This has always been one of my favorite sayings, so when it popped up on my Pinterest feed, I took it as a sign to share it with all of you.

The last two weeks have been pretty rough, especially last week. It's not really something I want to talk about publicly, but I feel like not mentioning it at all isn't an option since it explains my near absent state over the last couple of weeks. Normally I'm good at not dwelling on things and letting most stuff just roll off my back. It's a skill I developed at the TV station, but most of the time nothing that happened there felt like it was personal, so that made it easier to brush off. This is different though, so it's been harder for me to shake. One thing I know for sure, though, is that I am stronger than this situation, and it's not my first rodeo when it comes to dealing with this particular type of situation. The setting is different, but everything else is parallel. I survived it then (and came out on top, I should add), and I will survive it now.

In other news, this week is the National Peanut Festival, so I'm sure we'll be found at the fairgrounds at some point between now and the weekend. This is the first year of my adult life that I'll be going purely as a spectator with no ties whatsoever to the business side of things, which is wild to think about. It's also bittersweet since I'll be paying my own way inside, which is something I'm not sure I've ever done. Alexis is excited to go, and I'm excited to eat all my local favorite fair foods (elephant ear, here I come!).

In school news, we're reading and listening to the teleplay The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street, which was part of The Twilight Zone. I would love to do a compare/contrast activity with the actual episode, but there's some cursing so it's not possible.

We've started devoting more time to informational texts, as well, but those are truly not that intensive, since the skills go hand-in-hand with literary reading for the most part.

We're wrapping up a grammar unit on sentences, so we'll be preparing for a comprehensive test over those skills. We've been working on these particular skills for more than a month, so hopefully they've stuck. We really need to move on to clauses.

We're finally putting the finishing touches on the narrative essay topic I assigned back before fall break. This week will be the last we do with that before moving into explanatory, which is my area of expertise, hands down (hello, journalism background!). We'll keep doing narrative exercises, but not quite so in depth as this one.

Well, that's pretty much it for getting you caught up. I've got a long list of posts I want to get published between now and the end of the year, but I'm not making any promises on any of them. I'm still finding my balance, and a lot of days I'm just wiped when I get home.

Anyway, Happy Monday! I hope you all have a wonderful week.