You are currently browsing the monthly archive for March 2009.
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“We are making it up as we go along – and this is crucial to remember, because it will feel like that, and that’s perfectly normal.” Jennifer Louden
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Do you have the nagging feeling that it shouldn’t feel that way? Do you feel like everyone else feels solid and you’re the only one on a rolling wave?
running in Wittlich, Germany last year
Thinking of running? It’s the season to begin 10 week programs. Most people seem to use the Couch to 5k plan, but I’d like to recommend another plan. The Couch to 5k plan is popular and I have used it twice with my Weight Watchers members to train for a 5k, but the First Steps plan from Runner’s World is the one I’d recommend. It’s the one I used myself a few years back and it’s the one I’m using with the kids and a few of the judo students and coaches we’re training with for this year’s YMCA 5k Run.
The time intervals are clear and easy to remember. And remembering the intervals in the middle of a training session is pretty important. The weeks build endurance steadily, with no sudden jumps. The Couch to 5k plan has at least one week that contains an abrupt shift.
When I did the plan, I was explicitly not training for a race. I wanted a no-pressure entry into the world of running. I took about 16 weeks to complete it since I repeated any week that felt hard. But the plan will train you enough for a 5k: being able to run for 30 minutes + the excitement of the event= all that you need.
We’re one week into the plan for the kids. The rain, the snowstorm, and now the oodles of meltwater have made this an exciting week to be training as a family. But the kids are excited, remembering how wonderful and powerful it felt to finish the races they did last year. We’re warming up for a great season of running, and possibly even triathlons. Tias is definitely doing some of the Kids of Steel events again, and Sandra and I just might put our toes in the water. Rainer’s got races and travel plans coordinated and cross referenced all over the prairies. He’s training to qualify for the Boston Marathon, a true achievement in the amateur world. He needs to shave 11 minutes off his marathon time. We’re all crossing our fingers for him.
triathlon in Simmern, Germany last summer
…a time to consciously savour the small moments of colour and brightness, both the experiences you create and the flashes you encounter.
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Sweet in size. Sweet in taste. Mini Honey mandarin oranges from the supermarket. An indulgence for the waiting time before spring. Like gold for the tongue.
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Knitting heaven. Bright orange overlays yellow. The baby llama slides with tactile luxury through my fingers, a sensory vacation. Each knitting session is eagerly anticipated. The work inspires visions of wearing this over sundresses, inspires hope that the seasons will change.
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Petals from a friend. Bight, intense, exuberant. The first flowers delivered to my door in more than 15 years. Unanticipated. A feeling of being loved.
March is…not all horrid bits.
March is…training in finding treasure.
I find socks in the bathroom. In shoes. On the kitchen counter (ew). On the coffee table. Under the sofa. On the sofa. Between the sofa cushions. In the kitchen. Beside the computer. On window ledges. In the hallway. On the stairs. Socks, socks, socks! And where do they all end up? In the dog’s mouth. Because she’s clever enough to understand her job. She brings me the socks, draped artistically out the side of her moist mouth, and I pay her with a treat. With the way the kids are going, she’s going to have a full-time job fairly soon.
I’m pondering the creation of sock jail. All socks found on non-foot surfaces will be sent to sock jail and a bail of a dime will be charged to release them back into the law-abiding population. (A quarter if it’s handknit.)
Oh, it won’t seem important when I announce it. But give them a week and they’ll be staggered.
If I do it. But even if I don’t, the words “Sock Jail” make me giggle just a little each time I think them.
…wacky.
Same boy. Same location. Different over-the-shoulder implement. 24 hours apart. Oh, March, you’re so March I can only shake my head and giggle a little.
This weekend we had thunderstorms and oodles of rain. Flooding basements, puddles and oceans on top of sheets of ice, dripping and roaring in the countryside. And now we’re on the second of a three-day snowstorm.
If the weather forecasts are correct, we’ll hit -21 and then +4 over the next few days.
Oh, March.
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“When you reach a certain stage of commitment to yourself, you find that you are willing to give the amount of attention and energy needed to our basics [basic needs], because without them, it isn’t your life.”
Jennifer Louden
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What are your needs, shapes the rhythm of your days, what makes it your life? What both defines you and gives you energy?
“Do not take counsel of your fears.”
George Patton
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This quote has always struck me as being particularly wise. Our fears, our worries, and our discomforts can all be an indication that we need to take stock. They make excellent indicator lights, but terrible advisers. When my fears are in control of my plans, black-and-white thinking abounds, extremism takes over, and rigid solutions are implemented in the face of all wisdom and experience.
It was providential that in the midst of my March reevaluations a friend recommended a video talk to me and, while I usually avoid online video like a friar avoids possessions, I watched. In it Sir Ken Robinson talks charmingly and with insight about education and creativity. I was running on the treadmill at the time, and there was one point at which I shouted with laughter and nearly suffered a Terrible Incident.
So many points struck home. So many things I truly believe and, indeed, have written or spoken at great length about. And yet in moments of self-doubt, I never seem to remember them. Interestingly, on my bad days, I never remember to evaluate our days and our progress against my best ideals but only against traditional notions of educational ideals.
He reminded me that our system of education is built on certain assumptions and turns out a particular kind of person, a system and end-product that aren’t the ones I actually want to use as a point of comparison. He reminded me that while a strict classical education was what drew me to homeschooling, it was because it was the education I’d always wanted for myself and my children had taught me quickly that they were on a different plan. He reminded me that while I was aiming for a professorship since the age of 8 and gloried in academia, it wasn’t until my pregnancies forced me into my body that I began to walk a path that had at least a glancing familiarity with happiness, wholeness, and wisdom. He reminded me to not take counsel of my fears.
Who am I raising? What sort of big people will my small people grow up to become?
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I am forgetting that I need to take account of all that we do in our days. I am forgetting that a paper trail isn’t the only measure of educational progress. I am forgetting to measure our days against an ideal that is more than just educating the left brain, but the right brain, the arms, the legs, and the compassionate heart, too.
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“What might a fundamental honouring of a child’s own way mean for us as parents? After all, what does it mean to have one’s way? What is one’s true Way, with a capital W?”
Myla and Jon Kabat-Zinn
…a month of reflection. Often, it is a month of melancholy. I commonly cry in March. A month of bitter self-examination, of feeling like a failure as a homeschooler. Spring looms in the near future and with it the end of a homeschool grade year. Yes, we homeschool year round; yes, we don’t really think that way; yes, it still creeps into my thinking. With the situation we have had with the kids struggling to read and write and needing vision therapy this time of year always seems to throw into sharp relief the difference between my hopes and our reality.
This year, thankfully, I’ve avoided the melancholy. And the full-scale depression as well. Hoorah! This year there is just a sense of reflection. A little bit of the ‘waiting for spring’ blues, but mostly a sense that we’ve come a long way and now it’s time to hike up to some sort of promontory and get a look at the terrain ahead.
Sandra is ready for so much. Eager to get on with the serious business of life. The key will be to find a way to challenge her and let her feel like she’s pursuing her path while not pushing too hard and getting back to a place where it’s “I can’t; I’m too dumb, it’s too hard”.
Sitting still?
Tias is still wiggly but less so. Still a creature of his passions and pursuit of comfort and amusement but also ever so slightly willing to be guided to working on his life. Vision therapy this year seemed to unlock his reading, just as it did for Sandra a few years ago. He’s reading with a bit of confidence, a bit of interest. I’m so careful to jealously protect and guard those.
It’s been a week of thinking. Hard to share without seeming whiny, perhaps, which explains my silence a bit. It’s also been a week of the house in pieces as we continue to work on the bathroom while both Rainer and I have running plans that are pushing us hard and have us falling asleep in the evenings.
There are moments when the tangles of it all seem like art, though.
Life and art. Life is art. Reflecting is like letting the art critic loose. LifeArt. What’s my canvas look like? Do we need to buy new brushes?
One of the neatest parts of Project Spectrum is that it trains you to let your eye be charmed by certain details and urges you to record them.
Green on blue in our bathroom.
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“Bid me run, and I will strive with things impossible.”
William Shakespeare in Julius Caesar
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Have you run today?
