Tulip Drama

I'd been thinking lately that I should go and refresh the deer repellent that I strew around our shrubs in the back yard. The snow is gone, mostly for good. The bushes look like they have sustained some nibbling, but they are not completely devastated.

After refreshing the repellent, I looked around the rest of the garden beds. There is lots of work to do. The dozen or so bags of yard waste we got rid of last week helped, but there are two more beds to clean out, and one is large.

Last of all I looked at the front of the house. The tulips should be showing some leaves by now.

To my horror, I found my tulips are the latest item added to the deer buffet. The previous owner of our house had planted this pretty row of 40-60 tulips in the front bed. Every year we've enjoyed them tremendously. This year, alas --they've been munched. I'm not sure we will have even 10 lonely blooms. I was probably a week too late in getting the repellent refreshed in the back. Now I see I'll need to begin using it in the front of the house too.

At the Movies

Every once in a great while we will go see a movie at the cinema. We're on the once-a-year plan or there abouts. When we have a special occasion, such as this weekend, though we sometimes head out to see a show.

With family visiting from out of town, we headed off to the cinema. There were two offerings available to us, being that we were a party of four adults and two children. "Monsters Vs. Aliens", and "Race to Witch Mountain" were showing, and it was no contest for me.

Would I rather see another iteration of the tired formula of liberty-siphoning propaganda coming from sassy, selfish, impertinent creatures set in child-friendly colorful cartoons? or some live actors portraying an action adventure story?

No contest. Thankfully, the Artist and the Engineer were also turned off by the ads they had seen for Monsters vs. Aliens.

We saw about half an hour's worth of previews (yawn). Rick and I whispered to each other that two of the movies previewed looked bad, one for being environmentalist overkill and the other for being blatantly anti-American.

When the feature show finally began, our whole party was hooked into "Race to Witch Mountain" right away. It was fun, action packed, exciting, a little scary in some parts according to our pre-teen and our 7-year old. The best part was, through the whole movie there was not a scene I wished I could have shielded my kids from seeing, and not one word I'd rather them not hear. We had fun at the show and enjoyed talking about it afterwords too. There was one thinly veiled political issue briefly addressed in the script, but it was skirted so quickly I could forgive them. And the great, repeated, use of a certain product logo placement lent a great irony that Rick and I particularly enjoyed.

Muddling Along

I suspect the Artist may have strep throat again. It looks like the Engineer and I will be having school alone today.

The past few weeks have been a hurried conglomerate of the family moving from appointment to appointment and event to event. The end is in sight though, the first week of May will bring us to a family vacation. I'll write more about that later.

Besides school, upcoming visits from relatives (hooray!!!), Easter, and the upcoming vacation, I've been doing some thinking about gardening again this year, keeping up my workouts, and looking forward to summer activities with the kids.

I sincerely hope the garden will be improved with the addition of compost this year, and for the first time in a decade I plan to borrow a tiller to turn the soil. I will go heavy on the lettuces this year and I'll go back to planting some green beans and peas. Raised beds will have to wait for another year, I think, unless I can get a small one to experiment with.

The pedometer and been helping with the 10,000 steps a day program. I don't make it to 10,000 every day, but I'm not usually far off unless it is a Sunday. I must be a real lazy bones on Sundays! Sometimes I don't break 5000. And I am still using the treadmill four days a week to get in a quick, uphill mile.

A Clear Night!

Wednesday was a clear night in northeast Ohio. But things did not completely clear up for the Artist's science experiment.

The easiest constellation for me to find is Orion. We located Orion--hello old friend!-- and looked across the sky to where the big dipper was. So far, so good. Finding the little dipper proved to be more difficult. The six ancient oaks in our back yard did not help matters. Nor did the new sensor light the neighbors installed behind their garage.

We could see stars through the trees, but the view was so broken up by the inescapable branches, we could not be sure the star we were focusing on was indeed Polaris. I'm disappointed with myself for setting such expectations for this experiment with the Artist and then not being able to fulfill them.

The Artist got a latitude reading of 38º with her self-calibrated meter. Not too bad. Cleveland, Ohio is actually 41.30º (or 41.49º according to a different web site. It was too much to ask for two sources to agree).

The 3 - 3.5 degrees error the Artist's meter gave are just fine with me. We will not be orienteering with this meter, after all. I can see where fractions of the difference can occur with her hand-penciled calibrations, the site not aligning perfectly with the pointer, and that nagging doubt that were sighting the right star to begin with.

Perhaps she can try again from the local school yard one night or from her Papa's house. The view will be better in either place. From Papa's house she would have the help of an astronomy expert to boot!

Testing for Life

It is science experiment time at Homestead Lutheran Academy again today. The Artist's astronomy text, How the Universe Works, included this interesting experiment.

I'm slightly irked that we have not been able to finish the last experiment yet! We're still waiting to see Polaris! The rare cloudless nights have been unaccommodating in their cold. The remainder of the nights we have either forgotten to check or it has been cloudy.

But back to today! The Artist braved the cold to retrieve some sand from the sand box. She followed instructions in mixing a different additive into each of three glass jars: salt, baking powder, and yeast. Now they sit in the refrigerator "to imitate the cold on Mars." That one makes me wonder a bit. I'd consider Mars much colder than my freezer, let alone the refrigerator. As the temperature of our Florida room is 15ºF right now, I opted for the glasses to go out there instead. The photo was taken during their brief stint in the refrigerator though.After sitting outside all day, the Artist will bring in her jars and add some sugar water to each one. As I type she is beginning her write up for the experiment and forming her prediction about each jar's response to the sugar-water nutrient. About an hour after dinner she should have some more to write about!

School District Cuts

This week I received the newsletter from my local school district. I believe the Superintendent in my district has a tough road ahead, as well as behind recently, and furthermore, she is doing an admirable job with the less-than-ideal conditions that exist now.

For example, I really do appreciate that I was called to participate in a poll. I, as the mother of elementary school age children, was asked my impressions of school quality, safety, curriculum, texts, district fiscal responsibility, frequency of levy issues on the ballot, teachers and more.

When I spoke with the congenial pollster, I did tell her I home school my children so my impressions are mostly vague and second-hand. She wanted my opinions anyway.

One question was about a levy on the upcoming ballot. I told her that I would vote against the levy. I gave her only one of my reasons, that being the district put a huge levy on the ballot two years ago, saying that if it passed they would not put another new money issue on the ballot for five years. She laughed. Was it because I remembered the promise? Was it because the previous 50 people she spoke with that day told her the same thing? Was it because she thought I may have believed the promise from two years ago? Don't think for a second I thought they would keep that promise. I did think it was an irresponsible and short-sighted thing to say.

Looks like I was right. There will be another huge levy on the ballot in May. The newsletter that officially broke the news to me had something interesting to say about what the future holds if additional funding is not received: "Outdated technology and textbooks mean students will do poorly on standardized tests and be less able to compete in the job market."

That bullet point struck me because I've noticed over the years when I compile the lists of texts and books my children have read each school year several of them were published in the 1950s. There are a few from each decade in between then and now too, but at least three quarters of the books are over 25 years old. I don't think this is detrimental at all, and my school's standardized test scores bear that out.

It is not so simple a problem as to say "Let them use older books," though. The older books owned by the district are probably not books I would choose for my school. They are probably on the list of text titles the district had to choose from when spending money from the state of federal sources. Those strings are a noose.

The superintendent closed her message in the newsletter with word that funds are promised from Washington and Columbus (Ohio), but so far only promises have arrived, not guarantees or dollars. "Therefore, the only real hope our children have is you." (emphasis is mine).

I know this message is intended to garner support for the upcoming levy, but what a shocking statement! It is sad, shocking, downright pathetic, and an ill omen that parent would look to Washington or Columbus before looking to themselves to provide hope for their children.

There are great programs to help people with difficult educational challenges, and I'm thankful they exist. But even considering those circumstances I cannot fathom looking to government first for hope.

Blurt Shirts!

Saying what's on your mind never looked so good.

My husband, aka the Quipper, has begun putting his quips to work for himself with the opening of his tee shirt store at www.Blurt-Shirts.com.

He has several departments available now, some in development, and more ideas in the hopper all the time. My favorites, and I think his favorites too, are the political shirts, specifically his Revolution 2010 line. Here's one of my favorites from the Revolution 2010 line.
He also features a line of Lutheran shirts:
At the moment Rick is developing some lines of humorous shirts. I can't wait for you to see them! They really tickle my funny bone and I think they will be attention-getting and popular too. Be first to see them when they are available: sign up for the free newsletter at the lower left of this page.

Other topics include global warming, sports, and music. Check them out!