New Directions

Well the end of yesterday did not bode well.  Yesterday morning, after the hair fiasco, I talked to the ACT people on the phone to ask some questions about the form.  This man sounded like the teacher in the Charlie Brown comics - "Blah blah blah blah blah!"  Ugh!  I just want a straight answer thank you.  But he did give me an important bit of information that turned out to be extremely helpful.

With the idea that the county system school homeschool person would have to sign off on my forms - I drove into town with son.  What I ran into when I got to the administration building was "the wall".  "That office is no longer housed here."  So I get the number of the person to contact.  Now last year I met with the man who was heading up that department - nice man.  He was cordial, - if not helpful.  This lady - well - let me just quote my child:  "You did really good Mom.  You didn't yell at her and you took time to calm down and breathe."  And I will finish this discussion with - we (because I know legally that at sixteen we don't have to, but I had wanted to go through the motions of 'being-a-part' until he was finished - told the lady consider us no longer a part of the system.  We will officially do our own thing without their intent to homeschool form and their monthly attendance requirement.

Crying - I drove over to the psychologist's office - because I remembered the important bit of information that the man on the phone had told me - "The form can be signed by the homeschool liason or the diagnostician.  And you know what?  The pysch who did the educational testing for us was more than happy to help us.  In fact, he signed under his name - homeschol diagnostician.  What a sweetheart.

And another subject came up while I was there and he helped our family with that as well.  I'll let you know more about this area once we've made some decisions.  I took my signed papers, made copies, and sent them off to the ACT as a registered mail.  So we shall see what happens.

So on to today - I have been thinking for awhile that I wanted to do something special for J  - it being his final year and all.  But I haven't been able to save enough money to do the "big" thing I'd like to do.  And then I saw one of the ladies in our paint group make a portrait of her daughter for her birthday.  Hmmm... neat idea - but my abilities with oils hasn't stretched as far as humans yet.  And yet - I took out a picture that I had taken of J in 2005, turned it into black and white, and then polarized it to see shading areas.

I took my pics, paints, and a big 24-36 canvas and went to class.  And produced the picture you see up above - it is NOT finished by any means, but it is a beginning.  I don't know if J will appreciate the colors but at least when I got it home both of the guys they knew it was supposed to be J!  That's a start.