I Clicked

I'm Here.

I will write something.

First, homeschooling. Despite meeting much resistance by a certain spoiled 12 year old, I have managed to pull the energy from my already tapped reserves to persevere and push on. She is trying really hard to break me down. She is pulling out all of the stops, and is not trying to make this easy on me at all. She doesn't want to do the work. She doesn't see the importance of it, and yet, I see her having success. For example, she can look at a globe of our planet and point out the 7 continents, she can name the four oceans, and knows which direction is east west north south, and can even name interesting features of each continent. For example, she is familiar with the Great Plains of North America, and the Rainforests of South America.

It doesn't sound like much, but I see it as a major accomplishment for her, and myself. It is something that causes me to say, "Hey, you might not think you are learning anything, but look at what you know!" I wish I could say it inspires her to want to learn more, and sometimes it does, but most of the time I have to really work hard to get her to participate. Despite that, we are learning about matter now in science. She hasn't mastered this concept, but she is getting there, and I'm surprised at how much I had forgotten of basic concepts, but it has been fun learning.

We are progressing although I think it is much harder on me than her. She is really trying to get out of this work, and is not making it easy on me at all. I have cried many tears over this. I keep working on it, on her. I know she can do this, but she doesn't believe me, yet.

Second, the roses. I cut down my beautiful rose bushes yesterday. The temperatures are more like fall now, and they were really starting to wilt. I have never had rose bushes, so I am not even sure if I did it right. I hoped as I cut them down that they would come back next year with as much glory as they had this summer. I will be disappointed if I inadvertently killed them, or ruined them.

I'm lazy, so instead of raking all of the leaves that covered my front yard, I got out the lawn mower and took off. I felt sort of stupid mowing the lawn when it didn't need it, but it sure did clean up those leaves. After I mowed I watered the yard so that all of the cut up leaves would sink in a provide nourishment to the grass. My dad says our climate is too dry for this to work, but I did it anyway, thinking, I will just water really good, and besides it looks a whole lot better. It's a little trick my uncle in Missouri taught me, "don't rake, mulch instead!" is his motto, and I think it just works for me.

I noticed my neighbor watching me out there, and I thought, he probably thinks I am an idiot, but I noticed later he went out with his mower and did the same thing, so maybe I inspired him, and I'm not so dumb afterall.

Next, the puppy is still bringing much joy to our household. My goodness! What a little character he is. He's been into all sorts of trouble, and he completely ignores his name. He doesn't like being called Pumpkin, so we pretty much just call him "Puppy Power" most of the time, and he answers to that. He really likes people food, and knows how to beg already, but he knew that before he came to live here, he's been doing that since day one.

The girl dog developed a case of hives, and her face swelled up. I was quite worried about her, but my sister told me we could give her Benadryl, and after two doses she was all better, and it saved me an expensive trip to the emergency vet. I've never seen a dog have an allergic reaction like that before. I decided that if she didn't show any signs of relief the next morning, I would take her in, but luckily she got all better over night.

And, my dad was supposed to retire this month, but when I asked my mom about it the other day she told me they offered him a very generous raise, and he said he couldn't turn it down, so he will be working longer. I don't know when he plans to retire now. He works so hard. He always has, since he was a young child working on his grandfather's two farms, he has always just worked and worked. There isn't anything he wouldn't do for his loved ones. If I asked him to come and mow my lawn every week, he would do it, of course I would never do that. As it is right now, he spends quite a great deal of his free time mowing the enormous yard that surrounds his church, with winter coming he will have a reprieve from that, but I'm sure there will be other things that need tending to.

This post is getting long, so I will close for now. People always tell me my posts are too long. I think they are right. I have not mastered the short concise snippet thing that so many others seem to be good at. I'm just too long winded for my own good I guess.