December 2012, Sorooshian and Dodd offspring

Bonny Moss made this video while these kids (all young adults at that time, the youngest 21) were posing for photos. I'm glad there's a video of their posing. :-) Thanks, Bonny!

In the first scene, they are, in order, Kirby Dodd, Rose Sorooshian, Marty Dodd, Roxana Sorooshian, Roya Dedeaux and Holly Dodd.

Heart-shaped "gifts"

I'm backdating this to Valentine's Day so it won't show up after the video of the Dodd/Sorooshian kids. :-)

Renee Cabatic's cat coughed up a heart-shaped hairball. So Sweet! I wanted to save it in the same place as a heart-shaped animal offering I photographed a few years back.

Renee wrote: My amazing cat lovingly vomited up this heart shaped hair ball on Valentine's day. I'm not even kidding.

Notes, from something on facebook, where I had suggested a positive attitude, rather than a "same shit, different day" outlook. There had been a calendar advertised with the same turd photo for every month.

Someone said her artistic instinct was to have a fresh (as it were) turd every day, if she were making the calendar. I wrote:

But philosophically, then, you couldn't say "same old shit." It would be new and different shit. Cheerier, I suppose, as such things go.

Sometimes it's special, though. Remarkable shit. I was staying in my own room, with my own bathroom, with a shower, 13th floor, Bangalore, during Diwali--fireworks for HOURS every night (way more sound than light). Because the marble-floored terrace/balcony outside my door had plexiglass guards and not just open ironwork, I had the puppy with me. She was afraid of the fireworks, but had also done enough damage to the floors in this very nice, big apartment where I was. FINALLY, the third morning, she went where she was supposed to! It was sweet, it was charming, it was...

If you make a turd-a-day calendar, a SCATological year... you have my permission to use this one. Maybe February 14th.

Bruno Mars' Pandora skit, SNL, October 2012

This is one of the funniest things I saw last year. I wanted to keep it where I could find it easily. Most of what's out there is just a snippet or edited down.

Display blocks

Holly put that photo up on the facebook page she created for Just Add Light and Stir.

The blocks come apart by removing a couple of screws. They're plexiglass in wooden frames, and came from Discount School Supply.
Refillable Window Blocks And at the bottom of the top photo some of these show—they have one open side so they can be nested.
Nest & Stack with Color Blocks - Set of 6

I got them when they were on sale. I like that company. They deliver quickly and are honest and generous. I get paper there to wrap books in to sell, and have gotten gifts sometimes, and the tunnel kids play in at the Always Learning Live gatherings in Albuquerque.

2013 travels

http://speakingsandradodd.blogspot.com

Links are there for the schedules for the unschooling gatherings in Lisbon and Leiden, and Julie Daniel's conference in Ashford, Surrey (west of London).

Joyce Fetteroll is travelling with me in 2013. We'll visit Ester Siroky's family in the Yarrow Valley, in Scotland. I'm looking forward to that.

Later in the year, Joyce and I will visit Schuyler Waynforth and her family near Brisbane, Australia, and there are plans for visits to a few other places, to meet unschoolers and see the exotic Australian springtime!! In October. Details of that will also be at the blog linked above.

Schedules will be there, but photos will be here, when the time comes.

I'm not planning to travel this way next year, and I'm feeling old, so this might be the last big unschooling "tour." I kind of hope so. The families I'm meeting have been sweet and wonderful, but my kids are grown and I'm feeling old. Holly and I hope to visit India in a year or two, but to shop and hang out.

Octopus in a bucket

The notes are from Facebook writings at the time:

Sandra Dodd
October 16, 2012 at 8:00am ·

Holly and I were in the water, out a way, and found two big shells. I carried them back and put them in our bucket. My shoes were in there, too. Girly Crocs, toes down. All dry.

We came out of the water and there was a little octopus sticking his legs over the edge of my shoe. He had glommed himself on where my heel would have gone.

We went and got water in the bucket and pried him off gently with a shell and a feather.

We brought him up to show people, and will take him back later. He was out of water for at least half an hour, probably more, but he's alive. I figure we can let people look at him today, and take him back out after 6:00. He looks better now than he did when we first brought him up here.

We had a conch shell, too, about three inches long. It seemed to have a crab in it, when we saw the octopus, so we let that back into the water. Two dark things were sticking out, so I figured someone else needed it more than I did. We didn't have the camera with us at the beach. Later, in the conference, room, though...

Hand tool / springy rake

A close-up would've been nice, but it was mounted high on a wall, at a farm store George Mahowald took me to when we were buying food for the ALL in May event in 2012, in Massachusetts.

I used the image on Just Add Light and Stir (here), but those are small, so I want to upload a larger version. It wasn't a long rake handle. The metal was wound around something, though, when it was hot, so that there is a loop for flexibility.