I just was given a warm thank you by a regular reader, while chatting on a thread at MDC, who called my blog ‘inspirational’.  Then I realized I hadn’t posted in over two weeks, and there is so much to blog about!

So I’m going to try to catch up over the next few days.  For the sake of brevity and to keep from boring you out of your skulls, I’ll break things down into separate posts rather than putting it all together into one massive e-tome.

In this post, I’ll just mention my 2 biggest big news.  First: I’ve got a new job!  I’ve been accepted as the new Music Director at Gibson Memorial United Church.  (The website ’staff’ page isn’t updated yet, so don’t fret if you don’t see me there.)  This means I play organ and piano for Sunday services, as well as weddings, funerals, etc, and I lead the church choir, as well as any other musical events that may arise during the year, such as children’s choirs.

I have previously done a shared Music Director position, split 50/50 with another musician and dear friend.  She did all the ‘grunt work’ in terms of selecting choir music, serving on committees, etc, so I just had the fun part.  This will be the first time I have to do all the work, all by myself.  It should be a lot of fun, though, it seems to be a good group of people, and it’s a lovely little organ.

The other big news is somewhat related.  Before the job was even confirmed, we… bought a new car.  A brand new, new new new, 2009 Hyundai Elantra.

We were not planning to do this.  My old car, a 2002 Kia Rio, still had lots of life in her, but needed some work done.  Some expensive work.  And until the work was done, it was very unreliable, stalling randomly, not starting half the time, making funny noises… We occasionally looked through used car listings, but didn’t find anything in our price range that suited our needs.  Hubby agreed that I should have a reliable car, for carrying the kids as well as getting to my jobs.

Then we got the fliers about the dealer year-end sales, with 0% financing and deep discounts.  It was worth a look, even just as a fun “date night” to go do some test drives.  We tried some Kias first, and while I really loved the feel and drive of the new Rio, hubby dearest (all 6′5.5″ of him) didn’t fit!  Strange, because he fits very well in the 2002 model.

Then we tried the Hyundais.  We had an Accent before, which we loved, until some idiot drove right into hubby’s lane — and totalled our car.  So we were checking out the new Accents.  And you guessed it, he didn’t fit.

The salesman wanted to show us the Elantra, which is like the “next size up” car.  We thought it was way too much car, more than we could possibly afford.  He convinced us to give it a try though, and we did, just for fun.  It was great.  Tons of room, great dashboard panel, comfortable and a good drive.  But too expensive, right?

Well, maybe not.  The discount was so deep, that it was only a thousand or so more than the Accent!  And with the low financing, the payments would actually be comparable to getting a cheaper used car — which has much higher financing.

We had only 2 days to decide, since the sale was ending.  We crunched numbers, and came up with the figure we could afford.  We had to haggle quite a bit over the Rio as a trade-in, but in the end, they were able to come in under our maximum, and we were sold!  When they were able to find our choice of colour — deep blue, in the base model with standard transmission — and it was the only one left in the province, then I knew it was kismet.

So I have a New Car.  We have never before had a new car.  All our ‘new cars’ have been used.  In general, we still think that’s the best way to buy cars.  It was only the low interest rate and deep discount that changed our mind this time — honestly, the price we’re paying is about the same as you’d pay for a 2007 model second-hand!  It’s like the first two years’ depreciation were already taken off the price.

We did some more math, and realize that the cost per year of the old Rio — including purchase price (in 2006) and yearly repairs — worked out to be about the same as what we’re paying now for the Elantra payments.  Which is under warranty, so major repairs won’t be $$$ for us.  Hubby had still been a bit nervous about the decision, but when we realized this bit of number magic, he relaxed.

So you can understand that we were both VERY relieved when I did, in fact, get the job.

Here’s hubby and the sales guy, as we transfer our belongings from the Rio to the Elantra.  Which you can’t really see, other than the open trunk.  Oh well.  Better pictures later, I promise!

This post is part of the MDC Blogger Challenge for homeschool blogs. 

I think my favourite day of the week is Wednesdays.

I almost picked Saturday.  On Saturdays, we get up and go to the Fredericton Farmer’s Market.  I eat Betty Lee’s spring rolls for breakfast, Pomme gets a fresh-squeezed orange juice and her own spring roll, we’ll get some chicken curry bundles, fresh bacon, and more fresh local farm fruits and veggies than you could shake a stick at.

On Saturday afternoons I have orchestra rehearsal, which is sooo much fun for me.  Plus, hubby is home from work and I get to have him around all day.

So why isn’t it my favourite?  Because Flipper is away at his dad’s.  And while I confess we enjoy a short break from his crazy energy, I could hardly say that a day without him was a favourite day!

So I pick Wednesdays.  Wednesdays are a “short day” for elementary school students here, finished at lunchtime, so we decided to do a “short day” homeschooling too, so that Flipper would be free to play with the neighbouhood kids.  Even though he’d now be in middle school, which is full-length on Wednesdays, we’ll probably stick with this idea since his neighbourhood friends are still elementary-age.

On Wednesdays we only do a few “formal” things, the essential things that he really needs to do everyday to keep things burbling in his brain.  Math, spelling, grammar.  Maybe a couple other quick, fun things.

Wednesday is also our “errand” day.  It’s cheap bagels day — the local bagel store has $5.99/dozen on Wednesdays, so we always buy a dozen, then eat nothing but bagels for three days to enjoy them while they’re still fresh.  We’ll also hit the library every few weeks, go to the grocery store, and any other errands we need to run.

It ends up being exhausting for me, but Flipper loves going out and about, as does Pomme.  Usually.  So they love Wednesday.  Which is why I love Wednesday. 

That being said, I was sure I had written a couple posts without pictures anyway, but they’re not here.  I guess I just imagined it…

And I have been busy, after all, what with the City Band summer concerts and my garden and my kids and all the usual housewifey-homeschooley stuff.  But if I had time to play Bejeweled Blitz on Facebook 500 times, I had time to dash off a blog update or two.

Even my writing at Eco Child’s Play has lapsed… I wrote no posts at all in June, and only 2 so far for July (I need to write 2 more by the end of July in order to be paid — I have them all written in my head….)

Do most bloggers go through this?  Periods of time when they’re just not into it?  Is it a summer thing?

I need to get myself back on track.  I’ve just accepted the role of webmaster for the Fredericton Green Party Electoral District Association’s website, which needs a makeover and an interactive component — yup, I’m going to add a blog.

How have you regained your blogging passion when life just seemed more interesting?

It seems that post REPLACED the garden one.  Whoops.  So many words, just gone… sigh…

No time to re-type it right now, I’ll have to do it all over again later.  But I’ll do it with pictures next time, so it will be worth the wait… I promise…

And, usually, unashamedly so.  Yet I struggled all my pre-adult life as being the one on the outside, the one not in the know, the one on the outskirts just peering in, the one who is just missing something that the others all seem to know instinctively.

When I started this little blog back in December I knew I had an uphill battle.  I don’t tweet, I don’t digg, I don’t plurk or reddit.  I didn’t know a technorati from an ignoramus.  Plus there’s a whole community of related bloggers out there, the niche is already well-filled, they have their followers and subscribers who don’t need one more same ole, same ole to stay up late reading instead of playing with their kids.  I’m late to the party and I don’t know who to talk to in order to get invited in.

Little by little, I’m getting the hang of things, and I am getting SOME readers… no subscribers yet, and I can’t say as I blame them… I’m still very green at this and things are not, shall we say, consistently interesting yet.

Then once in awhile, in all uphill ventures, we hit a moment where things start looking up.

My post on Unschooling and Holes was included in the latest Carnival of Homeschooling (which, by the way, you should check out if you haven’t already!)  It’s not my first Carnival submission, and they’ve always been great for throwing a few readers my way.  But this post has been getting some attention!  Even though it’s nearly all the way down at the bottom of the Carnival post… heck, even I almost gave up halfway down the page and I knew I was in there somewhere.

It has 6 comments so far, which ain’t huge… but it’s the most comments any of my posts have garnered so far, and most of them are from people who came from the Carnival.  I’ve had more site views over the last 3 days than ever before.  And someone even blogged about my blog post!  That’s happened before with my Eco Child’s Play posts, which have a wider audience to start with, but it’s new to me here at Mother By Nature.

Oh I know this is still just a little ripple, but it’s still fun.  It still feels like, even if just for a moment, I’m being accepted in with the cool kids.

Like the new Amazon.ca links I just put in the sidebar… these are some of my most recommended books on many parenting topics, either ones I’ve read myself or really, really, really want to!  You can help support the site by doing your Amazon shopping through that link.

Even just the minor little things are giving me excessive amounts of jollity… For instance, just 15 minutes ago I found the button to put the “more…” tag in the front page posts!  Wow, does that ever make things look nicer.  Now you don’t have to scroll through a long boring post to find the interesting one down below… Heh… And earlier today I figured out how to include images in my posts, which is absolutely essential!

Now all I need to do is find some hard drive space to upload my latest camera shots… I have 4 Gigs of pictures and videos, and only 5 Gigs of empty space, and that’s AFTER uninstalling everything non-essential!  How does 100 Gigs of space get eaten up so quickly?