Click here to listen to Cindy's song of the day whilst you read. (opens in a new window)

There i something I've always wanted to do on a website, and that's to create a place that would remind you of my home, had you been over for a visit. I mean, isn't that what I'm doing anyway? Inviting you into my world? Yeppers, I sure think so. So, if you were here, this is what you'd find. Nothing fancy (or matching, at this point), just a down-home, simple place. Full of warm colors, good smells of candles, cooking and (right now) orange juice, and me sharing my two favorite things in the world with you. I have no idea if this will work, but hey, I had no idea how to do a statewide homeschool conference, either. It came off beautifully, tho. And that's life for ya. Or more apropos, that's unschooling.

My first favorite thing: Writing. I started writing at the age of 0, I think. According to my grandmother, I popped out of the womb, already in love with words I couldn't even read or write yet. As a baby, whenever I'd start fussing, Gram would read to me or tell me stories of her childhood, and as soon as she'd start talking, I'd grow quiet and calm. When my pudgy little hands finally figured out how to grasp a crayon, I advanced to scribbling on anything and everything handy; napkins, scratch paper, placemats, the sidewalk, the insides of books. I drew picture after picture of princesses with pointy cone hats and veils, extremely big teeth (I liked toothy smiles, apparently, but never got the hang of drawing them) and for some reason, my gals were almost always walking up or down stairs. I scribbled long pages of text, telling the story of what each of my princesses were doing, but don't ask me what I wrote. Maybe a hypnotist could go that far back in my little girl's mind, but I sure can't. By my teenage years, I was into composing lovesick / angst-ridden poetry and things-that-go-bump-in-the-night short stories. I had one published once, but it's not competition Stephen King would ever have to worry about or anything. Adulthood was filled with children, working and homeschooling, and writing about homeschooling. (if you're really interested in what I've done previously, see About Me in the sidebar)

My second favorite love has always been music. From toddlerhood on, music, both current songs and what they now call "oldies", enthralled me. Elvis would come on the radio, for instance, and I'd stop pulling myself up on the furniture, my eyes wide, and listen (He still has that affect on me sometimes. Except, I know how to walk now). Music became even more a core of my life because my parents bought a beer bar/restaurant combo in Wisconsin when I was 4. I grew up there, in an apartment above it, til the age of 14. My job, besides waitressing in Gram's restaurant, was to take care of the 45 rpm records that came off our jukebox. I think I was about 6 or 7 when I started doing this. The reason my mom picked me (over my 2 older sisters) for the job is because 1) I was forever bugging customers for a dime for the juke, 2) I knew what song was going to play "as soon as the needle hit the record", and 3) they could never find me to do my waitressing. I was either singing and dancing by the jukebox, or holed up in the apartment upstairs, glued to the hi-fi (that's a stereo to you youngins) or my AM radio, listening to a warbly, static-filled WLS out of Chicago.

When I was 15 and had moved to Colorado, I got this hankering to be a radio d.j. My mom suggested that I find out what the job was really like before diving in. Good idea, mom. (It wasn't the first time she suggested an unschooling route for learning something, but I'll bet she'd be surprised to know that how she taught us kids to learn had a name.) So, I spent my entire 15th summer calling up the d.j.'s on my favorite radio stations and talking to them in between songs. It was fun, interesting and ultimately disheartening to find that the d.j.'s don't determine most of what they play. 90% of it is pre-chosen by the programming manager. PMs, according to the disc jockeys, attended meetings, wrote reports and calculated what amount of radio play each song would get, to appeal to the right audience and generate good revenue. Ugh. I neither wanted to wade thru statistics all day or play someone else's list of songs, pretending that I liked them all. I wanted freedom, maybe even my own radio station. Like the rockin' one Stephen King eventually started.

Perhaps I'll get rich enough one day to have such a thing. I'll invite you over. In the meantime, this is all we have. Welcome to Cindy's Place.

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Tags: music | oldies | unschooled