Ooof

We've been having a bitch of a time in the last few weeks, both of us sick for ages, then 11 days straight of work for me. O's football team was knocked out of the playoffs in their first game. The new cat got a urinary tract infection and has been pissing everywhere. Just not a lot of fun, let's say.

On the up side, we did start the History Odyssey curriculum last week, and so far, so good. O really seems to enjoy the straight-forward, reading/research/writing-based learning of the program, and appreciates that there are very few "make learning fun" kind of activities. He really seems to like the very basic, old-fashioned, 3 R's approach to learning, and doesn't have much tolerance for craft-projects, reading responses, "pretend you are a Roman Centurion writing a letter home to mom" kind of assignments, that I always did like when I was in school, mostly as a break from the stuff he loves!

He also commented to me recently that he likes to write, but just doesn't know what to write about. Ok, so the years and years of incredible resistance to any form of writing was just about not quite knowing what to write??? I don't think so, but maybe this means he's going to be more open to some writing exercises.

He also seems happier to be doing some more structured work, and seems quite open to starting the daily schedule we have planned for starting in November (after the next spate of events in the arena.) It's taking months of talking it through, but I think he's seeing for himself how much he misses out on when he lays around all day doing nothing.