thinking, thinking...

So, where to start?

I've been very busy with our back to homeschool. Complications from using 2 different charter schools, several different outside lessons and Biola Star Program classes for my highschoolers...it's actually more than my brain can handle. Somehow I keep all the balls spinning, but the casualty seems to be my concentration. Hence, no blogging. I sit here in front of my computer and either sit passively reading twitter and homeschool message boards...or sit here and think "I should be cleaning/organizing something..."

Homeschool book organizing progress: the books I am done with have been put neatly into boxes awaiting storage. Problem: they cannot be stored because I need bigger boxes to store them correctly. So I have a few open boxes of books sitting on the floor in front of my neat bookshelf.

Um, yeah.

We had orientation for Biola Star high school classes. This year we have both Meg and Josie taking classes. Orientation day found me volunteering with registration. I was set up at the table where we figure out how many study hall periods your kids need and how much to charge you. Remember- homeschoolers tend to have more than the average number of children. Remember-I am not a math person. Remember- I have anemia brain +mommy brain + blond brain. I am also shy and seem to becoming more introvert as I age. It was stellar, really...

We went to Meg's Inklings class open house thingy. This is the very high academic /high expectation / literature class I was so excited about. This is the class I am re-living the high school experience I would have loved...and this is the class that Meg begged us to drop after we went to the orientation a few weeks ago. So....we go to this before school starts meeting, and the tutor is not there. His lovely/very intelligent wife was standing in his place. She is a graduate of this program and has taught it herself. She was very impressive..but she couldn't answer any questions about when stuff was due. I sat in the classroom and listened to several kids hyperventilate about when stuff is due or overdue and realized I had no idea any of it was due or overdue. I hate that feeling of being clueless in a room full of people and being the mom, so I shouldn't be clueless...um, yeah. I went home and wanted to drop it.

The class hasn't even started yet and we have multiple assignments turned in but possibly late...and a writing assignment I have no clue about and 3 syllabi that say slightly different/vague things. Sigh. Big sigh.

Remember that we quit teaching Sunday School? (I'll wait till you click over) well, we were allowed to quit but then asked to consider teaching 6 th grade where we'd only have 4 kids. So, we reconsidered. Jury is still out there, but I think we are not being allowed to quit...

I live in a wonderful neighborhood, think The Wonder Years...and on a nice, quiet street with great neighbors. The only stand-outs are the college boys who rent 2 doors down..but after a rough start they have settled down quite a bit. A wild hot tub party till 1 a.m. every now and then is not as bad as it could be, nor as bad as it was the first few months they were here. Until last night. In a drunken crowd they let off illegal fireworks at 3:30 a.m. Lovely. I almost went over and went all Anne of Green Gables or possibly all Amy Ponds on them... I can do a great "Oy!" but just rolled over praying it would stop or that someone else would call the police. From the screams and yells a few minutes later we think someone's husband might have went over and used good-ole-fashioned neighborhood justice instead...we can only hope.