I am due to have a kid in October. No, I don’t know the gender yet. Yes, I am going to find out – we just couldn’t tell at the last ultra sound.
With a new person coming into the house, my husband and I are committed to cooking more meals at home. I already have some staple recipes of my own, and I have some my Grandmother and Mother-in-law have promised me, but I want to have a vast collection. I could get cookbooks (which I have plenty of) and I could seek some out with google searches, but I wanted to at least feign some personal attachment to our home cooked meals.
So please, post your most famous, your most beloved, or just plain easiest recipes here – from dinner menues to baked goods. I want my kid to grow up with good eatin’!
What I have so far is listed below. This is just a list of meal ideas that are staples around our house or other family members, if something sounds good and you want a recipe let me know. I want to have at least 30 good recipes, preferably more, so that each thing would only be eaten once a month…
1) Venetian Pasta Rolls
2) My Crab and Spinach Pasta Rolls
3) Spaghetti (who doesn’t have an awesome spaghetti recipe?)
4) Chicken Alfredo (I make my Alfredo sauce from scratch, so easy)
5) Chicken Parmesean
6) My Mother-in-law’s Lasagna recipe
7) I have a badass Cayenne Chicken recipe if anyone wants it
8) Lemon Baked Pork with Carmelized Onions (courtesy of Rachel Ray)
9) Does anyone have a homemade pizza recipe? How do I make dough from scratch?
10) Grandmom Betty Rogers’ Stuffed Bell Pepper Recipe
11) Grandmom Betty Rogers’ Stuffed Cabbage Recipe
12) Chicken and Green Bean Casserole
13) Mother-in-Law’s Chicken and Dumpling Recipe
14) Grilled Cheese Sandwiches with tomatoe soup
15) I have an awesome Pork Orange Marmalade Recipe courtesy of Wally World
16) Peach Glaze Pork (great for holidays served with lots of sliced peaches on the side – I like fruity meat)
17) Mother-in-law’s Sloppy Joe recipe
18) Husband’s steak with my mashed potatoe/cheese casserole
19) Chili Cheese Dogs
20) Taco Salad/ Frito Pie
21) Chicken on Rice with Brocoli Cheese on the side (does anyone have a good brocoli cheese soup recipe? preferably one with jalepenos?)
22) Sherry’s Awesome Baked Chicken with French cut green beans
23) Mac and Cheese (add hot dog chunks)
24) Cheese Enchiladas
25) Chicken Enchiladas with green peppers
26) Grandmom’s meat loaf
27) Larry’s Corn Chowder
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I’m reading Anna Karenina right now, its clever and interesting. There’s a much different feel and mood than Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment (which I just finished recently).
I don’t have a formal review as of yet, I am just now starting Part II, but I did find this fantastic article and wanted to point it out:
http://chaosandoldnight.wordpress.com/2007/02/22/tolstoy-happiness-and-objective-meaning/
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My husband wanted a parody of “What’s Up?” by 4 Non Blonds, so I gave it to him.
Twenty – five years and my life is still
Trying to get up that great big hill of tweets
For a good status report
And I realized quickly when I knew I should
That the world was made up of this brotherhood of tweets
For whatever that means
And so I cry sometimes
When I’m chilling online
Just to get it all out
What’s in my head
And I am feeling a little peculiar
And so I wake in the morning
And I get online
And I take a deep breath and I post my life
And I scream at the top of my lungs
What’s going on?
And I say, hey hey hey hey
I said hey, what’s going on?
Ooh, ooh ooh
And I try, oh my god do I try
I try all the time, in this institution
And I pray, oh my god do I pray
I pray every single day
For a revolution
And so I cry sometimes
When I’m sitting online
Just to get it all out
What’s in my head
And I am feeling a little peculiar
And so I wake in the morning
And I sign on quick
And I take a deep breath and get
ready to read posts and I type real fast
What’s going on?
And I say, hey hey hey hey
I said hey, what’s going on?
Twenty – five years and my life is still
Trying to get up that great big deal called the net
for more wasted time
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This is an ode to Interested, as this post is actually a comment I made on her blog. I wanted to share it with my personal readers.
As a Christian who some people would call “religious” I have to say: I don’t think Easter should be the most celebrated Christian holiday.
Celebrating the Resurrection is quite different (in my book) from celebrating Easter. Easter, by name, is a celebration of the Spring Equinox.
The ancient Saxons in Northern Europe worshiped the Goddess Oestre at the time of the Spring Equinox. The Goddess Easter represents the sunrise, spring-time and fertility, the renewal of life. Pagan Anglo-Saxons made offerings of colored eggs to her at the Vernal Equinox, putting them at graves. Some people believe that the Egyptians and Greeks did this as well.
“Christians” used the name later and morphed their religion onto a pagan celebration so that new converts wouldn’t find the transition intimidating… and/or new “converts” kept celebrating their old traditions because rather than actually converting they added Jesus to one of the many gods they already worshiped. (I’ve seen the history written both ways, and both is equally believable.)
I would never prohibit a child from attending an Easter Egg hunt, because its now a fun tradition that many people participate in – but I also will never tell my kid that its an important Christian holiday or make up any kind of “Christian” symbolism about the eggs. In my book, the Resurrection celebration and the Easter celebration should be considered separate holidays, but they have been merged for so long people can’t remember the difference
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Please read this post in its entirety before you judge.
I’m a be prepared kind of person. So even though I don’t have any kids, I want to be prepared if and when I do. With that in mind, I’d also like to say that I truly believe in the old saying (Marx was it?) that “the hand the rocks the cradle rules the world” and that if we are bothering to spit children out of our bodies, we should be prepared to be well invested in their lives AND their education. For some people, the best they can do is sending their child to learn from someone else, whether it be public school, private school, or private tutoring. I believe that a healthy combination of many things including home schooling would be best I can do for my children.
In this post, I want to share my planned curriculum/ education plan for my children. I’m posting it because I want input. I want my fellow bloggers to pipe in and tell me what’s its missing, what they would add, etc.
So… take a look:
The Lesson Plan (2nd edition)
Staples to be exposed to: A bible verse a week, two hours of reading a day (minimum), two hours of exercise a day, one hour of cleaning or gardening a day, never more than one-two hours of television/movies per day on average.
Try to include one audio lesson per week that changes from subject to subject… perhaps a book on CD once a month.
A possible minimum of 200 volumes to read per year… count it up once the lesson plans are more specific, like the Darwin and Egypt Studies.
Ages 2-3
• 2 15 minute Kung Fu lessons through out the day
• ABC’s, 123’s, etc.
• Learn a new bible verse each week (or segments of verse)
• Practice singing various songs
• Story time for as long as you can get them to listen
• Incorporate daily “art time”
Age 4
• Start McGuffy’s primer
• Basic addition and subtraction (using objects)
• Start 30 minute Kung Fu lessons a day
• Once a week nature walks, berry picking, plant and animal identification
• Learn new bible verse each week, Ten Commandments
• Singing time
• Story time for at least thirty minutes a day
• Daily art time
• Reading to include:
All the Beatrice Potter books
All the Dr. Seuss Books
Mercer Meyer Books
Age 5
• McGuffy’s first and second reader
• 30 minute Kung Fu lessons every day
• Learn basic Chinese words, purchase Chinese lessons on audio
• Learn basic Spanish words, purchase Spanish lessons on audio
• Learn new bible verse each week, Beatitudes
• Singing time, basic music lessons, early piano
• Once a week nature walks, berry picking, plant and animal identification
• Learn to make tarts and pies with the berries, include basic arithmetic with kitchen supplies
• Daily art time
• Take turns reading stories to each other for an hour a day
• Reading to include:
The Chronicles of Narnia – C.S. Lewis
The Little House on the Prairie series – Laura Ingalls Wilder
Grandma’s Attic series – (research and buy)
Beverly Cleary books
• History and science lessons to correspond with questions asked… ie:”Mommy, where do bricks come from,” sit down and do research on the topic. Keep track of such questions and research adventures in a notebook and incorporate them into fun games the following week to keep the things fresh in their mind, but unassociated with the question. Have them make up a story about a brick maker and an adventure he had, etc.
• Organize once a month field trips to places like the zoo or the museum.
Age 6
• McGuffy’s third reader
• 45 minute Kung Fu lessons every day
• Continue with basic Chinese and Spanish
• Start American Sign Language
• Start basic Latin
• Music theory, piano lessons, and fun singing time
• Continue once a week nature walks and baking parties, in these get more focused and researched with science and math lessons. Go into detail on how water boils and bread rises, the science of heat, talk more about the math behind cooking. On nature walks talk about all the plants, the science of those plants, their origin, how to use them in the kitchen. Also, in the kitchen, teach them to tell time and utilize a timer.
• Continue reading out loud to each other for an hour a day and memorizing a bible verse once a week.
• Continue once a month field trips.
• Basic anatomy
• Daily art time, creative assignments pertaining to anything we’ve read or started learning.
• Reading to include:
Amelia Bedelia books
Max and Me and the Time Machine
Louisa May Alcott
Let the Circle Be Unbroken seriesluding a twenty-six word spelling and definition list every week (one word from each letter of the alphabet, go in order)
• Start a basic Spanish vocabulary list each week as well, 10 words a week.
• 1 hour Kung Fu lessons a day, to include the work out as well as Chinese history and philosophy.
• Piano lessons with Stephen, find a children’s choir to join or look into local children’s theatre
• Continue once a month field trips.
• History lessons to include: Susan Wise Bauer’s History of the World and historical fiction books
• Each month we’ll pick an animal to study… what they eat, where they’re from, different names people use for them all over the world, they way they move, how they affect humanity
• Continue learning a new bible verse each week.
• Continue reading to each other for an hour a day.
• Swimming lessons in the summer.
Age 8
• McGuffy’s fifth reader
• Enroll in Kung Fu lessons at Davey’s school
• Piano lessons, children’s choir, children’s theatre activities if they like
• Reading to include:
The Looking Glass Wars Trilogy
Alice in Wonderland – Lewis Carroll
The Lord of the Rings series
• Continue with basic Latin, basic Spanish, basic Chinese, and ASL
• History lessons to be included topically with books we read and languages studying. Also read Susan Wise Bauer’s History of the World.
• Start working through basic Science texts (use the textbooks as a loose outline to collect interesting literature on those topics)
• Spend an hour every other day with math assignments
• Go to first Kung Fu tournament, continue going every third month if they enjoy them
• Start multiplication tables
• English Grammar, start including a twenty-six word spelling and definition list every week (one word from each letter of the alphabet, go in order)
• Continue learning a new bible verse once a week.
• Continue once a month field trips.
• Continue once a month animal studies… what they eat, where they’re from, different names people use for them all over the world, they way they move, how they affect humanity, and how humanity affects them.
• End of year project on any topic.
Age 9
• Archery classes
• Do a Native American Indian Study
• Native American Legends and practices
• Camping trip, teach to fish
• Have the multiplication table memorized
• Master division and word problems
• Find/hire a Spanish teacher or kids Spanish classes
• Continue listening to Chinese audio lessons
• Continue Piano lessons
• Continue Latin and ASL lessons
• Reading to include:
The Wrinkle in Time Series – Madeleine L’engle
The Prince and the Pauper – Mark Twain
The Five Little Peppers and How they Grew – Margaret Stewart?
• English Grammar, cont. including a twenty-six word spelling and definition list every week (one word from each letter of the alphabet, go in order)
• Continue learning a new bible verse once a week
• Continue once a month field trips
• Continue Kung Fu lessons
• Continue once a month animal studies… what they eat, where they’re from, different names people use for them all over the world, they way they move, how they affect humanity, and how humanity affects them.
• Make sure we have covered basic TX and U.S. History (have all the president’s memorized).
• End of year project on anything.
Age 10
• Continue Kung Fu and Piano lessons, along with any activities they enjoy that go along with that (ie: tournaments, recitals).
• Continue learning one bible verse a week.
• Continue with Spanish, Latin, and ASL lessons.
• Go to Deaf Fest.
• Mastery of Fractions.
• Continue once a month animal studies… what they eat, where they’re from, different names people use for them all over the world, they way they move, how they affect humanity, and how humanity affects them.
• Obtain a fifth/sixth grade curriculum for science and history to be covered, or write own.
• Study the weather, climates, environment, etc. Spend the year completing a 20 page assignment on any major weather event in all of history. Combine the 12 animal studies from the year into this assignment by including information on how those 12 species were affected (or not affected) by the major weather event.
• Enroll in any electives desired at the middle school (second half of being ten).
• Cover lots of music and art history, as well as basic European history (summer vacation in England).
• Start reading the Get A Grip On… series. We own Evolution, Ecology, Astronomy, and New Physics.
• Reading to include:
Harry Potter – J.K. Rowling
Anne of Green Gables series – L.M. Montgomery
I am Charlotte Doyle – Avi
The Giver – Lowry
The Phantom Tollbooth – Junger
Age 11
• Start covering the Russian alphabet, start mastering basic Russian vocabulary, study Russian culture and history. Spend the year completing a 30 page research paper on Russia. Learn to cook Russian dishes. Vacation in Russia.
• Buy a Rosetta Stone for Russian.
• Continue translating basic Latin texts.
• Spanish and Latin lessons should be conversational, translate history and science lessons into Spanish and Latin and then back to English again.
• At some point in time I want to include Hebrew lessons
• History reports due once a month, pick their own topic out of lessons covered (2-3 pages).
• History lessons would include three sessions of reading and researching a week and two history channel selections that tie into the topic of each week.
• Spend a year putting together a “States” project together; include a 1-2 page written assignment on a state event that had/has international impact. Include a 10 page paper on the state that they find most interesting. Include in depth study on the presidents, their wives and their significance.
• Field trips to the beach, summer swim team if interested.
• Science: the equivalent of sixth grade basic science – Home-school or public school science classes for labs and such.
Read Get a Grip on Ecology
Study basic botany and whatnot
• Choose a sport at the middle school to join, or continue with Kung Fu training, or both.
• Start using modules (like from middle school) for math lessons, mastery of each topic before moving on.
• Reading assignments to include:
Invitation to the Game
Push Cart Wars – Jeanne Merril
Robinson Carusoe – Daniel Defoe
Robin McKinley books
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle books
A Christmas Carol – Charles Dickens
Remaining Harry Potter books
• 50 Book Challenge every year. Shelfari account and reviews on each book read.
• Continue memorizing one bible verse a week, but now include in depth word studies, meaning, history, and context of the verses.
• Piano lessons continue, unless they want to pick up another instrument (more than welcome to join the middle school band).
• Health, Kinesiology, Grey’s Anatomy and whatnot
Age 12
• Hire a Russian tutor
• Continue a sport. Continue musical instrument. Begin voice lessons if interested.
• Spend the year studying the Chinese culture. 35 page report due at the end of the year. Read through Kung Fu: History, Philosophy & Technique. Vacation in Taiwan.
• Study the nature and history of the Asian religions. Study Chinese poetry. Include discussions on our worldview.
• Begin reading through the U.S. History List
• 5 page once a month history reports due on any topic, 3 of these assignments through the course of the year may be incorporated into the 35 page China report.
• Reading to include:
Dai Sijie, go through his writing together, discuss worldview
• Astronomy, spend the whole year on stars and planets – field trip to NASA with friends. Space Camp?
• Pre-Algebra modules.
• Continue once a week bible verses and 26 word vocabulary tests.
• 10 page animal report on animal of choice, incorporate information on how the stars and planets affect this animal. Find out if this animal is part of any of the astrological charts and discuss metaphysical ideas and world view.
• Take Chinese calligraphy classes together somewhere.
• Egypt Studies (refer to the JARS Egypt project/ Appendix)… these studies will overlap ages 12-13 and take 4-6 months or as long as interest in subject is maintained
• Field trips to Museums are a MUST
Age 13
• Start Greek lessons
• Algebra modules
• Once a month 6 page history reports due on any topic.
• Geology, field trips to include rock climbing and natural science museums. Include introductory topographic map information to lead into age 14 topographic map stuff.
• Additional reading material:
Yearning for the Land: A Search for the Importance of Place – John Warfield Simpson
The Map that Changed the World – Simon Winchester
• Continue studying musical instrument, Continue playing or practicing a sport.
• Continue bible studies. Go through the history of Christianity up through the Roman Catholic Church.
• History lessons would transition from our Egypt study into Alexander the Great and the Greek/Roman period.
Possibly include the Manfredi trilogy
• Greek History, Greek Mythology. Architectural and cultural studies. 40 page end of year report. Vacation in Greece.
• Read The Illiad and The Odyssey together.
• Reading to include Bauer’s Novels:
Cervantes – Don Quixote
Bunyan – Pilgrim’s Progress
Swift – Gulliver’s Travels
Austen – start with Pride and Prejudice, if we can’t fit ALL of Austen we must include Northanger Abbey
Dickens – Oliver Twist, Great Expectations, Nicholas Nickleby
Bronte – Jane Eyre
Hawthorne – The Scarlet Letter, House of Seven Gables
Melville – Moby Dick
Stowe – Uncle Tom’s Cabin
Flaubert – Madame Bovary
Dostoyevsky – Crime and Punishment
Tolstoy – Anna Karenina
Hardy – The Return of the Native
James – The Portrait of a Lady
Twain – Huckleberry Finn
Crane – Red Badge of Courage
Conrad – Heart of Darkness
Wharton – House of Mirth
Fitzgerald – The Great Gatsby
Woolf – Mrs. Dalloway (read Michael Cunningham’s The Hours together)
Kafka – The Trial
Wright – Native Son
Camus – The Stranger
Orwell – 1984
Ellison – Invisible Man
Bellow – Sieze the Day
Garcia Marquez – One Hundred Years of Solitude
Calvino – If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler
Morrison – Song of Solomon
Delillo – White Noise
Byatt – Possession
A Separate Peace and Peace Breaks Out – John Knowles
Wizard of Oz and Maguire’s Trilogy, also see the musical “Wicked”
Literary Criticism Assignment for the year: Discuss Fantasy vs. Reality, What literary pieces throughout history have focused on fantasy vs. reality? What novels have skewed your idea of reality? Include a study in pop culture when a novel or set of novels have skewed the public’s view of fantasy and reality? (Twilight, Harry Potter, pretty much any book fad, follow the rise of the book in culture, the economic value, quote reviews, and find any/all statistics regarding behavior directly or indirectly related to the fad.)
• Start studying plays and theatre history, as well as films and film history.
• Cover a brief stint on writing, creating, and publishing:
Penguin Special – Jeremy Lewis
Learning a Trade – Reynolds Price
Infamous Scribblers – Eric Burns
• Continue taking any electives that the public schools offer.
• Go through 365 Intellectual book together.
• Dickens on the Strand and Ren Fest every year.
Age 14
• Bauer’s List to be read on Monday’s and Wednesdays, Tuesdays and Thursdays are to cover all other material, Friday’s schoolwork will be determined on a weekly basis
The Story of Me: Autobiography and Memoir – PART TWO of The Well-Educated Mind
Augustine – The Confessions
Margery Kempe – The Book of Margery Kempe
Michael de Montaigne – Essays
Teresa of Avila – The Life of Saint Teresa of Avila by Herself
Rene Descartes – Meditations
John Bunyan – Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners
Mary Rowlandson – The Narrative of the Captivity and Restoration
Jean-Jacques Rousseau – Confessions
Benjamin Franklin – The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin
Henry David Thoreau – Walden
Harriet Jacobs – Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Written by Herself
Frederick Douglas – Life and Times of Frederick Douglas
Booker T. Washington – Up from Slavery
Friederick Nietzche – Ecce Homo
Adolf Hitler – Mein Kampf
Mohandas Gandhi – An Autobiography: The Story of My Experiments with Truth
Gertrude Stein – The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas
Thomas Merton – The Seven Storey Mountain
C.S. Lewis – Surprised by Joy: The Shape of My Early Life
Malcolm X – The Autobiography of Malcolm X
May Sarton – Journal of a Solitude
Aleksandr I. Solzhenistyn – The Gulag Archipelago
Richard Rodriguez – Hunger of Memory: The Education of Richard Rodriguez
Jill Ker Conway – The Road from Coorain
Elie Wiesel – All Rivers Run to the Sea: Memoirs
• Geographical mastery: memorize locations of every significant country on the globe. Study topographic maps, pick twelve countries not already studied and write a ten page report on each. Include topographic information, and create a topographic map of at least one region.
• History to cover all the third world countries being memorized and the history of map-making.
• Additional reading material:
• One page animal report including information on how the topography/terrain of their homeland affects them and their lifestyle to be tacked onto the end of each country’s report… the animal must be from/found in that country.
• A Study of Mormonism and various occults and secret societies around the world. Go in depth. Include the various occult studies in the geographical, political, and economic studies of the third world countries verses America. Discussions on our world view. Cultural aspects of religion and money, how one affects the other and whether it should or not.
Books on Mormonism, Freemasons, The Templars, etc.
• Darwin Study – see appendix
• Darwin Study to lead into Biology I material
• Additional reading material:
The Anthropology of Turquoise: Meditations on Landscape, Art, and Spirit by Ellen Meloy
• Geometry
• Continue utilizing Shelfari
• Start looking through writing competitions for college scholarships
• Choose any language to pursue.
• Pick the country, set up a budget, and schedule the family vacation.
• Choose any electives or regular courses at the public school.
• Continue bible verses and historical/contextual studies.
• Continue sport and music lessons of choice… join the public school choir? Or band?
Age 15
• Bauer’s List to be read on Monday’s and Wednesdays, Tuesdays and Thursdays are to cover all other material, Friday’s schoolwork will be determined on a weekly basis
The Story of the Past: The Tales of Historians (and Politicians) – PART THREE of The Well-Educated Mind
Herodotus – The Histories
Thucydides – The Peloponnesian War
Plato – The Republic
Plutarch – Lives
Augustine – The City of God
Bede – The Ecclesiastical History of the English People
Niccolo Machiavelli – The Prince
Sir Thomas More – Utopia
John Locke – The True End of Civil Government
David Hume – The History of England, Volume V
Jean-Jacques Rousseau – The Social Contract
Thomas Paine – Common Sense
Edward Gibbon – The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
Mary Wollstonecraft – A Vindication of the Rights of Woman
Alexis de Tocqueville – Democracy in America
Karl Marx and Friedrick Engels – The Communist Manifesto
Jacob Burckhardt – The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy
W.E.B. Du Bois – The Souls of Black Folk
Max Weber – The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism
Lytton Strachey – Queen Victoria
George Orwell – The Road to Wigan Pier
Perry Miller – The New England Mind
Joh Kenneth Galbraith – The Great Crash 1929
Cornelius Ryan – The Longest Day
Betty Friedan – The Feminine Mystique
Eugene D. Genovese – Roll, Jordan, Roll: The World the Slaves Made
Barbara Tuchman – A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous Fourteenth Century
Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein – All the President’s Men
James M. McPherson – Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era
Laurel Thatcher Ulrich – A Midwife’s Tale: The Life of Martha Ballard
Francis Fukuyama – The End of History and the Last Man
• Algebra II
• Chemistry
• Continue sport and music lessons of choice
• Continue lingual studies
• Interested in any certifications?
• Interested in any activities at the public high school?
• Go through European literature and history
• In depth study on Catholicism all the way up to Martin Luther. The History of the protestant and catholic churches, how that affects America historically and politically. Discussion of our World View. Read ALL C.S. Lewis material.
• 50 book European literature/history challenge in chronological order of history itself…
To include:
Man of Blessing: A Life of St. Benedict – Carmen A. Butcher (H)
Autobiography of Henry VIII – Margaret George (FIC)
The Constant Princess – Philippa Gregory (FIC)
Mary Queen of Scots – Margaret George (FIC)
Georgiana Duchess of Devonshire – Amanda Foreman (H)
Horatio Hornblower series – C.S. Forster (FIC)
• Vacation in Europe, go backpacking this time
• Additional Reading to include:
Age 16
• Bauer’s List to be read on Monday’s and Wednesdays, Tuesdays and Thursdays are to cover all other material, Friday’s schoolwork will be determined on a weekly basis
• Bauer’s Part Four: Plays
• Pre-Cal/Trig
• Physics, read the Get A Grip on New Physics book.
• First aid and CPR certified
• Interested in any activities at the public high school?
• Continue sport and music lessons of choice
• Start taking college courses at the community college or AP Duel Credit at the High School or a mix of both: English, History, Macro-Economics and Government
• In depth study of sexuality, culture, nature vs. nurture and political stand points. Discussion of world view. Include in depth scientific research.
Jeffrey Euginedes’ Middlesex
Wesley Stace’s Misfortune
Ovid’s Metamorphosis
Recall Mrs. Dalloway and The Hours
• In depth study of art history and the relationship between sexuality, religion, and politics with art.
• Vacation to country of interest (tie into art)
Age 17
• Bauer’s List Part Five – Poetry
• Margaret George’s Helen of Troy to accompany the re-reading of The Illiad
• Calculus, Business Calculus
• Read A Beautiful Mind by Sylvia Narr
• Biology II
• Anatomy
Complete Grey’s Anatomy
Find the Anatomy Color Books
• English II
• Micro-Economics through the college
• History II…. Any or all of these can be taken at the community college or mixed with AP Duel Credit classes at the High School, whichever they prefer.
• Continue with any sport and/or music lessons
• Continue with their language courses
• Really start making their own plans
By Age 18
I hope to send them out into the world with an associate’s degree and a rock solid understanding of all religions and faiths. From there, they can choose whatever they wish/ God has led them to: more education, whatever job opportunities, more travels, missions, work with their father (whether Jon is still a millwright or if we’re running our own businesses). The garage apartment would be built for them to live at home if they like for minimal rent fees (give them benefits without making them irresponsible).
Feedback desired and encouraged.
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I just finished reading Caprice Crane’s Forget About It, a little romantic comedy about a girl with the worst life ever and to top it all off, gets hit by a car while on her bicycle and decides to suffer from fake amnesia to give her life a new starting point. Although it’s set in New York and has a bit of You’ve Got Mail quirkiness, it feels so familiar and southern. Probably because I’m southern and if it feels homey and familiar it must be southern! Which is just a fault of my own, not a fault of the writer’s. Not quite as hilarious as her debut Stupid and Contagious, but quite funny nonetheless, it was a much needed break from the doom I’ve been feeling while reading Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment. I sped through it in a delightful day off and still had time to get my chores done. Caprice Crane truly is the best at romantic comedy (a genre I am not too fond of unless the characters are in long flowing dresses and top hats) as she actually does keep me in stitches and does make me believe the happy couple should indeed have a happy ending. Jane Austen would be proud despite all its contemporary pop culture because Crane, like herself, is a master of the absurd and a breath of fresh air.
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So in Fall of 2009 I started a discussion thread in my book club about The Templars and Freemasons, and all those other secret societies that seem to have become lumped into one cohesive thought over that last few hundred years. I thought it would be fun and interesting (not unlike the Darwin study I’ve been doing lately). No one joined me.
My Book List was to Include:
Foucault’s Pendulum – Umberto Eco (fiction)
The Holy Bible – I am still using the Archaeological Study Bible put out by Zondervan (religion) as well as another version called ESV.
The Masonic Ritual or Guide to the Three Symbolic Degrees of the Ancient York Rite – Grand Lodge Free and Accepted Masons at San Antonio, Texas (religion/secret societies/ Freemasons/ occult)
Adoptive Rite Ritual of the Order of the Eastern Star together with the Queen of the South – arranged by Robert Macoy (religion/secret societies/Freemasons/ occult)
The Amaranth – Robert Macoy (religion/secret societies/ Freemasons/ occult)
The Templars – Piers Paul Read (history/religion/secret societies/ Freemasons/ occult)
The Meaning of Masonry – W. L. Wilmshurst (religion/ secret societies/ Freemasons/ occult)
Ivanhoe – Sir Walter Scott – (fiction / literature)
also for fun…
The DaVinci Code – Dan Brown (fiction/ mystery)
The Pickwick Papers – Charles Dickens (fiction/ literature)
Out of those, I read Foucault’s Pendulum (which was brilliant, as are all things Umberto Eco) and I just finished the book by Piers Paul Read.
Why did it take so long?
Piers Paul Read has an extensive history that spans three or so centuries – parts are fascinating and I couldn’t put the book down, and other parts were dull and I couldn’t wait to put the book down. What I discovered upon completion of the book, though, is that I was just being made more and more aware of how many interesting people there are in history that I should be reading biographies on! Eleanor of Aquitaine is mentioned a bit right around page 140 or so… There’s a picture of Richard the Lionheart in battle featured in the ‘centerfold’ pictures. I should know more about these people who are so well known among historians that every day people recognize their names too. Its not enough for me to recognize them – I want to KNOW them.
I noticed too that I tended to plod slowly through this book (and this topic in general) because it seems to create more questions than it answers. There is so much documentation of so many conflicting ideas. Were the knights actually crusaders for Christ? Were their actions even remotely compatible with the teachings of Jesus? Or, were they really devil worshipers like so many throughout history convicted them of being? Can the documented confessions be trusted? Or was it all just a a little too similar to events such as the Salem Witch Hunts?
The discussion thread for the book club is still open – join and add your thoughts there: http://www.shelfari.com/groups/32350/discussions/136727/Knights-Templar-Books-
Or, just tell me your opinion below. Also, if you’ve read something interesting on the Templars or the Freemasons, share the book and your review of it as a comment. I plan to continue my studies on the topic.
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Memories of My College Years…
Four hours is a good nights rest, she tried to tell him. They told her she was an insomniac… or maybe she told her that. But she knew she wasn’t really. She could sleep; she just wasn’t good at it. Sleeping was some kind of secret art that people withheld teaching her. Any good sleep she got happened in the late afternoon or early evening hours. Not in the night, when her beloved moon she never saw was awake, not then. Sleep could not or would not come to her then, at least not until 3:00 or 4:00, well 4:00, sometimes 5:00 in the morning.
She liked his tie. It was checkered… shiny… mesmerizing – “What?” she was in class. Oh yeah, class. But she knew that, she had been there all along, and before that in the library, and before that in her room, and before that lunch where she had told them, “Four hours is a good nights rest.” More than she’d had all week. Three hours at a time was usually an accomplishment and that usually only happened after she worked out. She’d work out, and then pass out. If she didn’t run three miles a day, she’d never sleep.
… I don’t miss it.
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(Book Review meets a Life Review)
Jasper held my hand as we eyed curtains at Dillard’s. I said “Oooh” and she “Awed” a moment, and then continued on. Bustling through the food court on the second level, she stopped and looked at me and began to giggle, “We know our way around by food and draperies. We’re fat old women, Andi, fat old women whose husbands are either dead or really, really rich and having an affair.”
We had continued walking and I tried to picture that, looking into the window of some overpriced clothing store geared towards people our age… the twenty-one and almost twenty, actually more for the sixteen to twenties to be correct. I looked at our slender bodies, linked together at the elbow as we walked hurriedly through the one place we despised equally – the mall.
What would it be like to have a really, really rich husband who was having an affair? Probably because you were overweight and did know your way around the mall by the food court and the draperies, a little too well. That would be awful.
A man on the sidewalk told us we had beautiful eyes as we burst out of the palace of materialism and into the warm autumn sun. It was too hot outside to be November.
In the car, we probably played Bright Eyes. Jasper was obsessed with them. Jasper was “obsessed” with everything she liked. She didn’t just like The Nightmare Before Christmas, she had a collection of Jack dolls. She didn’t just like Bright Eyes, she had to go to all their shows. She didn’t just like men, she had to devour them – and Jasper needed a good ‘wing man’ (one like myself). That’s how I found myself going to shopping malls with her arm in arm, listening to songs like “Lover I don’t have to love” as loud as the stereo would go, and hanging out at karaoke bars on Maple Point.
November 17, 2006, finishing one of the many books I dived into post college-graduation, Narcissus Ascending, I sat stunned by how reminded of Jasper I was. I felt like Karen McKinnon took a year of my life and hyperbolized (if that’s not a word, it should be) it into two hundred and twelve pages.
Jasper would catch you with her eyes; men fell towards those thick dark lashes batting around the intoxicating green of her iris. I’d watch her then touch their arm while saying something witty, rude, seductive, or maybe all three simultaneously. Before they knew what hit them, they had caught her scent, rich perfume, hair product, and what my virgin self assumed was sex. It was a good scent, a teasing scent; years later friends would mutter to themselves or to each other in crowds, “I thought I just smelled Jasper.” She stays with you, a sexual assault on all your senses at once – I don’t remember seeing anyone meet her for the first (second, third, fourth…) time without seeing their face express just that feeling.
With Jasper, there usually came drinking, drinking to be with her, drinking to get away from her. Many of my liquor experiences I either associate with her, or I blame on her, I blame my blaming on being histrionic. She would like that, me letting her be my bad guy, knowing that its what I do as to not dismiss her from my life entirely; even if I never speak to her again, she would at least have my guilt. She’d say something like, “Oh Andi, its because you’re histrionic like me. Here, I’ll blame you, too. Let’s blame each other, it’ll be fun.” We’d make a joke of it or something, and tell people in each other’s presence, maybe when introducing or being introduced, “This is Andi, I love her, she’s wonderful, I blame her for all my problems. We’re both histrionic.” Or vice versa, “This is Jasper, I love her, she’s awesome, and she’s the bane of my existence.” Everyone would laugh and find it funny, because we’re crazy enough to find that funny, and everyone else would be drunk and have no idea what we were talking about.
In that way she conquers us all, becoming her own legend. If she read my book, which she would if it got published, she would hate me for these words, call me up, disown me as a friend, call me a bitch at what I have done to her, saying she didn’t think I would say something like that about her. Or maybe, she’d do the opposite, call me up and tell me she loved me and thought my book was wonderful. Either way she would really love it, knowing that the world now knows who she is, she would tell stories about her bitchy friend who wrote about her in her bitchy book. If she ever did get mad about anything I wrote, she’d probably call back later and want me to explain, forgive me without saying the words and love me all over again. She would be proud. So, I have to be honest. It would be easy to say she’s like Callie, that she’s that screwed up and leave it at that, and it would be easy to pretend I’m Becky, capable of walking away.
But Jasper is Jasper and even if I can’t be around her all the time like I was then, I’ll still always love her somewhere in the strange corners of my heart. I needed her friendship then, I needed her so I could still be the good one, the tease, and the better person. My sister even told me that after she met Jasper, told me that I needed her because I don’t like things being my fault, because I needed to get a mean streak out of me, but I didn’t want to be responsible for my actions. I let Jasper lead. I handed her the reigns for almost a year. And then I was done, and when I was done, I was able to say I had done those things because of Jasper, even if it was only half true, even if it wasn’t true at all.
My friend Danielle thinks I read her wrong, because I’m usually good at knowing people when I see them. I didn’t. Jasper was exactly what I thought she was, and I was narcissistic enough to want her to be my friend because of it. Just like my first boyfriend, who wanted me around because it made him feel better, in the end he knew things couldn’t go on that way because in the end it just makes everyone feel worse. In the end, we all realize we’ve been narcissists at some time or another, falling in love with our own reflections – or the reflections we created for other people to see.
We’ve grown up since then. I married my love, she married her’s – and no they are not cheating on us and we are not fat old ladies shopping for drapes. But I can’t see drapes without giggling or hear Bright Eyes without sulking, and we still call each other every few months to make sure that one isn’t up to no good without the other.
Karen McKinnon’s book still sits on my shelf. I’m quite certain I’ll never read it again, but I like having it around. Buy it here:
http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?lt1=_blank&bc1=000000&IS2=1&bg1=FFFFFF&fc1=000000&lc1=0000FF&t=anakawhims-20&o=1&p=8&l=as4&m=amazon&f=ifr&ref=ss_til&asins=0312312180
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I printed up the manuscript for a book I’ve been working on since I was thirteen. Most of the plotline was developed in my teen years, most of the “working on since” has been rearranging the story to make the plot a little more linear. I meant to edit, do some moderate revisions, and send it off to a publisher.
The writing itself is good. I read enough literature to give myself that credit. But the story is so young… all the things I hate about the fad fiction that is out right now. I read Dickens and Forester and write something short of Libba Bray. The sad part is, I think its marketable, I think I could make money from it – but I don’t want my name on it, I don’t want my big sister to read it. They are the immature thoughts of a thirteen or fourteen year old, and still I can’t get the characters out of my head. They’ve been with me for so long. They were my friends when times were tough, my confidants when I was sad, and the people I rejoiced with when I was happy. Reading the story is like reading a diary in code because only I know what event or what comment inspired what sentence and which character.
I think teen girls would find something familiar and comforting in this fantastical tale. I think I would be frustrated that I never meant to be that kind of writer, ever wondering why I hadn’t been able to write like Audrey Niffenegger or Ayn Rand. I’m nearly 26 years old and I had very high expectations for myself and my writing. I may be checking things off my bucket list religiously, but I have actually achieved little.
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I just finished reading Caprice Crane’s Forget About It, a little romantic comedy about a girl with the worst life ever and to top it all off, gets hit by a car while on her bicycle and decides to suffer from fake amnesia to give her life a new starting point. Although it’s set in New York and has a bit of You’ve Got Mail quirkiness, it feels so familiar and southern. Probably because I’m southern and if it feels homey and familiar it must be southern! Which is just a fault of my own, not a fault of the writer’s. Not quite as hilarious as her debut Stupid and Contagious, but quite funny nonetheless, it was a much needed break from the doom I’ve been feeling while reading Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment. I sped through it in a delightful day off and still had time to get my chores done. Caprice Crane truly is the best at romantic comedy (a genre I am not too fond of unless the characters are in long flowing dresses and top hats) as she actually does keep me in stitches and does make me believe the happy couple should indeed have a happy ending. Jane Austen would be proud despite all its contemporary pop culture because Crane, like herself, is a master of the absurd and a breath of fresh air.
Anakalian Whims 