Praise God that week two of Nanowrimo is over. With 26,576 words, I am more than halfway through. On Wednesday I got up at 6am to write and was able to get caught up on my word count. Now I just need to keep it up. At least this week will be easier. Now that I think about it, I would say that writing a 50,000 word novel for Nanowrimo in 30 days qualifies under the Harris twins motto of Do Hard Things over at The Rebelution. It definitely takes discipline, and it is a way to glorify God, especially if you write it from a biblical perspective, like I am doing.

As of today, I am officially on a break from teaching until the week after next. Yay. We are in the middle of Utopia, which is not the easiest book, but interesting nonetheless. And that reminds me of something I read in our Smarr student guide that I wanted to post here. Regarding theft and capital punishment:

Raphael [the narrator] points out correctly the Biblical punishment for theft. During [Sir Thomas] Mores day, England had over 200 offenses that were punishable by death. As More points out, while the Bible prohibits theft, most of the thieves in England were just trying to surviveMore proposes the Biblical punishment for theft, which is restitution. If the thief had the wherewithal to repay the victim of his crime four-fold, then the account was settled. However, if the thief could not repay immediately, then he became a slave until he could pay back his victim. This method of punishment is more just, because the victim is compensated, everyone has the incentive not to steal, and the victim does not have to support the thief as is true in the American empire where thieves are put in prison at the expense of taxpayers. In fact, prisons are unknown in the law of God, because the Bible does not recognize a criminal class. Either the criminal is executed for a capital crime, or he is put into slavery. Thus, the just society will not have a prison system. Interesting.

There is a homeschool mom in my family's ISP that also teaches an English class to homeschooled highschoolers using Smarr. Yesterday my mom told me that five of her students were pulled out of her class because they and their parents had "issues" with her. So they are looking for a new teacher now. If anyone is interested, then let us know. Haha.

Lessons learned from cleaning my room yesterday:

1. Look before you stick the vacuum somewhere where you cant see, because you just might vacuum up the lip gloss that you thought you lost. But if you do suck up your lip gloss so that the vacuum is no longer operable, pray, and you will be able to get it out. Even if it falls through the hose out the other end.

2. Before vacuuming your floor, dust your high shelves and the things under your bed first, so that you dont get dust all over your clean floor (and yourself) and have to vacuum it again. (I knew that.)

I felt very dusty after my deep cleaning yesterday, but I am glad I did it. I even cleaned under my bed. Where does all that dust come from anyway?

On a different note, check out my ~*new*~ Amazon store here. I put a link to it in my sidebar as well.

Fall Memories: The Carmel Tree

Wordless Wednesday

Note: I know this is supposed to be wordless, but oh well. This is a tree that was on my grandparents' property. We called it the carmel tree because as the bark peeled off, the bark underneath looked carmel-colored, which you can see in the upper branches in this pic. And BTW, this is a picture of a picture, which is why the quality isn't the greatest.

Just so you all are well-informed about the goings-on in my life, I will be deep DEEP cleaning my room today because I just saw (and killed) a yucky creepy-crawly with lots of legs crawling across my bedroom floor.  *shudders* I hope *hope* it only somehow got in on my shoe or something from outside. Because I clean my room every week (and try to keep it picked up every day), so it is not like it's dirty or something. (In case you couldn't tell, I don't like bugs.)

This is an article I wrote awhile ago for the Global Learning Strategies e-newsletter. It hasn't been published yet because (I think) they do not get a lot of other submissions from other people to have enough to publish together, so I thought I would post it here.

God's Way or No Way

            So what are you going to do when you graduate? This question is one I heard repeatedly while in high school, and I typically answered with, I dont know. The truth was I never thought about it much because I was scared. I had been homeschooled since fifth grade and had never attended public school. The thought of going away to college far from home, getting a degree, and finding a career did not exactly appeal to me. I liked living at home and enjoyed helping around the house, baking, and running errands with my mom and sisters. Did I really have to leave all that just because modern society expected it of me? I was unsure if the Bible actually spoke to this issue of what to do about college. Eventually, over several years, God helped me find the answer to this question.

            When I was sixteen, I attended a Christian worldview conference. During that life-changing week, God used one of the speakers in particular, Mr. Doug Phillips, to teach me many things. First was that a majority of Christians today think like humanists without even knowing it, and at the time, I realized that included me. Another lesson I learned was how to apply the Bible to every area of life, and yet another was that as a daughter under my fathers authority, I had a specific role to fulfill outlined for me in the Scriptures. At the time, these were new concepts to me. I had become a Christian when I was young, but still felt somewhat uncertain about the exact system of doctrine that the Bible taught. Now I soaked up this knowledge because I knew it was true. After that week, I went home and started studying books, articles, and the Bible to strengthen my faith. As time went on though, I still had to make a decision about college. I had not yet figured out what God wanted me to do.

            During my senior year, I was accepted to three private schools, all far away. As my graduation date crept closer, and after listening to my mom, I finally decided to enroll at a local community college so I could live at home. It was during my first year there that I learned the horrors of public schools.

            With my biblical worldview and doctrine firmly in tact, I was appalled at my new teachers and classmates beliefs and actions. Christianity was bashed while Marxist and liberal views were proclaimed and worshipped. Sadly, I suffered through two years at that school to earn an AA degree. At that time, I knew of no other way.

            I still wanted to receive a BA in English, so next I transferred to a local university. After two quarters there, I reached my limit of secular teaching. Around that time, I was blessed to be able to read So Much More by Anna Sofia and Elizabeth Botkin, College without Compromise by Scott and Kris Wightman, and Accelerated Distance Learning by Brad Voeller. Through those books, I learned how God wanted me to live and exactly what He wanted me to do about college. I came to understand that as a girl, I needed to spend more time learning how to be a keeper-at-home. Attending classes at college five days a week hindered my ability to be a help to my family and fulfill my duties as a daughter and sister. Yet I did not want to abandon my education. When I discovered an alternative to college for earning a degree in a way that would be pleasing to God, I was thrilled.

            I enrolled with College Plus! in February 2006, and could not be more happy with it. My coach helped me set up a study schedule that works for me. Now I have time for studying at an accelerated pace and time for spending with my family each day. My heart feels such a sense of peace now because I know this is Gods will for me. It has been a long journey, and if there is one thing I am thankful for, it is the Lords patience with me. My hope is that others can learn from my story and not make the same mistakes. Public school is not the answer to the question of what to do about college. There are other, God-honoring ways to earn a degree, like enrolling with College Plus!, and my only wish is that I learned about it sooner. Even though I do not have far to go to finish, I would much rather do things Gods way, than any other.

Our family knows several homeschoolers/former homeschoolers who work at Starbucks around our city. My mom learned something interesting because of this from a brother and sister who work there, and she told us last night.

What do you think the three main goals of Starbucks employees are? (Found in Starbucks employee paperwork.)

1. DIVERSITY (in the people who work there and in being accepting of anyone who wants to work there)

2. FUN (for the employees to work as a team and have fun at work)

3. Customer service

Is anyone else surprised that customer service is number three???? Is Starbucks coffee so addicting that they can get away with that? What are your thoughts?

We are into week two of NaNoWriMo. Thats exciting. They say that week two is the hardest week (the Week Two Wall) because now that you have all your characters, you have to figure out what to do with them. Yep yep. I am not planning on quitting though. On Monday I got a little behind on my word count, but now I am almost all the way caught up. No one who has not done Nano before can know how good it feels to go to bed at night knowing that you wrote your daily quota for the day. Its pretty cool.

We finally finished Hamlet in the British lit class Im teaching, and next we'll be doing Utopia. Only one more week of it, and then well have a break. That will be nice. Its a fun class, but it takes a lot of time to prepare for.

Yesterday I had another advising appointment with a TESC advisor. He gave me all kinds of information about finishing up my final credits and when to apply for graduation, which is good. Its going to be very close, because I plan to finish everything by December, and the cut off date to have my transcripts in, in order to graduate (aka: have them mail me my diploma) in March is Jan 1. Its not that big of a deal if I miss that date though, because then Ill just have to wait till May. But it would be nice to be done as soon as possible.

I guess I should go and make myself useful now. Heres what I still have to do today: read as much of David Copperfield as I can (Done), clean (vacuum and dust) my room (Done), clean my fishbowl (Done), work on world lit lesson 4 (Done), prepare for teaching tonight (Done), write at least 1667 words (Done), and anything else I can squeeze in (Done - vacuumed bathroom, hallway, and Mom & Dad's bedroom; cleaned bathroom counter and mirrors; vacuumed stairs).

Somebunny is getting his nails trimmed

Wordless Wednesday

My Saturday consisted of work and doubling my daily word count to give my fingers a break from typing on Sunday. Now I need to get back into my routine.

Notes from David Copperfield:

-After emerging from the theater where he had seen the play Julius Caesar, David reflects, I felt as if I had come from the clouds, where I had been leading a romantic life for ages, to a bawling, splashing, link-lighted, umbrella-struggling, hackney-coach-jostling, patten-clinking, muddy, miserable world.

What are pattens? They are circular shaped rings that ladies strapped to the bottom of their shoes to raise themselves to keep out of mud. On city sidewalks, they would make a clinking sound. Interesting. That reminds me of the scene in Pride and Prejudice when Lizzy walks across the muddy fields to visit Jane when she is sick. The bottom of her dress gets so muddy. She could have used pattens.

-The phrase Bob swore that Miss Mowcher says to David and Steerforth upon taking leave of them is a mispronunciation of the French phrase for Good night Bon Soir. (J'aime le franais. :-)

-The game that Miss Mowcher refers to when she says, I love my love with an E, because shes enticing; I hate her with an E, because shes engaged. I took her to the sign of the exquisite, and treated her with an elopement, her names Emily and she lives in the east, is a parlor game. One person would start with the first letter of the alphabet and think of a good adjective, a bad adjective, something on a sign of a pub, a food, a name, and a place, all that start with the letter a. Then each person would take a turn with the next letter, and whoever could not think of a word was out. Fun game. We tried it.

Today I finally found a proctor for my world lit midterm. The person who set up all my Clep tests is going to do it. My course study guide says that a public librarian would be an acceptable proctor, so I tried that first. But none of the libraries in our county offer proctoring of closed book exams. That is too bad, because then there wouldnt be an administration fee. Oh well, I am glad to have found at least someone to do it.

NaNoWriMo started this month. So far I am on top of my word count. Fifty thousand words divided by thirty days equals 1667 words per day. The purpose of National Novel Writing Month is to just get a book written, no matter how bad it sounds or how many editing mistakes there are. Some things that help are eliminating contractions, using lots of interesting, descriptive, eye-opening, wonderful adjectives (well maybe not that many), and leaving anything that I type in the story, no matter how weird it sounds. Editing can be done when the month is over. The next thing I need to do is get ahead a few days so I can have a Thanksgiving break.

Now I am off to read more of David Copperfield. I am analyzing Agnes this week for our book club.

As girls, we are called to be under authority throughout all our lives. From the time we are born until the time we are married, we are to be under the authority of our fathers. Once we get married, we are to be under the authority of our husbands. God has designed this system for our protection, and it has been in place since the beginning of time (see Numbers 30).

Men and women were created by God to be different. Girls, be glad that you are a girl! Those differences are a good thing, and we should rejoice in who He created us to be. The Bible calls women the weaker vessel (1 Peter 3:7). In this sense, men are physically stronger than women are, and this is one of the reasons that we are to be under their authority. As girls we are more vulnerable and averagely smaller than men, so they (our fathers and one day our husbands) can offer us protection in the world better than we could protect ourselves.

This does not mean, however, that girls should act like helpless, dainty weaklings who sit around all day and do nothing. We should rely on our fathers protection for physical weakness, but we have a strength of our own. Our strength can be found in our femininity and in virtues such as gentleness, gracefulness, modesty, and purity. If we can embrace and excel in the feminine virtues, we will have great strength of our own.