Changes afoot ...

... And some landmarks on the horizon.

February fifth marks this blog's first anniversary, and I'm closing in on 200 posts.

I'd bake a cake, but, well, who am I trying to fool? I don't bake, and the last time I tried to feed a blog it took three days to get the crumbs out of the USB port.

Past and Present

I suppose, in a way, MLK's dream has come true, at least in my kids.

They don't understand what all the fuss is about with President Obama.

"He won the election, didn't he? Somebody always wins, right? So what's the big deal?"

We explained a bunch of times what the big deal is. But they don't believe us, I think. How lucky they are, to be able to scoff at the idea of a whole society discriminating against part of itself based on the color of the skin. In our little neighborhood, there is nothing to support these old tales of segregation.

"I knew he was gonna win, anyway," the boy said the other day.

"Oh?" I asked.

"Sure," he answered. "He's from Chicago."

Blog Directories

I spent a good chunk of the last few days submitting this blog to directories. And I'll tell you, I am damn sick of typing the same information over and over and over and over and over ... (Has anyone else ever noticed that if you type or write the same word multiple times it stops looking like a real word?)

Being new to the directory game, I haven't developed an opinion yet. Most seem like a directory, nothing more: a list of blogs. A few are different, though, and strive to be more like a online community or social network.

One really stands out: SlogBite^. Although the site itself is a bit rough around the edges, that is to be expected with any new venture. It is the owner, Mel, who makes it shine: personal attention and a clear dedication to this project. It is still in pre-launch officially, but I feel confident in recommending it to other bloggers interested in increasing exposure through a directory.

My collection of mini-badges reside in the right sidebar, but I'm throwing them in here too for good measure.

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GetBlogs Blog Directory

Buzzer Hut | Promote Your Blog

Blog Folders Blog Directory

My Bloglog

UFO over Chicago?

Articles at Many Rivers Blog of the Weird

Oh, the horror ...

The song in this video is one of my daughters' favorites ... and the images are from a videogame fave of the Hubby and son.

Shared because ... well, why should I suffer alone? :)

Only As Old As You Feel

"Listen, Mom!" my 12-year-old daughter, Blossom, said to me the other day. She was working at my old laptop, and as she struck the keys a metallic, mechanical sound issued from the machine. "I made it sound funny!"

"That's a typewriter sound," I told her.

"Listen!" she repeated, hitting (I know) the 'Enter' key, and eliciting that old-school ratchet-and-ding. After a few more feverish taps, she looked up at me. "A typewriter?"

"Yes," I said, suddenly feeling about a million years old. "Remember when we went to the museum last summer, and saw those old machines in the Newspaper display?"

"Ohhh," she said. "You had one in grade school, right?"

"Yes," I said again, finding a chair and easing my ancient bones into it.

"Neat," Blossom opined, typing a few more lines. "That was before CD-ROM, right? You had to use floppy disks."

"No, dear," I answered. "Something even more archaic. It's called paper."

Educating the Masses

When my oldest daughter, Rose, started kindergarten, she was excited and I was sad - my baby was growing up! She had taught herself to read before she was out of diapers, and the classwork was so boring for her that she spent more time assisting the teacher than being a student. The next year, she was even more bored: the school asked if she could help with remedial reading for third graders, but even this didn't keep her busy enough to keep from disrupting classes. So before first grade was over, we decided to pull her out of school and teach her at home.

We tried "homeschooling" at first, but before long realized that her learning style was far better suited to "unschooling" - and in the years since, her siblings have also been flourishing in this loose, self-directed learning environment.

Now, my eldest baby is teaching herself Japanese, and has decided she will become a forensic scientist (joining me in yelling at the television when we watch "Forensic Files" and the investigators miss the obvious). Her younger sister, 12, is torn between cinema and diagnostic medicine (she loves "House, MD" and the new-to-her Sherlock Holmes mysteries); and my son, 9, wants to be an engineer (or maybe a pirate, or possibly a astronaut, or an invisible ninja) and has already taken apart and reassembled most of our clocks. And the youngest, well, she's bent on world domination, and heaven help anyone who stands in her way.

It would have been so easy to send them to "real school" - but I shudder with horror at the thought of what would happen to them in the local conformity factories. There is nothing in my world as thrilling as hearing one say "learning is awesome" and another responding "shh - I'm trying to learn this."

A passion for learning is probably the best gift a child can receive - and it's free, infinite, and will last them the rest of their lives.