Saying yes.

Last night my youngest son wanted to play UpWords instead of doing his regular spelling and I just said yes.   I think it's important to follow the schedule and the rules most of the time, but sometimes, it's nice just to say yes to a more relaxed way of doing things.  It was good for him.  He got the rule of doubling the consonant at the end of a word when you add -ed or -ing reinforced over and over throughout the game.  He beat me, but I gave him 150 points to start with so I don't know if he really gets to have bragging rights. 

Work, school and life lessons.

It's Friday and I wonder at how fast the weeks just zoom by.  I am not feeling great today due to a bruised tailbone and an aching neck, but I am working.  I pretty much never take a day off, but I would sure like to today.   It is surprising what physical demands a job like mine places on the body.   It's a strain, sitting and typing all day.  One of these days, I'm going to have to do something else.  Maybe soon. I'd kind of like to get a standing desk, but I'm not sure what I'd do about the foot pedal.  I use a foot pedal to play, rewind and fast forward the recorded dictations that I type. 

The youngest kid got up this morning at 6:00 a.m., did all of his school work and then fell back to sleep on the couch.  Now he's got the afternoon off to do as he pleases.  The girl got up at noon, as usual (beauty sleep!) and is doing her school work now.  She's got a guitar lesson this afternoon.   Time management is one of the things they are learning, I suppose.  Her Dad took extra time with her this week on math and she's back up to speed and doing fine.

I learned a lesson on envy yesterday.  There's this woman I've met online whose life I have kind of envied.  They are wealthy.  They have traveled and adopted kids from overseas and were starting a nonprofit to help others. She seemed to me to have it all together.  Then yesterday she went public with something that gave me quite a shock and reminded me that no one's life is perfect and made me very thankful for the life that I have.

Perspective.     

January 26.

I love my day off and I had a lot of things planned for today.  Usually it's our clean the house day but the house is in relatively good order (for our house) , so I was thinking of doing some organizing or perhaps putting down the floor tiles I got black Friday (Yes, in November!).  I've been dreading that and putting it off because I really don't think I'll be very good at it and I tentatively set today as the day.  Unfortunately, I got up feeling quite bruised in well, as Junie B. Jones would say, my behiney and I don't feel good about the thought of sitting on the cold hard floor for hours.  I have no idea why this has happened.  My son said I sit too much and that is true, but I've been sitting and doing medical transcription now for many years and I've never actually had this issue before. It's odd.  So, today I have done things that don't require that amount of sitting.  I've taken out the garbage, cleaned up the kitchen, baked chocolate chip gluten free cookies and made my son a gluten free dairy free pizza while my daughter made herself and youngest son a gluten-y, cheese-y one.  My oldest son, bless his heart, said that the pizza was really good, although it just looks sad without cheese. Now I am uncomfortably sitting and blogging and ruminating about what else to try and accomplish today.  I may work on my version of this tablecloth which is halfway done and would involve lying on the floor and not sitting.  :-P

Useful things.

I was looking around for notebooking topics and ideas yesterday and I uncovered a lot of interesting things on Squidoo.  Here's the main search page.    This is a cool page showing all different types of notebooking.   Here's a page on anatomy.   Here's one on chemistry.   Here's a page on geography notebooking.  Right now my kids are notebooking their way through all of the simple machines.  This is going to take another week, probably and then we'll choose something else.  Now I know where to look.

School Today.

I got up and got my work done pretty quickly today.  The kids, as usual, did not follow my example and started their work right about the time I was finishing mine.  The girl was having quite a few problems with today's algebra lesson.   I try to stay out of all discussions which involve math, so she was asking her younger brother for help on every problem.  He's kind of a math wiz and although he doesn't really like math, he's good at it.   She probably got a good grade, but Dad will need to go over this a few times with her so that she gets it.  The kids started imagining the future when they are in college and he has to help her with math and she has to help him with writing, which will probably be the case.  Really, I don't think everyone should have to do higher math for every career path and I really don't think everyone needs to learn to do a research paper.  I mean, yes, it's good brain exercise, but what good does it do you later on in a career?

Addendum:   What I was trying so inelegantly to say the other night was this.  The training for career paths could be more specific.  There are careers for which writing a research paper would be an excellent exercise and good practice for life and some where higher math is definitely a must.   Sorry, sometimes I just write things and don't realize until later that I have not expressed my point well.  My oldest son wants to be a graphic artist.  He wants to avoid math.  Therefore, he's looking at getting a career diploma instead of a degree.  Should he?  I don't know.  He feels like general studies in college would just be high school all over again and he only wants to study art.  Should he have to study things that won't affect his career path? 

The Give Up and Escape Button.

My youngest son was playing one of his video games tonight and said that he had messed up so he had to push the "Give Up and Escape button".  Oh, wouldn't it be nice to have one of these in real life?  Like when you impulsively get in a drive through line for a snack and then you're there for 20 minutes and you think that you really didn't want a snack that bad anyway ... hey, it's Give Up and Escape button time.  Haven't you been to parties that make this seem like a good idea?  Classes?  Can you think of any other real life applications?   

Grocery shopping again.

Have I mentioned that I don't like grocery shopping?  I had to go again today and I have had such a headache all day that I imagine that an axe handle must be sticking out of the top of my head, it feels that awful, but it had to be done, so I went.  My husband had given me coupons that had come in the mail and one was for 16 dollars off my order if I went above 160 dollars.  They know that 160 a week is above my grocery budget because they track spending with those plus cards, so they are trying to make me get in the habit of spending more.  I know that, but 16 bucks?  I had to go for it.  My youngest son was with me.  We stocked up on expensive crazy things like peanut butter (really only 1 jar but it was a biggie) and toilet paper and we threw in a few things we really didn't need like Goldfish crackers.   We got the 16 dollars off but we had gotten a little carried away and were over budget even with the 16 dollars off and a few other coupons.  I felt bad because I always feel bad if I go over the budget.   It's a personal challenge, that budget.  I came home and looked up average grocery budgets and found this.   Apparently, according to the FDA, I am even under the lowest estimates for a family of 5 which includes 3 teenagers (AND 3 dogs and 2 cats) and we pretty  much never eat out.  I feel somewhat better, but I am still absolutely determined to stay within budget from now on.  :-P

PS.  I wore the same pants that I blogged about before here. but I've lost some weight and now they are way baggy on me and so they no longer have the same effect.

PSS.  I did have a grocery list today as well as a meal plan, but that coupon made me go kind of crazy.  That's my excuse.:-P

PSSS:  Also, I had a headache.

Sometimes,

I really just don't know what to blog about, but I'll tell you what I am up to this morning.  I am off work today and it's cleaning day and I've gotten started on that.  In between house work chores, I've checked Facebook, blogger and g-mail and took a tiny look at Pinterest.  I signed up for Youtube for educators in the hopes that I can find some good videos for the kids to watch on there.  I haven't explored it much because I'm just bouncing around between things today.  I don't really have much to say about homeschooling today because Thursday is their lightest day for school and they haven't started yet. 

I've read the first chapter of Wheat Belly.  I don't know why I get these books, it is just disheartening because  I have (2) friends and (5) family members whom I think would benefit from a gluten free diet and none of them will even consider it.  (I put the numbers in there because certain people who read my blog think that I think that everyone should go gluten free when really out of all the people I know, it's only 7, 2 with Crohn's disease, 1 with lupus, 1 with myasthenia gravis, 1 with rheumatoid arthritis and 1 with fibromyalgia) so :-P to those people.)   Wheat Belly is another book written by a doctor (I've read several) in which, when people took wheat out of their diet, they started feeling better in rather unexpected ways.  Their joints stopped hurting.  Rashes cleared up.  Brain fog and headaches went away.   Restless legs stopped being restless.  This all has happened to me too.  I feel so much better, but no one I have mentioned it to wants to even consider that it might help them or even try it for 1 week.  It's discouraging because I hate to see people suffer when I think they could feel better.  

Anyway.  Back to what I'm doing.  Right now I'm going to take a break from my up and about activities and sit for a few minutes, possibly watch a video and cut out the Boxtops for education for our homeschool group.  Through the year, I just tear them off of whatever package they are on and put them in a ziplock bag.  Then, this time of year when they are due, I cut them out more neatly, because I know that our homeschool group leader has to put them on some kind of form.  Last year we got 50 bucks for our group and I think it will be more this year because we've all been going to the salvage grocery store a lot.   (Chex gluten free cereal for 1.45 and a box top!)  

Busy Day Planned.

We have a busy day planned today.  It's our monthly 4H meeting and I'm going to teach the lesson.  We're going to do Mod Podge again.  Last time we did it I got it on my favorite shirt and on my jeans and in my hair. Today I'm going to try and be more careful.  That stuff does not wash out.  I had to cut it out of my hair.  :-/    Then we are going to eat dinner together and plan our homeschool group's activities for the next few months.  We've gotten into the routine of planning a quarter at a time, because if we try to plan too far in advance, we end up canceling and rescheduling a lot.  I got up early this morning, hoping that I can get my work done before we need to leave at 2:30.   Above is a tiny picture of our homeschool group.  The big one wouldn't load.  I'm 3rd from the left standing.  I think it's left.  :-)

Staring into space and other things.

I'm kind of having a stare into space marathon today.  I just don't feel like I can focus on much of anything.  The younger kids are having a Pokemon marathon.  They decided not to do school today since it's a holiday.  My husband made sure that they understand that they have to do 180 or 185 days (I have to look that up every single year in May) and if they miss today, that's just another day in the summer they have to do school work.  They assured him that they understood and they took the day off.  It's funny for me to listen to them playing Pokemon because they frequently burst into song.  Earlier today it was "The Pirates Who Don't Do Anything" and then for a while, it was the Harry Potter theme, and then about an hour ago they started with "The Grapes of Math" another Veggie Tales song.  It tickles me.

Right now things are pretty routine around here but there may be changes a coming.  My husband's work schedule might change dramatically over the next month or so and that will be interesting.  I'm not sure how that will impact our family's routine.  I guess we'll see.  

P.S.  Now they're singing Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer.  :-)