Home schooling and homesteading

With the holidays over, perhaps I might find time again to write something...anything, again. It has been a hectic few months, to say the least. My mood fluctuates between moderately good and absolutely horrid.

Occasionally I get e-mails from long lost friends who remind me that life is so much more than my moods. Thank you Ronni.

Yes, there will be time again to paint, to sculpt, to create. Even now, I have a work in progress which involves paper mache and making pull toys for the babies (something I saw on Martha Stewart). Sometimes I get to it, sometimes I don't.

The baby boy doesn't want to go to sleep now until 10 or 11 pm, which eliminates any time I might have for me. R is working over time again, 9am until midnight several days. Mid-December my darling fifteen year old decided she wasn't going to school anymore. What!?! So we decided the only option was to home school her. Luckily she finished out the semester and got those credits.

Both R and I have been reading home schooling books like crazy. John Holt, The Teenage Liberation Handbook, etc., trying to come up with a plan. Would it be so bad to "unschool" her? The books all insist that the teenage attitude will change and might even become loving again over time with interested parents who home school. Well, we will give it a shot. Actually, her attitude has grown better already. High school is so hard, and I get that. Her new found freedom may give her the boost she needs to get on with her life.

We have also been researching places to move...again. Why we can't stay in one place is a mystery. Wanderlust. I want to go to the desert, but R refuses and won't budge on that. He wants to go someplace that has ample water. He prefers the north, I think. But I'm not interested in Michigan or Wisconsin, so I threw out the idea of Maine. I was born there in a little town called Bath. And we have been reading the Nearings Good Life books, about their homestead in Maine, right next to the coast. Houses are cheaper there. And, I think perhaps the quality of life is a bit better. Certainly I've been trying to get out of the conservative Christian right wing mecca that I was raised in, for years. Where could I go and stay, finally? Is it Maine. Me who hates the cold and the snow? Is it possible? I told him we must be near the coast then, so I can venture out to the beach on occasion.

I have had a dream for about fifteen years of living a sustainable life. I wanted to build an Earthship and grow my own food and eliminate the need to be tied to corporate systems. After several years with me, I think R has joined in this dream to some fashion. Can we fulfill this lifestyle in Maine? Can I be cold for affordable housing, land and my freedom? Can I find my muse there, under layers of snow and ice? Who knows. And who knows if this will become reality. But today we dream, and I love to search for old farmhouses via the Internet. It can't be all bad. Dreams keep us alive. And I still have my desert dreams tucked away in a corner of my heart. Maybe they will keep me warm on long cold winter days.