So somehow, I’ve lost my momentum on this blog and never quite gotten it back. I haven’t been writing at all, except for e-mails, in months now, and lately I’ve been thinking that it’s time to start again. This is something that kind of comes and goes, I guess. I’ve been thinking about other things and busy with cleaning and organizing my house, and getting ready to home school next year, but as I get stuff organized and start feeling better about how the house is being run, writing comes back.
I guess maybe I’ve been cleaning for another reason, besides home school, eh? I dunno. It’s a bit odd to be me sometimes. I haven’t been doing much in the way of reading or studying, but it’s like the stuff I learned before is coming to fruition in my life anyway. I’ve always felt like a schmuck when it comes to housecleaning, and I’ve always felt like it was something I should be better at because it’s better for me and my family if we always have clean clothes and home cooked food, but I often fall short of that goal.
I still do, because I get tired easily, and I often feel sick, but instead of feeling guilty, I just wait it out and do what’s absolutely necessary until I feel up to working my butt off again. Since we’ve worked on the kids’ rooms, they’re more able to clean up after themselves, which is a great bonus, and I taught Shaya how to load and unload the dishwasher, so she can do that when I’m feeling crappy. Now, we’re going to work on laundry!
I guess it’s kind of tacky to make the kids do housework, at least from one point of view, but this is kind of a home school before home school starts project. They need to be able to clean up after themselves [something I never learned until I was a grownup, and something that Steve would tell you I’m still not the best at] in order to become effective adults. Especially Matt, because he has my distractable tendencies, and forgets what he’s supposed to be doing, so his cleanup process takes a lot more supervision and energy to maintain.
So anyway, I’ve been thinking about writing again, in the midst of all this upheaval and organization. I got a course by Holly Lisle online, called How to Think Sideways, and I started it back in the beginning, but at the time, I was only able to download one lesson a week, and sometimes I get on a roll, and don’t want to stop once I get going, so it was messing up my rhythm.
It’s all downloaded and complete now, so I think I’m going to start up with it again, and see where it takes me. I did the first five or six weeks back when it started, and I was already having a great increase in my creativity, and getting in touch with my ‘muse’ so I’m looking forward to starting up again.
I was thinking about posting my progress here, and maybe starting a free write at the beginning of my sessions on the blog, so God willing, I’ll be posting more often here. Seems like I should be doing something with it since it’s still here and easy to use, eh?
Come fall, I’ll have home school news to post, so that should be fun. I’ve decided to use Seton Home School curriculum because it’s fully planned out for you. When I home schooled Shaya before, we couldn’t afford a curriculum, so I did it with no idea of what I was doing, and no help, and Shaya’s education was far from complete because of it. At the time, I would never have used Seton, because it’s Roman Catholic, but since I’m Orthodox now, RC isn’t quite as offensive to me as when I was protestant. Makes sense, since the Protestant movement came out of Roman Catholicism, and so you get a lot of ‘Romeaphobia’ in protestant circles.
I’ve learned that while Luther was right to protest some of the things he disagreed with, the path that some of the others took after he opened the can of worms that became the Reformation, was anything but good. It’s kind of a sad thing, from one perspective, because of the shattering of the Church, and yet, a lot of good has come from the Reformation, too. So I dunno. I said all that to say that I’ll be using a Catholic home school curriculum, which also happens to be one of the most complete, and cheapest on the market, so it’s a double whammy!
I think Steve’s mom is a little worried about me using RC material, but in the end, I decided that it would be easier to filter through Catholic teachings than Protestant teachings, even though they’re both two sides of the same coin. There isn’t a curriculum available that’s Orthodox, so I gotta make do with what I got, you know?
I’ll be supplementing with Orthodox books, too, though. So hopefully, it will work out and my kids will get a well-rounded education. I think it will be good, because I can learn with my kids, and that’s kind of exciting, you know?
So about writing. Even though I’ve taken quite a detour on my quest to write books, I think I might be ready to stretch my brain in that direction again. I have a hard time finding balance for some reason. It’s like I only have enough capacity to focus on one, or at the most, two, areas of my life at a time, so when I’m doing one thing, like cleaning and organizing, everything else takes a back seat. I’ve always been that way, and I’ve tried at various times in my life to be wider in my focus, I can’t seem to master it.
I’m hoping that with home school, it will enable me to be a better, more involved parent [my kids are pretty self-sufficient, and they’ll find stuff to do without bothering me, which is great, but it lets me be lazy in interacting with them, so I don’t pay enough attention to them] and then after we’re done with school, I’ll be able to focus on writing and not feel guilty because I will have spent a good portion of the day with the kids.
I’m also going to be teaching them how to cook, clean, and do laundry, which is necessary for them, and will be a great help to me. We’ll be taking weekly trips to the library, and Seton has curriculum for PE, music, and art. I’m also planning to grow a garden this spring, and the kids will be helping with that, too. I think they’ll enjoy it. They all like being outside [well, Matt would rather be inside, but I think he’ll like watching stuff grow because he’s got a scientific, hands-on learning style].
Well, Michaela just came to me and said, “I want some bwead, an some appewbuttew on my bwead.” She loves apple butter. So I’d better go. I’ve got other stuff that needs to be done, too, but God willing, I’ll write more on here tomorrow!
If I Ruled the World 