Here It Is, But You Can't Get To It.......

The last time I got any child support money was about three weeks ago.  Before that it was 2008.  Yes, you read that correctly, 2008.  Three years ago.

Now you have the backstory.  Here's the scoop:

I opened a letter from the local child support enforcement office this afternoon to find, as I expected, a summary of 'support payments processed in June 2011'.  No surprise there. The surprise was on the line below the one for "amount collected and disbursed by check" (this line read $150.00 which is the amount of the check I got a few weeks ago).  The next line reads "amount collected and disbursed by debit card".

ANOTHER ONE HUNDRED FIFTY DOLLARS.

Yes, I have a child support debit card.  The last time I used it, it had a ZERO balance because the last $17 was taken by Chase Bank for inactivity fees, because I left that amount on the card.  But I didn't receive any more money on the card after that, so for three months I had a $5 fee and then the fourth month after that last 2008 payment they took the last $2.

And the card is expired.

It expired in 2009.

I tried the number on the back of the card, and when I get to part where I enter the card number I get a recorded message that my card is expired and then the call is terminated.  I left a pretty urgent message on my support caseworker's voicemail, whose greeting says she will try to return all calls within two business days.

Sigh.

I'll keep you posted.

If the child support people could make him pay, I wouldn't have to agree to tailor stuff like this.

Ringing the School Bell, 2011-12 Edition

After a short break we are back at the books here at Magpie Manor.

I think Birdman would be fine to have most of the actual summer "off" from school, but I know from experience that left to his own devices he can think up far too many ways to provoke my wrath.  So he's back to Saxon Geometry - LOVE the D.I.V.E. cd-rom. And today he had a Biology test, on which he missed ONE question.  Next week after he returns from Cincinnati he'll have the first Quarterly Exam.

He's working on the US Presidents app on my Android smartphone - each of the kids has an app to study and as they finish up they will rotate to a different one.

I got everyone a shiny new composition book for writing journals, and am continuing with this.  Sometimes I give a prompt and other times I just allow them to write about whatever.  Birdman's first entry is an essay about his experience at CAP Encampment.

We also have brand new book list notebooks.  I'm keeping all this stuff under my direct supervision so hopefully we don't have things misplaced like last year.

Velvet has gotten off to a bit of a slow start in picking back up with Saxon 6/5.  She was doing so well that I had her doing a lesson and a half per day before we went to Indy, but we're back to just one lesson AND the proper worksheet for now.  She just doesn't have Math Brain. She enjoys writing in her journal, and I don't have to remind her to read or update her book list.

She likes helping with the garden, although she's still not very good at deciding which is a weed and which is an actual garden plant - although if I'd (a) planted more to begin with and (b) wasn't so busy with work that it got ahead of me weed-wise, she'd do better.

She's studying the Power Vocab app on my phone; it has a definitions quiz and should help her with spelling.  I looked for a free spelling app but there wasn't one that met our needs.  She'll continue with her 4H projects again in the fall (I'm quite happy with the job she did on both her exhibits for the fair, btw).

Lightning McQueen...........is plowing through Saxon 7/6 like nobody's business.  Next week he goes to 2 lessons a day (read both lessons and do the lesson practice in both, and do half the cumulative practice problems for the second lesson, if that makes sense)

He's not a kid who naturally wants to read, so I do have to remind him to read every day (truth be told, he's not a kid who naturally wants to anything except eat and play video games, but I digress).  He's got a Countries of the World app that has trivia facts, a map, a picture of the flag and basic information like population and voting age of each country all over the world - even the Tiny Nations!  He'll keep going with his 4H projects this fall as well, and will be showing his poultry at the fair.

For group study, I've decided to continue and refine something we did a couple of years ago - the World Tour of Foods.  The first time around we had one dinner each month for seven months with the menu consisting of foods from one of the seven continents. (Antarctica's menu was granola bars and hot chocolate eaten around the chiminea in the back yard; we were pretending we were polar explorers!).

This time we'll choose a country each month and have a main dish, side dish, dessert and where possible a beverage from that country.  I haven't quite decided how we'll choose the countries; I kind of like the idea of putting all the countries on one continent in a bowl and drawing one at random, but the method of letting one of the kids choose a country also appeals to me.

We're also going to continue working on learning some songs from our Church in Slavonic (I have a Russian alphabet app I'm studying; I hope to teach myself to read Old Church Slavonic). And watch movies occasionally (some people may not 'approve' of my choice in movies, but I have a specific EDUCATIONAL purpose in mind for each and every movie we watch (except for maybe Speed Racer, but there's even a lesson to be learned in that one :)  )

So, let's get started!

Mute Monday

Another experiment

I am composing this blog post on my phone.  If I could figure out how to print from here, I'd only need the laptop for my business bookkeeping, tax returns and managing the photos from my camera.

Maybe this photo will help some of you who are enduring a heat wave right now. :)

What I'm Reading

I may have mentioned this before but I can't go to sleep if I don't read something before turning out the light.  Right now my current book is Stalingrad:  the Fateful Siege 1942-1943.

A story of two military forces, the ideologies behind both of which I completely disagree with (my, that is bad grammar, but I'm too lazy to edit right now).

Evidently the climate in that part of Russia is particularly harsh in the wintertime.  Add to that the problems of the Nazi German forces being spread very thinly over an enormously long Eastern Front (so thin that in some places they were 'drafting' overrun civilians instead of treating them as POWs); also the distances in Russia are simply LONG and Stalingrad is a very far distance from Moscow, communications were not as instant as we have today, and there you have the recipe for a long, drawn-out tragedy.

Stalingrad held, but just barely, and at what a price!  Party commissars attempted to micromanage every part of the battles without understand anything of basic military battle strategy.  Hitler and his top advisers refused to acknowledge the truth of the fact that their forces were extremely ill-prepared for the conditions they encountered both while advancing the Front towards the city, and the determination of both the civilian residents of Stalingrad and the Soviet forces tasked with defending it.

War is a nasty, horrible, tragic business.

A Farmer's Work is Never Done, You Just Get To Take a Break to Earn a Living.

We did a LOT of yard work today.  I mowed and trimmed the grass, Velvet helped organize the trash cans and clean up the concrete pad where they are supposed to be stored when it's not trash day, Lightning McQueen raked up the chicken poop in the yard and fertilized the rosebush, and Birdman helped me get some grass seed sown in one of the many bare spots.

I have several small tomatoes, and some butternut squash on the volunteer plants!

Go here to see a pic of one of them!

I got the mint trimmed off by the back walk too - it was taking over (but that's what mint is supposed to do, so it's all good).

Birdman came home from CAP Encampment this afternoon.  I think I'll have him write a post about his experience, although I will mention that he was one of the Distinguished Cadets this year.  :D

I'm really pooped; I think I'll have a tall glass of tea and relax for a bit, after I get the laundry off the line.

Experimenting!

Over the next few days I'll be accessing the internet using my phone' mobile hotspot. I'm also going to experiment with blogging by email (for draft posts).

I need to decide what we're going to do to celebrate Independence Day - we're all going to be in the parade on Monday afternoon, so I suppose we'll have a grill-out on Saturday or Sunday (but I think there might be a surprise from my mom in the works for Sunday afternoon, SQUEE).

I went to get in the car last night to roll up the windows and a VERY industrious spider had built a web across the window.  Since my car has no frame around the glass, the web was actually anchored to the steering wheel, the inner door frame and the seat back.  And naturally I went right through it.

I screamed.

Actually I screeched.

Then I grabbed the nearest handy instrument of arm-extenderness, an ice scraper hanging on the fence that hasn't made it indoors for the summer yet, and eliminated the web (and hopefully evicted the spider).

Never a dull moment.

And we ran a load of towels today, and yes, the washing machine IS leaking.  And not from the inlet hoses or drain hose.  Now I have to debate whether to talk to a handy neighbor (who will probably come try to diagnose/repair the problem for free or a minor amount), or try to find a not-exorbitantly-priced repair service (which of course will have to be paid TWICE, once to diagnose and again to repair).  Decisions.......