My Brain Hurts

There's just so much flying through the gray matter these days that it almost hurts. Wanna hear about it?

Of course, there's the minor issue of getting a house ready to sell. We're making daily trips to the house to pack & clean & to check on the cat (needs new home by the way!) and the progress is just sooo slow. Thankfully we are seeing good progress but it seems to have taken forever. We also have lots of little fixer-type projects and "the guy" we use for those type things is coming over tomorrow night. I'm truly scared of the cost that might be involved. That fear puts lots of thoughts in my head...

Thankfully, our realtors (we have 2 -- we're cool that way, ya know!) are super-encouraging about the house. Maybe they're just being sales-people?? It really doesn't matter because I need to hear their encouraging comments. Their pricing ideas meshed perfectly with our pricing ideas and that was a big blessing. They also complimented our "space" and this words-of-affirmation love language gal just soaked it up! OH, and they are so excited that we're not living there and have offered to "stage" the house for us! That gives me a nice HGTV-styled, warm, fuzzy feeling! I can't wait to see what they can do!

They also told us of a recent house-selling within a block or so of us and that the new neighborhood school being built being was a major draw. We're hoping to play on that school thing, too! Our house is just perfect for a family with lots of kids! We're hoping that little school (to open in 2009) will keep our house a little safer than most other houses in this "buyers' market."

In other news, we started our own school Tuesday. Day 1 was great. Things went very well. I will admit that I might have been a little too optimistic in thinking that this school year would be easier than last, though. I thought my pregnancy & post-partum months of teaching would be the more difficult of my homeschool experiences but these 2nd-year-pro months are proving that teaching with a teething 6-month-old and chatty 4 year-old might be the biggest of challenges.

Add to that a broken computer with a computer-based curriculum (busted on 2nd day!!) and you can safely deduce that I'm a little whipped. Tomorrow we will limp through another day of no computer but we have to have a better resolution to this problem by Monday. PRAISE GOD for my best friend's hubby being a computer guy! (J -- YOU TOTALLY ROCK! Thank you for all your help!!!) I will say, though, that the computer issue isn't 100% bad because it's giving me an opportunity to do more multi-aged teaching, which is cool. It's amazing how we've been able to incorporate things to make them jive but if I had to do this EVERY day, I don't know if I'd swing it all that well.

In the big picture, everything is going quite well, but the smaller picture shows the kids being a little wonky. The weirdness and activity of all these abnormal situations has started to affect the kids' behaviors. They're getting on each others' nerves a little easier than the norm and they're turning into tattle-telling, whiners that need more parental guidance. They're tired and maybe a little sub-conciously homesick and not really their happiest selves. I think the 'new' of all this is wearing off and they're feeling a little dizzy from the irregularities of each day. I'm hoping things will soon stabilize & we can all get some more rest and into some sort of pattern. When we can get the house completely show-ready, things will be MUCH better. The living arrangement we have is very good so my biggest desire right now is to just get done with the house and get it sold!

I'll share more soon.