My Bathroom Is Mewing

I didn't find a new home for Fluffy One (or is it Two?) quickly enough. Yesterday I thought it looked like she had had her kittens. But she looks so much like the other Fluffy, who was not so evidently pregnant, that I wasn't sure which one I was looking at. But when I went to the bathroom this morning (in the wee hours of the morning when all is silent) I heard mewing from below. So she obviously crawled in under the trailer and found a safe place to have her kittens. C'est la vie!

And The Beat Goes On … Unschooling Adult-Style

Unschooling is child-led, interest-led learning, or at least that is my quick and easy definition. Sounds pretty simple, doesn't it? But lately I have been thinking that my definition does not fit our situation anymore, since there are not very many children left in the house. It is difficult to have child-led learning without a child!

So I have been contemplating on what my current definition of unschooling should be, now that my children are adults. How does this sound? Unschooling is individual-led learning that occurs on an as-needed or as-desired basis. What? That isn't unschooling! Isn't that just life? Exactly. Which is why unschooling as a homeschool method held such appeal to me when I first heard of it. It was exactly the way we (my husband and I) already approached life. It was the example we were already setting for our children. It was the way every adult I knew operated. Why should the way our children learned be any different from the way all the adults around them learned?

I am often asked for examples of unschooling in action. It seems silly to tell others what we do, since unschooling is just living your life, whatever your life might be. My life is going to be different from yours. I can tell you about my typical unschooling day, but it really won't bear any resemblance to what your unschooling day will be like. But I would like to share a couple of examples of our adult lives and how we are learning as we go; not our children, but Bill and I, the parents in the family. Because I consider us unschoolers also, unschoolers for life, unschoolers of life.

To read the rest of this new LeapingFromTheBox.com article,
please visit Unschooling Adult-Style

Accompanying that article,
How to Conduct an Online Job Search

Catching Up

I can see I should have set a goal for writing daily in April! Goals. Must have goals! And deadlines! All procrastinators work better when there is a deadline looming.

Here are some pics of Miss Munchkin from Easter Sunday. She had fun gathering Easter eggs at my dad's, even though she did not have a clue what was going on. Once she got one egg in each hand, she just grinned and watched all the other kids running about, picking up eggs.

And here's a pic of the handbag I crocheted for Miss Munchkin. I had troubles with the handle and will probably have to redo it, but she seemed to like it.

It's been a busy April. On the 5th I drove to Evansville to bring David home for Easter break. And on the 9th I drove him back. And then on the 11th we (Bill, Charles and I) drove to Tallahassee. Bill had an interview there on the 12th (his birthday!), which we are still waiting to hear the final verdict on. Hopefully we will get word soon.

Friday the 13th we drove to Jacksonville, just to see. There are more job opportunities there, but none of us felt at all comfortable there. It is just too big of a city. Way too many people. Way too much traffic. We drove right on through and headed for St. Augustine, spending Friday night there. On Saturday morning (the 14th) we visited Castillo de San Marcos and walked the beach long enough to get the beginnings of a nice tan. It was lovely. Saturday afternoon we headed back to Tallahassee and then for home, driving through some very nasty storms but arriving safe and sound in the wee hours of Sunday morning. It was very nice to be home. And it was a good thing we came home earlier than planned. Bill had turned off the power strip to my fish tank before we left. I had some very cold, hungry fish in dire need of some oxygen! The tank was down to 62 degrees and most of the fish were just lying on the bottom, slowly fluttering their fins / tails. But I did not see any dead ones. I think they must have been practically hibernating from the cold and lack of oxygen. By Sunday morning they were looking much improved, swimming around the top, waiting for their breakfast!

Dogwood Winter Sucks!

I hate dogwood winter. Just when you think that warm weather is here to stay, old man winter blows his icy breath and we get several days of cold weather. I know you all in the north country are thinking that fifty degrees and a north wind is not cold. It is, though, when it has been in the eighties for two or three weeks. It is not nice to have to turn the heat back on and bring all the plants back inside so they don't freeze.

Yesterday I drove to Evansville and brought David home for a few days. Two days driving (yesterday and Monday) so that he can be home three days. Crazy. But it is nice to have him home, even for that short a time.

I haven't posted here this week because I have been trying to concentrate on writing a couple of articles for my website. Almost done and then I have to convert them to HTML and get them all linked up to the site. I will post here when they are up.

Next Thursday is Bill's birthday and also, coincidentally, the day he is scheduled for a face-to-face interview for a job in Tallahassee. So he is going to use a couple of vacation days and we will spend Thursday through Sunday in Florida. Most of that time will be in Tallahassee, but I think we will try to get in at least one day in Jacksonville. There seem to be many more job possibilities in Jacksonville, so we would like to see the area before we decide whether to submit a resume to any of those opportunities. Hopefully this interview on Thursday will work out and we can get under motion, begin to get out from the limbo of waiting and actually begin moving and living again.

Today was pay day and I should be paying bills instead of updating blogs! Bill paying is always so much fun. NOT! Wouldn't it be a blast if just once there was a huge surplus of funds left over after ALL the bills were paid?! I am sure that is just around the corner for us!

Job Opportunity

Yesterday Bill was offered a job opportunity that really bears some looking at. We spent all day yesterday talking about it and today I am making a list of pros and cons so that we can make an attempt at coming to a decision.

Basically, this is a year-long contract to upgrade and maintain computers and networks of an online gaming business. Everything they need, Bill can do with no problem. And everything that Bill asked about, such as budget control, etc., did not seem to be an issue with the contractor. So the job is very doable.

The pay is excellent. Heck, the pay is beyond excellent. We could pay off all our existing bills, pay David's college tuition for the next three years, and still put away a sizeable chunk into our retirement savings. And living expenses for the full length of the year-long contract are totally covered by the contractor.

Sound too good to be true? That is because the job is in Canada. Not just Canada, but some small Inuit Nation town in north Canada. I mean, really north Canada. So small it does not even appear on any maps that I can find. The recruiter sent us a .pdf map that shows where the town is. I did not realize people lived that far north!

So, here is my list:

Pros

• The salary. It's huge. Five times what Bill normally makes in one year. Since we do not have much of a retirement fund, this money would be really welcome.
• Living in an Inuit village, learn the customs of the natives.
• Charles likes cold weather and wants to learn to ski.
• All living expenses paid for the entire family while living there.
• No cooking for the entire year (they have a communal cafeteria)
• David's college would be paid for, with no outstanding loans when he graduated.

Cons

• A year away from Miss Munchkin, Kat and David. We would not be able to come and go. Once you are there, you are there for the duration.
• We would only be allowed a set weight amount of items to take with us (everything is flown in), so I would have to really plan ahead for books and such. But we would have Internet, so we could read whatever we could find online. And e-books are available from the town's cyber-library.
• The darkness. The job begins July 1 and we would be there until June 30, 2008. The summer months of sunshine are fine. It's the winter months that worry me, as both Bill and I need sunshine. We've been assured they have sunlight-replacement bulbs and such for those people that are affected by lack of sunlight, which is both Bill and I.
• The cold. Both Bill and I have seen enough snow to last a lifetime. But it's a dry snow up there, right? So our joints wouldn't ache so much?

Can anyone else think of any other pros and/or cons? Things we should consider while thinking over this job offer? Anyone have any experience living where it's so cold for long periods of time? And if you really think that we would seriously consider such a thing, you have obviously never heard of april fool's day!