Minor obstacles

I'm getting mixed signals from Claire. She sounded so much like she was utterly miserable at school, had given up, didn't bother trying, that homeschooling would be the best option for her. But at her dr's appt yesterday, she said she wanted to go back in the fall. She won't be ready! Either academically or socially. I know that in my heart...or do I?

I know she won't be ready academically because we have a lot of work to make up from this semester. But I'm not sure how she thinks that she's going to make it without friends, or the knowledge of how to make friends. She's only just started opening up to the girls in Sunday School and we've been there for 3 or 4 months.

I'm just going to keep going as planned. She may change her mind from day to day, but I see the destination.

She was on one type of medication for her depression, but it made her twitchy and fidgety and really interfered with her concentration. Thankfully, the dr changed her prescription, so we'll see how she does on this new medication.

I had hoped that we'd be able to come off the Concerta for her ADD, but I'm not so sure about that yet. She was having such a rough time yesterday just sitting down for more than a few minutes that I had to change the due date on her essay to tomorrow instead of today. The nice thing about homeschooling is that I can do that.

I'd actually been stressing about how we "shouldn't get behind!" But then I realized that if it took us 9 weeks to do an 8-week course, the Mayan apocalypse was not going to come early.

Yeah, still getting the hang of this.

DS (Aaron) is just finishing up 5th grade and I think he's exhausted. He told me the other day that he wants to be homeschooled. I know some people who think it's weird to have one in school and one at home, but this is the kid who actually succeeds at school. Plus, DH is still iffy about the whole homeschooling thing and I hesitate to change a system that seems to be working for him.

I haven't done any writing, but I'm almost done with the batch of ms's that were sent to me. I have some financial paperwork to finish up and the basement's still a wreck.

A bunch of small things are adding up and I'm feeling a little ... squashed.

First test!

She's taking her first test right this minute. It's over literary and poetic terms and vocabulary...and it's almost all long answer. Long answer questions have always been her downfall because she either didn't know the material deeply enough to do the analysis or she couldn't organize her thoughts well enough to answer completely.

But you know what? Life isn't all multiple choice.

She made an 89%!! Pretty good for less than a week of study. The one question that she totally screwed up will show up again as extra credit on her next test. It was about the difference between analogy and allegory, which, believe it or not, are concepts I come across regularly in my work. Knowledge doesn't occur in a vacuum, even the stuff we assume is uselessly esoteric.

First day review

Whew. That was easy! (Someday, I'm going to come back and look at those words and laugh until I cry.)

But yesterday really was easy! She did 10 lessons in her Daily Grammar book - and did NOT do them all perfectly, so she has to re-do the ones she missed.

Then she read the intro to the Poetry class and started writing definitions. She got halfway done, and she'll finish them today, plus start the next lessons.

In writing news, I need to get back to my stories. I'm working on a novella right now and would love for it just to be done. Unfortunately, I'm barely 3K into it, so there's a way to go yet. That damn novel is ... not stuck, I just keep waiting for the characters to say, "Yes, go this way!" and they've gone mute.

Starting a new job today doing some reading for a small pub. Here's hoping that nobody makes my eyes bleed!

And laundry. Today is Big Laundry Day since I didn't really get it done last week and we're down to the dregs. Yikes. But at least I don't have to leave the house today and that's awesome. I'm tired of constantly running around. I like my house and I'd like to spend some time in it. Plus, it's going to rain all day. Home is better than rain.