Since May is just about here, I thought I'd send one out in April. Here things are going fairly well. No news on any library jobs. Homeschooling continues to progress. We're up to Pocahontas and Jamestown and I learned for the first time that Mary Queen of Scots and Bloody Mary are two completely different people, though related. Bloody Mary was Elizabeth I's older half-sister. Mary Queen of Scots was a cousin, the daughter of the King of Scotland whom Elizabeth I had killed when there was possible evidence she was after England's throne. MQOS was the mother of James I, who succeed Elizabeth to the throne.
The weather up here made history last week -- we got the latest snow in recorded history in the Seattle area at SEATAC on April 18th and 19th. The benefits are that it extended the tulip season, we got to play in the snow and my procrastination in setting out our veggie garden this year was rewarded. I planted it this weekend instead and now have to find a way to battle the slugs and save the strawberries and lettuce. There was a cool blog that mentioned that slugs get a shock when they touch copper, so rings of pennies around plants will keep them at bay. We certainly have enough old pennies to do the job. If the rain holds off, I'll have the kids do it this afternoon.
One more garden-y type of thing. Ever since I watched an ER episode about 14 years ago where Carol Hathaway helps a lady save her worms from freezing I have been really interested in worm composting. We haven't really had a good set-up for it and I honestly haven't gotten around to it. It has a bit of the feeling of having a pet and being responsible for another living creature, so while I thought it would be cool and loved the idea of turning waste into good soil quickly, I hadn't done it. Fast forward to this house, where there really isn't a garbage disposal - there is one, but its location doesn't work out, and there is a big yard with a little "compost bin." I've been taking our food scraps and peelings and having the kids dump them in there. Imagine my delight when I turned the pile today and found my own private colony of happy little worms, composting away! They are doing a fabulous job, and I don't have to do a thing but keep adding food scraps. The bin has open sides, so the finished compost spills out the bottom. I did have to remove an opportunistic raspberry bush or two that had decided the compost pile was their home, but otherwise things are going well.
For the last several years I have been using a cool "free" program to do our federal taxes called taxact -- fortunately we've lived in states that didn't require state income taxes to be filed, so the free federal forms worked out nicely and I tended to download it in January and had filed by February and got a refund in March. With our move and rental of our old house and owning two houses the paperwork was a little more complicated this year so just completed everything now. Hopefully I have postage and can mail it out today. In Austin the local IRS office was local -- here the mailing address is out of state.
Homeschool this week is studying the 1500's and Reformation and Tulip Mania -- a pretty interesting economic bubble situation where people were paying the equivalent of $40,000 for one tulip bulb, and two weeks later it was only worth $1. I also watched the Disney film "So Dear to My Heart" with the kids this week. It was even a bit historically relevant -- had an animated Christopher Columbus, which we studied 3 weeks ago, and a Robert the Bruce, which we studied 6 weeks ago. And an animated lamb, which was cute. I'd never seen a picture of Burl Ives before. I pictured him older.
In other news there is a very vague possibility that there might be a job opening in September that might work out for me. Uncommital enough? I had lunch with a friend that moved from Austin up here and works at a private school. She introduced me around and I met the principal and took a tour with the children, and I was introduced as the "librarian" from her old school and there was much interest on the part of the principal and asked me about my degree. There is going to be an opening for a librarian at that school. And if I wanted to send the kids there, it would be a 30% discount. However, I relly don't think I want to send them there. For one thing, the math program is the same, but instead of working one year ahead, they are on grade level, so it would be a repeat for the two older kids. The kids don't study ancient history at all, just social studies. Possibly I could send the older two to Benjamin's school.
In any case, while I could post a strong case of being experienced, my last paid employment wast 9 years ago and I don't have a teacher's certificate and I have no idea of the salary or the job requirements -- and getting a teaching certificate in Washington State looks like a major pain. If working full time barely covers private school tuition I'm really not sure it would be worth it, as I know they'll learn more homeschooling, and I'd definitely see them more if they aren't in school for 6 hours every day.
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