Remember when this used to be a big deal?

This was the issue that was going to make a difference. The one with articles that took chances. The one that might mark a turning point in the magazine's career.

This is the issue that has articles about homeschoolers talking to our kids about death -- and the article assumes you're a non-religious homeschooler. I hastened to add in a promotional posting that much of the advice is also applicable to those who are religious, and that cracked me up. Isn't it always the other way around? Aren't we the ones who are always being told to just ignore the religious stuff, and this textbook, workbook, or curriculum will work almost as well for us as it does for the fundies?

Usually when I post about a new issue on a few non-religious loops I'm on, there's a burst of response -- both in sales and postings. Not huge, just cozy. "All right! A new issue of our magazine!"

This issue, the budget was so tight that I went ahead and did some promotional postings the night before I went out and bought stamps for the mailings. I couldn't buy one stamp more than was absolutely necessary. My PayPal account is in the low three digits as it is.

I posted a full report of all the articles that speak to heathen pagan nonbeliever unbeliever nondogmatic moderately-religious alternatively-religious homeschoolers. I also asked that people who like the magazine, like the sound of the magazine, or just like the fact that there's a secular homeschooling magazine out there please spread the word, as this was an exceptionally tight issue, budget-wise.

I figured I'd check my mail in the morning, right before I went to the post office, and adjust my purchase accordingly.

I didn't buy one more stamp than I'd already planned to, because I didn't get one response. No sales. No "huzzah, a new issue" postings.

Well, okay. My husband had a lot of work to catch up on, so he hadn't posted the articles to read for free yet. He'd post them that night, and I'd put word out that they were available to read, and then people would feel like they weren't being asked to buy a pig in a poke.

So the articles went up, and I posted that they were up for reading. I was excited about that. One of them is a humor piece -- those usually get a pretty good response. And one of them is about the new Joy Hakim book. People would have a chance to read about an approved-for-public-schools science book that quotes from the Bible.

So the next day I opened up my email eagerly. More about this later, but I thrive on feedback. It really keeps me going.

Nothing.

"You know, my usual loops have been really slow these past couple of days," my husband said. "We're talking about half the usual postings. Maybe it's the election or something, but people don't seem to be around. Are your loops slower than usual?"

Oh. Maybe that was it.

That EXACT day, someone posted about how she'd like to know where everyone on the loop lived -- and pluck a duck, dozens of people posted replies by the end of the day.

They were out there. They were reading. They were even in the mood to chat.

Okay. I posted to a specifically atheist homeschooling loop. Its readers include the author of one of the articles (a beautiful piece about letting our children make their own important decisions sometimes), as well as a lot of people who helped me out when the article about talking to our children about death was something I needed to talk about and get feedback on.

The next morning, I saw that the loop had five new messages. Great.

One posting about our new president (pro), one reply from the resident snarling anarchist (he spells said president's name "Obomba"), two replies telling him to lighten up, already, and one reply to them about how we should all cherish our differences.

I'm trying to figure out why I feel so absolutely flattened by all this silence. It's not as if I'm not screamingly busy with the orders I already have. It'll take me all weekend to finish posting those. (Thanks to Buffy and the gang for the help they're always so willing to give at times like these.)

Two things, I guess.

One is that there are some kinds of writing I do just because I feel like it. The kind of thing that will probably never sell -- I may not even try to sell it -- but it just makes me happy.

Magazine writing isn't like that, at least not the stuff I do for this magazine. The only column for SHM that I ever did just for fun was "Our Continuing Education," and I dropped it a couple of issues ago because it wasn't getting any feedback and we needed the room for stuff people were actually reading.

I get a sense of satisfaction from the work I do, but it's not the kind of enjoyment that says, "Hey, I'd do this even if no one but me was here to read it." How could that be? Researched articles and product reviews have no reason to exist if no one other than the writer is reading them.

So the only reason to write them is for money or feedback.

The only reason to make a magazine is for money or feedback.

So the lack of either -- especially when I've been able to count on some every time a new issue comes out -- feels weird. Like I just went to my local homeschooling gathering, shouted out a cheerful hello, and announced that I'd brought brownies -- and no one so much as glanced my way.

Here's the other thing that's nagging at me.

A friend of mine -- the friend I mention chatting with over cups of caramel tea in the current "Here We Go Again" column -- told me once that the right wing is better at getting what it wants politically than the left. (She'd just read a book on this subject, and yes, I can't remember the title.) She said that when there's a candidate or an issue on the right, right-wing types just plain show their support. They pour money, time, and votes into it. Whereas when there's a left-wing politician up for election, for instance, the left will quibble about this, that, and the other -- and anyone who has children of a certain age and temperament knows exactly the kind of thing I mean. "Remember when she said this, and it sounded kind of like that, and I just don't like her any more..." And the politician won't get elected, and the left will feel very bitter about the fact that they never have a representative who really represents them.

I started this magazine because there was a need for it. Because there wasn't one general interest, non-religious homeschooling magazine out there. (Home Education Magazine is wonderful -- they bought two articles from me, pre-SHM -- but they are primarily unschooling in focus [check their recommendations to people interested in writing for them] and they have plenty of religious advertising.)

So I started a magazine with a name that wasn't some namby-pamby wimp-out. (I don't mean Home Ed Mag. I mean all the magazines that don't have the stones to admit in their titles that they write for an evangelical audience.) The name of my magazine said exactly what it was and who it was for. I barred the door to religious advertisers. I wrote and ran a piece in the first issue that was so funny people liked it enough to steal it.

And I do have some faithful, funny, much-beloved subscribers. And I do get some great feedback.

Here's what else I get.

One person said that she stopped buying it because there were too many long articles, and she wants pieces that sum an idea up quick and fast because she doesn't have time to do all that reading. (Do NOT ask me to tell you how much time this person spends reading and posting on various loops.)

One person said that she stopped buying it because the cover wasn't glossy, and that just didn't say "magazine" to her.

One person said that she could never pay that much for a magazine (my cover price is fifty cents more than Home Ed Mag) unless it was something really big and thick, like The Old Schoolhouse. Although come to think of it, a lot of TOS was ads, and the magazine itself had gotten pretty religious lately, which really annoyed her.

I don't mean that I want my beloved eclectic fellow wacky homeschoolers to go all mono. The idea of unquestioning single-issue dogmatism is repulsive to me.

And I sure as hell don't think the world -- or even the secular homeschooling world -- owes me a living. Especially in this economy.

But this deafening silence is freaking me out.

Didn’t a secular homeschooling magazine used to be a big deal?

Back to stamping envelopes. I need to end this day feeling like I did something worth doing.

Christmas tree down, magazine home

Okay, I refuse to take all the blame for the tree staying up until mid-January. The weekend that we were going to take it down, my husband and I both came down with a stomach bug. Believe me, I would have been fine with ordering my ten-year-old to do the job; but there are breakable ornaments up there that I've had since I bought my own first tree at the age of seventeen (two feet tall, to fit into my attic bedroom at the home for multiply disabled children in which I lived and worked, and yes, I modeled my life after Jane Eyre's). I may come across as tough and cynical in print, but I'd tear up, or at least come out with some very un-Christmaslike language, if anyone shattered one of my little glass icicles.

The problem with leaving the tree up too long, other than being mocked by friends and loved ones with no defense possible, is that you lose all that momentum from the holiday season, and every day that passes makes it that much harder to just do it, already. You're back in the rhythm of ordinary days, and you really have to push to fit a major job like undecorating and disassembling a dusty tree.

But it was getting to the point that the floor was visibly gritty, because I kept not cleaning it because I was waiting to give it a really good cleaning after the tree came down. And then, since that wasn't quite incentive enough to get me and mine off our collective duff, the new issue of the magazine went out to the printer, and sooner or later they were going to demand that I come and pick it up and take it home.

I can fit a Christmas tree into my tiny living room, as long as I don't mind not opening the curtain to our tiny balcony and my son doesn't mind sitting extra close to his tiny piano. (Okay, it's a keyboard; but it looks and acts like a piano.) And I can fit the boxes necessary for several hundred copies of SHM in my living room, as long as I keep the faith that they're going to gradually empty out and drift away, usually just in time for the hundreds of copies of the next issue to show up. But I can't have boxes and boxes of magazine and a tree. That way madness lies.

So the tree came down. It took way longer to finish the job than it should have, since I'm a complete and total control freak and I had to allot a certain number of hours to screaming at the other members of my household for not wrapping certain delicate ornaments in enough soft stuff, as well as wrapping sturdy ornaments too thoroughly.

But we got it done, and if anything got broken I won't know until next year.

So then I cleaned the horrifying floor. I did this while listening to Stephen Colbert's I Am America (And So Can You!) This was rather a surreal experience, since Colbert reads the book himself in his television persona and is entirely too good at it, in my opinion. I had to keep turning it off and reminding myself who had won the presidential election.

So then I had less than a day to enjoy my shiny floor, which is just as well since we don't want me going all Stepford, do we. I called the printer this morning and confirmed that the baby was safe and sound. Said printer had been alarmed a few days ago that I refused to read the galley copy all the way through before approving the job.

"I've already read this," I said to him. "The cover ads are where they should be and the center section pulls out. Run it."

"Take it home, look it over, and give me a call," he invited.

Harsh fact of life: a printer isn't going to fix a typo, unless you want to bring him a whole new file and tell him to start the job again from scratch. I wasn't going to put myself through finding some horrifying misspelling in spite of all my reading and rereading. If it was there, I didn't want to know.

"Just do it," I said now. "Print it up. If there's something wrong, it's all my fault." My deeds upon my head.

He looked dubious, which is weird since this is how I've done things since I started this mad venture. True, there was that horrifying time when the center pull-out section for kids was not, in fact, in the center of the magazine; but I caught that right in the copy shop, since it's the first thing I look for. I don't do the "take it home, look it over" thing. I come in, ask them to please print stuff, ask them to please put said stuff in boxes that are perhaps not quite so large as last time since I'm the one lugging them up the danged steps, pick up my stuff when it's ready, pay without murmuring, thank everyone in the shop (including other customers) profusely, and drive away, not to be seen again until either the next issue needs printing or I need more copies of this one. I've never once come in on some random day raving about how if only they'd let me loll around all afternoon with a galley copy of some issue or other, my life would have been different.

I don't know why the guy was going all Nellie-girl on me this time. I'd been hoping that my brisk let's-go-let's-go attitude would rub off and get me the order the very next day, especially since it's a slightly smaller order than last time; but no such luck.

But at least it's here now.

Party time.

Finally...

I'm taking the disk to the printer tomorrow -- Friday. Issue #5 of Secular Homeschooling should be born in a few days.

My husband is conked out, having spent the last couple of days going to his paying job and then coming home and finishing up the last-minute layout stuff on the magazine -- and tomorrow he has to leave at the crack of dawn on a business trip. Not exactly a good time to ask him to put up the button for ordering single copies of the new issue, though it's available in subscription form. Usually we wait until the new issue is back from the printer to put the new info up on the order page, but I might ask him to do it sooner on this one.

I'm going to do a fairly lean print run on this one. My printer doesn't give bulk discounts, and they fill my orders pretty quickly, so I can count on ordering more copies as I need them without worrying.

But it's fairly tight around here, money-wise, and I'm sick of explaining the cardboard box décor, so I'm not going to do my usual ordering lots more copies than I have orders. I'll get extras, of course. But this order will be based much more narrowly than usual on how many issues have actually been purchased thus far. Because of the money thing, and because this issue takes some chances.

I have a four-part article spread about non-religious homeschoolers talking to our children about death. One of the articles is even funny.

I have a three-part article spread about talking to our kids about sex, and one of those articles is funny. I have great respect for its author, Sue Landsman, because she makes me laugh out loud and she does it in 700 words or less. I can't sign my name in 700 words or less.

I wheedled another article out of the wonderful Madison J -- this one about how and when to talk to our kids about religion.

I’ve got a piece defending cyber charter schools as a valid homeschooling choice.

And I got angry in print at Joy Hakim for having religious content in her latest science book.

I joke about hate mail, but I don't get too much at this point, and I'm bracing for that to change.

And it's one in the morning, and I have to go to the printer tomorrow, so I'm going to bed before I start making even less sense than I already am.

Prezzies? Rezzies?

A homeschooling loop I'm on had two threads going on Christmas day: one on worst presents received, one on best.

The worst started out as someone posting about some massively inappropriate gift her small child had been given. I think minor explosives may have been involved.

The other thread pretty much explains itself, and I thought it was kind of nice to see grownups admitting that they like getting gifts. Christmas has only comparatively recently turned into a holiday that many adults think should be all about kids getting stuff. It used to be a drinking and gaming day, which is why some early American colonists were so against it. So I think grownups should demand their fair share of the fun. I don't mean going too far back to its roots and starting off the day with the announcement that, hey, it's five o'clock somewhere. I just mean that our kids and other loved ones should do something toward making it as fun a day for us as we try to make it for them.

So I thought it would be nice to start a "thread" here about what the grownups got on whatever gift-giving holiday they may have celebrated recently. Don't tell me everything, because frankly I'm not interested. But do give me some highlights.

To start things off right: my son gave me (carefully sealed up in a red and green envelope of his own making, and closed, as he was careful to point out in writing, "with see-throo™ Tape-o-rama™!") the latest installment of the adventures of the Ninja Reindeer. Yes, I received the only existing copy of "Attack of the Choc-o-hater!" You're just going to have to live without knowing all the details, but suffice it to say that Ginger and Berry outwit the evil Dr. Bratwurst yet again, and are rewarded by being invited by the CEO of Brown's Brownies to a brownie feast.

My husband made an impressive showing:  with just a little money and a lot of looking, he managed to get me a used copy in very good condition of an out-of-print book I very much wanted. It's a collection of poems that Jane Austen and her clever family wrote, mostly to one another as gifts, jokes, or tokens of love. It may not sound exciting, but it used to be much more common to dash off verse to loved ones. Some of the poems are very funny, such as the one Austen's brother James wrote to his wife on behalf of the family cat, who is very bitter about being accused of ruining the bread just because he "slept a little on the dough." He is now threatening to go on strike, and not eat another mouse or rat until the housekeeper apologizes to him for the insult to his character. There is another more somber poem by this brother about his sister Jane after her too-early death. He praises her writing, adding that though the world may know her talent in that realm, "to her family alone/Her real and genuine worth was known." It's a beautiful book, and the only thing that made me happier than finding it under the tree was knowing that it had cost much more in patience and ingenuity than it had in cash.

Speaking of ingenuity, he also gave me two gift certificates for one-pound boxes of chocolate creams at See's candy. He's learned from long experience that half the ones he picks out for me himself will turn out to be something deeply horrifying and filled with icky purple goo. Far better to let me choose for myself, and have only myself to blame if I don't get exactly what I want.

I'd also like to hear the most ghastly, horrifying gifts that you or anyone in your family received. My husband, who is still (but just barely) my husband in spite of this, gave my son and I a pair of squirrel underpants. With a picture of a squirrel wearing them. Apparently he thought that the whole chocolate-and-literature gift-giving thing was heading him toward dangerously classy territory. You may not outdo this one, but please share anyway.

I read on a blog whose name I wish I could remember that it's better to set goals at this time of the year than to make resolutions. I'd like to hear other people's advice on this topic, or goals or resolutions of their own; and if it's of any interest of all, here are my goals for 2009, in no particular order:

1. I will try not to spend the entire first month of the year mourning aloud that it's already two thousand and nine and I hadn't even gotten used to writing 2008 yet.

2. I will work toward a sensible system of housework, whereby I'm not the only one doing all of it. I will both ask for and accept help, and will also if necessary get "Stop being such a #%&%ing control freak!" tattooed on prominent parts of my anatomy.

3. I will not threaten to napalm my apartment neighbors (at least within their hearing), no matter how much they drive me crazy by hogging everything in the laundry room and taking my wet duds out of the washer before any of the dryers are free and HOW EXACTLY DOES THAT HELP ANYONE, WHEN THEY CAN'T PUT THEIR STUFF IN THE DRYER BEFORE ALL MINE IS DONE ANYWAY???

4. I will water my balcony plants regularly, change the hummingbird's sugar water at least two or three times a week, and try not to kill my virtual Chia pet more than once a month.

5. I will gradually organize my time so that my own homeschooling -- the reading, French language study, and music practice I'm trying to have as a regular part of my life -- is as much a priority as my son's. I will stop expecting time to work on these subjects to just fall magically into my lap.

6. I will way less gradually organize my time so that the magazine actually gets out on something like a regular basis.

7. I will watch the entire available body of "Angel" episodes, so that I'll know what the heck is going on in certain "Buffy" episodes.

8. I will not celebrate only getting that previous goal accomplished as a real accomplishment.

9. I will accept and rejoice in the fact that my life is a work in progress.
 
So? How 'bout you?