Rumors of my death have been greatly exaggerated...

Have I ever gone ten days without posting since the inception of this blog?  I don't think so!

I blog about life, but life sometimes interferes with blogging.
We generally take the month of August off from school.  You'd think that means a little leisure, but no, it means it is time to do all those things I have been putting off during the school year.  It's time for dental appointments, sorting through the school stuff and deciding what we'll usat e in the coming year and what will be put aside, making decisions about new school books, writing, cleaning those things that never seem to get cleaned the rest of the year, and so on.

I mentioned writing.  Every now and then I get bit by the writing bug.  I develop characters, settings, situations and a plot, and I decide to write.  I am currently working on such a project, and the nature of it is leading me into hours on the internet doing research, which I sometimes love and sometimes hate.  I love learning new things; I detest spending even more time on the laptop than I already do, especially since I have a really ornery laptop that frequently does that which I do not wish it to do.  My research has brought me to look up near drowning, medical terminology, nursing, yachts and yachting, maps of Manhattan and Long Island, Ukrainian culture and language and spina bifida.  Weird, right?  I assure you, it all ties together.  I'm having fun, but there is little writing left in me at the end of a day for blogging.

I'm still trying to read at night.  I have on my bedside table some plays by Tennessee Williams, a collection of Faulkner stories, a biography on Paul Newman, and The Brothers Karamazov, which is really wishful thinking since it is a library book of substantial heft and minuscule print, and at the rate I read, I had better purchase my own copy of the book.

Knitting has fallen by the wayside.  I can't believe it, but there are only so many hours in a day, and I do need to devote at least some time to feeding and taking care of the children.  That reminds me:  I have a library book I need to read to the little guys.  Hedgehog in the Fog.  I recommend it.  We're blessed with a childrens' librarian who orders books I'm looking for.  They had no Elsa Beskow books in the children's section, and we haven't any here because I wanted to decide which would appeal to Gemma the most.  So our librarian, Miss Amanda, ordered seven of them for the library!

I've been trying to squeeze in half an hour of French each day, too.  Una has Rosetta Stone French, but I have just been using Duolingo, a free online course, and it's pretty good.  I took a couple of years of French in high school, but haven't used it at all, so much was lost.  If I continue to like this program, I may use it to brush up on my German as well.  Unfortunately, I couldn't find any free online courses in Russian that are quite as user-friendly as the Duolingo.  Cyrillic is a pain, and there's nothing for it other than painful memorization.

Bret had his birthday yesterday and enjoyed a meal of home-grown pork spareribs, baked beans, potato salad, cole slaw and cheesecake for dessert.  It was delicious, but heavy, and we were suffering for it this morning, unused to fatty, rich foods as we are these days.

Our cow's milk seems to be dwindling, and she isn't bred, so I don't know if we will be looking for another cow, or what.  I can't afford raw, organic milk for this horde--we go through a gallon a day, and that's not counting what I would use to keep us in yogurt.

Bret needed the van to transport a large desk he was commissioned to build, and so the van seats were housed in our schoolroom this morning, making for some additional reading couches.  My kids are like cats--if there's something new in the house, the kids gravitate towards it...

Anyway, that's all the news there is to tell.  I'll try to be better about posting, but no promises!

Have a great week!