most of the time i try not to think about how long its been since i had a separate room for art projects and play and homeschooling.
but its really hard when i think about all the stuff i’m NOT doing with my kids simply because of not having the space for it. i know, i know, i really should just make do with the space i have. but i don’t.
we used to have art projects going on in the big room all the time. well, maeven did. we haven’t had use of the room since tyren was barely walking. yes, its been that long. going on 2yrs this summer, as i recall! unbelievable. i doubt tyren even remembers anything about that room other than chaos and mess.
i HATE HATE HATE using the kitchen table for projects. our table seriously sucks. its all wood, and not the kind that cleans up easily. and it has leaves that go down, so stuff gets stuck in the cracks all the time. it seriously sucks for daily eating with kids, forget about it being anywhere close to good for projects. i know, i can just put a plastic table cloth over it, but i rarely do. my kitchen is ALWAYS a wreck, so doing a project at the kitchen table requires cleaning it up first. something i am obviously bad at in the first place or the kitchen wouldn’t always be a wreck! and then there’s the hassle of cleaning it up after we’ve done a project so that we can eat at it again. too much work, really!
anyway, i KNOW that i should just grin and bear it and use it anyway. but i don’t. rarely, at least. there are still times when i do. just not very often.
and i read all these absolutely wonderful blogs about how rich other homeschooler’s lives are with projects and exploration and hands-on activities and i think…”oh if only i had our big room!!” i know i need to make it work in another part of the house. but i just can’t seem to get myself to do it often enough. it just adds to my work! ugh ugh ugh. and then i feel guilty all the time for what i’m NOT doing, and then i get moving and do stuff and it doesn’t last.
that’s not to say that we never do ANYTHING, because maeven’s room can attest to all the projects she’s done in there. until it gets totally trashed and then her projects slow down considerably because she hates going in there. (gee, i wonder why? don’t talk to her about it, though, because its a losing battle.)
and i do set up stuff in other areas of the house sometimes…i just hate to do it.
so i have it in my head that homeschooling is seriously suffering because of not having that room. and that makes me very very bitter. because its taking so damned long to do anything in that room! its still as torn apart and as far from complete as ever it was!! going on two years!!!
and now we have run completely out of money. not only that but we can barely pay for the day to day things, so the room is, out of vital necessity, on hold. indefinitely probably. because we have no more help for it and we have no more money.
and right now we are fighting to just feed our family. money is so tight that i felt guilty buying 2 small books (just $10 each) at the book store today (they were AWESOME books!! i couldn’t resist! i can see us using them a lot!!)
probably shouldn’t have, but its been awhile since i bought any books for homeschooling, and i had taken maeven to the store to get some books with her allowance and i just couldn’t resist when i saw these. i’m really excited to use them! 🙂
anyway…i just HATE the situation we’re in without that big room. i get really overwhelmed by it every once in awhile (like right now) and have to vent about it. because we were FINALLY on a roll! things were happening! and then they just came to a halt again! UGH UGH UGH. it really upsets me when i think about it too much so i guess i should just not think about it anymore.
i need to figure out how to make do with what i’ve got. i did start to get things out of the shed and brought out the bookshelves that used to be in the big room and started de-molding (have to use a special mold killer to clean everything all over) the books that i wanted for those bookshelves. there’s still a TON of stuff in the shed and in bags around the house though. *sigh* and i cannot access so much that would really be cool to use.
at this rate its beginning to feel like its never going to get done. because right now we are just fighting to survive in this economy. the $2000 that we borrowed from adam’s mom to help with the big room is now gone…some of it did go to buying supplies for the big room…but most of it went to just paying for things like food…because of adam’s pay cut, we’ve had to dip into that money a lot. and now its gone. 🙁
and there’s a fair amount of money out there that is owed to us by various different people…but god only knows when we’ll see any of it. *sigh*
i just need to stop thinking about it…i keep telling myself this and yet i keep wallowing in the dispair of the situation about every month or 2. *sigh* because my kids lives would be truly enriched if ONLY i had that stinkin room back! and i’m ANGRY about all the crap that happened to get us in this situation! ARGH!!
ok done venting. time to focus on other things.
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