SUSS

Nancy came in with her 8 month old niece today - the one that was almost born during the A2A Cinco de Mayo event. I want to hold a baby that looks like me the way Klohee looks at Nancy! I want to belong to the thing. :P

Yesterday I made rosemary steak with potatoes and green beans, mooshu pork, and a kale salad. I had a fantastic time buying produce at Sprouts, listening to Tom Russel on my ipod, standing in line looking at the photos of babies in knit hats on the cover of hippie-dippie mothering magazines.

Theme?

yes.

Went to an unschooling symposium over the weekend - really interesting now that I am engaged how much I felt like I was split between younger and older generations of unschoolers. There was a time where I physically didn't know where to go - play games with the "kids" in one room, or play games with the "parents" in another room. I did a little of both. Ended up in the parent's game room for most of the night because I was knitting and they were playing a sedentary word game, rather than a jump-around-and-switch spots game.

Adam has been fantastic the past few days. Know the secret to my happiness? Think frequently about how I can make him happy. Really pays off. Wish I'd thought of this before. :) He suggested that we go look at wedding bands on Saturday (the ring kind, not the music kind) - and we will paint the rest of the fence we built, and figure out what we need to start P90X so we can start on Monday! I love projects with him!

Living with a bunch of families for a weekend in Santa Fe and seeing the Dodd's house made me think about the kind of home I want.

I worked 2.25 extra hours tonight, because I am going to Stuart's mother's memorial service tomorrow. I am not going to talk much about that right now. It's happening tomorrow, near Griffith Park. I will pick up Salvador, and maybe Adam will be able to leave work for a little while. I invited KJ.

Tonight I am going to fold my last load of laundry, feed the dogs, make the bed, run at 9 with Rosie, work on my camp, do some bootcamp videos, do some dishes, and knit!

unschooling symposium

Spent the weekend in Santa Fe, New Mexico at an Unschooling Symposium. We stayed at this rad compound up on a hill above Santa Fe's plaza...we had a bunch of separate condos, and a big common room where we ate, presented, and played games.

It was fun meeting a bunch of unschoolers I'd heard about through my mom, but I especially love just getting to hang out with Dodds for extended periods of time. Unfortunately, I flew in too late to hear my mom or Sandra speak, but I did get to participate in the show and tell, and the young adult pannel yesterday.

When we went down the hill to Santa Fe we found not one, but two yarn stores. I bought sock yarn at the first, and I am making my first cabled project! I love it. I bought a ton of merino roving at the 2nd place...I am going to save it and dye it myself, and then spin it for whatever project I want later.

So right now people are herding cats - trying to decide what is happening and who is leaving and who is staying and where we are going...I think the plan is to stay here and play games for a little while longer, and then head to albuequerque to see the Dodd's house, and then to the airport for a 6:45pm flight. We get in around 9something, I drive Roxana to UCI, and then head to home for sleep so I can get up and go to work in the morning. Kind of sad to think that tomorrow, life resumes as usual. I miss Adam - I always miss Adam, but I always want him to join ME where I am, rather than for me to go home. :P

Anyways - time to go knit and play games.

Are you sasha?

Home from the Good Vibrations Unschooling Conference in San Diego - actually, got home about 10pm last night, and am up and at work on this MondayMondayMonday. Eating 0 pt. Barley and veggie soup from a paper cup, because I spent some quality time with the boyfriend last night instead of preparing for the week.

The conference was fantastic, I have to say. It was incredibly pleasant - with enough structure that there was always something to do, but tons of time where I felt like I could just sit and hang out. I worked on knitting, I sold a lot of my pieces (every one of my coin purses got sold - I have to make more!) and laugh and laugh and laugh.

I went to one of Sandra's talks, one of my mom's, the contradancing funshop and... that's pretty much it. I went to bed early on Saturday so that I could get up and speak coherently on Sunday morning, and I was fairly pleased with the result of my talk. I think I got across all the big points I wanted to make. Next time I am getting recorded, however, I need to remember to speak the questions into the mic before I answer. Beginner's mistake. Whoops.

Some of the highlights for me included hanging out with Kirby and Marty til 4am on Friday night, hanging out with my dad at lunch, during the USC game, and during my mom's talk, the Sasha dance, talking about the things I made to the people I sold them to, meeting an unschooling mom who offered me land in Ecuador, and meeting Andy - my new favorite 6 year old.

As always, I wish unschooling conferences never had to end. But I really, truly missed Adam by Sunday night. If he had only been able to be there, I would have been content to stay forever and ever. When I got home, he was waiting for me and we sat on the couch and had a great conversation about homeschooling our kids and his weekend and my weekend and - it was fantastic.

I want to go to the irvine fine arts center on Saturday to do some ceramics. I'd also like to start some more coin purses. I also have about 3 hats I am in the middle of knitting. I think I am not going to take a lunch today and leave half an hour early so I can get home early. Work seems like a tiresome interruption after this weekend. I'm a little frustrated with my day-to-day right now.

big deep breath

The last few days have been absolutely exhausting in an emotional sort of way, which feels like it's crossing over into physical. I got home from work today and just couldn't keep my head up, so I went to bed. I slept for a few hours, so now it's 9:30pm, and I'm strangely groggy. I am thinking I will find an old comforting movie and go to bed again soon. I was supposed to do a 2 mile run, but if I go to bed before 10, I could get up before 7am and do the run in the morning.

I've spent a lot of my evening tonight looking at the Good Vibrations conference website - where I will be speaking at in September. I'm suddenly aching for a good unschooling conference. My mom and sister went to the HSC Conference this last weekend, and it was so odd to hear them talk about it... my first boyfriend was Josh Engle, and his youngest brother (there are 4 of them) is just about my youngest sister's age - and he and his parents still go to the conference also. My mom/sister stopped at their house on the way home, just like we used to when I was going to the hsc conference, and it's just so funny to see that little echo in their experience. I could get ridiculously nostalgic for HSC conferences, but I just don't have the energy for that right now.

However, I do have the energy to say that I am who I am because of conferences like HSC, Live and Learn, Good Vibrations, etc. I am who I am because of groups of unschoolers getting together and taking over hotels so that even those drab pigeon wall colors and carpets end up looking like peacocks and birds of paradise flowers. I am who I am because I had pink hair for most of my teens, and so did most of my friends. Because we had people piles, hugged and cuddled a /lot/. Because we had talent shows, because we wrote poetry on our pants, because we spent so much time online waiting for that one weekend.

I miss being so tapped in to the unschooling world. I saw a new HSC magazine at my mom's house and missed knowing every person who was writing for it. I'm giving a talk about being a grown unschooler and I am suddenly feeling like I should be reversing the talk - asking the audience how I can stay as connected as possible when I am working full time every single day and I don't have kids of my own.

When I exhausted the Good Vibrations webpage, I moved on to Sandra's. I hit "randomize me" and found my mom's page of writing. Then I spent a fair amount of time reading my mommy's articles about unschooling and parenting. It's so funny - some of the articles she wrote many years ago, but they still apply. She's a smart cookie, my mama. She wrote articles on soothing frustrated children, and as recently as yesterday I had wandered into her house looking for soothing, and yup, she followed her own advice.

"my heart is a teacup with hairline cracks" says Witch Baby, and I feel not exactly that way, but more like I am very small, sitting on the edge of one. Either way I lean, I fall. I'm not good at this balancing act. I don't know which direction I want to go. So I am just going to sit here, for the time being. Hoping that it's just those two choices and that the third isn't that the cup is going to crumble under me.

I don't think I am as maudlin as that sound. I think that's part of growing up. I was very upset yesterday and made a list "what would a grown up do?" Yes, part of it involved crying to my mother, but other parts involved making appointments, trying to go to sleep early, and going to work and doing my job.

::::::
I have one zucchini that grows larger every day. I have 1 small pickling cucumber and one loooonng japanese cuke. I have a few small jalapenos, and probably upwards of 70 green tomatoes. The eggplant has blossoms, so do the honeydew. The basil has gone to seed. I am saving up money to buy wood for a new, and deeper, box. I'd like to have potatoes, garlic, onions. Maybe a whole box just for melons and squash.

The remainder of tonight and tomorrow will need to be rejuvenate-Roya day. I am in need of some gentle loving-thyself. Exercising in the morning will be a good start.

I've been tagged!

I was just tagged by leakymouth! I have to mention 7 random facts about me, then tag 7 others to do the same.

Here's the rules:Link to your tagger and list these rules on your blog.~ Share 7 facts about yourself on your blog, some random, some weird.~ Tag 7 people at the end of your post by leaving their name as well as links to their blog.~ Let them know they have been tagged by leaving a comment on their blog.

The FACTS:

1. I am an elementary school drop out! My mom pulled me out of school to homeschool at the end of 4th grade. I consider myself an "unschooler" which means we never did curriculum or set lesson times or anything - we just lived life and learned because we are naturally curious people! I spent my time with swim teams, girl scouts, Rainbow Kids (our homeschooling park day group), and Bard in the Yard, the LB Shakespeare Company, until I was about 13. Then I also added classes at Cypress College, and fell in with the ceramics department. I did a lot of traveling, spent a lot of time in the ceramics studio, and eventually transferred to a 4 year university - although I would still, to this day, consider myself an unschooler.

2. My name means "sweet dreams" in farci. My dad is from Iran, he moved here in his early twenties to go to school. My parents met at USC - my dad was the only person in a tough economics class that got an A on the first test so my mom decided to study with that guy. She speaks farci as well, even though she's as white/blonde as can be from Long Beach, but they both speak it less now that they aren't trying to keep secrets from their little children. Farci was my first language, but I lost it when I started going to school. I can say "devar moosh derat moosh goosh derat" which means "the walls have mice and the mice have ears."

3. I have, on occasion, been asked to speak at homeschooling conferences around the country. One of my favorite talks EVER was the mom and daughter talk I did at the Live and Learn conference in Saint Louis, home of The City Museum. This year I will be speaking at the Good Vibrati0ns conference in San Diego.

4. I spent the summer of 2007 as an assistant Back Country Ranger for the Alaska State Parks. My boyfriend and our giant german shephard spent a week driving up to Alaska in his dad's white truck, camping along the way. The closest town to where we were was Willow - start of the Iditarod. Of course, Willow was basically a post office and a library, and The Burger Bus. The place we drove to to get groceries was Wasilla - now known as the home of Sarah Palin. We were working at Nancy Lake State Park Recreation Area - at the end of the road there was a trail that headed out to Red Shirt Lake. It was 3 miles to get from our truck to our cabin out at the lake. It was an amazing summer - one that I wish every day I could replicate. At "night" (lots of daylight, remember) we would sit in our yard and watch the eagles, the beavers, and the moose.

5. I once spent about 6 months living in Madison, Wisconsin. I heard Ralph Nader speak, learned how to knit, spent a lot of time walking, read every PJ Wodehouse in the library, worked at a Quaker camp, set my apartment on fire, shopped at the Co-op, got hit by a car, saw fireflies for the first time, lived in snow for the first time, spent a lot of time going to the farmers market, to state street, and using a friend's spinning wheel.

6. I once weighed 201 pounds. The day I stepped on the scale and was over 200 pounds I realized I needed to do something. That day I started exercising and watching what I ate. I lost 50 pounds. I lost the initial 50 by myself (well, with support from people, but no official "program") but now I am doing the weight watchers thing and tracking my points. Healthy living, exercising, and eating good food are huge parts of my life now - I can honestly say I have been changed forever. It's also not about how much I weigh anymore, but about adopting certain guidelines in my life and just feeling good! I never knew that I would get to where I would feel out of sorts and icky if I didn't exercise. Now it's a part of making my day good.

7. I want to run an art camp - I have wanted to do this since I was about 11, and it's something that burns inside of me and doesn't go away. Everything I do is with the thought that it might one day assist me with this goal. My degree is in Recreation and Leisure Studies, with certificates in Outdoor Recreation and Non-Profit Management. My current job is to run the volunteers/interns program we have, and to run Access to Adventure - the travel/recreational/social program for our clients. Our clients are all adults who have developmental disabilities, and one of the most rewarding parts of my job are not arranging transportation to Disneyland, etc, but putting on art workshops every few months and seeing the results. I am currently taking some online psychology classes in order to get my next degree - one in Art Therapy. Ohhhhhh how I want this camp!

so that's me, folks, and my 7 facts. I am now going to tag the following seven folks:

1. http://www.heidilogic.wordpress.com/

2. http://www.shellmitchell.blogspot.com/

3. http://maryeb-blog.blogspot.com/

4. http://twozanyzebras.blogspot.com/

5. http://lazytcrochet.blogspot.com/

6. http://lostmittenblog.blogspot.com/

7. http://paperwires.blogspot.com/