Big sky out the window

This is what I could see today without even going outside. Nice!

Photos, those flashes in time

I have this photo too (on paper, since those days), but Malinda put it on facebook, so that might mean she's the person who took it. If so, thank you! I've always really loved that look on Keith's face.

For those who aren't SCA friends, that was when we were prince and princess of the Outlands (at the time, it was El Paso, New Mexico, Colorado, Utah, Idaho and Wyoming). So in the photo we're Gunwaldt and AElflaed, though most of you know us as Keith and Sandra.

This was 1980. We have kids nearly the ages we were then.

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I'm back. Just after I posted what's above, Marty called, from an SCA tournament in a park in town, saying he didn't have the tunic that goes with his armor (some of the pads fit into pockets in this tunic, so it's necessary). So Keith is taking that to him. I came upstairs after finding the tunic and calling Marty to say it was on its way, and got an e-mail saying Lee Stranahan has put up a video of part of an interview he did yesterday with me. There will be one of Holly, too, when he uploads that and I'll bring that too.



Part 2: Unschooling & Real Learning

Birds and Snow

Rainy Saturday Morning

Yesterday was Brett's birthday and he's 25. (Brett is Holly's boyfriend.) We had a party here last night. I made and set up a bunch of food, with the help of Ashlee and Holly and Brett, and then I went to the back to hang out with Keith and let them have the party.

At 3:00 I came back up to see if there was anyone parked out the back gate, because if not I wanted to turn off the back corner light, which comes into our bedroom some. Marty, Bo and Julie were up in the library talking and I sat and talked to them a bit. Brett came back out. I stayed maybe 15 minutes, straightened up a little (there was really not much mess at all), got a snack, turned that light off, and went back to bed peacefully.

Keith got up and went to an SCA event (Queen's Prize, an arts and sciences event). He took some things to return to a friend for me, and she's going to be sending some onion skin typing paper back for me. That's what I print the warnings on for the Thinking Sticks, so if any of you are old enough and packratty enough to have some onion skin, I'd love to have it. I'll trade you something for it. The booklets I sent back to Flo had been used for this workshop and subsequent web page: http://sandradodd.com/guestfest/netting, so if any of you are interested in making nets (hair nets, fishing nets) by hand, there y'go. There's a video of Marty and Holly working on theirs that night, too. Holly's the one in the white cap. That's Sadie, in the green dress. Sadie was an unschooler of our acquaintance (college student now), and I made that dress for myself years ago. I always had those pamphlets in a safe plastic folder and I knew right where it was, but it took me a long time to get it returned.

I came upstairs so I could make tea. Bo's asleep in the library, Marty's asleep with his door open, and so I wanted to be very quiet. I got a mouse for the computer because the touchpad makes a click, and then just as I came silently back upstairs with a mouse, it started hailing, so I could've been typing on a cast-iron Remington (with onion skin and carbon paper) and the hail would've still been louder. Now it's raining. Sweet. We haven't had much rain lately and I want my yard to be happy.

Brett has the day off as a recovery-from-Birthday day. Holly works at 4:00. Marty works around then too, or 5:00. I'm happy to have many quiet, rainy hours to look forward to!

This morning I was reading a little magazine thing about whether people have kept their New Year's Resolutions. For many years my resolution has been "don't make resolutions." I was good with that. This year, though, I resolved to spend fifteen minutes a day more than I would have working on unschooling stuff online. When I read that I thought I had failed the day before, because I'd spent all that time on party and food and hadn't checked e-mail since noon or so, but then I remembered I hosted a two-hour chat earlier, and that did it. I'm still good on a resolution that involves doing something every day.

It's not that I wasn't going to spend fifteen minutes on it. It's that I find something every day to do that's not just for me and my personal desire to write and edit pages or whatever, but something directed more outward. I read other people's sites and blogs, or I do routine editing just to make the site better.

There's another chat Sunday morning. It's Easter, but my kids are grown (counting Holly at 17 as practically grown), and I don't go to church anymore, and the time is good for Hema Bharadwaj, who is missing some of the internet ease she had when she was living in the U.S. So anyone who has no church or egg-hiding or Easter dinner obligation can come and chat instead. http://sandradodd.com/chats/sunday

(Gratuitous flower images from my yard.)

So I wrecked the Saturn

Very sorry, Pati, to have wrecked the car you took such good care of. Very sorry, Keith, to have wrecked the car you drive to work. Very sorry, Vince, to have hit you when you were minding your own business.

At first Vince was cussing me out and I didn't mind. I rolled down the window, assured him I didn't do it on purpose, said I was very sorry, and asked him if he could call the police.



Vince called the police. I put the emergency flashers on because though I had conveniently moved his car out of the traffic, mine was still half in the inside lane. A nice man who seemed Middle Eastern stopped to make sure I wasn't wounded, and helped me get out of the passenger side. My glasses were kinda broken. I didn't notice until after I climbed over the gear shift and all and got out of the half-sprung door and looked back and saw the parts on the floor by the clutch pedal. The lenses were out and the plastic frame was too bent to pop them back in. I wasn't scratched or bruised.

So Vince and I got out and talked a bit, and his wife came by (I guess maybe he had called her, because both of us lived very near there). I called Holly. She was at the hairdresser watching Brett get a haircut. He was just about done, and they had two cars, so she sent him to get Keith (which is where I had been going, because he had taken his motorcycle to the repair shop and I was going to pick him up and bring him home), and she went to the house to get my other glasses and bring them to me so I could tell a vehicle registration from a proof of insurance card. Having Holly there made it much better.



Weren't the sky and mountains pretty today? And there's that "Cultivate Mindfulness" sticker I got because it was just like Kelli Traaseth's, and the "Got Virtue?" sticker Ben Emerson gave me. I mindlessly and rudely wapped another guy's car with Keith's car.

Vince and I are both okay but it was not good. The very nice young policeman pointed out cheerily that I hit Vince at the best angle, because if I had pulled all the way out the other car would have t-boned me and I would've been hurt. I think that was euphemistic for "dead." So I pointed that out to Vince, who was initially pretty pissed off that I had hit him. I told him even though it would have still been my fault he might have hit and killed me and he would've felt bad. He agreed. It cheered us both right up.

And although his car had a broken axle, mine was ugly but still driveable. Not in the dark, because the headlights are pointed at imaginary things.

By the time the tow truck came to get Vince's car, Keith and Brett had walked up there from the house. Holly drove Brett back, but Keith walked me home because I didn't want to get in a car. He went back with bailing wire to put the car together enough to drive it home.

I called USAA. Then Vince's insurance agent called me. Was there a citation? No, I said, but did she think I might get one in the process of the police report? I didn't run the stop sign, but Vince did have the right of way. She said she's never seen that happen.

Vince called after a while to see if I was okay and to tell me he had no hard feelings and accidents happen and he wanted to make sure I wasn't feeling too guilty. It really did make me feel better that he called. I was going to call him later to say I had asked about a rental car for him.

As such things go, we both walked away, and although he's horribly inconvenienced, I'm glad he doesn't hate me. And although Keith is inconvenienced and it will cost us money, he will eventually love me just as much as he ever did.

I cleaned the hot tub today and so I will sit in that later and my knee will feel better. Tomorrow Holly will take me to pick up a copy of the police report and to see if the optometry folks can fix my glasses, or get me some new ones. The bifocals are the ones she brought me. The purple prescription reading/computer glasses are the ones that didn't survive.

These purple glasses are in three pieces:


The photo is from yesterday. Nice record of some glasses I really liked.

Ashlee and Marty

Marty has a very nice girlfriend who has some very nice photos of them from a day they went to the zoo last month.



If you want to see those (and a few others) with more stability and fewer flowers, they're here:
http://w26.photobucket.com/albums/c111/SandraDodd/Marty/Ashlee/zooMarch09

Beautiful Holly

Holly has been a great friend and a comfort to me this week.

She's cute, too! We walked to the store in the wind to get things for dinner today.