Log Jam recipe, from a not-normally-a-cooking blog

December 17, 2013December 17, 2013trishmercer Leave a comment

She never understood her mother’s need to embellish everything, from her head to her food. Hycymum also insisted everything should be a meal. That meant taking three extra hours and twelve extra ingredients and stirring them into something no one would recognize anymore, then giving it a made up name like la-zhan-ya. ~Forest at the Edge of the World

“I read your blog, but I didn’t see any recipes.”
That’s what my friend complained about the other day.

“Well, that’s because it’s not a recipe blog.”

“So? People LIKE to see recipes.”

“But I’m not exactly a great cook—”

“But people LIKE to see recipes.”

“But I’m trying to be a writer, and—”

“Cooking bloggers write, too. Usually stories about the recipe, or what event they made it for, or—”

“BUT IT’S NOT A COOKING BLOG!”

She stared at me, genuinely confused, and said, “You should put at least one recipe on it.”

“Will you read it if I do?”

“If you tell the story about the recipe, yes.”

That’s the story, right there. And the recipe, down there.
Seeing how it’s Christmas, I probably should share something Christmasy, and since my 10-year-old took a bite of my Log Jam and said, “Hey, this is good enough for Pinterest,” (which, from him, is about the highest compliment one can receive) here is my recipe from a blog not normally a cooking blog:

(My little point-and-shoot camera got waaayyy close up for this shot. How in the world do real cook bloggers shoot their food?!)

Log Jam
(like those fancy dipping pretzels, but much easier, less messy, and nearly fool-proof. I’ve screwed it up only twice.)

1 bag of pretzel logs (12 oz.)

½ bag of semi-sweet chocolate chips (about 1 cup; you’ll probably need the second cup later)

sprinkles (optional, but they shouldn’t be)

caramel, melted
*Note: Either unwrap a whole bunch of caramels until your fingers are chapped and melt those—look up on Pinterest how to do that, because I don’t know—or use this recipe that I stole from Marcie Bingham’s grandmother (yeah, nothing’s original in my cooking):

Perfect Caramels
1 can sweetened condensed milk
2 cups sugar
1 cup butter (not margarine)
¼ tsp salt
1½ cup white corn syrup
2 TBS vanilla

Mix first five ingredients and stir constantly in a HEAVY pan until it reaches 245 degrees on a candy thermometer (about 20-25 minutes). Take off of heat and add vanilla. (*Note—I undercook it a bit, to about 220 degrees. That way the caramel stays soft and chewy, and your fillings stay in your mouth.)

While the caramel’s cooling, and your tongue has been iced down because you kept licking the spoon when you KNEW it was still boiling hot, get a large cookie sheet with sides, because you do NOT want these pretzel logs rolling all over the place. (Trust me—after the fourth time, it’s pretty annoying.)

Butter the pan heavily until it resembles a creamy yellow snow scene, then lay all the pretzel logs side by side on the pan. Go ahead and snap them in half, too. Most will already be broken anyway since you accidentally dropped a 20lb bag of sugar on them in the grocery cart; the beauty of this recipe is that you’ll chop them up at the end, too, so no need to be delicate. Hey, you can even toss in other kinds of pretzels as well to fill in all the little gaps. We don’t care.

Next, pour HALF of the cooked caramel recipe over the pretzel logs and other stuff you threw in there. You can try dribbling the caramel artfully, but it’s gonna goo all together anyway, so what’s the point. Pour the remaining half of the caramel into a heavily buttered 8×8″ pan, fully intending to cut and wrap them up prettily in wax paper but knowing full well you’ll stick a spoon in there “just to sample it occasionally” and blame the missing candy on the toddler who can’t defend himself.

Next, melt the chocolate chips in a double boiler until just starting to melt. Don’t let it get too hot or it will mysteriously burn and clump together into something no one will want, even if you slip massive chunks of it into cookie dough. If you mess up the first half of the bag, remember, you’ve got the second half, so try the melting process again with the remaining chocolate, but this time slowly, and take it off the heat as soon as half of those chips are melted. They’ll convince the others to join them in the mess in about 3 to 4 minutes if you keep stirring it.

What’d I tell you? Artful!

Now, dip a spoon into the melted chocolate and whish-whish-whish it over the caramel layer. Go all in one direction, realizing that the chocolate you fling all over the counter will be licked up later by the cat or your 17-year-old son. This technique will actually make your Log Jam look a bit . . . artful!

But to make it really festive, pour some sprinkles over it. Nothing says “professional” like sprinkles. People will forgive just about anything as long as there are sprinkles on it. For an added splash of professionalism that will make your neighbor think you’ve gone all Martha Stewart on her, melt some white chocolate chips and do yet another layer as a highlight. (That’s too fussy for me; I was thrilled I found sprinkles from four years ago I could use.)

Shove the whole thing in the freezer for about half an hour, or outside on the porch if it’s cold enough and the neighbor’s dog is locked up. When solid, take a sharp knife and start chopping that slab of fantastic goodness into pieces, like brittle. (See why you could be sloppy with the pretzel rods? Next time I’m going to try using a sledge hammer, just to see.)

Remove the Log Jam pieces while they’re still cold, or you’ll have a horrible mess that will take you hours to lick off your fingers. (Not that there’s anything wrong with that, but the children do get jealous.)

I’m not really sure how long it stores, because it shockingly doesn’t last until morning (but my stomach ache sure does).

Makes enough to feed your family, the in-laws, and maybe a few neighbors.

All right, friend–you know who you are. Here’s your recipe, now start reading!

I don’t like Jane Austen, and I’m so sorry about that

December 12, 2013May 27, 2015trishmercer 11 Comments

After years of shielding my pride, of trying to convince myself I’m of another persuasion, of losing my sensibilities in the attempt, I’ve finally come to the conclusion that I must, once and for all, admit the truth:

I don’t particularly care for Jane Austen.

Although the Regency-era submarine was a clever twist.

Oh, how it pains me to write those words! I feel positively wretched because for years I’ve done my best to watch every movie adaption and read every book, including Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters, and now I must confess that I rarely finished reading any of them because . . . I got bored.
Oh, dear.

Oh, I’m so sorry Jane! I’m so sorry all of my dear friends who love, love, love the regency period!

My darling daughter in her Regency-inspired wedding dress and hair, with my hunky husband.
(The only song he would willing dance to was “People Are Strange,” by the Doors. May explain a few things about us.)

I love it too. I’ve sewn empire waist dresses for my daughters as costumes, would wear one to church (the non-cleavage kind, of course) if I had the bosom to do it justice, and my oldest daughter’s wedding dress was obviously Austen-inspired.

But I slog through Austen’s books as if they are philosophy texts.
Actually, I’d prefer philosophy texts.
Oh, dear.

I came to this horrible conclusion as I tried to read one of my favorite authors about one of her favorite periods which was adapted into a movie that I thoroughly enjoyed: “Austenland.”
About one-third of the way through the book I found myself skimming—yes, skimming, as if I’m in college again and have to get through Thomas Hardy! How could I do this to Shannon Hale?

What’s wrong with me?!

I was hungrily looking, searching for the interesting parts . . .
And last night I nearly cried when I realized that the conversations, the nuances, the descriptions—all of that is supposed to be “the interesting parts”!

Oh, dear.

Where’s my romantic gene that revels in significant looks and subtle dialogue? I get completely lost in Austen-esque language, just like I was always lost in my college poetry classes.
(Hey, if your breaking heart feels the same way the stormy sky looks, just say so, ok? Don’t ramble on with images for three pages, because I have to write an essay on this, and my stupid grade depends on my inability to figure out a dumb puzzle written by a depressive dude hundreds of years ago!)

(Little wonder that when I pursued my graduate English degree, I shifted to rhetoric and technical writing.)

I have a sister who reads Pride and Prejudice every year.
I have daughters that do the same.
But I simply can’t. It took me my fourth reading attempt before I even finished it.
Oh dear.

I fear that I am alone in this I Don’t Understand this Madness for Pride and Prejudice (I-DUMPP).

It seems everyone else gets it.
“You’ve Got Mail” is essentially an adaption of Pride and Prejudice, and the book plays a part in the movie. Even if Tom Hanks’s character rolls his eyes as he muddles through the “hithers” and “dithers” he finishes it his first time around so he can discuss it with Meg Ryan.

Even Sheldon Cooper on “The Big Bang Theory” read and had to acknowledge that Pride and Prejudice is a perfect novel.

Except that I find it . . . dull.

I love the time period; perhaps that’s why I adore Terry Pratchett; all the stories of DiscWorld are set in a similar time. But maybe my I-DUMPP is because I’m no good with subtlety. Since Pratchett’s characters frequently have the delicacy of a sledgehammer, I can relate to them.

Or maybe I suffer from I-DUMPP because I don’t have a romantic cell in me. My book club read a nauseatingly sappy book which had me cringing for so long my face was cramped for a week. As we discussed it, I mentioned that the kissing scenes were a bit too detailed and long, and I was met with several blank stares as if I’d just said I don’t understand why everyone doesn’t have a third hand like I do.

My friend/editor said sweetly, “That explains a lot in the first book you wrote—you really don’t do romance, do you?”

(All I had to type into Google was “Colin Firth white” and it filled in the rest for me.
Popped this up all on its own.
Even Google gets it.
So why don’t I?)

Nope. I simply don’t get it.

I try to, though. I chuckled when Shannon Hale wrote, “Colin Firth, in a wet, white shirt,” was that all women would need to hear to understand the appeal of Mr. Darcy.

But I don’t understand.

The I-DUMPP in me rather preferred Colin Firth in “Nanny McPhee,” or even better as King George in “The King’s Speech.”

I just can’t explain why this is better. Maybe because those bizarre mutton chops are missing. And there’s something about a dark blue uniform . . .

That’s because in every screen adaption and in every BBC version of P&P I keep trying to understand why Mr. Darcy is attractive. He just strikes me as a moody, quiet man without much to say or do except to brood.

Brooding is . . . boring.
I’m so sorry.
Oh, dear.

A British literary character I do appreciate is Commander Samuel Vimes of Ankh Morpork: ragged, rugged, and using his sword for more than foil practice. Perhaps this is why I write stories about men in dark suits and uniforms who run after the bad guys, rather than reading about men who stand around in parlors saying underhanded yet witty things that go over my head. I get fidgety when I read such passages, and want to drag the men out of those stuffy rooms and over to the pond so we can do something more constructive, like chase geese.

My husband doesn’t understand this notion of romance either—and he’s dutifully watched nearly all of the adaptations with me—which is probably why we’re such a good match. He proposed to me off-handedly in a baseball dugout after a spectacularly embarrassing intramural game I played in college (my fantastically hit ball—intended to impress my boyfriend–instead turned foul, and also the umpire into a soprano).

Yet another man more appealing than Mr. Darcy; notice the lack of bizarre sideburns, the dark suit, and the presence of a smile.

Sadly, this is always what I picture when I think about any of Jane Austen’s leading men.
I’m so sorry.

My husband doesn’t bring me flowers, nor do I want them. Instead, we buy each other fruit trees or berry bushes, because those are far more practical. Our idea of date is wandering around HomeDepot sniffing the lumber, driving up the canyon looking for moose, or sharing a slice of cheesecake while watching something starring Rowan Atkinson in something entitled “Sense and Senility.”

Oh, dear.

And yet, we have nine children, so something seems to work.

I want to love Jane Austen. I like and respect the woman, and all that she accomplished.
And I want to see the purpose of taking long turns about the park (what the heck does that even mean?) and gossiping about people (although I thought that was a socially unacceptable thing to do).
I want to see the long dances as something more than dull exercise where you have to touch men you wouldn’t touch in any other circumstances.
I want to see these people doing nothing more than talking, picnicking, talking, walking, talking and riding as something interesting, but I just can’t.

Commander Sam Vimes, awesomely armed with a swamp dragon.

Instead, I want to smack them out of their fretting and lecture them like Sam Vimes did in Snuff, (a book I just finished reading for the fifth time, in two years. Oh dear.):

“Ladies, the solution to your problem would be to get off your quite attractive backsides, go out there in the world and make your own way! . . . Trust me, ladies, self-respect is what you get when you don’t have to spend your life waiting for some rich old lady to pop her clogs. And takers?”

(Sledgehammer diplomacy; I understand that.)

So forgive me, my dear friends, for while I love the idea of Jane Austen and all that revolves around her, she has become to me like peppers: I thought I loved them, I know I like the idea of them, and I certainly see their value in so many dishes, but on the rare occasions I actually get to eat one, I find myself gagging at the rubbery texture, at the flavor that’s too piquant for my tastes, so I spit it out and think, “Darn it—I really wanted to like that.”

If anyone else is willing to come out of the closet and admit to I-DUMPP, I’m here for you.

She’d read a few silly love stories when she was a teenager, trying to understand her friends and their longings for admirers. Most of the secretive tales were slid from girl to girl under desks where teachers wouldn’t notice, and were so sappy that she was surprised the well-worn pages weren’t stuck together from the goo.
~ “The Forest at the Edge of the World”

We don’t do Santa

December 1, 2013December 8, 2016trishmercer 2 Comments

We don’t do Santa at our house.

Now, before you label me a killjoy, call social services because I’m a terrible mother, or weep for my children because I’ve lost the Christmas spirit and am destroying the holidays, allow me to explain myself. Then you can start sending the critical responses.

I promise this won’t be a rant such as I once experienced delivered by a woman who was fond of pointing out that the letters in Santa can be rearranged into Satan. (She was also fond of roasting the opossums that wandered into her yard; I never accepted her offer to sample her stew.) This is an explanation of how we’ve chosen to do something more.

We used to do Santa for our three oldest children (who are now in their twenties) when they were younger, but over the years we’ve distanced ourselves from the magic, tricks, and well . . . deceit. Our six younger children never hear us mention Santa, unless we happen to be talking about a town in California.

As a child I dearly wanted to believe in Santa, despite the incongruities of his origin and abilities. I went to the point of analyzing, as thoroughly as my eight-year-old brain would let me, how he did everything in one night (magic dust, with some sort of cool physics involved), who all the other guys in Santa suits were (secret agents, bugged with mikes and recording devices to send the messages to Santa), and where he lived (under the ice cap—and this was many years before “The Santa Clause” movie; they stole my idea). I also concluded that the version of his origins, as told by the claymation TV show “Santa Claus is Coming to Town” was likely the most accurate, primarily because I thought the name Burgermeister Meisterburger was genius.

(And I also suspected my ancestors looked like Burgermeister Meisterburger.)

I still struggled with aspects of Santa, such as why reindeer seemed a viable mode of transportation, and the fact that Santa’s handwriting looked exactly like my dad’s calligraphy. But I eventually decided that my dad simply changed the tags once the presents arrived because elf writing was illegible.

So it was with utter shock and dismay that I received this news at age nine, casually delivered by my mom: “You know Santa’s not real, right?”

No, I did not!

In fact, I’d wrestled with this so-called truth for years—since I was five, at least—to make sense of a man of magic when I knew—knew—there was no magic.
So the whole Santa-thing was really a trick?
And the entire world was in on it?
What was the point of that?!
Why did all the TV shows and movies and stores and schools and even church, of all places, perpetuate the mythology as truth only to eventually say, “Ha! Fooled you!”

I was devastated. Then I was furious.

What other cherished beliefs from my infancy would be revealed as also hoaxes? For many months I worried that something else, something far more important and vital to my happiness, would also be revealed as a scam.

Fast forward fifteen years, to when my husband and I have a child old enough to know about Santa. Suddenly all those feelings of betrayal rushed me when my husband asked, “So how should we do Santa?”

I didn’t want to! I didn’t want to expose my children to the same beloved stories only to find out later they were merely stories.

But, family and societal pressures told us our children had to have Santa, and who were we to buck tradition? So, for our first three children, we did Santa. Visited him, sent him letters, wrapped the presents “from” him in special Santa paper, and all was fine until those kids started asking legitimate questions about his veracity.

Now I had a problem. I had always vowed I would never lie to my children (that’s not the same as teasing, which is a completely different form of torture). When they asked a sincere question, I would always give an honest answer about everything, from the Tooth Fairy to what Daddy means when he waggles his eyebrows at me.
(“Um, that means we need to talk. In the bedroom. Choose a movie—any movie you want.” Ok, so my honesty is relative.)

But the Santa Really Exists (SRE) movement meant I had to lie to my children, if only to protect their innocent friends from the reality. And I hated that.

So, after a few years of this moral quandary, I told my husband I simply wanted to quit Santa at our house—who were we to buck tradition? Whoever we wanted to be!—and happily he agreed. Since then, we’ve never regretted the decision to focus on our family and friends, and not even bring up the old fat man in red with an odd laugh like garden tools.

What are the benefits of not participating in SRE?

First, Santa doesn’t come off as a jerk. Trying to explain to my children the disparagement of Santa in delivering toys made me feel like a fraud.
“Why did the neighbor kids get a lot more from Santa than you did? Uh, you see, Santa doesn’t actually make the toys; he’s like a Secret Shopper. He buys the presents, wraps and delivers them, then sends us the bill. Yeah, that’s right.”
That was the only way to explain why our budget for each child was $45, while the neighbors had a budget of $300 for each kid.

My children accepted that answer until the year we were in a position to do a Secret Santa for another family. They eagerly helped us choose and wrap presents, but then the unavoidable question arose: “Why isn’t Santa shopping for them and just donating the presents?”

“Well,” I invented wildly, “he’s asked us to help him because, um, he’s too busy—”

“What, buying presents for the rich kids?” my eight-year-old daughter asked cynically.

I didn’t have an immediate answer for that. No matter what kinds of stories and explanations I created, Santa came across as a self-serving jerk whose services were available to the highest bidder. That’s not the spirit of Santa.

Second, we don’t have to lie to our children. By not playing into the SRE game we don’t have to keep up the façade that, something that I’ve always taught my children isn’t real, suddenly is for the month of December. Don’t get me wrong, we enjoy fantasy and magic—Harry Potter, Narnia, dragons and Merlin—we’ve got all the books, movies, costumes and games, and it’s fun and serves a purpose, but just not in the real world.

In our early parenting years we frequently struggled with juggling the mythology of Santa with the story of Jesus Christ, who we hold as reality. Once one of our children even said, “My friend at school said Santa is just your parents. So what is Jesus?” The notion of magic and miracles was so confused in her first grade mind she wasn’t sure what to believe.

And that bothered me, to my core. That was precisely what worried me as a nine-year-old. I had even decided, when I still believed in Santa, that on some level Jesus and Santa were related, and shared priesthood power and magic to accomplish Christmas.

Then Santa was revealed to be pretend, and so what about Jesus Christ?

For more than a year I paid very close attention in church each Sunday (well, it’s one way to get a kid interested about religion), waiting to hear something that would suggest that Jesus Christ and priesthood power were also just convenient and “fun” little lies. In fact, an acquaintance of mine who became disenchanted with all organized religion and the notion of God, told me the seed of that was planted when he learned Santa wasn’t real. It was society’s aggressive tactics to preserve this imaginary man, and the lengths to which everyone bought into the lie, that shocked him and led him to believe that everything is, at its heart, a hoax.

But I knew, in my heart, that Jesus Christ was not a hoax. After that year of deep ten-year-old introspection I developed a testimony of my Savior. I still believe in Him, and in my Heavenly Father, and in the Holy Ghost. I have felt them too many times influencing my thoughts and decisions to pretend my conscience is that clear and forward-planning. I have experienced miracles and even seen the laws of physics altered on two occasions to prevent potentially fatal car accidents. I have heard whispers, felt nudgings, and even once encountered a gentle cosmic slap upside my head trying to knock me into awareness when I was particularly hard-hearted.
God is real and involved and intensely worried about our welfare. Santa, however, is not.

I didn’t want my children facing those same troubling questions about what is real and isn’t, especially at such tender ages, so we quietly abandoned Santa a dozen years ago. When my children ask me the hard questions, such as if the Tooth Fairy is real, I answer with, “Is the Tooth Fairy magic? Remember what I’ve told you: magic is only pretend and for fun, but the power of the priesthood in Jesus Christ is very real and very powerful.” They don’t worry about magic anymore, because they have something better.

But, you may fret, what about the Spirit of Christmas? The Spirit of Santa?

Someone once remarked that Santa is the Savior in costume. That got me thinking: why not cut out the middle man and get straight to the Savior? We don’t need to be “Secret Santas”: we can be something grander, realer.

In other words, why not let Christmas be the time that we try even harder to be . . . like Christ? It’s His birthday we’re celebrating, after all. Why not celebrate it by doing what He did?

When you think about it, much of what we do in the name of Santa is what the Savior did and taught. Want to help that single mom down the street? Do so, and in the right spirit. Think about what the Apostle James wrote in describing pure religion: to visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction. (James 1:27)

Want to bring clothing and gifts to those in need? Visit those who are ill or lonely? Go ahead, and remember who suggested it first (hint: wasn’t Santa). Naked, and ye clothed me: I was sick, and ye visited me: I was in prison, and ye came unto me. . . . Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me. (Matthew 25:36; 40)

Let’s donate, share, encourage, serve, and love in the name of Christ, not Santa.
Yeah, Santa’s a good guy and all, but not nearly as great as the Savior of the world.

So don’t feel sorry for my children because they don’t have Santa. Oh, they’ll get plenty of presents on Christmas Day from their parents and siblings, along with stockings full of candy and Pringles, and there will be a few surprises snuck in after they’ve gone to bed on Christmas Eve, but if they happen to leave out a plate of cookies, they’ll know they were eaten by Mom and Dad while we put the candy canes on the tree.

Our kids don’t have Santa, but what they have instead are parents that don’t lie to them (well, not about anything important) and a truer sense about the meaning of Christmas.

After all, it’s Merry Christmas, not Happy Santa Day.

“I don’t hold with traditions just for tradition’s sake. I’m rather progressive that way.”
~Perrin Shin, “The Forest at the Edge of the World”

What you read matters

November 22, 2013May 27, 2015trishmercer 2 Comments

“It is what you read when don’t have to that determines what you will be when you can’t help it.” ~Oscar Wilde

I’ve been thinking about a post I read of a woman bragging about how many books she read over the summer: over forty before she lost count. Since then I’ve noticed many other people claiming they read two or three books a week, and I’m astounded.
Why?
Not because I’m jealous (I’m assuming these women—all mothers—simply don’t sleep), but because I don’t know how they absorb what they read.

But maybe that’s my fault. I don’t read simply to zip through a book. Something inside me insists on devouring, savoring, then regurgitating the story.
Uh, ok . . . that wasn’t very appetizing, but honestly I can’t come up with a more suitable metaphor.

What I read becomes part of me, of my psyche, and shapes how I view the universe and the minutiae around me. Because of that I’m very selective as to what I read. I know that, like a large soup, this book in my hands will add to the recipe of me, and I want to make sure that I’m not tossing in something unsavory or unsuitable, like a box full of donuts.
That’s not to say donuts don’t have their place (and the gluten-free part of me is now in Homer Simpson-like mode drooling and saying, “dooouughhnuuuuts”).

But a steady diet of donuts is unhealthy. (Oh, how I miss donuts!)

I’ve started many more books than I’ve ever finished. By the third chapter of a novel I decide if I will continue to add this ingredient to my stewing mind because it will expand the flavor or add a unique and unexpected taste, or if I will set it aside because it will taint the entire pot.
About half the books I’ve picked up I’ve put down again after half an hour. Sugar-coated nothingness—or worse, caramel-covered excrement—doesn’t belong in my head.

I’ve seen many examples of people unconsciously exhibiting what they’ve read. Once I was tutoring a young woman with severe reading disabilities, helping her to learn reading rules she never before mastered. As we slogged through a passage about a young man confused and bewildered and looking for answers, we came upon this sentence:
“He wandered into to the woods to —”

I knew the word was “pray.”
But she read the word as “party.”

When I quietly corrected her, she chuckled and said, “Guess you can tell what I was trying to read right before I came today!”
I didn’t ask.

For many years I did the following experiment with my students, to demonstrate how what is on their minds alters how they interpret the world. I divided the class into three sections and had the groups close their eyes. Then I wrote some words on the board, had one group read them silently, close their eyes again, and I repeated the procedure with the other two groups. Each group saw only their collection of words.
I then had all of groups open their eyes and tell me what the word should be that I wrote on the board: r_pe.

One third would say “ripe,” because the words I put on the board were banana, apple, and orange.

Another third would say “rope” because they read the words string, knots, and boats.

That’s when the third group would squirm uncomfortably, because they saw the word as “rape.”
Why?
Because on the board I wrote anger, violence, and power.

I never had a class that wasn’t surprised at how what was most recently in their mind affected the innocuous letters put before them, requiring their interpretation.

So I worry when I see acquaintances posting about books they’ve read, or talking about stories they love, because those were books I set aside. I hope that the rapidity with which they gulped down those words means none of them really stick, but it eventually all comes out.

A friend of mine says she can tell the difference between when her daughter has been consuming Shannon Hale versus Manga. The level of her teenage angst varies drastically, and sometimes the entire family suffers.

When I read something, I read and reread and reread. For a long time I thought perhaps this meant something was wrong with me (aside from my bits of OCD and other endearing neuroses). Even as a girl I read the Little House on the Prairie series about ten times.

But then I ran across this beautiful quote, timely in that this weekend is the 50^th anniversary of when this great man graduated to the next world.

“I can’t imagine a man really enjoying a book and reading it only once.

“The sure mark of an unliterary man is that he considers ‘I’ve read it already’ to be a conclusive argument against reading a work. We have all known women who remembered a novel so dimly that they had to stand for half an hour in the library skimming through it before they were certain they had once read it. But the moment they became certain, they rejected it immediately. It was for them dead, like a burnt-out match, an old railway ticket, or yesterday’s paper; they had already used it. Those who read great works, on the other hand, will read the same work ten, twenty or thirty times during the course of their life.”

Thank you, C.S. Lewis!
He also expresses marvelously how many of my other friends and I approach books:

“The first reading of some literary work is often, to the literary, an experience so momentous that only experiences of love, religion, or bereavement can furnish a standard of comparison. Their whole consciousness is changed. They have become what they were not before.“

On the other hand, I wonder if those who plow through novels like I tackle a tube of Pringles (blessedly gluten-free!) experience this, again from Mr. Lewis:

“When they have finished the story or the novel, nothing much, or nothing at all, seems to have happened to them.”

You tell ’em, Sean!

(But things happen to me when I eat a whole tube. Ugh.)

I have a few Terry Pratchett books which I’ve read five and six times, only so I can observe how he crafts the story. I watch intently for the tiny crumbs of foreshadowing he drops, savoring his turns of phrase and descriptions that dumbfound me in their creativity. And I laugh at the same spots every time, and I cry at the same places once I realize they are coming.

Somehow, it seems wrong to spend time in a story and not be moved and changed by it.

But perhaps even worse than being not changed, is being changed in all the wrong ways.

Why we quit Common Core

October 12, 2013May 27, 2015trishmercer 8 Comments

“Why is it considered a burden for parents to select what’s best for their children to learn? That’s the parents’ duty. My job is to help the parents provide that teaching.”
~Mahrree Peto, The Forest at the Edge of the World

I drafted those words—the question of a school teacher in a different time and in another world—over four years ago, before I knew anything about Common Core Curriculum. As a homeschooling mom since 2002, and a college composition instructor, I’d developed my own concerns about public education long before I was forced to confront Common Core head on. But the worries I had then about schooling have now festered into an ulcerous wound.

Education used to care about the children; now the system serves only itself.

I remember reading about Laura Ingalls Wilder, and how the parents were the school board, the parents chose the teachers, and the parents decided how they wanted their children educated.
I don’t need to tell any of you how far we’ve run away from that idea.

Not so long ago most children in elementary enjoyed school, their natural curiosity still remaining intact despite the introduction of bubble-sheet testing which I remember with lingering trauma in the 1970s. While it certainly wasn’t perfect, school was more about doing the times tables, spelling tests, listening to the teacher read from a novel out loud for an hour after lunch (yes, really), enjoying three (yes—three) recesses, spending time in music, and doing weekly art projects that frequently took quite a bit of time but resulted in rather amazing things. And this manner of education—again, while not perfect—still produced from my school many doctors, professors, scientists, and humanitarians.

For those of you don’t know, that’s now how school is anymore.

When I first pulled my children out in 2002, my then-first-grader’s teacher told me, “I’m so glad to see you doing this. When I first started teaching thirty years ago, my purpose was to show children the joy in learning about the world. Now we can’t do that. We teach coding, we teach filling in bubbles—heaven forbid I should try to make anything, especially reading, fun.”

Now, it’s not the idea of a universal core of knowledge that’s disappointing, but the application of it. In frenetic attempts to follow the Common Core Curriculum standards sold to schools—along with the bribe of funding—teachers have been forced to impose lessons and practices that leave the parents scratching their heads. My kindergartner last year spent a great deal of time filling out answers on bubble sheets, a not-so-subtle intimation that her ability to properly color in the little circles will be crucial to evaluating her future.

No, I don’t know who this is, but I concur with the sentiment.

Her first grade is proving to be more of the same, and now with timed reading tests designed to push six-year-olds to read random words faster and faster. Comprehension doesn’t seem to be a concern; only speed. My daughter is slowly beginning to lose heart.

At back-to-school night last month I heard many mothers express how, in kindergarten, their children were so excited for school, but now some of their fifth graders dread each day.
“What happened?” I heard one genuinely confused young mother say to her friend. “And does it get worse when she hits middle school?”
I was cringing so hard I’m surprised she didn’t hear it.
What happened?
We’re killing our children’s natural curiosity.
Will it get worse?
Uh, yes. Sorry.
How did this happen?

Through the same old nonsense we’ve always been dealing with in public education: the out-dated notion that all children are inherently the same, and can be “programmed” in the same ways to create the same output, namely an adult that will become an industrious worker.

The model doesn’t work; in fact, it has never worked for more than a fraction of the population. For as many doctors and professors my schools churned out, there were just as many who dropped out of college, failed to complete any kind of professional training, and never rose above being a checker at the grocery store. There are always children that fall through the cracks because they can’t fit the inflexible mold.

And Common Core, which is merely the same model in an updated website with a heavier hand and a stiffer mold, won’t succeed either.

First, anyone who’s had more than one child will tell you they are NOT all the same. I have nine, and you’d think that with so many kids we’d start recycling some DNA combinations. But mystifying each child is different, despite coming from the same gene pool, being raised in the same house, and eating the same food.

Half of my kids figured out reading at age 4. The other half couldn’t grasp it until age 9. One third of my children love math—one doesn’t even write down the formulas when he does algebra—while another third of my children tremble in terror when approached by a number attached to a letter. The other third are blissfully in the middle. Some of my kids find science dull, but others try to actively blow up the house while others try to put everything back together again. Some read nonstop all day long. Others grumble at the sight of the book.

Every child is unique, but years ago educators decided to shove them all into an assembly line of education where the same information is fed to them in the same way, NOT because it was the best way to teach, but because it was the cheapest way to process the greatest amount of students per teacher.

With all respect to John Locke, the tabula rasa notion of seeing humans as “blank slates” waiting for their minds to be filled with knowledge—a theory which has been debunked for generations, except among some educators with influence—ignores the fact that humans are born with personalities, with various learning styles, even with unique ways of perceiving the world. Ask any parent with more than one child: they come different.

Yet altering education to truly teach individuals, instead of groups, requires vast changes that education boards, university education departments, and most of all the government does not want to do, even though we see effective models in Europe and Asia. (And perhaps that’s why we don’t want to change; we resent the idea that someone else innovated something first.)

It’s simply too hard to change, argue those entrenched in the old traditions. Simply too hard to do the right thing.

So instead we take the outdated assembly line, add bells and whistles and unproven theories, and shove more kids through it hoping to disprove Einstein’s platitude that doing the same thing over and over, and expecting different results, is the definition of insanity.

Well, public education has gone insane.

And now, forcing Common Core—a method of teaching and an application of curriculum which has NOT even been fully tested—has dealt yet another great blow to children.
It’s making them hate school.

Now, I acknowledge that in every class there are those who will thrive. My 1^st grader is like that: she loves school. However, already the love is fading. As I mentioned before, she’s growing discouraged. Despite reading at a 2^nd grade level, she’s perplexed by reading rows of nonsense words and random sentences as quickly as possible in a minute, and math, which comes to her naturally, is becoming unnecessarily confusing. This frustration with education rarely occurred when we homeschooled.

I’m in a unique situation to compare the differences because I exclusively homeschooled my kids for nearly a decade, then put them into public school over two years ago when a pregnancy at age 42 scared me into thinking I wouldn’t be able to keep up with my kids’ needs. I had a 6^th grader and a 7^th grader thrust into the middle school, and they had never spent a day of school in their lives. We were all terrified. They adjusted and, to my great relief, they were not only on track but a little bit ahead, manifested by their straight A’s.

I also, with great trepidation, put my then 7-year-old high functioning autistic son into 2^nd grade, and braced for impact. He had a very sweet teacher, concerned resource instructors, and eventually learned to read and deal with the crowd.
Still, he begged to come home for third grade, as did his older brother in 6^th grade who found the math class too slow and the science too shallow.

Fast forward to this year; my now 9-year-old autistic son wanted to try 4^th grade, hearing about how great the teachers were, and wanting to spend more time making friends. So we eagerly prepared him making sure his was on target academically and as socially as an autistic boy can be. He was ready!

It took only one week for him to beg to come back home.

At three weeks, he started clenching his fists when trying to complete math pages that were filled with several methods of doing multiplication our trusty Saxon math didn’t cover. And then, faced with the option to complete a problem such as 49 x 28 = ? in any of the three ways he’d learned, he’d freeze, unable to know how to proceed. (For examples of the multiplication confusion some of our children are exposed to, watch this video.)

At four weeks he started clutching the sides of his head every night as he looked at his homework and whimpered, “I’m too stupid!”

That’s when I started getting mad.

He’s not stupid. Want to know about pyroclastic flows? Tectonic plates? The theories behind black holes? Ask him, but then make yourself comfortable because you’re going to hear everything. He’s read all he can on the subjects and knows the documentary section of Netflix as intimately as some kids know the starting lineup of a basketball team. Ask him about ecology, and get ready to hear a dissertation about saving the environment, misconceptions about global warming, and his opinion on the big bang theory. Remember, this kid just turned 10-years-old.

But because he can’t conform to the Common Core Curriculum he thinks he’s stupid and he hates school.

At his parent-teacher conference I learned that academically, he’s right on track.
But at his nightly parent-child conferences, I’ve learned that his anxiety is through the roof.
So Friday was his last day of school. We’ve quit Common Core, and starting Monday he’s schooling at home.

His frustration is not just because he’s autistic, either. I have a junior in high school taking math who asks me every night for assistance. Not even his teachers can fully understand the homework, tell their students to skip certain problems, and the photocopied pages they use have so many errors it likely doesn’t even matter what the real answers are.

My 9^th grader is also expressing similar frustrations, and asked to be homeschooled part-time this year because Common Core was so focused on filling in the right bubbles for the tests that she anxiously felt she wasn’t learning anything useful.

Anxiety and stress do not improve education; they strangle it. Learning can be a joy, but oddly our society has adopted the notion that if there isn’t suffering, there isn’t progress.

If you think junior high kids are moody now, just watch what will happen to our elementary kids over the next few years. I fear that by the time they become teenagers, their teachers will be permanently on valium.

There are many other arguments about the insufficiencies of Common Core, about how it was foisted upon states by dangling the lure of money in front of them, and how its main purpose is to produce good workers, when, for years, many of us thought education was about producing a populace that could think for themselves and identify was is truth and what is error.

But what’s really baffled me for many years is why the government has decided parents are inadequate in knowing what’s best for their children. I started writing my books in an effort to puzzle it out.

“Miss Peto, why do you find it disturbing that the Administrators select what’s most important for our children to learn?”

She really wasn’t sure, but it sat on her strangely. “Captain, what if the Administrators choose to teach that which is against the beliefs of the parents?”

“I can’t imagine any situation where the Administrators would recommend teaching anything that would be contrary to the welfare of the world,” the captain said. “If anyone would be out of line, it would be misguided parents.”

Exactly who would be deciding what was best for the world, Mahrree wondered, and what was best for an individual? (The Forest at the Edge of the World)

Why have we removed the curriculum decisions from the parents?
Could it be because our government has ceased to see us as someone they serve, and instead see us as a means to their own ends? My school teacher protagonist thinks so.

“You said the other day that I needed to get to the bottom of this!” she said fiercely. “Well, here it is: Parents are stupid, Administrators are smart. Hand over your children to the Administrators with no questions debated so they can pour their own ideas into the children’s minds, while parents worry about nothing else except getting more gold! Gold which they then hand over to the Administrators in higher taxes. Ooh, very clever! The Administrators get richer while families fall apart!”

Perrin’s mouth opened and shut several times, but he knew that when his wife was on a rant, there was no safe way to interrupt her.

“And then what happens to the children?” she gestured wildly. “Give the government a few years, and I’m sure they’ll be telling the children what jobs they can have, so they make sure our children make them enough gold and silver!”

Perrin lifted a finger, likely to try to interject that she had an intriguing point, but he pulled it back a moment later when she began to froth. His contribution could wait.

“Well, I’ve had enough. I’m going to give them a piece of my mind so they can see how intelligent mine really is!” (Soldier at the Door)

Yes, the nature of this character is to get a bit overwrought, but for what other purpose is there for the government to feel the need to take over the education of our children?

“Parents feel stupid because their government tells them they are, so they’re humbly—and even willingly—allowing someone else to guide their children’s teaching. But there’s another reason,” her husband hesitated. “This way the Administrators get to pick and choose what the growing generation learns, and anything that’s not supporting the Administrators simply isn’t covered. In one generation, the entire population should be as loyal to the Administrators as they are—or were—to their parents’ beliefs. Whatever they say, the people will believe.

“And that’s precisely what the Administrators want: the only authority influencing the world will be theirs.” (Soldier at the Door)

I submit that the federal government, in mandating what we teach our children, is attempting to influence the development of the rising generation so as to meet the financial and political needs of the government, not the needs of our children to become intelligent, thoughtful adults. No, this isn’t about mind control, but it’s a form of manipulation, of getting what they want out of us because they have all the power, and we have less every year.

Don’t believe the government is manipulative? As I write this the federal government has imposed a shut-down (or convenient slimdown, as some would argue) because of a budget impasse.
But the nature of the shut-down, and those areas that have been affected, is very subjective: subject to causing the most ire and discomfort among citizens. The randomness of road and park closures (outdoor monuments on the Mall in DC are suddenly inaccessible?), websites that are down (only because someone pushed a button to deny access), and services that are suspended (WIC’s been closed! Starving babies!) have all been carefully orchestrated to twang the most heartstrings with the least amount of effort.

Manipulation of the public, at its finest.

Just out of curiosity, I looked up “Ways to tell if you’re in an abusive relationship.” Read this list from Dr. Phil, and think of it in terms of the federal government and you. My friends, we ARE trapped in an unhealthy relationship.

I support my local school and the teachers—many of my friends are teachers—but I realize they have no power to stop this level of manipulation of public education. They, too, are stuck in an abusive relationship and are doing the best they miserably can in a bad situation.

But I’m fortunate in that I work only part-time, so I can, starting next week, teach my son at home again. He’ll learn tried and true math principles thanks to Saxon 54, he’ll learn to spell, and spell again, and spell yet again until he gets all his words right without the pressure of a ticking clock (which, autistics will tell you, can be quite maddening) and he’ll explore science and history without the fear that he’s hopelessly stupid.

I’m also not going to time how long it takes him to read something, because the boy doesn’t read; he savors. He analyzes diagrams and concentrates on charts. Pondering has become a lost skill, one that I refuse to deny my son. The point isn’t the volume of pages being read, it’s the depth of understanding he gets from the reading. As an English teacher, I’ve encountered many students who have read quickly through the texts, but remembered very little, so they have to reread, and reread yet again. Skimming isn’t the same as absorbing, but don’t tell Common Core that.

So today we quit Common Core, abandoned this one-sided relationship that doesn’t care one bit about my son but yet is obsessed with the data he produces.

But what about everyone else who can’t commit such a quiet act of pseudo-civil disobedience such as homeschooling in protest of Common Core? I wished we could band together and overthrow this nonsense, but that’s a bit vague.

What we can do is talk with our kids and let them know what we feel and think, how we believe and understand, and let them know that what they learn out there may not necessarily be what they should believe in here.

“There’s one thing we can do,” Perrin said. “We can make sure we’re not touched by whatever may be coming. In our house we will discuss and believe whatever we want. We can recognize for ourselves that the sky is dark and threatening with a storm obviously on the way, and explain to our children that the rest of the world has been conditioned to believe the sky is blue, despite all evidence to the contrary.” (Soldier at the Door)

My friend, a single mother who works full time and has two kids, wrote this: “I’ve come to the conclusion that school is where my kids go to be babysat while I’m at work, and they actually start learning when they get home. I have noticed that school seems to teach them WHAT to think, but not really HOW to think. I have to say that worries me the most. I try really hard not to browbeat my kids into agreeing with me, but I do want them to be able to back up their arguments logically.
“If I think of the schools as being responsible for educating the kids, I get very stressed out at the things they don’t know, and then get to stress again over the crap they ARE being taught. Some of the crap they come home spouting is just plain nuts, and it’s hard to stay calm sometimes during our little ‘debunking’ sessions. Makes for a really busy day for me, but sadly that’s how it is I guess.”

Yes, sadly for now, that’s how it is. But at least we still have the freedom to talk to and educate our children whenever and however is possible for us. And we better exercise that freedom for as long as we still can.

In the meantime, if you’re still unconvinced that the direction Common Core is taking us is not our children’s best interests, consider the changing opinion of the purpose of education. We used to be concerned about lighting the imagination, pursuing the truth, and developing critical thought, but no longer. Take a look at this statement from the Common Core website (emphasis mine):

The standards are designed to be robust and relevant to the real world, reflecting the knowledge and skills that our young people need for success in college and careers. With American students fully prepared for the future, our communities will be best positioned to compete successfully in the global economy. http://www.corestandards.org/

In other words, the purpose of education is to make money in the world. Common Core is demoting our children from thinking, creative beings, into busy little worker bees that make more honey for the governmental hive.

So if you think the purpose of life is to capitalize on the global economy, then surprise—Common Core is the route for you.

But I personally believe humans are destined for higher purposes and greater things. I’ve already discovered there’s much more to life than just money, and that’s what I want my children to discover as well.

My 10th child

October 8, 2013May 27, 2015trishmercer 1 Comment

Yesterday a delivery arrived–one that I’d been waiting for, for more than four years now–and once I lugged it into the house I couldn’t bear to open it.

It was, what I’m now starting to think of it as, my 10th baby.
I have nine children (yeah, really–all birthed by me, no twins), but the amount of effort and sleepless nights I’ve put into the Forest at the Edge book series feels very much like another child.
And yesterday it arrived. And, just like my human babies, I happily cradled the bundle handed to me, but didn’t dare inspect it. Because . . . what if something is seriously wrong?
What if this amazing little thing isn’t as perfect as the doctor proclaimed, but has three nostrils?
Or a large birthmark on its neck like I do?
Or . . . looks more like me than like my hunky husband?

And it’d always be my husband who’d take our newborn out of my arms and start to unwrap the impossible blankets. “Let’s see what we have here!” he’d say cheerily, while I clenched my hands by my face and worried that my sweet darling would have some defect that would cause him or her heartache, and that I wouldn’t know how to alleviate that pain.

Yes there were birthmarks–cute ones, on the tuchus or the bottom of a foot–and there were minor oddities and bizarre flexibility that, as my children grow older, proudly demonstrate to squeamish by-standers. But all in all the baby was pretty darned good.

I needed my husband again yesterday.
He saw the box on our bed and, always eager to open a package, asked, “Ooh–what’s this?”
“My books,” I whimpered.
“Open it!”
“I can’t!”
What if something was horribly wrong with them? I already knew of a couple formatting glitches I can’t seem to work out, and a few typos despite my going through it 30+ times . . . but what if there was something far worse?
I couldn’t bear it.
“I’ll open it,” my husband decided.
“No! Yes! I don’t know–”
He already had out his keys and slashed the tape. Then he opened the box and looked.

Cringing so hard my cheeks hurt, I asked, “Well?!”
Slowly he nodded. “Look pretty good to me.” He was reading the back cover of one of the books, still nodding. “Do you want it?”

Do I want my 10th baby? The actual paper copies of the books I’ve been writing since early 2009? (Actually, since it’s two books, maybe my 10th and 11th?)

I held out my hand nervously . . . then sighed in relief as he gave me Forest and Soldier. Not bad. Not bad at all.

Then, just as I did with my babies, I suddenly wanted to show them everything in the world. And, just like my babies, I started taking pictures.

First, I introduced them to my hero and mentor, Terry Pratchett. Don’t they look cute on the shelf together?

Then I introduced them to the bathroom, which is always a good place to know in a new house. Top of the tank, for your reading pleasure.

Then, the bathtub–waiting for me to actually dare take them near water–

Oh no! They fell in!
Oh, there’s not water.
Silly Forest and Soldier!

They also liked the baby swing in the backyard. Hold on, boys!

Then it was time to have a tea party with their friends . . .

And at this point I began to think, Maybe this is a bit silly?
I mean, seriously–would books really have a tea party with themselves?

Of course not.
They’d have a tea party with OTHER books!
So I introduced Forest and Soldier (they were pretty uncomfortable at this point, but already they have some sense of propriety so they soldiered on) to my other three inspirations; women who demonstrated that even “regular moms” can create books, and they unwittingly dared me to write: Shannon Hale, Jessica Day George, and Joanne (J.K.) Rowling. (The books all want to have a sleepover later. With popcorn. But I just vacuumed, so I’ll have to think about it.)

(I’ve met two of these authors, and bashfully said nothing about how they inspired me.
But some day I will. )

Finally I brought Forest and Soldier back to where they were conceived–my computer. On the screen is a list of the current drafts I have of the entire series (my file of past drafts is immense) and I showed them where they began. I’m going to save this picture as motivation; I’ve done it twice before, so I can do it six or seven more times to bring to life the entire family/series.

And then, I put Forest and Soldier back into the box.
Not because I’m still overwhelmed or anything by being a real mom, I mean, author.

Just because it’s nap time.

Cost of raising a child? Try $1800 a year, not $13,393

September 26, 2013May 27, 2015trishmercer 1 Comment

Costs of raising a child per year: Government’s estimates– $13,393/year.
My actual estimates— $1,800/year.
Something’s amiss, and naturally it’s Washington that’s missing it.

You’ve likely seen the terrifying infographic below claiming that it costs a crotch-kicking-romance-killing $241,000 over 18 years to raise a child.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) annual report on the Expenditures on Children by Families has found that a middle-income family with a child born in 2012 can expect to spend about $241,080 for food, shelter, and other necessities associated with child rearing expenses over the next 17 years.

That amounts to $13,393/year.
That’s also amounts to a lot of hogwash.

How do I know? My husband and I have six children at home (a total of nine, with three out of the house) which would mean we’re spending $80,358 for our children alone.
But we earn less than $60,000 year combined, so something obviously is not adding up. That’s because we don’t budget like the government (no rational person ever would).

Even Canada has caught on that these numbers are unrealistic. According to Frasier Institute, the cost is closer to $3,000-$4500/year. But even that’s too high.

Just don’t believe the government’s numbers.
The $241,000 “average” comes from the USDA. “Average” means “not really applying to anyone.”
Actually, it means that while some families may actually spend far more than this staggering sum (and just how often did the USDA figure in the Kardashians?) many other families spend far, far less.
Still, I’m amazed that normally thoughtful people who’d never believe government numbers (remember, these are the same people we trusted with home mortgages) suddenly and wholeheartedly embrace this figure which terrifies them from ever having a family, or justifies their reasons to becoming a parent only to a goldendoodle (just don’t look at the estimates as to how much it costs to own a pet per year. Hint: over $1,000).

This figure of $241,000, or $13,393/year, is misleading, because “averages” serve no one well. I know of no one who actually spends this amount, but I can show you over one hundred families who choose—choose: key word here—to raise a family on much less. Now, this is NOT to say that everyone can raise their children on the amounts I demonstrate below, but my math shows that taking the government’s advice on how much should be spent is probably the worst idea since the government decided to get a handle on health insurance.

So here it is, the government vs. the Mercer household.

Housing: Housing a child purportedly costs 30% of the $13,393, or $335/month. This rate suggests that each time a child is born, you must purchase a house that’s bigger to accommodate said child.
Nonsense.
If that were the case, our mortgage would be nearly $3,000 more a month. Granted, if we were just starting out and living in a studio apartment, we likely would need to eventually move to something bigger, accounting for the $335 increase. But adding a child to a household doesn’t mean adding on another wing.
My husband and I deliberately chose (there’s that key word again) to live in a rural area where we could buy a 2200 sq. ft. house with nearly 1/3 acre of land for a mortgage of about $1,000/month. While I grew up near a big city, and my husband was raised on the east coast near the ocean, we both decided to relocate to a less expensive area, purposely choosing a rural environment that we could afford on one income. True, this puts us at quite a distance from extended family, but it allows us to raise our children how we choose to, without outrageous expenses. Even so, for a time our family of 10 once existed in a three bedroom townhome for nine months. Several sets of bunkbeds were utilized, stuff was stacked creatively, and while the situation was far from ideal, we actually found ways to be happy.
Families can make do with much less than a private bedroom for each child (and all the unnecessities that some think need to go with it, such as one’s own TV, computer, and Xbox), and still be happy.
Actual cost of housing: nothing. Just shove the new kid into an existing bedroom. We call it “sharing.”

Education/Childcare: 18% or $2,410/year. This is another figure subject to choice. Because we chose to live in a lovely-yet-less-popular community, we don’t need me to work full time to afford that $3,000/month mortgage, so the cost of childcare is one we can happily ignore.
Still, there are school fees, but they’re not this high.
And high school sports can be costly, but not this much.
The real budget killer here is childcare. I realize that for some, such as single parents, there’s simply no getting around it. But perhaps there are some parents who worry that the government may come around and demand a check for that $13,393 a year to ensure their child(ren) are being raised according to the USDA’s expectations, so some couples may believe this amount must be paid out for childcare.
It doesn’t. We’re living proof. And I can show you another one hundred families as proof as well.
Actual cost: $200, because all of us know “free” education isn’t really free.
(Interestingly, the years that I’ve homeschooled my kids, I’ve found that the costs of books and supplies were actually far less than $200/per child. Go figure.)

Health Care: taking 8% of the $13,393 means that a healthy child costs $1,071/ year. Really? Why? Insurance rates that cover families generally don’t increase depending on the number of children. I admit that we currently rely on CHIP for our children, and pay a modest premium every three months, but it’s not $1,071.
If, heavens forbid, a child has a chronic illness—which is rare but does occur—the costs will naturally be higher. But I’ve calculated the cost of injuries (trips to the ER for stitches and broken bones) and doctor visits for illnesses for our family over the past 20 years, and found it to be much lower than $1,071.
Actual costs for a healthy child: $200/year.

Transportation: $1,875/year is what one little darling will supposedly cost you. But here’s the thing—driving around with six children in my van (and yes, I’d still have a van even if I didn’t have kids because I love the space) costs the same as just driving myself around. They go to the same places I do, and as for the claim that mothers must be a taxi service for their children? I just don’t taxi them around. If they want to do an activity, they can walk, bike, or scooter there. Again, we chose our home location to make that a viable possibility.
And no, your child does not need to be given a car for the 16^th birthday. If your children thinks it’s a necessity, then let them earn the money for the car, the gas, and the insurance premiums. It’s amazing how suddenly faced with being responsible for those expenses, a car just isn’t that important anymore.
Actual costs: nothing added.

Clothing: at 6% is $803/year. I don’t even spend that much on myself! This is an easy place to be frugal: jeans from Wal-Mart, T-shirts from Target, and shoes from Payless. Name brands are simply foolishness, especially when kids stain, tear, and outgrow overpriced bits of cloth.
We also believe in hand-me-downs. My closet is filled with bins of gently (and roughly) used clothes. Each season I sort through them to find older sisters’ clothes that fit younger sister, and bigger brothers’ jeans that can be cut into shorts for littler brother. Garage sales are also great deals, and word has gotten around my neighborhood that I’ll take anyone’s cast-offs off their hands. This year, because two moms cleaned out their closets, I haven’t needed to buy my toddler any clothes for the winter.
Actual cost: $300/year

Food: $2,142 or $178/month. At this rate, my family of 8 would require $1,428/month in groceries. But I spend about $750/month, including diapers, shampoo, cleaning supplies, etc. We rarely eat out, cook nearly everything from scratch (tastes better, is healthier, and takes only about 15-30 minutes more per night—I know, I’ve timed myself) and we are mindful of portion control. I honestly couldn’t imagine how to spend $1400 a month; if I did, I suspect we’d have some obesity problems, which would likely demand an increase in our health budget and clothing allowance.
I admit that my teenage son eats far more than my toddler son, but it balances out; my toddler subsists on what most toddlers do—a daily cup of milk, three grapes, two crackers, and oxygen. His appetite will match his brother’s in a few years, but a bit of planning ensures that it won’t be an extreme shock to our budget when that happens. I’ve kept to this budget for over a decade now.
Actual cost per child: about $93/month or $1125/year.

Miscellaneous: 8% or $1071/year or $89/month. This assumes karate lessons, soccer and baseball teams, and piano/sousaphone lessons.
Some will argue these extras are necessary. I’ll argue that what a kid really needs is some time to be creative, so I raise free-range children.
They wander the neighborhood in search of other children who they then “play” with. It’s an odd concept, but one I remember from my childhood in the ‘70s. Fortunately in our chosen rural community, “playing” is still allowed. They throw and kick balls to each other, do tea parties, play board games, make weapons out of foam and pvc pipe, and do night games. Sometimes my kids want piano lessons, so they swap babysitting for lessons. There’s always a way for a child to earn the costs to cover an “extra,” and learn a bit about the value of a dollar as well.
(Incidentally, don’t believe the line that sports will earn your child a scholarship to college. Add up the costs of the sports, gas for travel, and uniforms each year, then realize that the average student receives a sports scholarship of only about $500/year, and the math is easy. If it isn’t, maybe your child isn’t really college material.)
Actual cost per child: $0

So my grand, penny-pinching, free-ranging, fashion-ignoring, home-cooking, actual total cost per child per year?
$1,800.
times 6
$10,800/year for my current family of 6 children. And no, we’re not supplementing our income with food stamps or any other assistance beyond CHIP.

You CAN have a family, without enormous costs. Come by my modest home and I’ll show you. And so will my neighbors, and their friends, and their families . . .
Don’t let the supposed costs of raising a family scare you away from experiencing a fantastic adventure. Remember—the cost of a year’s upkeep on a goldendoodle is about $1,000/year, after the initial investment of $500-1,000 for what is, essentially, just a mutt.

Kids last longer, are far more entertaining, and far more rewarding. You really want to learn about the world and about life? Have a baby. You’ll be astounded, because everything—every last little thing—that you thought you knew about the world will change profoundly. It’s supposed to. You’ll become wiser, braver, and utterly amazed.

And besides, kids are ultimately a much better investment than anything else you can think of. I promise.

“Meme Fail” Part 2–worst advice anywhere

August 31, 2013May 27, 2015trishmercer 1 Comment

I love memes–I really do. Even if my first post (Read Part One here) about memes suggests otherwise.

I savor the combination of font, photo, and philosophy all distilled into one quick nugget. Some are fabulous, like this one:

Absolutely LOVE Maggie’s expression.

The text doesn’t have to be confined to 140 characters or less, even though politicians, Hollywood-types, and sports coaches desperately try to be pithy and twitterable. Memes can be just a bit more.
A good meme should:

have words from something or someone with at least a little bit of credibility–spiritual leaders, philosophers, scientists, authors. Never repost the anonymous ones, or the grammatically incorrect ones. They’ve been written by people who take advice from beer commercials;
have a readable font. It can be cute and fun, but NOT too twisty or tangled, or so full of different fonts that anyone over 40 has to take off and put on their reading glasses multiple times just to get through it;
have, if available, original art. This can be a photo or an interesting background, but NOT the sun setting on the ocean! PLEASE! No more walking-on-the-ocean-at-sunset photos with any old random saying attached to it. Such as:

A caution about memes: be careful with any that try to define the condition of one’s heart, eternity, or life. Especially when coupled with a sunset. It’ll make your brain all squishy, and you’ll think, “Hey, that just might be deep.” Here’s a hint–if you don’t understand it, it isn’t deep. Don’t be fooled by that beautiful sunset: it’s all jibber-jabber!

(I know, because that’s my photo and my saying, and I still don’t get it.)

There are many bits of color and words that fail any logic test, yet somehow have bedded down and made a living in Facebook and Pinterest. For example, the blob below:

There should be a rule that memes shall not channel fortune cookies, or blatantly lie. (Or have grammar problems, but that’s another rant.) No one can guarantee success, certainly not a melted cherry popsicle with spaghetti noodles on it.

This one below breaks two cardinal rules:

First, the font is all twisty-tangly, and second, it makes no sense. The teacher in me thinks, “Laziness!”

The English language has, according to the Oxford Dictionary, over 170,000 words, and there are PLENTY of ways to say them! (I suspect these are song lyrics from some emo-college band, written when someone suffered a terrible break-up with their significant other of three weeks. Get back to us when you CAN find a way to say things.
And please don’t add any sunsets when you do.)

I also don’t think memes should make vacuuming difficult:

Now, the photo’s nice, the font clear, but the message . . . seriously, have you EVER tried to clean up after someone trailing glitter?! Oh yeah–you don’t forget that chick any time soon.

Then there’s this:

Now this one’s just cruel. It’s a bald-faced lie, but enough people have bought into it that it’s made the rounds.

Ok, maybe it’s a metaphor that you will somehow, someday, for some odd reason, suddenly float away. Some unbearable lightness of being?
But if you think about it, that’s also a bad metaphor. I mean, look at this—it’s a BALLOON!
And what would happen if you were a balloon?
Well, if you don’t pop immediately—or have the helium sucked out of you by some people who value beer commercials and want to create their own memes—and if you’re lucky, you’ll float for quite awhile, buffered and batted about by the winds. But then you’ll start to deflate and sink into some dreary wilderness where you’ll be eaten by some poor wild beast which will then get you stuck in its gut and cause it to die.
Hmm, on second thought, maybe this an apt metaphor for life . . .

This next one is just simply dangerous. “What makes you happy”?

Well, what makes ME happy is not making dinner.

Not cleaning up the cat barf.

Not cleaning up the house, at all.

Not washing my hands . . . you get the idea.

Do MORE of that?

Sometimes I think we value memes because they introduce a new concept to us, even if that concept is rubbish, as beautifully illustrated here:

Just because you are unique doesn’t mean you are useful.

Great memes, however, make you think, then think again. They have photos that illustrate, and don’t use sunsets. Their words come from creative people who have dug deep into the world and found some nuggets worth holding up and sharing. Like this:

Each of Terry Pratchett’s books has about fifty meme-able sentences. Maybe I’ll make it my life’s hobby to meme them all.

Right after I find out who’s been meme-ing this other brilliant writer, Neal A. Maxwell:

Ah, meme-worthy!

Miley Cyrus, may I have five minutes?

August 26, 2013May 27, 2015trishmercer 7 Comments

Oh, my poor girl—are you really so lonely, so desperate, that you’ll do anything to get attention? You don’t have to. You can be a woman—a real woman—without becoming a prostitute, which I’m afraid is what you’ve done. You’re selling your body, but you could do so much more.

First, let’s put you in a classic little black dress, because I just can’t look at you in . . . whatever it is you’re wearing.

See? Don’t you feel so much better?

I suspect you want to show you’re not a “good little girl” anymore, although I don’t understand why so many in Hollywood think being “good” is “bad.”

But your behavior isn’t “adult.”
Strutting around in your underwear is what my toddler does.
And pretending to mate in public is what dogs do in the street.

You could do so much more.

Exploiting your body isn’t groundbreaking or original—you’ve just fallen for the oldest trick in the book. Check the Old Testament—you’ll see that selling your body has been around for thousands of years. It’s not art, it’s vulgarity, and you can do so much better.

Look beyond the cheering fans in the audience, and see the reaction of adults—real adults, not mere grown-ups (my explanation about the difference is here). Adults who, by the millions, learned of your embarrassing exploits via the news.

We’re not cheering—we’re cringing.
Millions of women are rolling their eyes in frustration that, once again, the message has been lost that women have infinite value, fantastic worth, and incredible potential.

Millions of men squirm and look away because your behavior arouses something in them, and it makes them uncomfortable because they prefer to use those feelings for true women who respect and protect their bodies.

And the men who are enjoying you? They’re they same flabby, smelly guys that linger at the bra section of Wal-Mart. Creepy and icky, Miley. You can do so much better.

You could still be a real adult woman.

But right now you’re headed down a path that will not end well. I don’t care how many times you’ve watched “Pretty Woman,” females who sell themselves short don’t have happy endings. Look at Lindsey Lohan and Amanda Bynes. (Actually, let’s not, or I’d have to “paint” little black dresses on them, too.) There are thousands of porn actresses who can tell you about a life of misery and self-loathing. No woman deserves to feel that way about herself. None. Not even you.

You can do so much more.

You want to prove you’re an adult? Than do something adult-worthy. Real adults—real women—use their influence and names for good. You may be too young to know these women, but do a little reading about Princess Diana and how she used her name to change the world’s view of AIDS victims.

Another little black dress . . .

Watch a few Audrey Hepburn movies, then look up how she spent her name and her later years taking care of starving and neglected children.

And another little black dress.

Take a good look at Eleanor Roosevelt, then find out what she did for civil rights when no one else was talking about it.

And yet another classic black dress.

Real women–real adults–do real important things.

So can you.

Despite the chill in the air, Sareen seemed determined to show Shem exactly what she had to offer. Not surprisingly, several soldiers had converged around Shem to share in the view.
“Oh Sareen, this is just becoming sad,” Mahrree muttered, wishing someone would point out to the girl—maybe Sareen’s mother, who didn’t seem to be around—that her displaying behavior was most inappropriate.
. . . But for the moment, Sareen was happy for the attention that, someday, she’d realize she didn’t really want.

~(Soldier at the Door, Book Two)

One parent’s response to Time’s “The Childfree Life”

August 2, 2013May 27, 2015trishmercer Leave a comment

“When having it all means not having children.”

I read that subtitle from Time Magazine’s “The Childfree Life” and I thought:
When did having it all mean becoming as self-centered as the two-year-olds these non-parents sneer at?

Then I thought:
When did having it all become the purpose of life?

I don’t think that’s a question many people worry about anymore, but it’s a most important one.

But let’s leave that aside for a moment and look at the question of, What’s the purpose of having kids?

I don’t like the answers of “As a duty to our society,” or “To perpetuate the species,” or “So someone will pay for my social security when I retire.” (That’s my reaction when people accuse me of being “overly reproductive.”)

All of those answers smack of some washed-out diatribe, a dull and pessimistic penance for being on the earth. But parenthood isn’t about passing on misery or fulfilling a duty. It’s about becoming an adult, with attitudes and understanding worthy of the definition of “maturity.”

I’m sure most of us didn’t become parents because we wanted to become “mature,” though. It’s a secondary and unexpected benefit, like panning for gold and finding diamonds as well.

As a young married I wanted a baby because I thought they were cute. I had the same affliction as many people whose pets double as their children: I wanted something to dote on, to dress up, to call “My Widdle Wiggy-wums” in public.

And then I had the baby.

It was nothing like carrying around a pet/pretend child (which we pathetically did with a cat for the year before).

Now, some who choose to be childless may defend their position by claiming their animal is like their baby. And I know they feel love and affection for it, but to believe a pet is the same experience as having baby is like comparing spending the afternoon in a wave pool with a vacation in Hawaii. The difference is miles apart.

I knew I would love my child, but I was completely unprepared for every aspect of the world to suddenly change. (And to also feel stupid for dragging my cat to stores.)

Parenthood causes a shift. I’ve seen it in nearly every new father and mother. The shift may occur as early as during pregnancy, or may not happen until the child reaches the first birthday, but at some point a person shifts from being a self-centered mere grown-up to a full-fledged adult.

What’s the difference?

Mere grown-ups (and it’s easy to become a grown-up; just don’t die before you’re around nineteen) look at the world and muse, I wonder what it can give me today.

Full-fledged adults (a much more fulfilling accomplishment than merely aging) look at the world and cry, Dear God! How do I make this a better place for my baby!? And everyone else’s baby?

It’s a drastic shift, a necessary shift.

The shift makes you forget about your own petty needs and wants (such as a shower and a decent night’s sleep), and makes you rabid about your child’s.

It’s the shift that makes you stop reading the sports page first and start paying attention to the headlines about education.

The shift that makes you more interested in local and national elections, in crime rates in your neighborhood, in safety in transportation, and in how the future will look in twenty years.

The shift moves mountains. Ask any parent whose child has been diagnosed with a mysterious or even fatal disease. They’ll rearrange all kinds of geography and even defy the laws of physics for that child.

In fact, I’m willing to submit that the vast majority of improvements to society—any society, in any year—was started by someone who was a father or a mother.

Because they felt that shift, and realized the world wasn’t about “having it all”; the world is about making it better for everyone.

The surprise of parenthood is that life becomes so much more meaningful when it’s lived for those you care for, rather than just for yourself.

Maybe avoiding this shift is why a certain segment of the population, not only here in America but in many parts of the world, rejects parenthood. They want to stay children themselves, always indulgent. That may sound like a flippant evaluation, but I’m sorry to say that each deliberately childless person I’ve encountered has had the same trait of, “It’s all about me, dear. Now would you tell that child to be quiet? I’m on a conference call here in the park.”

That’s why I submit that childlessness doesn’t solve problems, but it increases them.
I don’t believe that we should have children because one of them may change the world– someday–but I submit that we when we have children we feel the need to make the change–today.

Now I agree that parenthood isn’t some magical bullet that shoots maturity into people. They are those who have no business having children, who still regard their Chihuahuas with more affection than they do their tweens.

And there are also some true adults who are childless not by choice but by biology, who do more than just send a couple hundred dollars to a children’s hospital and think they’ve done their part for the future of the world. These full-fledged adults dote on their nieces and nephews, volunteer to coach little league and scouts, and teach the children in Sunday school.

I’m worried about the grown-ups who forgot to outgrow the “mine!” period of toddlerhood. Perhaps the most disturbing element about “having it all” is that it resonates with the increasingly pervasive entitlement that seems to be overtaking the developed world. At some point we need to realize that the more each of us tries to have it “all,” the less there is for everyone else.

And when, in the history of the world, was anyone ever happy when they got everything they wanted? Even Alexander the Great cried like a baby (and threw a tantrum like a toddler) when he realized there was nothing left in the world for him to “get.”

Joy has always come from giving more than we get, from serving more than demanding. That invaluable understanding is what parenthood gives you.

And that also, by the way, is the purpose of life.

“My children have me tied?”
The thought had never occurred to Mahrree. True, her life was completely different now. And she didn’t participate in anything outside of the house. And she hadn’t thought about the condition of her hair in nearly two years. Or the condition of her clothes. Or her house. Or garden.
But caring for these little children, who she thought were funny more often than frustrating, loving more often than loud, was an honor. It said so in The Writings, and she’d chosen to believe it from the moment she knew she was expecting her firstborn. And choosing to believe it had made all the difference in her attitude as a mother.
Were they difficult?
Yes.
Demanding?
For some reason that word just didn’t seem right.
(Soldier at the Door, Book Two)