03.17.08
Posted in Books, Food, Health at 1:45 pm by Christina
Jeff and I began our second juice fast of our new cycle, the last one being in late January. I have confirmed that via the fasting efforts I will achieve my immediate goal of getting within the weight requirements for private health insurance, so that is reassuring. Now I am working on concurrent efforts to the fasting: exercise issues, and emotional eating issues.
I am finding that my choice to do high-density willpower bursts (the fasts) is a more sustainable approach for me than trying to maintain a constantly high level of vigilance across all three fields of play: nutrition, exercise, and personal growth/healing. My overall nutrition is good for maintenance, and will be great once I’ve gained better success with regular exercise. (That’s even given bouts of emotional eating.) Tackling the caloric restriction necessary for actually losing weight through concentrated fasting is working well, given all the factors involved.
I have made some discoveries in my readings on the growth and healing front. Two important books I’ve read recently are The Solution by Laurel Mellin (R.D.) and The Simple Living Guide by Janet Luhrs. The Solution discusses six areas that lead to an inappropriate relationship with food: weak nurturing, ineffective limits, body shame, poor vitality, unbalanced eating, and stalled living. The Simple Living Guide is about voluntary simplicity, the concept of paring down excess in your life in order to live it more fully. In particular, things I learned about myself from time with these books:
If my life seems so busy that I’m having trouble making time for things that are important, then my life is too busy and I need to reprioritize.
I have difficulty accepting “necessary pain” in life, very much preferring an easy road.
My expectations are often so high that I can’t even get started because I know failure is inevitable.
These observations give me areas to focus my energies when not on an active fast.
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01.14.08
Posted in Books, Reviews at 12:01 am by Christina
I haven’t written a post in quite a while, what with the girls wrapping up Oliver, my own choral concerts and the holidays, but I am motivated immediately to post about tonight’s PBS airing of Jane Austen’s Persuasion in a new adaptation for Masterpiece Theatre. What an amazing production! 90 minutes of sheer bliss as Anne Elliot encounters her rejected suitor and they discover their love still burns. As much as I adore Pride & Prejudice, both the novel and of course the BBC miniseries with Jennifer Ehle and Colin Firth, I think Persuasion is my favorite Austen novel. The 1995 BBC production of Persuasion starring Amanda Root and Ciaran Hinds is exquisitely done, and this new one, staring Sally Hawkins and Rupert Penry-Jones, is a beautiful rendition as well. I think one of the reasons I love Persuasion so much is that Anne Elliot is a mature heroine; on top of that, I think that for an old married lady like myself the theme of love rejuvenated is more resonant than the first-love themes in the other books.
In any case, Masterpiece Theatre is running a “Complete Jane Austen” in the coming weeks, featuring new productions of four books and rebroadcasting the Ehle/Firth Pride and Prejudice and the Kate Beckinsale Emma. I encourage you to curl up on Sunday evenings with what looks to be a terrific set of Austen films!
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10.17.07
Posted in Books, Reviews at 8:45 am by Christina
I’ve just written up a review of this terrific book over at A Woman of Mystery.
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09.12.07
Posted in Books, Household, Life in general at 8:52 am by Christina
Via Mental Multivitamin, a homeschooling/books blog I read regularly, I was able to enjoy this post at Outer Life.
Most days I am in charge of two sleeps for Jamie, his nap and bedtime, and we rock while he has milk, up in our bedroom. The rocker is alongside the wall of paperback books, and so while my voice is on autopilot through the lullabies, my eyes usually wander the shelves. (I could turn the chair around I suppose and enjoy the view instead…) Since it is the paperback collection – or a portion of it, anyway – there are a lot of genre fiction books to ponder, and I think Outer Life is right on with why I and so many book lovers love these books. Familiarity. Even when a new book comes out, it’s so like the 10, 20, 50, 100 you’ve already read that it feels like a warm blanket.
I do tend to feel a bit sheepish about my passion for genre fiction – mysteries and Nora Roberts are the two I favor – so that it is “a guilty pleasure”, but it’s not a “secret fondness”. After all, these books are out on the shelves for all to see, and I openly tote them with me when I’m out and about with even the smallest possibility of time to read. Mostly I worry about what it does to my brain to have such a large percentage of my reading be genre fiction – and genre fiction that I’ve already read, at that. The biggest part of my problem is that I have zero willpower when it comes to putting down a book, unfi… unfini… unfinished. The time of day when I do most of my personal reading is bedtime, and frankly I know I can muster up a bit of willpower at midnight (which really should be at eleven) to put down a book in the middle if I’ve already read it, since technically it’s not an unfinished book anymore, right?
I guess we all have our special tricks for maneuvering our addictions and obsessions so that we can continue to be functional. I went to a library book sale last week and spent a long time in the mystery section, reading the backs of paperbacks in search of new authors to enjoy, and I came home with a bagful of single books that will lead me to series that I’ll probably like well enough to stay up several nights in a row reading, thus throwing the schedule and my temper into disarray and bringing on other types of guilty feelings. Besides the book sales, I have trained myself over the last few years to depend on my library system more than on the bookstore, and on the used-book seller when I actually want to own a book. So at least the budget isn’t breaking on new books, although it’s breaking on other issues now; it is a budget after all and is designed to be tested.
Staring at the paperbacks day after day, so that during the nighttime rock in the darkness I play games with myself remembering which title is where on the shelf, I have like Outer Life been pondering a cull – or, as I like to think of it, sharing the joy. I doubt I’ll ever get rid of my Agatha Christie books, but I think most of the Nora Roberts books are reaching the end of their lives on my shelves. I think it’s time for me to explore paperbackswap.com and bookmooch.com.
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07.20.07
Posted in Books, Current Events, Family, Kids at 4:17 pm by Christina
The imminent release of this book is quite a phenomenon in our house, and we have been building up to it over the last several weeks as all four of the readers here have re-read the first six books in preparation. Jeff and Katie are scurrying to finish Half-Blood Prince…
We have built hardcover collections of the series for our own library and also for the kids’ future libraries; Harry Potter has become a significant memory set for Katie and Emma. We have two copies ordered to pick up after the release party at Keplers Bookstore in Menlo Park, and the other copies scheduled for delivery tomorrow from Amazon.
Jeff is taking the girls to the party from 9 to midnight tonight. Jeff himself will be in a simple costume of robe and hat, dressed (and tagged) as an “Unidentified Ministry Source” – which character is featured frequently in The Daily Prophet newspaper in the books. I created a nametag for him to pin on his robe, based on Ministry of Magic artwork in Mary Grandpre’s illustrations:
Emma is going as Hermione Granger. To this end, she currently has her hair braided in 25 small braids, which we styled into wet hair treated with styling paste; this should give her an appropriately “bushy” look. She’s got a smart “uniform” outfit of black pants, black vest and white shirt, plus her black robe. In addition to her wand, she’ll also be toting a full bookbag (pillow on the bottom and a couple of books on top so it’s not too heavy to carry around!) and some S.P.E.W. materials – sign-up clipboard and membership stickers. She designed the stickers herself and helped me build them on the computer:
She’s also designed a Prefect Badge that I need to create still.
Katie decided to go as Luna “Loony” Lovegood. Based on one of Grandpre’s illustrations she chose too-short pants and scuff sandals worn with socks as her outfit, plus of course a black robe and wand. She also asked her uncle, Joe-Bob, who is a bartender, to collect bottlecaps so she could make a butterbeer cap necklace; and grandma Cissa had some apple earrings that still need to be converted to radishes.
My job is to stay at home with Jamie and anxiously await their return at about 1am or so. I’ll be going to sleep with him at 8:30 so I can get up when they arrive and start reading! Jeff and I both plan to be up all night reading. On Saturday, I have rehearsals at 11 and 1; the plan is for me to take Jamie over to grandma Meemom’s so that Jeff can finish the book (if necessary) and then get some sleep while the girls read. We’ve also decided that the girls may not start reading until there are two books available, one for each (unless of course they decide on a compromise like reading aloud; this is only if Jeff needs to finish still after they are awake).
We started reading the series right around when the fourth book came out (which is when they started being simultaneously released in the UK and US). Katie went to a book 6 release party with her cousin, and we’ve read books 5 and 6 at my parents’ summer party (Clambake 2003 and 2005) (along with many others who were there!- I think book 6 was being read by at least six different people at once that year!). The girls have played so much Harry Potter there are dedicated playroom materials to that game, including fun collapsible trunks we found at IKEA just a month ago. Katie has read all of the books as they’ve come out since she was about 8, and both girls have listened to Jim Dale’s terrific audiobooks. Emma started reading the series about a year ago, around her seventh birthday. We have spent much time in recent months in family discussions about what book 7 will hold, what details we’ve discovered in our re-readings that might be important to the conclusion, and so forth.
It has been a terrific journey that we’ve enjoyed together; I see read-alouds in our future when Jamie is old enough for the experience!
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04.20.07
Posted in Books, Humor, Kids at 12:12 am by Christina
I am reading Oliver Twist to the girls now, in anticipation of their auditioning for the musical Oliver! at the community theater this August. We’re only through the fourth chapter (short chapters, too). Right away we learn that Oliver was born in the workhouse and that his mother died immediately thereupon without disclosing his father’s identity.
Following close upon that, Oliver draws the short straw in the boys’ dormitory and is therefore the one who goes up to the warden to ask for more food; he is of course quickly punished in various ways, including beating and solitary confinement. He is also beaten in front of the other boys as a deterrent, and made to stand there while a sermon is preached over the boys to avoid Oliver’s wicked ways, because he is surely the spawn of the Devil.
Katie’s satirical comment? “Well, at least we know now who his father is!”
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04.19.07
Posted in Books, Parenting, Reviews at 1:26 am by Christina
Buddha Never Raised Kids & Jesus Didn’t Drive Carpool: Seven Principles for Parenting with Soul
by Vickie Falcone
I added this book to my queue after coming across its very interesting title at The Learning Umbrella. Frankly the title is almost meaningless to the book itself, although it is nice and catchy and I’m sure draws susceptible folks like myself in. Fortunately, it was a good book despite the red herring; the subtitle is the heart. I spent the last couple of evenings outlining the book into a Word file for myself so that I would be able to refer to it in the future. (This is also an essential aspect of my learning; I took copious notes as a formal student, though after I take them I don’t need to review them much. Just the act of writing helps cement my memory…)
So you want to parent with soul? Falcone doesn’t mean James Brown, so don’t get your hopes up; still, her goal is to enable you to parent in the state of “I Feel Good!” If you’re looking for advice and recommendations about how to toilet-train your child or get them to eat vegetables, look elsewhere. This book is about the big picture of parenting; it’s about how to parent your child in any and every situation, and still be able to look them – and perhaps more importantly, yourself – in the eye in the morning.
Some of the basic concepts will be familiar to proponents of attachment parenting and other nonviolent parenting philosophies. The theme of connection threads through several (if not all) of the principles. #1 is actually called “Connect”, and it refers primarily to connecting with your child, but also with yourself. #2 is about connecting with your intuition; for my tastes, the author goes too far into the realm of paranormal phenomena (psychic behavior, signs from the universe), but enough of it is grounded in true intution and learning to understand and trust it.
(By “true intuition” I mean cerebral processes that happen so fast we don’t understand how we derived the conclusion. Many people distrust their intuitive conclusions because they can’t parse the rational sequence. It’s a shame to waste good brain work just because we can’t keep up with it, and in some situations it can be downright dangerous, as when we don’t feel safe in a situation but don’t know why. See Gavin De Becker’s The Gift of Fear and Protecting the Gift for two excellent books on this topic; I also recommend Malcolm Gladwell’s Blink: The Power of Thinking without Thinking.)
Three further principles include live in integrity, infuse your life with peace, and transform your life with gratitude. They might be named connect with yourself, connect with reality, and connect with others! The final two principles, which might be a little tough to chew on for those who don’t feel resonance with spiritual/self-help language, are become a conscious creator, and create abundance. Setting aside the fuzzy lingo, these two are based on a fundamental truth: life is what we make of it. (In other words, if you choose to complain a lot, you could be as rich as Midas and as fortunate as I don’t know who, and you’ll still be miserable; and conversely, you could be living in abject poverty and suffer terrible traumas, but look for silver linings and wear a smile and be essentially happy.)
Some key discussions and techniques that I made special note of:
PHIL- Children, and indeed all people, need to feel Powerful, Heard, Important and Loved. These don’t mean you assist your offspring in becoming little Napoleons. Rather, they emphasize the value in treating your child as a person distinct and separate from you, with all the agency and individuality thereupon. Power doesn’t mean permissiveness; hearing doesn’t imply agreeing. Important means you value them; love requires unconditionality. When a child misbehaves, if their physical needs are satisfied (not sick, tired, hungry, uncomfortable, etc.), look for an empty tank in one or more of these PHIL areas.
Breathe- How many books and seminars in the world of personal growth recommend this technique? I’d venture to guess at least 3/4 of them! It’s not all pseudoscientific hooey, you know. Deep, relaxed, focused breathing has actual physiological impacts on the levels of stress in our bodies. I use this one with my kids, but not enough with myself.
Change process- The naming of four steps for change was particularly enlightening. 1: Unconscious incompetence; you don’t know what you don’t know. 2: Conscious incompetence; you know what you don’t know. 3: Conscious competence; you know what you know. 4: Unconscious competence; you don’t know what you know. The goal is to become aware, to learn, but also to have the knowledge become second nature.
Come here, not go there- This one fascinated me. So often we give our children commands to “go there” and do something, alone and without support. When the task is something the child has some internal issues with, they will balk and a power struggle inevitably begins. “Come here” gives the child a connection with the parent, their mentor, and a feeling of security in which to open up to those internal issues. And the connection grounds the child for overall better behavior.
Put connection before logistics- This is a hard one, and yet in my own experience and what I always hear from others, any and every power struggle is deflated when the parent takes the time to give the “misbehaving” child the connection they are asking for. How many of us have had this experience: Monday’s bedtime takes two hours because the child comes out, we send them back in, ad infinitem, with tempers rising all the while. Tuesday’s bedtime starts off the same way, but something in us on Tuesday shifts after fifteen or twenty minutes; we snuggle with the child for ten minutes and they glide right off to sleep. Sound familiar? It’s often called “caving in”, and yet all we really did was respond to a need the child was having to be refilled on connection with us. The younger a child is, the less they grasp the concept of delayed gratification; if they need a connection with you, they need it now and at the expense of all else. As Falcone says, logistics are always made easier when we put connection first, because the child will then be in a place to behave as we desire them to.
Parenting with soul means that when your fledgling child leaves the nest, you don’t go home and destroy yourself with shoulda-coulda-woulda and if-only. You go home content with yourself that although you weren’t perfect (because nobody is!), you parented in a way that made things better, for your child and for yourself. This was a good, informative and reinforcing book, balanced in philosophy and technique, and I recommend it to anyone who is aware or wants to become aware of the bigger picture in which we parent our children.
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04.16.07
Posted in Books, Household, Kids, Life in general at 6:35 pm by Christina
I wonder why grooves don’t happen more often? I suppose it’s because they are so susceptible to hiccups, like scratches in the grooves of a record album. But when they do happen, such bliss!
Last week’s sickness captured every member of the household in sequence, so all of the catch-up that we’d been planning to do after the chorus tech week schedule was postponed while we focused on health and necessary work. We were all recovered in time for the girls’ Wednesday music classes, Thursday and Friday playdates, and Friday’s orchestra concert. Chorus does not start up again until May, so on Saturday morning we began tackling some of the larger projects in the house. The two biggest projects (okay, I’m leaving the full-of-boxes garage out of the equation; it’s not technically in the house) are the books and the playroom.
The books – well, what can I say about a family full of bibliophiles, around-the-clock readers, and books? This is one large project! We have two 42×72 cases and one 42×84 case; if we’re lucky, these bookshelves manage to house the children’s books. Actually, we also have two 42×36 shelves as well that are part of the kids’ shelving; those are in different parts of the house, one holding board books for Jamie and the other homeschooling books in the study. The jumbo shelves are upstairs in the girls’ bedrooms. They are not totally full yet, because there are plenty of books scattered in boxes still, but I did manage to get the “kids’ books” boxes unpacked earlier this year, and over the weekend worked with Katie to organize them better on the shelves (chapter books, picture books, nonfiction, etc.).
Books get more than one paragraph of attention, though, because “kids’ books”, while plentiful and definitely making a dent in our collection, represent maybe a third of the total bookage. There are another 75+ banker boxes of books waiting for new shelving, 56 stacked in a block behind the couch in the front room, and at least 20 more out in the garage. Shelving is in my opinion the bane of a booklover’s existence. We really should come up with a figure that we can add on to any book we purchase, representing the shelf cost of the book. Libraries calculate this information for themselves, the cataloging fee, which of course includes more than just the physical shelf space but also the data entry and tagging costs; at my library it costs $10 in addition to the cost of the book itself when you lose a book and have to replace it. For many years we had Home Depot pressboard shelves, but we learned after Katie came along that these shelves offgas toxic fumes (though it decreases over time) and we decided to get rid of them.
We are finally in a position to treat our books well, giving them a lovely home not made of cardboard. (Most of the books have lived in boxes – catalogued of course so we could find them! – since the shelves went away.) Today, I ordered simple maple cases from Ballard Bookcase in Seattle: three 30×72 regular cases, and three 24×72 shallower “media cases” for paperbacks. These shelves are going to reside in the master/family bedroom (which is lovely and large; it’s wonderful to have five people in there and not feel claustrophobic, to have room for my rocking chair and to have room for our books!). In about five weeks, we should be able to unpack the rest of our books! I prefer books to any other decorating style 
Once the kids’ books were done, the girls and I began to tackle the playroom, which had never received an organization attack since we moved in (but was of course functional, otherwise we would have gotten to it sooner I guess). There, we have Ikea wardrobes (which are also pressboard but which are laminated and so the offgassing is much diminished), which is the setup we had in the playroom at the old house. This worked very well, especially the ability to close the doors on much of the equipment. (Although right now the hardware to remount the doors is AWOL – aaaaah!) The girls each have a bedroom now as well in that part of the house, the playroom being an unoptioned fifth bedroom and open to their rooms; they have very generous closets, easily twice what they need for their dresser and hanging clothes. So we rebuilt our wire basket units and put those in their closets.
Lest you wonder exactly how much organization a playroom needs – or perhaps feel that two children should not have enough play equipment to fill a wall of wardrobes and an entire closet – I’ll mention that my girls are enormously into imaginative play and we have built an enormous collection of costume supplies for them out of mostly secondhand apparel. For example, they have a toybox worth of hats alone, and an equal volume of old bathrobes and old shoes! One of the best purchases we ever made for them was a large quantity of cotton gauze scarves (white) that we dyed in a rainbow of colors at a tie-dye party one summer; these scarves have played every role you can imagine! They use them to turn themselves into cats or mermaids, to turn rooms into stages or forests; they become baby slings, plaster casts, and three of them together are permanently dedicated to being Rapunzel’s braid. (Tom and Elizabeth, no matter how great I say they are, don’t buy any – we’re making a collection for Dorothy at the next tie-dye party!!)
We’ve been spending Jamie’s naptimes over recent days sorting, organizing, getting rid of accumulated recycling and trash, and so forth. The transition of some categories into the wire baskets in the closets will open up shelves in the wardrobes to hold some of our games. (I can hear the garage sighing in relief at the prospect of losing some of it load…)
All we ask of the universe is that we remain happy tenants of this house for a while, not just through November! And actually, I’d like for the energy that keeps us groovin’ to stick around for a while, too
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03.24.07
Posted in Books at 9:53 am by Christina
Educator Days have started at Borders – 25% off everything – and it’s open to homeschoolers. I’ve been collecting a list of books that I would like to own: puberty books by Lynda Madaras; a couple of books on California tent camping; Raising Financially Fit Kids by Joline Godfrey (which I reviewed here); books on cells and DNA by Frances Balkwill; books for learning Spanish. The newest For Better or For Worse collection is out too, and I’m buying a couple of pop-up books to go in the “Pop! Goes the Chorus” themed gift baskets which I was asked to coordinate on behalf of the altos (who are responsible this session for the thank-yous).
I researched the new-book prices for the items on my list and plan only to buy those items where the discount nets me equivalent or better savings. Emma is going to join me, because Katie has a friend coming over for a “private” playdate. (It’s a shared friend, but they’re going to roleplay the Warriors books by Erin Hunter, which Emma hasn’t read.)
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03.15.07
Posted in Books, Homeschooling, Kids, Money, Parenting, Reviews at 2:26 pm by Christina
I saw this book mentioned somewhere online – a blog I think, and not an article. I really must start keeping track of where I collect book recommendations, because I would like to be able to link back to the one who inspired me. I think I saw this at one of the HomeschoolJournal.net blogs.
Raising Financially Fit Kids is an amazing book! Joline Godfrey organizes her presentation into four age groups of childhood where the different developmental milestones make different financial lessons and experiences appropriate. These groups start at age 5 or so, basically at the time when the mathematical and other developmental areas have progressed to a point where the most basic understanding of finance can be accomplished. 5-8 is “I’m Just a Kid”; 9-12 is “Encouraging Passions”; 13-15 is “Breaking Away”; and 16-18 is “Standing Tall”.
Across these four groups, Godfrey both challenges and encourages parents to work on developmentally-targeted aspects of the Ten Basic Money Skills:
How to save
How to keep track of money
How to get paid what you are worth
How to spend wisely
How to talk about money
How to live a budget [sic]
How to invest
How to exercise the entrepreneurial spirit
How to handle credit
How to use money to change the world
All of the money skills are addressed in each phase, with mentoring, lessons, and especially with fun activities: the traditional lemonade stand, for example, but also a “Financial Film Festival”; a money book club; a scavenger hunt where each team is given play money with the goal of spending the least to “collect” the items on the list (at a mall); an investment club; and so forth. Details are provided for all of the activities.
I especially liked how the author addressed the issue of allowance. In essence, she argues that allowance is a tool for learning financial skills. It’s not a payment for services, a boon from the family coffers, or a bribe for good behavior. Like all tools, there are rules for safe operation, and varying levels of supervision as well. The guidance she offers for providing an allowance is quite helpful.
Further information provided includes: discussions of different types of money personalities (hoarder, spender, etc.); a chapter on money and gender (both genders!); a chapter with additional guidance for extremely affluent families; and though hopefully I won’t need it, a chapter on what to do if you have an adult child who isn’t yet financially responsible. (Actually, the author offers advice throughout the book on adapting the material when you are starting with an older child, who is already past one or more of the developmental stages.)
All in all, an excellent book, with straightforward dealing on the many complications of personal finance. I’ve added this one to my list of “books to acquire” during Borders’ Educator Days at the end of the month.
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