About Ready to "Push"

The book is almost ready. I plan to give it the green light on my birthday, December 4th. I think that will work out nicely. So there you have it. The first--and hopefully not the last--collection goes on sale this coming Sunday. I will put up a link for anyone interested on Sunday.

Of course, this has not happened without some sacrifices. I don't think I will have time to design, print out, and mail Christmas cards the way I usually do. I'm hoping to at least put together an e-card, but that won't help with friends and relatives that haven't given me an email address. I feel bad about this, but I had to let some things go in order to get this project done. Thanksgiving was also tricky since I was hosting it and at the same time trying to finish some last minute editing. Everything came together in the end. Things were just a lot more hectic than I had anticipated.

The project itself has taken me most of this year to accomplish. I'm thankful for having a supportive family through all of this. They are my editing and technical staff. Nothing you read in my book hasn't been proofread and approved by them. There was one final error on the back cover that my mom noticed this week. I should have shown her the book sooner. Everyone else missed it until it was pointed out. Then it was glaringly obvious. It was a misplaced "the." The "the" has been dealt with.

My husband and children have also been there for moral support. I have had many crying spells, fits of anxiety, and fears of inadequacy through all of this. These aren't simply comics and essays for me, they are a reflection of our early homeschooling life and my educational philosophy. Putting them all together into a book has been like going through a prolonged labor. I'm at the stage where I just want to push the baby out, but the actual birth is scaring me. I don't want anyone to tell me my "baby" is ugly, or that I should have done something different because it isn't what they expected. Fear of criticism isn't just a bump in the road for me, it's a bed of hot coals and I'm bare-footed.* That's when my family encloses me with hugs and reassurance that it will all be fine. I can do this.

And I can do this. Because I have a great family and friends who believe in me. Thank you all for that. I'm truly blessed to have you in my life.

*The analogy is for my dad, who has actually walked across hot coals. I wanted to use something that is scary, but possible. If he can do it for real, I guess I can cross my virtual hot coals!

Home Spun comic strip #680

Home Spun comic strip #679

Happy Thanksgiving!

Carnival at momSCHOOL

The latest edition of the Carnival of Homeschooling is up at momSCHOOL. Please take some time to look at the submissions this week. I'm very grateful that Jamie at momSCHOOL took time out of this very busy week to set up the carnival!

Excuse me While I Have Some Whine

I'm sorry I'm not terribly funny lately.

My computer has decided to be wonky lately. It takes forever for me to load websites and blogs. And of course, the problems started right before I had my revised manuscript ready to upload to CreateSpace. Two days before I tried to upload it, CreateSpace decided to put up a new feature, an automated reviewer. This is supposed to catch issues before you send your manuscript in for review. But since my computer is working slowly, it couldn't load the automated reviewer. My computer kept freezing up. My husband finally uploaded it on his computer, but the automated reviewer seemed to think there were issues where nothing was wrong.

All this was happening while I was dealing with decluttering and cleaning my house (well...the kitchen and living room) in preparation for family on Thanksgiving. I have also been running around more than usual this week, with our homeschooling storytelling group and Chase's book group falling in the same week. Then I found out the county wants to close all of the nature centers in the area at the end of the year. As usual, community-building, affordable recreation is the first on the chopping block. This called for action, so I composed a letter to the editor. The annual Audubon sponsored raptor show was also this week. And did I mention I've had to deal with a cat with gum disease? A cat with gum disease that can only eat extremely mushy watered down food? And I'm the only one that can coax her to eat?

Then Sierra got sick. It seemed to be a 24 hour virus. I'm thankful it was only 24 hours.

Needless to say, I've felt a bit overwhelmed. When I get overwhelmed, I get panicky. I start wondering if I'm doing the right thing by publishing my book. I start wondering if it's better to just leave all of this until after the holidays. Of course, I've been sticking this on the back burner for years. I want to be a good example to my kids, but weeks like this one do test my resolve. I'm thankful I have a loving family to lean on when I feel this way. Frankly, their love and support has been carrying me through the past two days. If I get this book together before the end of the year, you have them to thank for it. I don't know what I would do without them. There wouldn't even be a comic strip if not for them.

So I'm taking deep breaths and submitting the revised manuscript. Fingers crossed.

Spelling is Correct

People have trouble spelling my name. It's the phonetic Spanish form of a very common English name, so many people often assume there is an extra silent H in it. When I was a kid, I got to correct lots of adults about it. There was a point in my life when I really hated the name Christine, because that was what the grown-ups usually wrote. It was mainstream. It was how everyone spelled it. It also was not my name. It reminds me of a line from the first episode of the second season of Star Trek: The Next Generation. The new doctor mispronounces the android Data's name. She is amused that it bothers him. Data tells her, "One is my name, the other is not." Names are important.

I learned it was easier to spell it out after I gave my name rather than have to watch the grown-ups erase their mistake or worse, scribble out the misspelling. Scratching out the H left my name with this odd gap between the C and the other letters. Sometimes the A at the end of my name was a transformed E. I turned this into a game. I could tell who was actually listening to me by watching whether they carefully followed my spelling or just quickly wrote down their own assumption. This is not simply about listening, but about being sensitive to a fellow human being.

This is something that bothers me when I see articles about homeschooling written by journalists and other writers outside the homeschooling community. They can't seem to believe that the word "homeschooling" is correct. In fact, I read one article in a local paper (I apologize, this was a while ago and I misplaced the clipping) where the reporter placed the [sic] symbol after each spelling of homeschooling in a quote he used from a homeschooler's email. The email was written to decline an interview request. The symbol was not used to inform readers, but rather to mock the homeschooler's spelling. It was also used for two words that were mispelled in the email.

I don't deny that there are many of us who are very elitist about spelling. Recent comments to a NY Times magazine article about homeschooling caused many in the homeschooling blog community to throw grammatical stones at the poorly written responses by unenlightened teenagers. Many of those letters were so alike that it was clear they were written as part of a class project. I feel worse that none of these students seemed to take the time to research homeschooling or read other comments from actual homeschoolers instead of simply parroting their class discussion. It is important to understand the opposing view to effectively argue your perspective. I had a hard time believing that many of the students who commented had an opinion. They were simply writing what they thought their teacher wanted to hear.

If I read any article that spells homeschooling as "home schooling" or "home-schooling", I take a deep breath and prepare myself for what will follow. I know the reporter would rather rely on spell-check than pick up an up-to-date dictionary. You don't even need a physical dictionary handy. Here are links online:

The Free Dictionary: http://www.thefreedictionary.com/homeschooling
Dictionary.com: http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/homeschooling
Oxford Dictionaries: http://oxforddictionaries.com/definition/homeschooling?region=us

Misspelling something as important as the name tells me that little research was done within the homeschooling community. It tells me an opinion was formed from the onset and the reporter would rather tell readers what he or she thinks they want to hear. And believe me, I understand! It's hard to learn about homeschooling. Homeschoolers are individuals. No two are educating their children in the same way. There is no standard way to do it. It's that freedom that attracted me to it. But try explaining that to a reporter.

I don't mind the misspellings of my name anymore. Now I look to see who can figure it out without me noting the error. Having homeschooled for a while, I know that pointing out mistakes doesn't really teach as much as recognizing and fixing your own mistakes. I'm still waiting for the journalists to learn that.

Home Spun comic strip #678

Home Spun comic strip #677

I complained to Marina that I made Jess' friend look too much like Coral. She didn't think it was a problem. I still felt I should point it out. Maybe someday I'll redo this strip. After I finish redoing the six hundred plus that came before it. I'm kidding!

Maybe just a tweak...

Carnival at Home School Dad

The latest Carnival of Homeschooling: Tweeting the Carnival is now up at Home School Dad after some technical difficulties. Please stop by and read some of this week's submissions!

Liebster Blog and HSBA nominations

I have been so wrapped up in my project lately, I've neglected to mention some honors I've received lately. Consider this the catch up post!

I was recently honored to notice this post from my blogger friend at Once Upon a Family

Here is what the award is about: The Liebster Blog Award started (sometime in the recent past) in Germany to encourage traffic to hidden gems of blogs with 300 followers or less. So it is an award you receive, but also an award you give (share the love kinda thing). If you receive a Liebster Blog Award you are asked to choose 3-5 other bloggers and link back to the blogger that gave you the award.

The blogs I am passing the award on to are:

• Home School Dad: I've been reading Home School Dad's blog for a while. I come for the jokes and stay for the thoughts. He will be running the Carnival of Homeschooling this week.
• Homeschooling on Hudson: It's funny, we live near each other, but this homeschooler is always on the go, so I haven't seen her for a while! She has wonderful photos and awesome links on her blog. She also covers news regarding homeschooling. This month she and her son are working on NaNoWriMo, which she has provided links for.
• Lost Persons Homeschool: This creative homeschooler's recent posts cover her daughter's project on renewable energy, a topic near and dear to my heart. Be sure to look at the excellent poster her daughter made using Power Point!

I'm going to have to stop at three, but only because it is so hard to choose. I follow so many blogs, and I think all of them nourish me in some way--spiritually, emotionally, intellectually, or some combination of the three.



I have also been honored with nominations in three categories at the Homeschool Blog Awards. I'm listed for Favorite Homeschool Mom Blog, Funniest Homeschool Blog, and Best Nitty-Gritty Homeschool Blog. Honestly, I am deeply grateful to my readers who took the time to nominate me. I do what I do for you, and I appreciate that you feel the need to reward me when your comments and visits here are reward enough! I recently had my 100th follower, Beth at Living Life Intentionally. To hit that milestone is so impressive to me. I'm humbled that so many of you want to read what's happening in my little corner of the blogosphere! Thank you all for the inspiration! It keeps me focused on my goal to get this book together for you and to keep cranking out new comics for you to enjoy!

Home Spun comic strip #676

Removing Smudges isn't like Adding Dinosaurs

I started working on some revisions to my book.

When I began my comics long ago, I didn't think very hard about publishing. I just did them. That is what you are supposed to do when you begin a project. I always tell my kids to just do it, don't worry about making mistakes. It's the doing that encourages learning and growing. I'm still learning, but I've also come a long way from where I began.

For one thing, when I first uploaded my comics to my very first blog, it didn't occur to me that I might publish them someday. I didn't think about things like resolution and dpi. And it is a good thing I didn't, or I might not be here today with as many comics as I've done. It's intimidating to consider every technical detail. You learn that as you go along. I found out about resolution when I first published comics in a homeschooling magazine, Secular Homeschooling. When I wrote comics for that publication, I learned how to up the dpi. Of course, I didn't go back to fix the old comics. I liked moving forward. Those comics had been written, and new ones beckoned.

When I submitted my manuscript for review at CreateSpace, I discovered that those older strips were a low resolution. This meant that when published, they might appear blurry or pixelated. I realized that part of my problem may have been copy and pasting as I gradually increased the size of my template to accommodate our PDF program. This all makes me sound very tech savvy. Think of it like trying to stretch pantyhose over a piece of cardboard. The more you try to stretch it, the more sheer the fabric becomes. The publisher could print it, since I am within their guidelines, but that would mean the comics might be hard to read. And since the comics are the whole point of this experiment, I think it would be unfair of me to publish comics that no one can read.

So I'm fixing the problem. And rescanning the earliest strips. And doing my best to stay faithful to the originals, even though my inner George Lucas would like to improve them. Marina kidded that if I were allowed to do what I want, I might start redoing frames and adding dinosaurs. I promised her I won't. But I might remove some smudges that I didn't get the first time. Those are mistakes I would have fixed if I had known how to use my paint program. That doesn't count, does it?

Sneak Peek: Cover Art

You can click on the image to see a bigger view. As you may have noticed, this has been taking up a large chunk of my free time, so I don't have any more comics ready. On the plus side, the sooner I finish all of this, the faster I can get it to publication. This has been a very emotional journey for me. I find I'm having frequent anxiety attacks about the whole thing. I'm afraid I'm going to submit everything and be told I did it wrong. I'm afraid I'll discover the formatting is off when I get my review copy. I'm afraid my readers won't like it. These are the earliest comics, after all. But as the saying goes, "A life lived in fear is a life half-lived," so I am continuing forward, inching over the peak and bracing myself for the plunge. This is how I want my children to live their lives, so it only makes sense that I set an example and face my own fears.

You may have noticed, I did not put the caption into the speech bubble. The caption happens to be the title. I'm sure you can figure out the title, but just to make this fun, I've decided not to tell you. What do you think is being said here? Tell me in the comments!

Home Spun comic strip #675

Posts and Pagination

I have read some fascinating blog articles lately. The first, at Laura Grace Weldon's site, is entitled Emphasis on Testing Cheats Everyone and it discusses the numerous studies that have been done regarding the purported purpose of testing and whether testing actually accomplishes what it is said to do. Regular readers of my blog know I'm no fan of testing. It's nice to see some concrete proof for what I've observed, that testing only helps us predict how well a subject will do on future tests. I recommend reading it.

The second article is from Camp Creek Blog. It Takes Time to Really Learn discusses how we hurt learning by moving too quickly from one idea to the next. I love this quote from Lori:

Adult life is like this, too. We’re bombarded with new ideas and inspirations and possibilities. Like excited children in a toy store, we see something that fascinates us, but before we really sit own to play with it, we see something new and the “old” thing (even if it’s just minutes old) is dropped by the wayside and forgotten.

This reminds me of a book I read years ago, The Paradox of Choice by Barry Schwartz. Having an abundance of anything, including ideas, can cause us to freeze up and not make any choice, for fear of choosing the wrong thing.

Lori's article really started me thinking. Our society seems to reward short attention spans. Employees who are better at multitasking have an easier time keeping their jobs since they can take on more responsibilities. A well-written television show has little chance of survival if it can't drum up viewership in its very first season. Programmers prefer lower-cost, mind-numbing reality shows that appeal to the audience the same way a traffic accident attracts rubberneckers. And schools that can show high marks on tests full of isolated facts learned by rote are rewarded with better funding. How often do you hear people laugh about how they could never pass the same tests they once excelled at? Every time I talk about testing I hear one of these "jokes."

I learned fairly early that if I wanted to do well at something, I needed to focus on it exclusively. I think my parents encouraged this attitude in me. They supplied me with reams of paper for drawing throughout my childhood. When I learned to juggle, I could spend the whole day doing nothing else. Circus arts was put to one side for yoga. And homeschooling. This is not to say that I abandoned past interests. One of the benefits of taking your time to learn a new skill is that it stays with you. You can always get back on that bike. You may be a little shaky at first, but the skill stays forever.

Which leads me to my latest project, learning how to publish my work. This has been on the back burner for a long time as homeschooling has been my priority, and then my writing and comics. Now that I have well over six hundred comic strips, the time has come to gather some into a collection. I've decided to do this as an experiment, using only the first two hundred comic strips as I learn the self-publishing process. I've been reading all about gutter margins and layouts and thinking about how to design the cover. Taking the time to learn and understand the final part of this process will probably cause me to slow down on making new strips, but I hope it will be worth it to the homeschooling community. I started putting everything together the beginning of this year, intending to have it ready in time for Christmas, but I'm having some problems with figuring out the formatting. My poor husband was helping me with my document for two hours last night, trying to get the footers to do what they are supposed to do. He plans to work on it again tonight. You wouldn't think that page numbers would be one of the most difficult parts of the process. That's something you learn along the way.

Home Spun reprints #287- Vote!

It seems to me that many people opt not to vote during off-years. That is, years when there are only local elections. I've tried to instill in my children that these local elections can be the most important, since they are most likely to have a direct effect on our lives.

There is no presidential election next Tuesday. Our U.S. senators and representatives are not running for re-election. There are only local candidates this year, and some are even running unchallenged because of the lack of interest in these positions. But for me, this is a significant election year. This year, Marina will be voting for the first time.

Would it be silly if I brought a camera to the polls?

Home Spun comic strip #674

I'm not sure whether I will have a strip ready for Friday. I've been busy, as usual, and driving around a bit more than usual. I also have a project in the works that I'm hoping to complete before the end of the year. It involves learning how to do lots of new things and it can be intimidating at times, so I need to focus on it. See? I'm unschooling myself. As things develop, I'll give more information about it. And yes, I've bitten off more than I can chew with this. Then again, I'm sure you expect this from me!

Carnival at HomeschoolBuzz

The latest Carnival of Homeschooling: Saintly edition is happening at HomeschoolBuzz. Please take a moment to enjoy the latest offerings from the homeschool blogging community!