I cannot, cannot believe how long it's been since I last posted! This summer has been such a whirl of activity, I don't even know where it has all gone. But it's been a good summer, I think. It seems like we got together with friends a lot, and that is good. Some sad things, too. My father in law has died. So familiar things change, phases of life go from one thing to another, and nothing seems to be the way you expect them to be, but God is good.

Lately I've been reading a book by Susan Wise Bauer, "The Well Trained Mind". Rather than a book on the kids' education, it's a book for educating myself-for a change! I used to read a lot but that has dropped off in the past few years. I get frustrated because I can never seem to get beyond a certain surface level in anything! I felt like I could read fiction about at the Jane Austen level, but anything more complicated would elude me. And the nonfiction I read seems to go over the same information over and over because I could only get one level of a topic and not a whole lot further. I can read what other people tell me I should think about a topic, but not really get a grasp of the source material for myself. Also my lack of memory gets frustrating. Like I can't organize my thoughts and tell back what a book was trying to get across in a coherent way. Why bother to read something if you won't remember it! It's just felt like I've been on a level of mental stagnation that I just can find my way out of.

I want the children to see me reading, trying to improve myself, enjoying knowledge and trying to be a better person, because I want them to see the value of it for themselves. But I run out of time, energy, and lately, motivation.

So I was happy to read in Susan Wise Bauer's book that it isn't that I'm just an air head, it's that I've never actually learned to read! No, I don't mean phonics, I mean how to really read a book! I'm excited to start learning the way to consume more difficult books, and pass this on to my older children! (My son would greatly admonish me for my over use of exclamation points there. But I am exclamation point excited!)

I want to really learn how to do this. She suggests one starts with Don Quixote, but I don't have that on hand, and I have always wanted to read Lorna Doone, so I think I will start with that. I'm just so tickled with this whole thing.

I think it will help me with my Bible study too. I have been frustrated with that for the same reason as with my other reading. I can read the Bible, I can read other people telling me what to think about what I read in the Bible, but I'd like to be better able to know what I think about what I read and why.

Well, time is still an issue, but to try and not to do as much as one would want to is better than to not try at all. I feel like I must keep trying.

And when I start to feel like I've got this more under my belt I will get started learning the other skill I am so frustrated with my lack of-Writing. Which that sentance is probably proof us, but hey, it is 5 in the morning, and I have been up since two. But I do also have a Susan Wise Bauer book on that subject too, that I can't wait to tackle. I think I will owe that woman an enormous debt. :) I hope so, anyway.

Ahh, nothing like having to reeducate oneself at 41. But such is the world we live in..