ABOUT ME! Who is This Crazy Lady and Her Kid She Calls Little Moe?

And a Little Bit About Suzy Q as Well!

Well, the first thing I have to tell you about me is that I am NOT your typical Homeschool mom. But then again, after meeting lots of other homeschoolers, I'm not really sure there is a typical homeschool mom.

I got the harebrained idea to homeschool my kids when Suzy Q came home from Middle School one day and said that some random parent walked into one of her classes and tried to beat up a student.

Yes, THAT was "the incident" I wrote about on another page. The principal denied it, lied about it, and then confessed and downplayed it. After all that we made the decision to homeschool.

Later Suzy Q told me that there were several 7th graders pregnant and many of them did drugs at the "Boys and Girls Club" that was located on campus.

Now, I know what you are thinking - she must have lived in a pretty bad area, but you'd be wrong. We lived in a charming college town with a school district that consistently had high ranking schools, (this middle school wasn't one of them though).

Little Moe came home from private school the next year (after we had a miserable failure over at one of the best charter schools in the state). I loved that private school and he would probably have never been homeschooled if I wasn't dead broke and his father refused to pay child support, but ya know...everything happens for a reason and life goes on.

It has been quite a journey, let me tell you. I've floundered and failed at this stuff more than once, but in the end everything worked out for us.

Suzy Q has gone on to graduate from homeschool. (She did try public school again in the 10th grade so she could "Socialize" but she got very bored with that and came home for 11th and 12th on her own accord.)

Little Moe recently skipped the 5th grade because he just accomplished so much in the 4th grade that it was the only logical thing to do. He made the transition into 6th grade this year without a hitch, as I knew he would.

During this time I was in college. The entire time. In fact I just finished my Masters in December of 2008.

I started out in undergrad and thought that I might as well just buckle down a few more years and go for the gold. It paid off I think and I learned soooooo much in the process.

Right now we live on a small farm in rural Colorado and I raise waterfowl (like ducks and geese!) I have a ton of ducks and geese - from the ornamental Mandarin and Wood Ducks to the annoying little calls, ducks are awesome. I raise a heritage breed goose called the American Buff and the ever beautiful and popular Giant Dewlap Toulouse.

I also have two donkeys (Paris and Nicole) 5 dogs, 2 cats, 3 rabbits, and 1 chicken. I am an animal lover, if you can't tell!

If you're wondering how I manage to homeschool as a single mom - well it hasn't always been easy. Right now I have a work from home job (A REAL work from home job) and my homeschool curriculum called Simple Schooling. These things, together with this website, pay my bills.

I don't live a lavish lifestyle but it is my lifestyle and I live it on my own terms. If you ask me, that makes me one of the richest people in the world.

So I hope you learned a little bit about me here and I hope you will continue to visit The Simple Homeschool often!

Oh yes, what about Little Moe you say? Not his real name of course, just a fun substitute. If you've ever seen Home Alone 2, I got Little Moe from the scene out of Angels With Even Filthier Souls!

And if you really want to know the gory details about my science background here it is:

Graduated with BS in Equine/Animal Science 3.5 GPA. Originally I was headed to vet school, but after working in the neo-natal equine unit at a major vet hospital - I decided that it was too depressing to always be dealing with sick animals.

Classes I took were: biology I, Biology II, statistics, chemistry, organic chemistry, metabolism and biochemistry, anatomy and physiology, animal nutrition, animal reproduction, animal science, endocrinology, undergraduate research, physics, cell biology, calculus, microbiology, equine diseases, animal breeding and genetics, and electives - most of which were equine related.

I caught the scientific research bug when I was accepted into a prestigious undergraduate research program and did some clinical research in the area of equine nutrition. After that summer I was definitely headed towards grad school and started looking around. My first choice school couldn't provide a stipend, and my second choice school was out of state, which didn't work for my kids. So I decided to go to a very big, top 20 in NIH funding medical school for a PhD program. At that school I took:

Molecular biology, developmental biology, cellular biology, reproductive endocrinology, biochemistry and metabolism, biology of disease, protein structure, analytical methods, genetics, and ethics in research.

That program ended up not being the right fit for me because, to be honest, basic science grad students are not supposed to have a life and my superiors couldn't get over the fact that I had time in my day to homeschool. They encouraged me to give public school another try.

So I left.

And completed my Masters in forensic toxicology instead. In that program I was back in my comfort zone taking a lot of metabolism, the subject that got me interested in research in the first place.

So that is the long and short of my science background. I currently work in the field of environmental protection. If you have any other questions about me...just ask!

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