Accountability Thread 5/30-6/5

[Critterfixer]

Afternoon! Had a busy morning getting through some things I needed to catch up on, but settling in for an afternoon of reading and relaxing now.

Today's goals:

House: chores

School: none (schedules if I get to it, but we have tomorrow off)

Gardens: potting up my peppers, sunflower garden

Cooking: chicken strips, gravy, broccoli, blueberries

Writing: brainstorming a revision project, reading, 1000 words drafting, scheduling for June

Art: none today, but I will be getting out some character art to work on this week.

 

[serendipitous journey]

Oh my heavens, it wasn't until I saw the thread title that I realized June was beginning.  Doh!

You were productive, friend!  Today saw me in migraine management mode; accomplished a bit, made dinner, started ironing the curtains (which I washed last week) and we'll hang them back up with only 2 ironed b/c tomorrow's a scorcher.  Off to shower, tuck boys in, watch a bit of something with DH. 

[HomeAgain]

Welcome to Monday!  It's a non-holiday in our house, it just means ds doesn't have music lessons but has to practice independently.  Yesterday was a wash here.  I finally turned the heat on, but it was so cold and rainy ds and I sat around playing games.  In fact, we may be adding another new game to our collection.  He had me go on Amazon. fr to see if there was a French version of 5 Minute Dungeon (spoiler alert: there is).  If it gets him to practice happily, it may end up here.

On the list today:

Summer schedule with ds:
-5 minutes Latin
-a math activity
-one chapter in a book of my choosing
-1 hour of play with me

House: laundry, organize school room

Cooking: maple glazed pork chops and baked potatoes for lunch.  It's the only meal when everyone is home, so lunch is the new dinner.

School: check on my classes that start next week

Tutoring: finish my multiplication/division pages for my extra littles

Personal growth: violin, work out kinks in a knitting pattern

[HomeAgain]

I am just going to say, after 3 straight days of rain, it is very hard to be motivated!

[HomeAgain]

Good morning!  The sun is shining and it's a beautiful day!

On the schedule:

• Put together my tutoring box for the week
• Ds's summer routine
• Online art class
• Baseball game
• Somehow find time to cook a full meal, deliver it hot to the two household members who are working, get ds to eat it, feed myself, and pack a ton of snacks for a 5:30-8:30pm commitment at the baseball fields.

[Critterfixer]

Morning! We had a good day off yesterday. Spent it picking blueberries and then at the lake. A lot of reading, some writing.

Today gets back into it!

House: chores

School: usual

Gardens: none because...it's raining. Again.

Cooking: leftovers

Writing: Two revision projects this month (hours to each TBA), draft 1000 words, Beta reading, personal reading

Art: June prompt project, but it's a damp day and slow drying may stall that out a bit.

[serendipitous journey]

Evening!  We trucked along today. 

This week is a vacation/ramp-up week.  So far, so good.  My goals are to set us up for school, set us up to have the house company-ready & meals nutritious, fun to eat and easy to plan, & to study the heck out of my RPG system so I can DM the games more easily. 

The core books for the system I'm using (not Dungeons & Dragons) are pretty sexist.  Like, really really sexist.  And have dabbles of stuff that, while not overtly racist, is pretty appalling (ie, dark-skinned = morally impoverished).  So it isn't much fun to study the rules. There are good-ish reasons to use it, and I'm engaging the company, trying to appeal to the better nature of the artists & creatives, but this sort of thing is slow going. 

Anyhow: everybody's heading off to bed.  🙂 

Tomorrow I'll kick off by troubleshooting our morning routine!

[HomeAgain]

6 hours ago, serendipitous journey said:

The core books for the system I'm using (not Dungeons & Dragons) are pretty sexist.  Like, really really sexist.  And have dabbles of stuff that, while not overtly racist, is pretty appalling (ie, dark-skinned = morally impoverished).  So it isn't much fun to study the rules. There are good-ish reasons to use it, and I'm engaging the company, trying to appeal to the better nature of the artists & creatives, but this sort of thing is slow going. 

 

Oh, that sounds awful!

[HomeAgain]

Last night I had another 2 hours added to my list.  I ate a meal at about 2:30, figuring I'd cook again after the game (8:30pm).  Instead, I walked into the house to hear the beep of one of the integrated smoke alarms telling me it had a dead battery.  Now, in this house, there's no way of knowing which it is, because they will all take turns beeping sporadically.  And the people who built this place got REALLY excited about smoke alarms, so I have some that are only 5 feet from each other.  2 hours and 2 trips to the grocery store for batteries later.......we found the dead battery tucked into one we didn't know about: in the garage rafters.  So all the ones I took out, that we just replaced in March, they were probably still good.

On the list today:

• Personal growth - dig into one of my classes and get set up.
• School - summer routine
• Tutoring
• Home: laundry, clean the shower, weed the front garden

[Critterfixer]

9 hours ago, serendipitous journey said:

Evening!  We trucked along today. 

This week is a vacation/ramp-up week.  So far, so good.  My goals are to set us up for school, set us up to have the house company-ready & meals nutritious, fun to eat and easy to plan, & to study the heck out of my RPG system so I can DM the games more easily. 

The core books for the system I'm using (not Dungeons & Dragons) are pretty sexist.  Like, really really sexist.  And have dabbles of stuff that, while not overtly racist, is pretty appalling (ie, dark-skinned = morally impoverished).  So it isn't much fun to study the rules. There are good-ish reasons to use it, and I'm engaging the company, trying to appeal to the better nature of the artists & creatives, but this sort of thing is slow going. 

Anyhow: everybody's heading off to bed.  🙂 

Tomorrow I'll kick off by troubleshooting our morning routine!

Call them out. That mess needs to stop, and it's unfortunately pretty entrenched, so much so that it's not easy for SFF creators to see at times. 

[Critterfixer]

Morning. Today's schedule:

Chores: catch up the laundry. A day of rain and we are really behind because I can't dry anything without sunshine. More rain expected today. Sigh.

Cooking: pizza night

Gardens: none--it just keeps raining.

School: usual

Writing: continue with the two revision projects, 2000 words on draft, keep up with reading

[serendipitous journey]

5 hours ago, HomeAgain said:

Oh, that sounds awful!

 

3 hours ago, Critterfixer said:

Call them out. That mess needs to stop, and it's unfortunately pretty entrenched, so much so that it's not easy for SFF creators to see at times. 

Thanks, y'all.  I hate to step away while it is -- as you say -- so entrenched, and it is very much an uphill battle.  If you have any particular ideas on "calling out" I'd love to know them; the company has stopped replying to my e-mails (it only took two 😉 ) and I'm trying to advocate on their forums.

[HomeAgain]

Good morning!  Today's schedule is.....

The art museum. 🙂

It's our first and only field trip this year.  They have 'high risk' hours so I can take unvaccinated ds and know everyone will be masked.  I've been putting it off and waffling because there are so many logistics to consider: masking, how to eat lunch (there's a no-return policy once we leave), summer traffic...today is our last chance before the bridges become maddening, so here we go!

[Critterfixer]

Morning. Ugh. Why are mornings so morning? Why can't they be more afternoon?

Today's goals:

House: chores

Gardens: check container plants, water as needed, see if I can plant the sunflowers. Everything is so late because it will not stop raining. We can't even till to put the okra in.

School: usual, last day for this week

Cooking: BBQ brisket, starting this at lunch to cook until supper

Writing: Revisions on two chapters, 1500 words on draft, keep up with Beta reading, personal reading

 

[serendipitous journey]

Hello! 

Today is keeping things sane + Latin Day.  Lots of Latin, housecleaning, sufficient fitness & piano & math.  Some stories.  And planning for the next while. 

Latin goals are:

• Begin assessing elder's grammar knowledge; have a plan for assessing it over the next week or so (engaging this on MP forums); think about how to get the grammar stuff into Anki; have child work on getting his vocab into Anki; have timeline for Anki vocab entry.
• Pick back with First Form Latin for younger: review, do a day's work, start Anki-fying
• Order graphic novel Aeneid, Latin poems for kids + basic Latin reader
• other school for the day: WWS + counting & probability for elder; Latin trumps all for younger, but some math would be great; work on music with younger, e-mail teacher RE a week off lessons. 

Edited June 4, 2021 by serendipitous journey

[HomeAgain]

Afternoon!

Today is organization day here. 🙂  All the things need to find their way back to their homes, but we also have a one-man crew taking a tractor to the underbrush in the backyard and watching the Bobcat munch through the growth is exciting.

On the docket:

Finish the school room

Organize my dresser (half done)

Go through the closets

Baseball game

Figure out dinner

[serendipitous journey]

@HomeAgain: how was the art museum?  Hope all went well.  Hurrah for art! 

[HomeAgain]

2 minutes ago, serendipitous journey said:

@HomeAgain: how was the art museum?  Hope all went well.  Hurrah for art! 

It was a special treat!  The oldest and I had a better appreciation for some of the artists, I think, 😄 but we were able to fill in some of the stories for the 11yo.  And we all loved being able to see some of the artists we'd studied: Winslow Homer, Cezanne, Van Gogh..More importantly, it was a good day for it, with low attendance. We had some galleries to ourselves, it was that empty.  The logistics of the food worked itself out well enough, too.  We had a large breakfast before we went, snacked when we got there, and made bento box lunches to eat on the way home.  Ds really wants to go back in the fall for a special Rome exhibit, and I'm hoping we can do that more easily.  One of our friends has given us a few other ideas of quiet museums to go to after the summer, so I'm crossing my fingers!

[serendipitous journey]

29 minutes ago, HomeAgain said:

It was a special treat!  The oldest and I had a better appreciation for some of the artists, I think, 😄 but we were able to fill in some of the stories for the 11yo.  And we all loved being able to see some of the artists we'd studied: Winslow Homer, Cezanne, Van Gogh..More importantly, it was a good day for it, with low attendance. We had some galleries to ourselves, it was that empty.  The logistics of the food worked itself out well enough, too.  We had a large breakfast before we went, snacked when we got there, and made bento box lunches to eat on the way home.  Ds really wants to go back in the fall for a special Rome exhibit, and I'm hoping we can do that more easily.  One of our friends has given us a few other ideas of quiet museums to go to after the summer, so I'm crossing my fingers!

Happiness! 

and, if you have a chance ... may I ask what sort of artist study do you do?  A la WTM? 

[HomeAgain]

1 hour ago, serendipitous journey said:

Happiness! 

and, if you have a chance ... may I ask what sort of artist study do you do?  A la WTM? 

A very relaxed one. 😄

We try to work in art along with history, so we work in first what art is, and then how it tells stories and really begin with artists around the renaissance.  One of our books is A Starry Night And Other Stories: The History of Art.  Very cool little thing that works through chronologically, telling the story in a conversational way.  I have chronological cards from the Louvre that correspond wonderfully.  I leave out the matching cards for the time we're studying and switch them out.

Pre-pandemic we went to museums more often, both big and small, taking our time to talk to the docents and really get familiar with pieces.  On our way out we would pick up postcard books from the museum store and learn more about the artists and their styles, matching it up with UnderTheHome's art studies or library books.  It wasn't anything formal, just a "when we're moved to" type study and something that felt relatable.

This week ds had a virtual art class for 3 days covering 3 artists he didn't know much about: Kahlo, Matisse, and Ansel Adams.  The company, Art History Kids, makes longer art guides that I think might be a good option this year.  Maybe 3-4, if we can do them, each focused on one artist. Okay, probably only 3.  BUT, the bonus part of our trip is that ds also got to see pieces from Kahlo and Matisse in person at the museum to go along with his at-home study, so it was a really good trip for him.