Dog Appointments, Lunch Dates and Girl Scouts

Today was not one of those exciting days, but we did take the dog for his yearly visit to the vet, lunched at Burger King (for a long, long time- never underestimate the ability of a small child to savor every single morsel of a kids' meal), and registered for Girl Scouts. While I was very excited about Spiral Scouts, interest in our local group seems to have disappeared. I have finally resigned myself to the idea that the group isn't going to continue. Had interest been shown in keeping it going, I would have stepped up to the plate and helped to lead the group, but I'm loathe to spend all sorts of time trying to organize events just so that no one can show up. I know that this happened to the previous leader, and I can understand the frustration she must have felt even if she never voiced any complaints. I don't know much about our local Girl Scouts group; I will know more once they contact me.

On a magickal note, we are now in the waxing phase of the moon, which is a great time for starting new projects as well as moving forward with things that are already happening. I always feel like I have just a little bit more "oomph" at this time of the month, and I intend to take advantage of the energy boost! My work on the Goddess series continues; the Gaia peice is read for color and I am very excited about that. With life being so wonderfully full it has been difficult to fit creative time into my life, but my soul needs it. I lose a certain amount of serenity when I'm away from creating art for too long. Having made the decision (with a little encouragement from loved ones who are probably tired of dealing with the crazy, artistically bereft me) to make the time to create, it seems that time does appear here and there. It's up to me to recognize those spaces in time when they appear and get to work!



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The Best of Intentions

One thing I've learned during our short time of homeschooling is that flexibility is important. As is determination, the ability to set goals and a certain amount of organizational skill. Flexibility, however, is key to homeschooling if one wants to make it through a whole school year with sanity intact and hair still attached to head. Of course, writing these words does not make me proficient in any of the above mentioned traits. Our life is a constant work in progress; some days flow along like a lazy river, while others tumble and splash like rapids in a canyon. Today was one of those Mississippi river mud days; I had big dreams, but my feet were moving slowly, and it seemed like fate was not hip to the idea of me accomplishing much with my little one. We flowed for brief moments, and I'm happy that we did some work, but it was tough going. My little one hemmed and hawed about sitting at the table. My husband didn't have any work to do today and was home on the couch with the television-a distraction to my daughter and I both- beaming forth program after program into our living room, the volume too loud to be ignored. There was an interesting show on the History Channel about early humans, and I did learn something from it, so I suppose there was some value to watching it. My daughter, though, wasn't really interested and so the educational value of the program was lost on her five year old mind. At some point, after we'd managed to work through a few pages in the Kindergarten Basics book (I'd opted to teach from a low frustration workbook today, thankfully), the Hub suggested that we let Little One watch a movie. Glancing outside and noticing that that thunder which had been threatening for the past few minutes had finally given way to a garden quenching downpour, I relented. I'm happy with what we accomplished, even if it occurred with a bit of struggle and in a haphazard sort of way.

Now, I'm pondering the value of homeschool organizers, flipping through web page after web page, searching for that perfect planner which will organize our lives and turn me into the Martha Stewart of the homeschooling community. I know that this won't happen. I know that part of homeschooling is accepting that life is usually more like organized chaos than perfectly ordered bliss. But I can dream.

Everyday Life

I've been working a lot recently on getting my family and I onto some sort of schedule. I'm not trying for a hard and fast schedule, mind you, but rather some sort of comfortable routine. Being a rather undisciplined and bohemian type of person, if I allow myself too much leeway I tend to find that I begin to fritter away more and more time and accomplish less and less of what I really want to get done. When one is homeschooling this can be an even worse affliction, since my daughter isn't going to learn anything if I don't spend the time teaching her. Frustrated with my many attempts to organize our lives, I began making lists recently. For whatever reason, if I write goals down I go crazy inside if I don't fulfill them, so doing this is a great way to ensure that I will accomplish most if not all of what I set out to do (in my mind) at the beginning of the day. Over the past week this has been working out quite well (much to my pleasant surprise). I've been finding the time to get the business work done, homeschool with our daughter, take care of the animals (which reminds me that I still need to feed our chickens-drat!), keep the house reasonably clean, and get meals onto the table more or less on time. I still have a long way to go, but our life this week was much calmer than normal; I did not find myself racing around in a tizzy because I was late to go someplace or was rushing to do something that I was supposed to get done the day before. I didn't have any creative time, I haven't blogged in days, and our extracurricular activities have been lagging, but I'm hopeful that if I was able to improve this much, I can continue moving forward toward where I want to be.

Now, off to feed the chickens.