whinge, or whine, or hwinsian

from www.webster.com
whinge
One entry found for whinge.
Main Entry: whinge
Pronunciation: 'hwinj, 'winj
Function: intransitive verb
Inflected Form(s): whinged; whing·ing or whinge·ing
Etymology: from (assumed) Middle English, from Old English hwinsian; akin to Old High German winsOn to moan
British : to complain fretfully : WHINE

See, I am now sure that M-Mv and I are not of the same species. In fact, I suspect M-Mv is some sort of super human created in a lab, fed huge amounts of Omega 3 from the moment of fertilization, and thereby gifted with copious amounts of memory, brain power and impulse control.

Evidence #1. M-Mv commented in my blog about 3 hours after I posted. There are people with whom it is my JOB to communicate and who don't hear back from me days and weeks on end (& sometimes never.......). M-Mv is right on it. Do we even need to consider any more evidence? I mean, just look at her blog. She has intelligent books. I have a bear reading McGuffy's primer (and not getting the short vowel sounds. Still.)

But, I really do like M-Mv. Proof:

I have her Feed a cold; starve a (spring) fever? post, printed out and tucked into my planning folder.

OK - here are the parameters of my homeschool whining (I still haven't decided which spelling to stick with so I think I'll just vary it a bit throughout. Yes, including the Old English version because it is a typical homeschooler's touch, no?)

Homeschooling is not negotiable in this house at this time. So it's not like I'm thinking of giving it up & y'all have to talk me back from the bridge or I might jump into public schooling. It's not going to happen this year, and not next year. I'm not completely discounting the possibility that it might happen at some point but it's not happening now. Which makes this just glorious and indulgent whingeing, because I don't actually plan to do anything about it. (except change my outlook at some point. Or start drinking.)

The hs methods per se are also not negotiable. I'm not going to suddenly become a radical unschooler. We're going to plod along with our version of the WTM. (there's a reason for this which will be explained in another post)

But, given that it's January, and we're coming up to the most depressing day of the year (January 23), which is going to be made even more depressing by the Canadian election, I'm going to indulge myself in a few days of whining.

You see what I want is recognition that this is so damned hard that accolades should be pouring in for all of us from all the world leaders. I want prizes. I want looks of admiration from all our neighbhours. And I want to see a finish line, somewhere out there in the distance, a definitive finish line, which I can drag myself to on my knees, over broken glass - even if it's several years from now - and throw myself across and be finally finished! I want this to feel like a marathon whereas right now it's feeling like I'm stuck in a hamster wheel, and like navhelowife and RANDI both commented, it's the never-ending nature of it that can just suck your life juices out of you.

Right up there with the never ending piles of laundry, piles of dishes, meals to shop for, plan and prepare, it just goes on and on and on and on, and the results aren't exactly glorious, you know?

I'm just not getting a whole hell of a lot of stuff done, is the problem.

Now partly it's because we've moved and we'll be moving again and everything is topsy turvy. So the smallest things become huge deals here. It took me 1/2 an hour to find the stapler yesterday. Hugo couldn't find his math workbook in the morning. I am not making the time to read ahead and prepare for the lessons. Nothing is where it's supposed to be. We sat down to do schoolwork and nobody could find a pencil. We finally found some, and they needed sharpening but nobody knew where the sharpener went. At which point, I rubbed my hand over my face while stifling the screams and I felt .....

the most incredible rogue eyebrow hair, the kind that belongs on hirsute middle aged men and sticks straight out of your forehead, and I swear it wasn't there the day before, but now I had this huge long eybrow mohawk thing happening.

And could I concentrate with that? I mean, could you? Why is it that nobody talks about weird eyebrow hairs that appear overnight & that you discover just when you're trying to explain adding fractions to child one, while simultaneously explaining that yes, it does make a difference which way your 6 faces, to child two?

Of course I couldn't carry on, and I just had to go to the bathroom and spend 20 minutes sifting through the half-opened boxes to find my tweezers and to get rid of this alien invader on my forehead. It wasn't a Read, Think, Learn day. It was more of a Look for Stuff, Look for Stuff, Swear, Look for Stuff, oh Just Go Watch a DVD! day.

So, hwinsian #1 can be summed up as: homeschooling is boring, repetitive, and sometimes seems like it will never end. I can't see any results. Some days I'm sure we're regressing. Even my eyebrows disobey me.

And I can't find anything. Yes I know that's my fault. That is a lovely segue into whinge #2.