The last week has been rather overwhelming.

We've been getting back into school and although we're only in the second week, I haven't once been able to completely follow the schedule I set up. I think that may mean the schedule needs some revisions. Over all school seems to be going well though. We've hit all the main subjects and some of the extras. I did find out that this year our umbrella school, under which we register the kids for their homeschooling, is requiring standardized tests for grades 3 and up. This means my oldest is going to need to learn how to take a standardized test and it means one more thing for me to worry about.

And as for worrying, I've been doing more than my fair share of that, along with crying, and other jags of misery associated with postpartum depression. I'm not particularly inclined to discuss it more than that, but I will say that when a wave of depression hits, it knocks me pretty hard and I don't like it.

Moving on to a happier note, our house is slowly coming together and turning into a house. We spent the last week, when not schooling the kids or crying, unpacking and sorting books and cleaning out the family room which had been mostly a storage warehouse up until now. Not any more -- it is now a room devoted to school, play and other pursuits of that nature.

Eventually, we'll paint it, because I not only don't like its orange walls, but I like them even less with the various white patches where the plaster needed to be repaired. Of course, it also needs some art on the walls, but all those things can come in the distant time known as "some day" because I don't like hanging things on plaster walls much. It always pains me when I hear the plaster keys falling down behind the wall no matter how carefully I drilled pilot holes. So I leave those things for my husband -- if the wall collapses I have someone else to blame.

Until then, what I've learned in the last week is that we have a lot of books; too many books. A surprising number of duplicate books that we've been hauling around for who knows how long have finally been weeded out though and set aside to be removed from the premises.