Mum Is Thinking

Howdy!

Howdy howdy howdy

It’s been almost a year since I wrote my last blog post, and boy have I been busy!

Busy busy busy

I’ve been keeping up to date with most of the other Hub bloggers, and thank you all for all the fantastic fodder for thought through the last year. There are some really nice new people on the Hub (I love Maisy and her mum’s homeschooling stuff! I just realised there are 4 homeschooling families on the Hub, that’s interesting…) And some dearly loved blogs are gone or in (perhaps? hopefully! temporary) hiatus. I hope all those we haven’t heard from lately are doing well. I worry when we don’t hear from bloggers who were once prolific writers, but then I know the break has done ME worlds of good, and hope it has had the same effect on them as well.

A lot has happened in the autism world and the Hub over this last year, and I’ve been like a leaf caught in the eddies at the edges of a stream…spinning in place and watching the world go by with great interest. I hope those who have joined me out of the mainstream are enjoying the peace to just sit and think on stuff, and those who have jumped into the rush won’t have too rough a ride!

So why am I writing now? Partly just to say howdy.

Howdy!

We’re still here, doing pretty well most of the time, and not so well some of the time, but then who said life is perfect? We get more than our share of joy, I guess, so we can handle the miserable bits.

And hey!

I want to say Merry Christmas to you all

My hands smell like lemon and orange peel, I’m making candied peel for the fruit cake we’re making tomorrow morning. We’re personalising it. Only cherries, homemade lemon and orange peel–none of that weird what-the-heck-is-that!? stuff. Lots of nuts; walnuts, brazil and pecans. And the best quality brown sugar I can afford (I think it’s called muscavado?) I don’t follow recipes, just like I don’t follow instructions well. So I read a lot of fruitcake recipes and concocted my own. I like doing that, it’s fun. I read recipe books front to back like novels, anyway, so it’s pretty easy for me to alter recipes. And I loathe following someone else’s directions to the letter, it’s annoying to me. If someone else already made it, what’s the point of my making it too? Sheesh. I like making things my own way.

Words to remember when my son doesn’t like taking instruction during homeschool I guess he learns best by doing things his own way, like his mum.

We’ve added art lessons to our school day. I don’t mean smearing paint around and playing with crayons, that’s a given. I mean learning human proportions, a bit of life drawing from a site that has sort of neutered (no privates showing) figures, sketching techniques, how to draw negative space…that sort of stuff. I have to keep the instruction part down to a minimum, show him something quickly and let him work it out his own way after that point. I figure a 30 second window for instruction to stay in the safe zone lol…Then I just give tips and ideas as we go. But not too much. It seems to work better than the traditional lecture type instruction, or too much critique which really gets his back up in a bad way.

Boy do I feel his pain. I have a hard time taking instruction as well…took a life drawing class recently and everytime the teacher tried to give me tips I’d fight the urge to tell her “I’m a better artist than you, dear, and what you just told me is stupid”. Not that it WAS stupid, necessarily, just that it irritated me no end to have someone tell me what to do, especially since I don’t like her art work. I mean, you can’t tell a teacher “Why would I want to do that? If I did, my work would look similar to yours and I don’t like yours!” I did follow her instructions. All spitting and cursing was internal, I promise.

I think I need to look for a teacher whose artwork I like before joining a class next time!

Luckily I’ve learned to keep all the curmudgeonly stuff surpressed. I wonder if our son will, it’s the one thing that seems to be causing him the most grief. We figure whatever is in his head comes straight out his mouth and no prettying up happens along the way–you get the uncut down and dirty version. I had the same problem as a kid, and to be honest it happens alot now too. It’s pretty distressing to realise you’ve hurt someone’s feelings when you had no intention to do so.

Hey, if you’re going to hurt someone’s feelings you should at least have intended to do it!

That was a joke Sorta…

Well, I’m done annoying you all. We’re still here, still kicking, and now you know it. I just wanted to write; I haven’t wanted to write for a long time!

Oh! almost forgot, I want to share a video, I love this band…

Go and take a step outside, see what’s shakin’ in the real world

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=DL6VeE0Iyho

And as long as I’m plugging them, here’s my favourite of their songs:

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=v2FayS_AHcA&feature=related

I love the odd bits of percussive stuff that goes on in their music, it’s purty. I don’t dance (ew!) but this music makes me wish I did. See, I’m listening to this, and I can’t keep still!

Oh, and that painting…a leaf caught in the eddies Speedpainting, digital with graphics tablet about an hour. Just to let you know where we are!