You see, “we” bought an Amazon Kindle quite a while back but he became so attached to it that it’s now his Kindle (he denies this, but he’s always using it!) There are many things he loves about the Kindle, but recently he found out that he can check out a book for free on his Kindle and keep it checked out as long as he wants, and he really liked that idea 

So we’ve decided to allow my newest book, Thriving in the 21^st Century: Preparing Our Children for the New Economic Reality, to be checked out for free on Amazon because the economy isn’t getting any better and we want people to learn how they can prepare their kids to thrive in challenging times (hint: homeschooling is definitely a part of the process!)

Of course, you can read free excerpts of the book here, but if you want to read the whole book, learn how you can borrow it for free here.

Now that I’m not homeschooling anymore, I actually had time to make most of my Christmas gifts, which was a lot of fun, and my beloved sewing machine got a workout. Since I always need music to sew by, I bought myself some early Christmas gifts: a few new cd’s.

I learned about the first cd earlier in the fall, when I stumbled onto a wonderful new show in the PBS Great Performances series called “Let Them Talk.” It featured actor Hugh Laurie, who most people know as the main character on the television show “House.”

I’ve only ever seen the pilot of that show and I didn’t care for it. However, my husband and I know Hugh Laurie from the marvelous “Jeeves and Wooster” series, which we discovered at the Door County Public Library when we lived up in Sturgeon Bay. After borrowing and watching every videotape they had, we ended up buying the series on DVD. We still love it.

While today’s Hugh Laurie is a far cry from Bertie Wooster, both shows display Laurie’s considerable musical talent. Bertie sang silly songs while playing the piano. The real Hugh Laurie took his musical talents to New Orleans, where he indulged his longtime love of the blues by singing and playing the piano and guitar with a marvelous set of musicians. I watched “Let Them Talk,” the show that documents his trip (you can watch it in full here) so many times online that I finally decided to buy the cd so I could hear the music even when I’m not near my computer. A wise decision, as I’m now doing a needlework project for someone and can listen to “Let Them Talk” while I work in my comfy chair far from the computer.

My other purchase is actually a set of two cd’s called “The Gospel According to Jazz.” I discovered one of the songs on it (see video above) last year and fell in love with it. After hearing that beautiful song I looked up Lalah Hathaway on YouTube and found her work with Kirk Whalum and his group. You can only play YouTube clips so many times before you break down and buy the music; at least that’s my experience. Hence my purchase of the two-cd set.

If you like jazz, and if you like praise music, this is the perfect combination. I’ve been playing these over and over and I’m not tired of them yet (the rest of the family may be, but too bad!)

Just last week I found out that my sister (a radio personality) interviewed Lalah Hathaway several times some years back. Wish I’d known who she was then as I would have enjoyed the interviews. Now I know that she’s the daughter of Donny Hathaway, whose work I’ve always enjoyed so much. Even if you’ve never heard of him, you’ve probably heard him sing:

Anyways, if you’re looking for some new music or an entertaining dvd set, I highly recommend these artists:

I got up at 6:45 am and looked out the bathroom window. Seeing it was dark, I went back to bed and slept for a few more hours.

I was cooking at 4:15 and I looked out the kitchen window and it was already getting dark. I hate how few hours of daylight we have this time of year.

So, why do I look forward to this day so much? Because now we’re over the hump. From here on out, each day will get a little longer. Joy!

I’ll appreciate the extra minutes of daylight every day from now until early June. Then I’ll start thinking about the summer solstice and how there comes a day in June that’s the longest day, and after that each day will get shorter. And I’ll get depressed just thinking about that.

I suppose that sounds silly. My husband thinks so. But there must be someone like me out there who’s celebrating the fact that once we get past today, each day will be just a wee bit longer, the sun will go down a little later, and we’ll be one day closer to spring. Right?

I once was an avid fiction reader. In fact, I used to read Gone with the Wind annually. But over the years of homeschooling, time for myself dwindled to the point where I rarely had time to read fiction. (I shouldn’t just blame homeschooling; my discovery of the Internet is equally responsible, I must admit!) When I did make time to read a book, it was usually Earlene Fowler’s latest Benni Harper mystery.

Now that I have the time to read fiction, I’m doing just that. Last night I finished the newest entry in the Benni Harper series, Spider Web, and really enjoyed it. The character of Benni is a woman who is intrigued by mystery and who happens to be married to a handsome police chief. Each book’s theme is related to the name of a quilt pattern; being a quilter, I appreciate that. I especially love that Ms. Fowler includes Benni’s Christian faith in every book.

And now I have yet another reason to love these books. In Spider Web, Ms. Fowler introduces a new character who will apparently turn up in the next book, and she has Down syndrome. How cool is that? I can’t wait for the next book!

I got in the shower, still half-asleep, and reached for the shampoo. After rubbing some in my hair, I realized it didn’t smell like my shampoo. Turned out I had grabbed the bottle on my left instead of the usual bottle of shampoo on my right. So I found myself trying to wash my hair with Oil of Olay body wash.

The body wash had come free with my purchase of Oil of Olay (around here we call it Oil of Ol’ Lady) facial moisturizer. I had tried the body wash a few times, but didn’t like how it made my washcloth so slimy that I couldn’t rinse it out, so the body wash had been sitting there untouched for weeks because I couldn’t make myself throw out a practically full bottle.

Anyway, once I realized my mistake, I rinsed my hair (only the top of my head had body wash on it) and then shampooed as usual. But when I used the hair dryer on my hair, I couldn’t get the top of my head dry.

Weird. But I had things to do, so I left my hair the way it was. However, after a few hours of feeling like my hair was extremely greasy (and it looked it), I decided to do something about it. I remembered that my grandmother always rinsed her hair with vinegar water “to cut the soap,” as she explained. So I filled the bathroom sink with vinegar water, soaked the top of my head in it, then used my husband’s strong shampoo (Head and Shoulders) to rewash my hair.

When I dried it, it was just as greasy on top as it had been before.

Now I began to get frustrated. How could I get this greasy mess out of my hair? I looked at the body wash bottle label to see what exactly was in this stuff, and discovered that the second ingredient is petroleum jelly. No wonder I couldn’t get my hair to come clean!

I remembered that we had a bottle of Trader Joe’s Tea Tree Oil shampoo in the cupboard. That’s strong stuff, so I figured it was worth a try. After two washes with it, my hair finally began to feel like normal, and I was relieved to be able to go out in public without look like I hadn’t had a shower in a week.

So, the moral of this story is….never use body wash as shampoo, and keep tea tree oil shampoo on hand for people who have a hard time waking up, like me!

You just never know what objectionable thing will appear in a modern movie. The plot may be interesting, but the f-word keeps popping up for no good reason at all. Or perhaps a movie has a ridiculous amount of nudity that does nothing to further the plot. It’s enough to make a parent very irritable.

This has been going on for quite a while; it’s one of the many reasons why my husband and I have been watching mostly old movies (pre-1980) for years. Even if our kids weren’t actually watching the movie, we never had to worry about what they saw as they passed through the family room. And though our youngest is now 18, he’s a young man with developmental delays and completely normal male hormones, so it’s a good thing we don’t watch more recent movies with all the female nudity, or we’d never get back the tv remote.

Twenty years ago, when our oldest kids were young, I had hopes that watching old movies would help them develop an appreciation for good stories with strong plots. I held that dream until they hit their early teens, when one of them announced that they thought Adam Sandler movies were the best movies ever. I consoled myself with the fact that my taste in movies was pretty unsophisticated at that age too.

That said, today the jury’s still out on whether the influence of old movies had much effect on my kids. I’ve noticed a definite generational difference of opinion, particularly about what’s funny and what’s not, but also about what constitutes good acting, good plot and especially good endings. Not surprisingly, I prefer an ending that makes clear what happened to the main characters. That’s how most old movies were written. When I watch a modern movie and am left hanging, I’m disappointed. But my kids don’t seem to mind that at all.

Now that our kids are grown, and some are out of the nest, my husband and I continue to enjoy old movies. Below are some we’ve watched recently. Got any favorites to add to the list? Please share in the comments; I’m always up for watching a “new” old movie.

How do you feel about letting your children watch television?

I have to admit, my feelings have changed over the years. When I was a young parent, I only let my kids watch “Sesame Street” and “Mr. Rogers.” The rest of the time they played: in their rooms, in the living room, in the yard and at the park. VCRs were still new and expensive; we rented one once in a while so that we could watch a movie, and we often rented an old Disney movie for the kids.  But that was the limit of our children’s television viewing. We didn’t even buy a color television until 1989; even then we bought a tiny one, hoping its size would keep the kids from becoming addicted.

Then we had more kids. I found that homeschooling the older kids was a lot easier if the little ones had a video to watch. Yes, it was on the tiny television, but it kept them glued in one spot for a while so that I didn’t have to worry too much about someone climbing up the kitchen blinds while we worked on long division in the living room. The rest of the time, however, I limited how much television the kids could watch.

By the time we got a bigger television, the kids had become used to entertaining themselves most of the time. Sure, they had a couple of favorite cartoons that they enjoyed (I think the theme song to “Pinky and the Brain” is still lodged inside my brain!), but if the weather was nice, they always preferred playing outside.

I do have some fond memories of my children watching television. I clearly recall my eldest daughter at age eight or nine yelling “Stop!” when, while channel-surfing, we flew past a play being shown on PBS. We went back to it and she became completely absorbed in a performance of “Into the Woods.” It was the start of a love of live performances that continues on; today she enjoys working behind the scenes of plays in the city where she lives.

And how could I forget my young son and my husband gluing themselves to the television for Chicago Bulls games during those glory years of the early 1990s? How they loved watching that team together.

Over the years, even after we bought a VCR, we found that limiting but not eliminating television worked for our family. It probably helped that we never had cable television, so our family was limited to a handful of local channels. Today I’m not aware of my adult kids being channel-surfers, although they do like watching movies and television series on DVD.

However, I must confess that our youngest is television-addicted. Josh is typical of many people with developmental disabilities in that he loves certain movies. He will not only watch his favorite Disney movies over and over, but he’ll also sing along, belting out the lyrics by memory. Since he has speech delays, it’s good for him to sing, and to reenact his favorite scenes. It also gives him great joy.

So, I don’t think the television is a bad thing, if you control its use. Unlike this mom, I don’t believe your child will become a genius if you withhold television viewing from her. But I do think unregulated amounts of it will make dummies out of children. I think we see the proof of that decades-long trend all around us these days, don’t you?

The article mentioned this young lady’s blog. Since I refuse to pay $6 for a magazine, I memorized the blog address and actually kept it in my brain until I could get home and type it into my browser. (If you know anything about menopausal brain fog, you know that was an accomplishment!)

I was rewarded with a peek into Sarah’s world. It’s a lot of fun. Whether or not you know and love someone with Down syndrome as I do, I think you’ll like this blog.