Ugh, I'm sick

I have been bothered by a dry scratchy throat and mild stuffiness and runny nose for the past couple of days. Not bad enough to take medicine, but bad enough to be a bother. My throat is worst in the middle of the night which makes for a bad night of sleep. Bad sleep nights result in bad headache days. The girls had dentist appointments yesterday and I had to pull over and have Tori drive home. I was having difficulty seeing clearly. I'd noticed the problem while still in the dentist office, but thought it was lack of sleep and bad lighting while trying to read. Turns out it was an ocular migraine. I've had this before, but didn't recognize it for what it was right away. When I get these, I don't get the pain part of the migraine, just the disturbed vision. My vision ends up partially blocked by what looks like ribbons of brightly colored kaleidoscope. If I didn't have to worry about safety, it would actually be kind of cool. I find myself trying to look around the the ribbons, which of course won't work, because they aren't really there. You can read about them here. This picture is a great display of what it is like, although instead of seeing gray, I see kaleidoscope.


I never posted about the trial run of Neurontin. It didn't work. I was still having the ice pick headaches and the lack of balance didn't go away. So now I am back to the muscle relaxant I've been taking for quite some time now, but take it 3 times a day instead of just at bedtime. This has been the case for a couple of weeks now. They still aren't gone but may have decreased in frequency some.

So, this is supposed to be a blog about homeschooling, right? Well, we've hit two snags.

One of my girls has fallen behind in her schoolwork. I've been preoccupied with lots of things this month and wasn't doing my job of checking in to be sure they were staying on track. She is nearly 3 weeks behind in her English class and 1.5 weeks behind in Math. We made a plan today to get her caught back up, but it will be a good amount of extra work.

I was trying to finish up the application process at PCC for my oldest and am on hold for now. We are homeschoolers through a private school. Legally speaking, my children are private school students. PCC requires students dual enrolling to be a resident of Polk County, be enrolled in a public school, private high school with an articulation agreement, or be in a home school registered with the Polk County School Board. The articulation agreement being the key words. I contacted the dual enrollment coordinator to request the “Polk Community College Early Admission Application for Private Schools (by agreement)” described in their Dual Enrollment At A Glance brochure. Seems they don't have a document by that name. They do have a dual enrollment application, but it is the same for public, private or homeschool students. I asked about the articulation agreement, and they are just confused. The Dual Enrollment Coordinator stated that I should fill out the Home School Dual Enrollment Agreement. That form is for homeschoolers, which we (legally speaking) are not. Even if we were, their forms are incorrect. They require in that form that you sign (as a homeschool family) that you can provide documentation that you have registered the child home study school as a non-public school with the state of Florida and that you file the Annual Non-Public School Survey. Families registered with the school board of their county in the Home Education Program, wouldn't do either of those. I sent a document from the Home Education Foundation, a group that works with Florida legislators on matters related to home education, whether through the Home Ed program or through a private school as we are. The document explains how to deal with students wishing to dual enroll from non-traditional private schools. After sending this information I called the D.E. Coordinator again, she said they are researching the issue. So we are on hold there.

PCC was in the news today, their name change has been approved. The school will now be called Polk State College. I think Sunshine State College would have been a better name. Polk State is a little weird since, well, Polk isn't a state! Now they need to settle on a new logo.


Schoolwork tomorrow, teachers' meeting on Thursday, cleaning some more rentals Friday, and a quiet weekend, I think, I hope.