It was the best of times. It was the worst of times. Yes, the past couple of weeks have been such a roller coaster as you can probably tell by the lack of much new content here. I thought about it every day. Many days I was working behind the scenes. Some days I just didn’t have it in me mentally to sit down and write here. Anyhoo.

So this is just kind of one of those dump it all out type posts with no real structure and little editing. If you are looking for something meaty or profound, you’re going to have to lower your expectations. LOL. If you want to read one of those posts where a blogger just kind of shares all the things in some random jumble of thoughts, you are in the right place.

Google has been doing I don’t know what the past few weeks and they have just tanked my search engine traffic (as well as that of many other people). And I mean tanked to the point that if I think about it enough I could make myself cry. I have worked so hard behind the scenes the past few years to continue to rank well in Google for many search terms so it would send more traffic and it feels like it was all a complete waste of time. I’m talking weeks and weeks and weeks of basically working on it full time and it’s all gone just like that. Poof. I cannot fully articulate how sad it makes me.

And because they are sending less people to my shop, there are less people buying. And that makes me sad. Not as sad as the people who have seen most of their livelihood dry up, but sad nonetheless.

It also makes me angry that one company controls the lives of so many people, but I’m trying not to dwell on that because I have to go to sleep after I publish this and I’ll get too worked up to be able to sleep.

On a brighter note and related to sleep, I discovered the joy of flannel sheets this week. That probably sounds crazy since I’ve lived my entire life in a place where fall and winter take up half the year (Michigan), but they never appealed to me. But I’m tired of my feet being cold and I can no longer wear socks to bed for some reason (even though I have for literally decades). So we bought some flannel sheets at Kohls and we both love them. And my feet are warm which is also very good.

On a sadder note, my alma mater’s football team (Michigan State) is just a mess and rapidly falling. It’s so sad to see what is happening. Phooey. So there is no fun in that and it makes me sad.

On a brighter note, I found a free online app to use for homeschool information organization called SeeSaw. I tried Evernote a couple of years ago for keeping records because I wanted David and Caroline to add to it when they did learning things. It did not work for us. At all. It was way too complicated for our needs (and brains). So I’ve still been using one of my own printed planners which works well because I’m a paper person. (I’m using the Lavender and Teal one this year.)

But now we’re also using SeeSaw for David and Caroline to keep me informed of all the extra things they do. I’ll explain it more in another post, but this is a great way for them to tell me what they did with Science and Art beyond what I had generally planned for them so I can keep a record of it. They would tell me after they did their schoolwork together, “Oh we looked at this awesome art site and we watched this great video about such and such element” and I wouldn’t have the info to add to my records. Now all they have to do is drop a link or jot a few sentences down in the app and I can keep track of it in my written homeschool binder. It’s fantastic. (Hat tip to Cait at My Little Poppies for her post I found while desperately searching for something on Duck Duck Go that would work! LOL!)

Caroline has really come to understand the joy of being an introvert. She was sick for about a week with a lingering throat and nose thing so we were home for a solid week. It finally clicked for her the joy of being home multiple days in a row, hunkering down on the couch with her laptop and drawing supplies and just BEING there. She spent hours alone in the family room, watching videos and drawing and such, while I was upstairs working in the office. It was wonderful for both of us. I’m not sure why it clicked for her now, but it did in a different way. It’s kind of neat to see it happen.

And she’s just a great kid anyway. Really. For all the hard stories about the early years I’ve written on here, I have to also say that we have a great daughter. Not perfect, but she’s great. She’s so funny. She’s got a great sense of humor. Really. She has an excellent command of the English language for someone her age and she knows how to use it. David said the other day that her drawing and character development in her drawings is better than some of the students in his college classes. (She just turned 13.) That’s the homeschool difference. She has had so much time to work on her art that she would never get if she went to a traditional school. It’s encouraging for me to hear that from him because I am so wrapped up in the process and making all the decisions about what to do and how to do it in a way that works for her 2e that I don’t always get to see the bigger picture as much as I would like.

On a down note, there is something going on in a particular part of my life that really frosts me. I can’t talk about it publicly, but I feel like a particular group of people is being manipulated and treated unfairly. This is the kind of thing that makes me angry. There’s not much I can do about it beyond what I have done. I’ve spoken my mind more than once, taken the action I can, and that’s all I can do. But I believe that it could have a negative impact on me in the not-so-very-distant future which is also frustrating. So I’m trying to figure out how to mitigate the damage that will almost certainly come due to the choices of others.

On a happy note, it’s a rainy and blustery autumn night and I’m safe at home with people I love and who love me. This is no small thing. I’m able to happily type here in my cozy office to send this out to the lovely women who come here and read and comment. I know I have a safe place to put my head tonight. God is on His throne and all is well.

For all of that I am thankful.