Month: August 2009

I haven’t posted about the books I’ve been reading lately. The last 2 I read were so fantastic and so much to think about that I haven’t written down my thoughts yet. (The Help and Crazy Love) AND, since those were so great, nothing else has really drawn me in lately. I am reading The Strictest School in the World sequel to the boys at night and we’re about 1/2 way through it. On my own I’m reading The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Society (yes, that’s really the title) and that is holding its own against the previous giants of literature that I mentioned. It’s a novel written as a series of letters in post WW2 London/Channel Islands (not the Southern CA ones, the England ones. And no, I didn’t know there were England ones until I read this book.)

The premise is an author is looking for a new subject for a book, because she’s tired of writing about THE WAR as that has consumed every aspect of life for the past 5 years or so and she happens to meet via letter this group of individuals who lived through the German occupation of Guernsey. The literary society was started as a ruse to fool the Germans, and then they found that meeting together and discussing literature helped them forget about the war for a short time. So the author starts corresponding with these people and they have fascinating stories to tell that all end up weaving together.

One thing I like about it (and what I liked about The Help) is it seems to be written with historical accuracy and transports me to that time and place. I can’t imagine having to make a choice to send my children away to live with strangers in England, knowing the Germans were coming to occupy your town, having to hide pigs from the Germans in order to have a treat to eat, coming up with a recipe for potato peel pie because there was nothing else to eat — no butter, sugar or even salt.

The delivery of the information keeps me interested. Because it’s letter to letter, things are peeled away, like leaves on a head of lettuce. You get bits and pieces of the different characters and events until the entire puzzle starts to come together. The other difference is because it’s written in letter form, there are natural stopping points all the way through. I don’t feel like I have to consume the story in one sitting. I’m 1/2 way through and should finish tomorrow. In my library box I have a Bones novel waiting for me — one of the newer ones. I wonder how it will compare.

I overheard Caleb telling his friend, “My dad is a Marine. He kills people.” then he went on to say, “he beats people up and farts on them.”
Maybe that’s how he kills them?

Oh my, that boy is like nothing else! He then continued to tell his friend, “Then he beats them up and poops on them!” Poor Jillian replied, “I don’t like violence.”

So I’ve been weaning myself off of Zoloft. There hadn’t been a good time to do it before now, and I figure if I do it now and the experiment turns out to be a bust, I have time to get back on them and get “normal” before we go to Egypt. I didn’t ever really have any side effects from being on Zoloft (except for vivid dreams) and I’m finding the bad thing about not having side effects from the meds is that when you wean off of them you don’t magically feel better. 😉

Here I was thinking that my laziness was a side effect and when I weaned off of the Zoloft I would have more energy, have less cravings, be more disciplined, and be all around a more fabulous person. 😉 Now I’m finding out that I actually am the same person, I just get irritated more quickly and more often, lol. So I haven’t magically become a better housekeeper, an earlybird, or find myself exercising compulsively. Darn.

I have gained weight over the past four years (about 25 lbs), but it would be hard not to gain weight when pre-Zoloft I could hardly eat anything and threw up from anxiety every other day and burned all my nervous energy by pacing around my house all day long. I also hit the “magic 35” this year, so maybe my metabolism left me along with my sanity.

Today was the first day I didn’t actually take a pill in 4 1/2 years. I never once missed a dose — never (one of the perks of anxiety). One of the reasons I decided to wean off completely was that 3 times last week I realized in the late afternoon that I hadn’t taken my crumbs for the day (I have been decreasing my dose slowly over the past year and I’m down to less than 1/4 of a pill and I’m not the best pill cutter, lol) and I was thinking that it would be a good time to stop altogether. No major changes in my life at the moment: no babies on the horizon, no deployments or moves in the next 12 months — it’s been a while since my calendar has been clear of those events. And if I’m drug free, I won’t have to think about trying to get my meds while traveling in the Middle East. Of course I’d rather hassle with getting meds than be a crazy woman running around in the desert. Thus, the experiment.

So far I haven’t had any withdrawal symptoms, and had felt rather satisfied by my progress and was telling Josh last night how marvelously it was going . . . and then bam! Today I started getting the electric shock feelings in my head if I moved too fast and bits of numbness in my face. Blech. So my new plan is to take my crumbs every other day for a bit and see if that is better.

Maybe I have to wait until the drug is completely out of my system to reveal all my wonderful attributes that have been masked by the Zoloft these past 4 years. Yeah, that’s what it is . . .

So I figured out that I was not providing enough writing practice for Calvin and I wasn’t staying on top of assignments that I had given him so I purchased this (geek alert: I am way too excited about my success with inserting a clickable link, including where the link is going to take you if you hover over the word.)

Meaningful Composition should provide daily assignments, and direct, step by step instruction so he gets clear guidelines (which he likes) and I don’t have to deal with tears (which I like). Win-win-win.

This year I’ve been experimenting with having all 3 boys in the same Five in a Row (FIAR) book each week. Yes, Calvin is in the age range for Beyond, and in fact that’s what I had him doing last year, but trying to do 2 levels didn’t work for me. It didn’t get done regularly and then no one was getting the benefit of FIAR. There are plenty of FIAR vol 1-3 books that he hasn’t rowed (vol 4 too!) so I’ve decided even if the books and lessons are on the young side, there is still benefit to be gained from it. I’ve said over and over again that I learn things every time I row a book and I’m a 35yo woman with a college degree so I think we can make it work for a 10yo.

So far we’ve had 2 great weeks rowing Daniel’s Duck and The Bee Tree. Daniel’s Duck week went along with the county fair and this past week we learned so much about bees. They are amazing creatures! I could write an entire post about all I learned about bees and how they basically dehydrate nectar to make honey and how they have this internal clock that tells them exactly what jobs they are supposed to do on which days of life and how they spend the first 3 weeks of life working around the hive as “house bees” and the last 3 weeks of life collecting nectar and pollen as “field bees” because the only live for 6 weeks and how worker bees are all female and the only difference between them and the queen is that the queen was fed royal jelly during the larval stage of her development . . . anyway, like I was saying, plenty for a 10yo to learn.

For the rest of school we’re doing Bible Study Guide for All Ages first thing in the morning. That takes about 30 minutes and all the kids are enjoying that. Then we do FIAR and talk about the daily lessons. That’s probably another 30 minutes. Then the kids move on to their independent work. Math U See (MUS) for both Calvin and Carter, then Calvin has to do 30 minutes of independent reading and 30 minutes of piano practice and Carter has reading lessons with me after he finishes his math. Then he’s done for the day.

Calvin has been taking WAY too long with his math because he’s doing long division and he’s just too slow with his multiplication facts. I’m going to start requiring him to do 5 MUS online drills per day and write down his fastest time. I’ll set a goal time that he has to beat eventually.

I don’t have any writing incorporated into Carter’s school at the moment. He did copywork last year and I will implement copywork again (copying their Bible verses) for Carter and Caleb once they start AWANAs in a few weeks, but I want to really focus his energies on reading for a few weeks. He’s so close to becoming a fluent reader and I want to keep up that momentum.

One other thing I want to add to their school is Arabic language lessons. I’m not sure how to do this, but I’m thinking of letting them watch Arabic kid tv on the computer each day. I also have Rosetta Stone that Calvin could do, but I really have to get our current schedule running smoothly before I add anything else. That was a mistake I made last year — starting everything at once and then getting overwhelmed and dropping it. This year we started with Bible Study, the next week added FIAR and reading, last week we added Math, this week we’re adding my Arabic class . . . hopefully we’ll be able to keep all the balls in the air.

since I couldn’t sleep the night before I got married either. Not that there’s anything exciting keeping me awake tonight, my brain just won’t shut off. Plus, I can never get comfortable as I’m trying to fall asleep. I keep shifting my arms and turning my head from side to side. I wish it were as easy for me to fall asleep as it is for me to fall back asleep in the morning. If that were the case, I’d love going to bed every night.

But no white dresses or flowers for me tomorrow, although I will be at church. I’ll just be corralling 3 kids on my way in the door and looking for my husband in the sound booth instead of at the end of the aisle. I definitely traded up.