I’m a fan of theme-blogging, because it makes it much easier to think up a posting topic if I know the day has a them. With Wordless Wednesday, Secular Thursday, and now “Ask a [Smrt] Homeschooler ” Tuesday, I’m becoming the laziest blogger ever. Stay tuned as I wow you with more boring nonsense!
My non-homeschooling friends and family have a lot of questions about how such and such works. I can’t answer for all homeschoolers or, ok, any other homeschoolers, but I can certainly answer for this particular Smrtly Lerned homeschooler.
Today’s questions come from my friend H. the Harried Homemaker:
“How do you keep your shit together [without having 9 hours of time during the week to not answer questions or tend to someone else's needs]?”
I mainline coffee from 9am-5pm and then drink heavily after the children go to bed. I’ve also convinced myself that I’m two separate people. I switch on Homeschool Smrt Mama during school hours and pretend that Actual Smrt Mama is spending four hours at a day spa getting highlights put in and her unmentionables polished. I also spend a lot of time hiding in the bathroom with a book. Captain Science asked, “Why do you have so many books in the bathroom.” I told him it was for reading while in the bath and neglected to mention that sometimes I sit in there and read while pretending to poop.
How [do you] keep the house straight when you’re never really out – there’s no separation between house and school?
We have a lot of stuff and very little time to sort that stuff. Luckily for me, Officer Daddyman collects plastic bins. We fill a bin and put it somewhere, and if we don’t need to sort through the bin to find anything for about three months, we just bury it in the backyard. Amazingly, this words well for disposing of dead pets, too, though I’d recommend an opaque box for that.
It seems like homeschooling is the ultimate act of submitting to your family. Not in some patriarchal bullshit [way], but being there.”
Ok, this one wasn’t phrased as a question, but it still sounds ask-y to me, so I’ll run with it.
Submitting, no, but subsuming, yes, a bit. It isn’t much of a shock or a paradigm shift, because I’ve also spent the last 4+ years pregnant and/or breastfeeding. I’m used to being there 100% for them. I never got a chance to get out of the habit of just always being RIGHT THERE if someone needed me or of rescheduling what I want to do around what the babies might need. If I’d started this several years down the line, after I’d had the opportunity to adjust back to the non-lactating, non-cosleeping way of life, it might have been harder to adjust to it and felt more oppressive, but I’m already a shambling zombie wearing a living babycoat all day, and you can’t really oppress a zombie. Zombies don’t pine for the fjords.
Do you have a question you’d like to Ask a [Smrt] Homeschooler? If so, email me at smrtmama@smrtlernins.com!
Where’s your sense of adventure? Dead pets should be left out so you can watch the process of decomposition. It’s called science lab.