Mom vs. the Dot: Making it COUNT!

Every time I post a blog, when I think I am spot on, it seems I am immediately put to the test.  Earlier this week I posted A Peek At Our Homeschool , which showed the typical schedule we have been following for the first 4 weeks of school.  At least 4 days a week.  We have been hitting the books hard! For some reason, after I posted that blog, my health began to go blah.  Blahdee Blah Blaaaah. With the change in weather, let's just say my body is rebelling.  The lupus fatigue has kicked in and I'm having headaches daily due to the change in barometric pressure. What I want to do least when I'm having an "off day" is to direct a highly structured school schedule.  Mostly, I want to curl up on the couch and wait until I feel better. Hmm...I have been reading up on "unschooling" this week and thought it would be fun to try it out.  The most convincing blog I read on unschooling this week was:   How to Learn All Subjects through U...

For weeks, I have had gallons of energy. Buckets even.  This is not normal for me, and I love it!  Summertime with its' warm weather and outdoor activities somehow turns off the lupus machine. But today, the switch toggled over to "on" and wouldn't you know it?  My tank was on "E" for hours. So naturally, it's grocery day.  Whee!! Basically, I feel like I have to flu.  Not sickness-wise, but fatigue-wise.  Kind of like the first or third trimester of pregnancy, when all you want to do is sit on the couch and wait until normalcy returns. So the troops and I headed out to the grocery store to see what we could do about restocking our pantry.  Even if I was having a bad day, we still needed groceries. Yup, it was one of those suck-it-up-and-go kinda days.  Thankfully, my oldest daughter, Aryn, loves to take on new responsibilities.  I handed her a quarter and she went and picked out the cart (or "buggy") and met us at the door....

Ah...The Game of Life!  Love this game!!  Played it back in the 90's.  Went to college and married, had a great career, huge house, 3 kids, and retired in richy-rich acres, or whatever the wealthy retirement place was called.  Perfect! Did you ever answer that question at a job interview...you know - "Where do see yourself in 5 or 10 years?" I could never answer that question. During my college years, I discovered a verse in the Bible that helped answer why I never had an answer to this question...at least, not a good one.. "Many are the plans in a person’s heart, but it is the Lord ’s purpose that prevails." Proverbs 19:21 In other words, "A man tells God his plans, and God laughs," so goes a Yiddish proverb. There you have it. Through all the trials of life, I have realized that I have to hold on loosely to the things of earth.  Certain things are infinitely more difficult to loosen one's grip on, such as my family members.  I th...

When first diagnosed with this autoimmune disease, the question on my mind was, "How can I survive this?"  My own body is attacking itself and I can't do anything to stop it. After reading up about lupus on their national website, I became paranoid, depressed, and extremely worried.  I was worried I would be arthritic, have a heart attack before age 40, lose my vision, have kidney shutdown and a myriad of other problems. It reminds me of  reading the What To Expect When You're Expecting book that every woman reads when she is pregnant with her first child.  A friend of mine aptly renamed it What to Worry About When You're Expecting .  Every possible scenario for what could go wrong during pregnancy is in that book.  The reader begins to wonder which of ten or twenty symptoms she is experiencing might mean this or that awful thing could happen to her and her baby. Recalling this little factoid about pregnancy led me to make the most important first st...