Episode 1: It seemed like a good idea at the time

In our first official episode of the Podcast with Suzanne and Amy, we talk about how we came to be homeschoolers, dish about what's happening in our lives right now (Jane Austen! Men in 18th century shirts! KITTENS!), and discuss the infinitely delightful Mapp and Lucia in our book talk. TRANSCRIPT BELOW!

You can listen to the podcast with the embedded player below, or download the podcast to listen to at your convenience. Of find us on iTunes. (And if you enjoy the podcast, leave us a rating—we appreciate it so much!)

• In this episode: 

• The Well-Trained Mind

• Love and Friendship

• Lady Susan

• Cold Comfort Farm

• Poldark

• Mapp and Lucia

• Greensleeves

• Mara, Daughter of the Nile

Plus: Gratuitous kitten on books photo. (Can I just point out that Suzanne also had a deer give birth to twins in her backyard this weekend? So she basically has a kitten AND baby deer right now. In related news: Life isn't fair. :))

We love to hear from you! An email to this address will always find us. 

—TRANSCRIPT—

EPISODE 1: It Seemed Like a Good Idea at the Time

Suzanne: Hello, and welcome to The Podcast with Suzanne and Amy, brought to you by home/school/life magazine. I’m Suzanne.

Amy: And I’m Amy.

Suzanne: And this is episode one for June 6th, 2016.

Amy: Yay.

Suzanne: Yay. So, hello, Amy.

Amy: Hello, Suzanne. How are you?

Suzanne: I am doing pretty well. Would you maybe like to talk about homeschooling a little bit?

Amy: I guess since it is the topic of the podcast, we probably should work it in occasionally.

Suzanne: We probably should. So when we were preparing for this, we decided to go ahead and ask each other my favorite question when I meet a new homeschooler, which is how did you get into this wonderful world of homeschooling? So Amy, how did you get into homeschooling?

Amy: Well, not on purpose, for sure. We definitely did not set out to be homeschoolers. When my daughter was born, I worked full-time, and I thought, “I’ll go to work. She’ll go to school. We’ll both do fabulously.” And we did kind of until about second grade when it became clear that school just was not really working out for my daughter. She did well. She got good grades, but every single day I was getting a note home from her second grade teacher saying things like, “Your daughter doodled on her spelling test today.”

Suzanne: Oh.

Amy: “Can you please talk to her about not doing that?” Or, “Your daughter was humming during her math test today.”

Suzanne: Wow.

Amy: “Could you please talk to her about not doing that?” Or, “Your daughter was sitting cross-legged in her chair today while she was eating. Could you please talk to her about not doing that?”

Suzanne: Oh, my gosh.

Amy: Well, and I mean, in a big picture way, I get it. Teaching a whole classroom full of kids must be so hard, and you probably do have to set boundaries that maybe same strident to people who aren't there in the classroom with 30 kids every day.

Suzanne: Right.

Amy: But it was just obvious that my poor daughter, if she was ever going to be happy in that classroom and do well, would have to really, really change a lot of things about the way that she apparently learned. And I remember, there’s this moment where I just thought, “Why are we doing this? Why are we trying to make school a place that she hates?” And so we really weren’t sure what to do. We thought about private schools, but they are so expensive. I mean, it’s like paying for college three times, and we have two kids. There’s just no way.

And we looked at other alternatives, but there was all this complicated hoop-jumping. You had charter schools, but you had to apply, and there were lotteries, and it all seemed way more than my brain could handle. So I thought, “Well, what about homeschooling?” Because even if its not what we do forever, it would work for now.

Suzanne: Right.

Amy: It would be an immediate solution, and it would give us time to figure out what we really wanted to do. Ha, ha, ha.

Suzanne: And so it began.

Amy: Almost seven years later, here we are, still homeschooling. It turned out that homeschooling was the perfect fit for us. We ended up changing a lot of things about our everyday life — like my job changed. But it’s clearly been such a good decision for us. And my son, who's eight now—

Suzanne: Oh, gosh.

Amy: ... has never been to a traditional school. So I guess we fell into homeschooling, but we’re really, really glad we did. What about you? How did you guys start homeschooling?

Suzanne: Well, I think we talked about last time, it seemed like a good idea at the time. I guess, I should start out, I’m a mother of four. I have four kids, boy, girl, girl, boy. And we’ve homeschooled from the very beginning. And the way that started was... Gosh, so many years ago when my oldest was about three and a half, and I had a baby at home, and I was home with them. I was a stay-at-home mom at that time, and I was in a neighborhood playgroup with about seven or eight other moms and their kids. And these were all our first kids. And everybody was putting their kids into preschool, everybody. I was the only one that didn't have my kid in preschool. And even though, I mean, nobody was pointing at me and laughing or anything. I mean, it was strange how much pressure I felt that this is what all the people are doing, and why aren’t you doing it?

And the reason we didn't have him in preschool was, first of all, we were broke because I was at home. And then the other reason was I just didn't feel like my three-year-old was ready for preschool. He was not super clingy, but I just couldn’t see dropping him off somewhere every day. I just did not think that he was at a point where he would enjoy it. Whereas some of the other kids in the playgroup, I mean, clearly they were there.

And, so I thought a lot about how this, okay, I’m already the odd one out. I’m already weird in that everybody else has their kids in preschool, and I don’t. And they’re starting to talk about pre-K, and they’re going places, and they’re researching, and they’re getting on waiting lists, and it was just stressful and weird. And around that time, NPR did a week-long series on homeschooling, and I don't remember much about it. I think it was kind of modern homeschooling, and the approach... Oh, what’s the Buffy line that, about?

Amy: Oh, homeschooling. “It’s not just for scary religious types anymore.”

Suzanne: Exactly, exactly. So it was kind of that approach. And they were talking to normal homeschool families. So I remember listening to the stories, and there was one day where they had a family that was at home, and they were recording them, and I could just picture, and they were saying they were all in a big easy chair, and the kids were piled on the mom, and the mom was reading Harry Potter to them. So I know that you don’t have to homeschool to read aloud to your children.

Amy: Right.

Suzanne: I am aware. But there was something about that image, like, “Wait, that’s what I could be doing,” that just really spoke to me. So after that, Amy will not be surprised to hear, I went to the library, and I checked out every single book, a literal stack of books, that they had on homeschooling and secular homeschooling, because I knew we were coming at it from a secular perspective. And I was really lucky. This is like 2001. So there was a stack of books for me to check out. If I had gone even maybe even three years earlier, those books would not have been published yet.

Amy: Right.

Suzanne: They were all hot off the presses. But I came home, and I put the stack next to the bed. So I’m there, and my husband’s next to me, and I’m just going through the stack. And I get halfway through the stack, and I turned to him and said, “I think we could do this.” And then I got to The Well-Trained Mind —

Amy: Ah.

Suzanne: ... by Susan Wise Bauer and Jesse Wise-

Amy: A classic.

Suzanne: I know I was looking it up on Amazon to make sure I got the author’s names right, and they’re going into their fourth edition this summer.

Amy: It’s a great book. I mean, I think that whatever style of homeschooling you feel pulled toward, you should read that book because it just makes you feel like you can do everything.

Suzanne: Exactly. Well, and it was just, I mean, the way they approached literature. Anyway, I read that book, and then I turned again. I turned to my poor husband and said, “This is what we are going to do.” And kind of didn’t, but that’s a whole other story. But anyway, so that was me making the decision.

And I ordered a giant box from Rainbow Resource, and I never looked back, which is very odd. I mean, I would never have guessed that I would end up homeschooling because I am middle-of-the-road, mainstream, never met a rule I didn't want to follow. What would I be doing with this weird fringy, bizaro, homeschool situation?

Amy: Right. It seemed like something that people who weren’t like me did.

Suzanne: Exactly.

Amy: People who were more together, or smarter or more organized or more in control.

Suzanne: Oh, no, I didn’t go in that direction. I was like, “Oh, this is a bunch of weirdos who are doing this.”

Amy: Well, I didn’t want to say, but yes, also like weirdos, but one person —

Suzanne: And I can say that because I am a long-term weirdo. But I think the way I was able to make that decision was because I never thought in a million years I'd be a stay-at-home mom. So when I was pregnant with my first child, and I ended up having this moment and making that decision. That decision to be a stay-at-home mom was so big. I mean, I cannot overstate what a life-shaking decision that was for me and who I thought I was.

So when it came to make a decision to homeschool, I was so far off-road from my life plan that it was like, “Yeah, sure. What the heck?” It really did not feel like a big decision at that point, because I had already gone as weird as I could go. So, how about you? So when you started homeschooling, you know you talked about working full-time before that, what was your life like before homeschooling?

Amy: Well, I think that’s always a really interesting question because I think it's true that once you fall into the homeschooling world, it’s like your SAT scores after you get into college. No one cares anymore —

Suzanne: No one did.

Amy: ... how you did or what you did, right? You’re like, “But what? I had this whole...”

Suzanne: I was a person.

Amy: Ironically, I mean, I loved school, loved, loved, loved school. Would have cried at the end of every school year, cheered at the beginning of every new school year. Went straight from high school to college, straight from college to grad school. I pretty much knew from the time I was in kindergarten that all I really wanted to do with my life was read books. So when I discovered that you could major in literature, I mean, my life track was pretty set. That's basically what I did.

I think I majored in literature through elementary school, through middle school, through high school, through college, and through grad school. So once I was in college, I fell in love with critical theory and post-structuralism and pop culture. And I spent I would say some of the best years of my life obsessing about those things. And being surrounded by people who were willing to, I don’t know, parse something like Henry James or Ghostbusters or the idea of white privilege for literally weeks and weeks.

Suzanne: I think that's how we bonded, you and I. I can remember discussing post-structuralism around the campfire at a homeschool Girl Scout outing.

Amy: I remember when we were sitting — Suzanne and I met because our daughters were in the same homeschool Girl Scout troop, and we met in person. We talked several times as we dropped our daughters off at different places. But the first time that we talked was on this camping weekend, which I think it's fair to say, neither of us was the most campery mom there.

Suzanne: That’s fair.

Amy: We were sitting in the arts and crafts tent, totally, totally bonding over Buffy and books, and it was great. I was like —

Suzanne: And I should say I had no, and I still am not quite sure I have any understanding of what's post-structuralism is.

Amy: Well, I mean, that’s the whole idea of post-structuralism is to scare other people into thinking they have no idea about what it is. Right? I mean, yeah.

Suzanne: But it was good. It was a good conversation, so. We —

Amy: I loved school and probably if I didn’t have to feed myself and other people, I would just go to school forever and read books forever and write papers about books forever. But when I finished grad school, I could get a job teaching — which, I actually love school, and I love books, and I love talking to people about books. But I found teaching college students kind of unsatisfying.

Suzanne: Oh, yeah.

Amy: I think, maybe I would have more patience now, but at the time, I really expected students to treat their classes the way I treated my classes. So I would walk into my freshman literature seminar and most of the class would not have done the reading, and I had no idea how to process that in a reasonable way.

Suzanne: Right. I don’t even know what to do now.

Amy: Yeah. So I ended up getting a job. I always like to say this because I think I might be literally the last person who found a job through the actual print edition paper.

Suzanne: Wow.

Amy: That’s so cool. I mean, I really might be.

Suzanne: That’s pretty cool.

Amy: So I found a job as an editorial assistant at a magazine, and I absolutely fell in love. I loved the pace of it because you were always on a deadline. You were always trying to wrap something up, but at the same time, you were always starting something new or working on a new story. And probably you spent half your time researching random things, really obsessively, and then moving on to something else.

Suzanne: Right.

Amy: It was like nerd paradise. So I worked in magazines. I got promoted to assistant editor, and then I went somewhere as associate editor, and then lifestyles editor and senior editor and editor-in-chief. And finally we moved back to Atlanta and started our own magazine, which was home/school/life.

Suzanne: Wow. Wow.

Amy: I know. It all sounds very exciting, but it’s less exciting than it sounds, I think.

Suzanne: I don’t know. It seems pretty exciting to me.

Amy: But you, you were the coolest pre-mom person. You were an engineer.

Suzanne: Well, yeah, kind of. I have to say, while you were talking about teaching, I was thinking about, my daughter asked me, my daughter, who wants to be a teacher, was asking me the other day, “Why did you never think about... Did you ever think about being a teacher when you were growing up, Mom?” And I was like, “No, I never wanted to work with children.” So I’m like, “Huh, maybe I should avoid nevers in my...”

Anyway, so I live in metro Atlanta, and I came up to Atlanta in ’87, which I think makes me a native. And I came up to go to Georgia Tech where I majored in computer science and met my now-husband who also majored in computer science. We were nerds together. So when I graduated, I went off to work with Lotus Development. I don't know how old you have to be to remember this stuff now, but Lotus 123 was a big spreadsheet, and I worked with a group that worked... They had a word processor, which was a competitor with Microsoft Word. We did not win that competition, but there, I worked on, it was called Lotus Word Pro. And so that was my job. I was a programmer, a software engineer working on the word processor. So I did that for six years, and then I got pregnant, and my plan was, look how well I’ve planned this. I'm a software engineer. I can work from home. I can cut down the hours. I have working moms in my group, have already pioneered this whole working, having a baby thing.

And then I had this just complete life change where I realized that I really wanted to be home with my kid. But I think, even more than the, well, certainly more than the engineering background, I have the same thing in my history where I loved school, I loved school. School was a thing I was best at. I loved my test scores. I loved my teachers. I love —

Amy: You should really be able to get grades in life. It would be so nice to get a little transcript at the end of every year.

Suzanne: Some years.

Amy: Maybe without housework on it.

Suzanne: Yeah, no housework. Could we pick? Could we pick what we get graded on? I think, that. So, yes, I was the complete nerd. I did not go to senior prom because I was at a math competition. Thank you.

Amy: I agree.

Suzanne: And college, I thought college was going to be the most fun thing I ever did. I was ready to leave college when I did, but when I left it, I’m kind of like, “Well, that's it. That was the high point.” And then I found that being a mom is more fun, but. So I think that's something that really drew me to homeschooling, because I love school. I love being with my kids. Wait, I can do these two things together. And I don’t know how much I was conscious of that at the time, but I think that was actually something that really drew me to homeschooling, was the idea of doing something that I already love and getting to see my kids do it with me. So that was a great idea.

Amy: Yay.

Suzanne: So what's going on in your homeschool life right now?

Amy: Well, mostly I am busy freaking out about high school.

Suzanne: There you go.

Amy: Because my daughter starts high school in the fall.

Suzanne: There you go.

Amy: But we’re actually just in our regular homeschool routine. We don’t break for the summer. A lot of people do, but I find that if we don't keep up our routine, things get crazy. So we’re pretty relaxed all the time, and I think we’re even more relaxed in the summer. But we just have our little routine. We go to the pool, we do some work. We’re taking these online crochet classes.

Suzanne: Very cool.

Amy: Which is actually... I was going to say, I was skeptical of the online class for something that you do practically with your hands.

Suzanne: Right.

Amy: Now, I’m like, it would be great if in all classes you could pause and rewind the teacher.

Suzanne: Yes.

Amy: Every few minutes.

Suzanne: Yes. Oh, yeah, that’s true. That would work really well.

Amy: So we’re pretty... It's quiet now, just kind of the regular routine. What about you guys? How is your summer?

Suzanne: Well, we do take the summer off, so there’s a lot of sleeping in and playing video games for about 12 hours straight, that’s going on, so.

Amy: There’s plenty of that over here, too. I just want to clarify. I don’t want to sound like...

Suzanne: Yeah, yeah, I know, I know. So, like I said, I’ve got the four kids. My youngest is 11, so he’s a rising sixth grader. So he’ll be starting middle school in the fall. My daughter, my next older daughter is 13, and she’s a rising eighth grader, which means that last year, I mean, sorry, next year, will be her last year of homeschooling. Because when I started homeschooling, people would say, “Well, how long are you going to do this?” And I would always say, “Well, as long as it’s working.” But in my head, I really, once we got into the groove, and once I saw some of the frustrations and challenges that my friends who had their kids in traditional school were facing, I really thought, “Oh, we’ll just homeschool all the way through. We’ll just keep going.”

But as we got closer to high school with my oldest, I started kind of mentally drawing — I mean, it is a kind of a different thing. So I was kind of mentally drawing up these pros and cons of homeschool high school, traditional high school, and I really came to a place where I felt like they balanced to a point that it needed to be his choice. So we talked about that a lot.

And then our family life kind of changed because to help out with the income and all that kind of stuff, I started doing some childcare at home, and as that kind of stuff changed, I began to see that it just wasn’t going to be possible for me to homeschool high school the way I would like to. So we decided that for our plan I was going to send my oldest son to the local public high school, which is a mile and a half away.

Amy: And which is a really good school. Suzanne lives in a great school district.

Suzanne: Yeah, we're fortunate. There’s a lot of great schools around here. And that was the plan. And the idea was, “We’ll give this a try. You’ll transition in as a ninth grader. You’ll be starting high school with everybody else, and we’ll see if it works. And if it doesn’t work, I will absolutely pull you out of school the next day.” So we always had that fallback. And it did work. So that has been the plan going on then.

So my 13-year-old, like I said, she’ll have eighth grade next year home with me and will be going to orientations at the high school. There’s tours we'll be doing. So I know this is my third time through. I know what that looks like, but it’s an emotional year for me. The last year that they're at home. She can’t wait. And so it worked out. With the older two have then now been at high school. My older daughter, who was 15, just finished up her freshman year of high school. And then my oldest who turned 18 —

Amy: Oh.

Suzanne: ... a couple weeks ago and graduated a week after that and is heading off to college in the fall, so —

Amy: Which is —

Suzanne: ... at Georgia Tech.

Amy: ... so exciting. Yay. You did it.

Suzanne: So we brainwashed him from the beginning. So he’s heading off to Georgia Tech to major in computer science like his mom and dad. So that’s my status. I feel weird sometimes talking about homeschooling. I’m a homeschooler with two kids still at home, last year, two kids at home, two kids in high school. Although I was thinking about it, and if you count homeschooling from, oh, say, preschool, which I like to, because it’s giving me as much credit as possible, that means that my oldest, he was in traditional school for four years, but he was homeschooled for 10 years. So it’s an interesting place to be between the two.

Amy: Well, and I think that one of the things about homeschooling that people should talk about maybe more often is that a piece of homeschooling is sometimes knowing that or when it’s time to stop homeschooling. Homeschooling is great, and I love it, and I have mixed feelings about homeschooling through high school. I’m excited about it and terrified by it, and I’m glad we have the opportunity to do it.

But I hope that if there were clearly a better decision for my daughter that I would seize that, I would take that opportunity. I don’t think homeschooling is always automatically the best choice. I think sometimes the smartest thing that we can do is really look the facts in the face and make the decision that works best for our kid, not for us.

Suzanne: Right. Well, obviously I agree, but I think sometimes people talk about homeschooling like you’re stepping off a cliff, like you could never go back, and that’s just not true. And I think the responsible thing, the best thing is try to... I try to come at it with what is the best choice for my family? And I talk to people who are considering homeschool this way too. It’s like maybe intellectually you think you’ve decided that homeschooling, maybe that would be your first choice. But maybe you feel like, if you're the homeschool mom, that you’re going to go crazy. So that counts, right? I mean, if homeschooling isn’t going to work for the parent, it isn’t going to work for the family, and that matters. And situations can change really quickly. And that’s a great thing about homeschooling is that you can respond to that change. So you can respond, both, by saying, “Hey, traditional school isn’t working. Let’s investigate homeschooling.” Or then if your situation at home changes, you can say, “Well, let’s look at our other options.”

Amy: Exactly. I think that as homeschoolers, it’s really important that we be kind to ourselves and to each other about the choices that end up being the right ones for our homeschool. There are a lot of people who feel like if their child wants to go back to school, that somehow homeschooling has failed.

Suzanne: Right.

Amy: That they haven’t been successful.

Suzanne: Right.

Amy: But I think in a lot of ways, having a kid who can evaluate her situation and say, “This is I think what’s right for me now,” is the most successful homeschooling there is.

Suzanne: Right. And they know they have options. That's the other thing, too. I think homeschool kids, they’re never trapped in a situation. It was really important to me when I sent my firstborn off to the high school. And all he’d ever done, he just watched Disney movies about high school. That was his whole preparation. If it didn’t happen on the Disney Channel, he didn’t know about.

Amy: Was he disappointed by the lack of dancing in the hallway?

Suzanne: I don't think he was. My daughter may have been, but. I mean, it was really important to me when he went to say, “Look, if this doesn’t work, you do not have to stay. You can always come home, and we will figure out something that does work. We’ll find another option.” And I feel like that’s so important because I feel that trapped feeling may be the worst feeling you can have. And that if you know you’re not trapped, if you know you have options, then you can actually hang in there longer. Right? Continue with the situation to see, “Okay, well, how is this going to work out? How can I...?” without feeling like you're giving up? But anyway, so it worked out for us.

Amy: I mean, I know your kids, so they're amazing kids doing amazing things. So I hope that, cross your fingers, that high school will go as well for us.

Suzanne: Yeah, that's a topic for another podcast. We can definitely talk about that. Which I think brings us to our first sponsor. Yay.

Amy: Yay. So, The Podcast with Amy and Suzanne is brought to you by home/school/life magazine. If your homeschool group would benefit from a regular influx of homeschooling inspiration, it may please you to know that home/school/life offers a great deal on group subscriptions. [Editor’s note: Sadly, this offer is no longer available.] A lot of people don't know this, but if you can get a group of at least 20 people together, and we don’t care if they're your internet friends or your neighbors or your homeschool group, as long as there are 20 of you, you can each get your subscription for $10 instead of the usual $19 per year. If that’s something that would interest you, send us an email to subscriptions@homeschoollife mag.com.

Suzanne: Yay.

Amy: Yay. I wasn’t sure exactly how to transition out of that.

Suzanne: Well, I can talk about the research that I did last night because I’m committed to this podcast. And so last night, I’ve ventured out from my home and went to see the new Jane Austen adaptation.

Amy: You are so brave and intrepid. I —

Suzanne: Thank you.

Amy: The sacrifices you make for your art, Suzanne.

Suzanne: I know. I just want to be appreciated.

Amy: Oh, okay, so I’m almost scared to ask because you know that I love Jane Austen. And I mean, I have issues with many movie adaptations. How was it?

Suzanne: I really liked it. I really liked it. That's a short answer. It's called Love and Friendship. It’s directed by Whit Stillman. I don't know if you've seen any of his films. Back in the early 90s, he was an independent filmmaker. He did Metropolitan and Barcelona.

Amy: Oh, yeah, all those young people sitting around talking about life movies.

Suzanne: Preppies having witty conversations, which is great for Jane Austen, and maybe not a preppy thing, but. So he was the director. And the movie is based on Austen’s short novel, Lady Susan, which was one of her earlier pieces before she started Sense and Sensibility, all the published novels. And it was not something she ever tried to publish in her lifetime. And I know I’ve read it, but it has been so long that I could not tell you where the movie changed things.

Amy: It’s a novel in letters, isn’t it?

Suzanne: Yes, yes.

Amy: So.

Suzanne: Yes.

Amy: That gives you a little more freedom as a director.

Suzanne: And I think it’s more straight-up comedy than her novels are. In the movie... Okay, so I should tell you about the movie. The movie centers around Lady Susan, who is played by Kate Beckensale, who I have always been a fan of since I saw her play the lead in Cold Comfort Farm. One of my —

Amy: Yes. One of the —

Suzanne: Favorite adaptations.

Amy: ... greatest movies.

Suzanne: Yes. Yes. Something nasty in the woodshed. So she then went on to be an action hero star. She’s been in a bunch of movies where she plays a vampire assassin. I don’t mean somebody who assassinates vampires. I mean, she is a vampire and an assassin. So she was in all these costume period dramas, and then she took this right turn and went into action hero land, and now she’s back, playing, like I said, Lady Susan, who is a widow, and she is just entertainingly awful. She’s the smartest person in the movie. Everything she does is manipulative. She's kind of amoral. So basically she’s traveling around and has no money and is just trying to go to various houses and live off her friends and relations in high style, and also flirt with everyone and have more... Add to her list of admirers, married men, young men. It’s part of the game.

So we’re following Lady Susan, and she has a daughter named Frederica, who, Susan, is trying to hook up with this wealthy, but really stupid guy, Sir James. And Sir James, he reminded me a little bit of Ricky Gervais in The Office, just dumb, but also unlike The Office, very sweet, but really, really dumb. So the daughter is trying desperately not to be hooked up with Sir James.

And then meanwhile, while Lady Susan is staying with her brother and her sister-in-law, brother-in-law and sister-in-law, she, the sister-in-law’s younger brother is there, and his name is Reginald. And so she thinks it would be interesting to basically collect him. She’s going to add another notch and have him fall in love with her.

So the movie is, you’re trying to see if the two young people, Lady Susan's daughter, and then this younger brother, if they are going to escape Lady Susan’s clutches.

Amy: Ah.

Suzanne: Although you’re also kind of rooting for her because she’s super entertaining. So, yes, I will just say, it’s very enjoyable. It’s very pretty. It’s the whole... The places are pretty. The houses are pretty. The guys are wearing the boots and those great coats that have the little capes. I’m happy.

Amy: So, I mean, obviously, I’m going to see it. Obviously.

Suzanne: Obviously, you’re going to see it. I mean, it’s funny, the movie itself, when it introduces the... I’m sure I confused everyone with my story of sister-in-law, brother-in-law, and all, but when they introduce all these people in the movie, they stop, and they do a closeup on that character, and they have a little spotlight on them, and they look at the camera. And then they have under them, “So-and-so’s unattached daughter,” or “Lord Mannering, Devilishly handsome.” So that’s how you’re introduced to the... I just love that kind of thing.

Amy: That’s delightful.

Suzanne: It really is. And —

Amy: I mean, you know how I feel about there should be more footnotes in the world.

Suzanne: Exactly.

Amy: Also, more little establishing signs.

Suzanne: So it’s very helpful. So the movie’s trying to help you. And there is a lot thrown at you, but you get the hang of it. And it’s laugh-out-loud and funny, the lines. My husband also, who is fine with watching these kind of period dramas, but he really had no idea what he was getting into. He and I were both laughing. Since it’s based on a shorter work, there’s not as much to it. You know what I mean? It's not a novel. It’s not one of these big, involved stories. It’s like a short story, which works really well when you change it to a movie. And the theme. And it’s — somebody, one of their reviews I read, compared it to a caper film, almost, like a heist film. And I can see where they’re coming from, right?

Because it’s like, is Lady Susan going to be able to execute her plan through all these ups and downs and revelations? So it’s not as serious and maybe not as deep as some of the other novels and adaptations, but I highly recommend it. It’s in limited release. I expect that it'll be out. I expect it won't be out for very long, actually. I expect it'll be on DVD and On Demand pretty soon. So watch it. Everybody go watch it.

Amy: Well, I will definitely go watch it because British period drama is my sweet spot.

Suzanne: Yep. And can I just tell you, so there was a lot of period films during the coming attractions. I also had that moment, that rollercoaster moment during the... I don’t know if you've had this, where I’m watching the trailer, and I’m like, “Ooh, this is going to be so great,” because it’s like 1930s Hollywood. All right, check. I’m there. And it’s got Steve Carell playing a movie exec. Oh, check, I’m there. And then all these other great actors keep coming in. And then it’s directed by Woody Allen.

Amy: Oh.

Suzanne: So.

Amy: That kills me.

Suzanne: I know. Because not only am I sad because I won’t see the film now, but also all these... I mean, Parker Posey, and I can’t even go through the list. It’s too depressing of all these wonderful actors who are in the film.

Amy: And I feel like I have empathy for people who have to make choices because —

Suzanne: It’s their career. I give them that.

Amy: ... they’re at the stage of their career where this film could make or break them. But these are not people who need the job.

Suzanne: I know. So, anyway, so I just had to tell you that I need to keep up with what’s coming out by him, just so I don’t have that moment of, “Oh, this looks so very cool. Oh, man.”

Amy: That’s so frustrating because I mean, he has made great movies.

Suzanne: Right.

Amy: It is a shame.

Suzanne: Right, right. It is a shame. So anyway, so cheer me up again. Tell me about something neat that you’ve been watching lately.

Amy: Well, speaking of British scenery and period dramas.

Suzanne: Remarkably.

Amy: Jason and I have been watching Poldark, which is a PBS series on Amazon Prime. Have you seen this one?

Suzanne: I have not.

Amy: So it’s based on a series of novels by Winston Graham, which I’ve never read and probably will never read. But it’s about a guy, Ross Poldark, who comes home from fighting on the British side of the American Revolution. And when he gets back to his home in Cornwall, he finds out that his father has died, and his estate — and his inheritance is completely falling apart. So he’s got to try to reopen the copper mine that has closed down under his father and pay off all of his father’s debts.

And what’s interesting about it is that Poldark is a very old and prestigious family name, which is a big part of the story, that he’s an important part of society in the town where he lives. But he’s also sort of the reprobate member of the family. He had to go fight in the American Revolution because he got arrested for drunkenness, and he either had to go to jail or go to...

Suzanne: Oh, okay.

Amy: And when he comes back, his fiance has married his very wealthy cousin, Francis Poldark. And Ross has also come back with all these ideas about equality and how people deserve rights. How it’s not always the landowner who should have all the rights. But he also has this kind of really awesome rich Brit snobbery about, like nouveau riche bankers and noblesse oblige. So it’s actually a great story. He’s both a frustrating and likable character. He gets caught up in all kinds of political and social drama. And it has Eleanor Tomlinson in it.

Suzanne: Okay.

Amy: I don't know if you know who she is. She’s in a couple of episodes of the Sarah Jane Adventures, the Doctor Who spin off.

Suzanne: Yep.

Amy: And she was Mr. Darcy’s sister, Georgiana, in Death Comes to Pemberley, the redhead.

Suzanne: Okay.

Amy: But I love her. And the whole time I was watching it, I was thinking that I really want her and Benedict Cumberbatch. Am I saying that right? Is there a right way to say his name or?

Suzanne: I think, I say it Cumberbatch, but.

Amy: Cumberbatch.

Suzanne: Yeah.

Amy: But anyway, I really want the two of them to make a Lily and Snape backstory movie.

Suzanne: Oh, that would be awesome.

Amy: I feel like that would complete my life. But the guy who plays Poldark, Ross Poldark, is also the same guy who played Kili in the Hobbit movie, movies.

Suzanne: Oh, okay.

Amy: I refuse to think of them as a trilogy, but I guess I have to.

Suzanne: So well, so I have seen pictures of him. I mean, PBS sells it kind of as a whole beefcake thing.

Amy: Well, I mean —

Suzanne: So how much is getting to watch beefcake boy, and how much of it is the write — is, like, listening to the plot?

Amy: Well, I was going to say, there is this sort of Mr. Darcy scene where he —

Suzanne: Oh, yeah.

Amy: ... rips off his things, and dives into the sea to go swimming.

Suzanne: Of course.

Amy: So I will say that because I was not a fan of the Hobbit movies. Did you like them?

Suzanne: I guess the short answer is no. I mean, I’m sad to say that, but there are parts I liked. There were things I liked about it. I have a lot of issues with the third movie in particular.

Amy: Yes. Well, because, I mean, the bulk of the third movie is completely made up because it all happens while Bilbo is knocked out in the action.

Suzanne: Right.

Amy: Jason loves Tolkien and any adaptation of Tolkien. And so every time Poldark would go down into his mine, I would say, “Maybe this is where the Pixies turn him into a dwarf,” and he would get really mad. It was very funny to me every single time, which probably makes me a bad wife.

Suzanne: No, no. We find our joy where we can get it.

Amy: It is a delightful series. I mean, it is sort of soap opera-y and fun, and you will not leave it thinking, “Oh, this is the greatest thing I ever watched.” But it is a fun series to watch.

Suzanne: Cool.

Amy: And I think they’re making a second season, but I’m not sure.

Suzanne: Okay. That sounds very cool. Well, did I tell you about the big exciting? We had a big, exciting event in my life this week. And-

Amy: You’re not pregnant.

Suzanne: No, but there is a new member of the family, because, as I just said, the 18-year-old is about to head off to college and as poor Amy knows, I have been having a 12-month extended nervous breakdown about this, about him turning 18.

Amy: I love that you think it’s only 12 months.

Suzanne: Oh, give me what little shreds of dignity. Actually, people are being really sweet to me now. People are coming up and kind of being like, “Oh, are you doing okay?” And “how are you?” And I’ve been fine now. It was like six months ago that I was having a breakdown about this, and everybody was like, “Oh, you're not there yet.” And so I got my breakdown out of the way early. But to reconcile myself to the fact that we are losing, not losing, that, I don’t know how to say, a member of the family is moving out of my house. I wanted to get, I don’t know, maybe an 18-year-old’s weight in kittens, I thought would probably work. But we have settled for one kitten.

Amy: Oh, a kitten.

Suzanne: Although —

Amy: Sorry. That was loud.

Suzanne: ... we have an option. We gave an option on a second kitten, maybe. So we have a little teeny tiny kitten. My husband organized the kitten, which I'm really proud of him. He’s never organized a kitten for me before. But he found him on Facebook. A neighborhood lady, a nice neighborhood lady, had rescued him and was looking for a home. And he’s teeny tiny. And he came with a name. The nice neighborhood lady had named him Gozer, after Gozer, the Destructor from Ghostbusters.

Amy: Speaking of Ghostbusters.

Suzanne: And my family, when we came home, we were like, “Well, we have been calling him Gozer. Do we want to change the name?” And all the kids were like, “No, that is the best name.” But, oh, if we get a second kitten. I reserve the right to name it Hamilton. But anyway, so Gozer is teeny, teeny tiny, and he’s black and white. And right at the moment, he’s living in my son’s room because that was a convenient way to... We have two cats and a dog, and kind of let Gozer acclimate himself slowly. Unfortunately, my son is allergic to cats, as am I, but he doesn’t have one sleep on his pillow every night. So now he’s sniffling. “I’m okay. It’s fine. He could totally be in here.”

And a friend of mine said it was nice of him to let the cat bond, the kitten bond with him and pick up his scent so that off he goes off to college, I can just smell the kitten.

Amy: Oh.

Suzanne: And think of my son. So that's our life. Can you top kittens? Because that's what I have. I have a kitten.

Amy: Nothing can top kittens. Is there a picture of the kitten? Can we put it in our show notes or something?

Suzanne: I think we should put a picture of Gozer in the show notes. I took a picture. So I have a stack of books next to my bed, as I’m sure you’re not shocked. And at one time he perched on top of it, and I was trying to get... They were like, “Mom, that’s the perfect picture for you, kitten and books.” So I’ll see if I can find a good picture for the show notes.

Amy: Well, the most exciting thing that’s happening around here isn’t even happening to me directly. My father-in-law just took off for a few weeks in Israel.

Suzanne: Wow.

Amy: It’s very cool because he actually lived there for a big chunk of his life. After his family left, or kind of got forced to leave Romania. Because they owned a business, and they were Jewish. And when the anti-Semitic Communist regime came into power, it wasn’t a good place —

Suzanne: Right, right.

Amy: ... for people who owned a factory. So they ended up going to Israel. And my father-in-law was about nine. And then he left Israel and came to the United States when he was a teenager, when he was about 17. And he finished high school and went to college here. But the cool thing, the thing that I’m really excited about, is that his best friend from Romania is actually in Israel now. And they're meeting up, and they’re going back to Bucharest together.

Suzanne: Oh, how wonderful.

Amy: And they’re going to visit the little town where they grew up. So the kids and I, and by the kids and I, I mean, me clearly forcing the kids while the kids are like, “Yeah, that’s great.”

Suzanne: As one does, yes.

Amy: Are going to trace all of his adventures. We have a little map, and we’ve got some pins, and we’re going-

Suzanne: Oh, that is very-

Amy: ... to keep up with where he is.

Suzanne: And did you put a LoJack in him, so you could like GPS him?

Amy: I didn't, but I should have. He’s a very good grandfather, and we don’t want to lose him.

Suzanne: Don’t want to misplace him somewhere.

Amy: No.

Suzanne: That's very cool.

Amy: That’s a cool trip. So I'm very excited about it.

Suzanne: Yay. That is cool. That’s cool. So is it time for our second sponsor spots?

Amy: I think you’re right. It is time. So here's our second sponsor spot. Maybe we’ll come up with a more graceful transition for sponsor spots.

Suzanne: We are excellent at this, so.

Amy: If you guys have a suggestion, you can email us at podcast@homeschoollifemag.com.

The Podcast with Suzanne and Amy is brought to you by home/school/life magazine, where we’re super excited about our new summer classes online. Yay. Summer classes. [Editor’s Note: These classes are no longer available!]

Suzanne: Yay.

Amy: If you are looking for fun learning opportunities for this summer, you will definitely want to check them out. We’ve managed to convince a lot of very cool people to teach some very cool classes. Suzanne, my cohost in podcasting, is teaching the coolest Hamilton history class. Shelly Denkinger is teaching How to Think Like A Philosopher, which is an amazing class. Jeremy Harris is teaching a class on the Poetry of the Harlem Renaissance, which I kind of want to take myself. Rebecca Pickens, who you may recognize from our curriculum column in every issue, is teaching a very cool Wildcrafting class where they're going to learn how to identify, collect, preserve, and use herbs for sort of medicinal and culinary purposes. Isn’t that kind of cool?

Suzanne: That’s very cool.

Amy: And I’m teaching a very nerdy class on Sherlock Holmes where we’ll be reading a Sherlock Holmes short story and looking at different cinematic adaptations of it.

Suzanne: Very cool.

Amy: So yay for summer classes.

Suzanne: Yay for summer classes

Amy: And now books.

Suzanne: I know. Do we get to talk about books now?

Amy: Now, we get to talk about books.

Suzanne: Do we get to talk about books now? So see, here’s what happened. So here’s what happened is I have one of my favorite books in the whole wide world called Mapp and Lucia by E.F. Benson. And I happened to notice the other day on... I just happened to notice. So thank goodness I noticed this because if I’d missed it, I would’ve been devastated that there was a new adaptation being shown on PBS. And so I may have gushed a little bit about that in the Stuff We Like column on the blog. And so I managed to convince Amy to read it. So I can’t wait to hear what she thinks. But anyway, so let me tell you a little bit about Mapp and Lucia, because people have not heard of this book, which is a shame. It’s set in like 1930s, the little seaside British town of Tilling.

And we have two queen bees. We have Lucia, who moves there from a different town, and she is used to being the woman who... I mean, the whole town, the whole social, everything, just revolves around her. And she has a faithful sidekick, Georgie Pillson. And so Lucia and Georgie end up moving to Tilling where they run into Miss Mapp, who, in the original 1985 version, the adaptation I watched, which actually got me into the books, is played by Prunella Scales. And she played the wife on Faulty Towers with John Cleese, if anybody watched that back in the day.

And Miss Mapp is the queen bee of her town. And it’s how these two... I don’t know, it’s really funny. I think of it kind of Jeeves and Wooster is one of those books that just always makes me laugh. And their schemes and how they manipulate people, and everybody else is just kind of watching what they’re going to do. So what did you think of Mapp and Lucia?

Amy: Well, Jeeves and Wooster is exactly what I would compare it to, so you know that I liked it. It’s just utterly delightful. It is like taking a vacation in a book. You’re in this whole other world where people wage war across a bridge table.

Suzanne: Lots of bridge.

Amy: Which I love.

Suzanne: Right.

Amy: I love bridge-related drama.

Suzanne: And I’m really excited because I don’t understand bridge. So now I have someone who can explain it to me.

Amy: Well, apparently in later books, as I know you’ve told me, there’s all this drama between Auction Bridge versus Contract Bridge.

Suzanne: Right.

Amy: So I’m very excited to get to those parts. But I love Lucia, who is the most obnoxiously wonderful character I’ve met in a long time. She’s so funny. There’s a scene early on where she’s sitting in the garden of her home. She’s been widowed for almost a year, and widowhood is starting to lose its romance for her a little bit. She’s maybe ready to get back to life after mourning very dramatically for these many months.

And there’s a great scene where she’s sitting in the garden of her home, and she knows that people will go by and see her. And she’s got a book of her husband’s poetry with her, and she wants them to come upon her reading it, sadly, in this very tragic position. But she can’t get the knots that tie the book together undone. She has to settle for leaving it sitting beside her instead.

Suzanne: She’s kind of stroking the cover.

Amy: And she can’t actually open it.

Suzanne: Yeah, I mean, it’s just so entertaining. Both the adaptations I’ve seen are great. Watch those, read the books. I mean, it's stuff like, so Lucia meets Miss Mapp when she rents Mapp’s home in Tilling —

Amy: And there’s a whole —

Suzanne: ... for the summer.

Amy: ... whole lovely little subplot in which everyone in Tilling rents someone else’s house. So by Lucia renting Mrs. Mapp’s house, basically, everyone in the town is able to earn rental income throughout that summer.

Suzanne: Right. And then Mapp charged Lucia more than she was — anyway, there’s all these things going on. And then Lucia decides to open the garden grounds of Mapp’s home because she's renting it for a fete to raise money for the hospital. And Miss Mapp has a conniption fit because she doesn’t want the ragtag and bobtail of Tilling through her... Anyway. Their battle is assumed. And they have... Oh, it’s stuff like Lucia always drops little pieces of Italian into her conversation, and it drives Miss Mapp crazy. And she begins to suspect that Lucia doesn't actually speak Italian, which she does not. And so then there's this whole plot about trying to get an actual Italian speaker face-to-face with Lucia, so Lucia can be unmasked. And there is plotting galore. I mean, it’s backstabbing, and people being vicious to each other over... Just entertainingly vicious.

Amy: Yes. Yeah, exactly. One of the most dramatic bits of the books revolves around a recipe for a particular lobster dish that, I mean, causes a fantastic amount of drama. Just, it’s lovely. And one of my favorite characters in the books is Georgie-

Suzanne: Yes.

Amy: Lucia’s friend, her gentleman friend, who has no desire to marry Lucia. And she has no desire to marry him, but they’re adorable together. And he’s just such a fun character.

Suzanne: He really... And the original series that he plays, he’s played by Nigel Hawthorne in the 1985. But I mean, both adaptations are really good. It’s very fun. I will say that. I think there's something... Now, I don’t know if you’ve seen the adaptations. I think it actually translates well to the screen because there’s a lot of physical humor. There’s Miss Mapp's breaking down the door to her house ’cause she is put on the chain. And Mapp’s used to just walking in and out. So there is a lot of physicality, and it’s just great to see the characters being brought to life.

And the really great news is, if you love Mapp and Lucia, which I think is probably the high point of the series, there is still more. There are two more books after Mapp and Lucia set in Tilling with both the characters. And then there’s also books ahead of them. There’s a book with Miss Mapp on her own. There are two books about Lucia’s life with Georgie before she comes to Tilling. And those are also really, really worth reading. And of course, again, Mapp and Lucia, where these two powerhouses come together is maybe the best.

Amy: Yes, it is. It is like Jeeves and Wooster or Georgette Heyer. I mean, really delightful stuff.

Suzanne: Yeah. I’m so glad you liked it.

Amy: I loved it. I hope that you’re going to like the book I picked for us to read next as much.

Suzanne: Oh, dramatic drum roll.

Amy: I wish we had a drum roll. Maybe I can find a drum roll and edit it in.

Suzanne: I can’t wait to hear. What is it? What is it?

Amy: Okay, well, so I have to backstory, which is Suzanne has read everything. Suzanne is the only person I know who has read more books than I have. And I think that’s awesome.

Suzanne: Not that we’re counting,

Amy: But no, but it’s... So before this episode, I sent her a list and said, “Hey, will you tell me which of these books you haven't read yet?” Because I wanted to pick something that neither of us had read, or that I had read, but she hadn’t yet. And Suzanne’s response totally sold me on the book that I should pick because it was irresistible. The backstory on this is too good. So I picked Greensleeves by Eloise McGraw. Because apparently another McGraw book led to Suzanne’s criminal incident.

Suzanne: Yeah, my life of crime. Does that mean I have to tell the life of crime story?

Amy: Well, I think that it does, unless it’s really embarrassing, but maybe especially if it’s really embarrassing.

Suzanne: Well, we will. We’ll have to, we’ll just tease that for next time, that —

Amy: Stay tuned.

Suzanne: Stay tuned. And I’m really excited to read Greensleeves, by the way. And I know I knew the name. I haven’t read the book, but I knew the name Eloise Jarvis McGraw, right when I saw it, because my very favorite... One of my really top 10 ever favorite books of probably middle school was Mara, Daughter of the Nile by the same author. Have you ever read Mara?

Amy: I haven’t read that. I’ll read that, too, while I’m reading Greensleeves.

Suzanne: I haven't, it was not one I’ve revisited as an adult. But, so my life of crime, my criminal act revolves around Mara, Daughter of the Nile. So you’ll have to tune in next time.

Amy: Wow.

Suzanne: And I will have to look that up.

Amy: That’s a dramatic cliffhanger.

Suzanne: I will have to look up the statute of limitations to find out if I really want to out myself on national podcast media.

Amy: Surely, they would not put the parent of a young kitten in jail. Surely.

Suzanne: Gozer would just be cute at them as... All right. Well, I’m so excited. So Greensleeves next time.

Amy: Yes. Yes. I hope you like it.

Suzanne: I’m sure I will.

Amy: And I guess that is it, the wrap for our first official episode of The Podcast with Suzanne and Amy brought to you by home/school/life magazine. We’ll be dropping a new episode every couple of weeks, all summer. So check back in for more conversation about the places where home, school, and life intersect. And let us know what you think. We would love to hear from you with questions, suggestions, ideas, anything pretty much that you want to share. You can reach us by email at podcast@homeschoollifemag.com. Thanks for listening.

Suzanne: Bye.

Episode 0

Welcome to The Podcast with Suzanne and Amy, home | school | life's new podcast! In this episode, we're testing out our cool podcasting tools and talking about what you can expect in upcoming episodes. (Spoiler: Books. Lots and lots of books.) Check back Monday for EPISODE 1: At Least It's Better Than the Phantom Menace.

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