Dexter Daze

Once a year our little village comes alive with all the party that a little village can muster—live entertainment, "art" booths, fundraiser food, kiddie fun, and a beer tent—and every year we make our way down to our little main drag to take part. The stores take advantage of the increased traffic and hold sidwalk sales, the neighbors take advantage and have garage sales, and I spent most of the time cooped up in the library basement running the biggest used book sale of the year. The boys, on the other hand, took advantage of the mock train rides, the bounce house, and the instrument petting farm. And there's always the food. Friday night we ate home cooked pulled pork and cupcakes, Saturday lunch we ate grilled chicken at the local church, and Saturday dinner we made our way into the beer tent for brats and brew, and then to the Dairy Queen for dessert. And when a weekend goes like that, there isn't room for much more, nor energy with which to say much more.

Nature Thursdays—I dig dirt at the County Farm Park

The last of the county's summer kids programs was this morning. Since they have been like a compass around which we have organized our weeks I'm saddened to see them end, and it reminds me that, for one, I need to get Calvin signed up for fall story times at the library, and two, it's time to start searching for the area homeschool groups. But for one last time today we gathered with a county parks guide and other moms and kids, several of whom we've been seeing weekly there all summer, for an hour of nature exploration.

I know I wrote about the mom at one of the earlier outtings in the forest who was deathly afraid of bugs. That was annoying for sure, but not surprising like the park guide leading the dig in the dirt class today who was afraid to touch a worm. Calvin and a couple of other kids helped her with that, while many others were encouraged in their own squeamishness.

The display of squeamishness was possibly the most interesting thing that happened in this event, which turned out to be a disappointing finale for the summer program. We made mud, we made wet sand, we went out to dig up worms for observation, and very quickly the class devolved into a building of canals in the sandy area around the park and filling them with water gushing from the hose. It was fun, it just didn't have the same depth that the other Thursday classes had.

But after the class event Calvin threw our lunches in the camera pack and went for our own exploration of dirt on a hike through the woods. It's been much cooler lately—a welcome break—and also quite moist. The upside was an influx in really fun fungus, the downside was an influx in really not fun mosquitoes.

The majority of the fungi we found I think would belong to the genus Amanita. They go by the common name of blushers, which seems apt; many of those we saw were in the stance of young lovers caught in a passionate embrace. Pretty little mushrooms. I think that was my favorite part of the hike.

Calvin definitely enjoyed the mushrooms, but his favorite part might have been conquering the climbing wall at the playground. A real personal triumph, that. And between moments of cringing and fighting to keep my hands from shooting up grab him, I was excited for him.

Missing the bus

All around us kids are getting ready to start school. Sales on clothing and school necessities of which I have taken only very small advantage (glue and glue sticks to be exact), and a certain tension on the streets that says the kids know their days of freedom are coming to an end. In the homeschooling communities there is a certain push going on as well. Some have taken the summer off and will begin again with lessons in a week or two, while others of us are just taking stock of the situation, prompted by some innate sense that new beginnings belong to the fall. This is actually our first year of what I would call deliberate homeschooling. Which is to say that this is the first year that Calvin will not go to school, or this is the first year that he would go to school if we weren't homeschooling.

I remember after Calvin was born that the first night home with him was the scariest; they'd let us take this little thing home and we were now entirely responsible for his welfare—us, and only us, because, be it freedom or abandonment, nobody was checking in. Now, in a few weeks, when the school bus rolls through the neighborhood and Calvin fails to get on it, we will do it all over again. Michigan law allows parents to teach if they so choose and requires neither notification nor regular assessement, so nobody, neither teacher nor truancy officer, will be checking in. It's an awesome feeling. There will be no significant difference in our own home (aside from the change we're effecting in our ideology), but like the moms who will for the first time put their child on a bus, or drop him off at a school door, there is a certain poignancy for me in this particular fall; It's a finality that marks the passage of time, a rite of childhood, even without its physical manifestation.

We are doing some things differently this year. For one thing, we are trying to connect with one or more of the great homeschooling groups in the Ann Arbor area, something I'm hoping we can do in the next couple of weeks. We are also talking about how we can introduce some organization without curtailing creativity and we might start with daily suggestions of things to do, lists created by Calvin, of course. I do have in my hand the skills assessment sheets for both kindergarten and first grade and that may or may not make a difference in what guidance I give (or don't give) throughout the year. And in general we're just taking stock, both physically (like taking down, sorting, and re-shelving all of our books, sorting crayons, organizing craft products) and mentally (by reading books of encouragement and guidance).

So when the bus comes to our neighborhood in a few weeks, we'll be ready...to not get on it.

Oh hi

There's really a lot I could say today, and probably should, but we had a wonderful and busy day and now my book is calling me. I will say that I'm already pleased with the fundamental changes we are making—I think we all are—and the results are already notable. If I wasn't so tired, after hours spent un-shelving, sorting, and re-shelving books, I think I would turn my face toward the future and feel elated. Instead I'm going to sink into my reading chair and dive into my current eye-candy book, The Golden Compass.

Two

That's two hummingbirds in our tree—can you find them both?

They are both females so what I took to be playing may have been territorial behavior, but it looked a lot more friendly than that. They were in our yard together many times today for prolonged periods, sitting in the tree and pipping, flitting through the gardens and around the feeders, still pipping, and they never appeared to make physical contact, but they certainly were fun to watch. Apparently we have the destination yard for hummingbirds.