Not Another Homeschool Blog

sketch a day # 21  20 min I feel like I'm waffling here, about being hands on with the kids, then hands off with the kids, and it really is quite a balancing act.  In the case of things that affect my pocketbook, I am certainly hands on. This week the issue was registering for next semester.  The girl did most of it on her own.  She chose her classes and more wisely in terms of not killing herself and letting college counselors pile on or overly influence.  I helped her out by doing a checklist to make sure she was meeting graduation requirements more than two years out, and trying to see how/if she could fit in a second minor which she sorely wanted.  The verdict was yes! Go for it! You could finish in four semesters granted you get all the classes you need, and fortunately, you have five. For the boy, I was forced to pay a fine for him getting locked out (boys) before he could register.  Then read the suggestions from his counselors which was...

sketch a day # 20 - 2 minutes It started about a year ago.  About 6 different magazines started arriving at my door on regular circulation. They were all magazines I read in my youth.  Ebony, US, Essence, and similar magazines geared toward the black crowd.  I just shrugged, and tossed them in the recycle bin knowing that I did not order these rags and so I won't be paying for them when the bill came.  A lady at my gym (older Scottish lady) was getting the same magazines and kept trying to give them to me because, well, they were black magazines and I am black.  LOL!  I messed with her a little.  I scrunched my nose, and said "I don't read those", and suggested she give them out somewhere else.  I know, that was shady of me, but oh well. I did some research and found that the magazine companies were sending out magazines to people who had never subscribed 1. to get them to consider subscribing and 2. To claim a bigger circulation than they h...

sketch a day #19  2 minutes I put the time on a lot of my drawings because I feel like it explains how quickly I did a drawing and why it is or isn't that detailed.  But as I practice and draw more and more, I feel like I am getting into the knack of it.  I am even getting used to holding the pencil differently , even though depending what I am doing, I may still hold it like I am writing. Anyway, Here is today's drawing.  I did it in 2 minutes, but I feel like I was still able to capture the glass mug that was sitting on my desk.  There is a printer, an envelope, and a printer wire in the background. I'd been going on about math lately , where I was insisting that some kids close to me who were struggling with math should spend more time on it.  Us homeschoolers like to say that kids will pick up some subjects in their own time and at their own pace, but if we let them, a lot of the kids will never get math, and reading might not happen before pube...

sketch a day #18   (scribbling on the road trip) I visited with the kids this weekend.  Sort of. Our son wanted to come home for the weekend, and so went down and picked him up. (These kids will have car(s) by summer.) Since we were there (they both go to college in the same city two hours from home) we stopped to see our daughter. In case you missed this, she goes to a women's college. I don't know if this is unique to Women's colleges or not, but there is clearly a hand-off vibe where parents are concerned. They love for parents to come out for parent designated events which are few and far apart... and they live it when we come to performances.... some performances, but just because it is weekend, does not mean it is mom and dad's time.  You are a college woman, and it is all college all the time. We arrived Thursday evening and stopped at the girl's college to bring her some things she asked for. She was busy with Theatre rehearsals, as she is stage mana...

So there's this art exercise where you scribble on the paper, and then try to turn that scribble into a work of art.  I am not good at it, but I spend a good deal of time on that exercise today.  Here are my attempts.  I'm only counting one of them today... the one that I liked. This is one type of an exercise in frustration.  Most often, an exercise in frustration is when you are doing something over and over again, and expecting a different result.  Wait.  Isn't that also a definition for insanity?   You know, you deal with the same person, day in and day out and pray for a different result when the conversation and motivations don't change.  It's kind of a why bother type of thing.   sketch a day #17  45 min In this case, I hope that by doing this exercise over and over, I can develop the more creative part of my brain and embrace some kind of uniqueness in my art that is unique to me, but developed.  I hat...

sketch a day #16 -30 min I read a couple of stories today that I found terribly disappointing.    First, a young man of 16 years was accused by someone he had never met of stealing the person's backpack.  He was arrested and placed in Rikers Island because his family could not come up with $10,000 bail. He stayed there for 3 years without a trial.  He attempted suicide several times but was unsuccessful, and received beatings from the guards for his attempts.  Soon before being released he was brought before a judge who told him if he pled guilty, he could go home with time served.  He refused. He was not going to take the rap for something he had not done.  Soon after all charges were mysteriously dropped.  He is suing.  I hope he wins.  I don't know what the young man's personality was.  I don't know what his track record was. I don't know anything about him except what I have seen on TV.  He is 21, meek, mild, an...

sketch a day #14 - 15 minutes I was done with elections before it even started.  Obvious lies on tv directed toward idiots who don't know any better (both sides).  Constant calls to my house, from both political parties (because I am not beholden to any group).   And then there's the fact that I am an area manager for my county's elections.  They started us working on hiring and managing staff 3 months before the election, a month earlier than usual, and still we were short-staffed.  But the biggest problem is that the general public does not know if they are even registered to vote (if you think you are not, you probably aren't and should go ahead and do that) and those who are don't know where to vote.  The rest of the people have no idea WHERE they are supposed to vote, so we, the workers get yelled at because YOU showed up at the wrong location.   I blame this on the county. We used to get post cards before every election.  I haven'...

sketch a day 12 30min This is for yesterday.  I missed a day. Hubby and I spent the day looking at houses.  We would like to downsize. Our house is huge... frankly too big to really keep clean with only 2-3 people living in it 80% of the time. So we went looking at new home developments in the area, hoping there was something out there for middle aged folks who wanted something smaller, but nice. No-siree...there wasn't.  Based on what we found, I have come to realize that in our suburban area if we want to downsize will will either have to buy something in a less desirable area of town or wait 9 years.  Apparently we are too young to downsize. The the two-3 bedroom houses with nice finishes are reserved for 55 and older communities!  Sure there are starter houses here and there but they are finished with poorly done laminate countertops and linoleum floors. This is not the kind of thing that 40-something year olds is looking to move into.  Our be...

Sketch a day #11 - 15 minutes.  No matter how many times it has happened to you, you still don't see it coming.  It starts with something small that creates tension in your body, and then you feel little explosions in your brain and sometimes pretty colors and still you ignore it. Day two, you realize what is going on, but now the medicine won't work.  You should have taken it yesterday. Day three, people are trying to drag you off to the emergency room, but you know that they will tell you the same thing as last time, and you promise that it if is still going on tomorrow, you will go. Fortunately, there's a guy at the mall that knows what to do.  You drag yourself there with one eye open.  You grunt and point, and mumble, "20 minutes" and while what he is doing seems torturous at the moment, and you pray to God that he doesn't actually paralyze you with his gyrations, you leave feeling a bit lighter, and after a nice long nap and a ton of water, you...

Sketch a day #10 - 10min Today is Halloween, and as usual, I will be following my tradition of busying myself with a movie or a project and ignoring the ringing doorbell.  No, my house doesn't get egged or papered, thank goodness, either my husband or one of my kids has given out candy in the past.  I just don't like to do it. I am just a non-conformist like that. It bugs me that the same kids who rolled their eyes at me, or harassed my dogs, or left dog poop in my yard when they thought I was not looking will be ringing my bell expecting candy from me. If it were up to me, I would buy 3 HUGE peices of candy, and a big bag of the most generic stuff I could find, and give most everyone the generic stuff, but then the few kids that are actually well behaved and kind came to my door, I would reward them with a honking big piece of candy in front of everyone else!  That would learn'em. But hubby's got it.  He got some big bags of candy, and a big friendly smile...

Sketch a day #9  - 45 min. This is a sketch of my upper window in my greatroom.  The room is two stories high, so there are upper and lower windows in the room.  You see a bannister in the foreground, because I am actually sitting in a room on the second floor to draw it.  The house is three stories high in the back, so in order for a ladder to be outside this window, it has got to be pretty tall.  Fire-fighter tall.  It is still not tall enough for the guy repairing the woodpecker holed trim to get where he needs to reach, so he is also propelling down from the roof to get to a certain area. This job is driving me nuts! First, tomorrow will be two weeks since he quoted the job. Second he said it would be done by Tuesday... last Tuesday... It is now Thursday of the week after. Finally, as is true with most jobs, he didn't stick with the original quote.  As of right now, $400 to replace two pieces of trim 30-ish foot high from chimney top to groun...

sketch a day - day 8 -30min Today I sketched my eyeglasses.  They are sitting on my pencil case. They are cute but uncomfortable and I don't wear them like I should. One lens is thicker than the other, and so in those lightweight wire frames, they don't really sit right.  Since my eyesight out of the other eye is pretty good, I can get away without the glasses at all, but the other eye compensates. I have to hunt down my glasses and put them on when my eye starts twitching or when I get a headache from not wearing them as it causes eyestrain.  I have been warned that if I don't start wearing them all the time my lazy eye will become more and more apparent and even lazier, but I still don't.  I am planning on getting a new pair with a better weight balance...  Don't know how they will do it, but it is what I will ask for. I chose eyeglasses for my image today because after yesterday's encounter with the cashier I began thinking about how we view others. You...

Sketch a day - day 7 I went to the grocery store for two reasons... lunch, and cash-back. Cash back is awesome because I don't have to pay atm fees to spend my money, and since I had to pay the dude repairing the woodpecker holes in my house today, I needed cash. (I probably won't use him again, with one of the reasons being he doesn't take checks.  Who wants to go to get cash two days in a row to get enough money to pay someone?) Anyway, I said to the cashier I need $100 cash back, is that possible? She replied, the max is $50, but I can split your bill. Cool.. Cool.  So she rang up my bill with a few things left on the conveyor belt. As I went fishing in my wallet for my debit card she got annoyed.  I was trying to find the right debit card, for our joint account, since I didn't want to take it from my main shopping account because most of the money was for house repairs. She replied in an annoyed voice... "that's a lot of cards".  I apologized...

Sketch a day- day 6 I was busy today updating my computer with the next mac version and then trying to get back photos from when my computer died... I think my daughter's sweet 16 photos are gone... going to try to snipe a photo or two from people who were there. My sketch today is something I do naturally and often.  It is a sketch of my bedroom floorpan.  It is a stupid room.  The most obvious place for a bed, between two windows is under a vent and right next to the bathroom.  I don't like that.  There is a huge sitting area with a slated ceiling like a huge dormer.  My bed is there now, top photo, but I have been bored with it. The biggest problem is where the cable jack is is also stupid... on the wall behind the couch in the upper photo and so I can't really see that from anywhere that it makes sense to put the bed. It is an enormous room really, just poorly planned.  The people across the street actually took half the area where we put...

sketch a day- day 5 It's Sunday, and I really have no deep thoughts. So here is my day 5 sketch of the day.  I tried to portray a couple of celebrities, and then a random person from a magazine.  Portraits are really not my thing! Can you name the two celebrities?   Good luck!  Fighting the urge to delete these.  Not my best work. 

sketch a day-day 4 I looked at some of my work from 25 years ago today... It was in the garage.  I am going to toss it, after taking a few pictures because it is all charcoal and has become muddy over the years.  Still, there are some good things about it. I will take some photos before trashing it. One thing I noticed is that there is a slight slant to everything I draw.  I think it is because I don't sit still and I don't hold my head still... I move around and kind of lean to one side, so there is also a slight lean in my work.  You can see it in this candlestick drawing from my mantle.  Also the middle candle is out of perspective because I drew it first and then when I moved my persecutive, I did not change it. But... nothing in life is perfect, and interestingly enough, my most slanted, imperfect pieces have been purchased (long ago, when I drew regularly).... so there is clearly beauty in not getting it quite right. Perfection is a dangerous thi...

Sketch a day, day 1 I am trying to force my creativity by doing a sketch a day.  I am using some free video lessons by  http://www.jerrysartarama.com/art-lessons/free-art-instruction-videos.html to inspire me.  I used a lesson today on using shapes to draw buildings... this is the house across the street from me.  You could say I am homeschooling myself in art... kind of as a refresher. This sketch took all of 10 minutes.  I am sure I will revisit it later and add ink. As I was drawing, the news was on. I got distracted from my task when I heard the phrase "the devil in the White House". They were interviewing an elderly early voter who was saying he was voting a straight Republican  ticket because he dislikes the devil in the white house. I had a personal heart response to his comment. It hurt my feelings. I've heard presidents called a lot of things by fellow Americans but never the devil. I couldn't help but wonder what in him made him view Obama ...

It has been 1 year and 5 months since I finished homeschooling my kids.  My youngest is well into her Sophomore year at college, and my son is well past the halfway point.  They are doing great! And then there's me. I have a lot of ideas about what I was going to do after homeschooling.  Homeschooling gave me so much focus... so much direction, and was so passion-filled... now I'm feel like I am grasping at straws. I thought I was going to work with homeschooling families after homeschooling, but found out real quick, that the people who need me the most can't pay me, and I am not in a place to volunteer that kind of time. I thought that I was going to get a Real Estate License and sell houses, but after going through the course, I found out there were a lot of things about that industry that I - just - don't - like.  So that's not going to happen. I thought I was going to go on a bit of an adventure with my husband, but we are not sure that is still goin...

The door bell rang yesterday, and the dogs went wild as usual.  Fortunately, I still had their leashes on them from a recent walk, so I was able to grab it and control them and they acted like they wanted to eat whomever was at the door. (They are Minature Schauzers, so aren't dangerous, just bossy.) Anyway, there is a young man at my door.  He had a chipped front tooth, and he was holding a pretty big coupon book. He was talking pretty fast and slick.  All I could make out was "help me out, Help me out, something-something-coupons".  I replied, I've purchased those before and I never use them, so no thank you.".  That wasn't good enough for him.  He insisted, "Help me out, help me out.... don't you want to help me go to college".  I stifled a laugh and said, "how old are you?... twelve?. "  Because he looked... well.... twelve, and he replied, "no, i'm 16".  "Ok... that's cool, but I'm still not buying, ...

I am starting to see the gentrification of NYC in action. I can clearly handle the rent. The numbers meet and/or exceed the requirements to live in any such building... even the best of buildings.  But, there is that one line on every application that says what your credit score has to be to be accepted.  Brooklyn or Harlem 600.  Upper East side, Lower East side, Hell's Kitchen, Chinatown 650-700. Upper West side or SOHO or Chelsea 750. (this is approximate, but you get the idea).  If you want to live in the nicer areas you must have a pristine credit report. But there was/is this great recession. Who's credit report survived that unscathed?!!!  I know for us, there were a few years that were pretty hit or miss... one paycheck away from homelessness kinda stuff.  The credit report is not perfect. ...And we are doing BETTER than most people we know.  So that means that in order to get into the nicer areas of NYC, even if you can clearly afford the r...