So obviously I suck at writing these days as I’m always forgetting to post. I get halfway through a post then save it as a draft as my attention gets called to something else and then forget to come back to it and finish it off. Then a week or two go by and I realize not only have I forgotten to write a post but I forgot to finish writing the one I started. I’m not sure when this weird process started or why but it’s become a very bad habit and for someone who likes to write it’s not helping me any. So let me try to get myself going again.

Now this is not a New Year post as in Happy New Year! because hello, we’re halfway through February, my youngest just turned nine and hubby and I just celebrated our 11th wedding anniversary yesterday. This is more of a life has changed once again kind of post. The thing about raising kids is it’s never dull, you never know what’s around the corner and you never expect things to change so dramatically when they do. Last year was a tumultuous year for everyone from the very first week of the new year….I don’t really want to rehash it all here but the effects of it were that my youngest was left without his sister (sounds horrific but she’s alive and well, so don’t stress no one died), had to start a new school year by himself and then endured a year of bullying that the school did very little about. Oh and did I mention these kids are seven and eight years old! Any how we dealt with it as best we could but once I got what I needed for my son, we finished up the school year and have started home schooling

Thankfully Francis (my youngest) is a pretty resilient kid which I think is mostly due to the fact he takes after me but he also knows he has a safe place to call home and everyone here loves him unconditionally. There are still things he mentions from school that upset him but we’re letting him acknowledge those feeling and deal with them so he can get past them and move on. Being as he has autism though that’s going to process differently than for most kids but hey bullying is horrible to any child and it takes a long, long time to recover from no matter the age or intellectual ability of any person.

Now this is not meant to be a depressing post either even though it’s been a serious matter to deal with. No, we are looking at home schooling as a new adventure and although it’s taking a little longer to settle into than I thought it would, I think we’ll get there in the end and have quite a good year. It’s definitely been trickier than I imagined trying to do the school work, run a business and get all the house work done at the same time. In my twenties I would’ve nailed it but being as I’m forty seven next month and menopausal, yeah…..I’m definitely not in my twenties any more lol.

I’m at the point of considering closing my online store Simply Flaneur for at least six months so I can focus on the school work and out school activities. It’s not something I really want to do as to me it kind of feels like a failure but the sales aren’t coming in at the moment and website fees are expensive. So I’m considering taking direct orders for awhile until I’ve got good momentum going here at home with school work, house work, oh and all the bits of furniture I revamp and sell, that takes time too. So I’ve got some big decisions to think about and then make.

On the gardening front, not much is happening here at home, well that’s kind of a lie but I’ll need to fill you in fully in another post on that front. But for now, summer is coming to a close and there’s not much happening in the garden apart from the last of the summer tomatoes hanging in there, spring onions that refuse to die, italian parsley going nuts and garlic chives finally getting with the program. At the community garden my pumpkins have gone nuts and have taken over pretty much the whole patch but they are doing beautifully and we wont be short of pumpkins this winter. I am very much looking forward to getting my winter crops in again and now I’ve got the room with the plot at the community garden, I’ll be planting a lot more this winter. However we won’t be waiting on Purple Sprouting Broccoli this year lol….to read more about that experience you can find it here.

So I think that’s about it for today and I can’t believe I got through the entire post and I’m about to hit publish…yey for me! Well with our school day finished and it being really hot here we’re now going to get our swimming gear together and head to the beach for an afternoon swim and some stress relief. Nothing eases stress like a trip to the beach, don’t you think? Take care and I’ll catch you again very soon.

Au revoir….Michelle x