… but I’ve been missing a bit lately.  Things have been really busy here and our modem broke.  I drove to an almost neighboring city to get a replacement this morning and we are now back on-line.  I cannot even say that we used our time off-line particularly wisely.  We just did all of the other usual stuff.

We had a great weekend for garage saling.  The richest neighborhood in town had their annual community garage sale.  It was truly better than usual.  We managed to find several great bargains which included clothing with the tags still attached ($1 per item) and a $2 shelf that now houses the children’s movie collection.  We also found an educational game, a few good picture books and a couple of action figures for the boys.  Wildchild managed to find himself a couple of toys while he was out with us as well (he’s sneaky that way, but he certainly can charm people!).  

For anyone who might be interested, I haven’t killed our little container garden yet this year, nor have the bunnies found it, nor has the dog gotten upset with us and dug everything up.  We have some actual plants growing, a few sprouting, a few freshly planted and even a tomato that is flowering!  I’m almost afraid to get my hopes up, but I cannot help being at least a LITTLE excited!  If I have time, I’ll post some pictures tomorrow.

Moving the shelves seems to have led our own perfect storm of household rearranging.  If you wonder where I am, I’m probably under a piece of furniture somewhere trying to help heft it into a new location.  I’ll be back just as soon as I can crawl out from under whatever I’m currently hiding beneath!

On a completly unrelated note, we’ve decided to go ahead and plant another garden for me to kill.  Hopefully this one will last long enough for us to get to eat some of it, too!   So far, so good.  We actually have a few hopeful-looking little sprouts sunning themselves on our front porch and waiting to be transplanted. 

I absolutely positively cannot seem to teach math from a book.  There.  I said it.  I think it probably stems from my ADHD and dyslexia issues, but I cannot really be sure.  

It isn’t that I do not understand the math.  I really do in my own weird way which might not in any way resemble the way that the math books say I should be doing it.  It isn’t that the books we have used (and they have been many by many top-rated publishers of math books) did not do a great job of explaining things.  I just happen to have an amazing ability to turn the perfectly sensible information from a perfectly sensible math book and turn it into gobbledy-gook when trying to teach it to my children.  

The good news?  Apparently, I’m pretty good at teaching math as long as I avoid referring to anything in a book.  My children are actually doing well in math this year.  They are understanding everything they are given to do, are making their best math grades ever and have even stopped whining over math lessons.  I’m still struggling with WANTING to refer to a math book if for no other reason than to have some idea of what order I should be teaching things in.  I think I scare my children when I even approach their old math books these days…. Sigh. 

Now, what on earth am I going to do with the math books?