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Phew!

Thank you for all of your prayers! My mother's surgery was successful and the surgeon was pleased. He was able to repair the perforation and also avoid a colostomy bag. The biggest concern right now is just pain management, so continued prayers for that would be greatly appreciated. We are still unsure for how long she will be in the hospital, but I know my mom is really, really hoping to be discharged to her home. She is a homebody and being away from home and her dogs for six weeks has been terribly difficult. Now I hope she can focus on getting better and be able to put all of this behind her.

And I will start breathing again. And perhaps regain some of my patience which is a limited commodity in the best of times. If you had seen my little scene with R. tonight, you would have knocked me right off any pedestal you might have been tempted to put me on. I live with myself, so no pedestal in my mind. I just sometimes get the impression that other people think I am more saint-like…
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The end of a long road

While we all enjoyed our fall break week last week, the down side is that the first day back to a regular schedule can be sketchy. In the great scheme of things, the morning actually went pretty well. Everyone did math, with a limited amount of kvetching, but everyone also acknowledged that it was difficult to start back again. As a bone, I said we would put off doing grammar until Wednesday. (Tomorrow is our co-op day.) There was much rejoicing.

So we're back to our regular school schedule which we'll keep up until Thanksgiving week. Everyone (including myself) is feeling refreshed from the break, so it shouldn't be too difficult to make it to Thanksgiving. It's not actually that far, really.

[Insert deep breathing over the things which will need to be done when it does arrive. There, I'm better.]

But really, only part of my brain has been on school and children and house stuff. The other part of my brain has been on my mother. Tomorrow morning, she will be headin…
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Well, that was a total fail

Remember those crab apples I wrote about last week? How I was going to try turning them into crab apple jelly? Well, the whole adventure was a bust.

First, I didn't have a chance to get the original bowl of crab apples that I had picked cooked. They sat on the kitchen counter for several days, getting less and less appetizing. Well, to humans at least; the fruit flies found them more and more irresistible. Into the garbage they went.

Not quite ready to give up the whole enterprise, I took advantage of a beautiful afternoon to go pick some more and give it another try. I mean, the entire tree is covered in them. How terrific would it be to get a bunch of jelly from them? Picking them was the most successful part.

Armed with a large bowl of crab apples, I set to work doing the next step. According to the recipe I was using, I was to take off the stem, cut off the blossom end, and cut them in half. First of all, have you ever tried to get a step off a crab apple? It cannot be done. A…
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Friday bullets, October 18, 2019

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I'm not sure I'll have a lot to say this week, since I seem to have spent the majority of the week doing laundry. It's all caught up now... well, as caught up as it ever is. Let's say it is in a far more manageable state than it was at the beginning of the week.

Well, that was true until about three hours ago when we discovered that R. had overflowed the toilet upstairs which led to all sorts of towels being used to clean it up. And the water started to come down through the dining room ceiling as well. Fun times, people. And to make it even more fun, there seems to be some other water pipe drainage issues that J. will go down to the crawl space to investigate once he returns from the hardware store. I will admit to this all giving me a very unpleasant feeling in the pit of my stomach, mainly because I'm afraid it will turn into a very unpleasant feeling in my checkbook.R. is now only allowed to use the bathroom with an adult to supervise. Which is going to be a gre…
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Libraries and thrift stores

Along with doing the grocery shopping today, I made a quick trip to the library and stopped in at a local thrift store. Can I just say how much I love libraries and thrift stores?

I'm sure you all know that I love libraries, because, well, books. Many, many books that are free for the taking. It feels so positively frivolous to walk up and down the shelves of a library, and checking out books just because something about them caught my eye. Sometimes I end up loving these randomly chosen books, sometimes I start them and put them aside, and sometimes I don't ever end up reading them. But that's okay, because eventually they all go back to the library and a new stash is brought home. There are no oughts or shoulds, just the sheer joy of experimenting with all sorts of vastly different books. On the rare occasions when I'm in a book store looking to buy a book, I am almost frozen because the choice of what to buy feels so much more weighty. Which book do I decide to spen…
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Writing from a list

In our once a week writing workshops, one of the things we've been working on is ways to generate ideas about what to write. One of the techniques that everyone has enjoyed has been writing from a list. The idea being that a list is created about something, and then later, the student looks back and chooses one of those items to write more about.

Here are my two lists for today.

Things I do not Like

1. Waking up to the words, "Mommy, there is poop on the floor."
2. Driving 2 1/2 hours round trip for a ten minute orthodontist appointment.
3. Seeing a dear, older friend so significantly slowing down.
4. Doing seven loads of laundry in one day, and still having at least five more to do in order to catch up.
5. Children who put clean clothes down the laundry chute because they didn't put them away in the first place and couldn't tell which was which. (Though it should have been evident by the fact they were still folded.)
6. Mice in the house.
7. Cats who play with mi…
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Fall break

We are on fall break this week. When I was doing the planning, I knew that K. had an orthodontist appointment on the 14th, and since it was in Chicago, I knew it was going to be a multi-hour extravaganza. I also knew from experience, that I would be ready for a short break about this time, too. Boy, was I right.

We've managed to keep up with our schedule, but a fact that most non-homeschoolers don't know is that it is nearly impossible to keep up with house stuff while homeschooling. Even those of us who are pretty relaxed with our schedule find it challenging to do both homeschooling and house. There just isn't time. So that coupled with the fact that you are using your house all the time, adding to the chaos, makes it even more difficult.

This is where I was at last Friday, but then I was gone all day Saturday, Sunday was busy getting ready for H.'s party, and yesterday I was gone all day again at K.'s orthodontist appointment and visiting a dear friend. Do you h…
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