Busy Friday.

A cool picture my daughter took of a sunset a couple of weeks ago.

I had to work today and then we had the Friday guitar lesson and then we killed some time in town to save gas money by going to the library instead of coming home and then we went to a birthday party.  It was a basketball party for a boy in our homeschool group who was turning 15.  Needless to say, I didn't play basketball.  Some of the other moms, my daughter and I played Upwords Scrabble while they played basketball.  We had a really good time.  One of my friends carries a Scrabble dictionary with her all the time, just in case she gets to play a game.  How cute is that?  So I brought the game, she brought the dictionary and we kept score on the back of a coupon I had printed out to get a 7.99 haircut.  (Like Smart Style on Facebook if you want one too.)  Everyone kept asking me how I am doing since my oldest son went to Mississippi and surprisingly, I'm doing okay.  :-)

Keeping busy and making some changes.

A picture my daughter took of our driveway, unrelated to the post below.  :-P

My oldest son has been in the path of the hurricane, but he's okay.  They cancelled classes for 2 days and today, they start back.  I've been keeping up with him by phone, email and Facebook, which has helped me a lot.  These kinds of things are hard on moms.  I've been keeping busy by typing a lot since I'm trying to make up the time that I was off for the trip and then the computer crash.  My husband has got my computer going pretty well at this point, so that's good.

In homeschool news, yesterday, there was quite a bit of whining from my daughter about Life of Fred Geometry and she and my husband decided to put her in Teaching Textbooks Algebra 2, which we already own, instead of switching to a different geometry course, which we would have to put out money for.  Youngest son likes Life of Fred and so he's going to keep doing that.  So, for the first time since we pulled these 2 out of public school in first and third grades, they won't be doing the same math book.  My daughter is going to have to get by without her younger brother explaining the problems to her.  That should be interesting.  We'll see how it goes, I guess.

Today's my day off from work, but I'm going to work anyway.  The only indication that it is my day off is that I haven't started yet.  I've given myself permission to start a little later than usual and I slept until 9:20 this morning.  It was great.  So I guess I should get started now.

Have a great day everyone. :-)

Just plugging away.

I'm working today, plugging away at the backlog the hospital got while I was gone and plugging away at re-entering all my PC Shorthand speed typing entries that I lost.  As I was bookmarking this page of writing prompts.  I realized that I have lost all my bookmarks as well as photos, documents, curriculum/notebooking things that I've gotten for free and everything else that I felt was worthy to save on my computer for the last 2 or 3 years.  It's frustrating. 

A crab.  That's what I feel like this morning.  I need more coffee. 

A quote from each of my children.

My kids still say some of the funniest things.  These are excerpts from yesterday.  The oldest's quote is per Facebook, since he is in Mississippi now.   He said "The sky was clear earlier but now it's getting really cloudy and dark.  Tut, tut, looks like a hurricane"  He does already have a friend's storm shelter to go to so I'm trying not to worry, but classes were cancelled for the next 2 days.  Kind of disconcerting for a landlubber like myself.

Anyway, onto the next one.  Last night, when we were very, very tired, listening to our nightly audio book, Percy Jackson and the Olympians, my daughter and I were both lying on her huge bean bag chair.  I wasn't looking at her, so I couldn't tell that her head slipped off the chair (there really wasn't enough room for both of us), I just heard her say kind of pitifully "My head fell off".

And finally, the youngest, who always has the best quotes.  He was reading, for fun, the Book of Revelation.  He said that every time it would address a group of people as "you", he would change it in his head to "ya'll" and asked me, "I wonder what is the ancient Greek word for ya'll?"  We got silly with this one later and were saying things like "If ya'll don't change your ways, ya'll are going to be very sorry." 

So anyway, I think I'm adapting a little bit better to my oldest son being gone.  He's so happy and having so much fun and of course, we have the phone and email and Facebook. 

The promised pictures. What a week.



Kentucky State Fair concert picture, Newsboys. This was Monday.



 On Tuesday we went shopping, cleaned the house, took out the trash, froze the taco meat, made arrangements for all 5 pets to be fed and cared for and I cried quite a bit.






Then on Wednesday we went to Mississippi.

On Thursday, we had a tiny 1-day mini-vacation.

My daughter wanted a pretty shell and I picked this one up for her and carried it around for quite a while, before realizing that it was actually occupied.  There was a little crab inside!  I'm so glad I didn't bring it back to the hotel.



Ocean Springs Mississippi Beach.



Beach.  It's a pretty area.

 

Mellow Mushroom pizza.  This stuff is WONDERFUL.  This picture was taken to show how big this slice is, but you can't really tell unless I tell you that this is a normal size plate, not a saucer. 


On Friday, we moved our son into this dorm and came home.

My son's dorm.  He's on the second floor.





On Saturday, we picked up our dogs and started trying to fix the computer and the car and started with our new normal.  I'm not sure how I feel about it yet.

The New Normal.

So, now that one of the kids is out of the house, temporarily at least, we begin our new normal.  We have 2 homeschooling, which is the same as last year and they are in 9th and 11th grades.  Youngest son was telling some people at our party last week that he had no idea what grade he was in.  That really makes homeschooling seem so positive to all the public schooling relatives and friends (Sarcasm)  ... but I was able to overhear, tell him he's in the 9th grade and give a little speech about how his education is personalized and that he is in 11th grade math and science and 3rd grade spelling at the same time, so it's no wonder the boy is confused.  Really though, he should know we call it the 9th grade.  :-P. 

The oldest boy is alive and well.  I have seen evidence of him on Facebook, though he did not call me last night.  He starts classes today and hopefully will get the ball rolling on his work study job because he's going to need that.  He spent the weekend at an event for freshmen called Survival Weekend, where they do a lot of team building and getting-to-know-each-other activities and he's making some friends.  His roommate arrived yesterday and is from Belgium, so that should be interesting.  I hope it goes well.  I got a little teary in the milk aisle of the grocery store yesterday because I didn't have to buy Lactaid milk for him.  It's funny how his food intolerances are something I miss, but I have spent a lot of time and effort, not to mention money, trying to properly feed the boy for the last few years. 

The girl woke up yesterday with a sore throat and does not feel horrible, but doesn't feel great either and has spent a lot of time lying around and sleeping this weekend.  

My job is a mess because my computer crashed on Friday night just after we got home and I posted my last update here on this blog.  My husband has been working frantically trying to get it set up again, but I have lost my medical dictionary and all my work files, so I can't work until that gets fixed.  Honestly, I enjoy not working, but we seriously need the money after the Mississippi trip. 

We booked a hotel on line, site unseen, with decent reviews.  Our main goal was to be within walking distance of the beach, but that shouldn't have been our main goal.  The hotel was not nice.  The sheets were kind of brownish and someone's taco was in the fridge.  We ended up leaving there for another hotel and haven't heard yet if we will get our money back.  It's my fault.  I thought it looked okay, but then the longer we were there, the less I liked it and my daughter HATED it.  On a scale of 1-10, she rated it a 1.  I personally rated it more of a 3-4.  I was just too exhausted and emotional to be confronted with making a decision about a hotel.  Anyway, we called and got another hotel and moved at 10:00 p.m. on Wednesday night.  It was not fun, but we were relieved once we got to the new place.   We found out after we got there that the beaches in Mississippi are not good swimming beaches.  It was okay for walking in the surf and looking at shells and stuff, but that's it, so we took a mini vacation on Thursday, walking on the beach, going to the Barrier Islands National Seashore which sounds more impressive than it is but was free and eating at the Mellow Mushroom.  Then we got up early Friday, moved the boy into the dorm and drove 9 hours home, only to find that we were too late to pick the dogs up, my husband's car battery had died while we were gone and my hard drive had erased itself.  Good times.

There were good times throughout the week and my youngest son provided quite a bit of comic relief while the older 2 kids were just sweet and my husband was a hero, driving us all down there and back, fixing the car and the computer and getting up and going to work at 4:00 am on Saturday when I could barely even open my eyes. 

Pictures to follow.

Road trip.

We took the boy to college in Mississippi.  It really is a long, long way.  We went down to the gulf coast on Wednesday and Thursday and then today, we brought him to the college and moved him into the dorm, then drove 9 hours + back home.  I think he's going to do great.

Me, maybe not so much. :-(

Kentucky State Fair 2012.

We went yesterday to the state fair.  It is an excused absence in Kentucky for school kids, I guess since it happens in late August and most of the school districts start back in early August, they kind of have to.  Anyway, we went.  We left our home at 1:00 p.m. and did not return until 11:30 p.m.  It was long but it was very good.  They have stopped giving out the big booklets that tell you when all the shows are, so we weren't as organized in our approach to the fair.  We didn't know what shows were when, so we only saw one show.  Then we kind of wandered around and looked at things, ate fudge, sampled the dips, got a really good deal on yarn, tasted country ham and sorghum, saw the animals, climbed in the TARC bus, rode rides, toured the house they build inside the fairgrounds each year, got a massage, had a stare down with an owl, put on drunk driver goggles and attempted to play corn hole, and marveled at the fun food offerings like fried Oreos, fried Kool-Aid and pork butt on a stick, which makes me laugh.  We went and looked at my daughter's 4H entries to the state fair.  She had 5 entries and won 4 red ribbons and 1 white.  I think she was disappointed she didn't get a blue.  I was really hoping the crocheted mat she made would win something big, because it was very cool.  Then, we had a picnic in our car and went to the Santus Real / Newsboys free concert.  It was really, really good.  Now I can barely walk.  I have sore muscles in my legs and shoulders and a really giant blister on my big toe.  It was fun though.

Tacos and more tacos.

We decided on a taco bar for the party on Saturday because tacos are something that the gluten free boy can eat and enjoy.  We served only taco shells and tostadas made from corn.  We had no wheat tortillas and no wheat in the seasoning for the meat.  With it, we had all the fixings, with a lot of yummy fresh veggies from my father-in-law's garden.  Several of my family members asked me if I wanted them to bring something and up until about Wednesday, I said that I could handle it.  Then about Wednesday, I started to feel very overwhelmed and when someone offered help, I said okay.  So a few people brought things. We had a big old spread by the time it was over.  We had 4 crock pots full of taco meat, 2 of chicken and 2 of beef.  I brought home 2 full and 1 with some still in it.  I find that I do not know how to estimate how much people will eat.  Thankfully, it's not a skill I need very often.  The point is, that I overestimated.  I was helped to this by my brother and my mother-in-law who both told me that I didn't have enough meat, so I added 3 pounds to the hamburger meat and 4 pounds to the chicken.  So it is partially their fault that my family is going to be eating tacos for breakfast, lunch and dinner for about a week.  :-P

Busy day.

We had a big party for my son today,  I spent the day making taco meat and pico de gallo and a bunch of other stuff and now that I don't have the party to think about, I think I'll start to fret more about my son moving out.  Sigh.  It's always something when you're a mom.

Hanging in there.

I'm a little better today.  The fear knot in my stomach has dissipated somewhat.  I'm trying to deal with 1 day at a time.  Today, grocery shopping, guitar lesson, work and getting the desserts baked for the party tomorrow.  Tomorrow, making tortilla bowls, putting taco meat in the crock pots, cutting up veggies, decorating the room and having the party.  Sunday, we will make the final plans for how we are going to get the boy to Mississippi, who is going, who is staying home, who is dog sitting, who is working, who is taking off, and then we'll start packing.  This is all new to us and new stuff is always a little scary, but we'll get through it.  One day at a time.  One plan at a time.  One trimester at a time.  One year of college at a time. 

Fear not versus fear knot.

I've been running around all week with that kind of a fear knot that I get sometimes in my stomach.  My son got the scholarship and now we've got to try and get him 9 hours away to a college.  I'm kind of a little bit terrified of the logistics, the costs, etc.  Everything.  I'm completely overwhelmed.  That's where I am this week, struggling with all that and  how to throw a party for him on Saturday, which I've already scheduled.  I'm second guessing every single thing.  It has not been a fun week. 

I kind of drive myself crazy.

He got it.

We finally were notified yesterday about the scholarship after a determined person called the financial aid office.  Yes, it was actually me, can you believe it?  I hate to make phone calls, but I called the college my son is going to and asked about the scholarship.  The woman in the financial aid office went and got his file, then I heard her typing, then she said, okay, it's on his screen now.  Then I said "He got it?!" and she said "Yes."  After that I don't know what I said, possibly it was gibberish.  I do know I said "Thank God" at some point.  Now I feel so many things all at once.  I'm happy for him.  Sad that he's moving out.  Overwhelmed at all we have to do between now and then.  Proud that we've now got our first homeschool graduate into a college.  Excited.  Happy.  Sad.  Proud.  Overwhelmed.  I'm having a hard time getting my work done this morning. 

The first day.

The kids are doing their first day of school today.  I'm working.  I don't need to sit and do school with them because they are high schoolers and basically school themselves at this point.  I have printed out the list of things they need to do each week and printed out the resources from Curr-click and various other web sites that I want them to use and they have started.  They actually seem to be enjoying themselves, although they probably wouldn't admit it.  They aren't doing math today because their Dad/math teacher is at work and can't tell them how many pages to do, so they think it's best just to skip math altogether for today, just to be on the safe side.  :-)  

Dr. Suess.

"The Waiting Place…
…for people just waiting.
Waiting for a train to go or a bus to come, or a plane to go or the mail to come, or the rain to go or the phone to ring, or the snow to snow or waiting around for a
Yes or a No or waiting for their hair to grow.
Everyone is just waiting.
Waiting for the fish to bite or waiting for wind to fly a kite or waiting around for
Friday night or waiting, perhaps, for their Uncle Jake or a pot to boil, or a Better Break or a sting of pearls, or a pair of pants or a wig with curls, or Another Chance.
Everyone is just waiting.
NO!That’s not for you!
Somehow you’ll escape all that waiting and staying.
You’ll find the bright places
where Boom Bands are playing."

From "Oh the Places You'll Go."

 I feel like this is where I spend the majority of my time.  Lately we've been waiting for the school my son wants to go to to confirm a scholarship.  They've told us he's eligible for it, but it hasn't shown up on his portal on their web site yet.  Monday we're going to have to make some calls I guess.  We kind of need to know, you know?  Today he's going to accept a scholarship from our church, but its a pretty small one. 

Over the years I have gotten better at waiting and that is a good thing I guess.  :-P

Procrastination, it's making me wait.

Or something like that.  We still haven't started school, despite a kind of a vague plan to start this week.  This is the longest break we have ever had.  We were very diligent this year and got finished in early May.  The public schools here started back this week and I don't like to get very far behind them, so we are going to take aim at Monday.  That will make us 1 week behind them, which we can easily make up by not taking as long a fall break, winter break and spring break.  They take 2-3 weeks for each of those and we don't have to.  I have made some selections from my curriculum collection that I have stored on my computer and I have printed some things out, so that's progress I guess. 

If you are a homeschooler ...

and you have not bought supplies for this year yet, please go over and take a look at Freely Educate  you may save yourself some money.  Today she has posted a free K12 math program.

Here's one she posted in her archives.  It looks great. Scholastic Study Jams

Searching the archives is like a treasure hunt.  If you need something, do a search.  The search box is easy to find, in the top right corner.

Working today.

I'm trying to fit in some working today amongst all my other responsibilities.  :-)  It's a good thing I have flexible hours because I flex the heck out of them. 

Today I thought I'd share some of the kind of stuff I do.

For example, here's a little bit of what Dr. P. said word for word.

"The patient was complaining of the right leg pain for a long time is getting worse day by day and the patient's pain was getting more worse after 100 yards of walking according to the patient.  The patient has no any pain in the left side leg."

As I type, I try to correct the grammar/sentence structure a bit but try not to slow down while I do it.  Typing fast is money, since I am paid by the line. 

This is what I came up with for this one.

"The patient was complaining of right leg pain for a long time, getting worse day by day.  The patient's pain would get worse after walking 100 yards.   The patient has no pain in his left leg."  

Sometimes their sentence structure is a little wonky and I have to change things around, again, on the fly.  One of my doctors always says "yesterday night" and there's this one who says "no any pain" and the one who pronounces width as WIDE-th with the long I sound and the one who says "woiding" for voiding.  

Still in their defense, I don't speak any of their language at all, much less complicated technical medical words in a second language.  And, if it weren't for these guys, I wouldn't have a job because it would all be done by speech recognition software. 

Crazy busy Monday.

Today I had to get all my work done early so I could take my mom to the pain clinic and sit there for several hours, then go back later and get prescriptions. I didn't get done/home until 8:00 p.m. and I was/am so tired. The pain clinic just sucks the life right out of you, I tell you, waiting there all that time. Today is also my wonderful daughter's 16th birthday. (I cannot believe it, of course!) She's such a blessing!

Use what you have and Currclick.

I have decided not to spend anything right now on homeschooling the 2 youngest kids.  I may have to get some things in January, but right now I've got enough stuff to begin with.  Last year, I won a physics curriculum from Currclick somehow.  I've forgotten the details.  This was when I was working at Mom's house.  I downloaded it, put it on my flash drive and brought it home.  Then later, when my older son asked to use my flash drive and could he erase it in order to have more space I said yes, because I had forgotten that I had never transferred all the physics files to the computer at home.  So today, I was thinking about that and I remembered that Currclick lets you download things multiple times so if you lose the file somehow, you can have it again.  I went and checked my Currclick account and there is every thing that I've ever downloaded from there, some of which I have lost when I have changed computers or just forgotten about, so I have a ton of stuff to begin this year with.  It's cool.  I'm currently re-downloading the physics videos. Also, they are having a massive sale right now which I have already linked to, but I will again, because I think this is such a cool homeschool resource.

My typing skills.

I've always had this thing I do sometimes when I'm typing, I'll sometimes leave off the first letter of the word.  I've got ospital and atient set up on my version of Word to autocorrect to hospital and patient, but lately, I've started doing it with the word drug.  The mistakes with these words tickle me, and even though I have to do a find and replace at the end of the report and replace all instances of rug with drug, I've been laughing at these.

The first one I did today was:

No known rug allergies. 

That one is kind of funny, but the one that really tickled my funny bone was this one.

No history of rug abuse.

Shoot!

My son was filling out his work study forms and I heard him say "Shoot!" My younger son said "What? Did you spell your name wrong again?" and he said "No, I spelled my social security number wrong." ;-0

Currclick sale today.

This is where I get a lot of things to fill in, copywork, notebooking and various other resources.  Check it out.

Randomness.

Here are my Friday random thoughts.

I need to get done with work early today because my daughter has a guitar lesson, but I have a hard time with this lately because I can't concentrate, so we'll see.  I may end up having to type late into the night.  :-(    I'd also like to say Dr. You-Know-Who-You-Are, no matter how many times you say the incorrect plural for the word atrium and no matter how clearly you pronounce it (incorrectly), I'm still going to type the correct word, every time.  Get used to it.  I say this here, because I am banned from contacting any of the physicians or hospitals that I type for directly, so this is just to get it off my chest a little.   I wouldn't contact him anyway, I just hope that by typing it correctly every single day for the last few years that I'll wear him down and he'll look it up and realize he's wrong, just the same way, he keeps pronouncing it slowly and carefully every day in the hopes that I'll realize I'm wrong (but I'm not).  :-) 

I have made no progress on planning, except thinking that I'm going to go ahead and start the kids on that middle school curriculum that I have, plan for them to finish it early and then throw some more in depth study their way later in the year.  The decision is to use what I have for now and not spend any money right now.  It gives me a few months to look around for some other free or cheap resources.  I think I may have seen some free textbooks for Kindle ...

Speaking of Kindle, my son finally got my book kind of adequately formatted and we published it on Kindle this week.  It's about what to eat when you are gluten free.  I'm very happy about that and I hope to make a little extra money with that.  

Speaking of my oldest son, we still need to hear back on a scholarship that he might get and it's driving me crazy that we haven't heard yet.  Is this normal not to hear about something like this when classes start in 3 weeks? 

Still haven't decided when we will start school around here.  Probably next Tuesday, the day after my daughters 16th (?!) birthday.

Actually.

I've actually given a little thought to school off and on today.  We usually start the day after my daughter's birthday which is Monday, but this year, we've got the oldest going off to college and it's consuming a lot of our thoughts, at least mine.  I've also been thinking a lot about my mom, since she fell and hurt her back and also feeling sorry for myself since my back still hurts after 2 1/2 weeks of antibiotics.  I may have to go back to the very expensive specialist and I don't want to do that.  :-(
But, in between the busy crazy times, my husband and I both have been thinking about school for our 2 remaining high schoolers.

We're going to do chemistry this year, geometry, writing and MS Office.  Then the girl will also be working on a foreign language.  She wants to switch that from French to sign language, which does count, so I guess we will.   The boy needs to work on his writing literacy.  He has dysgraphia so he's in an entirely different place than she was at this age.  He will also have to continue typing but I'm going to have to get something different from Mavis Beacon because MB wants him to be fast before he can move past the home row and he's not fast.  The girl already types well enough that I think she can stop doing MB every day.  I've started looking for a chemistry curriculum.  I downloaded a free middle school curriculum from someplace but it doesn't look very in-depth so I've been looking for supplements for it, with really no luck so far.  Anyone have suggestions?

So that's it.  I've thought a little bit about school and with as crazy as it's been around here lately, that's an accomplishment.  :-)