Green smoothie heaven

I have discovered a few more tips for making green smoothie fixing fun and efficient and delicious.

1. Buy bags of organic greens at Trader Joe's. Currently, I have a bag each of their Southern Blend "greens for cooking" (mustard greens, turnip greens, collard greens, spinach), baby lettuces, and arugula. It makes getting a variety of greens SO easy, no washing is required, and they keep well.

2. Unless you like spicy smoothies, go easy on the mustard greens.

3. Add cilantro (if you like cilantro). I put in three or four stems, chopped, and it's perfect: just a hint of flavor.

4. You know those non-green vegetables that you know you should be getting but don't especially want to eat? Put them in your smoothie. I don't feel like eating whole reds and oranges right now - not even on salads - but dropping some chopped orange bell pepper in my smoothie is painless.

Pulling up my socks

When I get into a funk, I always throw everything I can think of at it, which makes it hard to tell if one of those things in particular is what helped, or a combination of things, or a hormone shift, or just pure coincidence. That means I can't get on here and share with you Ronnie's Sure-fire Cure for the Blues.

I can share my most recent collection of things I've tried. Something in here has helped!

Morning Pages which often include...
The Work

Green smoothies for breakfast and...
Huge reduction in gluten and refined sugar consumption as part of...
A new diet that is about 50% raw

Daily #gratitudelist post on Twitter

Going to the pool with Emma once or twice per week

A limited surrender to what I cannot change
An attitude of acceptance toward what I need and what I don't have energy for right now

10 essentials

Idea stolen from GQ via mnmlist.com. I think I've done something similar before, but it never hurts to reexamine one's priorities.

1. My glasses
2. My inhaler
3. My laptop
4. Notebook
5. Pen
6. A place to live, preferably with electricity, heat, and running water
7. The well-being of my tribe
8. My own well-being
9. Time to write
10. Hope

Unschooling in 140 characters or less

Another great unschooling conversation, tracked in tweets:

Tweet #1
Convo in the other room: ROUSs, urination, internal organs, prophylaxis, body scans, modern surgical methods, weather patterns.

10 minutes later
The convo continues: kidney donation, stones; hydration; fuel for bodies; waste filtering; blood circulation, types, donation.

6 minutes later
More convo: shock, amputation, wilderness survival, outswimming sharks and outrunning bears, decoys, plans for the day.

Gratitude in 140 characters or less

My friend Laureen inspired me to start tweeting a daily gratitude list. I like it a lot, and I don't want to lose the little hints into our daily lives, so I am gathering them here on my blog. Probably. Maybe. If I continue to care about preserving them.

9/17
Employment in a recession. Patient people. Having many outlets for what I need or want to say. Love of family. Books on CD. #gratitudelist

9/19
Simple pleasures: Morning Pages, green smoothies made greener with Green Goddess, HDS, football Sunday, new beginnings. #gratitudelist

9/20
Friends who share their babies, daughters who come home for visits, e-banking, conversations with Frank, self-compassion. #gratitudelist

9/21
Simplifying, saying enuf, dh who picks up slack, too-short traffic jams thx to wonderfully melodramatic books on CD, MJ home. #gratitudelist

9/22 a.m.
Snuggles w/my *adult* dd, optical illusions w/Emma, sunshine & a full moon on the autumnal equinox, having options, C. Kane. #gratitudelist

9/22 p.m.
Kind text messages from daughters, a job that accommodates my #procrastination (mixed bag), my cozy home, JK Rowling, love. #gratitudelist

Warty, warty mom-warts

Ronnie today

I am in an exceptionally bad mood for no good reason. This seems like an excellent time to post about my flaws.

Attention: You are now entering a shame-free zone. If you are feeling judgmental, go somewhere else. Thank you.

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My best buddy, Steph, said something to me in a recent email, in response to my comment that I was looking forward to our upcoming empty-nest trial period. She said, "In public you are the invincible 24-hour RU mom. I forget that you are susceptible to weary-of-momness."

Steph knows me very well. We've been friends since, oh, about 1985, and we have talked or corresponded most days since the day we met. If Steph can be surprised by my moments, it means I am not being forthcoming enough about those moments, and I am painting an unfair picture of what being an unschooling parent looks like.

So, here, for the record, I state unequivocally that sometimes I just simply SUCK.

I have bad moods. I snap and snark at family members. I get tired and overstimulated and sometimes decline to engage with a kid or spouse who is interested in talking with me.

I have helicopter-mom tendencies that occasionally eclipse my awareness that my kids don't need that kind of parenting. I say things I shouldn't say, offer reminders about things that are none of my business, and ask for "courteous" status updates at times when the real issue is my own fears.

I am sensitive to noise and too often ask people in my house to quiet down or take their movie-watching selves to the other TV. I am ridiculously irritated when other people fail to adhere to my systems and do really heinous things like attempting to recycle the lid of a bottle, or not putting the scissors where they go, or leaving a dish on the counter even though I for once have emptied the damned dishwasher.

I am currently going through a period of life-weariness that feels like swimming in molasses, so, yeah, I am looking forward to our upcoming empty-nest trial period. In the meantime, I am more than usually self-involved and reclusive and grouchy and prone to resentment.

So, what does all this mean to our unschooling?

Short answer: Not a damned thing.

Long answer: The members of an unschooling family really live together, and our particular unschooling family is fully together a lot since I work at home. There are not many secrets in our house, you know? Frank and my kids know my flaws and failings all too well; whatever smokescreen I manage online does not carry over to our in-person life. They have no choice but to be used to me.

This means that, while they do not necessarily take my lesser moments in stride, they certainly know that they are moments. I am not defined by my bad moments but by my whole self, and my whole self is
Ronnie Maier, dedicated unschooling mom, peaceful partner, and woman who never stops trying to do better.

Unschooling and the relationships between family members in an RU household don't flourish because we have found some magical way of avoiding bad moods, screwups, and sad times. No, they flourish because the philosophies we live by—my infamous RATS: Respect, Acceptance, Trust, and Support—are not just for good moods, successes, and happy times; they're for all times. And those philosophies don't flow only from parent to child but from child to parent and partner to partner.

We are not perfect, and I am certainly not. But we are in this together. We give each other the benefit of the doubt, a Get Out of the Doghouse Free card, or simple forgiveness as needed. And we never stop trying to do better.

Morning conversations

When people first learn about unschooling, and usually react negatively thereto, there is much that they don't understand about what it looks like and how it works. A prime example is the starring role that conversation plays in our daily routines.

Now that school is back in session, niece Emma is spending her days with us again. She arrives about 7:30, well before Frank and Chloe wake up, so she and I spend the mornings chatting, just we two. These conversations are sometimes, oh, mundane I suppose: what we did last night, what we're thinking about doing today.

Other days—many days—these conversations are simply brilliant unschooling gems. Last Friday was one of those days. In the space of about an hour, Emma and I talked about green smoothies (I was making one), multiplying 9s and all the cool patterns you end up with, the formation of the Traveling Wilburys (I started singing "Handle Me With Care" after spilling something), how the Beatles and the Stones fit into rock culture, Dr. Hook and "Cover of the Rolling Stone," and then—because of this cool story from Wikipedia:

In the United Kingdom, the BBC Radio network refused to play "The Cover of the Rolling Stone," as it was considered advertising a trademark name, which was against the BBC's policy. The song was re-released with a host of BBC DJs shouting 'On the cover of the Radio Times!' over the band's vocals in the choruses. The song was released as "Cover of the Radio Times" for the UK market. The BBC found no problem in playing the record, since they published the Radio Times, weekly. The single found real cult status after that.

—trademarks and copyrights.

This free range conversation—especially when combined with ready interaction with Google—is a core element of unschooling, since it is in exactly that type of conversation that we weave the web of learning, making connections between apparently disparate subjects (even Dr. Hook to trademark law!) and providing the foundation for future learning. Sometimes the connections are conscious—"Oh! That reminds me of..."—and sometimes they're not—I can't remember how the 9s multiplication tables fit in there—but they are always effortless and uniquely our own and fun. And that makes all the difference.

Size to fit

Our family recently bumped up against what I'll call institutional response. It's the way institutions respond to situations, which is to say, rigidly and without creativity. Institutions usually have reasons for their rigidity, and these usually run along the lines of "the alternative is logistically and/or financially too hard to handle" and "if we make an exception for you, we'd have to make an exception for everyone."

I have managed an institution (a traditional family is one), so I understand both the temptation and the seeming good sense of those reasons.

What unschooling has shown me, though, is that those reasons are cop-outs. There are myriad ways to run an institution (as this article shows), and rigidity is the very least of them. As unschooling parents, as human beings, we prefer to focus on the individual: the individual situation, the individual (and often extenuating) circumstances, and, above all, the individual person standing in front of us.

There is a lot of theory wrapped up in unschooling and a lot of ideals. Both of these leave a lot of room for institutional response. For instance, if one abhors school, one might be tempted (and this "one" was) to refuse to allow one's child to set foot in a school, or to decline to spend any money on formal schooling, including college. But to take either of those positions is exactly contrary to what unschooling is all about. Unschooling parents help their children attend school if the kids want to, often suffering tremendous angst and a fair amount of compromise and outright inconvenience to do so. (Imagine the dilemma faced by a friend of mine who has a nightowl household and a family that travels a lot, and who now has one daughter asking to try school.)

Other examples: Suppose an unschooling parent holds a firm belief that toy guns contribute to the violence in the world, or that plastic toys are an abomination, or that meat is murder, or that TV rots your brain. Suppose he or she believes that Christ died for our sins or that the Law of Attraction works. The institutional response to these beliefs is rules and close-mindedness: "You can't" or "You must." In her mind, the parent who employs an institutional response might have excellent reasons for the rules she sets. She might not call them rules, and she might approach the rules with gentleness and respect. She might believe she is implementing the rules without punishment. And she might perceive cooperation and understanding from her kids and think everything is hunky-dory.

But here's the deal: Any time you let your belief system or your convenience come between your child and your child's wants, goals, or desires, that is institutional response. It's rigid and it's inherently disrespectful of the individual. Also, it is punishment because when you keep your child from having what he wants, you are punishing your child, and I don't really care how you pretty it up.

The alternative to this rigidity and disrespect is adaptability and acceptance. Adapt to your child. Accept your child for Who He Is, both in this moment and in the larger sense. And always, always respond as an individual and to an individual.

----------------------------

That should be the end of this post, but as I was writing it, I could just hear the comments coming in. So, let me add a couple of footnotes to head some of those off:

Convenience and compromise - Having the wants and interests of one child conflict with the wants and interests of another child is probably the hardest situation an unschooling parent faces and you have my sympathy. The complexities of such a situation are not covered by this blog post.

Your excellent reasons - I do not care what they are. Your child has excellent reasons for his or her choices, too. They count, too, and often they count more. You have had your whole life to build your belief system. Share it with your child, live it in front of your child, and then get out of his way and let him build his own belief system. He will almost certainly make some choices that you don't like. You will survive this, I promise.

New connections

We were looking at one of the girls' old picture books today, "Animalia" by Graeme Base. It is a unique and beautiful alphabet book with dozens of starts-with-the-letter pictures to discover on each page. Today, about ten years after we first read this book, we made a new discovery. On the D page is a drawing of a Dalek. Chloe gasped and then whooped when she saw it.

It's but a small example of how our perspective and knowledge base change as we tuck more years under our belts.

Unconscious mutterings #397

Want to play? Go here.

1. Gangs :: Listen
2. Contact :: Space
3. Surprisingly :: Delicious
4. Penciled :: In
5. Ignore :: Snooze
6. Let’s go! :: Come on, Barbie, let's go party.
7. Cornerstone :: Life
8. Influential :: People
9. Holistic :: Medicine
10. Lovesick :: Swain

Starting week 3

I am still loving the changes I've made to my diet, and I seem to be settling onto a plateau in terms of how far I'm going to take this for now. Here's my food routine most days:

Breakfast: Approx. 20 ounces of green smoothie with varietal fruits and greens plus some flaxseed oil.

Lunch: At work, a salad. At home, it varies. One day I had salad left over from the previous night. Another, I had leftover spaghetti and stirred some raw romaine into it. YUM! Today, I ate some California rolls, probably one of the most processed foods I've had in two weeks. But many days, I don't really eat lunch—those smoothies are filling!—and will instead snack on a handful of raw almonds until dinner time.

Dinner: Whatever Frank fixes. He's playing along a bit, so our dinners include more whole, organic, and/or free range foods than they used to. We're buying better meat (and eating less of it), which makes dinner taste SO good.

Snacks: Raw almonds, dried apricots, snap peas and other veggies, ginger snaps from Trader Joe's, and the Trader Joe's peanut butter cups that Ginger just HAD to leave behind to tempt me.

Drinks: Water, about 3 cups of coffee per week, and a very occasional glass of juice. I'm not drinking very much actually—I'll get myself a glass of water and it'll just sit there—so I think I'm getting a lot of hydration from the fruits and veggies.

As I've said previously, I'm not in this to lose weight, but I think I have, 4 or 5 pounds. We'll see if they stay off. If they do, I'm quite sure it's from the reduction in complex carbohydrates.

And I'm feeling good. I've been a little moody this week, but that's not unheard of around here. :-)

Quote of the day

Conventional parenting, which gets accepted as good parenting, is destination oriented. It's getting kids into college. It's stopping the tantrums. It's making sure kids stay away from drugs. It's about getting kids from point A to point B. It's about molding kids into what we think will help them the most.

If there is one thought that will help you understand unschooling and respectful parenting it is this: The primary goal is joyful living. All other goals are secondary.

All decent parents, of course, want their children to be happy. But they assume that sometimes happiness needs to be sacrificed to get something better.

But for unschooling, peaceful parents meeting any goal must also meet the goal of living life more joyfully.

~Joyce Fetteroll
(emphasis mine - and how!)

Why we unschool

A friend on FB asked her friends to tell her why they've made the educational choices they've made. The responses from the unschoolers are fascinating and run on a theme: honoring their children's choices and building stronger family relationships. Very cool.

Here's my answer:
Chloe was unhappy. That started it. We always planned to homeschool for middle school (aka, the place where we send our 'tweens to be tortured), but Chloe was done by the middle of 3rd grade. MJ initially planned to stay in, but after a couple of weeks at home, she decided she liked it, too. The reason we were willing to try it early was that we were just kind of unimpressed. School wasn't horrible (with Chloe's 1st grade year as a big exception), but it was so... blah. We knew we couldn't be any less inspiring. :-)

I go into more detail here.

What led you to start unschooling?

My basic green smoothie recipe

1 banana, quartered
2 or 3 handfuls of fruit (anything goes)
some leaves of romaine, ripped up to make about 2 handfuls
a small handful of "little sprout thingies" - I'll try to remember to add their real name later - MICRO GREENS - that's it, thanks, Ginger!
varietal dark greens
about a cup of water
about a tablespoon of organic, filtered, cold-pressed flaxseed oil

Variations:
a few raw almonds (soaked) - makes it a crunchy smoothie
other veggies

Tips:
- Put the fruit on the bottom of the blender. If I start with the greens, I have to get a spoon and shove things around.
- Most blenders will work. Mine leaves more texture in the smoothie than Ginger's, but it does the job.

Blend to desired consistency.

Makes about 20 ounces of smoothie, which I drink in its entirety for breakfast. It is surprisingly filling and satisfying. Yesterday, I lost track of time and didn't go down to the cafeteria before it closed. I was fine all day, drank a pint of milk and ate some raw almonds about 5, got home about 9 and had dinner. No problem with low blood sugar (and I usually have a problem with low blood sugar).

Morning musings

I've been doing morning pages again after a couple months without. I really love it. The idea is to write three pages longhand. Today, I went on to a fourth page, and WOW! Some really good insights.

Remember that little meme I did a couple days ago, where I looked up an old blog post and it supposedly revealed my true nature? Well, it hit me this morning that it worked! My true nature is to report. And that is why I love blogging, Facebook, Twitter, morning pages, journaling, writing, writing, writing. Oh, yeah, and talking. And speaking to an audience.

I also realized one of my own deepest fears, but I just tried to report on that, and no, it's private at this point.

Anyway, morning pages are great!

As I continue musing and reporting, I'm sipping my breakfast green smoothie. Lots of strawberries in this one (because they're starting to turn), and it is really yummy. So, the Increasing Raw Diet continues. Hmm. Diet in the sense of "what I eat." I'm not dieting in the sense of "trying to lose weight." Although of course I won't complain if that happens. :-)

The most surprising thing about the changes I'm making is that it's totally easy. I don't crave anything, I never have to go hungry, and I'm not missing the things I've stopped eating because if I want them, I eat them. What's remarkable is how little I want them. Carbs, for instance. I've gone from carb-junkie to carb-take-them-or-leave-them in a week, with no suffering whatsoever. And junk food? It doesn't taste very good to me anymore. I have a bite or two and I'm done.

In other words, eating healthier feeds itself. My body likes it. The stuff that's good for me has begun to give me the same high as (or better than) the other stuff.

I finished up my contract with the HealthVault team yesterday. I'm a bit sad; it was an interesting product to work on. But today I return to the Retail team, my old stomping grounds, and will have lots of friends and familiarity to enjoy.

Frank's efforts on the housepainting continue now that the rain has stopped/paused. We have our fingers crossed for a sunny September.