Vermont Goodness

This week I've experienced the ultimate in cheese toastiness, and I thought I should share.

It all started when I visited Vermont last summer with my BFF and her fam for her birthday. We did the whirlwind tour of the state by doing as many factory tours as we could fit into two days. Of course souvenirs were picked up along the way, including some Sage cheese from Sugarbush Farm (which didn't make it home with me - but I was able to order it from them online) and a French Herb bread mix from King Arthur flour.

Which leads me to this week. Being a champion procrastinator, I still had not made the bread or eaten the cheese. While the cheese was safe inside its wax coating, the bread mix was due to expire in the middle of March. So I sprung into action. The bread was easy enough to mix, and I even remembered to put my rings back on my fingers after kneading. It turned out deliciously; even my picky pickerton son loved it. Then the cheese was opened with much fanfare, butter was smeared on top of a slice of bread, two slices of cheese were put on top of the butter, and all of the above was placed under the broiler for just the right amount of time. Ooey gooey scrumptiousness. If I'd been smart I would have taken a picture to post. Alas, I'm a loser. You'll just have to trust me then.

In case you're wondering, other wonderful places visited were the Simon Pearce blown glass factory, Green Mountain coffee, Cold Hollow Cider Mill, and, of course, Ben and Jerry's.

Hillary for President

Texans, vote for Hillary at the March 4 Primary. Don't forget to COME BACK at 7:00 for the Precinct Convention process where the actual delegates are chosen. Otherwise you may be represented by someone who supports a candidate that you don't.

Check out these sites for inspiration:

HillaryClinton.com

Hillary Speaks for Me
(This is where I originally saw a slightly different version of the above video. The (presumably) first version actually has some good things in it about NLP and mind control. Who's bamboozling who?)

Obama is 'Just Words.' His 'inspiring' speeches contain no substance. His feel-good catch phrases are merely hypnotizing the people. Hillary has the long-term experience, and she knows how to make decisions and get things done. She backs up her statements with REAL plans. See ya at the Primary.

Jericho Returns

We've just finished watching the triumphant return of Jericho on CBS. We waited anxiously all day for the moment to arrive. My son even did his math lesson first thing without a fuss in order to get it out of the way in case other school subjects ran long today (they didn't.)

The episode was very satisfying, tying up the last episode of the first season and introducing new issues that we're sure to discuss in the coming week. We especially liked the scene early on in which one of the deputies is eating peanuts in deference to the fan campaign to bring the show back from the dead. Thanks CBS!

Freedom and Justice?

Just a quick thought about a news story this week...

I was just watching Religion & Ethics Newsweekly on my local PBS station, and they reported on President Bush's recent trip to the Middle East. They said, " When he visited Saudi Arabia, he emphasized religious commonalities and said monotheistic faith is the root of freedom and justice."

Here's a news story discussing it as well, which includes the rest of the statement that monotheistic faith is the root of freedom, justice and representative government.

So that means polytheism is the root of serfdom, injustice and despotism, right? I guess the Greek democracy, the Roman Republic, and the atheistic philosophies of the Enlightenment, on which our government is based, didn't make it into Mr. Bush's public education. And neither did the French revolution with it's revolt against the despotic government and its reliance on the Catholic Church for its authority. Clearly "No Child Left Behind" was inspired by personal experience.

At least I live in a country where I can express my opinions without fear of reprisal (for now.)

Only one year left...

Coke Cake

Having just checked Cygknit's blog, I found something that saddened me: an obliterated Coke Cake recipe. This is a terrible tragedy! So I did some digging through my cookbooks on the counter...


Nope, not here...

Maybe in the boxes that are hidden in the back of the pantry...


Yep! Here it is. In my mother's handwriting no less...


So for good measure, I'll also include the Snickerdoodle recipe in her hand. When I make these now, I use ALL butter, rather than shortening, and I double the amount of cinnamon and sugar (last ingredient.)



Snickerdoodle recipe is courtesy of Betty Crocker's Cooky Book, the book held in the highest esteem at my childhood home.


Hope y'all enjoy!

Dreams of New Beginnings

All of my dreams last night had a theme: birth. I have been having pregnancy and birth related dreams sporadically for the past few weeks. Symbolically associated with new beginnings, I felt that these dreams indicated I was on the right track again with my business plan. For those who don't know me, I have been in the planning stages of an online metaphysical store for about three years now. I have the domain, the appropriate registrations with the government, and even a closet full of great merchandise, but no working website. A lot of our indecision lies in the choice between starting small or saving up lots of money and starting big. We have vacillated between these ideas endlessly.

Choice #1: Start with an online all-in-one hosting package that offers simple templates for a monthly fee.
Choice #2: Pay a programmer to design the whole website with all of the features we want, exactly how we want.
Choice #3: Wait until we are living in a place that makes us happy (not Texas) and start with a brick & mortar location.
Choice #4: Go ahead and open a brick & mortar location in Texas now, along with a simple website, and then move the business when we move.

After a few dreams of myself being pregnant and giving birth, I made a decision to go with choice #1. This after we had been settled on #2 for quite some time (which had resulted in nearly no action being taken.) While I am anxious to have a physical location where I can interact in person with people and provide services such as seminars and discussion groups, I have finally realized that Rome was not built in a day. To quote an insightful friend, I need to Start Where I Am, Use What I Have, and Do What I Can.

We are once again actively researching hosting sites, and my husband is actively working on one of his pet projects, making ambient music. Keyword here is ACTIVE. We have been passive and (mostly) patient for too long.

Which must have led to my all night dreaming of births and babies. The weirdest one involved me taking a carton of eggs out of the case at a grocery store and feeling movement inside. When I opened it, the eggs started hatching. Another had me carrying a basket (womb metaphor) of mouse babies to a woman who had just given birth. I held the baby for her while she took the basket. According to one of my more far-out dream interpretation books, accepting a baby represents accepting a new birth in the initiation process of your higher self. So we're off to a new beginning!

Trick or Treat

Delayed Daylight Savings had an unexpected benefit after all. Every Halloween we frantically try and fail to finish eating dinner before trick-or-treat time at sundown around 6:30. This evening, however, found me finishing dinner preparations at 6:30, as per usual, with a little panic - until I realized it was not getting dark. We were actually able to finish eating before the first ring of the doorbell. That doesn't mean I have to like it, though.

Something interesting happened this year. My son forgot it was Halloween today. We didn't discuss costume options prior to this afternoon, after he remembered (he saw someone dressed up at the store.) So at the last minute he threw on his (homemade) cloak and pointy wizard hat, grabbed his (real) wand, and away we went. We made it through our entire neighborhood in just one hour. Only about thirty percent of our neighbors had on their front porch lights. I guess that's to be expected here in the Bible Belt. One house even had a sign advertisement in the front yard for their church party. Yuck. The participating neighbors were very generous with the candy; we ended up with two full buckets (a pumpkin and a cauldron) out of a fairly small number of houses.

A cold front is apparently coming through either tonight or tomorrow as we observe the change into the darkest part of the year. Another turning of the wheel.

Back to School

After successfully completing our first week of sixth grade last week, we are now almost done with the second. I feel much more on top of things this year, this being our second year of homeschool, even though I procrastinated quite a bit on getting the syllabus ready. (I didn't finish until the middle of last week!) I think I put it off so much because I was a little worried about this year's topics. For example, how do you explain the Enlightenment to an 11-year-old in a way that is interesting to them? Or, is Dickens really appropriate for 6th grade? We're also doing a study on the origins of Judaism and Christianity, which I feel needs to be done with care in order to engender tolerance and respect for other religions. Following that is an in depth study of Greek mythology (fun!) and the Iliad and the Odyssey. Then comes Dickens with the Industrial Revolution, followed by reforms such as the women's suffrage movement.

All in all, some pretty serious subjects. It's almost like this year my son will officially become an older kid and begin to take some of the weight of the world onto his shoulders. This was worrying me. And then he and I sat down and talked about the schedule for the year. After not completely finishing everything last year until well into July, he had some definite ideas about how to avoid that this time. I did some renegotiating of my work schedule so that I'm home three days during the week rather than two. We cooperatively came up with a daily schedule that will allow us (if followed faithfully) to finish everything by May:

Monday - Math, Science, Reading (textbook)
Tuesday - Math, History, Writing, French
Wednesday - Math, Science
Thursday - Math, History, Art, Writing
Friday - Math (lesson + test), History, Poetry

Literature and history reading assignments are worked on every day, and PE and Health are incorporated into daily life. Monday and Wednesday are the days I've been working, so on those days he does the subjects he can do without me present. I was excited to find quizzes and activities online for the textbooks we're using for Reading and Science. Overall, I'm pretty pleased with having a schedule. Last year we didn't start with 'official' days for specific subjects until towards the end of the year when we realized we needed to get caught up.

Learning French was a last-minute decision. I had been wanting to teach it to him and had purchased a beginner text "on a whim," so when I casually brought it up during schedule-making, he agreed enthusiastically. (Much to my surprise!) Another pleasant surprise so far has been that my staunchly anti-Art child has now done two art projects. I guess it helps when it's on the schedule! Here's one of them:


This is called Bubble Aquarium, and it's from a textbook called With Art in Mind. Even though it is from Bob Jones University Press, there are only two references to God or the Bible in the whole book (easily skipped.) It has simple lessons that show examples and list supplies needed. Perfect for my Art-hating kid. Luckily he doesn't mind looking at art, just actually doing it.

As for Dickens, I found myself greatly relieved when I did my Lexile rating research. Turns out that Dickens is right in line with my son's current reading level and is just about on par with Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. So, we'll be reading (out loud since I've never read these two) A Tale of Two Cities and Hard Times as planned. Now, I'm still a little worried about the sections on Romanticism and the Enlightenment. We're to study the ideas of Descartes, Hobbes, Locke, Montesquieu, and Rousseau, and how their ideas affected history. I'm open for suggestions on how to approach this in a non-yawn-inducing manner!

I mentioned I've been worried about introducing these heavy topics. After working with him these past couple of weeks on preparation, and then seeing him try things he's been resistant to in the past, I must admit that maybe he is ready for the added responsibility that this knowledge will bring.