Contest Extended to Saturday…Homeschoolers Gone Wild!!

August 23, 2012 at 8:59 pm (Authors, Books, CGCC, E, Education, Family, Gifted, Homeschooling, Jeff, N, Scheduling)


No joke, I can’t even hold a proper contest!

The last couple of weeks have blurred by and I’m losing my mind already. We homeschool around these parts, as you may know, and N’s OnlineG3 classes started on Monday. Coincidentally, Monday was all drama, all the time. One family member cried for two hours because he discovered a conflict in his schedule that denies him *more* class time. He always needs more. He has clear expectations and doesn’t respond calmly on the first pass when things are not to his specs.

I have no idea from where that fantastically noisy trait originated on his family tree.

Pictures of cute kitties make us calm.

Tuesday and Thursday classes were smooth and he had a blast, though we then had a difficult discussion about dropping a science activity we were both looking forward to…but we already see the writing on the wall. He’s a year young for it, and they’ll have a full team, so maybe it’s not fair to have him participating anyway. I don’t know. It brought on more tears though. He wants to do all of it.

In a few weeks we’ll start Friday co-op in Skokie, which kicks off our Beelers on Wheels grand tour for both boys.  This co-op is not negotiable for them.  They love it like a diabetic loves low blood sugar readings.

Monday Science Spectacular begins a couple of days later–4 hours at the Chicago Botanic Gardens for them both as well, with a friend thinking about some fun opportunities for the kids to hang out even more. Tuesdays are always our local unschool group, which is our home base, so that leaves Wednesdays and Thursdays home. Oh wait, Wednesday is for gymnastics, swimming lessons, field trips, and scouts. So, we’re home on Thursday. Part of the day. Sometimes. Homeschool skate is Thursdays for 4 hours. E’s favorite, next to gymnastics.

OMG We’ll never make it.

Calming kitty *and* puppy….

E is technically going into 2nd grade, but he wants to take all of the same classes as his brother. He’s pissed he’s not in Online G3 also, so I sense our lives are only going to get more complicated as E gets older and more joiny.

We also have trips to Iowa and South Dakota this Fall, as well as Symphonic concert, Opera, a one woman play about Marie Curie, and … ?  Some other stuff I can’t see on my calendar because my eyes are bleeding.  Why can’t I say no to those people I ever-so-craftily made myself at home?

We have a very ambitious schedule this Fall. I’m not really sure we can pull it all off, so I’m stressed. I’m always stressed. Last night I had the mother of all hissy fits because Jeff brought home dinner and my order was wrong. How dare he?! How dare Quiznos run out of Au Jus for my sandwich?! WTF is going on with this crazy world? He was surprised at my, shall I say emotional, reaction to the disappointing news.

Calming kitty picture……

Week One of our rabidly over-scheduled and mostly unschoolie-yet-eclectic homeschooling 2012-13 year has begun, and I’m already overwhelmed. I’ve almost forgotten my church bingo wins with my parents and sister this weekend, and that was a spendable cash euphoria!  I will be blogging in the future about the FREE goldfish.  Thankyouverymuch, Aunt Jen and Uncle Tim.

Long story short: you have an extended period to try and win Jen Merrill’s (link to Laughing at Chaos blog) new book:

If This is a Gift, Can I Send it Back?: Surviving in the Land of the Gifted and Twice Exceptional

Read back a post for contest details. I’m way too comfy (lazy?) to grab the link myself. Work for it, people!  I will draw names on Saturday.  She signed them a week or so ago, so they’ll be ready for the mail in a jiffy!

Also, still not sure how the contest will go for the Chicago Gifted Community Center, but I’ll be giving books away there too. 🙂 CGCC is new and awesome, so check us out and help us grow!

DAMNIT!! WTF is the kitty doing in the toilet???? What is wrong with that cat?? I’m not calm anymore.

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Amazon.com Should Know I’m a Low Rent Ho

August 14, 2012 at 12:47 am (Addicted, Excess, Family, Organization, Scheduling, Shopping)


I just bought a new wall calendar that is perfect for my family.  We have so much scheduled, and everyone has their own stuff to remember, but none of us can apparently do it without losing parts of our souls.  It’s grisly.

I finally thought I’d just slap an ugly calendar on the wall and see what happens. The three different Franklin Planners, spiral bound calendars, generic planners, electronic organizers, homeschool-specific systems,  the computer…none of them work for our family.

I’ve tried them all.

Not this one. I haven’t tried the ear plug calendar yet, though all it will tell me is the last day I remembered to move the plugs.

Well, more like I buy them all and then don’t get around to implementation.

Because we’re so busy.  And I’m disorganized.

So, we have post-its, random notebooks full of jotted down info, receipts with important scratches on their backs, lists about the list of lists.  Pages of notes about the lists.  Piles and piles of papers, some of which might be important.  This has been a successful system so far, but I’m sort of stressed out.

There are people in the piles.

Don’t judge; it’s not nice.

But alas!!  Amazon, my love, showed me a sweet $5 solution.  It was so seductively presented, with a picture, description, product number, and everything…  Amazon overplayed its hand and should be familiar with my slutty shopping ways by now.  All they really needed was to post a plain old sans serif “Hey, we’re selling shit” and I would buy.  I would also buy some of that delicious ambrosia as gifts for my friends, no less.  I’m easy like that.

Amazon sends me covert messages that indicate it prefers a classier sort of clientele. I’m not buying THAT!

I pointed at my cart and told that calendar to get in.

“Get in there now!” I told it.

I bought that calendar but good.

Get in the cart NOW!                    “Whip Dragon” by Richard Mark Huffman

It arrived on my doorstep with free super saver two day shipping, and I was all twitchy with excitement.  I couldn’t wait to get all of our activities, classes, appointments, whatevers, recorded.  Organized.

WTF?  My calendar, my precious, expired in June? But I bought it in August!

 

Returns Center > Request Refund

Keep this item and receive a refund!
We’ve got you covered! There’s no need to return the item to receive your refund.

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1 of AT-A-GLANCE Recycled Monthly Wall Calendar, 12-Inch x 17-Inch, White-Cream, 2011/2012 (PMA2-28)
Sold by: Amazon.com LLC
Reason for return: No longer needed/wanted
Details: Not sure how I missed it, but this calendar expired two months ago. I have no need for a 2011- June 2012 calendar! Why are you even still selling it?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Amazon doesn’t even want me to return it.  They told me to keep their trash and are giving me my money back with no questions.

Amazon sold me their recycling!

Good thing I just bought a new planner at Target.  I think it’s going to be just the thing to help me get the family organized.

I paid full price, ‘cuz that’s what I do at Target.  My new planner was just sitting there on the end cap.  Asking for it.

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Squeezing the Charmin, Making the Donuts, Insulting your Mother

June 3, 2012 at 4:22 pm (Attitude, E, Family, Jeff, N, Parenting)


We’ve been running ragged for as long as I can remember.  My kids and I are tired of our schedule, but not willing to give anything up, so we keep going until one of us drops.

Someone in this picture is winning, but I really don’t know who.

It’s like a game.

I think I can win this game.  I have more weapons in my arsenal (money, car keys, smartphone, calendar, lock on the outside of the basement door, etc), while their strongest ammunition is youthful verve and willingness to band together with their profound precocity. To conspire. Against me.

Winner Winner Chicken Dinner! I’ve got this one in the bag.

Sometimes when we come home from being away all day, we just veg in front of the television for awhile and wait for our vestibular systems to calm their business down.  This is also when we decide if we have good attitudes or if we’re going to descend into chaos.  As they get older, we all choose chaos less, but it’s always creeping around our perimeters.

“It’s not magic! It’s physics. The speed of the turn is what keeps you upright. It’s like a spinning top.” Says Deborah Bull. Well, F-U Deborah Bull. It *is so* magic! And maybe overscheduling. But mostly magic.

Last week (haven’t posted in a few days on account of the game), we settled in for our electronic meditation time.  We were in good, yet tired, spirits.  Companionable even.  I don’t like the kids watching tons of commercials, so we usually opt for DVRd stuff, or pre-recorded programs.

Not this day!  We were letting it all hang out

We were planning to squeeze the Charmin,

Even Bob Dylan can’t help himself.

make the donuts,

This is an actual book cover. It exists. Fresh Hot Glazed Make those donuts! Make them good!

and ponder the burning sensations in our nethers and taints.

I vote “entertainment”. I mean, no one is going to get out of this alive. Death, with or without explosive medical diarrhea, is a certainty.

Drug commercials are some of the most entertaining.

We didn’t wait long before the first meat hook claimed a Beeler victim.  Of course it was E, my 6 year old.

“We need one of those Roomba machines!”

I know the kids have been wanting one since they saw it on America’s Funniest Home Videos, or AFV for true fans of the show.

We have cats, the boys have ideas.

It’s a versatile vacuuming robot machine. Also takes on the fight between good and evil.

“What are you talking about? I asked him.  “You don’t even vacuum!”

Crickets. Sometimes they punctuate silence.

I continued to fling feces all over his great idea.  “I think the person who vacuums should decide if we actually need a robot to help us vacuum.”

“So,” no beats missed, “dad needs to decide if we get a Roomba?”

Ouch.  His aim is true, the black-hearted brigand.

N snorted.  I don’t know how I should have interpreted that.

Schrute knows. N doesn’t. N needs to stop laughing at his mom’s expense.

 

I do vacuum.  They just don’t realize that I do it after they go to bed.  Punks.

They thoroughly appreciate Jeff, so maybe it’s a chromosomal magnetism thing.  Perhaps they are repelled by girl cooties?  I’ll have to think on this some more.

________

Feel free to Like Delicious Minutiae on Facebook or leave comments on my blog.  My family doesn’t appreciate me, so I will seek my approval over here.

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Chuck Norris Redux and Why My Kids Are in a Chain Gang

May 27, 2012 at 11:23 am (Blogging about Blogging, Chuck Norris, E, Family, Homeschooling, Jeff, Lifestyle, Minecraft, N)


My house is a pigsty, I re-realized this morning, while we were feeling somewhat restless in each other’s orbits.

Jeff eventually took the kids to the beach, and I said I was going to stay home and clean the barn we call home.  Like the scrubby kind of cleaning, where you vacuum the vents, use products, and everything.

Shit yes, I love to clean my house. Look how happy it makes me to serve my family.

I was obsessing over blog stuff before they cleared out, metablogging if you will, and read to the kids a list of countries from which my international friends are checking in.  Since February 25, I’ve had readers from 70 different countries.  That’s surprising to me.

Then they started showing up at my house. It was really awkward.

The kids are into geography.  We have 13 maps on the walls of our main living space.  We kinds/sorta homeschool on weekends and holidays to make up for all the goofing and video game playing “we” do on “school” days.  And Target shopping.  And Costco visits.  And all-day play dates, parties, and park days.  And, well…maybe we don’t homeschool so much as we live our lives with curious minds.  They suck everything in.  Especially free samples.

I don’t think he really loves me. He just wants me to spend $300 on frozen lasagna and toilet paper. Costco sells over a billion rolls per year. Saw it in a documentary.

Geography of Vanity lesson done for the day, I was then looking at my most popular post stats.  Far and away, Chuck Norris is the winner.  He brought in almost 1200 readers, while my second place maternity pants invited only 200.  That one is only a couple of days old, so maybe I should give it time.
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N wanted to see if he could find my blog using Chuck Norris keywords.  We think it’s funny that Chuck Norris really does win at everything, even a popularity contest between crap in swimming pools and a pair of pants.

You think it’s a joke, but it’s true. Chuck is badass.

With a couple of tweaks, N found my blog and proceeded to correct my grammar and spelling on old posts, to which E commented “You made all those mistakes in front of everyone!”

Let’s go with annoyed and secretly proud, too. Then let’s also go with an opening bid of $12.50 for the both of them.

These guys are Damned. Lucky. I’m their mom.  Far better people than I would have had them breaking rocks by the roadside by now.  Maybe even in a chain gang.  Instead, I kicked them out of the house.

Precedent set. This kid corrected his mom’s grammar and spelling too.

So, while they were gone, I cyberstalked people online, took a few hours to nap in the middle of the day, made up conversations between the cats *with* the cats, got the brush-off from my mom on the phone, cried the rest of the afternoon because my mom was cheating on me with my other sister…  Then began cleaning the house about an hour before I figured the boys would be home.

Sometimes the conversations are short, so we just make beautiful music together instead.

Apparently it looked like I got a lot done.
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“It looks like you got a lot done,” Jeff said.  He must have really low expectations for my domestic skills.
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It’s pretty shortsighted for me to be admitting this in print, seeing as now he knows how much I can get done in an hour or less.  I only got one room done, but Jaysus H., the Queen of England could suck soup out of the carpet, it’s so clean in here.

Assume the position, Betsy, or there will be no soup for you!
(nods to Seinfeld’s Soup Nazi)

Speaking of weird visuals, N informed me before they left for the day:
“E found a glitch in Minecaft!  He discovered a way for all the animals to lose their torsos.  They’re just legs and floating heads.  The sheep also lost their faces!  They walk around and graze just fine, so it doesn’t look like they mind.”

Bwahaha Ditto on your base.

And a Chuck Norris fact I hadn’t known before today:
“Chuck Norris’ iPod came with a real charger instead of just a USB cord.”
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OMG  I wonder if he took the sheep’s faces, and all the other animal’s torsos?

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Maternity Pants Time!

May 24, 2012 at 4:40 pm (Blather, E, Family, Jeff, Lifestyle, N)


I know what you’re thinking.  “Gosh, how awesome that Kim’s having another one of those sweet Beeler children!”

But you’d be WRONG!

Those Beeler children are not sweet!  Err…  I mean, I’m not knocked up!

These are *not* the Beeler children. These children will kill you while you sleep. The Beeler children will wear you out until you just lay down and die. In your maternity pants.

My OB agreed with me, after E was born, that I’m not a good candidate for more pregnancies.  But I have this pair (seriously, I just wrote it pare, then pear, then pair) of maternity pants from 2001 that I AM STILL WEARING!  Yesterday I took them on their maiden 2012 voyage in which I played tennis with my husband and kids.  Today I wore them again to go roller skating with the kids at homeschool skate.

It’s not that I’d be a bad mom, quality-wise… Just a terrible vessel. Also, it might kill me. These parents are terrible parents quality-wise.

I know it’s summer when I get to wear my maternity pants.

They frickin’ rock, in all their lime green glory.

This maternity pants sighting proves at least two things.  One, I wear clothes more than once before washing because it’s great for the environment, YAY Environment!,

Not super funny, but a diagram instantly makes this post more scientific. Plus, it’s a VENN! Venn diagrams are very helpful in sorting information.

and 2) we are an athletic bunch of Beelers this week.  N was outside, under the wide open sky, with sun shining and no electrical outlets.  None of us perished from the grass, trees, breeze, or solar flares.  We almost perished from E’s very bossy tendencies, however.  He’s definitely one that has ideas and opinions, and likes to bark them at all of us from the comfort and safety of family.  He’s pretty quiet outside the family.

“Nasa warns solar flares from ‘huge space storm’ will cause wide-spread chaos.” So be careful if you leave your house. Ever.

I have no idea where E gets those bossy traits.

Not from me! I swear! Jeff is a lying liar.

Moving on, back to the subject of my awesome pants…  A friend commented that she liked them a couple of years ago.  I ‘fessed up that they were maternity in nature.  The ground didn’t swallow me up, so I kept wearing them.  Last year, my sister saved me from myself and helped me get some new clothes.  I think she felt sorry for me because I was still wearing a brown, v-necked shirt that she couldn’t even remember how long ago her store carried…  Ten or more years, at least.

I love that shirt, too.  I can’t wait until lime green and brown are acceptable together in public.

Half my target t-shirts were stained with movie popcorn butter.  Thanks, Jeff!  (buy same size as husband wears, in men’s = two wardrobes for the price of one!)  My favorite pair of jeans actually wore out in the crotch last year!  There was nothing left!  I was sad (dual meaning) and wore them a couple of extra times before declaring them toast.  I’m painfully shy, so the juxtaposition of not being able to talk to people due to diagnosable mental illness, plus my hoo-ha hanging out…priceless.

The rip started like this. Then it grew, and kind of gaped down a little. This is not my hoo-ha. This is a stranger’s crotch, thanks be to Google Images.

Did I mention the social anxiety?  One-two punch, shyness *and* social anxiety.  Maybe they’re the same thing?  Whatever.  “By the power of Grayskull…I have the POWER!”  But I save it for Facebook and blogging.  Sorry.

Word.

But my maternity pants stand the test of time.  They also hold three tennis balls per pocket.  PER POCKET!  That’s right…  Pregnant women need bigass pockets to hold their crap.  Car keys, water bottle, a sandwich, plus whatever else is necessary to be pregnant and on the move.  Non-pregnant people wearing maternity pants could also benefit from bigass pockets.  Skating?  I had a pear of socks, unusually large smart phone, folding money, and an electric generator for my laptop.  And my laptop.  It was glorious.

This year I have a couple of shirts and pants that are younger than my oldest child, which is almost the same as me being in the front row of Paris Fashion Week.  I’m pretty jazzed, actually.  I will continue to wear my maternity pants, however.

I think they look a little bit like clown pants, and I hate clowns, but sweet baby (insert favorite deity name here), I love those effing pants.

I don’t love *these* effing pants.

I just read this to my creative writing critique group (N & E), and the feedback I received is that it needs more bad words.  I love those kids almost as much as I love my maternity pants.

For N and E, who like it when I swear.

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The Fort Must Be Defended Against Alien Forces

November 11, 2011 at 2:22 pm (E, Education, Family, Fear, Field Trips, Following Bliss, Homeschooling, Jeff, Lifestyle, N, Parenting)
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So I just posted about E’s joy.  Now I’ll post about N to keep balance in the universe.

Different kids find their delight in different places. Read the rest of this entry »

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It’s a Wonderful Life!

November 11, 2011 at 10:01 am (E, Family, Following Bliss, Jeff)
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E is a kid who likes to celebrate.  He likes to get excited about stuff and get mired in the details of things he enjoys. There is a reason Jeff tagged him as our Enthusiast…he’s quite Enthusiastic when he chooses to be.

There’s always that caveat.  He is, after all, a Beeler.  We are a mercurial bunch. Read the rest of this entry »

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“Simon Says: Pick Your Butt With Your Finger.”

October 24, 2011 at 6:43 pm (Crazies, E, Education, Family, Following Bliss, Homeschooling, N, Parenting)
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The good news is that N feels better after a weekend bout with either food poisoning or a food allergy.

The bad news is that N feels better after a weekend bout with either food poisoning or a food allergy. Read the rest of this entry »

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Chuck Norris IS the Higgs Boson

October 21, 2011 at 11:12 am (Cub Scouts, E, Education, Family, Jeff, N, Parenting)
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Here we are, another Friday drive into Evanston.  N and E are big fans of Chuck Norris jokes, so it’s funny to listen to them try to one-up each other in the backseat.

Portrait of Chuck Norris

Read the rest of this entry »

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My Future Daughter-in-Law Might Be A Cheeseburger

October 18, 2011 at 10:09 pm (E, Family, Following Bliss, N)
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After sleeping through the opera and later missing MRU as well, the boys and I decided to salvage the day by getting Halloween costumes figured out.  I wish I could be one of those moms that whips something together and the kids look cute/clever/scary/funny/etc.

More Like Bologna

They’d just look and feel sad if I did though, so off to Halloween City we went to shop the spoon-fed, previously imagined, mass produced, cute/clever/scary/funny/etc. polyester looks.

First we needed sustenance.  We wound up at Baker’s Square so E could stalk spend some quality time with his girlfriend, Barbie.

Read the rest of this entry »

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