I guess the main silver lining is that the kids aren’t sick. And that I can’t hear much of the bickering because all I can hear is snot.

I have, until this point, kept my (lack of) belief to myself, but if everyone else is wearing their beliefs on their sleeve, maybe I should do the same.

Once again, it’s no wonder I don’t have many friends.

So I’ve quit twitter in an effort to reclaim some of that time. No, nothing happened. I didn’t get into a twitter spat with anyone and run with my tail tucked between my legs.

I just remember a time when I would maybe check my email in the morning and then not be near a computer (or an iphone) until evening. A time before livejournal (really dating myself here), discussion boards, facebook, twitter, etc. claimed so much of my time. A time before I felt the urge to share and read everyone’s thoughts on everything, or what they eat, or their foursquare check-ins…

Earlier in the month I thought 2012 would be the year that I quit blogging, but instead maybe it’s the time that if I have anything of substance to say, I’ll say it here. That’s not to say I won’t be posting pics of things I eat

DH started his new job today. The new job means he leaves early in the morning, isn’t home for lunch, and will probably be home later in the evening. I know this is probably normal for most people, but for the last I-don’t-know-how-many years he’s worked a whopping 1.3 miles from home. He was home nearly every day for lunch, was home in the mornings, and even occasionally rode a bike.

TBO is working on his writing. Or, he’s supposed to be… except he keeps getting distracted. I want to get up from here and clean a little, but I know that’ll just distract him more. Too many toys have made their way back into the living room and it’s making me all twitchy. TGO is currently looking at the books, which I just reorganized (again). I’m trying not to look over there but I can see books on the floor. o_O

And we spent the morning going to Harris Teeter for cat litter and trash bags and to the pet store for the cat’s food. Seriously, it was noon before we got home.

Oh, I also did our meal plan for the week. I’m trying to do that to use up stuff we have (no, I didn’t do superdoubles last week) and attempt to cut down on all the impulse buys at the store. I spent part of yesterday cooking chicken noodle soup to freeze for the week. It’s ridiculously easy and so much better than the canned stuff.

I bought a couple of boxes from Target (the canvas/cloth covered ones since they are pretty and didn’t cost much more than the plastic ones. Also, I love the collapsible canvas ones. The kids have them for their laundry baskets, book baskets, etc.) and each morning I load their boxes up with stuff. Ideally I’d do this the night before but I’m not that organized.

This morning’s boxes have workbooks for TBO (tracing letters) and TGO (dry erase tracing), coffee cans that we’ll make into piggy banks, and blocks. TGO is playing Sesame Street games on the computer and TBO is using Time4Learning.

What else? I started a crafting meetup group and just recently a homeschool meetup group for people in Charlotte. I’ve been cooking all sorts of new stuff too. Also been cleaning, like seriously cleaning in places that haven’t been cleaned since…um… we moved in here 5 years ago. Yeah, I know. Gross.

I started a tumblr, which is good for posting pictures on, but I never quite got into writing stuff there.

We’re going to try workboxes for homeschooling. TGO is nearing 3 years old (shut the front door!) and TBO is almost 4.5 (no, seriously, when did this happen?)

Alright, TGO is yelling for me to put the password in on the old laptop so she can play games. Later taters!

I’ll definitely be making these to sell on zibbet!

Saturday I woke up with a kink in my neck. I figured I slept wrong (actually, I slept like total shit Friday night) so I took ibuprofen and have been doing the heat alternating with ice thing. Except it wasn’t getting better. So I went to the doctor this morning about that, the hearing loss, and the rashes.

Have I mentioned the rashes? No? Yeah, these rashes. They don’t itch, but they do burn/sting if you touch them. And they only appear, thank the Flying Spaghetti Monster, on my legs above my knees.

So I told this NP (I love nurse practitioners, btw) that my mother has lupus, I fail the VDRL test and when I did the ANA test I was one point shy of positive. I have joint pain. I have rashes. I have digestive issues. I have a constant low-grade fever… so she had the lab draw blood to do ANA, VDRL, a test for rheumatoid arthritis, etc.

And as for my neck, she did an x-ray which showed my neck doesn’t have the normal curve or something and gave me a muscle relaxant for the spasms that she guesses are the cause of the pain.

And now I wait for lab results and hopefully answers.

I see I never finished the wrap-up of the homeschool conference… I still have my notes and will get to it, I swear!

I deleted my facebook. Not deactivated, but deleted. As in it’s gone, sayonara, toodles, adios! I don’t miss it. I miss some of the people but I’ve kept up with the people that wanted to stay in touch via twitter, g+, and email. Now I spend my time knitting, cleaning and reorganizing, etc.

I also started a meetup group. I know, I know, I said I’d never do that again, but I have this itch to be around artsy-fartsy people, to knit in public, yada yada. There’s a group through the library that I really enjoy, but they only meet once a month, and believe me, I’m already studying the calendar to see how many days it is until we see each other again. So yeah, a craft meetup in Charlotte (http://www.meetup.com/String-and-Bean – shameless plug!) Plus, I think we all need something outside of kids, laundry, etc.

I’m adding knitting blogs back to my reader and it makes me so happy to find blogs I used to read 4-5 years ago (life pre-kids!) are still writing. Some are gone, but I’m happy to find some of the ones I remember. My scale will appreciate me drooling over knitting blogs instead of so many food blogs. If you know of any knitting blogs you love, let me know and I’ll add them to my reader.

Speaking of my scale – I walked 3.18 miles Thursday night. I was in unbearable pain all night for some reason… I usually walk 2 to 2.5 miles at around 18 minutes a mile  but maybe 3 miles is too much. Feh.

What else? Laundry, dishes, more laundry, Angry Birds… oh yeah! TGO is using the potty! Well, she’s been using it since 16 months every now and then, but this week she’s been actually doing a fair amount of her business in her pink potty. I had planned for her to use TBO’s old potty, but getting her a potty of her own served two purposes: she has her very own potty and TBO is now forced to use the regular toilet. So yay for that!

We went to IKEA last Sunday. We were probably the last people in Charlotte to go and we weren’t terribly impressed. Maybe because it was busy, or maybe because we didn’t need anything, but the main area of interest was the food. We didn’t buy anything though.

Alrighty, I’m off to search for more knitting blogs. Enjoy your weekend!

I didn’t take many notes because it was more conversational but I did write down a couple of things.

She recommended John Holt’s “Learning all the Time”. I haven’t read this one but I added it to my wishlist.

Another book Anna recommended was “College without High School” and she talked about how colleges are interested in homeschoolers/unschoolers because they tend to do things that stand out on college applications.

Then we watched this:

Animal School

I don’t remember a whole bunch else except a lady saying she uses shutterfly.com to document their unschooling days (and to assign a subject to their activities like cooking could fall under math, etc.)

A man asked, skeptically, if all his kids would do was play video games. The woman next to me (Erika Davis-Pitre) answered that they may for a while because it was no longer scarce, but once they had worked it out (gotten to whatever level, gotten tired of it), they would get interested in something else. Also, not to see video games as just a waste of time because there is a certain level of logic and skill involved. That evolved into having open lines of communication with your kids and also that one could have a career in video gaming.