVORITE QUOTE?  “Don’t believe everything you read on the internet simply because there’s a quote and a picture next to it.” – Abraham Lincoln

HAVE YOU BEEN OUT OF YOUR HOME COUNTRY?  I’ve been to Japan, Guam, the Philippines, Australia, New Zealand, Antarctica, Fiji, and the exotic Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean. 

MET ANYONE FAMOUS? I met former Chicago Mayor Jane Byrne’s husband.  He gave me an autograph that reads, “You should try my pork chops!”   He forgot to include his address and phone number, the cheapskate.

FIRST JOB?  I delivered newspapers written in Polish to little old ladies who smelled like cabbage and tipped me with rotten fruit and Halls Mentho-Lyptus.   They meant well.


HAVE YOU EVER HAD SURGERY?  Yes, and if my wife ever gets pregnant, there’s a urologist who’s gonna get a beat down.

WHAT DO YOU GET COMPLIMENTED ABOUT MOST?  The back of my head.  It usually comes when people say, “Hey, look!  He’s leaving!”

WHAT’S YOUR FAVORITE TYPE OF CANDY? Eye candy.

HAVE YOU EVER REALLY AND TRULY HAD A BEST FRIEND? Yes.  And I was smart enough to marry her.

WHAT IS YOUR HAIR COLOR?  It varies, depending on whether you are looking at my nose or my ears.

EYE COLOR?  I color.  You color.  We all color.  Coloring is fun!

FAVORITE RESTAURANT? That place where my wife sits across from me, a cold beer sits between us, and the children sit at home with a babysitter.  I LOVE that place!

PLAY ANY MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS? I love playing with musical instruments.  Oboes are surprisingly aerodynamic when you don't have a javelin, and the bean bag toss into a tuba bell is fun, too.

RELATIONSHIPS OR ONE NIGHT STANDS?  Two night stands: one for my side of the bed, and one for hers.  We can’t share just one night stand.  It wouldn’t be good for our relationship.

WHAT WAS THE LAST THING YOU BOUGHT?  Four boxes of Life cereal and a package of hot dogs. 

WHAT BOOK ARE YOU READING?  Milton’s Paradise Lost.  It’s a delightful little tale where a man tries to justify the ways of God to man (as if that was really needed), and one of his characters admonishes another not to try to understand things that beyond his understanding. 

Writing about Writing

Shortly after I resumed writing this blog, I was offered the opportunity to write for both Home Educating Family magazine and Home Educating Family Association’s blog. Home Educating Family Association runs a leading online homeschool curriculum fair and prints an excellent home education magazine. The magazine is nice. It’s a full color, glossy magazine for the homeschooling community that offers practical and spiritual advice, support, and encouragement for homeschoolers. The website is a one-stop curriculum fair where you can view home education curriculum from a wide variety of publishers, all from the comfort of your living room.

 

Writing professionally has been a dream of mine for a couple of decades. I don’t know the exact definition of “professional writer,” but since I am being paid for my efforts, I will hesitantly lay claim to the title. With the offer to write my own column for the magazine came a very short deadline.  I was given two weeks to write an essay about father/daughter relationships for the March issue. That article was far harder to write than I thought it would be. I volunteered to write an additional arts/crafts/activity piece, due on the same day. I wrote it and took the necessary pictures on the morning of the deadline. I was offered my own monthly blog entry for the HEF website, with an article due Christmas Day (that was moved back two days for the holiday) and I had to write the family’s annual Christmas letter.  I was suddenly faced with a lot of writing to complete in a short period of time, and I realized that deadlines are deadlines no matter how strong the writer’s block.

I was absolutely blessed with opportunity, for which I am very grateful. 

The big challenge in all of this is to remain funny and relevant. That requires a lot of mental energy in a house that is not known for its calming atmosphere. Humor on demand is difficult. Clean humor on demand is even harder. As I look back over the years at my blog writing, I see a lot of humorous writing completed at my leisure. There’s the rub. Time. I didn’t have a lot of it. I didn’t post anything here.  

I have submitted all the writing that my editors need at this time. I have a month before my next deadline and I know the topic about which I will write. My Christmas letter was printed, mailed, and in the recipient’s mailboxes before Christmas day, which is a record for me. So, I thought I would visit my writing workshop, this playground of words, and pick up where I left off.

 

I will leave links to the blog pieces when they are published online. My Christmas article will be available online sometime in the spring, if anyone is interested. And as usual, I’ll share the latest hijinks with the kids. They are my constant source of entertainment and frustration. Life is good that way.