A Great Weekend

What an awesome weekend so far. Last night, my mother and I took dd (age 7) to see the closing concert for International Week at the University of Alberta. I-Week, as it is now called, has been an annual event for the last 22 years, and it always culminates with a variety-show type of concert on Friday night. I LOVE IT. Last night's show featured a Japanese drum group called Kita No Taiko, aerial acrobats from Firefly Theatre, a Sufi music ensemble, some other stuff I can't remember right now, and a performance by Kinnie Starr, the most incredible poet/singer/performer that I have ever seen.

What I love the most is that almost all of the performers are local groups, based in Edmonton, and yet they either come from all over the world, or they are inspired by music or art from all over the world. It is such a wonderful opportunity to see a lot of local talent perform, and at an incredibly reasonable cost (only $12 a ticket!). From the home-schooling perspective, it is also an amazing opportunity to show my daughter all kinds of different performing arts, and possibly inspire her to try something new.

I think about all the crap we consume on television, on the internet, at the movie theatre, and on the radio, and I wonder why we are so addicted to it, when there is this incredible, vibrant, richly varied culture all around us, right here in Edmonton. I mean, these are LOCAL artists, living and working and performing HERE, and what do we spend most of our free time on? Movies, television, internet, radio. Oh, and video games. I suppose it's partly because I have to go to a bit of effort to find out about these great performances and events in the city and figure out how to get there and so on. It's not just streaming into my house.

I remember my sister-in-law making a joke about NEVER wanting to live in "dead-monton" and I was slightly hurt at the time. Now, years later, I just think that most people just don't know about the rich variety of cultural, spiritual, and artistic communities that exist here.

The International Week concert was only the beginning of my awesome weekend. This morning I slept in until almost 10 o'clock - a miracle. Okay, ds did wake me up at 8, and dd woke me up at 9, but I didn't actually get out of bed until 10am. I'll take what I can get. What is unusual about today was that I had no plans. I always have plans. Almost every day of the month is planned. Today, however, had absolutely nothing scheduled.

I sat around drinking coffee and reading the latest Maclean's magazine. There is an interview of David Walsh, author of No: Why Kids-Of All Ages-Need to Hear It and Ways Parents Can Say It. This is an absurdly long title for a book, but the author sounds like an absolute genius. He seems to really understand why parents cave to their kids all the time: guilt, pressure, being busy, being tired, trying to keep the peace. He acknowledges how much time and energy goes into effective parenting, but he also talks about how important self-discipline is. By saying no to our kids, and forcing them to deal with boredom, dissatisfaction, and even high expectations, we help them develop self-discipline. This is my kind of guy. I already tried to reserve the book at the library, but they don't seem to have it yet.

I ended up calling up a friend to go for a walk this afternoon. I drove to her house, then we walked to Starbucks, had a coffee, and walked back. It was a bit on the cold side (about -15), but at least we got some exercise. When I got home, my daughter was invited over to a friend's house to play, so I went with her and sat around chatting with the mom for an hour and a half. We finally got home at 6:30 and ordered pizza.

I couldn't have had a better day if I had planned it all out. Tomorrow doesn't have much on the schedule, but I am going to have to do some laundry and housework. Maybe I'll squeeze in a trip to the library. I am dying to get started on Little House in the Big Woods with dd right away. My weirdness post got me thinking about it.

Weirdness

I have been tagged by Daisy to post 6 weird things about me. The way
it works is that I am supposed to tag 6 other bloggers to post 6
weird things about themselves. The trouble is, Daisy's blog is the
only one that I read regularly. I read a couple of others, but the
people don't know me.

I asked my husband for his opinion. At first he said he couldn't
possibly narrow it down to only 6. I am just a vast, complex entity
composed entirely of weirdness, peculiarity, and idiosyncrasy. When
pressed for details, he waffled and said that he is just so used to
my strangeness that it doesn't even seem weird to him. So, I have to
figure this out myself.

1. I meditate for an hour every morning. That is something that most
people don't know. I have been meditating on and off for years, but
lately I have been doing it very regularly. I'm not sure if it is
going to solve all of my problems, but I definitely feel like I'm on
top of my game, "with it", and generally have my act together a lot
more than I usually do.

2. I have a very bizarre relationship to science. There is a tonne of
it that I just do not understand, and I am extremely skeptical about
almost all of it. Like gravity, chemistry, time travel, oh, and
physics. Especially physics. My husband gets great laughs almost
every day because I really don't get physics. I mean, you've got
laws, you've got theories, and who can keep them straight? Not me.

3. I am a home-birthing, attachment-parenting, co-sleeping,
home-schooling, health-food eating, environmentally-aware
crunchy-granola type of person. Those are 6 things right there that
make me weird to most members of my family. However, I do not
compost. Several people I know are completely shocked that I do not
compost. So, now that my kitchen garburetor is broken, I guess I am
going to start composting.

4. I actually like going on trips all by myself. I travelled around
Europe for 3 months all by myself when I was 22, and it was fabulous.
It is the only way to travel, the best way to travel. It's great.
Nobody to have to try to get along with, compromise with, or even
talk to if you don't feel like it. You can do exactly what you want
to do, whenever you want to do it.

5. I have a long-standing fascination with Laura Ingalls Wilder from
Little House on the Prairie. It started when I read the novels around
age 8 or 9. I developed an extremely colourful internal relationship
with Laura. I had fantasies that involved travelling back in time and
living with her. I would know so much because I was from the future.
Then I would imagine that she travelled to the present, and I would
take her around and show her things and explain everything to her,
like cars, music, shopping centres, dishwashers, airplanes,
absolutely everything. This was DETAILED.

As an example of how severe the Little House thing is: My husband has
always wanted to go to Disneyland or Disneyworld and a whole bunch of
other big attractions in the United States. I have always resisted
because I feel very weird about travelling in the US. I mean, people
there are allowed to carry guns! When I was in Las Vegas, I kept
looking at everybody and wondering, Does that person have a gun? How
about that one? That person could have a gun in her purse right this
second! One day last spring, I was perusing some home-school sites,
and I found some stuff you can do with the Little House series
(hooray!) and OH MY GOD you can actually VISIT Walnut Grove! There is
a museum and some other stuff there to see. I almost freaked out. I
called my hubby over to show him, and I was like, "Forget Disneyland,
honey, we're going to Minnesota!" I get excited just thinking about it.

Okay, I admit it, THAT is weird. I kind of want to start reading the
Little House books to my daughter, but I notice that I'm holding
back. What if she doesn't like them as much as I do? It could cause
irreparable harm to our relationship.

6. The vast majority of what I read for pleasure is non-fiction. I
almost never read fiction because I get completely absorbed in it, to
the exclusion of all else. Meals go unprepared, children are ignored,
the telephone goes unanswered, and I'll stay up until 5am just to
finish. Then I need 2-3 days just to recover. On top of that, I find
that I often take on the mood of a book for days afterwards. If it
was a very profound book, or very sad, or very dark and depressing,
well, that's how I'm going to be feeling for the next week. I won't
even permit myself to pick up a novel unless there is NOTHING going
on for the following week.

Okay, that was long. I guess the 7th thing that's weird about me is
that I like to go on and on and on and on. I just can't shut up.

I think this whole branch of the weirdness game is going to shrivel
up and die here, because I have no idea who I could tag. Maybe if I
sleep on it, I'll come up with something. Pam, Isla, Lisa, Nicole,
Alan, Mark, Andree, why don't you have blogs yet? Get started! Start
with the weirdness poll!