Oh Jeeze, I can feel myself being sucked into cyber world. Do I feel bad about this? Doc has described herself as a "blog whore". I resisted even reading blogs, having the audacity to actually write a blog was completely inconceivable, for years. When I began to homeschool I began to research homeschooling online. I started, tentatively at first, participating on a bulletin board for homeschooling moms. Wow, I found a place where I could access, 24/7, an international community that is chatting about every aspect of life home and homeschooling with children and partners. Not only could I read this information, I could participate, ask questions, pose my own ideas, wrangle around, explore, argue, dare I say it - learn. So many of these women blog that eventually I broke down and, secretly almost, I began to go read what they have to say. Again, Wow.

Look what I found, a nearly perfect description of unschooling: http://sandradodd.com/unschool/stages And then look at this quote I found else where on the same site: "There is no magical prevention for bad attitude, but if parents are modeling a bad attitude with their own unreasonable selfishness or arbitrary system of denying children, they should expect their children to show arbitrary selfishness to others." I find this statement riveting for its implication in my life with my parents, my children, my husband, his family, our friends, siblings, and on it echoes out into the world. I nearly gasped when I read it.

All this time at the computer threatens to overwhelm. Life happens more richly away from the computer, and my kids are not here. That is a good thing, though ironically given that quote up there. My kids do not benefit from my omnipresence. It would be a huge, and I think grandiose and egocentric, mistake to imply to the children that I should entertain them.

And there is the rub. Folks say constantly, "You are homeschooling, I could never do that!" Well just know that every time you say that to a homeschooler you can bet that homeschooler is thinking, "Honey, I could never spend that much time with your kids either." That is a little insider tip for you. How do we do it? We keep ourselves occupied in an adult world, partly to give the children space and time to learn how to fill their own world, and partly to keep from drooling and sagging - both mentally and physically. Good God, have you noticed how much we knit? And blog? But knitting and blogging and keeping ourselves occupied with our own passions model that behavior for the kids. It is so obviously true that it is a cliche, "they will do as you do, not as you say."

Are you noticing how circular all this is. The irony? "Life is pain, Highness, anyone who tries to tell you any different is selling something." Wait, that is not the irony. The irony is that the work is fun. The work is to appear to be industriously engaged in the grown and living world which, we all know through painful trial and error, is nearly impossible to do. Because at the same time, your actual job is to live under house arrest in service to freaks, trolls, fairies, mermaids, Pokemon's, spilled milk, ticks in the scalp, and eventually most of the sacred and profound thoughts and emotions ever to fleet across this "ruined cathedral" (to quote Haven - the brilliant - Kimmel). And as near as I can tell, you may knit or blog in the mean time.