The Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Meme

Eight things about me. You know the drill. I was tagged by Zamozo. I'm not tagging this time, but if your blog is on my blogroll, consider yourself The Chosen One, or 8, as the case may be. Let me know you chose yourself in the comments so I can go read all about you, since we're sharing and all.

1. I am phone phobic. Really. Call me and I will talk for hours. I won't call you back. I can't. Really. Freaks me out. Sometimes I can get over myself and pick up the phone -calling my dad today is a good example - but for some reason, making a phone call is not one of my strong suits. So. For anyone out there who would think I would call once in a while....sorry, I wish I could. Call ME. Please. Pretty please.

2. I have lived in 23 different houses/apartments/dorms in my 35 years.

3. I can't decide if I want another child. On one hand, I have two beautiful girls and I am totally content with two. On the other hand, a boy would be nice. On the other hand, I get sick thinking about the overpopulation of the world. On the other hand, I would love to give birth again to show my daughters how it's done now that they are old enough to remember. On the other hand, these two are out of diapers and weaned and have been for years and years. I'm running out of hands and no amount of "not not trying" has made up my mind for me these last three years. Time to give up? Or time to bring in the big guns?

4. I have used the same razor for almost 20 years. When I was in high school, I bought one of the razors that has replaceable blades. Since it has never broken and I can still buy the blades, why should I get a new one?



5. I miss my family. Really, really miss my father and step mom and brothers - and their wives and kids, too- and my mother. My mother is dead, so not much I can do about that. But the rest of them... See #1. They are as bad with the phone as I am and we don't get to be together very much due to our far flung abodes.



6. I hate to back track. I will spend a long time with a map finding the most direct route anywhere. I can understand when a road has to be built to go around a lake or a mountain, but why don't all the roads across the wide flat desert connect? Why can't I just drive straight to where I am going? Seriously...



7. I cannot handle disappointment. Expectations are the death of me, I swear. I could be the happiest person in the world if I could learn to accept life as it IS. My dreams are often not pursued, for fear of it not working out as I expect. Mine is a untested faith.



8. I sewed my own wedding dress. It for was for the wedding to another guy that I did not end up marrying. Good thing C was not afraid of commitment because I started our relationship with my wedding dress all ready to go! It took me two days to make, except for the hem. I hate doing hems, so I kept putting it off until I had a nightmare about walking down the aisle trying to finish the hem, dropping the needle, tearing the fabric, with everyone in the church whispering behind their hands. Got right up and finished that hem, by god!


Bonus picture of me, Sept 1996, in that very dress:

Now, chose yourself The Chosen One, er, Eight, and share the love!

Long Lost Pictures Part I

But no words. Or a few. Take it or leave it, because I am afraid this will never get in this blog any other way. So. Pictures from our trip to San Fran/Monterey:

Banana slug at a rest stop in Santa Cruz.

Checking out the tide pools in Monterey.

Kelp Forest at the Monterey Bay Aquarium. So cool.

A girl and her Daddy observe the depths of the sea.

Touch pools are awesome!

Gifts shops are, too!

A saw a whale out in the bay through one of those telescope thingys. She was soooo excited.

Dinner: Clam Chowder in a Sourdough Bowl. Mm-mmmm!

A wild Starfish in the North Bay the next day in San Fran. It was HUGE!

Stay tuned for more pictures.

Like the New Look?

Thought I would play with the new blogger capability for putting an image in your header. And one thing led to another....

Last weekend when I was struggling with how to move forward with my new world view, C said something to me that got me thinking. He asked me why I always have to be doing/learning/exploring something new. Why can't I just be happy with who and where I am?

Well, I guess it is like this blog here. Sure, I really liked the last look I created for the blog, otherwise I would not have made and displayed it. But there comes a time when something new calls to me and I grow restless with the old. My creative juices start flowing and I have learned to flow with them, as ephemeral as they tend to be.

Life is like that for me. There comes a time when I have to start something new. When I choose to revamp my life to accommodate all the new tidbits that have slowly become part of me. It is not that what came before is bad or unworthy. After all, it got me where I am now, right? It is just that life means change, no matter how much you want to settle in and stay comfortable with the status quo. Life is change is growth is life. Anything less would be a form of death.

Maybe it's just me. Or just people like me who tend to question everything and explore and constantly learn and strive to be better, not because we feel "less than" but because it is fun. Maybe we are different from most people who appear to be content with the status quo, never questioning why they do what they do. Maybe that is why I am an unschooler. And why it seems so easy for me to "get it".

Not everyone can unschool their kids. You have to have a drive to learn and make life interesting. You have to find joy in something new. You can't be content with what is, never questioning anything. Questions lead to answers which add up to learning and more questions. And THAT, my friends, is the basis for an education. An education made up of answers only is no education. State approved answers, crammed in tight, held in place by fear of not measuring up. That, my friends, is no way to educate the future.

Speaking of the future... Never before has what comes next been so uncertain, so surely challenging, and never before have we needed to be prepared for such an imposing unknown. An education of answers only won't serve our children in the coming times. They need to be able to question everything, and to be able to think out of the box, and to be always striving to make things better. Business as usual got us into this mess, and business as usual will NOT get us out of it.

New blog designs, new ideas, new experiences, new ways to live on this planet. My children see every day how to shake things up and keep it interesting just by watching me. They have a sense of adventure and a zest for life that will serve them well.

Thanks!

I wanted to put a thank you here in the post section and not in the comments, since you all might not read the comments. Thank you to my friends who commented on my last post so far and to anyone who comes after this posting. I want to clarify that you should read that last post not with a tone of despair, but with one of dark humor, and sarcasm even. I'm not suicidal and I haven't given up. Writing that yesterday was a process for me, taking me from confusion and anger towards a better place of acceptance, for myself and for the world situation. If we can't laugh at the hopelessness and at ourselves, well, that would be bad, no? So, I feel better knowing I DON'T have to have it all figured out -and writing that yesterday helped me to see that - and that I am not alone, and that I helped someone else even a little bit by bringing my process here into the limelight. Love you all!

Red Pill, Anyone?

Fans of The Matrix will know what I am talking about. I want to take one more post to lay out some of what has been going through my mind lately and then I will attempt to get back to the purpose of this blog. Although since the title is Life, the Universe and Unschooling, nothing would technically be off topic, right? What is happening to me right now IS my life and in small but increasing ways becoming my children's life as well, so it does fit in this blog. Besides, it's my blog. It is what I say it is.

Anywhoo, I feel like I have inadvertently swallowed that red pill from The Matrix and now I see the truth. What to do with that truth, I don't know. Yet. I'm sure I will figure it out soon enough.

What is the truth that I am speaking of, you ask? The fact that we are destroying our planet and in turn ourselves. The way that most of us don't seem to notice or care. The fact that our way of life on this planet is unsustainable. Meaning it cannot be sustained. The definition of sustain is to keep in existence; maintain; prolong. Our way of life is not going to keep us in existence for very much longer.

Ok, so now what? I have a few options:

1. I can curl up in a ball and cry out in fury and despair for all that is lost.

Check.
That was not fun.

2. I can zoom out my viewpoint, way out, and see that if we continue doing business as usual and kill ourselves and the planet we call home it does not really matter in the grand scheme of things. I can see that we are simply following the natural order of things and Nature will re-balance Herself, with or without us. And it is all good because I am not really my body after all, or not only my body. I will go on in my true form which is Spirit and Spirit is forever.

Oooo-kaay. Might as well just check out now, if it all doesn't matter anyway, right?
No, I came here for a reason. Or at least I prefer to think that I have.

3. I can zoom in a bit more and hold the whole of the dying world in my heart and work tirelessly to make changes to save myself and everyone else on the planet. All of us. People, plants, bugs, pandas, whales, and everything. I can, until my dying breath, speak out against what we are doing, trying to change the minds and hearts of every last one of us, so that we have a chance to save ourselves. No matter how hopeless that really is. I will alienate everyone I know in this noble, yet vain, attempt to save the world, leaving me bitter and alone in my righteousness. But, hey, at least I tried.

Does that exhaust you as much as it does me, just thinking about it?

4. I can put the blinders back on - even if I have to use three rolls of duct tape and a bottle of superglue to keep them in place - and party it up until the end, trying to drown out the voice of reason with more and more of what our culture has to offer. Endless buying, fear numbing entertainment, exciting world travel, fascinating scientific breakthroughs, more, more, more, until I can't any more and then....(see #1).

Not if want to live with myself. Those blinders are too flimsy to last very long and when they do finally fall off, the guilt would kill me before I could get the gun to my temple.

5. I can buy into the idea that technology and human innovation will save us. My salvation is assured with solar panels and windmills, composting toilets and organic gardens, deeper community and bartering, bicycles and local markets, birth control and green building.

Even though I know this to be pointless, I will most likely do all of the above. It's better than #4, even if it requires lots of consumption and holds little chance of success.

6. I can zoom in my view reeeaaallly tight and focus on me and mine and our daily life moment by moment, choosing to act from my new frame of reference, hopefully more wisely. I can stay in the Joy that is Life and learn to make lots of lemonade with all the lemons that will be thrown our way as the sh*t hits the fan. And it will.

Lemonade, anyone? I like this one, even if in the end it turns out to be the wrong choice. I've got to live with what I have now and find a way to make it good, or I might as well give up. I can't always do the right thing -if that can even be determined - but I can make the best of everything. I can live in Joy and Peace and Love. I can take the spiritual high road and make every moment worth living, until the last.

Honestly, I imagine I will end up doing a little bit of all of the above. But to maintain my sanity, #6 is going to be my resting place. # 3 will pop up once in a while, so bear with me. # 5 will be what I do when I need to take action. # 4 will be what I find myself doing when I have stopped thinking for a while, or can't handle the Truth. I will punish myself with #1 and # 2 will bring me back out of despair.

So there you have it. Miranda's plan to save the world, or at least what to do as the end approaches! Hope that helps someone. It helped me, anyway....

ITEOTWAWKI

"It's the end of the world as we know it"

The above video is a trailer for a new documentary called What a Way To Go, Life at the End of Empire. My good friend Stephanie brought it to my attention and we have been conversing thru email. Here is an excerpt of an email I sent her today:

I feel like there is Truth to a lot of the law of attraction - especially as Abraham describes it - and at the same time I know we are missing the point of it if we are going to be focused on more, more, more. The idea that we CAN do something does not mean that we SHOULD has been running through my mind. It is obvious to me that we are powerful beings. Just look at the destruction we have wreaked! So, I know we are capable of so much. The trick will be gaining some wisdom about the whole deal and choosing wisely to use our power for the good of the whole living community. And a little humility about our “greatness” would be good, too. I think we do so much from a place of surety about our actions and their effects, but we really DON'T know what we are doing and how it will affects things, you know? If we could just admit that we are NOT sure and manage to NOT act and give it all some time to settle out, we could make wiser choices as a species.
I’m thinking of that song by Imogen Heap on the cd you made me, Let Go. “There is beauty in the breakdown.” Bring on the collapse! Life IS good.

Anyway, thought I would share, at the risk of looking like the crazy fearmonger with the sign that declares "The End of the World is Nigh!" It is a risk I am willing to take.