Forgot my own blog

The world turns too fast, and I forgot about my own blog. That's okay, no one else reads it either!

We're finishing up a year of homeschooling and are a little behind. No sweat, it's easy to catch up on the stuff we missed. We are considering joining a group called Classical Conversations, but I have a few concerns. One of the reasons I love homeschooling so much is the flexibility, and the fact that I get to choose the curriculum. If I join this group, I lose a little flexibility in my curriculum choices. Their foreign language program has a LOT of Latin and one year of Spanish. I agree that studying Latin is very important and beneficial, and I bought a Latin elementary curriculum to use before I heard about this group. But Greek and German are very important, too. Latin gives you the basis of all the Romantic languages. Greek is also a big part of that basis. German is the basis of many other western languages, and has had a big influence on English. The argument for all Latin and no Greek or German is that Latin makes up more than 50% of English and 60% of Spanish. Hooray. What about the other 40-50%? In true classical education, the students study Latin and three or four other languages. The more languages you learn, the easier it is to learn any other language. You also have a much greater understanding of other languages, whether you become fluent in them or not. If we do end up joining this group, I guess I could be a cruel taskmaster and make the kids study Greek and German in addition to the Latin and Spanish they'll be working on for the Classical Conversations classes. I dunno....

During the last year, I made the decision to leave a dog rescue group that I was part of since 2004. I need to focus more on the hubby and kiddoes, who need me more than the pups needing homes. It wasn't as hard to leave as I thought it would be. The structure of the group has changed a lot, and I really don't miss the drama. I'll always care about the dogs and will endeavor to educate people about responsible dog ownership. I wish them all the best success in their endeavors. I just have to focus my time and energy elsewhere for the next several years.

DH is taking classes online. Instead of ten weeks of classes that require 5/7 days of participation, he's taking five week classes that require the same amount of work in half the time, and the classes run seven days a week. He's definitely more motivated than I could ever be. He has a break for a week, and then he gets to spend a lot of time doing busy work for a computer class. Like he'll learn anything in that class. He's been doing this stuff very successfully since he was twelve. But the certificate matters to some people, so it's good to have. It's not like he's uneducated. He just changed his major five or six times in college. Then he joined the Navy, made it through nuclear power school, but can't transfer the "classified" classes that would give him a PhD in several disciplines. So it's online classes to get a "degree" in software engineering. He's actually said in the past that programming isn't a career, it's a job skill. I love my brilliant man.

A sad thing that happened this year is that DH's sis disappeared about seven months ago. DH was able to take a week off work and go to her memorial service recently. We're pretty sure she fell off a cliff into the ocean on a nature walk. She is very, very missed. I only met her once a few months after Brent and I were married, but we emailed each other quite a bit and got close. She is a wonderful person. I say "is" because she didn't stop existing. She just IS in a new place doing new things. I can't refer to people who have passed on in past tense. That just seems wrong to me. Brent's sis has great faith, great love, and such a fun personality. I have put all of her emails into a special folder of their own. Everytime I see her name on the folder I feel this sharp pang and I want to talk to her. I hope that doesn't annoy her. I hope she's happy and knows how very loved she is. Someday I'll feel more peace about it. Right now I just wish I'd gotten out to visit her, hug her, and have those great spiritual conversations face-to-face. Love you, Beanie.

Right now I have a bad cold and am every shade of ornery. Yes, I am a veritable rainbow of angst. Poor DS-8 got yelled at far too much today, as did DS-3. While we were reviewing math, DS-8 kept making really odd, silly mistakes. I kept getting impatient with him. I finally told him to go check his blood sugar, and if he wasn't low, he was going to be in trouble. His blood sugar was 61. I was in such a bad mood I didn't even feel ashamed of my irritation level. I told him to eat some sugar and sit down for twenty minutes. He didn't want to sit down and rest, so I yelled at him again. DS-3 figured out how to get past a kid-proof door knob and a dead bolt today. He kept getting outside with no supervision. While DH was working on making the door impassible, I tried getting DS-3 into a room full of toys to play with. He kept doing the no bones drop to the floor move. The last time he did it he jerked as hard as he could and my soda spilled all over the floor. So he got yelled at, too. After he managed to get past DH and myself one more time, I threw my hands in the air and said, "I'm tired of being a mom. I'm done." I just shouldn't do anything when I'm sick. My poor kids are going to have complexes.

Maybe I'll blog again this year. Maybe not. Who knows? We'll see.