Harry Potter, homeschooling, and the end of an era

This summer feels like a turning point in my life for so many reasons. It's amazing how a three-month span of time can encapsulate so much change.

In June my husband began working in another state, where he taken has an apartment. Monday-Thursday we live apart. After 25 years of marriage, that's a big change. As part of that process we are selling the house that we have lived in for nine years--almost twice as long as I have lived in a house, ever--and are moving to a supposedly less-expensive house. The move is one I've wanted to make for years. We will be closer to friends and church. But it has also been problematic, adding a layer of "What the heck were we thinking?" to the change.

In 30 days our only daughter is getting married. It's all good. He's awesome. They're moving away, but not horribly far. They'll be close enough that visiting can be the matter of a weekend. Like  I said, it's good. But it's also an ending. For almost 25 years I've been the mother of four, at home, living under my roof, and soon I won't be.

My homeschooling days feel like they are almost done. After almost 16 years this is also a big change. My 18 year old needs only a burnishing of math skills, and will be in a college class or two this year. My 15 year old is ready to spread his wings. He wants to go to a residential charter school--at a university out of town--for his junior and senior years. It's a good plan. It would be a challenge for me to provide a challenge for him if he stayed. I have one more year with him, but I really don't do anything for him anymore except buy books and shuttle him places.

My almost 21-year-old, who was the catalyst for our homeschooling, and therefore so much of what has been wonderful about the past 15-plus years, has gone from being that kind of weird, unhappy five-year-old who didn't GET letters and hated school to a college honor student and suit-salesman extraordinaire. And Harry Potter was a part of that. Back when I was trying hard not to despair of him ever learning to read, he went from zero to Harry Potter in three days. Yep. Although he had never read a book before, he read The Sorcerer's Stone in three days. It was a major turning point.

And over the past eleven years Harry Potter has been a part of our lives. Almost every summer has been marked by a new book or movie release. We've been to book release parties and midnight movies. We've  bought multiple copies and still had two people lying on the floor with a book open at two different spots, reading. We've debated the good or evil of Snape and of the books themselves. We've drawn all kinds of comparisons between the books and movies and other books and movies. We've gone to HP sectionals at Higher Things and listened to HP discussions on Issues, Etc.

And tomorrow night the last movie comes out. My three oldest are going to the midnight movie with my youngest and oldest sons' best friends. (My youngest is away for the week and can't believe he planned so badly!) I made it to all of the midnight showings until the last, but I fear age and responsibility have caught up with me.

So bear with me if I'm feeling a bit nostalgic. This is yet another chapter closing in a bittersweet summer.

Difficulty conforming

I am having a problem. My nonconformist tendencies, which have gotten ever stronger over the past few years, are having a lot of trouble with having my house at the peak of on-the-market readiness.

The house is spotlessly clean. There is no clutter. (If you know me you recognize this as a miracle.) It is freshly painted. Much of the woodwork is freshly stained. The carpets are cleaned. We have filled a 15x20 storage unit with furniture, books, pictures, etc. My scrapbooking stuff is hiding in a Sunday School room at church.

BUT...

We have too many books. I've cleared out dozens of boxes, and we still have "too many." My master bedroom is too plain and undecorated. We have too many cars. (I suppose it would be okay if they all were shiny, expensive late-models, but there it is.)

Our TV is too large. We should have a flat screen.

Of course, I know--as a former Realtor--that there cannot be any sign that six people actually live in this house.

Why? Why do people need to pretend that they don't live in their homes when they are for sale? I never had a single buyer who was so stupid that they didn't realize that the house would be different when THEY moved in. I totally get sparkling clean and decluttered, but my house feels sterile to me at this point. It isn't model home decorated, but without the batiks, books, family pictures, etc., it has no soul. And I'm not going out to buy generic dreck to reanimate my house.

Thank goodness my Genie and my pottery are home-sale friendly.

I long to be past this and back into books all over, color, life, cooking, and fun. If my house doesn't sell quickly I may go crazy.

What we've been up to

We've been busy with preparations to move into our new house and with wedding preparations, but most of all right now we've been getting our current house ready to sell. Why do we always finally do the things we've wanted to do to the house just in time to sell?

Jonathan and Andrew stripping the border in the master bath...

and Bethany painting it.

Bethany and Evan working on the hall bathroom.

The big news

So, last time I blogged about why I've been too busy to blog. Well, I'm going to be busier.

Bethany is engaged to be married in August. We are in a frenzy of celebration and planning. It's going to be a big wedding, in part because they both have good-sized families, and in part because we have such a wonderful church family and as-close-as-blood friends among the Lutheran homeschool crowd.

So, a few major details need to be nailed down, and then back to house preparation and getting ready to move.

The disappearning blogger

I really had planned to blog every day in January. I even had a couple of people who said they were glad I was blogging again. But, as has happened so often over the past few years, life got in the way.

This time it was life in the form of an envelope from my husband's company outlining the details of a relocation offer. His job is moving to the Chicago suburbs, and he will be going with it. The envelope contained all of the terms under which that will happen, including provision for selling our house.

Under these terms, we really need to get the house on the market soon to get the best benefit. The house needs a LOT of work, so suddenly we are in a frenzy of packing and preparing.

This would be enough to have kept me from blogging, but throw in symposium at the seminary and the attendant socializing, and big anniversary celebration for Pastor Petersen, and a few other, smaller events  and, there you go. Disappearing blogger.

Furry friend

I CAN CHAT WIF EVAN?

Life-long friends

I was fortunate to grow up reading. Our house didn't have the books-in-every-room decor that my husband suffers, but we owned books and my mother read to me. She introduced me to the library when I was a small child and it and the book mobile became two of my favorite places. I wasn't a particularly popular child, so I spent a lot of time alone, most of it with my face buried in a book. I was reading early enough that there was a run-in with my first grade teacher when she insisted--in front of the class--that I could not possibly have read Charlotte's Web the previous summer.  But I had. And quite a few more, too.

I devoured the Little House books for the first time that year, among others. Over the next few years I fell in love with Frances Hodgson Burnett's A Little Princess, the already-yellowing volumes of  The Bobbsey Twins series that had been my mother's, and my grandmother's contribution, Jean Stratton Porter's Limberlost. I met Katie John, Luvvy and the Girls,Trixie,Pollyanna, Rebecca, the Peppers, and the Melendys. I worked my way through the Nancy Drew mysteries that had belonged to my mom and her sisters, and then moved on to Agatha Christie. After I exhausted Dame Agatha I discovered Dorothy Sayers. About this same time--when I was about 12--I found Taylor Caldwell, Anya Seton, and Victoria Holt. I quickly ran through their writings.

In the school library I found less salutary companions. Judy Blume, Paul Zindel, Go Ask Alice and more gems were the contributions of the library of my Illinois middle school, where I spent a great deal of time during my two study halls every day. Fortunately, they didn't keep me from finding better literature at the public library and, occasionally at the bookstore. And, to encourage the moms whose daughters are currently devouring garbage, they didn't do permanent damage.

I still go back to my childhood favorites from time to time. I just re-read the Little House books for at least the 25th time. A Little Princess is revisited every couple of years. It hasn't been all that long since I spent time with Luvvy and the Melendys. Anya Seton's Katharine is an almost annual read, as is the big hit of my senior year, ...And Ladies of the Club. I introduced all of these friends to my daughter, and we share a satisfying love of many of them. In return, she gave me Anne of Green Gables and all things Austen.

Fine companions, indeed.

No more new friends

Okay. Maybe no more is an overstatement. But I realized today that I approach email lists differently now than I used to.

Once upon a time, I joined email lists looking for connections and support. I found both. Years ago. And have long-since made the transition to face-to-face friendships with many fellow list members. In fact, most of the dearest friends I have were former email acquaintances.

Now I stay on the lists mainly with an eye to the infinitesimally small number of times that I can add something of value to help or support others.  Those times seem to grow fewer. I've become impatient with discussions that I've been through each winter for ten or more years. I frequently think about quitting all of my lists, even the one that I started and manage. I don't enjoy them any more.

And I think that today I figured out part of the reason why: I don't particularly care to make any new friends. I don't want to learn the new folks kids' names, what their husbands do, how they homeschool, or anything else. I feel no compulsion to be fake-nice and not stir up trouble. I just want them not to be annoying.

I think I'm getting old.

Friends at Christmas

I really like this picture. It's not that it's great photography, it's the people and the place. This is in our church basement on the afternoon of Christmas Day. It's a combination of  family, old friends, and newer friends. It really feels to me like it captured a moment. Something important.

Christmas/Epiphany letter

A blessed Epiphany to you!
(Since I’m writing this on the 11th Day of Christmas, I am assuming that most of you will see it after Epiphany.)

This has been another year for us to count our many blessings and to enjoy the wonderful life we have here in Fort Wayne. It seems to have gone very quickly, but on the other hand, last February seems like a long time ago. As a family we enjoyed our church, our garden, our fire pit, and going to a few TinCaps games.

Colin’s year was shaped by the changes going on at work. Many of you know that the company has decided to move its Fort Wayne operations to Chicagoland. As part of that process, and because of his promotion this summer to Chief Engineer, Hybrid Powertrain, he has been spending increasing amounts of time in the Chicago area. Between that and his other travels, we’ve spent a fair amount of time missing him. He has continued to serve as the Chairman of our congregation and to sing in the church choir. He also sang with the Bach Collegium through the fall, but has had to give that up for now because of his traveling. Don’t ask us how this Chicago-based job thing is going to work. We don’t know. We just know that after almost nine years Fort Wayne is home and we aren’t leaving. He likes his job. The most likely solution is a long commute every weekend for a few years.

Bethany has had a somewhat eventful year, joining the ranks of the uncounted unemployed in August. Her paralegal job had its interesting and challenging-in-a-good-way moments, but she also had a challenging-in-a-bad-way boss, who was causing her so much stress that her health was in danger. We told her to quit or we were kicking her out of the house.
(Not really.)
(Well, almost.)
Now she’s babysitting on a regular basis for the one and three year-old sons of some friends. (I, personally, would choose a psycho-tyrant boss over small children, but Bethany is of a gentler disposition than I am.)  Increasingly frequent visits from our friend Evan Meyer have turned into the two of them being “In a Relationship” on Facebook, Evan visiting for Christmas and her going to Wisconsin to visit his family the week after. She is still singing with the Bach Collegium and the church choir, and reluctantly teaching Sunday School. She continues to be the same adorable Bethany, but if I say anything too good about her, she won’t let me send this, so I’ll stop with that.

Some of you may be old enough to remember the commercials: “BankAmericard has become VISA.”
Patrick Casey has become BOW TIE GUY.  In August he added a much-needed job at JC Penney to his schedule. He works in the men's clothing department, and between his sartorial individuality and his charming personality, he has become a bit famous. His sister, attending a movie with him, was accosted by a group of girls who approached her when he made a concessions run, wanting to know how she was lucky enough to know BOW TIE GUY and to be in his presence. When he isn’t hanging out at the mall, he is a sophomore at IPFW majoring in German, minoring in History & Political Science, and making his parents very happy with his stellar grades. He still acolytes when needed, and enjoys helping to train (read intimidate) the new members of the corps.

Jonathan found a new love this year and in the process we threw our normal life out the window. In January he auditioned for two musicals. His plan was to be in Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat at the Fort Wayne Civic Theatre if he got a part. But since he didn’t really expect a part on his first attempt, he also auditioned for a part in the New Haven High School production of The Sound of Music. He didn’t get the Joseph part, so he took the role of Rolf in TSOM. A week a later the Civic called. They had lost their Benjamin and wanted Jonathan for the part. Performances and rehearsals didn’t overlap. It could be done. It would mean much craziness. Rehearsals from 3-5:30 in New Haven and from 6-10 downtown. Twenty performances in four weeks in March. Since New Haven High School is between 18 & 25 miles, and 30 & 45 minutes from our house, depending on the route, this was not a small time commitment for me. I spent most afternoons in January, February, & March sitting in my car reading, or hanging out at the New Haven library and my evenings running around town. But just seeing him on stage in Joseph--singing and dancing--made it all worth it. He had a blast.

He followed up the spring shows with Sweeney Todd in a summer theater production at North Side High School, and then was back at the Civic for White Christmas this fall. More shows on tap for this spring and summer. He continues to sing with the Bach Collegium and the church choir, and still loves to acolyte. He also sang the national anthem at a TinCaps game again this year. His siblings want me to tell you that he routinely sleeps 12-14 hours a day. As far as homeschooling, he is somewhere in his junior year. The heavy musical schedule pushed academics to the back burner for a while, and he will graduate either next December or the spring afterward.

Andrew never leaves the house without his overloaded backpack. Never. It is packed with Greek, Latin, Biology, Algebra, and some sort of music, plus whatever book he is currently reading. Academically he’s a sophomore, but if he ends up deciding to go to Indiana Academy his junior year, we’re calling this his freshman year to give me more time to adjust to the idea of him leaving. He has also taken to carrying Jonathan’s guitar around with him.

When he isn’t carrying his backpack and guitar around, he likes to play on the xbox, pick out songs on the piano, and chat with his friends on gmail. He got glasses this year and enjoyed the attention that brought. He has continued to love acolyting and loved helping to train some new acolytes. (Of course, we know that’s mostly because he got to talk and they had to listen.) His siblings think that he is the coolest member of the family.

Andrew asks, “What about BenCat & Callie?” To steal a line from my Pastor, “They’re cats.”

My year was good. I got to garden, cook, scrapbook, read, and hang out with my kids. I continue in my seemingly endless, pointless quest to save time and money by moving out of this house and closer to church.

Once again we were blessed with an abundance of visitors and lots of time with good friends, although it never seems like enough! I made it to Higher Things in Nashville and got to see some old friends, and to put faces and smiles with some names. The next month I had the pleasure of seeing many of our friends who came to Redeemer for our second annual family retreat. We also had a great day at the lake with my aunts and uncles and cousins, who I rarely get to see. (We are blessed to see most of our family often enough that it is not an event, although the fall visit of Sean & Anne from Australia definitely qualifies!)

I have what is arguably the best job in the world, being secretary at Redeemer Lutheran Church. My hours are flexible. I get to spend lots of time putting together bulletins, looking at hymns, etc. I am getting to know the members our congregation better. I can decide that I am just not counting an hour that I spent at my desk because I decided to check Facebook “real quick.”  My sons can go with me and either do something productive or just hang out. My boss is not a psycho-tyrant and I don’t have to play with three year-olds, fold the same sweater for the 34th time, or drive to Chicago. Every once in a while I get ambitious and think about revving my Melaleuca business up again,and am quickly slapped down by the realities of my schedule, but the desire is still there.

 This has been a challenging year for some of the people we love. There have been some hard losses due to deaths or economic realities, and sometimes both. You are in our prayers as we go into the New Year.

We enter 2011 thanking God for all of you.

Love, The Caseys

O Morning Star, how fair and bright!
You shine with God's own truth and light,
     Aglow with grace and mercy!
Of Jacob's race, King David's son,
Our Lord and master, You have won
     Our hearts to serve You only!
          Lowly, holy!
     Great and glorious,
     All victorious,
          Rich in blessing!
Rule and might o'er all possessing!

Come, heav'nly bridegroom, light divine,
And deep within our hearts now shine;
     There light a flame undying!
In Your one body let us be
As living branches of a tree,
     Your life our lives supplying.
          Now, though daily
     Earth's deep sadness
     May perplex us
          And distress us,
Yet with heav'nly joy You bless us.

Lord, when You look on us in love,
At once there falls from God above
     A ray of purest pleasure.
Your Word and Spirit, flesh and blood
Refresh our souls with heav'nly food.
     You are our dearest treasure!
          Let Your mercy
     Warm and cheer us!
     O draw near us!
          For You teach us
God's own love through You has reached us.

Almighty Father, in Your Son
You loved us when not yet begun
     Was this old earth's foundation!
Your Son has ransomed us in love
To live in Him here and above:
     This is Your great salvation.
          Alleluia!
     Christ the living,
     To us giving
          Life forever,
Keeps us Yours and fails us never!

O let the harps break forth in sound!
Our joy be all with music crowned,
     Our voices gladly blending!
For Christ goes with us all the way--
Today, tomorrow, ev'ry day!
     His love is never ending!
          Sing out!  Ring out!
     Jubilation!
     Exaltation!
          Tell the story!
Great is He, the King of glory!

What joy to know, when life is past,
The Lord we love is first and last,
     The end and the beginning!
He will one day, oh, glorious grace,
Transport us to that happy place
     Beyond all tears and sinning!
          Amen!  Amen!
     Come, Lord Jesus!
     Crown of gladness!
          We are yearning
For the day of Your returning!

(Lutheran Service Book, 395  by Philipp Nicolai)


It's that time again

No, not New Year's Resolution time. Not time to get organized. Or diet. Or exercise.

It's time for me to give myself the lecture about protecting my time and being able to say no. This doesn't mean that I don't want to see or hear from my friends. Or do things with or for them. What it does mean is that suddenly I find my plate full of tasks that people are expecting me to do, in a certain time frame, but I am waiting on information, etc., from others to be able to do them. So I am getting behind and stressed. These are the kind of things I should say no to. I do not enjoy having responsibility for things that I am not in charge of.

So friends, if you notice I'm seeming rushed and stressed, it isn't you. And I'm not too busy; I'm just the wrong kind of busy.

Wisconsin

The hubby and I took a little road trip to Wisconsin this weekend. We spent the afternoon and evening of New Year's Day with our good friends, our former pastor and his wife. What a treat!

We then spent Sunday morning--yes, you read that right, Sunday morning--driving around the Milwaukee area. We drove along the Lake and up through the campus of UW--Milwaukee, a trip I made daily when we lived there. I loved that drive, and it is every bit as relaxing and beautiful as I remembered.

After our drive, we met up with Bethany and Evan and his parents for lunch at Buca di Beppo. Bethany went to  Wisconsin with Evan on Christmas evening, and spent the week with his family, and part of the reason for our trip was to bring her home. We had a good lunch, and enjoyed meeting Evan's parents.

I didn't realize how badly I needed a break until I got away for a couple of days.

January blogging

I decided that I'm going to try to blog every day in January. The NaBloPoMo topic for January is "Friends" and I'm going to try to use that as inspiration.

I've spent a lot of time over the past few weeks thinking about what I want to read this year, and I wanted to start the new year with a strong choice. I picked a book that Carol, a friend from college who I've reconnected with via Facebook, recommended. Carol is fun, smart, and interesting, so I was sure it would be a good place to start. To see what I think when I finish, you can check my book blog.

Baking

My assistant Bethany and I are baking. Lots of baking. We are making desserts for a benefit concert and dessert buffet and for a dessert auction. We are discovering some new things we like and some new things we don't.

We like piping the frosting onto the cupcakes.

 

We like these pumpkin bars. We may even need to make another pan.

Bethany doesn't like red velvet cupcakes. I can take them or leave them. But we both love the cream cheese frosting. We also love these cupcake cups.

We also love the way these apples look with the dish towel. It's the little things....

My grandparents

I was loading some photos that Patrick scanned from my grandma's slides a couple of years ago, after she died. I came across several of my grandparents that reminded me why they always were--and always will be--who I think of when I think of a happy marriage.

They were married for a little over 70 years, and there was a look that I remember Grandpa giving Grandma when I was five, that I was still seeing him give her when I was 40.

The numbers, they hurt me

I have an issue with numbers. They have always seemed like a foreign language to me. If I work hard and concentrate--a challenge in itself-- I can make them behave, but I don't enjoy it and it wears me out. In college, after struggling through calculus at my first school, I was delighted to discover that UW would let me use symbolic logic to fulfill a math requirement. I got to do math with words and pictures! (Yes, I was the weird kid who loved proofs in geometry class.)

 I also don't like to deal with financial things. I like to spend money, and I'm happy to earn it, but I don't really like to think about it too much.


So, of course, I'm our church treasurer. And I do a good job. As long as everything goes along as expected, it's only moderately painful. A former church secretary with an accounting background set up our system, and it works very well unless something changes, but it is complicated. Because of some changes, I have run up against a convoluted accounting issue that has had me pulling out my hair. I thought that I had a solution, provided by someone else with more knowledge than I have, but that solution only twisted things up more.

Yesterday I figured out why. And in that moment was grateful for my one semester of accounting and the fact that I understood--kind of--how different accounts work and why things were messed up. But knowing--intellectually--what the issue is and knowing how to fix it are two different things.

Last night I talked the issue through--out loud--with my mom and then with Bethany and made some headway. One idea that I came up with while I was talking to my mom is to draw some pictures, so that's today's plan. I'm going to draw a "map" of what the stupid numbers mean and I'm going to hope that it gets me to my destination.

Multi-tasking gone wild

So, while waiting in the green room I heard one mom talking about a guy she saw driving down the road talking on one cell phone and texting on another. This morning on my way to work I saw something that beat that.

I saw a guy talking with a blue tooth, texting, and SHAVING. Yes, shaving.

Revisiting

So, redecorating the blog has lead to some revisiting of links. I'm working on getting my blog roll updated. And I checked out my To-Do List.

Sigh.

I did manage to eliminate a couple of items, but only because I don't want to do them any more. According to this list, the last couple of years have been a total bust. But for some reason it just doesn't bother me much.

Wait! You want me to work?

I mentioned last week that I spent a couple of evenings sitting in the green room waiting for Jonathan, being apparently invisible, overhearing lots of conversations. I was trying to read my book, but there was one woman in particular who seemed to want to be sure that every single person in that very large room was listening to her. And I was about five feet away.

Her first topic was the job that her daughter had recently quit at a moderately high end accessory store because she felt like they were making unreasonable demands. My attention was caught because I am well-acquainted with the store and the employees. It has extremely low turnover; there are several people working there who have been there for six or seven years.

This daughter, who is 20 and "had a little trouble" and is "taking some time off" from college, quit what can only be described as a pretty cushy gig--as retail goes--because she was expected, on the nights she closed, to clean the bathroom. One toilet, one sink, one mirror. And her mother agreed with her that that was an unreasonable expectation. The mother went on to complain that many nights her daughter ended up spending half of the evening "dusting and straightening." And she didn't "raise her to grow up to be a cleaning lady." Plus, "she just wasn't having fun."

 Oh, where to start? How 'bout with the attitude that certain work is "beneath" a person? I have heard this quite a bit in the last year, mostly from young people or their parents, but also--more than once--from Boomers. I find it unfathomable and more than a little annoying. Unfathomable, at least in part, because it was ingrained in me that, if you need money, you work. And that all work, done well, has value. Work is good; not evil.

I probably react somewhat on a personal level, too, because I have done the jobs that so many spoiled teens and self-important Boomers seem to find distasteful. I've worked fast food (and cleaned the bathroom.) I've worked in large and small retail establishments (and cleaned the bathrooms.) I worked in the college food service, much of that time in the dishroom. I've worked in a movie theater (and cleaned the bathrooms.)  I bartended and waitressed and cleaned LOTS of things worse than a bathroom. I've cleaned houses.

Oh yeah! I almost forgot: I was a real estate agent for three years, and in our smallish office we all took turns cleaning the bathroom.

Most of those jobs weren't fun. Sure, I had fun while I was doing them, because that's who I am. But they weren't fun jobs.I worked hard and went home exhausted. But I did them because I needed money. When I was in high school I wanted to put gas in my car and buy clothes and pizza. When I was in college I wanted spending money, clothes, books, and gas for my car. After I was married there were bills to pay and later a family to help support while my husband earned a master's degree. And then there were piano lessons and soccer teams and books and....

Right now, I'm fortunate. I have a part time job as our church secretary that is mostly fun. I'd rather not have to work, but it is paying most of our oldest son's college tuition, so it's worth it. But, if our circumstances changed, I would do what I needed to do, including clean toilets.

I don't believe that there is never a good reason to quit a job. I quit a pretty cushy one once because my boss wanted me to lie to customers. I encouraged my daughter to quit one because she had an abusive boss and it was affecting her health. But bringing kids up to think that they are too good to do certain work isn't doing them any favors.


More from the green room next post.

I love this guy

I was going to say I love this kid, but changed my mind. Although he's MY kid, he's not a kid any more. I'm pleased to say that he's one of my favorite people and I am very pleased and humbled by the person he is growing up to be. Besides that he's a darn good writer.