Raft-Up: Counting Heads

Who Me?
Originally uploaded by toastfloats.

"I feel like I'm forgetting something," I muse, staring at the skyline as if miles of ocean horizon can reveal the secrets of my forgetfulness. It is calm, cloudless, and unfortunately almost still as we crawl slowly off the Mexican coastline heading south and west for the equator.

Aeron helpfully peeks into the dodger locker, "Cat is here."

DrC grumbles something about fuel from the galley where he is preparing dinner.

Jaime more or less completely unhelpfully notes that she remembered to check her Facebook account before we left the marina three hours ago.

And then there is silence.

In case you haven't been following along, I have three children. Aeron, Jaime, and Mera. We all wait for a few breathless, still moments, the only sound the flapping of the main as it luffs in the gentle swells and off shore breeze. Almost as one, we turn to look at the smudge on the distant horizon.

"I'll look," says Aeron, jumping down off the cockpit seat and scrambling into the port hull.
Jaime, Dean and I don't move. We are all sharing the same, miserable thought. Oh shit. We left Mera behind.

It's not like we haven't done this before. In fact, it is something of a habit, leaving Mera behind. Mera is our quiet, studious, bookish middle child. For years as we learned to drive the boat, we would take Don Quixote out every Thursday night for the Elliot Bay Marina races. Roughly half the time, we'd leave her on the dock and for many of the remaining evenings we could honestly state after sailing for an hour that we didn't actually know whether or not Mera was on board. It got so bad that DrC insisted we put a check list on the helm: dock lines and fenders stowed, instruments on, electrical unplugged, radio on, Mera on board.

Fortunately, the silent miserable tableaux of the three senior crew of Don Quixote is broken mere moments later by a relieved, high soprano voice shouting up, "She's here! She's HERE!"

Maybe we are just rotten parents. If so, we're probably bad pet owners, too. Twice we more or less accidentally left Dulcinea behind. Once we left the dinghy behind. And on one memorable occasion, we kinda sorta accidentally snuck out of an anchorage in the wee hours of the morning abandoning a pair of particularly obnoxious 'buddy boats.'

Yet I must confess that my biggest fear cruising has never been that I would stupidly head off shore for a 2000 nautical mile trip one head short of a full deck. My children are clever, capable souls and can handle being alone for a few hours. At age 5, Aeron proved the point when we drove to the grocery store one day and left her at the marina. As an aside, this was also Mera's fault, as Mera's seat in the van was next to Aeron's. How she could get all the way to the store and into the produce section failing to notice something as loud and noisy as her sister was missing baffles me to this day. A panicky 15 minutes later, we arrived back at the marina and found Aeron eating donuts and entertaining the staff in the office where she had -- quite correctly -- immediately tromped after discovering that her bonehead family had driven off without her.

No, my fear is almost exclusively the loss of one of my beautiful family overboard in the night.

The odds of finding someone -- even someone wearing a life jacket -- in the middle of the ocean at night are astronomically low. If everyone else is asleep when you fall over, the phrase 'zero chance of survival' is not hyperbole. Beacons, personal EPIRBs, and proximity crew alarms all improve your odds, of course. These options were simply not priced in the affordable range a mere five years go, so the Conger family travelled from Seattle to Auckland without them. If we could have, we would have. If you can, do. If you can't...

Well even with all the fancy shmancy gear in the world, surviving a midnight fall off an ocean going yacht is mostly a matter of not doing it. Doctor, it hurts when I do this! Don't do that. My fear of falling informs our boat rules and gear. A simple but well-cared for system of jacklines, harnesses, clips, and life jackets tie the helmsman to the boat no matter what the weather. On passage, no one is allowed to step so much as a toe on the deck without this gear from the time the sunlight turns to burnished gold on the horizon to the moment in the morning where the coffee is steaming and its possible to read a book in the salon without additional light.

Misty Beaches
Originally uploaded by toastfloats.

And still I am afraid. I still experience panicky moments when I come up at 2 AM for my watch and die a little when I can't instantly track Jaime's movements. Nights when I leap out of my cabin at 10 during DrC's watch, heart pounding, sure he's gone forever. I have tended the boat through 90 knot hurricane winds, managed sails while balanced precariously on the bimini  as we pitched in a heaving sea, leaped overboard at midnight to clear a prop with my feet when we were moments from being driven ashore, and watched my children leap like billy goats along a traverse in Zion with a 1000 foot drop on either side. Yet nothing -- absolutely nothing -- scares me like these moments in the night when I know with a certainty that leaves me cold that one of my loved ones is gone.

Our fears can not define the boundary of our existence or the limit of our reach. To watch my girls swim with whales, I have to let them stand watch in the night. To love them -- to let them live -- I have to trust them not to die. It's hard. It's so hard to count heads and come up one short. And yet every night, we do it anyway.

I keep counting and counting and counting until the number is five plus a cat, and every time the moment of relief is pure and fresh and profound.

 * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

October's Raft-Up Writers

The topic this month is fear. We all have different fears and different strategies. If you haven't already subscribed to these authors, I encourage you to explore the excellent writing my fellows in Raft-Up:
2 Behan sv-totem.blogspot.com
3 Steph www.sailblogs.com/member/nornabiron
4 Stacey http://sv-bellavita.blogspot.com
5 Tammy ploddingINparadise.blogspot.com
6 Ean morejoyeverywhere.com
7 Lynn sailcelebration.blogspot.com
8 Diane www.maiaaboard.blogspot.com
10 Jaye lifeafloatarchives.blogspot.com
11 Verena pacificsailors.com
12 Toast http://blog.toastfloats.com
15 Dana svnorthfork.blogspot.com

Their Adventures

Could Be Mars
Originally uploaded by toastfloats.

I need to talk about my children for a few minutes. This is going to be a fatuous, fluttery, overly sweet and sentimental in-your-face-my-children-are-awesome post. Either move on or brace yourself.

Jaime is climbing mountains. I think I might have mentioned that before. Briefly. I don't mean she is climbing mountains metaphorically. No, I mean that she took her hard earned work money to pay for a trip to Taupo so that she could do the very challenging Tongoriro day hike. This warms the cockles of my heart for several reasons. First, she's spending money on experiences... an expenditure at this age of which I wholeheartedly approve. Second -- and a corollary to the first -- she spent all her money and can now not afford to buy a car, which is another situation of which I wholeheartedly approve since her driving terrifies me. Third, she's hiking across mountains. That is just so awesome! She went without us, which is probably four because it indicates a certain independence of thought and spirit, but... I want to hike across mountains. I might be jealous.

Okay, I'm jealous.

Mera is a star. Well, actually she is "Unnamed Young Shark Girl #3." We're okay with that. She is one of the only year 10s in her high school production of West Side Story, and she is thriving. I enjoy watching her grow more confident, learn about the theater, and become an increasingly better vocalist and dancer. She's pulling that A+ student plus extracurricullar thing with a vengence. Probably more important is she has Friends. Lots of them. She is starting to have a rather busy social calendar. Go Mera!

You Can Do It Mom...
Originally uploaded by toastfloats.

Number 3 is playing netball. Despite our initial groan of comically American dismay, DrC and I are attempting to step up to the parental plate and learn the rules. All thoughts of this not being a contact sport are evaporating in the face of several team injuries, including Aeron's rather nasty jammed finger and an elbow to the eye. I still find some of the rules bizarre (and do not even get me STARTED on the uniform skirts), but there is no question those girls run for 45 solid minutes per game. She is starting to look like a lean, poorly fed, fiendishly blonde animal. Apparently, a steady diet of fresh veg and fruits, good quality breads and meats, and a glass of warm milk in the morning are insufficient for her current metabolic rate which runs at roughly the same pace as a squirrel on Ritalin. I might break down and start stuffing sausage pies and Pop Tarts into her lunch.

My husband is a musician. Now would somebody please just give us a call and agree to play with him periodically. It is time he got out of my bedroom and started playing in front of someone other than his sleepy wife. He's better than half the buskers you hear out there. Actually, maybe that's the solution to our money problems too... I could just send him out to busk every night. Hmm.

I am sort of employed. I should start work next week in fact. Maybe hopefully probably. Before anyone asks, no details forthcoming until the final paperwork gets through the byzantine adminsitrative system of my employer. I don't want to jinx anything. So while the family set the bar pretty high, I'm limping along behind them waving the weekly calendar and chore chart and trying to get them take their fish oil. Sadly, only the cat is impressed.

Working Away

Getting Run Down by the Spirit of New Zealand
toastfloats on Flickr

We've been in New Zealand since mid-October. The original plan -- such as we plan anything any longer -- was to get DrC settled into work, the girls into school, and then I would begin the long slow process to rebuild my consulting business. When I say rebuild, it is perhaps an exaggeration. For most of my consulting life, I have made little or no attempt to be fully employed. Usually, I use contracting as a method to work part time at things I enjoy so that I can spend the rest of the time doing tasks I truly love. Whether it is raising babies, homeschooling little girls, or sailing big girls across oceans, I realize now that contracting has been for me a gateway to spending time with my children.

However, now my children do not really need me so much any longer. They need the love and the support, sure. They don't really need me to wipe their noses or pick up their toys. Granted, I didn't really ever spend much time wiping either noses or toys. I remember wiping a lot of asses, actually. Come on. You were thinking it. Someone needs to have the courage to stand up and say, "Children are about butt wiping." They are not cute or fluffy or particularly fun, especially not in those early years when the quantity of crap flowing out the back end is truly mind boggling. Seven straight years of diapers and look where it got us… ten straight years of high school girls. I am somehow failing to see how this can be interpreted as the golden statue for Lifetime Achievement in Diaper Pinning.

Yet, there they go. Strong, independent Jaime. Beautiful, talented Mera. Charming, clever Aeron. Little people all grown up into bright young ladies with not the slightest interest in whether or not I stay home as long as there are plenty of snacks in the bin when they get back to the boat after school. The adjustment to institutional school life is going much smoother this round. I don't know if this is because the schools are better, they learned a great deal about public schooling the first go in Pukekohe, they are more mature, or some combination of the above. We are only three weeks into the year, and they have already established patterns and connections which bode fair well to ensuring I never see them.

Jaime has perhaps the hardest road this year. A combination of senior year pressure and a failure to do anything strictly educational last year means that her academic load is fierce. To this she added water polo, a job, and a boy friend. Kids these days. I have no idea how she'll handle it. She might not. Look, I know it can be done. I did at least that much my junior and senior year. I just don't know if Jaime is the one to do it. My only contribution to the decision making process is to offer my support, rides to 5:30am practice, and a lesson on GTD should she choose to go ninja on her personal productivity. After that, we'll have to see what she is made of. Smart bet is she either takes me up on learning how to get organized or she selectively reduces her work load until she has the bandwidth to do it all well. The one extremely good sign is that her eyes are wide open, fully aware that she may have taken on too great a load.

While Mera's choices appear on the surface marginally less ambitious, she is something more of a perfectionist. She is enrolled in Y10 accelerate which as near as I can tell means that functionally she is a Year 11 taking her NCEA Level 1 college qualification courses this year. The academics are a larger work load than she is accustomed to. More importantly, she goes through school with an odd combination of sublime arrogance and complete lack of confidence. I can not fathom it. One minute, she's the smartest kid in the room and not afraid to let you know it. The next she is dithering and fussing and agnsting over the micro details of a paper due on Monday, fearful of tests and worried about how her teachers will respond to her presentations. The worry causes her to spend energy and time perfecting every assignment, perhaps well beyond what is strictly necessary. For extra curricular, she was cast as a Shark girl, plays badminton on the weekends, and… much to the entire family's delighted surprise… made some friends with whom she actually *gasp* does things. Our little Mera, hanging out uselessly at the mall eating bad food and browsing shops. We're so proud. Really. Sometimes we can convince her not to take her Kindle on these excursions. We all count this as a major step forward.

Aeron is no longer the baby of the family, but she does at least have the advantage of being the youngest and with thus the lightest pressure. Her middle school is only moderately challenging academically, so she is channeling her boundless energies elsewhere. Horrifying both her father and myself, she wants to take up netball. In our opinion, netball is what you get when you take cheerleaders, put them on the basketball court, and make it impossible for them to smash into one another or do anything even moderately interesting. On the other hand, it is a huge sport down here, and I suspect Aeron will prove outstanding. She's scrappy, strong, and highly athletic. She was voted her class captain last week. No surprise, really, with her empathy and charm she's a natural leader and politician. DrC and I are thoroughly underimpressed with her course of study so we're supplementing in the evenings with math and French. We'll see how she goes.

Couple of Walkers
toastfloats on Flickr

And then there is the good doctor. I was supposed to start work in January. Instead of working and starting the family down the path of putting money into accounts, I have spent the past two months either prepping for or recovering from surgery. As a result, our finances are worse than anemic. DrC stepped into the breach. He has been picking up extra shifts at every possible opportunity. When he isn't doing doctor stuff, he is scraping away -- sometimes quite literally -- at the back log of boat maintenance chores. It would be hard to be more impressed with this work ethic, diligence, and emotional strength. He is a good life partner in so many ways. It didn't take this experience to make me recognize it, but it never hurts to be reminded that I made an outstanding choice and am lucky to have him.

So that's it. While I've enjoyed some amazing professional experiences, I haven't worked full time since 2005. On ramping isn't going to be easy. On the other hand, I look like the sole slacker in a family of over-achievers. Might be time to remind these Congers where they got that hyper-activity, more is more, I-can-do-anything-better-than-you gene.

School Just Isn't

Mera Goes to High School
Uploaded by toastfloats

It is time to close the Don Quixote Academy. Homeschool for the Conger family is over. There are two major reasons for making this move: social and financial. While we have met many great homeschooled teenagers, there are definitely some advantages to socializing your children with the great unwashed in the soup which is public high school. Every bit of frustration and mediocrity and pettiness they experience in a big institution will go towards thickening the skin in preparation for leaving home and heading out into the much more challenging working environment. Also, good high schools have opportunities for sport, performance, and hands on science which are almost impossible to replicate in the homeschool environment.

Then there are the financial and professional motivations. We have drained the cruising kitty bone dry. College and/or trade schools loom on the near horizon with almost literally nothing in the bank to fund them. Don Quixote herself needs some expensive upgrades and maintenance. While DrC’s salary is good and we live simply and small, saving is slow with one income. Two would be considerably faster. Moreover, I want to work. I’ve been on sabbatical for a very long time. Even with the contracting, getting back into the professional world will be a difficult and slow process. Women who off-ramp to raise children are inevitably penalized, professional careers damaged sometimes beyond repair. The longer I go without full time work, the less likely I will ever be able to obtain the kinds of responsible management positions which are my favourite way to earn a living.

So, long ago we made the decision to close our homeschool and send the girls to public school on returning to New Zealand. On our arrival, we immediately went to the local schools to enrol the girls only to come up against a number of obstacles. First, it is near the end of the school year. For kids Jaime’s age, exams were about to start. No one saw any point in Jaime attending school for a week and then stopping. Second, the intermediate school refused to enrol Aeron. They said she was too young and must attend primary. Aeron just isn’t primary school material – she’s bigger, more mature, and academically near mid-high school.

This leaves us with only Mera. Mera started school two weeks ago. She attends Takapuna Grammar School as a Year 9 student. Year 9 in New Zealand is roughly equivalent to 8th Grade in the United States except kids in Year 9 attend with all the high school kids. Secondary school as a result is 5 years long – Y9 to Y13. Takapuna Grammar is a high decile school which basically says that we live in a posh neighbourhood with a lot of families who are well-educated and send their kids to university.

While it isn’t a sure bet, high decile schools in New Zealand are generally thought to provide a better quality education as well. Active, engaged, educated, and wealthy parents are highly correlated with good schools. Apocryphally, there are statistics, damn statistics, and reality. While Takapuna is a high decile school, it is still a public high school. There are a lot of children, few teachers, and an insane amount of aerosolized human hormone. While there are lots of really smart kids and probably some fantastic teachers, the pill sorter process which dumped Mera into classes during the final weeks of the school year has ensured that my daughter doesn’t get to see these academic pearls. Mainstreamed into the general school horde, Mera is largely unimpressed.

Part of the problem is that we run a rather strict homeschool. When it is time to study, we try to keep quiet, listen to each other, focus on our work. In the classes Mera attends, students speak out of turn, the teachers yell to little affect, and there appears to be a complete and utter disregard for the learning process. Another issue is the incredibly poor quality of the course materials. Mera mastered the subjects covered in her year 9 textbooks years ago. In fact, the entire tone and level of the books seems grossly dumbed down. I would swear we’ve been using age appropriate texts to teach the girls, but you would never know it comparing the materials used in Don Quixote Academy with those used at Takapuna Grammar. I would be hard pressed to find a lesson in either the science or math books that Aeron has not already mastered long ago, let alone Mera.

Yet, Mera insists that the best thing is to remain at the school in the mainstream classes. Tests for accelerate courses are given later this year, and she has already spoken with the dean to ensure her opportunity to take the placement exams. During the short time before school adjourns for summer, Mera intends to concentrate on learning about the school and making friends. She believes that were she to transfer classes, her efforts to fit in would be seriously hampered.

Rescuing Discovery -- Again
Uploaded by toastfloats

Fair enough. Mera’s probably correct. We don’t really care if she learns much academically during this next month or two anyway. While she may be light years ahead in history, social science and English, she still hasn’t grasped even the basics of being a teenager. Example? Jaime nearly despaired of Mera ever passing Cell Phone 101 after we discovered that my middle daughter had left the thing in the car on a trip to the mall. So it is a very constructive use of her time just meeting people and figuring out how such strange and perverse creatures as high school teens function. For Mera it is an immersive, foreign language experience.

After all these years of worrying if we were “keeping up with the Jones,” it is clear that we drastically overshot the mark. Yet, it doesn’t feel that way. The girls don’t seem abnormally smart or clever. They are bright, healthy kids with reasonably good study habits. It makes sticking to our “close homeschool” plan extremely difficult. It is hard to know if we are doing them any favours enroling them in schools which hardly appear capable of understanding my girls, let alone educating them. Can any amount of socialization balance the fact that they will effectively be treading water intellectually for years until their peer group catches up? There really is no way of knowing.

I do know that I never thought when we started homeschooling that one of the hardest bits would be stopping.

*Update: Another article written during the November push for NaNoWriMo (which again I completely failed to get anywhere near 50K). Mera is out for the summer, accepted into the Y10 accelerate classes for next year. We'll see.

Happy Place

Happy Place
Originally uploaded by toastfloats.

The family (minus DrC plus Grandma Sue) spent a whirlwind day yesterday in the self-styled Happiest Place on Earth. Like McDonald's, Disneyland now advertises 500,000,000 served. I can not for the life of me see how this marketing assists in building their brand. It reminds me of those misplaced Microsoft ads with people who like their phones so much they run into walls being encouraged avoid this horror with the purchase of Microsoft's POS phone which you'll want to toss in your purse or under your car. I believe Aeron expressed this best, "Disneyland would be a lot more fun with half as many people and a lot less noise." I think maybe we could just remove all the fat people and that would do it. Each fat person is essentially two anyway, and currently the fat people so outnumber the folks with a BMI in double digits that you would essentially empty the park by establishing a width limit instead of a heigh limit.

Case in point. It's a Small World. Every time we go to Disneyland, my mother forces us to ride a panga through the single most insipid song on earth. It's five minutes of little creatures dancing around in ethnically insensitive costumes to a mind worm song that you can not extract from your brain pan for six months thereafter. This year we were treated to no line and a boat that leaned so seriously to the port that I spent the entire ride resisting the temptation to warn my children to grab their life jackets. Somewhere between China -- which now sports Mulan and Mushu, a travesty of Disney history which no doubt infuriates the purists -- and Australia where for some reason they do not include the 6' foot tall man-killing flightless emus, I reached beneath my seat looking for the bailer bucket. Fortunately, we survived the trip and arrived at our destination, a small dock with a concrete bridge and handrails where we extended our limbs outside our incredibly dangerous craft and into the welcoming arms of grown men dressed like Little Orphan Annie.

Of course, this is all an exercise in throwing stones into a very fragile glass house. After a year in New Zealand, I am roughly the weight of a small car. I have a carbo belly consisting of sour dough bread, lamb and apricot pies, and Steve's home brew dandelion wine that is similar in size and texture to a 3 year old's swim ring. My loving mother reminded me this morning that it was impossible to squeeze her lovely narrow ass, my beautiful 10 year old and my enormous belly into the same ore cart on a train that whisked around Thunder Mountain. To which I reply, that was the easy part. It was popping it back out again that was the challenge. My ass was suction cupped to the seat and our hips wedged so tightly we could insert neither hand, nor arm, nor foot. Would that Grandma's glasses had been similarly wedged as our one tragedy in another wise typical Disney day was to see (and I use that term euphemistically) her glasses fly off on the last turn as we entered Thunder Mountain station.

But let us return to the question of whether or not Disneyland is truly the "Happiest Place on Earth." It is possible that the magic and sparkle of Disney are still there and age, experience, and wisdom have aged me out of the ability to savor it's artifice and hermetically sealed safety. It is possible that Western consumer culture finds the endless parade of overly priced goods and rides with warning signs on every vertical surface the height of enjoyment and joy. Yet, I experienced more pure happiness walking with my mother through the Oreka Valley in the Southern Alps. I would swear that the girls laughed more on the climbing ropes at Tree Adventures or as we towed them behind the boat through the empty Bay of Concepcion.

Disney still makes me smile. The fireworks are amazing, the shows delightful, the rides make me scream and laugh, the girls still light up like little Christmas trees as we walk through the park. But it's not my Happy Place. Mera asks me this morning if Disney doesn't satisfy, where is my Happy Place? Home. Home! I'm going home to Don Quixote. Just the thought warms the cockles of my pirate heart. Yo Ho ho and a bottle of rum! Just need to swing into Disneytown first and get my Johnny Depp pirate hat.

Curriculum 2011

Math and Language Prizes
Originally uploaded by toastfloats.

Every year it gets a bit more challenging to homeschool the girls while it simultaneously gets much easier. After a year languishing in what passes for education here in Pukekohe, the girls have to get back to work.

2010 was a very enjoyable but essentially academically null year. #2 and #3 at least loved their school, respected their teachers, and learned how to reach out to children their own age. Aeron was her bouncy, generous, friendly self while reserved Mera nevertheless found ways to make connections. In particularly, Mera's experience of Kapa Haka was so positive that it would have served alone to make the school year worthwhile.

But I digress, we are talking about "Homeschooling: The Later Years." What gets easier is teaching our children. The unschoolers are essentially correct when they say that kids are information sponges when left to their own devices. Educating the girls grew easier and easier the less effort we put into it and the more we let them do it themselves. At this point, we simply put the content in their hands, set minimum targets for volume, and then let them have at it. Generally, they limp along grudgingly in topics of less interest while blowing out the targets when something engages.

Yet, there is the kernel of the problem as well. As the girls get older it gets harder to find good, self-guided instructional material... at an affordable cost. During the younger years, we relied heavily on workbooks. Workbooks were available in all subjects at the local children's educational book shop for quite reasonable prices. If we couldn't find it there, we could always go straight to the publisher and purchase our pick of workbooks in the $15 to $25 range.

The workbooks, however, start fading in about middle school and are essentially gone by high school. That's a shame because workbooks are a fantastically useful teaching tool at any age. In their place are $100 to $200 middle, high school, and college text books. When your student doesn't click with a $15 geography workbook, you try a different author or publisher. When she throws up her hands at a $100 textbook, it's tempting to bash her over the head with it.

Another problem we face as the girls get older is that they are starting to have Goals. It used to be we could select the books, the balance of one subject versus the next, and the volume and pacing with almost no input from the children. Sure, occasionally a book or program died in their hands and required replacement; Singapore Math and Calvert both immediately leap to mind. We listened and replaced, but we didn't really abandon the principle of, “Yes child... math is something we're going to master, as are spelling, writing, and science.” It's not like we ignored them, but unless the book or exercise was completely heinous (e.g. Elements of Language 1, 2 and 3), they didn't care much one way or another what we swapped out.

But now, there is a Plan. Jaime in particular has narrowly defined aspirations; Her current career objective is to become a Civil Engineer. The only question is which flavor, but the basics requirements are the same. To the end of getting admitted to a New Zealand, Australian, or U.K. University in the field, she presented me with a laundry list of subjects she wishes to study during our 2011 homeschool year. These include: Physics (NCEA 2), Statistics/Modeling, Economics, Chemistry (NCEA2), and Geoscience. I talked her into an art class only, but only after I found a really good textbook on Basic Technical Drawing. It took a visit to the iCivilEngineering web site to convince her that a computer class was essential; So we're also tackling AutoCAD next year. The later effort also required a bribe of fixing her laptop keyboard and an iTunes gift certificate. It took her father's intervention to drag her kicking and screaming into agreeing to a literature and writing survey course which he'll be conducting with Mera. God forbid we spend even a moment reading and savoring the classics. This will teach me to let my daughters hang out with engineering geeks.

Making Soap
Originally uploaded by toastfloats.

Mera's goals are less well formed. However, her critical opinion on topics and materials are considerably better articulated and delivered with a cool disdain when I somehow fail to meet her educational expectations. The literature course spearheaded by her father includes a reading list which required considerable massaging before attaining her coveted approval. She flat out veto'ed our grammar tomes and writing exercise books as both “poorly written” and “utterly useless.” And despite the fact that her mother is a professional technical writer, her father an English graduate from U.C. Berkeley, she requested that her Grandmother Nancy take responsibility for evaluating her non-fiction, Grandma Sue the fiction. She deigns to learn Science and Spanish from her father, Math from her mother, but she will teach herself Drawing, Music, and History thank you very much.

Thank all the little gods of parenting, Aeron still doesn't care.

We are hundreds of dollars into this project of School 2011. The books we've ordered are gathering at Chicken House and in the States at my mother's house. We will have no opportunity to swap out topics or texts once we leave the coast of Mexico. Our principle consolation is that old standby of cruising families everywhere. Even if they fail at homeschool, the Experience Will Educate Them. Surprisingly, this isn't sophistry. Just look at the girls' accomplishments in New Zealand. No question that somehow, some way, we are keeping up with the educational jones.

Mera is Our Academic Super Star

Mera is Our Academic Super Star
Originally uploaded by toastfloats.

I can and will write about this later... something all retrospective and interesting about homeschooling versus public school in New Zealand. Reflections on our year here. Today, I just have to say, GO MERA! Your Mom and Dad are Very very VERY proud and impressed with your accomplishments.

Dinner at Chicken House

The Bakehouse Cafe
Originally uploaded by toastfloats.

“What’s that?” I ask looking at the serving bowl in the center of the table.

“Dinner,” replies my truculent eldest. Her posture screams, “Duh.”

I nod my head thoughtfully as though Jaime has revealed newly discovered deep profoundity. Inside I speculate that this exchange is her notion of revenge. For years my reply to the daily query, “What’s for dinner?” has been the terse and uninformative, “Food.” Turn about is fair play with the Conger crew.

Mera, however, is not quite so willing to play along. She peers into the bowl dubiously, “Are you sure?”

Jaime is put out, “Of course I’m sure. I made it.”

“Well there you go,” Aeron notes. “That’s the problem.”

True enough. Jaime does a lot of things incredibly well. She’s a mean dinghy racer, she can gut and clean fish, she knows how to solve for x and y and write a five paragraph essay. She can take the helm in bad weather, put on mascara without looking like raccoon (at least most of the time), and charm the socks off just about anyone any time anywhere. However, she cannot cook.

It might be more accurate to say that she cannot cook if anyone else is in the room. I once sat down to a surprisingly tasty meal of stuffed shells and spinach salad prepared by my eldest daughter. The secret ingredient, however, wasn’t herbs and spices or caramelized onions. It was the absence of sisters, parents, or good looking young men. Given a chance to focus, she can serve us up something edible.

I look across the table at Jaime’s friend Andrew, “This is your fault.” I point to the semi-raw chunks of broccoli and the pile of half burnt, half frozen dumplings. “You did this.”

Andrew throws up his hands, “I didn’t do anything! I told her…” His voice trails off at my glare. Andrew has spent enough time at Chicken House to know that that dog won’t hunt. He distracted Jaime, and now we’re all suffering the consequences.

DrC crunches down on a chunk of broccoli, “I think we need to take your phone away.” This is his generic answer to just about any problem with Jaime.

Jaime is immediately on the defensive, “It’s good. It’s just fine. It’s great!” She attempts to demonstrate this by manfully spearing a dumpling and sluicing it in what might be soy sauce and wasabi. She briskly bites it in half and chaws the glutinous mass. I admire that she neither winces nor do her eyes water. In a choked voice she gasps, “See. Great. Just eat it.”

We Love You Anyway, Jaime
Originally uploaded by toastfloats.

There are probably very few meals easier to prepare than steamed dumplings and stir fry. Yet, I fear we must find dig deep into creative culinary chicanery to identify dishes commensurate with Jaime’s attention span. In the absence of a microwave, what we need is a magic wand that Jaime can just wave in a half-assed manner in the direction of the stove. I suggest, “Maybe next time we’ll have you do spaghetti, Jaime.”

Aeron shapes the pile of sodden rice on her plate into a gooey snow angel, “Maybe next time you’ll let her order pizza. She’s good with the phone.”

In Our Own Words

Memory Picture
Originally uploaded by toastfloats.

Today, we delivered our impact statement to the Pukekohe Police. The judge uses these statements during the sentencing phase. The thieves who took our stuff have been in jail now for a few weeks. The judge gets to decide based on what they've done and how it impacted us how long they will stay there. The court asked me to have the girls and DrC write their own statements.
---------------
It made me very mad to know someone had stolen important things that only affected me. -- Aeron Conger (9)
* * *
The burglary was very upsetting to my wife and children. We were still living out of our suit cases, having a hard time finding a place to live. The house smelled like cat piss and we weren't sure we could live here. The burglary was like someone telling us "We don't want you here." We thought our neighbors might have done it, until the thieves were caught.

Financially, we will recover, since we have property insurance. It will be a big pain in the ---- having to deal with the insurance company and keep track of everything we purchase for the next 12 months. My wife has spent many hours dealing with these issues already.

Petty thieves deserve to be punished, because their crimes are, most likely, not of necessity but of opportunity. Stealing is easier than earning an honest wage yet it causes immense emotions and societal harm. It alters our way of life on a fundamental level and changes the way we view our neighbors and fellow man. -- Dean Conger (45)
* * *
This theft hurt me personally, because many of the things that were stolen had no commercial value, but they had memorable value. They were a piece of my life. The most important stuff I owned was the stuff that was stolen and not returned. I was also hurt by the complete lack of respect that someone showed. I don't know how this could be justified. -- Jaime Conger (14)
* * *
Our family moved to New Zealand in mid-February. We pared everything we owned down to ten suitcases, seven of which were taken in the robbery. I want you to imagine that you distilled your life to just a few bags and that 70% of everything you owned was then taken from you. This was a financial loss, certainly. It was a more devastating personal loss to all of us as things we valued very much were taken.

Financially, we will recover from our insurance company roughly two thirds of our total estimated replacement cost loss of $X,000 USD ($Y,000 NZD). The difference is primarily due to depreciation on the high value electronics, medical equipment and marine equipment that were in the bags. Another large fraction of the unrecouped loss comes from a single item: a folio containing business, educational, medical, and recreational software which the insurance firm will not recover. The irony is that the majority of the recreational disks are not actually functional in New Zealand. We also lost no small amount of accumulated data on the external hard drives which will take years to recover. We had copied all our movies and music on to those hard drives so that we might leave the original disks in the States. The work effort represented is a dead loss.

Emotionally, the issue is more challenging. After two years in Mexico, it was strange to feel that we were considerably less safe in New Zealand… a country reknown for its low crime and corruption rates. I think immediately after the theft, we all just wanted to go back to Baja where we would feel safer. Gradually we are pulling out of that and beginning to enjoy ourselves again. However, the entire incident dramatically shook our confidence. I must stress that the actions of the Pukekohe Police -- their consideration, respect, and diligence -- have materially helped the entire family in this recovery process.

Personally, the hardest moment for me was walking into the garage where our things were found. Everything of monetary value had, of course, already been taken elsewhere -- sold or traded, who knows. But there in the garage were so many precious bits of our lives. And they had thrown these bits -- diaries, pictures, souvenirs, children's clothing, letters and mementos and homemade jewelry and gifts -- into the trash. My daughters' most precious possessions were mixed with dirty rags, empty soda bottles and food wrappers. It made me cry then and it makes cry now to type it. Our lives meant absolutely NOTHING to these people. They felt NOTHING when they treated us like garbage. It is hard to have even the slightest empathy or sympathy or respect for someone whose values are so distorted that they miss the most obvious value of such things.

Immediately after this happened, Mera and Aeron agreed that the punishment for a crime such as this one would be to take the most valuable, precious and important thing the thief owns and burn it. Just burn it. But when they got some of those things back, they came to me… separately… and said no. Don't do that. Because no matter how bad the thieves were, we can not be that cruel. It just hurts too much to lose something that important. I will defer to my daughters on this point, and leave the notion of justice to someone considerably more objective than myself. Personally, I feel far more Mama Bear and mean. -- Karen Toast Conger (42)

* * *
It felt like an earthquake. The stable thought you get that no one is bad or evil and nothing bad will happen gets shaken up and destroyed. I thought that like an earthquake as well, it is sudden and quick, but takes days or even months to heal. But it also reminded me that our possessions are not our family. They don't matter nearly as much as my Mom or Dad or my sisters. Still, it was a constant burr in my side afterwards, remembering all the useful, important, silly, or just normal stuff that were now gone forever. The things that probably hurt the most were my diaries and my Mom's life-time jewelry. By some miracle, the thieves missed the jewelry and were caught by the police, so once I got my diaries back, everything else didn't matter too much any more. But I can still remember turning into a waterworks, Mom trying to pull it together, our empty, run-down house, and the question that usually comes at times like that. Why? -- Mera Conger (11)

The Ultimate Purge

Okay, most of you know that usually I write, let the content percolate, edit, and then after much editing release. But today something really really bad happened and enough of you are "need to know" that it's easier to post it here. My apologies for the lack of professionalism and the time shifting.

To bring you up to date, we found a house we really like in a town we really like south of DrC's work. We've done most of the work to get the kids into school, and we were all set to move in this weekend.

The problem is that the house -- which we call Chicken House because chickens were browsing in the front yard the first time we saw it -- smells like cat piss. In fact, I think the former tenant locked about a dozen cats in the front half of the house for several months without a litter box. It smelled a bit when we visited it, but we thought we could take care of it with cleaning.

Strike One. Cleaning didn't get rid of the smell. Removing the carpets in the affected rooms didn't get rid of the smell. In fact, the hardwood beneath the carpets is so seriously damaged, I'm at a loss what can be done to fix it. So we opened up the windows, left them with their little security latches, and fled the house yesterday.

Strike Two. Today we got back to the house and the smell was worse. This wasn't the terrible part. The terrible part was that the suitcases we had left in the dining room were gone. And the two boxes, my sewing machine, DrC's backpack, Mera's new school back pack, and my sewing kit. Gone. Investigation revealed that someone had broken in through a back window, opened a side door, and rolled off with everything we own.

The nice police man Chris told us that it would have helped if we'd dogged all the windows, but that the job was done by someone watching the house. It was probably a neighbor or the former tenant, we believe.

The nice Victim Support counselor said she could find us some kit, some clothes, some furniture. She also said the house was unlivable with the smell. Good it's not just my opinion.

The nice woman at the broker said she'd get the landlord over there to figure out what to do about the smell and to investigate whether additional locks on the windows or an alarm system might make sense.

All these nice people just made me cry. Of the 10 cases of personal and household goods we so arduously packed and shlepped from La Paz to New Zealand, we have two left. We have a few items of clothing, the kids most precious dolls and blankies, my laptop, and DrC's iTouch. We don't have hard drives, boat gear, or business clothes. We don't have our Rapid Chef cookware or my collapsible measuring cups, the sewing machine or sewing kit my mother put together for Christmas. We don't have Mera's diaries or the collection of bits and bobs Aeron stowed in the wooden painted chest that we also no longer have. We don't have the files I did for my client last month -- or the backup I put on the hard drives -- or the software disks I use to create the files I build for my clients. We're missing three computers, three external hard drives, a handheld GPS that kept us from running aground countless times, our captain's log for Don Quixote, and all our paperwork for the boat.

A couple things on the positive side. First, all of DrC's credentialing papers and his disks with his grandparents videos are all here at the hotel for no reason we can understand. Also, when we were in Sacramento in August, we made a copy of those external hard drives so all we've potentially lost is Sep 09 to Jan 10 when I got my new laptop. Frankly, the best of it is on this blog or on Flickr. We still have the kids' most precious items they can't live without as well as our guest book from Don Quixote. Finally, the mysterious gremlins of fate tossed my ziplock baggie of precious jewelry on the floor where it lay... completely obvious to anyone looking. There it is... my wedding ring, the jewels DrC gave me when the girls were born, the jade from my grandmother and the fake silver charm bracelet Mera gave me for Christmas this year.

Perhaps the biggest thing on the positive column, however, is my daughters. We all cried at first. Mera lost the most and cried the most. Initially. But after a few hours and on the drive home, they all sort of reluctantly admitted to me that they weren't terribly upset. In fact, the girls are almost over it. Jaime said, "Compared to leaving Isabel and Sam or Don Quixote or Dulci, this doesn't feel so bad." Aeron and Mera agreed pointing out that it was much more upsetting saying good bye to Uncle Glenn or Heather or Pamela or Noey or Carolyn... before the list got us all sobbing again I cut them off.

My girls are so resilient. Isn't that one of the major reasons we decided to do all this? They are so equipped to handle disaster. They are better equipped than their mother who fell apart in front of the nice policy man, the nice victim lady, the broker, my husband, the grocer, my blog audience. They are so strong, so capable, and so unattached to things.

Jaime remarked, "At least I didn't lose my birthday gift... I still remember the sea lion biting my foot."

To which Mera agreed wholeheartedly, "I think that proves we should just keep giving experiences for presents, don't you?"

"Okay, Mom, for my next birthday, I want to go to the Rainbow Park!" chimes in Aeron.

Okay, well, this was one hell of an experience. Whoever gave it to us, I'd like to know the return policy.

So Long and Thanks for All the Fish

Mera Checks It Out
Originally uploaded by toastfloats.

The hardest part is saying goodbye. It's a dirty secret in cruising that we say good bye all the time. Every time we leave an anchorage, there is a strong probability we will never see our fellow cruisers again. Every time we enter a new harbor, there's a chance we'll see long standing friends or go through the process of making new ones. It's a complete roulette wheel. We all either adapt to this constant flux of known and unknown, or cruising instead devolves into sequential trials of the heart as people we respect and admire disappear from our lives.

For some, this itinerant life poses no great challenge. Either their relationships with their boat family are so strong and sufficient as to require no supplemental entertainment, or they don't like people anyway. DrC falls into this category. It's not that he's asocial. Exactly. He's just very self-contained. Mera, too, finds very little trouble drifting from one set of people to another. Neither of them easily or quickly create strong bonds so we rarely spend enough time with any boat to build the kind of trust and closeness required to make our departure difficult for my husband and middle child. When they do place their trust in someone, the relationship is forever. DrC can still go on a rant because kids he knew in high school are not responding to his friends request on Facebook. He is an incredibly loyal and persistent friend for whom distance, time and absence mean exactly nothing. Noey, Uncle Glenn, Hbunny and Greg better keep this in mind. A similar pattern is evolving in Mera.

Other cruisers become social butterflies, making friends rapidly through exchanged confidences and culinary tidbits but easily trading one group of friends and boats for another. This is a highly adaptive approach which opens the decks of many boats to new conversations and ideas. Jaime and I fit this mold. While for the most part, we do not develop deep or lasting relationships, we sincerely appreciate and enjoy the people we meet. We regret saying good bye to friends, but we know that we'll either see them again... or we won't. It's not a problem. We delight in each other's company for the time that we have and when it's time to leave, we simply move on. This is not to say that either Jaime and I have not developed strong relationships with some of our fellow cruisers. However, these are actually the exception which prove the generally fickle rule. And most of those friends for whom we feel a lasting bond are those we can easily and readily access via the Internet. Jaime and I are truly digital natives.

Another group of cruisers find a compromise solution in the buddy boat. These cruisers identify like minded traveling souls with at least roughly similar interests and boat performance and travel together everywhere they go. You frequently see this pattern with kid boats who will move in groups of two, three or even more, but you see it in the older couples as well. The advantage is that the comfort and stability of your ongoing relationship with your buddy boat offsets the temporary sadness and loneliness engendered by leaving friends behind over and over again. I think that in the long run, even DrC would have to come to grips with this model if we were going to continue cruising, because on our boat we have one of the most challenging personality types.

Unfortunately, Aeron falls into another category of cruiser entirely. She loves deeply, immediately, and passionately. She is loyal and generous with her heart. Her charm and ready smile endear her to cruisers of all ages, and she rewards their time and attention with her trust and wit. However, each departure rips her apart. It's not just the kid boats, the little girls friends like Skylar (Ocean Blue) or Caroline (Windfall). She cried when we left Meerkat, Endless Summer, Victory Cat, and Profligate last spring. She was nearly hysterical leaving behind Beach Access and Precious Metal last week. These weeks leading up to leaving Don Quixote and Mexico behind – probably forever as a family – are chipping away at her soul leaving her a sad parody of her normal bubbly self. Each time we leave a port, I brace myself for the tears and the deep sadness. It wrenches the heart to see our baby so horribly off kilter.

Aeron and Uncle Glenn
Originally uploaded by toastfloats.

This is part of cruising I welcome putting behind us. For at least a year, we will stop moving, stop saying good bye every few days. My little girl will grow a full year in the company of the same group of children and adults. I hope that if we do take up a gypsy hiking or biking lifestyle again after our year down south, Aeron will have grown and matured sufficiently that it doesn't hurt so much. Or maybe it is more accurate to say that we will not take up a nomadic lifestyle again until Aeron is emotionally ready to undertake the challenges, or she is off to college and her happiness in her own hands.

Interview: Mera at One Year

Title: Interview: Mera At the End of the First Year
Tags: cruising, children, Mera

Sunset with Mera
Originally uploaded by toastfloats.

Roughly a year ago, Keet asked me to interview the girls about their experience as boating kids and their thoughts on the future. The time has come to update their answers and ask a few new questions.

* * *

Q: What do you think about our plans for the coming year?
Very hazy. I don't really know the big idea of what we are going to do. I probably didn't know what we were going to do last year either. I'm sure whatever it is will be fun because it always seems fun.

Q: What was your favorite place to go or thing to do during our first year?
Can I have more than one? Yes.Mostly the outdoor sports. The place I liked to go best was probably Fake Mexico after a long trip by ourselves, 'cause Fake Mexico has pools, it has people, it has escape from the solitary life and it is fake so you can laugh about that. My favorite thing to do is always read.

Q: What was your worst time during the first year?
Moving into Jaime's room. Jaime's reaction and she wouldn't talk to me for a week after that... maybe even more than a week. Daddy: Was that a good thing or a bad thing? Daaaadd... *snort*

Q: What is your favorite thing to do as a boat kid?
Play with my spy kit and swing around on the mast. You definitely can't do that because you don't have a mast on shore. My favorite thing to do is watch the cat, she's an endless source of fascination, particularly since she decided to climb the mast is her goal. One day, I swear that cat is going to run off the end of the boat.

Q: What is the thing you hate most as a boat kid?
I hate jellyfish. I had a very scary incident with a jellyfish. I hate seasickness. I've been on this boat for a long time and I still can't stop from getting queasy when we go on a long passage. It's even harder when Aeron starts reading in the cabin in the dark when the boats swinging up and down and around and around. She's got a stomach as hard as a rock.

Q: Are there any places you want to go or see during the coming year? Where would you insist that we go again?
In the coming year, I insist we go to all the national parks that we can. The place that I want to visit again that we've already been would probably be … San Simeon. That was probably one of the most beautiful anchorages we've ever been in.

Q: Can you tell us one thing that makes boating families special?
Well, we are a lot more honest with each other because we have to be. We trust each other with certain things more than other families do and we can speak about what we think except for Dad and Jaime. Though, Dad has started to talk a little bit more.

Q: Would you like to shout out to any boat buddies or boat kids who might be following this blog?
It's going to be a list: Sunbreak, Bay Wolf, Windfall, Third Day, Sirius Star, Beach Access, Noey, HB... though maybe he would get less messed up if we called him Hbunny. Are Max and Kat following the blog? I think so...Max and Kat. Profligate, Victory Cat, and Totem. Excellent Adventure and Rubber Duckies. And Endless Summer. And Sea Level.

If folks wanted to send a care package, what would want in it?
Books. Lots of books. Things for my spy kit. I've already got a magnifying glass, so don't worry about that. I need a good set of binoculars, microphones I could plant somewhere... could be cheap but it would look cool, well I'm sure people are creative enough to think of stuff on their own. The problem with my spy packet is that lots of the stuff that I have is broken... like a broken phone. Most of the stuff a spy kit needs is imagined stuff. But at least it's there. So I don't really need working stuff. I would like a telescope... one of those pirate telescopes that you can just fold back in? Besides my spy kit, I like candy and I like mail. I like to know what's going on in your lives. And I like origami so if any one has new sheets of paper. And directions for origami. So far I have limited directions. I can't get them down here because they are in spanish.

Q: Anything else you'd like to add?
I'm not done listing people. All right: Gruncle T, my grandparents, Gruncle Dale, Polly. Hey everbody, I'm thinking to buy a small computer. This time it's for real. No regular Santa Wish. I'm going to buy a notebook computer. Mom is going to help me put all the applications on it this summer. I want email, an ebook reader... I want WoW but Mom says it won't fit or run or something... Mom is just going to take care of it.

Afternoon Breeze
Originally uploaded by toastfloats.