It’s A Conspiracy!

More specifically, it’s an Advent Conspiracy.

The concept is fourfold:

• Worship Fully
• Spend Less
• Give More
• Love All

This has been a big issue of ours for years. I’ve spoken at churches about this on three or four pre-Christmas Sundays. We as Christians are too much part of the mob at the mall.

Take a look at the site, then take a look at your Christmas and talk about it with your families. See if they feel as uncomfortable as we did.

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Background: MrPages shaved off his beard about two weeks ago. He has been shaving daily since then, but we’ve had a hectic week and he hasn’t been able to lather up for a few days. (That and he decided that his fifteen year old razor wasn’t doing the job anymore and perhaps he should replace it!)

LittlestPage: Daddy your face is all porky. Just like a porkypine!

Two of the LittlePages are playing “Royalty.”

LittlePage who is playing the Queen responds to the Prime Minister who is giving a long rambly speech, “Would you please finish up!”

LittlePage Prime Minster, “But, Your Majesty, I am just getting to the point.”

LittlePage Queen, “No, I’m afraid you are just getting to a dull end.”

Apparently the “improv” part of our homeschool drama class is having an effect! And I’m beginning to worry about what “discussions” with my future teenagers may look like!

In trying to furnish the kids rooms, we have been looking for some shelves to put on the wall. We found the perfect shelves at Home Depot and bought a pair. A few days later we decided to go buy more, because we will put two or three in each kids room.

They no longer carry them. We bought the last ones.

Sigh.

But wait! What’s that on the horizon? A bird? A plane? No! It’s WOODWORKER MAN!

Working from the ones we bought, I whipped up a pattern and then LittlePage3 and I knocked out another dozen or so shelves. LittlePage2 assisted with rounding edges and voila. The ones in the front are from the store, the pile in the back are the ones we made.

See dear? All that money, time and floor space in the basement isn’t for nothing!

We just dropped A LOT of money on a program called Rosetta Stone to help teach french to the kids. We bought the Homeschool Edition, with Levels 1,2 and 3 French, and the Audio Companion CDs in a bundle. (And it was a bundle, let me tell you.)

I looked around on their website, and there is a tonne of information on how to use the Homeschool Edition on a network with “SMS”, their management program. It allows you to track users and lesson progress, and allows users to log on on and use the software from any machine on the network. The explanations and instructions are very clear, and are updated as of a few weeks ago. Yay! We have a home network and a number of machines around the place, this will be great!

Rosetta Stone French comes in the mail. I open the box. I take the CDs downstairs to install on the server. I look in the box again because there is no SMS disk.

I call tech support. I wait 10 minutes. They tell me that it’s all built in now, I don’t need a separate SMS install.

I try again. I beat my head on the desk. All of this beautiful documentation and none of it seems to match what’s on my screen or in the box.

I contact tech support via email. Their submit form is VERY broken, so it won’t allow “return” characters in the explanation of your question. I have URLs and references and multiple questions, and it takes me literally 10 minutes to figure out why this form won’t take my request. The error message I get cunningly neglects to mention that CR’s aren’t allowed. Grrr.

The response I get is this:

Hi [MrPages],

Rosetta Stone Version 3 Homeschool edition is not network-able. I apologize for the inconvenience. You may install the software on two computers.

Let us know if you have further questions.

Um. Hang on a sec.

I reply with a list of articles that seems to contradict this directly.

Hi [MrPages],

Those articles are for the Version 2 product. You have the Version 3, the newest Homeschool product. Version 2 is no longer available for the language you are studying as a homeschool version. The Version 3 Homeschool product is not compatible with home networks. I apologize for the inconvenience.

If you would like to return your product, please contact Customer Care.

I reply again, pointing to documentation that specifically mentions version 3, pointing to the fact that none of the documentation is labelled as version specific, and indicating my displeasure at the removal of functionality without any documentation of such, and in fact, with documentation out there that contradicts the removal.

Then I get this wonderfully concise summary of the issue:

There are two versions of the SMS, Version 2 and Version 3. There are two versions of homeschool products, Version 2 and Version 3. The Version 2 homeschool product works with both versions of the SMS. The SMS and Version 3 do NOT work together. The Version 3 product is an entirely different setup, and is not capable of networking.

So. You’ve used the same version numbers for two separate products that used to be bundled. Now they aren’t bundled, the old version of one works with the new version of the other, but the new version of the same one won’t work with the new version of the other.

Thanks. That’s brilliantly clear. Wonderful marketing, guys.

And, like suckers, we kept the program because it’s still the best way to learn a language. It’s so frustrating to be stuck in a position like this, trapped by incompetent documentation and marketingspeak into accepting less that we ordered. And just smiling and taking it.

Rosetta Stone, you have a good product, but you suck at customer service.

Barbara’s comment on this post led me to write a new post rather than reply in a long comment there.

Yes, the dads in our homeschool group get together for meetings. Yes, this is incredibly rare, from what I hear about homeschool groups and dads. Yes, it has been a very long road to get to this point, and it’s still in the development stages.

Our local homeschool support group has been together for a number of years and is about 12 families, give or take. Activity has ebbed and flowed over the years based on who felt the need to organize what. There has been a monthly “Moms Meeting” for almost seven years, but it varies between a defined conversation topic, a Q&A session and a chat-and-dessert night.

I think the issue for dads is that the moms see each other far more regularly than the dads do, because they get together for field trips, swimming lessons, play dates, all that sort of thing. The dads are usually working when all this happens. It used to be that the dads saw each other at the annual picnic, and one summer for weekly soccer lessons and that was it.

At those events, the dads have talked about “Oh, we should get together more often…” for years. Finally, last spring, a few of us decided to just set a date and see what happened. We’ve gone monthly since then, and they’ve been a great time.

Our meetings start late, around 8 or 8:15 because I work on Pacific Coast time so I don’t get off until 7pm. I have time to say “Hi!” to the kids and MrsPages and then head off to the meeting. We begin by just chatting for 10 or 15 minutes, the usual “So, what renovations have you done on your house lately, how’s work going?” kind of guy-talk. After that there is one dad designated to give a 5-or-so minute summary of how homeschooling works in his house. There are so many different methods and styles and curriculums and it’s a great thing to hear how the moms and dads work together in different ways. These short talks and the questions afterwards have been the most valuable part of our meetings.

Next is a short talk by someone (usually the person who did the “How We Homeschool” talk) (”usually” being defined as “It has been this way in the 3 times we’ve met so far”) on some topic that interests the speaker. Topics so far have been “The differences between schooling boys and girls”, “The Five Love Languages of Children” and “Informal Homeschooling”. The talks aren’t major productions, just a brief overview of a topic. They’ve mostly been based on a book that the presenter is reading or has read.

After this, we chat for a while about anything and then we pray together and then go home. It’s been a specific goal of ours to keep meetings short and end exactly when we said we would. Our hard deadline for ending is 10pm. We always set the next meeting date and speaker before we leave.

Because of the ages of the children in our group, most of the open conversations have tended towards dealing with becoming-teens. We as dads are seeing our children reach this stage and are trying to make the required changes to meet their and our needs. Talking it over with other dads is incredibly helpful. Everyone has come with a great idea that no one else has thought of, and everyone goes away with at least one new thing to try.

It has been great to come to the meeting with something on my mind and find out that others are struggling with the same thing, or that someone else was struggling and then resolved the issue and can discuss methods for doing so.

Now, to put all of this in perspective: The homeschool group has been together for seven years. In this time we have had three dads meetings, all in the last four months. We skipped last month because no one could come. We normally have 4 dads show up, out of 12 or so families. I hope you get the picture that this isn’t a model of superhuman dadliness, it’s just a few guys wanting to talk about stuff enough to get over the stigma of “man meetings”.

These three meetings have been powerful enough that I strongly suggest that if you are a man, you should find a few other men and meet together to talk about manly things. Godly manly things. It’s hard, and it’s uncomfortable, and it’s totally worth it.

For those of you who know me in person, this may not come as a surprise.

I hate superficiality.

Seriously.

When people at church used to ask me how I was, I dutifully smiled and said fine, meanwhile screaming inside of my head that I’m not fine. Yet I knew, I must confess from experience, that if I told the truth I would alienate the dear person who inquired about the state of my life.

And so I hate superficiality and yet feel obligated not to burden those who are not prepared to share the weight of my craziness.

I feel that same way about this blog. I know several people out there read our blog. I know some of you in person. Some of you are complete strangers. And yet I struggle with what it means to be truthful or transparent here in this place. In all honesty, I don’t really want to be completely honest with you all. And yet to be less than honest is not an option. So my little bit of space here on the internet is silent.

I’ve been mulling exactly why it is that I feel such an inability to be truthful. Here are two guesses:

1. I am afraid you won’t read my blog anymore, and somehow that would amount to complete rejection, (even if I don’t know you read it) and though I tell myself that it doesn’t matter, it does.
2. I am afraid that something I might blunder on about will hurt your feelings and you will leave, which honestly would be even worse than the first reason.

And yet I feel some sort of responsibility to share things here, because I can’t help wondering if my own confessions won’t help someone else.

I have great life.
I have a wonderfully compassionate and graceful husband.
I have the best children in the whole entire world. (I realize I may be biased!)
I live in one of the wealthiest nations in the world that is considered in the top five for standard of living.
I own my home and nice clothes and a newer car and more books than I will admit to.
I believe with my whole heart that my Saviour has paid the price for my mistakes and is helping me step by step to learn to be like him, so I can join him in his Kingdom in the next life.

So why does everything in my life seems so difficult?
Why am I haunted by mistakes I have made and might make in the future?
Why am I constantly suffering under the weight of disillusionment and disappointment?
Why do other people not have this all-encompassing struggle with worry and self-recrimination?
Where is the line between sharing our burdens and just sinful complaining?

I have more questions than answers. In fact, I don’t have any answers at all. All I have is a blessed life that I don’t deserve and can’t understand. A bunch of problems I often feel overwhelmed and defeated by. And a Saviour who loves me more than I deserve or can possibly understand and who literally takes my breath and words away with his compassion and care.

Really what more is there to write. If you want to be party to my struggles, let me know. Otherwise, I think my blogging hiatus may continue for awhile.

NOTE: I’m going to de-vowel some words in this post so we don’t end up on google searches for unsavoury topics, like we have in the past. Sorry if it makes reading more difficult.

There’s an interesting news story from a Detroit newspaper about a teacher who was apparently unjustly accused of m0le’sting two young boys.

There was no case at all against him, and the investigators didn’t do some very basic things (like question the adults that were in the room where it supposedly happened, etc). But that’s not really what this post is about.

This post is about this paragraph:

At one point, Assistant Prosecutor Andrea Dean tried to argue that movies found in Perry’s home, like “Star Wars,” the “Harry Potter” films and “Little House on the Prairie,” constituted “non-er0tic p0r’n0gra’phy.”

“N0n-er0t1c p0rn0gr’a'phy”. What the heck is that?

And exactly how would this bizarro concept apply to “Little House On The Prairie” ?

It just boggles the mind.

The prosecution actually tried to use ownership of a G-rated movie of one of the most popular books in North America of as evidence that a man is a child-m0lester.

One of my favorite books of all time is The Long Winter, joined on the list by Farmer Boy. We have audio books of both of those, and Little House movies too. We’re even waiting to start watching The Waltons together as a family.

We’re so bad.

Let’s not even get started on Star Wars and Harry Potter.

Well, okay, Harry Potter’s a bit iffy.

I’m popping out of my home school planning frenzy for a quick moment to share a joke
I read on my MOMYS list:

How does a home schooler change a light bulb?

First, mom checks three books on electricity out of the library, then the kids make models of light bulbs, read a biography of Thomas Edison and do a skit based on his life.

Next, everyone studies the history of lighting methods, wrapping up with dipping their own candles.

Next, everyone takes a trip to the store where they compare types of light bulbs as well as prices and figure out how much change they’ll get if they buy two bulbs for $1.99 and pay with a five-dollar bill.

On the way home, a discussion develops over the history of money and also Abraham Lincoln, as his picture is on the five-dollar bill.

Finally, after building a homemade ladder out of branches dragged from the woods, the light bulb is installed.

And there is light.