Things on my mind…

First of all, today was another horrible day. (You all have no idea to what “other” horrible days I’ve been going through, but my video diary does. It’s been a rough two weeks.) And now I can’t sleep – again – and I’m impotently furious – again – and I miss all of my friends tremendously. Sometimes it’s when we’re surrounded by those who are supposed to love us that we feel the loneliest…why do I keep forgetting this?

My mom is home from the ICU with an 11 inch scar running from just under her shoulder blade to her chest. She’s full of drain holes and scars and pain pills that don’t seem to help so much. The chemo and radiation is set to start in a few weeks and I’m – we are all – dreading that almost as much as the surgery itself.

As for diet and working out, let’s just say it sucks right now. I went to the grocery store to buy healthy food and instead got so confused about what I was supposed to buy that I came home without anything. I really really hate shopping and food, have I mentioned that lately?

And then tonight, there was an incident about dinner. DH wanted my help to make it, and I didn’t want to eat it, let alone figure out what to have. So I lost my temper, he lost his, and we all ended up grouchier than before. Eventually he gave in and left me alone and I eventually ate. It was not a wonderful night.

ALSO, I am officially sick of my hair and summer. It’s time for scissors, beer and Alaska. Or Canada. Or Norway, I have lots of family there. I may have to settle for the Olivehurst community swimming pool, but it’s nice to think about leaving town.

Okay, so it’s true, sometimes I just come post here to whine and get it all out of my head. Thanks for reading.

Homeschooling over the summer

As it turns out, we didn’t meet every deadline with school work this year. A tiny percentage of it was due to my disorganization; the majority of the reason we’re behind, though, is that it took DD about six months out of the school year to catch up with kids her age. She had a speech impediment that really slowed her down, even in math, because when she couldn’t say the words or read them, she couldn’t really grasp the concept behind the word, either. We spent a lot of time skimming over important information to focus on the foundation work over and over, simply because she wasn’t getting it. That’s the wonderful thing about home schooling – you go at your child’s pace, the child isn’t forced to go along with the pace of the classroom.

We could have chosen to skip “summer school” and just made up the rest of the work at the beginning of 2nd grade, but I wasn’t willing to do that, for two reasons. One is that I want her to have a fresh start at the beginning of the year – all new books and all new classes. I want it to feel like she’s starting something new, not just continuing the drudgery of last year. Remember on the first day of school, how exciting it was to get your brand new text books and work books? That’s part of the thrill that makes the ending of summer just a tiny bit bearable, and I didn’t want her to miss that. But the main reason was that in just the last two months of school she really hit her stride. It wasn’t a fight to get her to do school work anymore; she was enjoying her quiet reading time for the first time ever; she was answering more questions right than wrong and gaining confidence in leaps and bounds. I didn’t want to put a stop to that and lose the progress she’d made. I didn’t want to crush the spark of love for learning that she was finally feeling.

So we are, in our own way, doing home school summer school. (Try saying that threetimesfast, lol.) Since we don’t have meetings with the teacher at the end of the month, there aren’t any real deadlines that are imposed on us, which takes a fair amount of pressure off me. We have been able to spend more time than ever doing fun projects that revolve around school work.

I have spent hours reading next years textbooks and making bulletin boards, work sheets and projects to go along with each unit. While she’s doing her school work I’m going mine, lol.

But the atmosphere is certainly a lot more relaxed, which works so much better for us.

And the one tip I just discovered tonight is the main reason for this blog.

We have been working on filling in her Math Mini Office (which I will hopefully be videoing tomorrow so you can see it firsthand) and she’s loving each new thing we put in it. She wants to play with it, since she helped decide what should be in there, and she watched and helped with every step of the process. So tonight I let her quiz me, the only rule was that the answer to any problem she asked had to be found in the Math Mini Office. She had a blast! I gave her a pointer so she could feel like a real teacher, and she was really careful to praise me after every answer, which was adorable (and is something I work really hard at, so I was glad to see the effort paying off). After the quiz, and after showing her how to use the mini office, I gave her a two page assignment and left her to do it on her own.

At first she looked at me with deer-in-the-headlight eyes. She didn’t want to have to do it by herself. I reminded her that she wasn’t alone, that she had her mini office to refer to if she got stuck, and that calmed her down a little. After two problems she looked up at me and frowned. “Why is this so fun? Math’s never been FUN!”

And there you have it, the main reason the mini offices are successful. They give kids a way to help themselves, and lets them feel accomplished. Right now she’s sitting on the floor doing math problems happily, and every time she finishes one, she throws her fists in the air and yells something encouraging (it varies between “I’m awesome” and “This is so fun” and “Tada!”) which is such a huge change from last years tears and fits!

So that’s what our summer school has been so far – lap books, mini offices and cheers. It’s pretty great.

It’s over but just beginning

The surgery went perfectly. Because we don’t take blood transfusions, the doctor was extra careful and really took his time, which means a 4 hour surgery actually took closer to 6 1/2, but hey, whatever works! He said it couldn’t have gone any better. The cancer hadn’t spread so they were able to remove it.

But now the recovery…a week’s stay in the hospital and then home again. The hospital will be fine. It’s not that part that worries me, but the once she gets home part. She always overdoes everything and I don’t want her to exhaust herself. We will probably spend a lot of time up there helping out.

So this weekend will be spent in the hospital, I’m sure, but when family needs your support you go do what you can do, and that’s what we can do.

I’m exhausted but, contrary to what my one lone reader just commented, I AM EATING and even trying to sleep. I did slip up, of course, but I recovered.

Okay, I’m going to go throw some laundry in and go to sleep, more, and happier, posts coming soon!

D-day has arrived.

Or maybe “C” day would be more fitting.

Whatever. The point is, today (well, it’s 11:45 PM, so in 15 minutes) is THE DAY.

Mom’s surgery starts at 7:00 AM. By 8:30 they should know if they are going to go ahead with the whole thing or if the cancer has spread to her lymph nodes. While she will be peacefully dreaming, the rest of us will be crammed in a tiny waiting room and sleeping in hospital corners waiting for the news.

Well, I’ll probably be in the mental institution down the road being force fed sedatives so I don’t die, but that’s another post all on its own.

I wish tomorrow was already here and gone so I’d know what happened and what to do with myself. Right now it’s all about making plans and back up plans and figuring out wills and where we’ll move to and whatever else has to happen in case of worst case scenarios. It’s not fun or pretty or even realistic but when my anxiety flares up like this I talk, and over analyze, and end up having chest pains and hyperventilating.

Okay, enough of this! Just keep our family in your hearts and thoughts and I’ll post what I know as soon as I possibly can.

I’m back!

After a week of no phone and no internet, it feels really great to click on the Firefox logo and have my browser open perfectly every single time. It’s even faster than it was before, due to this awesome tutorial. My page load times are so much faster, it’s seriously amazing.

I still have no new project pictures to put up because I have been too disgusted with the whole no internet thing to care about uploading pics. That’s a rotten attitude, I know…so I’ll try to get to it tomorrow.

We have been really busy around here. The marble magnets are a thing of the past; now we have moved on to making magnetic bookmarks. I would include a link here, but we’ve been making our own up as we go along, so there’s no link to include. I will try try TRY to get pics tomorrow.

We have also been making lapbooks and mini offices. As far as I can tell, there’s not a difference between the two, but maybe I’m missing something. We have one for Math and one for Language Arts. They are both based on next year’s curriculum so we haven’t used them much yet, but they are a fun project, and I’m seriously hoping it will cut down on the “Mommy how do you” questions!

The garden is exploding with green tomatoes, crazy amounts of zucchini, and beets that are bigger than my fist and really sweet. We are having a great time checking out how fast things can ripen and how fast seeds become plants (little does she know she’s actually doing science! lol). We are, in fact, getting swamped with zucchini, and there’s only so much fried zucchini one family can stand, so it was time to look for new recipes. Tonight I tried Paula Deen’s Zucchini Lasagna and it was delicious! My one complaint was that the final layer of cheese burned to a blackened crisp and for one split second I was sure I’d ruined an hour’s worth of work. Turns out that the cheese was easy to remove as one big hunky layer, so it didn’t ruin anything. If I make it in the future I’ll just omit that last layer of cheese, because frankly, it may have been too much cheese. I know, I know, there’s really no such thing…but in this case there’s the possibility that there was.

I’m really tired and grouchy so I’m going to shut up now. And maybe upload those pictures…although making another book mark sounds like a lot more fun…hmm.

Just stopping in…

To say that not much has changed on any front. I spent the last part of my week cleaning and throwing stuff away and reorganizing the whole kitchen. I tend to do mindless busy junk like that when I’m upset, and things have been one major upset after another the last few weeks.

Apparently no news is good news. The cancer, so far, hasn’t spread; but again, they keep telling us they won’t know for sure until they actually go in to operate. Which they still haven’t scheduled. So we are still in limbo. I find myself staying away from the hill more and more, because there doesn’t seem to be much to say anymore. Everyone’s handling it just fine except for me, and I’m tired of being the only person with emotions for a ten mile radius, so it’s easier to stay home until there’s something useful to do.

But, this whole cancer thing really has shaken me up enough to the point that I’m actually going to go the doctor. It’s been almost eight months that I’ve been dealing with really weird symptoms and haven’t done much about it. The one time I did go in, the doctor ordered a complete blood work up and full physical, then changed her mind and wanted to do even more extensive testing after some of my results came back. I “accidentally” missed my follow up appointments and avoided her repeated phone calls until she eventually sent me an angry letter and then gave up. This has made me realize it’s time to deal with whatever’s going on and stop being a chicken. I don’t like it, but whatever.

On the crafting side of things, we made more marble magnets and watercolored and spent lots of time getting ready for next school year by making decorations for the big bulletin boards we have for school information. While productive, again, it feels like just busy work, not really accomplishing anything of great importance.

On the techy side of things I went last night and got a huge hard drive (bye bye little stupid 60! lol) and a new video card. We stood there debating on which card to get and eventually went with the most expensive one because apparently that’s how guys think. Whatver, it was all easy to install and we were able to play the new game DH just had to have, so things are all good. Finally, I don’t have to worry about space and can get around to actually organizing the stuff I really want to keep…

Okay, this is seriously the most boring post ever, so I’ll put you out of your misery and say good night (good morning, since it’s well after one, but who cares, right?) I’ll be back soon with pictures and projects and hopefully good news updates!

Cool project I can’t wait to try!

Okay, so today I was over at Whipup checking out her newest posts (okay, her few latest newest posts since I’ve missed her the last couple days, lol) and she had the coolest link to the coolest project.

These paper mache party lights are so festive, so colorful, and more importantly, so cheap! I’ve really been wanting some cool lights in my room to go with the new quilt and wall hanging (which I’m still working on, which is why there are no pictures of them yet.) We don’t use a headboard and I think a shelf with these lights under it would be the perfect finishing touch to my room.

Anyway, go read the post and make some of these things and tell us all about it. Do it. Now.

Maybe I’ll change from Messymama to Bossymama…hehehe!

Marble Magnets and Thunderstorms!

So last night, I was so happy to be going to bed at 9:00, that was an amazing feat for me, and honestly it took all day to prepare for. I had to make sure baths were done with, dinner was early, laundry was taken care of, and basically crammed my normal evening routine from four hours to about one and a half to compensate for the early bed time I’m determined to make happen every night. And then, at just after 9, the first huge lightening strikes lit up the area in the yard so brightly that I thought the power lines had smacked together and sparked, it was so bright. The lightening was soundless and dry as tinder for the first hour and it was incredible. Here’s a link in the hometown newspaper with some great pictures of the light show. There were several air-to-ground strikes that were clearly visible from my huge front window. Since this is Northern California, not Colorado or somewhere known for their beautiful storms, it was pretty freaky. We never lost power but both my father, who lives about thirty miles up the mountain and my good friend who lives in Nevada City both did, so I’m counting my blessings that we didn’t. Apparently the rains were a lot heavier up there too. And even just across town, over by my old house, there was amazing weather we didn’t get here – quarter size chunks of hail that thrashed my friend’s yard and garden and bounced off my sister’s roof.

I thought the storm was passing over so I fell asleep at 10:30 or so. I had no idea that the storm was really just taking a break. At 1:20 I was woken up by my entire house shuddering and shaking under the loudest, longest thunder I’ve ever heard. It was terrifying, if you want the truth. About three years ago a thunderstorm would have sent me into complete Anxiety Girl mode, full of panic attacks. I used to wrap up and lay on the living floor between the couch and sofa and cry the whole time it stormed, I was so scared. So I’m much better than I used to be, but I’m still not comfortable with uncontrollable loud noises, to put it mildly! But I survived. Now I’m a little anxious waiting for the next storm to roll in, but I can handle it.

But I didn’t get to sleep early.

Tonight a good friend came over and brought dinner for us and my hubby worked on her brakes. It was a good trade. She stayed until ten, so I didn’t go to bed early, and when she left I was really keyed up so we decided to do a quick craft that’s been on my to-do list for the last three months – we made marble magnets. I didn’t take pictures or anything (that would be too organized) and I realize this is an old craft that’s already seen it’s heyday, but I really had fun doing it with DD and it was relaxing. However…it’s now almost midnight and I haven’t even started getting ready for bed, lol.

9:00, I will reach you one day with snores and peaceful dreams, I promise!

Homeschool Tip of The Day

Okay, this may be the most basic tip ever, and probably something so obvious that it shouldn’t have taken me two years to do it. But since it did, I figured I’d share and try to prevent anyone else from some of the same frustrating moments I had.

The tip is this: When you get your curriculum for the upcoming year, go through the books thoroughly, front to back, and make notes on what you’ll be covering with your student during each chapter/unit.

For instance:

Second grade social studies is an entirely different world than kindergarten and first grade S.S. were. Now, instead of a textbook and a workbook for practice exercises, we have a textbook, two workbooks and a ton of extra projects that have to be done to meet the California standards. There are 6 major units in the book, with each unit being broken down into lessons that all fall under the theme of the unit.

So I went through each chapter of the textbook and made a vocabulary words list for each lesson (which each chapter is broken down into for easier reference) and also picked one small project for each lesson (there are either 4 or 5 lessons in each chapter, so we’ll cover roughly one lesson each week. This means there’s plenty of time for a small project for each lesson.) Also, for each unit there is a special Focus Skills point, like Comparing and Contrasting, Main Ideas and Details, etc., so I made a note of this point for each unit so we can keep that main thought in mind as we learn. Finally, for each unit I came up with a supporting idea for a Big Project, as we call it. There are 6 of these Big Projects, one for each unit (of course) and all of them will be month-long undertakings that are interactive. Some of them consist of a bulletin board that we’ll add main thoughts to each week. Others of them include making a word web and adding to it each time we learn a new point, making a family story board and a collection of family stories, and other things. (I will try to post these projects on a monthly basis. There’s no promise though. You know me better than that.)

So that covers just one subject, Social Studies.

That doesn’t even touch reading or math.

For these books, there’s a lot more research involved. I have done the same thing with all of her subjects that I did with Social Studies – read each lesson, broken it down into a rough schedule to get us through the month, and recorded all new ideas and main points with supporting projects. For math this year we’ll be doing a lot of hands on experiments to try to better grasp the concept of fractions and decimals.

And of course, there’s Science. Second grade science covers a lot of fun stuff. My one complaint is that the plant unit isn’t scheduled to begin until about the same time that Winter will begin, so we’re not going to be doing as many hands-on things with seeds and plants. But now that I’ve read through the material and made my master list of subjects and ideas for the book, I know what to expect and have prepared for it by planning some summer learning. We’ll be taking pictures of the garden each week and examining seeds and basically covering the unit without doing the paperwork the first time around. Then, when it comes time to do it this winter, we’ll have lots of information, memories and photographs to help get us through the book.

So that’s my extensively long-winded tip today. The main point is, don’t let the books surprise you with what you’re supposed to be doing; be prepared by going through the material before the school year starts and keeping accurate notes on what you’ll be covering.

Oh, one more thought about why this is such an important thing to do…all through the year, you can find all kinds of books on sale and at thrift stores, or put the word out to the family to be watching for prisms if you know you have a science unit on that coming up soon, or plan for a special field trip or movie day that corresponds with a unit in one of your subjects. You can only do these things though if you’re really prepared, which you can only become by looking at the material…right?

Okay, that’s enough outta me this morning. Have fun!

Can’t stop to blog right now…

Okay, things are awfully quiet and boring around this blog lately, I know. There are several things I have on my camera that I need to upload here and blog about, including an entire bedroom redo with a stacked coin quilt and wall hanging…but right now, life’s not so good for our family, so blogging and cameras and even sewing have been put aside in favor of simply surviving.

When I was 9 my grandmother was diagnosed with lung cancer. Less than a year later she passed away and life as I knew it ended.

Last Thursday we got a phone call from my mother in law. I try to keep this blog impersonal, so for that reason you guys haven’t ever heard much about my family, but my MIL is pretty much my hero and one of my best friends in the universe. She has been a huge part of my life since even before I married my husband, and without her I don’t know where I’d be right now. After we were married my husband and I lived in the same house as my in-laws for about six years, and if I had my way, we’d live with them again, that’s how much I love and appreciate them both, but my mom especially. She’s seriously my best friend, and that phone call ended life for me as I know it.

She has lung cancer. She quit smoking 18 months ago, and now she’s got cancer. I’m angry as hell and scared to death and more than anything I’m so confused about how I feel that I can’t even really react to anything right now.

They are going to do surgery either this week or next and take out between a third and a half of her right lung. Well, they are going to attempt the surgery; if the cancer has spread to her lymph nodes, they will have to stop, but there’s no way to tell if it’s spread until they open her up and look.

Anyway, the long and short of it is that one of my favorite people and a huge part of our family is really ill and life is really hard right now.

I want to blog, I want to create, I want to forget…but I also don’t want to go back to my usual way of dealing with things. I feel like I’ve finally got my life under control and my disorders aren’t ruling me right now; I’m even eating again, that’s how good things are going, and I’m terrified of losing all of it over this. So in the end, I don’t know what to do, but I don’t know what NOT to do either…

All I know is I may not be here as much for the next little bit and that I will miss blogland. Updates coming soon.