So here we are, week 2 in our ongoing Virtual Academy experiment. It’s been….interesting.

First of all, we still don’t have all our curriculum and it will be backordered until toward the end of September putting T~ a full month behind in several subjects (social studies, science and art). Despite the fact that it’s the company’s fault that we don’t have the stuff on time, we are still expected to make up the work. This, it seems, will be an underlying theme this year.

For example, yesterday the online school was having “technical difficulties”. What that means is that kids could not log on to do their online work, parents could not log on to see the instructions for offline work (because usually the instructions are also included in the curriculum that has not yet shipped so right now the only option for teaching is to access the instructions online). That basically means no work could be done while the system was done which, as it turns out, was all day.

And then there’s the internal email which runs on a different system but has also been down more than it has been up. Finally the teachers are just scrapping the internal email for most regular communications after they realized that relying on it to log attendance was an inherently flawed idea if the kids could never receive the emails!

And yet again today the online school is down. This time worse than yesterday. Yeah, this is going smooth as buttah.

You know what? Shit happens! But the thing that burns me up (see underlying theme, above) is that if a public school had a fire, the kids would not be expected to return in the evening to make up the hours that day. It was made quite clear that we are still very much expected to figure out how to log our six hours a day even though we can’t actually log into the school. Funny, that.

And speaking of logging those six hours…we have gotten pretty good at streamlining our learning. I think T. and I are developing a system. The curriculum is based on the concept of mastery which means as soon as he masters a concept, he can go on. No busy work, no hours of problems you already understand how to solve. You do a short assessment, if you achieve 80% or higher, you move on. So we are skipping a lot of the in between activities and just using those if he does NOT achieve mastery on an assessment. This is making lesson time really fast and much less boring or stressful.

So that’s the requirements of the curriculum. The state, though, has its own requirements and it requires that students do 6 hours a day of work. Some good friends with much more experience in the whole online school gave me some good early advice on filling those six hours. When you stand back and really examine what your kids are doing with their free time, so much of it is deeply enriching and educational. So all of those things get counted as hours. If my kids swim or ride bikes, that is PE. If they dissect a dragonfly (which I’m sorry to say is exactly what happened this weekend) then that is science. If they spend a lot of time on Wikipedia, that is reading and often science too. I am really falling back on my unschooling roots here and it feels like a good balance.

I am probably not going to survive the state email loop though. Let’s just say it hasn’t been a great fit. I knew as soon as the “honesty is so important in our reporting of the hours, let’s not encourage each other to dishonestly represent the hours our kids spend learning by logging hours they spend doing things enjoyable!” thread started (which was, I’m sure you can guess, aimed at me).  I always love being accused of being dishonest!!!

But then the “let’s not criticize the curriculum, the school or our teachers” threads started and I knew that it probably wouldn’t work out for me. ha. Seriously I think our teacher is awesomeness, so far. She is as screwed as the rest of us with all the changes and lateness of it all. She has over fifty students!!! I would not criticize her but its in my nature to be very skeptical of any for-profit business and skeptical of our government. And if we can’t talk about that and ways to better both of those systems then, well, I probably won’t be wasting my time there. I happen to think my tax dollars should go for my own child’s education in a way that best serves us. And I happen to believe the VA profits in a HUGE way from each child admitted because there is no classroom, no electric bill, low curriculum costs, etc. So I expect a lot in return. I think that’s OK to talk about. So I guess I’ll just talk about it here.

So all that said, my friend Dorin asked T~ how he was liking it and he was very positive about it. I’m reminded of all the really stupid, lame, crazy wasteful time that schools use up to justify their 8-4 school days….study halls, assemblies, conferences, etc. Blah. Yuck. But managing it all through the virtual school is HELLA-easier than handling it all in a brick and mortar.  I think it’s a pretty good fit for T. for now. If or when it isn’t, we’ll just unenroll. Meanwhile, I’ll try to balance the positive with the annoyingly frustrating.

Don’t say I didn’t warn you!

I’m not going to make this a political blog but I am a politics junkie of sorts. I have been glued to the TV watching CNN and Fox News and CSPAN. Some people watched the Olympics with such obsession, that’s how I few the Conventions. I think I actually cried at some point watching one speech or another every single night of the DNC.

I will also say that while I don’t hide that I’m an Obama supporter, it wasn’t always this way. Although I have some very liberal values, I also have some very conservative Republican views as well. At one point in my life I was a huge McCain fan. In 2004 I dreamed of a McCain presidency instead of the Bush presidency. When I heard he was running this time, I was not heartbroken. But McCain has changed and wavered from the politician I used to love to one that more closely resembles the current administration. I rationalized that it was a political move to appeal to a broader base but that, if elected, he would still be the same politician I had always loved. He wasn’t my first choice but if the votes fell to him, we would survive.

But the choice of Sarah Palin as VP has not only made my hope shatter but has, for the first time in this campaign, struck deep paralyzing fear in me as an American citizen. There is not one thing about Sarah Palin that I can say I support, relate to, share or even respect.  Terror is not an over-exaggeration for how I feel. This isn’t an unfamiliar feeling. I felt the same terror in 2000 and then again in 2004 as friends and family drunk the koolaid and voted Republican for reasons that often had nothing to do with the future of our country or even political agendas and everything to do with religion, values and other non-political issues. Both times that terror was quickly and fiercely shown to totally justified. I’ve learned to trust that feeling of terror and it scares the hell out of me that a campaign that just two days ago I considered to be divisive but not terrifying is now completely terrifying.

Now almost all of those friends and family regret those original convictions and gross misjudgments. I hope they will all have learned from those mistakes and take a deep, long, hard look at the kind of direction a Palin administration could lead us down. Creationism in our PUBLIC schools, forcing *children* to carry to term the babies of incest and rape (hello back ally abortion of the 60’s! We sure didn’t miss you but we are staring you in the face again!), no sex education in the schools (hello again back ally abortions! We are going to be good friends!), the destruction of any HOPE for good energy policy or environmental oversights (goodbye earth! It was nice knowing you!), forget ANY chance at a progressive health care reform, evangelical radicalism invading our political arena. I honestly believe with every single fiber of my being that as devastated as our country is at the hands of the Bush administration’s last eight years, it will get worse…far far worse…if McCain/Palin are in office.

And I’m angry. Angry because I resent the hell out of that woman using her vajayjay to pretend she and I have ANYTHING in common. We are certainly not a “we”. Putting her on the same level as Hillary Clinton makes me want to scream. I’m not a Hillary supporter and never have been but I can acknowledge that she has worked hard for her entire life to shatter the political glass ceiling and she has worked *in WASHINGTON* to do just that for many times longer than Palin has even been in *local* politics. To compare herself to the great women in political history is completely outrageous and makes me embarrassed as a woman.  Two weeks ago she was calling herself “just a hockey mom from a small town in Alaska” but now she stands in front of our nation and has the audacity to put herself on the same level as women in history who REALLY put cracks in that ceiling?  She’s riding on their coattails but taking the credit. It is an insult to every woman who came before her.  Just because she is being used as a last-minute Hail Mary political pawn does not make her a hard working powerful legendary or historical politician. In fact, just the opposite. This woman is an embarrassment to women - she is and will continue to work to turn back the hands of time on feminism, women’s right and important issues to women. While Obama is telling fence-sitting African-Americans to vote their politics and not their skin-color or their obligation to their roots, Palin is telling women to vote their gender.

And I’m embarrassed and mortified that some women are doing just that without knowing a single thing about her dangerous brand of politics and the end result will be devastation to our nation that can’t stand to lose any more than we have already had taken from us. I heard a quote on CNN yesterday from a woman who said she was a Hillary supporter but after hearing the Obama acceptance speech had swung her vote but then when she heard that a WOMAN was chosen as VP under McCain she said she probably would swing her vote to the woman so long as she spoke “intelligently”. It did not matter what she SAID, just that she came across as intelligent. Wow. These people are just as dangerous to politics and the future of our country as the people who vote for religious reasons without regard for political views.

But all hope is not lost. Not at all. At the end of the day I believe that we are a smart nation that has been devastated enough in the last 8 years to cast aside religiously-controlled political views and stubborn allegiances to the Elephant. I believe we are responsible enough, now,  to force ourselves to be more accountable to our obligation as US citizens to become informed and educated about the issues that plague our country before we arrive at the polls. I believe MOST of us know better than to make a decision based on how someone dresses or whether they have black skin or breasts.

And, in fact, some people in my life who I never thought would EVER consider a Democratic candidate are now fully committed to the Obama campaign. I get honks and thumbs up when folks see my Obama bumper sticker while driving down my very Red city streets. At get-togethers and public places people approach and say “Is that your car? I’m an Obama fan too!”. I was actively involved in the last presidential election too but nothing like that ever happened then. People are pumped! Former Hillary supporters are totally on board, too.  And I’m super proud to say that my Mom, who has not voted in, well, a long time is already planning to cast her vote and called today to say that she wished I was local so we could go to the Obama rally in Michigan, together this week. And I sure wish I could.

I sure wish I could AND that I could take the stage and look at my fellow Michiganders and say “My family was torn apart and we lost our home under the Bush administration, like many of you.  My friends lost family members in Iraq under this administration. We ALL know someone who has lost a job locally because of the bad policy decisions of this administration. We want it to end. A vote for McCain/Palin will seal the the coffin on this great state. If in no other state as great as in Michigan, Obama’s audacity of Hope MUST be brought home. It is all we have. It is our last great chance. ”

For 18 long months, you have stood up, one by one, and said enough to the politics of the past. You understand that in this election, the greatest risk we can take is to try the same old politics with the same old players and expect a different result. You have shown what history teaches us — that at defining moments like this one, the change we need doesn’t come from Washington. Change comes to Washington. Change happens because the American people demand it — because they rise up and insist on new ideas and new leadership, a new politics for a new time.

America, this is one of those moments.

~Barack Obama, Acceptance Speech

{a view of the mosquito jungle aka my backyard “paradise”}

I’m done with texas. DONE.

The reentry (from vacation), as someone in my comments aptly named it, has totally blown chunks. I can count on one hand the number of times I have left my home since I’ve come home from vacation. Ok I can count on two fingers - gymnastics and grocery shopping. Hardly “fresh air”.  I’m tired, not showered, overwhelmed, overworked and stressed so I stay in. But mostly becuase it is hotter than shit so what is there to inspire me to leave?  And looks like we have quite a bit of hurricane weather heading this way, to boot. What’s worse than hotter than hot scorching days where the sun doesn’t ever peak into my windows but its too hot to go FIND the sun? I know! Rainy days! Because somehow, defying the odds, the rainy gloomy weather DOES find its way into my windows and everyone’s mood is shit while its rainy.

But staying home is not good for me. I feel like I am living in a freakin’ cave. On a whim I looked at houses available for rent in our area. Huge amazing McMansions. All of them? Like bear caves. Dark, closed off, no natural light. I am half considering moving BACK to one of those stripped naked neighborhoods were there are no trees for miles just because I am so desperate for sunlight. I find myself hiding out in my bedroom a LOT and finally realized it is because I am so desperate for revitalization and it is the only room with even a little sun in our whole house. Even when it is ridiculously texas-sky-blue sunny, we have to leave the lights on in every room of our house or we can’t see well. And our lighting totally SUCKS - it’s that orange save-the-environment crap that barely lights up anything. It is just depressing and I have had enough.

{lonely bud on my ‘pot bush’}

I miss grass. I miss being able to sit outside without freakin’ ants crawling EVERYWHERE. I miss having a kitchen bigger than a postage stamp. I miss having hardwood floors. I miss having real carpet instead of this cheapo crap we have here. I miss maple trees and oak trees and boulevards. And sidewalks.

So where can I move in the country that will not get snow, will not be 100 degrees from April - October, will not be too rainy, will not have fire ants or “palmetto bugs” (polite word for huge mother-f’ing cock roaches) and where we can swim for half the year? Also has to have good homeschool and vaccine laws, by the way.

It is going to be a LONG fall (aka extended summer).  I know the 50 degree nights and 65 degree days on vacation, the real grass that you can lay in without being devoured by carnivourous bugs and the trees and outdoor air for the last month have set me into a tailspin. Remind me NOT to go on vacation to more temperate areas of the country next August - it just makes reentry impossible. Unless I plan not to return until November!!

{funky light that is my backyard}

PS all this whining, courtesy of the swim break my husband took all the kids for in the backyard pool, made me feel guilty. So I went outside to take some pictures (posted here) and enjoy the fresh air. Except there were so many mosquitoes that I got bit up instantly. Addy can’t even swim back there without being bit at least once.  They don’t make waterproof bug spray. Sucks. SO.much.  And the yard was so yucky and unkempt and wild  and itchy that no one ever uses any of the awesome play equipment we own. And the light is so crappy - super bright in spots and totally dark in others - that all my pictures didn’t turn out. Blah. I gave blood for nothing at all.

{looking straight up - my crepe myrtles. When I moved here I thought “how quaint! Flowering trees!” but as it turns out I absolutely hate crepe myrtle!}