Life amid the Mess

Life is messy. Anyone who doesn’t already know that is in the process of learning it. Homeschooling is life with your kids, with academics thrown in the mix. We know how much the normal kid loves academics. That makes homeschooling really, really messy.

 

Homeschooling isn't always fun crafts and cool science projects.
Sometimes it's struggles and meltdowns over math

I’m a homeschool graduate, but when I started homeschooling my oldest with two toddlers underfoot, I was blindsided by how many days my plans went awry. Days of struggle over phonics and reading. Days of temper tantrums—sometimes mine—and toddlers smearing goop on the walls while I was trying to teach sums. Over time, some things have gotten easier. Most things have simply gotten…different.

And life remains messy.

Seasoned homeschool moms aren’t taken off guard by the struggles in our homes right now. It doesn’t make them easy, but maybe it makes them easier. Those of you suddenly thrust into homeschooling with no planning or preparation, you may be getting into a routine (probably not). More likely, the little routines and projects of last week may have crumbled, and now you don’t know which way to turn. Hopefully you have a spouse to back you up; many of you don’t, and you’re trying to shoulder it all by yourself. You may feel like a failure.

I’ll be honest, when we first went into self-quarantine, I was a little excited. I began March feeling too busy. Piano lessons. Tumbling lessons and the upcoming track season. Homeschool co-op. 4-H cooking, art, photography, and archery. I was realizing I’d overextended myself. Then, Quarantine, I thought. I don’t have to go anywhere. It was like balm to my introverted soul.

Over the weekend, my husband was home from work. We got a break from schoolwork. The weather warmed to the 60s. The sun was shining. We did outside work and spent time as a family.

That was the first week of quarantine.

This is the second week, the first week of I-don’t-know-how-many weeks under a stay-at-home order. Play dates are now not only frowned upon, they’re a Class C misdemeanor.

On Monday, my husband went back to work. The sun clouded over and the temperature dropped. The kids and I were tired, restless, and more than a little cranky. My children asked to play with friends and didn’t understand why I said no. My 11-year-old acted like the emotional, hormonal tween she is. My 7-year-old daughter also acted like an emotional, hormonal tween. My son, though never the best at staying focused, is usually quick at math and highly motivated by the thought of finishing the grade and moving up. On Monday, he acted like a chimp on a sugar high. When I looked over his final worksheet, I gave him a letter grade—ADHD. During his school breaks, he teased his sisters. Doors were slammed. Tears were cried. The screams were eardrum-shattering.

I tried my best to handle it all with equilibrium, to be the calm in the storm, the one voice not shouting, the grown-up. As the day wore on, though, I spiraled downward. First came the lethargy, then the sense of helplessness. I prayed. Next came the sense of hopelessness. I prayed. All I wanted to do was make it through the day to (their) bedtime. I prayed some more. All I wanted to do was sit down beside my sourdough starter and cry. For a while I wallowed in self-pity. Then I got up and hugged my children, because they need that more than they need any standardized testing.

Some days your family rediscovers the joy of cardboard boxes.

The day wasn’t done with me. It kept unraveling long past bedtime, actually, but I survived. Tuesday was better. We were a little more rested, the sun shone just a little brighter, and the fights were fewer. Today was a mixed bag. My eldest, quarantined because of the coronavirus, still managed to pick up a stomach bug that kept her on the couch half the day. Balancing that, though, were my two younger children, eager to do their schoolwork quickly so they could go play. There wasn’t a single fight till late afternoon. (Roughly the time my eldest got off the couch, but I won’t comment more on that.)

COVID-19 or not, quarantine or not, each day is its own—its own struggles, its own triumphs. Every day we’re in a place we’ve never been before. Some days leave you feeling flattened. Some lift you to the mountaintop. You simply have to take them one day at a time. Cling to Christ. Love your children. Give yourself grace.

I needed a message like this this week. I thought maybe you did, too. Hang in there. You’re doing great.

I didn't just cry into my starter. I made something with it. Bernard Clayton's recipe,
simply entitled "Sourdough Loaf," with Amish friendship starter as a base.
I think it's the best bread recipe so far.

Beekeeping during a Pandemic

Sometimes it seems like the whole world has gone mad. I’m the first one up today, wondering what the governor will decide about a stay-at-home order and whether it means my husband will be working from home this week—and what it means for friends who can’t work from home. I’m thinking about immunocompromised friends and family who need this disease slowed. I’m trying to decide whether to give my children spring break in a world that’s quarantined, or whether to keep the normalcy of daily school schedules.

Thank goodness for bees.

Caring for animals or working the soil can ground you when the rest of the world seems out of control. Feeding, watering, cleaning pens, running your hands through the earth…there’s a kind of solace there.

 

The view across the top of the frames.

I opened my hives for the first time this spring right before everything changed. It was a warm, sunny day, but there was snow in the forecast. The weather this winter has been pretty open, meaning my bees have been more active but without a nectar flow to make honey. I opened the hives to slip in some bee fondant to get them through till flowers start making nectar. (Bee fondant is basically bee candy made from sugar and water. It’s used in the winter to avoid increased moisture inside the hive from supplements like sugar syrup.) While I was in there, I poked around a little. All three hives had booming populations and had foragers out looking for pollen.

One hive had varroa mites. Seriously. Varroa mites are a major factor in failing bee colonies, and I could see them on the bees. I could see signs of some of the diseases they cause, like Deformed Wing Syndrome. Normally you have to test for mites to see how many are in a hive. How many, not “if.” These were right in front of me, which meant the hive was in serious trouble if I didn’t do something.

Full disclosure, this was totally on me. Doing nothing last fall was what got me into this mess. I should have checked and treated for mites then, but I let other things push in and take my time and attention. I put off treating for mites until the weather was too cold to open the hives.

I had to wait for the snow and below-freezing temperature to come and go before I could treat for mites. Saturday was the first truly warm day when it wouldn’t be harmful to open the hives all the way. I treated the bees with oxalic acid, using the drip method. I’ve treated with it before. I’ve also used products like Mite Away Quick Strips. It’s a good idea to switch up treatments; mites, like any pest or disease, can become resistant to a treatment that’s used to often.

Using oxalic acid stresses me out a little, honestly. It’s supposed to be a “natural” treatment because oxalic acid is already present in honey, but any chemical that comes with eye protection, rubber gloves, and a big skull and crossbones on the bottle makes me antsy. I had to take the oxalic acid and combine in with sugar syrup, which would be dripped into the brood area of the hives. The measurements had to be precise (and they were metric—ugh!) This method usually requires a syringe tube, but mine had gone missing. A turkey baster with measurement lines works in a pinch. I will, of course, never use that baster for turkey again.

Preparing the oxalic acid.

Once at the apiary, I had to open the hives one by one, taking off all boxes to allow access to the bottom brood box, dribbling medicated sugar syrup between the frames—25 ml per box—and then replacing the top box and repeating.

Two of the hives were too busy to pay any attention to me. One, the one that really needed it, was really, really angry. However, I only got stung once, which is half the damage they did last time. Once I was through with the treatment—and the angry bees—I could take the time to enjoy those marvelous little creatures.

The bottom box of the infested hive.

And I do enjoy them. Despite the stings and occasional uprisings, despite working with dangerous chemicals and having to use the metric system, I love those little critters. The steady thrum of bees at work is better than any relaxation app. The smell wafting from the hives—sweet, warm, and slightly yeasty—is heady and intoxicating. Each bee, each piece of perfect comb, each example of their social structure gives evidence to the incredible, precise creativity of their Maker. Even when the world is going mad around me, watching bees at work calms me and remind me of who is in control.

I don’t know what my point is with this post. Perhaps you’re interested in beekeeping, perhaps not. Perhaps these details bore you. Maybe I hope it will pull you out of yourself for a while and give you the same peace it gives me. Peace for the day. Peace for the week. Peace for the times ahead.

God bless you this Monday.

Playing Games and Taking Time to Breathe

 

No man is an island entire of itself; every man

is a piece of the continent, a part of the main;

if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe

is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as

well as any manner of thy friends or of thine

own were; any man's death diminishes me,

because I am involved in mankind.

And therefore never send to know for whom

the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.

~John Donne

I’ve said that our lives are continuing as usual in this pandemic, and that’s partly true. There is no reason for our lives to be affected. We have the curriculum and lesson plans in place to homeschool. Shopping is difficult enough that we keep our pantry well stocked so we don’t have to do it often. We are concerned but not panicked.

Yet things aren’t the same. It’s as if the world around me is hyperventilating and I’m holding my breath, waiting to breathe properly again. Many around us find their world off-kilter, and I’m off balance, trying to keep my footing.

The crisis that has not touched us has affected our whole family.

Perhaps it’s because, as John Donne says in the piece above, “…any man's death diminishes me,

because I am involved in mankind.”

And perhaps it’s because every time I look at the news or turn on social media, I am reminded. Every time my children ask if we’re going anywhere today, and I say, “No.”

“Why?”

“Because everything is cancelled.”

Yesterday I could feel some tension getting to me. I could feel my children getting restless. So I decided to ditch the curriculum for the day and play games instead.

Did you know you can do that if you homeschool?

A few years ago I dipped a toe into gameschooling. Yes, it’s a thing. I even wrote a blog post about it. Over time, though, the games slipped away. I was too tired. Life was too serious. Chores were too many.

This week, though, I woke up to the idea that we need to come together as a family. One way to do that is to play games together (and if the kiddos are learning, so much the better).

My husband and I have been wanting Catan for years. This past Christmas, we finally got it for ourselves. We were so excited. It has sat unused since then. Monday we pulled it out and played it as a family. The kids were up two hours past their bedtime (except the youngest, she crashed). We were enjoying playing a game as a family too much to let it go.

Settlers of Catan with the family.

Yesterday, I went through our game cupboard and pulled out half a dozen games that could also be considered educational. We played this spiral math game, which only required a deck of cards, some teddy bear counters, and a pair of dice I swiped from Risk. From there we moved on to games like Diggers Garden Patch (math) and the Scrambled States of America (U.S. geography—there’s also a book). When it comes to educational games, SimplyFun and Gamewright are two of my favorite companies.

Playing the spiral math game. I like it because it can be tailored to each child's level of math learning--addition for my first grader and more complicated operations for the older students.

It was like stopping to take a breath.

We’ll get back to our regularly scheduled curriculum today, but maybe we’ll also find time for Rummy Roots (reading and vocabulary) or multiplication wars. I’ll also make time to bake sourdough bread—and remember to breathe.