I agree with this. I do enjoy discussing these topics, but it's not easy. I'm always willing to give it a try, though.

Oh, you have my sympathy. You're in a very tough place! I haven't got any advice, sorry, but I hope something turns up for you. I have to say that in your shoes, I'm not sure I would go back to homeschooling unless I felt that it was definitely what God wanted for us (and I'd be expecting a lot of help!).

Oh, tell me about it! I have done that cycle and it was horrible. I fought with it through our first year of marriage...:eek: Cranberry pills saved me! Thank you wonderful nurse!

It sounds to me like you have a UTI coming on; it's just not full-blown yet. Until you can get to the doctor, you should drink lots of water, go pee as often as possible, drink lots of cranberry juice too. If you have Vitamin C around, take a large dose. If you happen to be able to get to a drugstore, cranberry pills will help too. Anything that will make your urine acidic is good! (Even aspirin will do a bit.) All that will help control it until you can get treatment. You'll know it's a UTI if you get a lot of pain right at the end of urination--something like being stabbed. Good luck! BTW the doc won't need to do an exam or anything; a UTI is diagnosed with a urine test. So you can go to your gp if that's the problem. --Dangermom, who is drinking a lot of water tonight too :/

Thanks--very interesting. And I never thought I'd see someone recommending California standards over other state standards!

Yep, same here. It was like "Look! Here's your ideal education! Ta-da!"

I would be very interested in reading more about this; can you give me any sources to look for? Thanks--

Um. I'm a little embarrassed to say that I got 126. I would have gotten more if my brain hadn't locked up from all the songs running through it. Yes, I listened to a lot of radio. We didn't have MTV though; my mom is morally opposed to paying for TV. Dangit, I went through the answers and a couple were marked wrong when I got them right! And I had a couple of typos. I could have done better!

Your local fabric stores probably give classes, and if you bought your machine new, the store might offer them too. A lot of sewing machines come with 6 free classes or something. Or you could ask an experienced sewing friend for lessons and offer an exchange of some kind. I have a friend who gives lessons to local girls and she's swamped! Your library will have books on how to sew. Sewing machine mastery is at 646.2, and sewing books are at 746. You might like to start with a small quilt project, in which case I recommend the Quilt in a Day Log Cabin, which has great instructions and illustrations for newbies.

Well, sure. But the fact is that they weren't and they never will be. That kind of hype will never surround a true work of great literature. The mania around Tolkien's Middle-Earth is the closest you will ever get. The media is about making money, not encouraging deep thought or true enjoyment of a good book. Those things are not lucrative enough for the media to get excited about. Librarians liked HP because it did at least get kids excited about reading a book instead of playing a video game (though there were plenty of kids who waited for the movie). That effect could be used to introduce kids to other good books--thus the booklists titled "If you liked Harry Potter, you might like...." Kids were actually voluntarily picking up a book and reading it for fun, not because they had to read a 300-page biography and do a report on it (awwwww). (Librarians are all about the enjoyment part of reading.) Now IMO it's ridiculous to make HP a part of any school curriculum, but teachers are always trying to find hooks to make school more "fun" and yet compulsory and measureable and all sorts of un-fun things. Librarians are constantly trying to improve the world with no money and no street cred. If something like HP comes along and looks like it will help, we'll take it. It's a gateway book; we offer the harder stuff once they're hooked. ...So, have you tried Diana Wynne Jones?;)

I haven't let my own kid read them yet because I think she's too young. The first couple of books are fine, but they get very dark as the series progresses. That worked well for the kids who 'grew up' with HP, but I don't want to let my 7yo read them all at once, which is what she would want to do. As a librarian, I'm happy that HP encouraged kids to read and broke the big-book-phobia that so many kids had--it used to be far more common to have kids whining at you: "250 pages? That's so looooong, I need something short!" HP was a great excuse to give kids other (better!) books to read. It brought older fantasy classics back into print, which was nice. OTOH it also ushered in a flood of third-rate children's and YA fantasy and made it common for every. single. title. to get turned into a movie. That worked pretty well for Narnia, but badly for most others. And I didn't care for the hype and hysteria. (I did find it bizarre and entertaining to watch HP get vilified by certain groups while Philip Pullman's "His Dark Materials" trilogy flew completely under the radar--right up until the film release.) I'm not a huge HP fan myself; they're OK. There's better out there, and there's worse.

May I ask a question, since this seems to have turned into more of a general discussion? I don't think I understand the quiverfull idea very well. Can someone direct me to an explanation of the ins and outs? Also, what does one do if, say, the wife is still fertile but more pregnancies would be very bad for her health?

Here's a silly little (utterly pointless) Nader story for you: in college I took a course from his sister, Laura Nader--a big one with probably 300 students. Most of us were too young to remember Ralph from the 70's "Unsafe" thing, and didn't know what he looked like--just that he was a famous person. One day late in the semester she showed a film that had a still shot of Ralph in it, and an enormous gasp went up from the crowd as we realized that Laura was the spitting image of her brother. I don't know what he wants to accomplish by running for Pres for the nth time; if he wants a platform for his views, there are cheaper and less disruptive ways to go about it. It's a joke now.

What browser are you using? You might try a different one. Make sure your cookies are enabled; it won't work without that. Good luck!

We started with ZB print but switched to Italic in 1st grade, before cursive. I did it because I thought it was both prettier and a more practical style of writing. I don't know about boys or reluctant writers though; mine is an 'easy' writer.

BA in Comparative Literature (English/Scandinavian). MLIS, (Master's in Library and Information Science) --I'm a librarian.

I have several, but my favorite is the Rosemary Wells volumes, followed by The Real Mother Goose, which I grew up with, so I'm blinded to the defects of its pseudo-Greenaway illustrations. :D There are lots of great ones, though; look through the library's collection and enjoy!

Yay! The clouds disappeared and we have a lovely view. The kids are having a great time.

My husband is 100% supportive and very enthusiastic, but he doesn't do a lot of actual teaching, though he's always hoping to be able to "next year." He's currently starting up his own business so he just doesn't have time to do teaching too. OTOH he's willing to get a housecleaner when the finances allow it, so that's support for me, right? Right!

I've met Sarah McLachlan! She was very nice to me. My brother has a (Russian) friend he's stayed with who lives next door to Vladimir Putin's stepmother. How's that? :rolleyes: Oh, Sandra, my MIL used to know Orson Scott Card when he was a wee tot!

I can't not read. I read in bits throughout the day. (I have been known to be dictating from one book to my daughter and also looking at my book at the same time. It's probably not good, but it keeps me sane.) Also while cooking, eating, brushing my teeth... For study, I tend to use the evenings; I'm too much of a zombie in the morning. For a while I was trying to read something from a classic every night. That got dropped for a while, then I started poetry on most nights, and currently I'm in an online discussion of the Iliad which has kept me on my toes. I studied Henle Latin last summer and enjoyed that very much, but dropped it during the school year. I guess I'll have to nearly start over this summer, and I'll have to really tackle the Greek alphabet too; it's very easy for me to forget, and I think I've tried to learn it 3 times now without permanent success. I don't know why it's so hard when I can still read the Russian alphabet with ease!

Oh, ain't that the truth. Your post strongly reminded me of when we had our own "friend-with-failed-marriage"--only it was more complex than that, we met him at church while he was in rehab (and he's still sober! Yay!). A very nice man with no clue whatsoever. My husband did some things with him, but one day he was in our home and, when my husband went into the kitchen, he suddenly told me some things about his marriage that were way TMI that my husband already knew all about. I didn't know where to look and was very glad to escape the room!

I would be very uncomfortable with the OP's situation. In our marriage, our deal is that we don't spend time alone with members of the opposite sex. Certainly I have guy friends, but there's no reason to go out alone with them; I'd go in a group. To us, it just makes sense and isn't difficult at all. I'm comfortable with men as friends, but in group settings.

I loved her books as a teen. I tried to get them all. Some of them do get kind of weird, though. Some are quite realistic, some are a bit thriller-y (exotic international plots and so on) but especially in later years she did a lot of fantasy. Her books do tend to sound dated.

I'd be dead, so I'm quite a fan of modern medicine. Come to think of it, I'd be practically blind, too--no one would marry me anyway! I do love a lot of old-fashioned things, but I like it that I don't have to do them. I can sew for fun (I sew a LOT) without having to bake bread and carry water too. A handmade quilt or dress is extra-meaningful even if it's not necessary. And I can make a lot more of them in less time...