My girl

Dissecting a crawfish.


Dressed up for her piano competition. She score in the very superior range with a 91%


Doing her online Music History class


Dressed as Queen Ester for Purim

Very mathy weekend

Saturday our downtown had an Easter Festival and the Math Center participated by developing a Math Trail, which was an activity sheet with math questions to do at different downtown businesses.



Zoe is was conscientious player, she wanted to do all the problems and do them by herself, though we did help her count the Fleur de Lys at the New Orleans style coffee shop. There were a over 600.



She designed a protective shell for an egg and dropped it from 12' high, and the egg didn't break! Then she got to throw the egg at a physics student from the local college. After that exciting event the physics students showed her the math behind her egg drop.



She was the last kid to finish, just 15 minutes before the closing of the last shop, though we also started really late. For a prize, the bakery gave her a giant brownie, a cupcake and three cookies.




Today Zoe was at Math Center for three hours. She worked on the video game she is programming in JAVA and the community project about fractional bases. She told me she was very proud because she was chosen to be one of two student teachers and teach the other kids binary.

She noted that today she was the only girl working on the community project. I pointed out that the leader of the math center is a woman. Zoe and I talked about why women are underrepresented in math professions.

She told me that she doesn't think she will succumb to peer pressure and drop her interest in math because she already stands out in her Hebrew class as one of the best students as well as the only kid who says they like learning Hebrew and she said, "I am not going to change. I don't care about fitting in or not fitting it. I just am what I am."

I hope she retains that strong sense of self when she gets to her middle school years.

Why I could write

Yesterday Pere asked me what made me finally decide to write my book. I have been thinking of it and developing it in my head for at least eight years.

I decided I could write when I stopped talking to my mother and went to therapy.

See, I've wanted to be a writer for as long as I can remember thinking about things like that. Actually, most of the time I was a storyteller rather than a writer. It is hard to write when you are riding your bicycle or wandering through the woods. I made up stories all the time, for far longer than most people do.

I wanted to be Kurt Vonnegut or Jack Kerouac. I even smoked unfiltered Pall Malls. But before that I was a little girl with a prodigious vocabulary who wanted to be a writer. And I would read my stories to my ever loving (yeah, right) mother. I still remember what she said because she sliced each letter of each word was into my heart with a razor. I still have the scars.

I know it wont sound like much. But I thought my mom loved me and I thought she was right. So when she read one of my little handwritten stories and she said "You should learn to type so you have something to fall back on when this writing thing doesn't work out." I was devastated.

Think about that. Who says that to a young person? And she wasn't joking. She wasn't being playful. She took my childhood dream and she told me that it wasn't going to work out. And not only that, she told me that I should set my sights lower, like being a secretary.

Some of you who read this might not be parents, but you might have interacted with children. If young child said they wanted to be an artist and showed you their drawing, would you just say "Oh! What a lovely drawing!" Any normal person could at least muster fake support.

If the drawing really was quite nice for the child's age you might say something more specific like, "Wow! That is a very realistic looking cat. My, my, you are going to be artist someday." If the picture was just some terrible scribbling you are still obliged to say, "Very nice!"

Parents are supposed to be biased towards their children. Parents are supposed to think their children are pretty darn great and possibly the best child ever. Some parents don't, of course. But does the child ever think it is the parent who is wrong? No. Children who are burdened with a parent who doesn't see them as extra special or worse, doesn't even love them end up thinking that they are nothing special and not lovable.

None of the praise I got at school, from friends, and from strangers who read my writing ever kissed away the hurt my mother caused me by telling me that I wasn't good enough and that I needed to set my sights much MUCH lower.

I had so many other scars that said I was not pretty, too skinny, and later too fat, that I was a mean horrible person, that I was a fool, that I was laughable, forgettable, and unlovable. And every time I went to her with my heart in my hand and asked 'Am I good enough now, Mom?" and she say "Of course not" those old wounds would reopen and bleed.

Then, when my own daughter was eight and a half, I realized that no mother, no normal mother would tell their child, who dreamed of being a writer, that their childish storytelling was so bad that they should give up now and set their sights on being a secretary.

I had to stop taking my heart to my mother and allowing her to stomp on it to be able to write. I had to see what a crazy f'ed up bitch she is to write.

It is a daily struggle to write. All the scars are still there and I can't tell you if they will ever go away. But, by not subjecting myself to her special brand of evil, I am at least giving myself a chance to heal.

Some days I am happy with my writing. Some days I reread what I wrote and I can just hear my mother's voice in my head laughing at me and telling me I am a fool to even try this.

But mostly I want to try. I don't want to be an old woman and look back on my life and say "I didn't even try to fulfill my life long dream because my mother told me I wasn't good enough." She doesn't get to have that. I am not listening to her anymore.

Spring Fever

I am ready for spring! Today I went out for a walk with only a long sleeve shirt and hoodie (well I also had pants on... oh, and shoes.) No huge winter coat for me!

I am looking forward to seeing the first crocus buds spring forth, but I may have to wait.

I can feel a big spring cleaning coming on. I keep rearranging all the furniture in my mind. I am prettifying my nest. :)

I repainted the upstairs bathroom but the color is too subdued and now I am thinking I will repaint it a vibrant green.

Zoe has been begging to get back into our roleplaying game, but the idea of focusing my creative energies away from my novel makes me resentful.

I will have hit 100 pages any day now. Pere promised me a celebration. But we have something else to celebrate this week, our anniversary. We will have been together ten years on the 9th!

I love that man of mine!

Homschooling Wednesday

Math - graphing and multiplying exponents
Math Center - Archimedean Solids

Language Arts - Finally finished Essay Voyage

History - the life of children in 18th Century Virgina

Science - using microscopy, scanning electron microscopes, and x-ray diffraction to see minuscule structures.

Read Aloud - Another version of Prometheus and Pandora which lead to a long discussion about the roots of historical anti-feminism.

Japanese - Katakana and predicting weather

Watching - Xena

Reading - Uncle Tom's Cabin

Piano - practice practice practice

Hebrew School

Just a small town girl

Today I am feeling grateful for the small town we live in. I am inspired to make a top ten list of things that made me happy today.

1. Living one block from the river. Recently it has been steely gray with white snow banks reflected on the edges. It's poetic.

2. That Pere job downtown is so close that he can come home for lunch everyday.

3. Looking out the window high up in my therapist's office where I can see half the town at the many historic churches, and buildings.

4. That we have a Chocolate Cafe.

5. The girl with pink hair at the Chocolate Cafe. I wanted to say "I love your hair." But she walked by to fast.

6. That we can afford a house that it large enough that we can have a baby grand piano.

7. The 24 hour Poetry Reading Event coming up.

8. Our AWESOME and FREE Math Center downtown.

9. Our Temple that has a young Rabbi and so many friendly congregants.

10. The many smart, interesting, nice people I have the good fortune to meet.

It's been too long since I last posted. Honestly, I am spending more time on Facebook.

But I need to remember that this blog is also a journal for me, a history of our lives together and a portfolio for Zoe's education. And, with that in mind, I am inspired to post more often.


For Zoe's 9th birthday we gave her the present of sleeping over at the Field Natural History Museum.


There best part was running around the different exhibits all by ourselves. I mean, isn't that something you've always wanted to do? We weren't really in there alone, but in certain places we could pretend we were. The tour of the Egyptian exhibit by flashlight was second best, only because it was a bit crowded. Overall it was great, though next time I would bring an air mattress rather than try to sleep on the hard floor with only a sleeping bag.

Here are just the highlights of what Zoe has been doing in her homeschooling

Math - Life of Fred Algebra and going to the Math Center 3 times a week. Yesterday one of the mom's at the Math Center asked me how old Zoe was and what math curriculum I used and then she complimented Zoe a lot on her math knowledge. One of the projects Zoe is working on at Math Center is writing an explanation of Base 2, 3, 4, 5, etc. for their website. They will also be doing a project on fractional bases.

Language Arts - Zoe has finished the Michael Clay Thompson Voyage series and will be starting the Word Within The Word and Magic Lens series. This is a secondary curriculum for gifted students and one of Zoe's favorite classes. She especially loves the poetry component.

History - Reading about Colonial America. Last week was a perfect storm about Slavery. She was reading about slavery in history, reading excerpts from Abraham Lincoln's speeches in Language Arts, reading Uncle Tom's Cabin in Literature and watched an episode of Hercules about slavery.

Science - I just got a new high school biology book for Zoe. It was written by biochemist Mahlon Hoagland, who discovered transfer RNA.

We talked to some science savvy friends and decided we could skip middle school science now that she is pretty solid in her algebra. We will problem just end up doing Biology, Chemistry and Physics in a loop with more advanced material as we go along.

Literature - Reading Uncle Tom's Cabin. Zoe is loving this literature choice. She says she is excited to be learning so much about slavery and that she really likes how Harriet Beecher Stowe brings the reader into the story. Did you know Uncle Tom's Cabin was the best selling novel of the 19th century? It was the best selling book of that century after the Bible.

Music History - Professor Carol is doing a great job teaching us both about music history. The videos are very interesting, and I really feel like I am learning a lot about music from a cultural perspective. I know Zoe is too.

Japanese - more of the same. This week she is focusing on reading katakana and describing what people look like and what they are wearing.

Reading - Zoe has been really into acting out Shakespeare's plays with her dolls. She spends a lot of her free time doing this, in the afternoon and before bed. Brian and I sometimes do it with her.

I realized that she would get more out of Shakespeare if she was more familiar with the Greek Myths. She has already read D'Aulaire's Greek Myths a few times, that is a great book. But I felt like she needed more. So we started reading Nathanial Hawthorn's Tanglewood Tales, but even that, whilst having excellent vocabulary, was still edited for children. Much of the passion was taken out, which is kind of misleading, in my opinion. For example, the book doesn't mention that Zeus was the white bull that took Europa, nor why.

Bulfinch's Mythology was a little better but still written for children in 1855, so there was censorship of the passionate appetites of the Gods. And hey, the passionate appetites of the Gods is what a lot of the stories are about.

So this weekend I found Gods and Heroes of Ancient Greece, an English Edition from the German author Gustav Schwab. These stories seem to be oriented towards adolescents, at least as far at the content including Zeus's exploits with mortal women.

Zoe is enjoying the Hunger Games and Catching Fire, both by Suzanne Collins. Other books she has read recently are Gregor the Overland and City of Ember. She liked them both.

Mostly though she has been rereading/staging Shakespeare and reading her new Spyology book, which is really cool.

Whew! That is a lot but I am not done yet.

Zoe has a piano competition coming up in two weeks so most of her piano time has been spent getting ready for that.

She also auditioned for and got into a local performing dance troupe. They started rehearsals last week. They perform mostly over the summer, doing over a dozen dances at festivals, charity events, and in small theaters. Zoe is extra excited because one of her good friends from the neighborhood is also in the group.

Zoe also auditioned for a part in Seussical the Musical which is playing downtown South Bend at the Civic Theatre. She got in the Who Chorus and a part as a Fish Lady. But, unfortunately, the Seussical rehearsal times conflicted with her dance group's rehearsal, so she is not doing the play.

She is pretty busy. It can be a struggle to make sure she has enough downtime to just play and be bored and then inventive (because that is often the order of things.)

These days she is homeschooling from 8:30 - 3:30 with an hour and 10 minutes for lunch.

I am keeping busy too. I have been running for seven weeks now. I am up to running for 30 minutes at a stretch. I am really proud of myself because I have been able to keep this up and also because I am enjoying it. I really never thought I would enjoy running but I do. I imagine I will like it even more when I am not running in the snow.

I have also been eating 1200 - 1500 calories a day since the new year. Though I don't really stick to the calorie limits on the weekends. But I don't gorge myself either. But I eat what Pere cooks, which is usually high in calories, or we go out to eat. But I have been losing weight and it makes me happy to be taking care of myself.

My book is going pretty well. Some days I can get five or six pages written. Some days I feel like my writing is crap and no one will want to read it. But, I know I have written some good stuff, so I can keep on editing the parts I am less happy with until I am happy with them. Writing is so much about editing.

I am also reading Mean Mothers by Peg Streep. It is REALLY good. It has made me cry several times and I realize that I am not done with my grief and maybe I never will be. But I guess that is natural. Here is an excerpt from Mean Mothers