Interesting, because I *hated* reading comp questions as a kid - I mean, seriously *loathed*, despised with the passion of a thousand fiery suns kind of hate. I'm still not really sure why, although I know the "writing the answer in a complete sentence" was insult to injury - I had this thing about writing the least amount of words possible to answer anything in elementary school, and having to make it a sentence added unnecessary words to the already bad assignment. Interestingly, I'd not have minded nearly as much if it were a closed book test instead of an open book timewasting torture - the pressure of the test made the hard work of integrating my knowledge and putting it into words interesting instead of drudgery. (This personality trait of mine, of external pressure adding interest to otherwise not that interesting or worthwhile work, contributed to a nasty, nasty procrastinating habit that ended up with me crashing and burning in college.) Also, and possibly related, I've recently realized that I can't take notes effectively - determining necessary versus unnecessary details is still very much like hard work for me because I only do it on tests (or now, on forums ;)), when the pressure/worthwhileness makes it exhilarating instead of horribly hard drudge work. (My memory and reading speed was such that I could just read the text twice and retain it perfectly well for the test, and do the thinking work of integrating all that during the test itself - I always learned a ton from taking tests, put together things I hadn't thought of before.) I think I could stand going through the logic stage outlining of WTM - pick a book or two of mine that deserves that level of thought and have at it. Because now I use the boards like I used to use tests - as an interesting reason for going to the hard work of thinking through what I've read. (And narrating now, as an adult, is hard work - I only do it when I'm sufficiently invested in conveying that info to the other person, or in sorting it out in my own head - although I must say, narrating definitely fixes it in the memory wonderfully.) Best guess as to why I hated reading comp questions is because I could comprehend just fine without them and that regurgitating just what the book said was pointless drudge work, because it required all the hard work of putting thoughts into words with none of the interest of trying to answer a question I didn't already know the answer to when I started. Even now I hate to answer questions that require no original thought - if I'm not learning something new or doing something new with the info in my head, it's no fun. Give me a good essay question any day - something with intrinsic interest - something that ends with me knowing more than I did when I started, if only because it required me to organize a corner of my overstuffed mind ;). (And see, this is why I participate on WTM :). When I started this post, I didn't really have a clue why I hated reading comp questions, other than they were "hard". But they weren't hard because I didn't know the answer or that I hated writing in general. But now, through the work of writing this post, I learned something new :). And that makes the hard work of thinking worthwhile.)

That was (and largely still is) me. Idk, I sort of feel a lack. There's something to be said for experiencing things firsthand instead of through a book. I've been reading Ten Ways to Kill Your Child's Imagination, and one of the things the author talks about is the value of direct experience and experimenting with *reality*. He's not anti-book, by any means, btw - but I totally substituted books for real life experience, and I don't think that was ideal, exactly. I remember being in honors physics, and though I was tops at doing the problems and such - and did understand the theory and could solve novel problems - I was flabbergasted at what some of the boys could do with the random bits and pieces of stuff in the room. For all that I liked science, I never played around with science - because I was too busy reading a book ;). And that showed in my complete inability to do practical things with my book knowledge - because I never *did* practical things, I never learned how to go about doing it. (That's a bit of an exaggeration, because I actually did quite a bit of needlework, and that knowledge allowed me to pick up knitting and crocheting fairly fast as an adult, and I did my fair share of playing with ropes and such in trees and things of that nature. And tbh I remember that more fondly than 3/4 of the reading I did. Someone here has a siggie quote about children not remembering their best day of television - I *do* remember my best days of reading, but I remember more about my times playing outside with the neighbor kids. I read a lot of twaddle and idk if I consider that much different than watching TV.) Now I am interested in all that practical knowledge I ignored as a kid, and maybe learning it now is as it should be, because now is when I care. Heck, I hated math manipulatives until I was in my 20s learning to teach math, because I thought they were pointless. And it wasn't till I was in my 30s that I realized that I learned to do math abstractly and never really formed a concrete sense of quantity (that's most of my learning in a nutshell, right there) and that playing with manipulatives and learning to really *feel* quantity in a concrete way is awfully valuable. I had no *idea* the depths of experiential knowledge out there, because I just skipped over it as a kid - didn't care. I see the same in my oldest dd. I got on just fine till now, and now that I care I am deepening my experiences of *concrete* reality, so maybe that's fine? Eta: Idk - I didn't see all this as a kid and so I didn't care about it, so I didn't do it, so I didn't see it - it's rather circular. And I *wanted* to care about some of it - nature and such - only reality didn't really stack up well to book reality. It's so very similar to what the 10 Ways books say TV can do - make unreality seem more attractive than reality, in part by ensuring you never develop the skills to appreciate reality, because you are spending that time in unreality - and so reality is even more unpalatable at first glance, and unreality is so *easy*, so you go back to unreality. Books were, and are, my unreality. And that's had a lot of negative consequences.

I lost my ability to handle stress after spending a few years depressed and under constant high stress (that I worked extremely hard to bury and ignore). I used to thrive under pressure - in fact, I *required* pressure to thrive - an ever-increasing amount of pressure, in fact. Unsustainable, and as my house of cards fell, I became unable to function under pressure at all. I recently realized that all that buried stress didn't magically go away when the external stressors did, which is what I sort of assumed (and you know what happens when you assume ;)). It had been lurking in my body all that time - my baseline stress level was at just under red alert levels 24/7 - and so it's no wonder that any additional stress, however small, would cause my stress cup to overflow. And it would take longer and longer for me to consciously feel stress - I'd "feel fine" with a stressful event looming - and it frankly puzzled me. But in retrospect I realized that I was still burying stress unconsciously, and it was erupting in lots of ways that I never connected with "being stressed". I've been doing a stress relief program for the past seven months (and started exercising), and my baseline stress level has gone way down, and my muscles are less tight (and I can sorta consciously relax them). Plus, my awareness of my body's reactions to stress have increased - before I'd "feel fine" yet be snapping at people every two seconds, but now I consciously feel physical and emotional stress reactions before they hit the "curled up sobbing on the floor" stage. I'm still not great at handling stress - I now realize all the not-so-good ways I deal with stress (eating and buying stuff) - and though my overall stress levels are way down, I am consciously feeling stress more - downside of learning to pay attention to it, I guess. It's not been a magic fix or anything, but reducing my baseline stress levels has helped a lot. It's an ongoing thing, though.

Joel Osteen does use the word "gospel" when he preaches, but it is not the traditional Gospel message. I watched "Joel Osteen on the Gospel" - a video of him preaching that is on his own youtube channel, what he wants to tell the world about the Gospel - and it was a lot worse that I thought it would be. I was expecting the standard prosperity gospel, "Now that God has saved you through Jesus' death on the cross, he wants you to have a abundant life now, blah, blah, blah" - at least the Gospel got thrown in *somewhere*, even if just as an afterthought or intro to the *real* message. But Osteen didn't even do *that* - in a message specifically on the *Gospel*. Now he talked about Jesus dying on the cross, and he talked about Jesus' resurrection, and us being confident of our victory b/c of Jesus' victory. But by "victory" he doesn't mean victory over sin, death, and the power of the devil, but rather achieving our dreams. "Many times on the way to our resurrection, to our dreams being fulfilled, we experience these types of challenges [Jesus' experiences on Good Friday]." The whole message was, basically, that just as Jesus experienced really, really bad things on his way to his greatest moment, the bad things we may be experiencing now are not signs of lack of faith or that we will never get the good (temporal) things God has promised us, but are in fact part of the process of getting to the good things. We need to have faith that, just as Jesus had his resurrection after the horrors of Good Friday, we too will have our victories, obtain our dreams, even if we are suffering now. Very feel good, very hopeful - but *not* the hope of the Gospel. He's not saying that "God loves you so much that He sent Jesus to die on the cross, that in Jesus He forgives you and saves you and makes you one of His children. You may mess up and fall short and fail miserably, but *God* doesn't fail - His love is more than big enough to cover your sins." Rather, Osteen says that God loves us and wants us to have a good temporal life. He doesn't forgive us so much as excuse us - God understands that we all mess up here and there. Just choose to believe (in what? Jesus' good example?) and all will (eventually) be well. That's not the hope *anyone* needs. And if they think that's it, that's all there is to the Gospel, it would be too easy for them to *never* hear it.

This is an interesting discussion. It's important to dh and me that we share religious beliefs, because we both see our faith in Christ as foundational. It would be devastating to me if dh chose to leave the faith, and vice versa. However, it's not because I would consider dh a different person, or because he can't be ethical or moral without faith - although with a change in what he looks to as the source of his morality, it wouldn't be surprising if what he considered "moral" changed as well. Otoh, plenty of people have happily held to a good chunk of Christian morality (seeing it as ethically good) while not having Christian faith, so general moral positions might well stay the same. In any case, I see Christian morality as a secondary result of faith, not the chief purpose of faith, so while it would be practically helpful if my no-longer-Christian dh retained the same basic ethical positions as before, it's not remotely the reason I'd feel devastated. It really would be the eternal separation from God that would be the kicker. (Practically speaking, potential conflicts and loneliness wrt practicing my own faith and raising the kids in the faith would probably rate up there if it really happened, but just thinking in potential terms, they aren't worries.) That's what I see as the core reason for faith - being reconciled to God - and thus what would hurt the most if dh no longer believed. Because in my beliefs that's about the worst thing that can happen, so of course I would be extremely sad if dh rejected belief in Christ. Eta: It would be completely in line with my beliefs to rely on God to work out whatever He was going to work out, to continue to have faith in God working things for good, and otherwise continue on living our lives together. I'd still love my dh - I would just be very sad and worried for him.

I used to think people who noticed other people's clothes and had opinions about the relative merits of them were shallow - I sort of took pride in my ignorance :sigh. But now I've come to see it as comparable to noticing spelling and grammar and word choice and font choice and page layout, which is automatic for me - I can't *not* notice that sort of thing. And I spend what would seem like a ridiculous amount of time to others tweaking my words and the presentation of those words, because I notice that sort of thing and so I care about having it look nice, even if it's not earth-shatteringly important. My understanding is that noticing clothes and hair and accessories is like that for other people - it's automatic and they can't *not* notice. And I'm starting to think it might be worth the time and effort to cultivate a bit of that sort of observation. For me the key thing is what people *do* with what they notice. Someone has a crappy layout or outfit, someone has spelling errors or unstyled hair, someone used an "inappropriate" font or wore "inappropriate" shoes - do I get all judgey? Do I throw out their good points because of it? Or am I kind about it?

I used to be frumpy and now I at least try not to be frumpy (no idea if I *succeed* but at least I try ;)). My frumpiest stages were a combo of not caring, not knowing what to do if I had decided to care, and body image issues. The worst one added on being overweight and depressed to the mix - I had no energy to care even if I'd wanted to. As I lost the weight, came out of the depression, and became more confident about my body, I started to care more. It's been a matter of baby steps, and my standards are low - jeans and a cami, where both fit well, is my dressing to go out :lol: - but hey, I *try* now (and it's an improvement on baby jeans and stretched out camis, and the decidedly frumpy denim skirt I wore when I was overweight and hated how pants looked on me). And I do think my clothes fit and flatter me, even if they aren't anything special style-wise. (Hair wise I wear a giant bun, which I put up nicely each morning (in not-caring days I threw it up without bothering to comb it) - people complement me, so I think it works for me even if its not "in style" ;).). Possibly I doth protest too much :lol:. The caring is still a work in progress ;).

I've just this week started T-Tapp :). I've only learned the very first move, Primary Back Stretch (which took three viewings before I could follow along - there's a lot to it) , but the move lived up to its claims - it is an excellent warm-up. I did it before I did my (very gentle) yoga, and when I did stretches, I was able to reach my usual end limit at the very beginning of the stretch. And when I did it before my walk, the walk felt more intense, like I was really working, more so than usual (which was good, because I was feeling like my walks weren't doing much, aerobicly-speaking).

I'm about four weeks into MuTu focus - I spent three weeks on phase 1 and started phase 2 this week (there are four phases, each for two weeks, or longer if needed). I'm pretty pleased with my results thus far: I've retrained myself in how to stand and walk (and not have my stomach pooch out without having to suck in - I no longer feel like I look fat in my close fitting shirts :)), I can engage my abs much more effectively, and I've discovered my pelvic floor ;) and can now consciously engage it. I've had better results with MuTu than with Tupler, particularly in applying MuTu to other exercises and my daily life. This review of the two matches my experience: http://619healthandfitness.com/workouts/diastasis-recti/tupler-vs-mutu/ - that whlle Tupler is good at closing a diastasis, MuTu is better at building core strength. My Tupler results, such as they were, disappeared the minute I stopped doing Tupler (as I've had much better results with appying MuTu to my daily life than Tupler, I think it will be much easier to maintain). Plus, the muscle awareness I'm developing with MuTu is so much greater than what I developed doing Tupler - MuTu, even just Focus, is more comprehensive than Tupler in my experience. I was able to get 15% off MuTu through a code offered on this blog post: http://www.servingfromhome.com/general/i-am-a-mutu-mama-and-diastasis-what/ (the code worked as of a month ago).

This might be me :shifty - I live in camis with built-in bras. I do notice if I appear to be sagging and shorten the straps to lift me back up, which seems to do the trick, but otherwise I'm thinking I'm fine - what else should I be looking for in terms of "built in bra is not enough"? I don't have the first clue about what makes a handbag dated or not - I do not remotely keep up with handbag styles. Is there any quick way to do this? :lol:. (Of course, my bag was a $5 goodwill find, so probably that makes it dated by definition :lol:. At least it's black ;).)

The LiPS manual recommends having the student run their finger under the text instead of a notched card - could be something to try.

For the bank and debt example, it would be like if the bank made an error. You have 10 dollars in your account, and the bank, which had mistakenly thought you owed them 10 dollars and had previously taken it away ($20 in your account - $10 debt = $10 left), realize their mistake and take away the debt ($10 in your account *minus* the -$10 debt = $20). You can think of it as un-taking away the money they took: by taking the $10, they left -$10 in your account; by taking away the -$10 they left, they are in effect *giving* you $10.

The pastor who officiated our wedding said that he doesn't include that line - too much potential for trouble. I can't recall if I've heard it at other weddings - if so, no one spoke up ;).

When my lil' guy insists, "No, I do it" when it comes to unhooking my nursing top :lol:.

Thanks :) - I got Teaching the Classics :thumbup:.

His background is LCMS Lutheran - went to one of our universities and everything. (People forget that Lutherans, though Protestant, are still very much sacramental Christians, which I mention, because CiRCE is so very rooted in a sacramental view of Christianity.) I don't know if he still is or not, though.

Do you mind expanding a bit? The Artist's Way is on my to-read list, and I'm curious how this contradicts it :bigear:. Of course, I've been reading the sample and her blog series, and getting hung up on theological differences :lol:. So close and yet so far - it doesn't help that my reading this weekend was on a very pertinent-to-the-book theological concept, and so it's already on the forefront of my mind. It's odd, because I'm pretty confident I have a *lot* of theological differences with The Artist's Way ;), and yet that wouldn't prevent me from setting them aside and gleaning the good. Idk, there's something about almost agreeing yet not entirely that makes the differences so *glaring*. Eta: I really hate learning via video/audio (I'm a transcript gal ;)), but I'm just about ready to watch/listen to over 5 hours of Kern talking about teaching from a state of rest, just because he's from the same theological background as I am, and I'm intensely curious as to how much of what this blogger says is her spin versus what Kern said.

I did it and my oldest does it, too, and I just let her keep trying. There are books she's started 5-10 times, reading them until it gets to be too much, and she gets further each time, with more comprehension. Heck, there's one author that, as far as I know, she's never finished any of his books yet, and she says he's one of her two favorite authors. I always figured that drive to comprehend things above their level was one of the ways gifted kids become so good at reading.

I *love* Carol Dweck. Her book Mindset was a game-changer for *me*. She's got some sort of computer program for kids that teaches them about the brain being a muscle: http://www.mindsetworks.com/webnav/program.aspx . Bit pricey for individual purchase ($79), but an option. The book is definitely worth reading, imo, and it's likely to be in the library. How Children Learn, by Paul Tough, extends the idea of a growth mindset to character - that you can improve your character through hard work just like you can get smarter through hard work. ETA: And learning through failure was highlighted as a very good trait to develop. Also, The Art of Learning discusses learning through failure, and the author described how he improved by continually seeking out stronger opponents and learning from his losses; he also contrasts a willingness to lose with one of his opponents' desire to be the big fish in a small pond - his opponent would rather stay mediocre than lose. The movie Meet the Robinsons is about a gifted kid overcoming fear of failure (and is also just awesome!) My oldest has fear of failure in spades. I tell her all the time that learning is *supposed* to take effort, that when a new thing is hard she is building new connections in her brain. And I both tell and try to model that failure is no big deal - just pick yourself up and try again :thumbup:. Dh plays video games, and dd7.5 wants to play with him, and that's been a good source of "failure just means try again" practice; plus she sees dh fail and try again lots of times, too. Educational apps are also helpful -she loves to play them, and the ones we have are extremely matter-of-fact about failure - no penalty, just try again. It's definitely a marathon, not a sprint.

I've wondered if my dd7.5 has stealth dyslexia for a while: She had several of the preschool markers for dyslexia (including being left-handed, being slow to start talking, and being slow to develop phonemic awareness, including hearing rhymes). She had trouble learning to read, but when it clicked, it clicked, and she went from CVC words (at 6.5yo) to reading at a 3rd-4th level in under six months (before she turned 7). I thought at the time she'd finally learned to blend, but recently I learned that she *still* can't blend - she learned to read in spite of that. Her visual memory is incredible - she only needs to see a word once or twice to remember it. She loves to read, but despite working through the entire multi-syllable sections of Reading Pyramids, she still guesses at pretty much all the multi-syllable words (extremely effectively on ones in her oral vocabulary, though, and then she remembers them easily) - her ability to decode one she hasn't heard before is nil - she makes up something that's sometimes almost recognizable but often is way off. And those mispronunciations tend to stick (even just purely oral mispronunciations - she's been adding a syllable to "Alaska" for several years - she's only just now starting to be able to consciously correct that after years of us repeating it correctly back to her). We started REWARDS, and she couldn't blend oral syllables together on new words (words in her vocabulary she did mpstly fine). I stopped REWARDS because of her failing the Barton pre-screening (along with dd5.5), and I'm learning LiPS to do with them both. Her handwriting's not much better than it was when she taught herself to write at age 4.5, and she can only do copywork if it's spaced exactly as she would write it. She can't space words reliably on her own. And she gets tired of writing before her little sister. Copying from a book is extremely hard, and copying from memory is even harder - she really can't do the latter at all (and she gives up so quickly on the former that I don't know if she can do it in any practical sense). She can dictate stories to me fairly well, and she's slow but not too bad with typing out stories from her head. She has an incredible memory, but she still has to figure out her math facts most of the time - she's fairly fast at it most of the time, but it's clear she's reasoning it out instead of having them memorized. Granted, I've never done explicit math fact drill, but she works with them a lot and it's odd given her extremely good memory. And for a kid with such a good memory and vocabulary, she's surprisingly slow at word retrieval sometimes. All that led me to wonder and read up on my own, but I was careful to never mention it to her, because I wasn't sure and because she thinks of reading as something she's good at, and I didn't want to introduce her to the idea that it's something she's supposed to struggle with (although she does, in many ways; she just likes to read in spite of it). However, today dd7.5 said herself, unprompted, that she thinks she's dyslexic, because she has so much trouble writing and because spelling is hard for her. She also noted the same thing I'd noted, that it's becoming increasingly noticeable that dd5.5 doesn't struggle with writing the way dd7.5 does, that she likes it and is improving in a way that dd7.5 isn't. She was introduced to the idea of dyslexia through a book she read (and it turns out the author of that book series is dyslexic herself), although when she told me about it she clearly didn't include herself in the category of "people who have trouble with reading". In retrospect, the very fact she brought it up to me probably says something. She *has* seen me reading books on dyslexia, and I wondered if she'd make the connection as to *why* I might be doing so, and maybe she has, but not that she's said. But she keeps most things of importance inside her - her actually *saying* something that's clearly important to her is pretty significant. Anyway, my instinct is to weight her self-diagnosis heavily - any reason not to do that? And that plus my long standing wonderings/suspicions has tipped the scales toward my thinking we ought to do evaluations (plus seeing how dd5.5, who also has phonological awareness issues, *doesn't* have the writing issues). IDK, we don't have a lot of savings - enough that we *can* do one or two out of pocket evaluations, but not enough to do out-of-pocket therapy - just the copays/coinsurance on in-network therapy would be a stretch tbh. Our insurance is pretty good, but I don't know how much longer we will have it. And I don't even know what to look into first. I've been planning to do a regular eye exam with both girls on general preventative principles (especially since my entire family has myopia) - should I take dd7.5 to a COVD for it? And what would I ask for? Or is this an expensive neuropsych thing? I suspect giftedness with dd7.5 - does the potential 2E change anything in terms of where to go, who to see? Or should I finish my four dyslexia/learning-disorder books first (Overcoming Dyslexia, The Dyslexic Advantage, The Gift of Dyslexia, and The Mislabeled Child) and that would be helpful in pointing me in particular directions?

I'm not saying it's definitively not Biblical, but I'm wary about visions and miracles (like gold dust manifestations), that for all the "Jesus did it!" attributions, don't actually point people to the Gospel. All the focus is on the awesomeness and real ness of *heaven*, like believing in heaven is how you get to heaven. Jesus is like an side note - cause of Jesus, we get to go to *heaven*. And we can be confident of this because a small child saw a vision of *heaven*. It's just, heaven's not the point, visions of heaven aren't the point, gold dust manifestations aren't the point - the point is Jesus' atoning death on the cross - and too often those "Biblical" visions and miracles take center stage and crowd out the very Biblical message of the Gospel that they are supposed to be "proof" of. When a "Biblical" vision obscures the actual Gospel message of the Bible, that makes me very wary.

I'm open to the idea of near-death experiences being real in some sense, but I think they are a bad, bad, *bad* thing to base one's Christian faith on. (I can't speak to whether they make a good foundation or help for other beliefs.) They are subjective, hard to interpret, and can lead to people putting their faith in the *results* of salvation (a good afterlife) instead of the *cause* of salvation (Christ's death on the cross). In Christianity, belief in heaven isn't what saves you. Too often people feel like they can't be Christian because they have problems with things that *aren't* central to Christianity. Heaven being real or not real, and what precisely it is like, is secondary. Heck, belief that the Bible is the Word of God is secondary, too - it, like belief in heaven, is a *result* of saving faith, not a *cause* of saving faith. Either God is trustworthy in His promises that He *can* and *has* saved us through Jesus - in which case we can rest assured that wherever we are going after this life, it will be with God and so will be a Good Thing, by definition . Or God is a liar and *can't* or *won't* save us, in which case the exact details of heaven are entirely beside the point if God can't/won't take us there. And who cares whether the Bible is really the Word of God if God can't/won't keep the promises He makes in it. I really like the book "Broken: 7 Rules That Every Christian Ought to Break as Often as Possible" - I think it does a fabulous job of stripping away all the false stuff we add on to "being a Christian", and shows the core of our faith: that Jesus Christ lived and died and rose again to save us from our sins. If *that* is true, it takes care of *everything* else; if that is *not* true, then there's no point to everything else.

Quick research shows that the average scores for all takers on all sat ii tests are all above 600, with many above 650 (http://professionals.collegeboard.com/testing/sat-subject/scores/average ), and "elite colleges" probably expect to see above 700, per this: http://collegeapps.about.com/od/satiisubjecttests/a/Good-Math-SAT-Subject-Test-Score.htm It does sound like a "good enough" thing, but good enough is fairly high.

I punctuate (and write) purely by ear - never learned any rules. And when I started learning about classical education, I embraced the idea of learning the rules wholeheartedly, because I felt all the disadvantages of only having intuition to guide me. But after a while, I came to see that having a intuitive sense of language was *important* - that rules without intuition was just as limiting as intuition without rules (or even more so, in some cases), and that I had seriously underestimated the value of what I already had. I'm still "yea, explicit formal knowledge!", but I'm equally, "go intuitive informal knowledge!" And I'm becoming increasingly "intuitive knowledge first" and "root all explicit rules in intuitive understanding" - avoid any hint of a divide between "school knowledge" and "common sense". Did a bit of research, and looks like punctuation-as-pauses is the "old" approach, from Ancient Greece to the 1700s - point of punctuation was to guide the reader in reading aloud. 18th and 19th centuries saw a transition from punctuation-as-pauses to a syntax-centered approach, which is the dominant method today. There were various "systems" taught for length of pauses, but all were in the order (shortest to longest): comma, semi-colon, colon, period. Anyway, there's an interesting approach in Nitty-Gritty Grammar, related to the pause approach, with a bit of syntax-y-ness thrown in: Period = Stop Sign: Come to a full stop. Then go on -- no sliding through. Signals the end of a complete thought. Comma = Flashing Yellow Light: Slow down, look left and right, then continue. Signals a pause in the action. Semi-Colon = Flashing Red Light: Stop briefly; then forge ahead. Connects two related complete thoughts closer than a period would; separates related thoughts more than a comma would. Colon = Arrow or Road Sign: Listen Up! What follows explains or adds information. Parentheses and Dashes = Detour: Take a quick detour -- then proceed. They add extra information or show a break in thought.

Peter Elbow has a book, Vernacular Eloquence: What Speech Can Bring to Writing, that has a few chapters on punctuating by ear. I wonder if he might have some helpful guidelines there - will try to look later tonight. I know that I got my "pauses" idea from something I saw online (that was about teaching kids grammar) - will see if I can remember where.