Sick Day

Today I slept in without guilt, because I am sick and because I feel my primary job is to recover as quickly as possible so I can enjoy my weekend in Dallas with my husband. I did get up and do school with Jasper and felt very noble for doing so. I am taking the maximum dosage of zinc and feeling quite nauseated as a result.

I went shopping to get food for the kids for the weekend. I worked on geography, because geography runs my life, and that won’t stop just because I want to go somewhere this weekend. This week’s geography research has me feeling very nostalgic for my high school days, because Kenya is one of the countries we’ll be covering. Funny how the memories come flooding back when you look at certain pictures . . .

I also found myself pondering a phenomenon that has puzzled me for many years now. You know why I originally got on Facebook? It was because when Mary was a teenager, some students at the university started a hate group on Facebook. What did they hate? Anyone who wore a cloak. They posted hateful and malicious things that were aimed at shaming and humiliating anyone on campus who wore a cloak for any reason.

I felt I had to be on Facebook to see what my kids were up against. And frankly, I was and still am bewildered by it. Why should someone be so offended and outraged by someone else’s outerwear choice? I see people every day wearing things that I think are totally ridiculous, but I don’t hate them or want to hurt them or publicly humiliate them. I just resolve not to emulate them!

Then recently someone started a “confessions” page where people at the university can post whatever they want to anonymously. Out of curiosity, I checked it out and found that it was a repellent hate-fest, much of it aimed at cloak-wearers. Why? How does the fact that someone wears a cloak make someone else so angry and full of spite? And how can you go to an engineering school and not expect it to be full of nerds and geeks? If you are a cloak-hater, please enlighten me. I do not understand this particular prejudice. How do cloaks personally offend you?

Cloaks are so practical and useful. I think the primary reason they are no longer common is that they are admittedly a real pain to drive and wear a seatbelt in. But why the hate? Whatever happened to “to each his own?”

Of course, I really don’t care what people think about my cloak-wearing. I’ve never been mainstream in my life, and I doubt it’ll ever happen now!

Counting Down

Well, I survived another Wednesday, and now there are only 5 more to go! And six weeks from today, Lina will be here! Can’t tell you how thrilled I am about that. Given the fact that I am getting sick, and given the fact that I am exhausted, I thought it was pretty amazing that I made it to co-op classes and didn’t forget anything more important than my flashcards. We even remembered the brownies for the bake sale!

We were in West Africa today, and there were a whole lot of countries to cover in very little time. It’s also very gratifying to see how much more engaged my students are now as compared to the beginning of the school year.

Thanks to Lina, Jasper had a couple of disgusting photos to show his classmates today. They were studying ants, bees, and termites in science class, and I remembered that Lina had once sent us photos of an enormous termite queen that had been dug up near the school in Zambia. I could not find the photos anymore, but I asked Lina about them and she was able to find them and resend them so I could print them for Jasper to take to class! 

I had promised the kids that today we would finally join the stampede over to Chick Fil-A after classes. This is where many of the families go every week, and my kids feel very deprived that we don’t ever do it. They have gotten to go with friends on a few occasions, but I have never taken them before today, because I hate spending money on lunch when we have food at home, and because I am always so eager to get home and collapse.

I think they all had a great time, though I think they were also surprised to discover what an outsider I am in our homeschool group now. I ate alone and then walked over to Walmart to pick up a few things, including some more Zicam because that’s the only thing I’ve ever tried that has worked for me when I have a cold.

By the time we got home, I could think of nothing but lying down, even though I knew I was going to have to go back out to do some banking for Flynn. I had a brief rest before running my errand and then had another rest later before plunging right back into preparing for next week’s Geography class. We are hoping to spend the weekend in Dallas so I really need to lick this cold and get as much prep work done as I can before we leave.

Oh, and the van has some more issues. Hope we can get them resolved before we leave . . .