More weirdness.

Eric tagged me (interestingly enough, along with people named Peter, John, and James — oh, and Karl too) to tell six weird things about myself.

Now, in some circles (say, back home visiting family and friends at Christmas) the weird things would go like this:

1. My three kids were all born at home
2. I homeschool
3. I have never (yet) owned a stroller, a crib, or a playpen
4. My three-year-old is still nursing, and I didn’t wean my oldest till he was well past 4
5. I believe that butter is good for me
6. I am teaching myself Latin because I hope it will be more useful in the future

These things make me certifiably weird in a "percentile of the population" sense, but I’m guessing that they don’t seem particularly surprising to the population that visits my blog.

So I’m going to have to do better than that.

1.  When I was twelve, I accidentally severed all the ligaments in my right wrist.   

I fell down some stairs with a drinking glass in my hand.  Now I have a scar that looks like I tried to commit suicide.   And I have limited sensation in my thumb and two fingers.  This is useful for having my iron tested.  Fortunately,

2.  I am left-handed,

as are my husband and our two sons.  While left-handedness is not weird per se, I am, as, left-handed women are rarer than left-handed men.

3.  I share two "work days" per week with a few close friends who are also homeschooling families.

Sometimes at my house, sometimes at one of theirs; we arrive in the morning, help out with housework, bring lunch, sit the kids down at the table together to do their schoolwork, sometimes take walks, make dinner together, hold a baby, make tea, knit, plan curriculum, read stories to eight children at once, that sort of thing.  We call it "the tribe," and it keeps us from getting that creeping sense of isolation. 

The dads are part of it too, by the way.  We also see each other occasionally on weekends, and function as a sort of extended-family-by-choice for the purpose of, oh, moving furniture, getting someone to drive you to the airport, babysitting, someone to put down on forms as the emergency contact, that sort of thing.  For example, this evening one of the dads is coming over here with his three kids to hang out with Mark and me for a few hours because his wife needed some quiet time to work on the computer.

If this doesn’t sound particularly weird to you, consider this:  We are hoping, and trying to figure out how, we can all move into houses that are next to each other or at least on the same block.  Unfortunately, this seems to require more computing power than I can muster.

Where did I meet these people?  Well, that brings me to this:

4.  I have a doctorate in chemical engineering.

And if you don’t think that makes me weird, you don’t know many chemical engineers.  It’s not a very good doctorate (please don’t ask me to describe my thesis work), because I became a shameless slacker, academically speaking, after I decided I didn’t want to put into daycare my son who was born 3 years into the thing.  After that, I never went to any seminars or networked or published any other papers or learned any auxiliary skills or lectured any courses or did anybody any favors — in short, nothing at all that might help me get a job in my field. 

I spent my first maternity leave finishing up coursework.  I wrote most of my thesis while on "maternity leave" (actually, they’d just stopped paying me) with my second baby.    I turned in my thesis on April 29, 2004, the same day that my son was having minor surgery in the university hospital; on May first, Mark went back to full-time work and I went home to raise my kids.

I don’t know if it makes me weird, but it has certainly contributed.  Oh, and by the way, two of the dads in the tribe (see number 3) were in the same PhD program, and that’s how I met them.  My husband isn’t one of them — I met him when we were both undergraduate ChE students.  (Hmm.  It’s just occurred to me that maybe I better not get any more schooling.)

5.  Unless there are some that I forgot, I own eight different kinds of slings, a.k.a. soft baby carriers.

I do not think this ought to be considered weird — after all, I own more than eight shirts — but the number seems to be greater than the average.  This is how I have managed to make it through three children and no strollers or playpens.

And because someone will ask:  Didymos long (blue indio), Didymos short (red indio), Maya Wrap, Mexican rebozo "extra fino especial," Kangaroo Korner Adjustable Fleece Pouch, Kangaroo Corner Mesh Water Sling, Kangaroo Korner Adjustable Mesh Pouch, and a tube sling that Hannah made for me a long time ago.  This doesn’t count the Kelty Expedition Carrier, which only Mark ever uses.

Finally,

6.  When I am reading something, anything, I am completely oblivious to my surroundings.

This drives people around me crazy.  Nobody believes that I do not do it on purpose.  When I was a child my parents would shout my name at me until one of them thought to tap me on the shoulder, at which point I would put my book down and wonder why they were telling me I was grounded for being disrespectful.  When I was a graduate student, once, I got locked into the library at closing time and didn’t notice for more than two hours.  And now that I am a mother, not even the screaming of my own children — I mean, the kind of screaming that is accompanied by blood on the carpet — can break my concentration, if I happen to be looking at a magazine.  Something must be wrong with my maternal instinct.  I blame graduate school.

tag, if you’re reading this: stella borealis, light and momentary, valerie, anyone who thought the first six weird things were weird, and the tribe (if you’re willing to come clean in my comment section.)