Wow, what an awful situation. There is just no way to really fix that--the trust is gone. I like what hillfarm says, but I think I might have to say something. :mad: Your poor daughter, how icky for her.

Some people say "Never let the sun go down on your anger." IME this leads to stupid arguments at midnight that drag on and on. If it's late and you're mad at each other, just go to sleep already--in the morning you'll most likely feel silly for having gotten angry over something little, and if it's a real issue you can talk about it more rationally. Being tired does not contribute good things to an argument.

No, I love library work and I have been worried about having to change. So for this, the primary motivation would be resume beefing-up and investing in my future. I now have two friends willing to take the kids and supervise them a bit, and a husband willing to take them as in my plan described above. I would ahve to get a lot better at time management and spend a lot less time footling about online, but I think it's doable. So I need to do serious thinking about whether it would be best for the family. I'm leaning towards it at this point. Thanks for your thoughts everyone, it's very appreciated. Hardly anyone understands the situation like you folks do!

I wouldn't care.

As far as the financial side of things go, we spent most of last year unemployed and are still digging ourselves out of the hole of debt we accumulated. Although my husband now has a good job, it would certainly help things. But the biggest reason for doing this would be to keep me employable--as things are right now, I'm fast losing relevance and my field is shrinking. It's an excellent opportunity for me to move up and stay current, and keep me prepared for any other icky unemployment surprises.

A good friend just told me that she would take them one day a week and help them with their work. That just leaves 2 days a week where they would be doing "homework." This has all only JUST dropped into my lap and I haven't yet had a chance to discuss it much with my husband. What I'm kind of envisioning is them working upstairs while he is down, and then having lunch together, and he can look at their work. He is very supportive of homeschooling, but he's not much at systematic supervision. And he really needs to concentrate on his job--we can't have them running in and interrupting all the time. It would kill his groove, so to speak. We don't have a lot of close friends who homeschool--most of their very good friends are in PS. And the ones who homeschool tend to live a ways away.

This morning, a well-paying job in my field dropped into my lap from nowhere. I'm a librarian and I was laid off last year from the dinky job I had (substitute work a few hours a month). The library field has gotten quite difficult lately, and I was getting kind of worried about keeping my hand in. Maybe I would have to think about switching fields. This job is 9 hours a week (but a 20-minute commute). It pays ridiculously well for a library job--I'd be able to hire housecleaning help. Of course, there's the small problem that I homeschool 2 kids, but I thought maybe the scheduling would work out OK. The hours are 10am-1pm, three weekdays per week. Which, obviously, is prime school time. What the heck do I do? I know some of you work and homeschool at the same time, but how on earth would you pull this off and still let the kids have fun with their friends in the afternoons? My younger girl is only 7, so I don't like the idea of her working unsupervised that much. At best, they would be spending the time at my parents' house, where my husband has his office (he telecommutes). I'm stumped. It's a great opportunity but I can't figure out what to do.

I love mine, and am wearing them right now. They are my house shoes--I have plantar fasciitis and needed good shoes to wear at home. I wish I could afford another pair to wear outside! Mine are acid green. :)

Tznius has great clothes.

Our respective parents only live a couple of hours apart, and we have frequently had Thanksgiving all together.

My parents live in town, and they would help, but a lot of our friends would too. I would prefer for my in-laws not to show up and would hope they wouldn't! (Besides a nice short day visit to their son.) Their help would just not be helpful, kwim.

I also cut off at 9pm, unless we're good friends and I know they're night owls.

Well, those of you with young children will want to know that at one point on Colonial House, some people skip church and go skinny-dipping instead. You can't see much but it's there and I was surprised by one shot. Also, CH has a very sad chapter where the original governor and his family have to leave, as the oldest daughter's fiance (who was not along for the experience) died. They do show some shots of grieving.

I found that for my girls, group lessons were just useless. They needed one-on-one lessons with a very loving, sympathetic teacher. They were very hesitant (and sometimes scared) for a while, then got over the hump and were on their way. But they did learn more slowly and a bit older than their friends did. I'd advise you to take him to play in a shallow pool a lot this summer, and don't push him at all. Next summer, take him to play and then try one-on-one lessons. I know it costs more, but for us it was well worth it--the group lessons were money wasted.

I too was really annoyed by the feminist stuff in Colonial House. I am a feminist, but I'm also interested in historical accuracy and that was ridiculous. If you're going to live like a Pilgrim, then you should jolly well expect to attend church for hours and wear a cap and spend a lot of time working in the fields. The caps particularly enraged me--here you are in an age with no shampoo, working over an open fireplace, and pretending that caps are oppressive to women instead of a sensible precaution to keep your hair clean and away from the flames. (Not to mention that men also had their heads covered all the time.) Agh! I don't think I could watch that again. I loved Manor House though. "This house is killing meeee!" :lol:

He's 18, so I think he should decide what he's going to do. But it's also your responsibility at this point to decide what your standards are for keeping him at home. Is he going to need to pay rent? Does he live at home as long as he's in school and pulling a 3.0? And so on.

Life is too short to read books you don't like. When I went to library school, it had the bonus of curing me of that little niggling belief that you have to finish books. Now I skim, skip, and drop them with abandon.

Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni. My favorite modern fiction author. A. S. Byatt I'm conflicted about. I want to like her more, yet she is a bit longwinded and pretentious. As for authors who are modern because they wrote after 1900, I'll vote for Eleanor Farjeon. And my favorite fantasy author is Diana Wynne Jones.

Mine this week are Quiverfull and The Red Pyramid. Still working on the great London book! (I went to the Sacramento library and got a whole pile of books that have been on my wish list, so I had to drop everything and read those. Sac is two hours away, and I rarely get a chance to go there twice in 3 weeks so as to be able to check books out.)

Do you read the WTM blog? There was a guest series a little while ago on dysgraphia. I'd encourage you to read it--it had a lot of wonderful ideas, whether or not your son has dysgraphia.

I'm not sure what to think. I don't buy the "freedom of speech" argument--he's not being punished by the government and he hasn't been silenced. He says himself that he had been warned but had never taken it seriously until he got some consequences. Perhaps facebook ought to be between a kid and his parents, but it's public too. And FB/online events routinely disrupt school these days. It's a difficult issue, and I don't think it can be dealt with easily.

It was a funny joke for about 30 pages. Would have made a funny short story. As a novel, it drags on and on and on. If you don't like it now, you won't like it any better after another 100 pages, I promise. (Note to publishers: the classic + monsters formula has now jumped the shark, crashed the boat, and Fonzie is dead. You did not need to publish "Jane Slayre" or "Little Vampire Women" and "Android Karenina" was totally unnecessary.)

We lost most ILL last year. I registered at the big-city library 2 hours away, using my BIL's address, but that doesn't really help all that much. We went totally broke last year, though, and I signed up with a charter school that pays for almost everything I ask for. So that's how I'm coping, but my amazon wishlist is very very long!

I'm listening to a course right now called "Six months that changed the world: the Paris Peace Conference of 1919." I'm learning a ton, it's so enjoyable and interesting!