Kind of in limbo.

This is what the sky seems to look like most of the time lately.  It's been stormy.

I'm not really doing much of anything right now.  We have to wait until Sunday to pick up the fair entries and see what the kids won.  I haven't felt good all week and am on an antibiotic, but it really doesn't seem to be working yet.  I've only got 3 more days to take it so I hope it improves me soon.  Consequently, I have been doing the bare minimum, working at my job and that's pretty much it.  When I don't feel good, I go slow and so it's been taking many many hours to get my work done.  For example, I'm not done tonight and it's 8:31 p.m.   Time for my husband to go to bed and my son to wake up for work.  When I feel better, I'll send in my letter of intent to homeschool and get started on the planning, pick up my exercise routine and other projects where I left them off.   I hope it's soon.

Speeding.

The summer is just speeding on by.  The local schools start up on August first.  That's only 13 days away.  I haven't even cracked open the Rainbow Resource catalog.  I haven't made any concrete plans as to what we are going to do this fall.  I know that my daughter will be using the same writing and French (she makes a face every time I say this),  son needs to work on spelling and writing, there will be science with notebooking and we'll do some grammar work.  We might go back and do Grammar with a Giggle or possibly get the one for high schoolers.  I think GWAG is for middle school.  Speaking of speeding by, how quickly have our homeschooling years gone?  I mean, we're going to have a college student and 2 high schoolers this year!  Four years and we'll be done.  :-(


We had an awful storm last night.  It knocked out our electricity for 4 or 5 hours.  We had no choice but to adorn ourselves with glow-stick bracelets and  play board games.   It made my younger son happy because he finally had someone to play Settlers of Catan with him.  We really should do that more often.  There for a while, we had board game day every third Sunday, but since my husband's work shift changed and now he works on Sunday, we've let that fall by the wayside.  We need to start doing that again.  

Busy, but mostly good busy.

Today I tried to work with a lot of interruptions.  The phone was ringing.  The kids were talking.  The kids needed help draining the macaroni they were cooking.  The dog needed to be taken to the vet for a blood sugar test and we needed groceries, but I couldn't combine those trips because I couldn't leave the dog in the car while I got groceries with it being over 100 degrees.  I still didn't get my complete amount of lines, but I ran out of work about an hour and a half ago and I took that as a good excuse to get in the pool for a while.  Now I'm out, I'm blogging, I'm eating Cheetos and watching a little CSI. (multitasking) and in a little while I'll check and see if there is more work.  That's one of the disadvantages of working at home ... you're always at work.

Hot!

It's calling me.

My goodness it's hot today.  Our air conditioning is acting up again.  It's about 85 in here.  That's probably not really all that hot by normal standards, but when you are spoiled rotten to central air it's hot.  If I EVER get done with work today I am going to get in the pool, but I despair of ever getting done.  I overslept this morning and then my sons were doing a lot of talking this morning and the phone rang several times, then the dog had a reaction to his insulin and between all those interruptions, I'm only a little more than halfway done at 4:00 p.m..  It's going to be a long, long day.  Actually, it already has.

The air is fixed.

It's nice because today the pool temperature is only 74.  The crazy kids are in it, but I don't think I could take it.  I'm way too much of a wimp for that.  Tonight's low is going to be in the 50s, but then it is going to start warming up, up, up and then it will be warm enough for me in the pool.  I did get in the day before yesterday when it was just so incredibly hot in here, but yesterday and this morning, we kept it under control with the cooking outside, turning some computers and things off and putting a ginormous fan in the living room window.  Now that summer really seems to be getting here, I need to get a summer fun list together.  I've been looking at this site to get me started.  :-)

Feels like summer!

Picture of our creek, not our pool.  I don't have any good pictures of the pool.

I got in the pool today.  Can you believe it?  May 6.  That's the earliest I've ever gotten in the pool.  We don't usually have it up until memorial day weekend.  The temperature outside was 87 degrees and the temperature inside is not much better since our air conditioning does not seem to be working.  It keeps freezing up.  I did some chores around the house, got very, very warm and decided to just get in the pool.  I felt much better for a while, but now I'm back inside and getting very warm again and so I might have to go back out there.  It's so nice to have it as an option.  I'm thinking if we leave it up until September I can get 5 good solid months of exercise in before we take it down and I turn back into a slug.  I really need to get a winter exercise plan.

Bad weather again today.

I really hope that it's over at this point.  Our electricity has been off and is now back on.  I had to stop working, which I really didn't mind at all and the kids couldn't do their math for a while because it's on the computer as well.  I hear it's been really bad in other parts of the country.  :-(

We were.

We were right in the middle of a bunch of tornadic activity yesterday.  My mom had a doctor's appointment so we started to go to it (I didn't know about the tornados at that time, just the storm) and we got about halfway there and my cell phone rang.  It was my son telling me that my aunt had called and that the appointment was cancelled, but then after we got back home, my aunt called and asked why we weren't at the appointment?  Apparently there was some kind of mix up in the bunch of phone calls, but at the end there was me uncharacteristically telling off the receptionist, who was denying to me that they had cancelled the appointment and said that they just wanted to see if we were coming.  I said, not nicely, that if I had been going to cancel I would have called.  I really think it was one of those things where a bunch of workers in an office like that get a bunch of cancellations and they think "oh wow, if just one more person cancels, we can all go home!" and then someone called my aunt (who was going to accompany mom at the appointment while I went back home and finished work) and tried to talk her into cancelling and then my aunt or one of my sons, the one who took the call or the one who phoned me, got a message mixed up.  I don't know.  It was crazy.  While I was gone the work in the typing pool dried up and I ended up not getting enough work yesterday.  Very frustrating.

In other news, we did have a bunch of tornados around us but no damage here.  One of my Facebook friends had to spend half an hour in a bank vault and the school kids had to spend quite a bit of time sitting in the halls.  My school kids went about their work, timing things like showers and puddle jumping between storms.

Not pretty today.

It's storming, absolutely POURING.  I used to love storms, but now I just find them depressing.  I hope the storm is over soon because I need to take a shower and take my mom to the pain clinic for her appointment and I don't want to go out in that or take a shower during a thunderstorm.  At least our electricity is still on, so I can work.  I'm thrilled about that, don't you know.  Youngest son thinks the storm is really cool and wants to go out in it, but we have stopped him due to lightning safety issues.  Later on, when the storm passes, we'll let him go 'puddle jumping' which is what he wants to do.   

Just too pretty.

It is just too pretty outside for kids to have to do school.  Nobody's said it, but my daughter just sat down, wrote all her math problems on a piece of paper (she usually does them on the computer) and went outside to do them.  My youngest is already outside, but unfortunately, I don't think he's doing school.  I think he's doing boy stuff like walking around with a stick. He'll have to do school later, when it's dark and supposed to be screen time, but he feels like the tradeoff is worth it, I guess, to get out in that beautiful sunshine.  I wish there was a way I could drag my desktop computer out there for just a little while.  I'm doing the old get-it-done-in-a-hurry method so I can go out later.  To each his own, I guess.

While I sit out there, I'm going to work on a list of all the things I want our family to accomplish in March.  :-)  They'll be so thrilled!   Spring cleaning is what spring break is for, right?

Raining on Freckles Parade.

Warm and cozy once again.

Freckles looks forward to garbage day.  On garbage day, I gather the garbage from all over the house, throw it in the back of the Suburban, open the front door and let Freckie in and then drive down to the road (our driveway is long).  While I'm unloading the trash into the trash container, she gets to run around, smell things and pee on them.  Oh, the pure unadulterated doggy joy!  Today, however, it is raining.  She hates rain.  This didn't affect her enthusiasm when I was loading up, but when we arrived at out destination (the end of the driveway) and it was raining there too (!!!) she was upset.  She didn't want to even get out of the truck.  I means, what's the point?!  I made her get out and she made a half-hearted attempt to sniff and even peed once, but then she was oh so ready to get back IN!  Oh well, there's always next Thursday.