Random ramblings

The imp will be home sometime right around lunch time, today.  The pixie has missed him.  So have the kittens.  So have I.  I love my in-laws enough to let them keep him overnight without too much worry, but I do miss the little twerp, even if I don't miss the kids fighting. 

The pixie woke me up at 7:30, and isn't back to sleep, yet.  I usually can get her back down for a couple hours to stand in for the morning nap she still kinda needs, but refuses to take.  She's twenty months old, as of today. 

Right now, she's giggling and talking to her Pooh Bear.  It's cute, but I'd rather go back to sleep, which I can't do unless she does. 

I have four stories left in The Godshead.  I shouldn't have any problem getting the rough draft finished before classes start up again.  I may be able to get a final draft finished before classes start.  I'll just have to see what I can do.  After semester starts, I may have time to edit, but won't have time to write.

We're having issues getting my new laptop to see the printer on Odysseus's computer.  For a little while, it wasn't even seeing the computer, so progress is being made.   Slowly.  I just can't print anything right now to be able to edit it.

I tried playing with the order of stories, to see if I could make for a better hook into the book with the Amazon "Look Inside" feature--Odysseus said that he'd wished, after the fact, that I'd put one of the gut-punch stories earlier in Survivor for such reason--but discovered that, while The Godshead is basically a collection of interconnected short stories, they are interconnected in such a way that I can't reorder them without mucking up the timeline that they all sort of loosely fall into.


Back in the eighteenth century, when the novel was a new form of literature, there was a form called the epistolary novel--a series of letters that told a story.  Robinson Crusoe was closely related, as a diary turned novel.  I don't think I've seen a short story novel outside of Heinlein's work--Time Enough for Love certainly qualifies, even if it's more a collection of novelas.  I may be a bit pretentious, but I guess The Godshead sits in good company, where form is concerned.  

After that's done and published, I've got a couple ways I can go: I can either try to finish my take on the Arthurian legends, or I can try starting the next book in the Modern Gods series that I have a rough idea for.  I guess it'll depend on sales. 

That will have to wait until Christmas break, though, unless I only end up with one class (which seems, at this point, to be a distinct possibility).  Grading fifty students' first drafts of papers every three weeks with a final draft a week later, plus grading fifty students' blogs every week plus everything else an online instructor does to keep the class running smoothly, and to help everyone learn that wants to, takes up too much time and mental energy to be able to write.  I do wonder, though, if it would make a difference with half that number?

Actually, it's never fifty students.  I usually have an average of about two per class drop before even signing in (actually, it's more like about five, but I usually have several dropping into the class as others drop out of it, so it averages out to about two slots unfilled), then I usually have about one or two students stop participating every couple weeks or so, until I have between fifteen and twenty students per class.  A manageable number for a class that focuses solely on writing, and a lot of it, and almost all of it graded.

My mother in law asked about one of the public pre-schools, run by the school districts, and if that would be an option for the imp, since he's old enough.

Yeah...no.  Those things do "testing" if the kids aren't completely "normal."  Yes, parents are permitted to refuse permission, in theory.  In practice, I've heard of parents who refused the testing who got their lives turned inside out by child illfare.  In practice, kids with disabled labels are worth a lot of money to the school districts, and the ones who have labels without actual problems are worth even more money--they don't have to spend the ADA money on accommodations, if the kids are labeled but there's nothing wrong.  

So, no.  My son is not stepping foot in the public school system.  Not for anything short of a court order saying that homeschooling isn't allowed, and neither is private schooling.

I've seen the end result of thirteen plus years of public school.  It's always been bad, but it's getting worse, year by year.  I will not permit my son or my daughter to be that ill-served, ill-prepared, and ill-educated.