What I Did This Summer

Yeah, I know. It sounds like one of those cheesy school essays done early in September. So sue me.

My company has come and gone. [sniff!] It was fun while it all lasted, but now it is time to dig out from under the rubble of things that got shoved aside so we could all have fun and get back to the routine of school, laundry, cleaning, cooking, and daily living.

This year, school has a new meaning for me. It means FREEDOM! I've homeschooled for the last 18 years and now I am letting some people who are actually called to teach in a Christian school do it. That means I can now concentrate on being a "justa" wife and mother. Oh, and a student and kinesionics practitioner too. On the one hand, I feel like I am being an incredibly selfish person by not putting up with all the educational frustrations, total mess, and heavy workload and joylessness that I experienced over the years. Like I don't deserve any joy in life, and neither do my kids. (To all the Calvinists reading this -- I know I deserve hell and damnation, but I *am* one of the elect and therefore entitled, by grace, to joy now.)

And yeah. Socialization. I know all the arguments about why socialization at home is good for your kids when they homeschool. Truthfully, my kids have benefited from it. They all interact well with adults and kids of all ages because they weren't socialized to their peer group. Hopefully that will hold for them.

BTW, I'm not completely out of the homeschool mindset. I can't bear to part with the books yet. The kids may find them useful for homework or projects. And I will likely start teaching Elodie to read this year.

In other news, I just finished up four days of advanced training in kinesionics. I have a love/hate relationship with these courses. I love coming out of the training at the end with more tools for helping people. However, in order to get there, it is a case of "physician, heal thyself." In other words, I have to have the therapy done to me as well as practice on my classmates. This is usually good for at least one complete emotional meltdown. I cried my way home and cried my way back on at least two days. But it's all good. I'm all fixed now. [liar.]

My instructor is a rather reserved man and doesn't say too much, but I think he thinks I am doing well. The other students seem to think so, at any rate. My goal is to become as good as my instructor, and while I think I am a long way away from being that, but I intend to work hard in the next few years to move in that direction. Already I am taking my exams deeper than I had before and learning along the way. I'm also planning on branching out and taking in more education soon. I have a specialized course on nutrition and glyconutrients from the Miami University School of Medicine to finish up, and then I hope to start working on my wholistic nutrition bachelor of science from Clayton College of Natural Healing .

On other fronts: I continue to lose weight. I am planning on losing another 25 or 30 lbs and getting into seriously good shape. My elliptical trainer awaits me in the basement. I also have some tai chi videos for learning tai chi to go through, some Pilates DVD's to use, and a few other things I plan to use for accomplishing the above.

I don't have a lot of plans yet for what I plan to do with my time when the kids are in school beyond giving the house a thorough going over and instituting regular nap times for the pre-schoolers. I want to have some chill time to think things over and then decide from there what I want to do. I'm not an idle person by nature, and I hate wasting time on games and useless activities, so filling my time with profitable activities should not be a problem.

That's it for now....