Time lines and Unschooling

I don't believe in conventional time lines.  I understand the earth rotates and every 24 hours the date changes again.  I understand the need for order in public and some slight structure.  But I want to challenge every single one that comes along my path.  I think the strongest ones I want to challenge are the ones that says my family has to do something at a specific time.  I even fight against birthdays and holidays!!  What do I mean?  I really dislike those days.  I do not want to stop life to give honor to something because the calendar tells me I should.  Does that mean I don't want to celebrate people and things in my life?  No I DO want to but let me do it when it seems natural. 

So one of these time lines is graduation in traditional school.  Home educators do not believe in traditional time lines but many want the opposite effect I do.  Many speed it up and finish high school and/or start college at the same time.  I know of many students that will graduate from college around 20....then what???  There is a big huge world to explore, do you really need all that pressure to have a degree and go get a job before you can order a glass of wine in a restaurant?  This past weekend due to a local community college requirement here in Texas, we had to write up a transcript of high school course work for my oldest.  In our minds she finished highschool two years ago, took a year off to earn money for a trip to France mainly Paris, then another year off because the day after she came home from France we moved our family from Washington state to Texas.  I wasn't going to pay out of state tution for community college courses. So as I dug out the three thick files of the past 5 years of her life and moaned as how to put this all together........I learned something. She did most of the work to graduate about a year earlier too.  It was wonderful reveiewing her course work, her activity in our community and it was even better after we finally typed up that transcript and handed it to her.  Over two and a half years later we had that beautiful transcript in hand....remember I don't like timelines! :)

Almost a year!

Hello again,

In three weeks will will have lived in Texas for a year. Mostly it has been a good journey.  I think the last month has been the hardest on the adults in this family.  As humans we tend to recap and examine our surroundings on anniversaries.  We aren't exactly were we thought we would be but who has a crystal ball?  We have found some areas that we have enjoyed, we haven't found a community to call our own.  I do think that is our own fault.  My youngest said this past week, I don't understand the group you are trying to get to know.  I questioned her, the response was something to the effect that they were nice enough but not cool enough for us.  That maybe we needed a younger crowd because we seem younger at heart to her.  That is a nice thing to hear from your teen. That same teen dreams of living in an apartment in the city going to corner deli to grab dinner and walk around the city....sound like her parents?  Of course this is my very conservative daughter who is beautiful, shy and has a 3.99.....who is all the sudden dying to show the world that she is artsy and creative. She said she wants a new hip haircut, a tattoo and nose piercing!  I am really fine with all of it....daddy said the haircut is fine!  So why do we not live in the heart of the city?  Because it just isn't time.....yet. We will be moving again in the next few weeks....looking at renting a house this time.  I think that will give us the opportunity to figure out if we want to buy a house again in the future.  We  feel the pull to move again but try to fight it and put some roots down....I think we are part gypsy.  Overall it has been good, I want to take some time to really figure some things out.... first time that I really remember my inner voice say to calm down, sit and take care of yourself.  So that is my goal for a bit.

Ready or not...here I come!

I am procrastinating big time. I fly back to the great northwest tomorrow and I need to pack, make lists and just get ready to leave for a week. I could blame it on the heat, it has been over 100 degrees for 34 days or some crazy fact like that. But I just don't want to deal with all I have to go back to.  I have a lot to do back in Washington...all stuff that needs to get done and it will get done but I feel a bit overwhelmed with the whole process.  I believe I am starting to feel at home in this great state of Texas, we had our 4 week anniversary this last Saturday.  It was a good day...we discovered a fun, artsy neighborhood to sweat the afternoon in.  We visited galleries, talked to clothes designers, drank some LOCAL micro brew and had yummy pizza made w/local veg. It is the type of place we were craving....of course it is on the "wrong" side of town.  I can't tell you how many times we have been told stay out of south Dallas....we won't be moving there because the commute wouldn't be pretty but it was our kind of place.  On our way home we drove in another part of Dallas that we would like to hang out in and discover more but with the heat we were just too tired to adventure much. But maybe Paul and the girls will out hang there next weekend while I pack up ALL of their stuff for them back in WASHINGTON! :) 

Ok, after typing a bit I think I am feeling motivated to start getting ready.  Of course I have lovely friends to visit, get to hang out with my dad for week, wake up to cool mornings with coffee on my favorite patio, and get the process started for having our stuff join us in the south.  So ready or not here I come!

Miss Josephine enjoying her rootbeer...something cold.

Here is Sarah waiting for her yummy lunch.

Art and a view

Here is a bit of Brandi art.  Paul came home and asked "is that a hint?".  "No" I replied, "it is inspired from the picture on your beer carton".  This is the kind of thing you do when camping in an apartment.  It is created on the cardboard insert from our IKEA sheets with colored pencil, watercolors and a bit of sharpie. I guess it is "green" or recycled art....mostly it was relaxing.  Yes, I did borrow one of his beers during the process.

This evening a view from our apartment, it is 105 out there at 7:55 pm.   Many people have asked for photos of the place but seriously we are camping here...no magazine layouts for this place at least for a couple more weeks! Stay cool!

Not yet....not even close.

Yesterday was kinda a bummer.  We look forward to these weekends to explore our new area and possibly find where we want to land. I guess looking back we found where we don't want to land. :) After a yummy morning of hanging on the patio with the hubby...I was surfing and writing...he was totally enjoying reading the Great Gatsby, we got the girls up around 11sh and headed to Fort Worth.  We went the way of Arrlington so he could show us the TWO Six Flags parks and where the Cowboys play...which were all pretty cool. We had been told that Fort Worth was the friendlier city for pedistrains so we just assumed we would find some cool hang out areas. Well we arrived at the city drove around a bit and did notice a couple more people about than we did downtown Dallas.  I know it is 105 here but these people are cave dwellers!! I had a glimmer of hope we I saw a large Barnes and Noble taking up a huge conner...but that is where it was born and then died.  So me trying to bloster the moral in the car took the iphone and found the historic Stockyards of Ft. Worth. I had heard of these back home and thought it would be as good as a place to start as any.  Well....it was fine. We are not cowboys, there was people but not our kind of people. Sarah bless her heart tried to jump in and embrace the culture for a bit.  Josie was just too tired to even try.  She had stayed up until 2am finishing the last Harry Potter book and had a good cry fest at the ending...so she was not feeling it...not even wanting to try to feel it. In the end we were tired, hot, sticky and I was done with seeing the cowboy art (there was some beautiful stuff just not my style). We hopped back into the car found a Blockbuster and rented the second to last Harry Potter for the girls to view while Paul and I headed to store to find makings for dinner. As we recapped the day Paul reminded me that Dallas hasn't been a huge city for that long....we are taking huge suburbs here...that it isn't a port town like Seattle, Portland, Frisco, San Diego, Puetro Vallarta, Sidney all these cities that I have loved and have been established for over an 100 years. I except that...now. I guess we need to just keep discovering and realize that not all cities are alike and except what we find. So here is to the search.....have a happy day!

Falling off the hamster wheel

That was a close call. We almost jumped back into the mortgage/homeowner thing way too fast. Within days of arriving in Texas we were house hunting and networking to find the next house to purchase. I think part of this was because we didn't know what else to do with our time, it is fun to look at houses and meet people (realtors). As time went on and we made appointments to view properties I was getting worn out and wasn't real interested any longer. I was recalling that we really were looking forward to living in an apartment, not doing the yard work, working out when we wanted, swimming in the pool a few times a week. Of course this apartment will be 100 times better when we have our stuff....which will arrive in about 3 weeks. I think what sealed the deal was when I called the mortgage company to prequalifly us for the loan....our credit was not as good as we wanted. Of course this was due to the family situation we were in a few years with my grandmother. It just reminded us why we chose to move in the first place. We wanted to explore new horizons, be debit FREE, travel and not freeze our butts off in winter. Well the credit thing put the brakes on the whole deal......and we felt free! Last night Paul and I went down the street to check out a sports bar and we had sometime to chat. I asked him how he was with everything.....he looked at me and said that if he never had a yard again it might be to soon. :) I totally understand. I am headed back to Washington to sell the mower and 95% of the lawn equipment. We still don't know where we want to land in this big old city....it is the 4^th largest metro area in the US! Daily we find or are told of areas to check out, and that is what we will do for the next 6 months to a year. We will take pause to figure out what we really want. Right now it looks like a condo/townhouse, 3 bedrooms, 2-3 baths with a little courtyard or patio. Because we live on our patio's....that is just how we roll. Of course it needs to be within walking distance to a Starbucks or a row of cute little businesses that we will get to know the owners by name. Because we like community. I know we will find it and I am happy that we are in no hurry to do so! 

The Journey

It has been two weeks since we arrived in the Dallas/Fort Worth area.  I keep thinking about the drive here.  It was a long 4 day, 1900+ miles and lots of time to just sit.  I think I understand why some people don't move and explore other cities. I believe there are lots of reasons really but I experienced something kinda strange in that first lag of driving that I will try to explain.

It was around two hours into the drive when the hubby was looking pretty tired.  I was up for driving and took the wheel. He promptly fell asleep and the tall teen in the back was so jet lagged from the Paris flight that she was in zombie land.  So the car was quiet.  I was driving us down I-84 going EAST.  Why did I make a deal out of EAST...this is when I felt it.  This deep in my gut compass....right below the rib cage in the center of my body.  It was my body telling my brain this is not the way you usually drive.  It was like a strong magnet.  You see I have lived all my life in what I call the "northwest loop".  Born on the board of Idaho and Washington in Coeur d' Alene, moved to Spokane for 12 years, moved to Federal Way/Puget Sound for 8 years, onto Portland, Or  for 12ish years and then back to dry side in the Tri-Cities for 9ish years. For you northwesters you can understand the "loop" idea now.  It isn't that I wasn't up for moving around....I was.  But this time we were being real brave and driving EAST.  I had this feeling in my gut for about an hour or so that I remember.  It was an interesting lag of the trip, as I approached the little town that my grandparents were born in I had tears streaming down my cheeks as I missed them both terribly. I kinda took this time to say goodbye to my grandmother that I took care of a couple years ago and forgave her of the mess that she created and brought to my house.  I was amazed that she grew up in a tiny little town that I was driving by and was thankful for all the love she gave me growing up. After I passed that area I started to feel more at ease with driving east and was ready to see what the road ahead was to bring me.  I do think we humans have a core in our beings that make us want to stay in a place because we know that place, I don't think that is a bad thing but I am happy that I fought the urge to turn the car around and stayed on the path ahead of us.  I still can't believe that I wake up in Texas every morning but I am proud that I do.