This is my husband, Eric. He likes giraffes. We have been married since November 1997. We got married on his birthday. He never forgets the date of our anniversary.
July 30th, 2010 
Katrina Last weekend, I went on my annual trip to Southern California to the General Hospital Fan Club Weekend. Most of my photos ended up being of the field trip we took to Santa Monica, so I’ll just include those.
Here they are: http://www.katrinarasbold.com/santamonica.htm
July 29th, 2010 Katrina It started out with feeling like I just don’t have one more thing to give. I’ve hit the ceiling of my sacrifice room and there is nowhere else to go. Where does “I can’t give” go to when it wants to go? It gets its wings and moves on to “I don’t give…” as in “…a damn.” Those of you who know me well know that “damn” was not my first choice of delicious words to use, but this journal cross-posts to my primary Facebook account and I have aunts and cousins and clients and such on there who are sensitive to such things.
I don’t know how many of you have been a mom of advanced age. If you were or are, I don’t know how many of you have been a mom of advanced age who has been raising children since she was a mom of a very unprepared, unadvanced age. I started at 16 and before that, I did a good bit of taking care of my mother’s family. I turn 49 this year and I gotta tell ya, there is a reason why people who give and give and give until they die of very old age are celebrated. It’s because not all of us can do it.
July 19th, 2010 Katrina I slept very little last night. A long cured case of sleep apnea (over a year) crept back up on me and I woke up gasping for air what felt like every few minutes. It was annoying as all hell since I was and am very tired, but in retrospect, I can see how aptly it reflects the last several months of my life. I’ll get comfortable and think things are going to be peaceful and almost tolerable for a while and then before I know it, I’m drowning again. It was something I needed to see and feel to get a good, objective evaluation of how things are.
July 13th, 2010 Katrina My negativity is affecting my life in a pretty strong way. It has taken a lot for me to get to the point of admitting that this is the case. As many of you know, I have not always been this way. What led me to it is personal, as these things tend to be. You can pretty well guess that although I share a good bit of my life here in this journal, there is a good bit that goes unsaid.
July 1st, 2010 Katrina When I decided that I would have more adventures in life, I had no idea they would be so tiring! I did have my first overall dud adventure recently and of course, I will tell you all about them.
It has been a busy summer. Summer is short this year. The kids got out of school on May 28th and they start again on August 9th. I am officially out of elementary school world.
June 15th, 2010 Katrina I am going to give my very beloved family a chance to miss me this weekend. Time for me to go on one of those adventures I talked about before. I’ll have my camera and will be visiting with some friends and family here and there. As usual, my time to so all I want to do is minimal, so it’s like I’m flying through life’s buffet, taking a tiny taste of this and a tiny taste of that. I’m grateful for the opportunity to do this on a strict budget and for the miracles that opened up to allow it to happen.
June 9th, 2010 Katrina I am very late in updating this journal, especially considering the magical mystery tour that my life has been lately. I am again reminded of what a magical experience our life is if we just take the time to wake up and connect the dots through our myriad of life experiences. Part of the reason why I have been so late in updating is that my PC has been in the shop and I have trouble writing creatively on a laptop. I love laptops for what they do, but I am a PC girl at heart. I finally thought to plug my USB keyboard into the laptop and now it is easier for me to use. At this point, I am ready to invest in a different PC (supposedly the motherboard and/or processor has died, which is not surprising given the hard miles I put on my PC) and get an external drive to house all of the necessary information that is currently on my internal hard drives like, oh, my whole entire business database. I may be ready, however, my bank account is not, so we’ll see how that goes.
May 24th, 2010 Katrina The only constant is said to be change and I can definitely feel change in the air. It’s not all something I can see or explain, although some of it is. It’s more like a balloon that is being filled with more and more air, putting pressure onto everything around it before it explodes.
May 11th, 2010 Katrina It has been such a long time since I was able to update my journal. I really miss it, but life is changing very soon and I can feel it coming back. I never expected the home schooling to take up so much of my time every day and on the days when I’m not, I am busy trying to get the things done I can’t do while home schooling. Nathan has gotten so much better with his work. He’s more independent now (most of the time) and I am confident that he will do fine when he goes to middle school in August. He will have 4 months of probation and all he has to do is stay out of trouble for that amount of time. The first few months of school are typically honeymoon phase anyway, so he should be OK. We’re at least willing to give it a try.
April 22nd, 2010 Katrina Wow! What a ride the past few weeks have been, as you like likely tell from the fact that it has been a long time since I last journaled. I don’t know how women home school more than one kid on an ongoing basis and have any kind of life left for themselves. I guess it makes a difference if you draw up your own lesson plans and incorporate a lot of independent study by way of computer and experiential learning. For me and Nathan, it’s old fashioned workbooks, textbooks and handouts. I am very lucky to have an incredibly organized and flexible coordinator. The past two weeks have been insane because we were trying to get him caught up to the rest of his class in time for STAR testing this week. Long story short, we did, he is and it’s done. It typically takes us 8-9 hours a day to get everything day and that’s not just telling him, “OK, go in the next room and do these 25 math problems.” It’s about going through, problem by problem, question by question, keeping him focused and on task, teaching him things he no longer remembers or the things his class had not yet covered.
