The Hard Part About Homeschooling

As more materials have shown up, and now that I have an official (if not slightly dungeon-ish still) school room, our daily school time has become easier for me to handle. I set everything up the night before, N~ and I have space that is just for school, and W~ and C~ are in the room next to us playing (when they aren’t on the school room floor coloring and cutting paper). For the most part, things are going much more smoothly than I anticipated.

Of course some days, no matter how prepared you are, things just fall apart. Today was one of those days. Despite starting around our usual 9:00 start time, we didn’t finish our 2 1/2 hours of required school time until around 1:00.

Sometimes, you have to let things interfere.

Like, for instance, when my father called this morning. I answered because he rarely calls me when he is at work. And when your father asks if you could go next door to make sure that your mother isn’t dead, well, you stop the lesson, tell the older kids to play quietly (yeah, I didn’t want them there if Grandma wasn’t breathing), and go. Don’t worry–Mom was fine. She just happened to have left her cell phone turned off at the same time that her home phone decided to have technical difficulties.

Later, school time was abruptly halted when my internet connection wouldn’t work. I decided to take the opportunity to call my cell phone provider to let them know that my insured phone (which I am supposed to be able to use as a modem) has refused to connect to my computer for awhile. A long and frustrating conversation ensued, in which I tried repeatedly to explain to the “customer service” rep that I had no way of telling if it was the cable or the phone not working, since the cable is proprietary to the phone (I don’t think he believed me) and I only have one. He finally agreed to send me a new phone (he put me on hold first–I’m convinced that someone else finally told him that I couldn’t just plug any old USB cable into my phone), but informed me rather huffily that they would NOT be sending another cable. When I told him that the cables are in the box with the phone, he replied that it wouldn’t be for the replacement phone. Gee, thanks, that’s helpful.

About forty minutes later, the internet started working again, so we went back to school. Until the baby had a blow out.

Sigh.

We made it through. It may have taken an extra hour and a half, but we made it through.

Now, I just have to make it through tomorrow (both school AND the surgical consult for E~) and I get a long-anticipated reward. I’m finally going to use the gift certificate that Sean gave me for Christmas and go for a massage.  You know you need to take better care of yourself when it takes nine months to cash in on something that spectacular. I’m ready for it.