Resolved: I am going back to the old resolution.

The photos have nothing to do with the text. Think Kilgore Trout and Wide Open Beavers (if you're able to). [They were photos of snow, and I might be able to restore it someday, but... snow in the back yard, probably.]

December 31 Resolution you wish you'd stuck with. (You know, there's always next year...)

"There's always next year" isn't a promise anyone can make, and the older I get, the more aware I am of the scarcity of years in the forward direction.

And "There's always last year" is fairly guaranteed, but I'm starting to lose my memory, too!

So... resolutions. I had one last year. For a dozen years before that my resolution was made and kept all year. Simple:

I resolved not to make a New Year's Resolution.

But in 2009, I had a serious resolution, and I announced it, and that was that every day in 2009 I was going to spend 15 minutes more, each day, doing something to help unschoolers than I would have done otherwise. So every day for nine months and some I did that, conscientiously, and in September I ended up wounded and in the bed and on drugs and some days I didn't do it. In October I perked up and kept on with the fifteen minutes a day thing, but sometime in November I let it slide. So I didn't make it all year, but it was still a lot of extra-fifteen-minuteses.

Keith's ice molds, over the solar-powered yard lights, in the dark, last night. First with a flash, then without, then one of them close up (click if you want for enlargements):

Okay, those are dark and dull. So is this, but more dangerous. Graffiti and tumbleweeds, from the overpass at the Bernalillo Roadrunner (light rail) station, taken yesterday.

There y'go. You don't see that every day. (Well some people do, I guess...)

Thinking about an advertisement...

December 30 Ad. What advertisement made you think this year?

Went to see Harry Potter at the theatre in the mall at the base of Norwich Castle. During the pre-movie bits there was something about "Visit Britain," with a website for tourism. A teenaged girl sitting in front of us kinda snorted and said "Who would want to visit Britain!?" I was too tired to argue with her. I fell asleep a couple of times during the movie, and didn't feel well later, and lost my glasses at the mall.

In an early December issue of People Magazine there was a General Motors ad that said "Ideas are sexy too."
I had already blogged about that when it was new. I wrote I think it's cute. I think it looks like a fusion of Mark Wahlberg, Sam Elliott and Albert Einstein. What human of any gender could complain about that!?

I wasn't the only one who thought it was cool.
"This is my favorite ad... Ever.... Ideas are sexy too."

"This is what I saw when I opened my People magazine today. I would actually want to learn science if they looked like that!"

Ice, Oddities, Laughter, and its opposite

And here's what Keith does with those buckets of ice, when he gets a chance. The top is more solid than the bottom. They have hollow insides, so they're bucket shaped, but the bottom is the least frozen part. Each of those clear ones is over a solar-charged light, so at night they light up faintly. It's really pretty. The other two are pretty for having a bunch of leaves in them..





Here are some other images of the past few days, clickable in case one interests you:





December 29 Laugh. What was your biggest belly laugh of the year?

Marty made me laugh several times because he's clever and surprising. This year hasn't been hilarious, and most laughter was surprised sputter, or "I can't believe he said that" hoot, or nervous embarrassed laughter. I'm not wanting to laugh at people who are going about their everyday lives. I think the most fun laughing I've had lately involved watching The Big Bang Theory. Tonight I missed it, to talk to my sister on the phone. Then I cried. I didn't cry because I missed the funniest stupid show I ever watch. I cried because she told me the story of when my parents announced they were getting a divorce. She thought I had been there, because the "family meeting" was in my bedroom. But I was at college. She said she could picture where everyone was sitting, in my room, on the floor or on the bed, and sure enough I wasn't there. She thought maybe they chose that room because it would be most like I was there, or they needed my influence.

The other day I asked Keith and Marty if we could open Christmas gifts in the room that was Kirby's for many years, and Holly's for a year and some, because it would seem they were closer than Texas and England.

Those stories are very similar. I didn't know until today, in 2009, that in 1970 the family meeting at which my parents told the other kids it was over was held in my bedroom.

I found out about the divorce in a wet letter from my mom. She didn't mention that meeting. Each week they sent me $5, to the dorm 90 miles away. The letters never said much. I didn't open it at first, because I was talking to my roommate and some other friends. Then we rushed to leave, and the letter was on the tray when I slid it down to the dishwashing room. I realized it and called back that there was a letter with a check in it! That was the last year they used the dining hall in Hokona. The last year it was an all girls' dorm, and the last year its dining room operated. The dishwasher kid pulled the wet letter out of the deep, soapy sink and handed it to me. My only concern was whether the check could be salvaged. But there with my friends looking on, and a stranger, I opened it and saw that my parents were getting a divorce and my mom had already moved out. I cried.

The Love of Paper

December 28 Stationery. When you touch the paper, your heart melts. The ink flows from the pen. What was your stationery find of the year?

I used to love paper a LOT, and I still use a fair amount of it, and I still own a great deal of it. This year I didn't discover any new paper. That's kinda sad!!!

The best paper I have is some 100% cotton typing paper. It's almost fluffy!

I've been using tissue paper to wrap copies of the Big Book of Unschooling, various kinds of tissue paper, and some is good and some is better, and occasionally there's some that I almost don't want to use for so mundane and practical a purpose.

The paper I use most this year is used paper towels (greasy is best), the paper from sticks of butter, and shredded paper that comes from cleaning old files and sorting through the mail. And I use all those for lighting the fire in the stove that heats the hot tub. Not quite "stationery," but my pen lately has been the computer and my stationery has been this blog (and a few other online cards, tablets and frames, as it were).

Social Moments, Web Related

Everyone reading this is having a social web moment.

December 27 Social web moment. Did you meet someone you used to only know from her blog? Did you discover Twitter?

I did start using Twitter last year, and my favorite part is seeing what Kirby and Holly write there.

The number of people I've met after meeting them on the internet is in the hundreds, but it wasn't blogs—it was discussions on message boards and mailing lists set up for homeschoolers, and unschoolers.

In September I got to sing with some people after arranging the singing on the internet. That was cool.

I think my favorite "social web" story of the year is that Learn Nothing Day had a life of its own without a bunch of organizing. It's alive. I found a German Learn Nothing Day event I hadn't known about in advance. Just finding mentions is very cool. I don't have any plans for 2010's Learn Nothing Day.

E-mail is my favorite internet thing. Then websites, then message boards, then blogs. I love blogs, but I wish they were more solid, more reliably long-lived. I love the ease with which people can share photos.

YouTube, iTunes and Playlist.com have enriched my life. I love Google. Amazon and eBay have been very useful. Facebook and Myspace have been too much sometimes, but also very useful at other times.

I suppose what I'm saying is that I have social-moments-web-related every day!

In a playroom far, far away...

Princess Leia (portrayed by Holly Dodd) and Luke Skywalker, in his pirate guise (portrayed by Adam Daniel):

Momentous Moment

December 26 Insight or aha! moment. What was your epiphany of the year?

Aha! Aha...

I'm still thinking.

I had a couple of epiphanies about other people that wouldn't be nice to share. Sometimes I really want to think people like me for myself, but when other factors come into play I realize I am, to some extent, what they call "being used." But then I think... That's being useful! What if I were the sort of person who had no "use" to others?

Then I skirt another insulting phrase, which is being a tool. But there are two ways to go on that. There's the "what a tool" use, which means not a great tool, but dumb as a hammer. But the other way is to have been a tool used by a higher power, like God, or a philosophy or a movement. So if I'm a tool that helps people be more thoughtful or honest, that doesn't offend me. If someone uses me, even I'm embarrassed to discover it, if I was "used" to make the world better, then that's not so bad.

But that's not the learning of a moment, not a flash of AHa-ness. Still thinking.