simply janet

This first back-to-school week for my kids has gone well. Thank you for your thoughtful comments and emails on my previous post. Back-to-school week has also been my first “back-to-me” week. I had low expectations for filling my time the rest of this month because things will step up gradually beginning in September. I have big plans but wanted to bookend those plans with some silence and stillness first. And the photo? Last week was supposed to be my haircut, but it was postponed. Big changes should require a hairstyle change too, don’t you think?

I’ve continued to read a LOT, though that has leveled off as well. Meanwhile, my Kindle has been hijacked by either my husband or my oldest son and since they’ve been reading more, and I’m finding turning to my stack of “actual” books — including library books.

If you’ve been keeping up with me at Goodreads, you might notice that I’m reading a couple of books that have been on my “To Read” list for ages: A Homemade Life: Stories and Recipes from My Kitchen Table and The Soup Peddler’s Slow and Difficult Soups: Recipes and Reveries. I’m also looking forward to reading The Wordy Shipmates. (I’m back to reading some nonfiction in between the novels). Finally, I’m hopeful that I’ll get a lot out of this book too: SHED Your Stuff, Change Your Life: A Four-Step Guide to Getting Unstuck. I’ve hit a wall with this summer’s de-cluttering and organizing and I hope that this book will address one of the next steps I need to take – dealing with issues of old magazines! I have Blueprint, Domino and a handful of Mary Engelbreit magazines that are taking up an entire shelf of one of my bookcases. I want to reclaim the space, but for some reason, can’t bring myself to just recycle those magazines. Of course, if anybody wants them and is willing to pay the shipping, I’ll send them to you. That’ll be the ideal solution.

The fun activities (reading, knitting, crocheting) have screeched to a halt in favor of getting two young men ready for a new school year. Two different schools (one elementary and one intermediate) along with different requirements and lists, has been challenging — and still fun, but of a different sort.

Something I haven’t shared about is that I homeschooled my youngest son last year. In our school district (as is probably the case in yours), if a child is struggling academically, there are very few resources within the school system UNLESS he’s failing a core subject. Actual failure in a core subject reflects poorly on the school, so they attempt to make “accommodations” (less work, etc) for the child so that he can’t fail. But failure, when it is allowed to happen, is then an official reason to begin paperwork and a process (“request for intervention”) in which the school board can decide if the student requires academic testing to qualify for special services within the system. If a child is not allowed to fail a core subject, that process can’t start. We had two consecutive years of trying to request intervention in spite of his NOT failing a core subject, but were denied both times. This course of events, along with some other factors, in addition to following my instincts, led to our decision to homeschool him last year. It was the best decision we could have made for a broken-spirited boy. And now it’s time to go back to the previous school and begin third grade with a fresh reserve of coping skills, renewed confidence, additional mastery, and even some excitement about the prospects — for all of us. So I’ve tried to be fully engaged in both boys’ needs right now — and even the very grown-up Erica has needed her mom.

Parenting never really ends – it just evolves.

Fresh starts for them inspired me toward some of my own. I’ve been daydreaming about a professional closet organization (someday) and I know that Paul certainly has as well; although we need to do many home improvement projects, it is the closet overhaul that most excites him, so to that end, I’ve been trying to deal with the clutter (ahem, mostly mine) in the master bedroom closet. I’ve got a growing pile of clothes ready to go to Goodwill; I’ve also found several bags of yarn from my 2003 new-knitter stash — some full skeins, some partial skeins and a huge monster ball of kitchen cotton. They’re all headed to Goodwill. There’s a more recent bag of 100% wool that I won as a door prize – swatching with it never inspired any possibilities, so that’s going. Clothes that don’t fit – from twenty pounds ago – are going. I don’t know why I kept them! There’s an old Brother sewing machine that doesn’t work (but that has sentimental value), that’s probably not going to be given away, but likely stored in the attic. I still haven’t decided on that. One bite at a time, right?