It’s a bit difficult to write on my laptop when there is a small dog sitting in my lap.  I hesitate to move her, though, because she is keeping me warm!  This cold weather is not my friend.

We did our homeschooling reading today while snuggling under a blanket on the couch.  Outside the pool waterfall is on, triggered by the freezing temperatures to keep running so those pipes don’t freeze.  It looks incongruous and out of place with the snow-covered palm tree standing silently beside it.

On the math front, we’re still working our way through the tests to find the appropriate place to begin lessons.  On the memorization front, I am a big fat failure.  We need to work on all the CC memory work but haven’t taken the time to do so as I had hoped we would.  Freak snowstorms in north Texas do have a way of wreaking havoc with the best laid plans.

In science today we started an interesting book about Chemistry that is written from a Christian perspective.  The first chapter dealt with metals that people through the ages have used as tools and how ancient people learned how to separate iron from the iron ore…others were able to fashion iron tools from meteorites.  It’s always interesting to see how science gurus through the ages insist on certain facts to be absolute only to turn out to be absolutely wrong.  For example, scientists in the 1700s did not believe that rocks ever flew out of the sky despite any eyewitness or other evidence.  When the prestigious scientific academy examined one of these so-called sky rocks, they dismissed it and said it was a regular rock that had been struck by lightening.  They were so sure that rocks never fell out of the sky that museums that had such rocks hid them so as to not be thought of as backwards.  It makes me wonder about the so-called absolutes of today’s science.  What will we make of them in 100 years?  200?  300?

Today is one of those days that I feel an absolute failure in the homeschooling environment.  I think I go through these funks every year.  Being a homeschooler is difficult because there is no break.  Children who are schooled get to go home and get a respite from their mean teachers; children who are homeschooled are already home and probably wish they were anywhere else instead of under mean mom’s thumb.

It was a day that started out badly this morning at 4:15 a.m. when I awoke with a strange taste in my throat that then led to a panic attack.  After sitting up on the couch for a couple of hours, I went back to bed.  I wish I could say that I spent that time in prayer, but I did not.  My stomach pain/bloating hit hard, and I let myself get lost in a book to take my mind off my ailments.  Needless to say, homeschooling was NOT what I wanted to do today.

Then the sweet lady who cleans my house got here.  Her son was sick all last week with a stomach virus; the whole time she was cleaning, I kept obsessing about all the different things in this house that she is touching.  Yes, I have a problem.  I know that.  But knowing it and knowing what to do about it are two different things.  I sit here on the couch writing this blog, and my toes want to curl up.  You know the feeling you get when a mouse or giant spider runs across the floor?  I don’t know about you, but my instinct is to climb up on the table and get out of the way.  That’s how I feel about all the things she touched today.  I will probably take some bleach and go clean my door knobs and light switches and anything else I can think of that she probably touched.

I hate that I am this way.  I have a counseling appointment this afternoon — he is the kind of counselor who likes to have specific outcomes.  Well, I am not cured of my weirdness and anxiety.

I’m ashamed of the way I treated her.  She is a hugger and hugged me twice. Inwardly I cringed…and when she kissed me on the cheek, I thought I’d die.  Can I put bleach on my face and still be okay?  Probably not…but that’s my mind-set.  Hopefully she didn’t notice what inwardly I was/am going through.

Rationally, I know she was using cleaner. I know she herself didn’t get sick…yet.  I know that her hands were probably dirtier with my germs than anything else.

Ugh.  I wish there was a way to make stomach-sickness germs light up on surfaces so I could clean them off.  I wish I could go crawl into a place where I was all alone with a book.  I wish I didn’t have to eat because then maybe the horrible bloating pain would stop.

One of the things I resolved to try to do this year was to be content.

Hm…how to be content when I currently hate myself?  I’m not content with that.  Thus…it’s off to the counselor I go.  Whether it does any good or not…who knows?  Maybe talking about it will help me find contentment through the inner turmoil of my mind.