http://www.cnn.com/2010/HEALTH/09/07/p.autism.vaccine.debate/index.html
There’s a question mark at the end of their headline, but I’m hoping that question mark is gone for all reasonable parents.
“I took care of a child who died of measles encephalitis because he was not vaccinated. It was a horrible death that was needless and preventable, and those parents never forgave themselves for not vaccinating their child.”
This is my seven-year-old’s mantra this summer: Camp every day! Camp all year round!
That girl is just so darn happy. And no wonder: In school, you have to conform. Camp is about expressing yourself. In school, they try to get rid of your bad habits. In camp, they put up with them or turn them into art projects. In school, they tell you what you’re learning will be useful someday. In camp, what you’re learning is useful right now!
She has had two great camp experiences this year, and I wanted to write about both of them because we have a whole month left of summer (those of us who don’t attend PVUSD), so don’t give up on camp yet.
When my son was six, I read about Renaissance Camp and talked to a very happy parent, and we decided to try it out. It was fabulous, and he went for two summers. Luckily, the very happy parent warned me about the waiting list. She said, “Call them and find out which day and time registrations open online. Then put that on your calendar and register right as soon as it opens because they always fill.”
Renaissance Camp is all about hands-on art and science. Younger campers are joined by camp alumni who work as teen counselors. The staff is fabulous and they take amazing fieldtrips. This summer my daughter went to the Museum of Modern Art in San Francisco. My son’s group went to the Exploratorium. All expenses are included in the camp fees. You get a really great calendar each week telling you what they’re going to do. Your child comes home brimming with new ideas and insights. I have absolutely no complaints.
This year, however, things were different. The camp didn’t fill. The director was put on furlough so she couldn’t be there full-time. None of this affected the campers — they were happy as clams. But I noticed it. There was a sign up informing parents that there was space in all three sessions still. (The third session starts Monday, and I bet they still have room…) The staff seemed particularly interested in having us fill out evaluations — the County, of course, is looking for any way to cut funds, and a program for kids that didn’t fill this summer might look like an easy target.
After Renaissance Camp, we took some time off camp to travel and relax, then she was back at it with Santa Cruz Soccer Camp. Again, I have not one complaint to lodge. Like last year, the program was lovely, my daughter was very happy, and she learned a whole lot more than just soccer moves. I wrote an article about Santa Cruz Soccer last year and also blogged about it.
Like Renaissance Camp, Santa Cruz Soccer is also experiencing great declines in enrollment. It runs on a weekly program, with new sessions every week, so you can sign up anytime during the summer. Unlike Renaissance Camp, SC Soccer is not a County program. They can only function if they get enough money, and most of that comes from enrollment. And most of their enrollment comes from word of mouth (or in this case, fingers!).
It’s a hard time now for everyone, and one of the hardest things to judge is this thing they call “Consumer Confidence.” Even people who haven’t seen a decline in their income are starting to think twice about spending. The problem is, when confidence goes down we start to get a snowball effect: Those who have enough money start spending less, which results in fewer jobs and less tax revenue. In a county like ours, that means that services we have known and loved for years start to disappear. And once they disappear, they don’t necessarily just pop back into place when the economy starts up again.
In my own mind, I have to fight with this lack of confidence. When I spend the money on a camp, I remind myself that not only does it make my daughter extremely happy (camp all year round!) but it also supports our local economy and continues programs that I support. I’d hate to think that these wonderful experiences won’t be here for future Santa Cruz kids. The people providing these services lose their jobs, move on to something else, somewhere cheaper to live, and their accumulated experience can’t be replaced.
I’m fine with change, but not that kind of change!
So I guess my message for the day is this: If you have the money, camp is a great experience, and your choice of camps is out there this summer. These two camps are just two that I know have room, but I’m guessing most of them do. And many of them are probably offering discounts. And if you’re not in Santa Cruz, I’m sure this is happening communities across the country, too.
We’ve got one month left of time to offer your child the experience of taking joy in creation, movement, and invention.
As I told the owner of Santa Cruz Soccer, the most precious thing to me about the camp is that I see my daughter shining with success. She’s not always successful at other things she needs to do in life, but camp is all about success. And that’s a gift I’m happy to give her, each summer until the money dries up!
We knew we had a mold problem. Everyone who lives under redwood trees has a mold problem. At least it was better than when we moved in, and you could smell it on everything. Then, we replaced the heavy, soggy curtains with blinds, got rid of the mildewed wool carpeting, and lined the entire crawl space with heavy plastic.
But still, we had a mold problem. Years came and went, and shoes we didn’t wear would start to fuzz. We’d say, boy, we really should deal with that mold problem.
Then came the Summer of Getting Rid Of (which follows the Winter of Getting Rid Of). I called our friendly painter (shameless plug: T. Paul Sek and his wonderful wife Debbie, who do all the research we don’t have time to do, who tackle other people’s mold problems, their allergy problems, and their irritation with nasty-smelling paint with cheer and Certified Green weaponry). We set a date, we started to unload the closets. And unload. And unload.
The kids and I were about to take off on five days up in the Sierras with a friend, and so I demanded of my husband: Don’t put anything back in until we decide what to Get Rid Of! I returned to find the enormous pile intact. Secretly, I’d hoped that he or some kind faeries would have taken care of it, but no such luck.
The closets were gorgeously clean, and coated with some stuff that mold doesn’t like the feel of. It was almost a shame to put anything back into them, but we attacked the pile.
On top were the things that we knew we were probably going to keep. The everyday clothing that we’d been wearing regularly went back in, though I managed to grab some frayed, stained, and unwanted items as they made their way back into the closet. I was ruthless with my own stuff, removing all the socks I don’t really like, the t-shirts I really don’t wear anymore, the shorts I’d always hated. Goodbye, clothes, hello, Goodwill!
Then came the dressy clothing that we wouldn’t wear very much anyway, but you just don’t want to replace. My husband has fewer than one occasion per year to wear a suit, but who wants to buy a new one? Back in they went. I stopped a few pieces of my own nice clothing that I’d never really liked and put it into a separate pile for the Daisy Store. (Have you been there? Fabulous! Around the corner from OSH on 41st Ave., and all their proceeds go to the Family Services Agency.)
Then came the loads of clothing I was keeping for various reasons, all of them unrealistic and sentimental. Clothing that doesn’t fit me anymore and is already out-of-date. Even if I lost those inches around my middle, would I wear them? Clothing that I was saving for my daughter. I have fond memories of my older sister and me dressing in my mother’s old fancy party dresses from high school. We loved them so much — we felt like princesses in them. My daughter, however, has decided not to wear girls’ clothes at all, much less princess outfits. When she plays dress-up, it’s in knight gear and as a samurai warrior. Is she really going to wear that stuff? And then there were the pure sentimental items: the dress I was married in didn’t get sent to the Daisy Store pile, but that suede dress I’d never wear again did.
Years and years of stuff I was keeping because “you never know when you’ll need it” went straight into the Goodwill pile. That which had visible mold on it went straight to garbage.
The haul to the Goodwill was easy. There was nothing in there that I will remember enough to miss. The Daisy Store pile, however, is still tossed over the couch in our bedroom. I feel like there is a lot of my history in there. Can I really get rid of the lime green miniskirt that I used to perform in? I have a picture of me with my thick bangs and eyeliner performing outside the student union at Stanford wearing that skirt. It’s hard to give up pieces of my past that bring back such memories like nothing else.
On the other hand, someone else without a mold problem might actually wear it. I’d like to think of some other skinny teenage girl finding my lime green skirt and thinking, Wow, this would be perfect to perform in!
Then again, she’d probably look at it and laugh. This is one of those relics like my mom used to wear in those old photos of her in her college days…
But I won’t think of that. I’ll remember that I don’t need these things, and someone else might. Our closets are now airy and newly painted. We installed a better fan in the shower room, and the drolly named “Dri-Z-Air” in the wettest closet. I may be down one lime green skirt, but on my last visit to the Daisy Store, I found a fabulous, shimmery red dress to wear in the evenings when I go out…
…out with the lime green, in with the shimmery red! Now, that’s progress.
I’m not much at finance. I’m good at math, and very organized, so you’d think I’d do OK at bookkeeping. But on the contrary: I hate bookkeeping and it hates me. I do the bare minimum required for my business and force myself monthly to balance our home accounts. When I’m a penny off, I get driven insane trying to figure out where that money went. It’s hard for me to give in and just adjust the register.
So it’s probably understandable that I haven’t done much bookkeeping with my kids. They get their allowance every week, they get paid for various extra tasks they do, and sometimes they get incentive payments for behavioral issues. They’re expected to keep their money in one place, keep track of it, and spend it on things that they want that we don’t want to pay for.
That system, however, had some problems.
First of all, I would shrug when our son mysteriously had another $10 to give me to buy him yet another iTunes gift card. (What did kids of our generation spend their money on? Oh, I guess we were always wanting to go down to the record store, but there was the fact of working out how to get there, so I’m guessing we spent a lot less, or at least a lot less often!)
“Where did that money come from?” my husband will ask. Uh, well…
The kids could also exploit my leaky memory. “You didn’t give me my allowance this week!” my daughter would exclaim, and search me if I did or didn’t.
And then there were the arguments: “She stole my wallet!” “No I didn’t!” “I’m sure I had $20 in here and now I can’t buy that software I’ve been saving for!” Et cetera.
So I got on the warpath, the only time I ever really get much done. I stormed upstairs and looked for a ledger sheet to download. Nothing. Just software, which we have. But software can be much more easily altered than a piece of paper! I wanted them to write down those numbers, add, and subtract so they could actually see where the money went.
I tried printing from Excel, but if you don’t have anything in the fields, the boxes don’t print. I tried buying a ledger book, but they were horribly expensive online, and nonexistent at the office supply store.
Finally, I thought, OK, I am a graphic designer, after all. We bought them report folders that would hold their ledger sheets, and came home. By then, it had occurred to my slow-moving brain that I could probably figure out the Excel thing. So here’s the trick: I did try all the various preferences and options, but really, the easiest way to do it is just to insert a space in each cell so that Excel prints the outlines of all the cells. I made the cells big enough for a 7-year-old’s handwriting. Then I PDF’ed it, and voila!, a perfect kids’ ledger sheet.
You may have it, free of charge (click here).
Will this solve the problem? Well, we still have the problem of my leaky memory. I really have much more important things on my mind than my kids’ money, like what to have for dinner and how to solve all the world’s problems. My fix for that is that they’ve been informed that any money that mysteriously appears in their account will be taken away. Every deposit and withdrawal must be initialed by a parent.
And we still have the problem of wishful thinking, which I guess will just be solved the next time my kids say they want to buy something they can’t afford. It used to be that they’d immediately accuse the other child of taking their money, or me of not giving them allowance, or something like that.
Once you start keeping track of your money, you have to face the cold, hard facts.
Hey, maybe that’s why I don’t like bookkeeping!
Hi everybody,
My blog got featured in this week’s Homeschooling Carnival. It looks like there’s lots of interesting links there, so check it out!
