Taking the Scenic Route

There has been a lot of talk about spanking and hot sauce on the tongue as punishment on the Gentle Discipline boards and lists I subscribe to because recently, a couple on an NPR show talked about how wonderful spanking was.  There has also been some attention to Lisa Welsh (I think that is her name…”Blair” from “Facts of Life”) who is one of those self rightous, twisted, annoying ‘christians’ (I can’t capitilize Christian when I firmly believe her actions show that she is anything but Christian).  On a show or book or something she advocates abuse to raise children the *cough* “biblical way”, including putting hot sauce on their tongues if they talk back or use bad language.  First, let me say, that I find that pretty funny because ds LOVES hot sauce and it is the only way we can get him to eat some foods…but we are talking about Louisiana hot sauce, not tobasco here.  However, anytime you forcibly do things like this with the intent to cause hurt or shame, I really think it is more about the parents inability to act maturely and all about them getting out their frustrations and anger out on the child.  Nothing to do with discipline, everything to do with domination and abuse.  I find this especially true in today’s world when we KNOW the effects of spanking.  I don’t blame people who spanked before we understood the effects and therefore didn’t seek alternatives (because a lot of people did it even though it didn’t feel right because ‘that is what you were supposed to do’), but how can anybody in today’s world still do this ?!? 

Anyway, on one of the lists I am on, the question was posed:

“Is “spare the rod, spoil the child” really in the bible?  People say that all the time, but I have yet to have a person actually say WHERE in the bible.
“
and here is an answer that I thought was well articulated.  I knew that “rod” had nothing to do with sticks and other implements to beat your child, but this explanation is really great:

No, it’s not.  There is a verse in Proverbs that says “He who spares his rod, hates his son, but he who loves him chastens him early.”  Which makes great sense when you understand that the “rod” is “Shebet” and it was the staff of authority held by the head of a home, and to spare it means to set it aside.  “Chasten” comes from a Hebrew word that means “verbally correct” and carries the connotation of “Come let us reason together”.  So the verse is saying that a father who loves his son will take seriously the responsibility symbolized by his shebet and reason together with his son about God’s Law.–nothing at all to do with spanking. Oh, and the word for “son” is “na’ar” and is used for individuals from age 6-20, and since the ability to reason isn’t developed until 14 this verse is speaking about a late adolescent (who would have been responsible for offering his own sin offering at 21). So it’s about making sure your young men understand God’s Law before they were accountable for
upholding it.
Crystal Lutton
Author of Biblical Parenting
http://www.aolff.org
“Parents do not provoke your children to anger,
but bring them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord.”  Eph. 6:4

Link from another blog I like:  Myths of Spanking

Zane decided today was the day to learn to drink from a cup.  It took a bit, but he ended up figuring it out.  He started out by trying to get his whole face in the cup so he could lap water like a cat alternating it with dipping his hand in and sucking the water off.  Both Zach and I worked with him to put his mouth around the cup properly and he got it.  He still isn’t great at tipping the cup the right amount so he can get water without choking himself, but that will come with practice.  It is weird to think of all the little things we have to learn, things we don’t even think about as adults.

Zach had an interview today.  He isn’t sure how it went, but it at least went well enough that they want him to email his references to them, so he isn’t out of the running.  There was another interview for the same position right after him. 

I am feeling better, but very tired.  I can’t take a nap because Zach crashed in the bedroom, so I have to stay awake.  I think the stress of the interview was just too much.  I can’t wait until he wakes up so I can go take a nap. 

Finally, some long overdue pictures.

 A chalk drawing by Zane from earlier this month.  It looks sort of like an angel to me.

To my parent’s farm a bit over a week ago

On the way out to the farm, we ran into a stretch of road where the blacktop was STEAMING!  There was fog like steam rolling off the top of the roads.  We couldn’t really get a great picture of it since the most dramatic areas were also the most dangerous to stop due to low visability, but it was really interesting.

Shelby & Zane

Zane picked up Shelby’s (black lab) toy (an old milk carton) and handed it to him.  Shelby gingerly took it before running energetically and playing.  It was so sweet to see how gentle Shelby was with him…all her energy contained when she was next to Zane.  I still get a little nervous with dogs around him.  I have never had a problem, but I know stuff can happen so incredibly fast with even the most gentle dogs.

Sandpile fun

Time to Eat!

Typical summer fare…burgers and chicken breasts on the grill with corn on the cob.  We were getting such a kick out of dad.  He kept explaining the best way to prepare corn.  He never used to cook before mom worked…a big reason why I learned to cook at such an early age is because dad just didn’t cook. To hear him repeatedly telling people that “all you had to do is put it in the microwave for 3 minutes” was just so cute and sweet.

Playing with Grandma and Grandpa in the sandpile.

A day at the farm is not complete without a ride on the 4 wheeler with Grandpa

Grandpa and Zane exploring the workings of some antique farm equiptment. 

 I can’t remember the name of this one of the top of my head, but it is pulled behind a tractor and is essentially a giant rake.  It pulls the hay into piles so the thresher can come by and pick up the hay to make bales.  Dad hasn’t made hay bales since I was a kid, so this isn’t a peice that has been used in a while.  The thing I remember the most from baling is the smell of the fields..it is a sweet and pungent smell.  It is also a harvest that requires many hands to do well because you have to have somebody running the bailer, and people pulling the bales out and stacking them on the trailer.  It is hot and itchy work. 

I really like blogging.  It is so much easier to me than journaling with pen and paper.  I have probably started a hundred journals in my life, with all manner of notebooks and blank books, from the pretty to the utilitarian.  I never manage to do it longer than a week or so.  Writing by hand seems so tedious.  I can’t stand my handwriting if I just “write” and spend an inordinate amount of time trying to make it neat, as if somebody were going to grade the thing.  When you see people journaling in movies and such, they have these really neat journals full of pretty handwriting with little sketches…it all seems so lovely and meaningful.  My journals never look like that.  Well, more accurately, they look like that for about 3 days, then the pressure to continue to make it ‘perfect’ overwhelms me and it ends up in the pile of notebooks with half a dozen pages used and the rest of the pages blank.  I also feel the need to “catch up” with every journal I start…and it is so overwhelming that I never really accomplish it and get frustrated. 

In contrast, with blogging, everything flows.  I can type much faster than I can write, and when I come to a word I don’t know how to spell, I just push through it the best I can and use spell check when I am finished.  I don’t get as hung up on proper grammer or sentance structure compared to journaling by hand either, although I probably should pay more attention. lol.

Blogging is also really handy when you are in a chat room so you don’t have to rewrite the answer to “how/what are you doing” every time somebody new comes into the room.  You just put a link and if they are interested, they can look and you don’t have to go through typing it all again.  This especially nice when something really crummy is happening because you don’t have to keep reliving it.

Why do I feel the desire to blog?  Mostly so the “little stories” of my life, of Zane, of family are recorded for those that follow me.  There is so much I wish I knew about people who lived through what is history to me.  Did grandma have the same feelings I do about raising children, did get excited over the feel of a particular yarn?, did she have a favorite pan?, where was she when Kennedy was shot and did it affect her?….the little things.  How did she veiw politics and “historical” events…where they important enough to her to recognize the significance then, or did they pass by without notice and only realize in retrospect how big things were at the time.  I know more about my family history than a lot of people my age simply because my grandparents only died recently (dh and I each have 1 grandma left, but until a few years ago, we had ALL of our grandparents and both of us remember at least one great-grandparent…pretty amazing when you think about it.)

I also want to record the daily events for a reference for myself.  I have no sense of time what-so-ever.  None.  Just ask anybody who wants to meet me at a specific time.  lol.  I also have no sense of dates.  I just get completely lost without having it recorded.  Any time I have to recall when something happened, the only way I can figure out a close approximation of the date is to remember what my surroundings were like at the time of the event…what car was I driving, what furniture did I have, what was I wearing, what pictures were on the wall and then narrow down when those things all occured at the same time…things like that.  I have a strong sense of history, the ebbs and flows of my life and civilization in general, but dates…no.  I can tell you even the most innane detail of events, but not when they occured.  For instance, I can visualize utterly the last night I spent in La Jolla, CA sitting on the beach watching the sunset.  I can smell the air, hear the rhythm of the waves crashing on the rocks, see the sunlight dancing across the waves, and see the siloutte of the man fishing off the rocks not far from us.  There are a million other minute details I can remember and in my mind, I am still right there, but off the top of my head, I can’t even tell you the YEAR it happened, much less the day.  lol.  (ok…we moved to La Jolla after we were married…in the fall…so it was the winter of 1995-1996. I think my parents came down after Christmas…aren’t the bowl games after Christmas (they came to see the bowl game)?…so it had to be around the last days of 95 or the first days of 96, but probably not New Year’s eve or day, because I think I would have remembered that, and I think before my birthday, because I would have remembered that…so probably around Jan 2 – 10th in 1996…whew…I can narrow that one down pretty well)  I think that is why it is hard for me to remember when things happened in my childhood…there aren’t a lot of reference points.  There was a tornado in 74, and the next “big” thing was a cluster of things that happened in 6th grade (getting period, winning art contest)…that doesn’t really narrow things down very well.  lol.  The trials of a stable childhood I guess.  Zach has a lot more reference points to narrow stuff down.  As a sort of funny note, when I went back and read some of my old notebooks, I often put the date without the year.  Some of them I have no idea what year they are.  I went to the same school and church until I was in my early 20s (I even went to college with a few of my classmates from preschool), so even the references to people are the same throughout my childhood.  I just think that is weird.

I also love this blog because I can add pictures.  I wish this computer actually had space to store the photos so I could add more (would love to have a picture every day), but I am on the crappier computer and have to kick Zach off of his computer to get to the pictures, and that isn’t going to happen every day.  This computer has also taken to crashing when ever I try to plug the camera in, so I can’t even download *a* picture to put on the blog, but instead have to wait until Zach wants to download the camera *and* let me on to mess with pictures.  I could be pushier I guess, but it doesn’t seem right for me to interupt him working so I can do something non-essential *right now*.  I am just glad there is a second computer, as crappy as it is, so that I can actually get on the internet and do things without having to wait for him to be off the computer.

Well, both my guys were awake and active when I started this entry, and both are snuggled into bed as I finish.  I hope this thing makes sense since it has been up on my screen for 4 hours with all the interuptions.

I feel a little better today, but not great yet.  At least it is moving in the right direction though. 

I did get a new project on the needles, so that made my day a lot better.  I decided on a garter stitch jacket, hat, and booties for my cousin’s kid.  It is a Debbie Bliss design and looks quite a bit like the LTK Easy Peasy jacket, with a lot more details.  I decided that the yarns I could afford would not look good on the other two jackets I was considering and I knew that Bernat’s cotton tots (a 100% cotton that is pretty nice to work with) would work up fairly well.  I did buy some other yarn yesterday thinking an acrylic might work for one of the other designs, but when I knit up a swatch for gauge, I hated it.  It had a horrible drape and you could feel all the pop bottles that gave up their lives for the yarn…just YUCK.  I have all the yarn except the partially used skein back in the bag with the reciept in the car to make sure it doesn’t get messed with before I can return it.  (Bernat soft & chunky btw, so nobody else makes the same unfortunate mistake).  It took me much of yesterday to do the math to convert the gauge from the DB yarn to the CottonTots, but I was able to get it started finally. CottonTots is about the only discount yarn I have ever been happy with.  It seems like I can’t find an acrylic I like the feel of yet.  Maybe it is because it is a natural fiber and works up a lot nicer than the kitchen cotton yarns.  I choose the “Butter Cream” color because they didn’t have the gender neutral colors I wanted and I didn’t like what the store did have.  I think this will work up really pretty.  I only have about 10 rows right now and I am happy with it.

I did have a bit of a surprise today….I actually agreed with Pat Buchanan in an article I read.  I am sure I still can’t stand him in reguards to social issues, but on this I really liked what he had to say and agree with much it. 

eta:  I originally wrote Pat Robertson instead of Buchanan, so I guess I still don’t agree with Pat Robertson. lol.

Good, Good news!  Zach got a call back for an interview for a part-time job as an in house tech support for a law firm.  The job is really close (almost walking distance….could be walked, but probably not a great idea in dressy clothes).   It seems like they would be willing to work around dh’s school schedule and since he has to put a salery expectation on the application, we assume it pays decent.  It might not be what he is “worth”, but we didn’t want to get knocked out of the running by putting the requirements too high.  It is going to be difficult enough finding a job that will work around school, we knew we needed to give a little on the salery to even be considered.   They wanted to do an interview next Wednesday afternnoon (afternoon is a GOOD thing for Zach….am interviews put him at a disadvantage big time)  Say some prayers for us..this looks like it would be a good thing.

I am still fighting whatever it is that I have…I don’t feel as bad as I did, but dang, I want to feel better already.  I can tell I still have a low grade fever and feel really irritated by that. 

I did email Jess at Fabric Connection about having some yarn custom colored to make some LTK pumpkin hats (scroll down for picture)  for all the cousins in the family….Zane is the oldest, down to a 5-6 month old.  It is small and I can make it for both boys and girls without having to hawk my jewelry to buy the yarn.  lol.  I will probably be able to make all  of them for between $20-30 with custom dyed yarn.  (well. plus shipping)  I have SO many people to knit for.  I still haven’t decided what to do for Christmas, but they will probably be scarves and/or hats since I don’t have time or money to make everybody sweaters, especially considering there isn’t a single person in our families that wears a size smaller than a large….most of the men are well over 6 ft, and almost all the women are plus size, or near plus size.  I don’t know how to do sox yet, so that doesn’t seem like a good idea since it is a skill all on it’s own.  Oh, and that doesn’t include knitting anything for Zane, Zach, or myself.  lol.  I at least want to make a sweater for Zane since he is a little guy.  I don’t want to make a sweater for myself…my gosh, the amount of yarn I would need is astronomical!

eta:  well, the yarn is going to be $8/skein, and at a skein a hat (plus 1 more skein for the embellishments), it will be a tad bit more than $20-30, but I really want to do it anyway.  I haven’t been able to make anything for Zane’s cousins yet because I haven’t even been able to afford to send a card, much less a knitted item.  These hats sell for a minimum of $18, so it will be worth it…I hope (I really hope they like them).  It just kills me to not be able to do anything.  I haven’t even been able to send out Zane’s Easter pictures yet because we have never had the funds for postage until now.   I will be heading to the post office as soon as I feel better.

In contrast to yesterday:

bad news: headache back.  I just took more meds, so it should be better in an hour or so

good news:  financial aid money in.  He has to go through a whole mess because he was dropped from his classes, but by the end of the day, we should have some cash in our bank account.

bad news:  no financial aid money yet.

good news:  I am feeling a bit better and Zach & I tackled the intimidating job of completing the transition from 1 bedroom (with a king size bed, and 4-5 ft wide strip along one side for Zane’s play area) and a storage room (with maybe a 5×5 ft play area) to a 2 bedroom apartment.  We moved all the clothes from the closet in the “master” bedroom and made that a storage closet.  (we have been working to reduce our storage for weeks now to make it fit) and moved all the clothes to the slightly smaller closet in the second bedroom.  We moved the king bed into the smaller bedroom (which is now pretty much a “bed” room.  lol….not much space around it.  We put a twin mattress (my folks still had my childhood mattress and brought it up for us this week) in the master bedroom and moved (or plan on moving) almost all the toys into that room (leaving some quiet toys in our bedroom, and some toys in the living room of course).  We moved the crib into Zane’s room too (no room in our room) and he actually wanted to get in it.  lol.  He has never slept in it, we use it for diaper storage.  Still have a lot of loose ends to finish up, but the major stuff is done. Yeah!

Thank you for the well wishes and prayers.  It meant a lot to me.

Headache down to a dull roar with meds, but I feel really weird on them…woozy and foggy brain.  I am really yearning to feel like myself again.  It seems like I have spent most of the summer sick.  Such a beautiful summer and I am missing it.  I had so many things to get done in this break and almost none of them are getting done.  Zane is clingy, I am hoping it is just because he is sensing something wrong with me and not because he is getting sick.  I do know it is really hard not to scream at him to be quiet and go away and let me *at least* lay down (forget about sleeping until we can get another door lock…the only room we can lock off contains all of his toys.)  without crawling all over me.  It isn’t fair to him and he does not understand, but every little noise and touch is amplified and it is absolute torture right now.

We are sitting on pins and needles waiting for the financial aid to get in.  You would think Zach is the first person to graduate in the summer and go to grad school in the fall for all the trouble he has had.  The first date to pick up your financial aid was last Thursday.  We spent $10 of the last $20 on meds for me today.  My mom offered to pay for it, but I am really just hoping that our money will be in soon (like tomorrow).  We owe her so dang much money already it is ridiculous.

Hopefully, I will be able to write a happier blog soon.  This is depressing.