An Update

I haven't blogged in so long that I don't know where to start. I miss my blog and the discipline of daily writing, but it got a little weird for a while. I am such an open person that it was hard for me not to emote all over the place. I see value in the ability to be open and real for the sake of others who may stumble upon my writing and find that they aren't crazy - that this is how it feels to let your heart break, to move forward into the unknown - but I needed to take a break.

The truth of my situation as I see it now is that everything I feared would happen has indeed happened. All of the worst possible scenarios played out. I have had to leave the kids for longer periods of time that I ever wanted, expect more of them that I ever hoped to, and have faced some of the hardest truths about myself and my life. I would love to say that it's all come up roses, but it's still hard.

The most recent stress of our situation is my landlord that said I could live in the house for a year has decided t put it on the market after only 7 months. It may take 5 more months to sell it, but nonetheless it looks like we'll be moving again. I am ready to move on. This shared house thing is really for the birds. I do not like moving, but see this as a stepping stone to a better life.

There are some huge bright spots. I have a job I love helping homeschool families in need. It has been amazing and a great "reality check" to remind me that lots of people are in very difficult situations, many severely worse than my own. I have friends that love me - we hang out and play cards, watch movies, hike the Appalachian Trail and all sorts of things. They bring me groceries, listen to me whine and pray for me. I am truly blessed in this. Truly.

This weekend I am going with four women from my family to New York City for the weekend!!! I am so excited. I have always wanted to go. I have felt a little guilt over going and not taking the kids but I know I really need the break. I love my kids - they are excited for me. How cool is that? I'm hoping to bring back a more sane, relaxed mom for them.

Hope all of my friends out there in bloggy-land are doing well. I haven't read blogs in years. I hope to resume that part of my life one day in the very near future.

No Time to Blog

Life is moving at a breakneck pace. I literally didn't have one minute to relax yesterday. From the moment I left work it was go, go, go. Once I got home at 11 pm I had to make my "healthy" lunch. Real food, good food requires so much more prep time, but it is worth it. I had started to wake every morning with a blood-sugar crash that felt much like a hangover and in just a couple of days with the simple diet change of removing white sugar and white flour from my diet, I already feel sooooo much better.
I have decided that working moms are my heroes. Having been a "stay at home mom" for many, many years, I KNOW that all moms are working moms. However, there is a great juggling act that goes on for moms that work full-time outside the home, one that I am only beginning to understand. Every day I am proud of myself for all that I do - the sense of accomplishment and the spirit of doing whatever is necessary - and simultaneously I feel guilt for all that I cannot do and the abbreviated amount of time that I spend with my kids. But day by day we are making it, one day at a time.

Facebook Feed Test

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Back to the Blog

I have missed blogging a great deal. It is an outlet, that as my friend Joanne would say is cheaper than therapy. One thing that sort of brought my blogging to a screeching halt was when I made it private. I am a pretty open person. I hate the feeling of being false or concealing my feelings. Sometimes the things I think and write are not theologically sound. Sometimes my words don't come out right. Sometimes what I write here on my blog is in process. I am going to stop making apologies for it. God is with me even in the dark places where other people don't always want to go. If you are troubled or concerned by anything you read here, you are free to use that little X in the upper right hand corner, and visit here no more. It won't hurt my feelings. As for me, I will continue to blog my little heart out as I see fit.
Since I am no longer in "Texas" I will probably be relocating my blog to a "JulsnWV" address or something on those lines. Stay tuned.

I Miss You

Yep - I have been absent from my blog a bit in the last week or so. My computer crashed and we had to send it packing - literally to HP so they could replace the motherboard. This happened after Travis and I did much hair-pulling (our own hair, not each other's) trying to troubleshoot the issue with technical support.
Life has been a whirlwind. I have been working about 20-25 hours a week. I still like my job, but I get home late a lot of nights. Travis and I have been spending much more time together - which is excellent - but also means I have less time to blog.
Just wanted you to know, my dear bloggy buddies, that although I may not be posting much - it is because life is offering me many opportunities to live outside the blog for now. I do miss you and hope to catch up with each of you very soon.

Contemplating the Blog

Today I moved some posts to "draft" status. They are posts that I want to save for myself, but may have inadvertently invaded the privacy of others or seemed presumptuous in ways I never intended. This is the conundrum of "the blog". Actually it scared me a bit to think that I was being read wrong. This is the place where the rubber meets the road in the reality of our cyber lives. I blog because I enjoy writing. I blog because I want to maintain the day to day contact with my friends who live so far away. I blog because it is an outlet, cheaper than therapy, and a way to keep a record of our lives. The danger is that this has become a bit of a public spectacle, read by people who don't really know me leaving room to interpret or misinterpret what is said and get an often skewed impression of the kind of person that I am. I never intended for it to be that way. I certainly never wanted to step on any toes, push anyone beyond their comfort zone, or infringe on anyone's rights to privacy. I am not sure where this will lead. For now, I will tread cautiously, wanting better between myself and others than a one sided relationship. There is a lot more to me than what meets the blog.

Clean-Up

Emily let me know today that she was having a hard time loading my blog! I believe it - wow I had a lot of stuff that had to communicate with different sites. No wonder. I cleaned up my sidebars and hopefully this will help for everyone concerned! Now bring on the comments!

Apology and Retraction

In my haste to post some instructions for backing up your blog, my wording misrepresented my thoughts and may have inadvertently sounded accusing. Please read the edits in this post to clarify the matter, and clear Homeschoolblogger of any malicious intent. Sincerely.

Based on What?

I saw this on my friend Rachel's blog - and I wonder how this value is assessed.

My blog is worth $19,758.90.
How much is your blog worth?

Definitely checking into that!

The Simplicity of Planning

An article of mine on this subject was just published at my friend Leslie's Simple Journey Ministries! Check it out.

Urgent Blog Back-up Notice

It has come to my attention that those who have blogged previously at Homeschoolblogger may have their blogs deleted if it points to another blog - in fairness it is a free service for the user but the "space" used is paid for by others, and takes up room on their server. I wanted to point you to this post that tells you how to back up your pages and picture files quickly and easily. I have done it a couple of times. When you get to the instructions, if you have a lot of entries, you will need to break them up because it will never save them all. I had 511 - so I put in the total number of entries as 150 - and then followed the directions and saved 4 pages which covered all of my posts. It doesn't allow you to save the comments, but it does allow you to look at the posts and read them. It is a lot faster than trying to copy and paste all your posts which I started to do here once upon a time, and never finished. I can't exactly tell you how to go through this process on HSB because I am so unfamiliar with their layout anymore - but I did find all the things Ronda pointed to in that post after hunting around.

Here is how you back up your Blogger blog just in case you want to know:

• At the top of your blog page to the right choose "customize"
• To the left, choose the "settings" tab
• The choose the "formatting" tab
• Set your number of posts to show per page to a number that works for you - if you go too high it won't load properly - and if you go too low you'll have too many page views to save - I am a pretty voracious blogger, so I set my number at 100 - and had to save 10 pages
• After you save these settings, click on View Blog
• In the first page, go to the "File" menu at the top of the page to the left, and choose "Save Page As"
  
• When you go to save your page you'll be able to choose a file and destination - I chose a folder called "Blog" and made a sub folder named "2008.06 Blog Back-up"
  
• I saved my first page as The Clearing pg. 1 - then I clicked "Older Posts" at the bottom of the page and did the same with the next page until I had done all 10. Once saved, you'll be able to view these pages even when you're not online.
  

It is a good idea to back up your blog occasionally. We put a lot of work and love and thoughts into our blog. Don't lose your hard work!

If this post in any way made it sound as if I believed that TOS/Homeschoolblogger had ill intent, or wanted to ruin anyone's hard work, that was not my intent. I offer apologies to anyone this may have offended.

Unschooling Myself

Since I have embraced the unschooling lifestyle, I have seen how truly we are learning all the time. Life presents a multitude of opportunities to embrace new experiences, participate in new activities and learn new things. I have tried to embrace this for my children who are always moving from one thing to another, investing themselves headlong in a subject and really getting into it in a way they would not be able to if they were in school for 8 hours in a day. But this has not only been beneficial for them, it has been a paradigm shift in lifestyle for me as well. I have always loved to write. Always. From the second I could form letters on a page, I had stories to tell. In fact, I just published my very first, paid magazine article. It was an assighment that wasn't something I would necessarily choose to write about, but it was good writing. More recently I've been studying the art of screenwriting. I've learned to crochet, tried my hand at HTML and CSS, worked with imaging programs and learned to design and tweak digital scrapbook pages, taught myself to design newsletters, learned to create a PDF file and am learning now how to make a PDF form interactive. There is so much more and there is no end in sight. Some of these things I do just because I enjoy them, and others even generate a little extra income that always seems to come at just the right time. Last week I designed a blog header and yesterday used the format of my template to put together a blog make over for my good friend Dwayne who spent his first Mother's Day without his mama. There is just so much to do, and learn and try. My husband is the same way. Just recently he designed a wire puller that would be helpful to electricians on the job, and has always come up with gadgets and gizmos to make any work he is doing easier. (Too bad we have no idea how to patent some of it!) The best part is when the kids see us diving headlong into our own interests and pursuits, they are inspired to do the same. Yesterday I got a homemade Mother's Day card from my beauties that said this:

Thank you for being the person you are, and for giving us space to do the same.

That is just about the best thing a mother could hear. Isn't it what we all truly need most, the opportunity to become who we were created to be?

I Blog, Therefore I Am

Just some thoughts off the cuff this morning. Sometimes we get perceptions that aren't even close to true and what other people say about us starts to shape what we even think of ourselves. I was told in a comment during a very dark time about a week ago that my blog was the "whiniest" they had ever read. It made me feel a bit better to realize they had only had their blogger profile for 2 days - but nonetheless it was a mar to my image of self.
I pride myself on being a typically optimistic person while none of my life has been particularly rosy. I try to keep myself focused on the glass that is half full, and even harder not to lament that it is full of water when I really want coke and rum. Life is just what it is, and for better or worse we take it one day at a time.
Have I ever mentioned that I can't use that phrase without thinking of Valerie Bertinelli, and was greatly distressed the other day to hear that my husband had never seen this show that was an icon of my childhood. But I digress.....
I am an extrovert for the most part who is finding myself living more and more inside my head. I can't seem to connect with anyone lately including my family and find almost every human interaction exhausting. This is a scary place for me. I used to always be energized by the crowd, animated with stories, full of laughter. I think a large part of it is that I had a community of people who brought that out in me. Now I just want to figure out a way to work my way back to them, but I'm stuck.
I was watching a clip on Good Morning America this morning with Barbara Walters - evidently there is an interview where the tables are turned and she is the one being asked all the questions. Robin Roberts was asking her if there was any one question that she should have asked, but didn't, and Barbara said it was "what is the greatest misconception about you"? Her answer was that she was controlled - and she didn't bleed. I get that - sometimes I think that we hold things together so much that others think we haven't a care in the world. Often in my life I have been the one in the room laughing the loudest, but that doesn't mean I wasn't likely hurting the deepest.
I am a person, just like you, making it one day at a time. Some days I laugh, and some days I cry. There are times when I am doing more of one than the other. Some times I whine and other times I can pull myself up by my big girl panties and deal with it. Don't think for a minute that by reading this blog that you may really and truly know me. You may know me better than I know myself - but there is still much left to be searched out that only true relationship can find.

Rejected Commenter

My friend Henry wrote a blog post not long ago about Learning to Reject and Delete. I completely understood and agreed with her line of thinking. I do not have my blog set currently to approve comments before allowing them to post on my blog which has allowed a stinging comment a time or two but that is the risk that I take.
There are some who find it their duty to correct what is in their opinion every wrong thought, opinion, perspective, etc. I often blog as I am forming a completed thought, and wish that those people would understand that I am not saying that everything I blog about is right and true and good or even Biblical. Just being a Christian does not mean that every expression I make as a human being is going to be theologically sound. I am being transformed into His image - I am not already there - and neither are you.
All of this to say, while I agree with Henry wholeheartedly, I have recently been on the other side of the reject and delete button. My comments were benign, friendly and even in support of the blogger whose blog I was commenting on, so I really have no idea why my comment was rejected. I can tell you this, if conversation is not open, I am not likely to comment again. I don't have the time. If I had said something controversial or harsh, I would expect such treatment.
Just as Henry quoted we should say only that which is useful in building one another up (bang rubber mallet into own head 10 times) and get rid of bitterness, rage, anger, malice and slander, we also need to all learn to be slow to be offended. (bang rubber mallet into own head 10 more times).
So there it is - it is about relationships - they are a kind of dance. I step on your toes some and you pull back, then you step on mine. (It is a different thing when someone wears steel toed boots and it intentionally trying to flatten your whole foot, which was more Henry's experience.) But in friendship, with cyber-buddies or real life friends, we dance. Each friendship takes on a rhythm of its own. But we seem to get better at it the more we keep in step with one another, twirling to slow, quick,quick, slow, quick,quick.
I'm definitely going to lose Henry on that quick,quick part, but that's okay, I'll catch her on the next slow!

Adieu Dear Blog

Dear Blog,
You have been a huge part of my life but now it is time to say good-bye. I have loved being here, writing down my thoughts or sharing the events of the day. I've met many friends, most of them are simply cyber friends. Others I've gotten to meet in real life. I've enjoyed making friends and reading about your lives too! The community and connections with other people have been immensely exciting.
Now it is time to move on. Life has gotten too crazy with working, writing, and trying to spend time with my family and a moment or two on house cleaning. Maybe I'll even find time to read a whole book now and then. So, I will just say Good-bye dear blog. Thank you for being a fun part of my life.
Please leave me a comment so at least I will know I'll be missed.

I would like to add just one comment here at the very end. April Fool! Have a nice day and leave a comment anyway! Let me just tell you before you start leaving "hate comments" that it is all Karen's fault! She started it!

My Boy Blogger

My son has been asking me for a couple of days to help him set up a blog. We finally did. He dictated two posts to me, but I think he'll be whipping them out on his own in no time! Way to go Kullybear! Hop on over and leave the kid some comments, he'll be thrilled!
A short while later Kaitlyn said she got a new blog too, where she shares her deep thoughts and interesting music! What's up with that on the same day??
Some of you have already visited Kendra's blog, where readers can get a reali-tea check.
Wow, all my kids finally got bitten by the blogging bug!

Check it Out!

My sister, who is a new blogger got a schnazzy new blog template design by Goofy Girl! Stop by to say hi! Tell her I sent you.
Mine's next - I'm so excited!

Miss My Blog

It has been an eventful few days that have kept me from blogging. I have been taking care of emergencies, putting out fires, spending some much needed time with hubby, and trying to keep all the balls I'm juggling in the air.
Just wanted to say hey, and that I am missing the blog.
When I stop spinning, I will focus my thoughts enough to write something worth reading.
Hope you all are well.

Computer Craziness

I sent my computer to HP a few weeks ago. This is the third time I have had a 9 month old computer serviced. It has already done a "disc check" since I got it back this morning. It is so frustrating. It is likely they will be sending me a new one very soon.
Now - weird situation with my blog - if I use IE to view it - I get a little white square with a red X in the box where the header should be. If I use Firefox, I don't have anything - not even the space where the header goes. Please tell me what you see when you view this blog - it is all so strange!

You MADE the Party

Geesh - we have been so dang busy that my poor little blog has been so neglected. We have had co-ops and labs and helping kids who are studying the cellular kingdoms of bacteria and such in biology, and reading books about the Aztecs, reading and critiquing essays (on request), keeping neighbors blood-thirsty dogs away from my cats and doctor's appointments with my hubby who acts like a big two year old and likes to open drawers and get into things while we're confined in the itty-bitty exam room. To think that just a few short weeks ago - we had virtually nothing on our plates, and now we're spinning like a top.
Last night, the girls were invited to a surprise birthday party that took place at this really hip little eatery called Jason's Deli. I tried to talk them out of it, but there was no way. They had a great time, and I sat with my friend Melody and had adult conversation, and ate something called a Muffelatta which has ham, hard salami, provolone and some sort of an olive dressing, on grilled bread. Yummy. After the party the kids went bowling until late-thirty. When we were about to leave, the birthday girl's mom thanked us for coming and when we thanked her for inviting us, she said in the sweetest southern accent, "Well, you MADE the party." Imagine that! Somebody likes us. Wonders never cease. I am going to stop telling myself it's just because they don't know us yet. We are a bit of an acquired taste.