Category Archives: homeschool

The Kids are Alright!

Yes, that is a quote from “The Who”

It has been a long, yet weirdly short eight months.

Eight months ago, in a land far, far away (come on, we all love a good fairytale! No?). The Joy family ventures off merrily, on their much anticipated Spring break jaunt. Skiing. Snowmass, Colorado, here we come!

Then BOOM Coronavirus hits, as our esteemed President likes to call it “The flu from Chi – Na” (I still crack up when I hear him say this word!). We finish our week skiing – Snowmass shuts down. We spend a weekend in Boulder, restaurants shut down, we have to queue to get into Wholefoods, but then I feel like that store does love to make you feel slightly unworthy of shopping there. Toilet roll – SOLD OUT, Sanitizer – SOLD OUT, any semblance of liquid soap – bloody SOLD OUT. Finally the axe fell, schools closed their doors, and we were banished to our basements. Sitting in the gloom, bathed in the deathly glow of a subpar laptop and harangued by a wealth of teachers. Who really had no fucking idea what they were doing (no criticism intended) just stating facts.

AND there we all were festering. One overwhelmed, anxiety driven mother; I seriously thought we were all going to perish on a daily basis. A “at home” working husband who is always on an important call and then add three small dragons (boys) lost in the ether, breathing fire at us all. EEEKKK

Spring Break was looooonnggg.


Time marched on and we have had to all learn to be together and let me tell you that this is by no means easy. Ummm I like my own space, I like to not be constantly watched, asked for 30 million snacks, water, toilet roll etc etc. I do not want to be responsible for trying to keep the kids online and on top of that actually learning. All I wanted to do, was to let them swim and watch old movies, if only if it was to experience a little peace.

We had screaming matches and fist fights (kids). Blood was spilled, furniture broken, glasses smashed and usually over the minor fact that someone had tapped their fingers a little too long. We have learnt to be tolerant of each other’s annoying habits – OR NOT, mainly NOT. I spent my days trying to keep them quiet, while daddy held down a job. Then, if that was not hard enough, we decided to just pick up and move all of us from Florida to Colorado. That was clearly not easy or stress free – online schooling came in handy then.

I had to manage tiny people melt downs, from missing friends, hating the “Corona”, wanting to be at school, we have copious amounts of anger and laughter. I have been told daily that I am hated, just for enforcing a rule, which ultimately will make us all better people, or I may have just asked for a small person to help mama and empty the dishwasher. This enforced eight months in each other’s pockets has opened my eyes up to the fact, that the kids truly think I am the dumbest person in the room, that I know nothing and I have been nowhere. When in fact, beneath this dippy looking exterior of mine I am the ONLY person in the room (remember my kids are all boys of ages 11, 8 and 5) who has a upper class degree in Sports Science, was in the academic top 10% of kids at high school and travelled the world in her 20’s. But still to these three boys I know nothing. Deep breath Kelly, calm and collected… Be nice, be nice I tell you woman.

The months drag on/fly by and the kids are still home, still no school. My house looks like an elephant has stampeded through, I have mountains of washing tall enough to rival Mount Washington, I have given up on homemade food, my hair looks like a birds nest and I have aged at least 10 years. Seriously, no judgement please, or at least silently in your head.

Tick, tock, tick, tock ……. Another month trips by, summer in COVID passes, vacations are cancelled, family is missed. Yet, new adventures and friends are made.

Then on one glorious sunny Colorado day, announcements are made – THE KIDS CAN GO BACK TO SCHOOL. My heart lifts, the kids scream for joy and they are all rapidly booked for a haircut, as I am currently in possession of three very shaggy bears.

Our freedom is returning, we can all start to stretch our wings and break free from our family nucleus. As much as I have been extremely worried about the children, we have all learnt so much, yes even dumb mummy and we all know how stupid she is. 🙂 We have learnt to be –

Tolerant of each other.

To care for each other always.

That we all love to watch 1000 repeats of “Jessie” and the “Simpsons”!

That you can truly never have enough ice cream.

That the impact of an action has a profound effect on the group, good or bad.

That we genuinely love each other.

On that note my eldest (who is in school two days a week) has just come out to inform me, that there has been 340 days of Coronavirus thus far.

So, after eight months at home together we are relishing our time apart. You see, my friends do not think I am an idiot (I hope not). Everyday I am living, loving and relishing, as we all know this could all change tomorrow. With another lock down, another spike, and we are thrown back together. These eight months have also taught me that my kids are alright, I am alright. That with all that can be taken away, we can still love each other, hug, be silly, dance wildly and learn to be silent, together.

I have to admit there had been a high chance of serious injury and maiming with my crazy kids all together, but they are definitely ALRIGHT!

Love hard, live with ferocity, care for others, laugh a lot, adventure with intention, be silly, hug when you can and always, always be kind.

And you will be just fine.

Love dumb mummy. ( I think that upset me you know 🙂 )

A walk on the WILD side.

As a mother of boys, my life is rarely quiet, so much so I collectively call them my dragons, my wildlings. I even call myself the MOB (Mother of Boys) or the MOD (mother of dragons). The MOB sounds more badass.

Being a boy mum, I spend most of my days, breaking up fights, soothing egos, washing dirty clothes and regulating video games. The other half of my day is spent picking up sticks left lying EVERYWHERE, flushing forgotten shits and pees, mopping yellow stains off the floor, fishing earth worms out of pockets and learning extensively about the Avengers, astronauts and Star wars in detail.

When the whoops, fights and wildness reach a fever pitch that there is no return. I bundle them up, off out the door, to skip up a mountain with all the well behaved, sedate children, chatting to their parents and acting like angels. Mine are not those kids. It also takes at least 30 minutes to put on socks and find shoes. We fall out of the front door to screams, as one kid puts a worm on another kids head. To arguing profusely about the “I go first” saga, as the hierarchy and boyish power struggle re starts. By the way we have gotten like 50 meters up the road. 100 meters up the road, someone has been hit on the back with a stick (fucking sticks), another kid has climbed over a front lawn to put their hands in a water feature and the last has decided to touch every trash can up the road, as they are suddenly super interesting . Then, in mid flow of me telling him to back up from the trash, he walks in front of a car and then careers back and across the path of a COVID mask wearing couple. They look at him in horror and recoil like cast members of the “Matrix”. While he proceeds to scream and holler at his brother, who thinks he needs to be a parent at that very moment. People must think we re nuts and heathens, we are now a mere 150 meters up the road.

We make it to ‘the hill” another stick fight, one loses the capacity to use his legs and the third at that very moment desperately needs to go for a poo. So much so, he is running in circles shouting “what if it comes out of my mouth arrgghhh” ? We get to the top, this is 800m, ALL OF THEM ARE STARVING. Snack break, poo forgotten. Now it is a race back down, off they go whooping and shouting like cowboys and Indians, flailing! All arms and legs and yup there we have it, a small body catapults in to the air and slams on a rock. ONE TWO THREE here it comes, wait for it, WAIT FOR IT…… A blood curdling scream flies out of his mouth ARRGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH. Older brother pipes up, “oh you are a bit dramatic” Tyson comes out of hurt child and charges at brother ROOAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR . Fight number 788 ensues.

Almost home, Almost fucking home. nothing we do is calm, nothing we do is stress free, nothing we do is quiet.

signed The MOB

Loss – Balance – Life

“Actual happiness always looks pretty squalid in comparison with the overcompensations for misery.” – A Brave New World, By Aldous Huxley

So much has been written about COVID 19. Extensive reporting, every blog, dick and Harry is about it. – Oh, in case you were terrified I am going off topic here oh don’t be silly. I’m all over this supposed disaster like Rona’s twin virus, clearing up the excess in healthy bodies.

New World

The Pandemic has pushed us in to a space of uncertainty and it is a hard place to navigate.

We have had to face extensive change, restrictions, enforced restrictions. The ease of life has been reduced and we as mere Homo Sapiens can get fixated on how my life ISNT rather than what it has become. I have written a few posts on the hilarity of loss and change and so have millions of others.

THE GOOD that grows from nothingness.

However, I do want to talk about the “good” we have achieved, but from the perspective of myself as a lowly human bean (Love the BFG), at home with her 3 children, nutjob cat who thinks he is a dog and a hard working but highly amusing husband.

Believe me, when I say, this is a narrow focus. Hummm, should take like 2 minutes, so I am sure you are about to pee your pants in excitement with bated breath.

TIME

This is the single most important gift that the pandemic has bequeathed to me. Life has sloooweeedd right down and I am grateful. I am not longer living at top speed, where my world is a blur and the details are lost. Instead I have stalled, and my surroundings are crystal sharp, in focus, the SD is now HD and my eyes hurt from the clarity they now must process. Life halted and nature came back in to view as my eyes grazed up from the floor, past my phone and looked out to all that is around. Oh, and I picked up a book again and started to read.

On a very personal level, time has hit back against the restless energy that possesses my every waking moment. It drives me to perpetually keep moving, but now I am forced to be still. This works against every fiber of my being. But who said therapy was easy? I am always running (literally) from myself, the demons planted there at a very young age, by an unknown assailant. The self-hatred and fears, they crept in and now reside in every cell, festering. Memories locked in my secret “brain never remember that again compartment”. It’s a dark and bleak world in there, lost but not really forgotten. Time, the pandemic, the “lock me up”, has allowed me to watch these youth formulated self-perceptions, unwanted memories and start to accept them. Allowing the light to start trickling in, illuminating the snuff dark of a disillusioned child.

SINGLE UNIT in motion

Time has enabled me to cease the intense screaming that is required to get the kids to school. There is no rush, flurry or elevated stress levels. With “crisis” school as I have now called it, because, I am certainly not homeschooling at any level of intelligence or knowledge. We are now able to wake, eat, dress, brush teeth, sit and LOG ON in a mere 60 minutes. We are learning to work together as a family. All of us are solitary but are learning to be together, a single unit. Moving forward in masse and between us we are less frequently looking back at what it once was, but accepting instead the what it has now become.

BALANCE

In life we need balance, it is an intrinsic part of our being. There has not been balance in the world for a very long time. We scrabble at home to create equilibrium, with yoga, meditation, time alone, limited screen time, but life gets in the way. We are urged to be better, work longer, faster, keep up with all that is thrown at us and if we cannot keep up we have failed, we are unwanted.

Yet, Coronavirus is bringing back that balance, in its weird body humbling way. It is reminding us we are not invincible and that our life was skewed. The world is heavy with, people, industry, war, hate, dictatorship, greed, it is dragging us down and squishing our hopeful faces into the mud and standing on them. Equilibrium has to be restored, stitched back into the fabric of our day. Coronavirus is leveling the playing field, stripping off the weight and enabling us to all see we are equal, and no one is exempt from its infiltration and grip. Everything has its direct opposite and without it, the light will feel dark, the good becomes evil, the left will become right, and the action will also become a reaction, never ending in its totality. A circle will never become whole, but always an eternal straight line, leading us in a never ending, forward motion, full speed, no time to complete the cycle and sit back to reflect – EXHAUSTING, Fucking Exhausting.

REMEMBER

We are all sitting in that same boat (all be it, 6 ft. apart) floating in an unknown sea of uncertainty, alone, solitary but united.

Re learning to collaborate, harvest empathy, see again the beauty of mother earth and being given a moment to breathe again. w

We are being released from the suffocation of our excesses. Which means she (earth) too can breathe again and begin to nurture her inhabitants in their time of need.

The virus has smashed our technological cocoon and exposed us to the rawness of our internal crux and basic needs. Because, that is what we are, basic! With all our intelligence (with some people I do beg to differ on this point) our sophistication, our needs are still basic, so very basic. When the world is stripped back, all we need to survive, is food, water, air to breathe, sunlight, a home, income to support the essentials, the ability to feel, cherish the rain on you skin and the sun on your back, smell the earth, lie down in the grass with a breeze fluttering across our face. That is life! That is what we are having to remember! It is not about how many toilet rolls you own. That is what the pandemic is revealing, in small tiny fragments. Generating hope for a future we can be proud of, that we can thrive in and a world we are happy to die in.  Eventually, giving back our bodies to nurture a future generation of hope.

And that my friends, is what the pandemic has given me, I have little fear, only hope we will and can do better.

I would like to sign off with another quote from a Brave New World – as so apt and seriously one of my favorite books.

“I ate civilization. It poisoned me; I was defiled. And then,” he added in a lower tone, “I ate my own wickedness.” ― Aldous Huxley

Peace out and now in the words of Samuel L Jackson

“Stay the Fuck at Home!”

Love Kelly

Where did all the “normal” go?

Where did all the normal go? Yes that boring old, Dullsville regular, normalcy of life? What is normal I am sure you ask?  You know that well worn lovey that smells all cozy and is soft on your cheek – GONE. The well worn rug under your feet, RIPPED AWAY and you are left alone, loveyless and standing, barefoot, alone on a cold, concrete floor shivering… brrrr . Lets add naked to make this sink in and really morbific. (I learnt that word today, so had to use it.) PS. please do not imagine me naked, as enough to put anyone off their cereal.

COVID 19 came in disguised as a “chest cold” originating in China (please watch how Trump says this word, it is clearly the pandemics greatest gift, oh and apart from the social media explosion, that kindly fills up 1/2 my day with belly laughs).  It snuck in and BAM took over the world and decided to kill a few for good measure, just to make sure we took notice. So, began COVID’s assault and eye opening ride of world domination. “Outta ma way bitches”, it screams.

Side note –  humor is how I deal with change and impending doom (I can also be very dramatic). I do not make light of the situation, but I will point out all the “funny” in it. Because, there is a whole fucking lot, otherwise I may as well cry at the complete mismanagement of the situation and utter shit show we are in.

In life, in the space of one tiny month, a mere 30 ish days, everything went from “regular” to a dramatic, head spinning change to the way we live, socialize, work, educate, shop, wash ourselves, communicate. Shit, I even have to clean my own home now. Yes, I had to formally reintroduce my self to Mop and Bucket and Mr Dyson. Plus, the check I normally give to the cleaners, went into my drastically low, alcohol fund.

Essentially, we used to be “free” to roam (I am not sure that should necessarily be allowed for some members of society) and now we are not. LOCK DOWN PEOPLE, the aliens are coming (yup dramatic), Stay at home orders and chained to a 6ft bubble of safety (but not really, but we kinda of are). I went from stay at home / PT working mum to homeschool teacher Mrs Joy, who essentially my kids do not see as any type of educator. More snack bitch and Band-Aid distributor. I hear the calls from the social media do gooders, “now you know how hard those underpaid teachers work”. YES I do know, I have always known, I have always admired their love and hard work they put into my children, as all three can be compliant on a good day and ass holes the rest. But can I just point out, dear do gooder (non teacher, social media smack down person) these beautiful souls chose to be teachers, they knew the score and they have a special, innate ability to teach. I on the other hand NEVER chose to teach, should NOT teach and I am now thrust in to the glare of 3 pairs of beady, baby dragon eyes, smoke spilling from their nostrils. ALL WAITING for me to step up to the plate and get BURNED by their total lack of interest in me as a teacher. I was not trained, I do not have the enthusiasm or patience to guide my middle child through reams of cursive, I did my time of that when I was 8 years old (my cursive is something I am proud of today, you really should check it out, if I actually ever write again with a fountain pen). I also have to guide three children through a wealth of online schooling, I am but one, humble parent, running like a decapitated chicken through three different sets of educating. It is not a pleasant sight, believe me.

Sod this, any one up for a cookie baking session? Lets count those damn cookies and subtract as we eat, or throw in a little fraction work. MATH – check, Kid 2 read the instructions – ENGLISH – check. Baking is a science ooohhh SCIENCE – check – Job done.

Then we have the fact I cannot really leave my house, don’t get me wrong, I love my house, but I also love a good coffee shop and not being with my family 24 fucking 7 . I truly cannot hold my breath long enough at the bottom of the pool. The kids are wild, I am wild, that cat is getting into fights, the kids are pretty much re enacting the Hunger Games and Daddy is locked in his office working more hours than if he were at actually work. But instead I now have to feed him and shush the kids when he is on a work call. I spend a lot of my time shhhh shhhhhing SHHHHHH SHHHHHHINg like a train pulling into a station SHHHHHHHHHHHHH. SHHHHHH the F up PLEASE!!!

Now we come to shopping, what is the deal people? Apparently, toilet paper, eggs and meat are survival essentials. They are nowhere to be found, unless you dig deep into the recesses of the nut jobs back yard self made bunker, who think this is Armegeddon. Newsflash, paper to wipe your arse will not save you, neither will the eggs for that matter, a hospital just might. – Now that is a combo for the Chopped kitchen.

Just don’t get me started on the hoarders, as that is a whole another 1000 words right there. I mean who are these people? Where are these people? They are clearly the same over 65 year old ass holes (UHUM you are high risk) hanging out with their mates in groups over 6. Well if you want to get sick and potentially die I’ll bagsey your bog roll thank you very much. Jesus people! (and no he will not fucking save you, he doesn’t give a crap about you, but he may just want your toilet paper). We are staying inside to keep you safe and out you are trying to get on the damn beach, to watch a sunset with your buddies. You do realize this is just the tip of the iceberg, its gonna get BIG and you may just need that non existent hospital bed.

My head feels like it may just combust into a cloud of tiny pieces, with the wealth of miscellaneous thoughts I would like to share and amuse you with. But dear people, this is humungous and I could be here for days, I’ll surely be locked at home with my “sweet,” “dearsome,” kiddiewinkis FOR MONTHS and this blog may be my only savior. Because, hell I know and as I said God will not be doing any of that save you stuff, and I certainly will not be knocking on the doors of his big pearly gates.

Well, until my next brain dump, keep well. keep apart, wash those filthy hands AGAIN and don’t cough or you may just be hunted and killed.

Love an insane, not drunk enough, locked up mother of three boys, who has no Xanax.

Peace out