back

This is the thing.

I am not addicted to the internet. I am not addicted to my blog. Or to reading the blogs of friends (and people I have come to think of as friends), to reading my emails and keeping up to date with educational ideas, resources and websites, and I'm definitely not addicted to those ridiculous celebrity websites that tell you who Jake Gyllenhaal is dating now.

No.

I just need all these things to breathe. :)

Now that I am back online… (and pause to say: I AM BACK ONLINE! Thank you, oh, thank you, nice guy from Internet Service Provider who talked to me for half an hour while we figured my modem stuff out. Well, he figured it all out while I did as he asked. Did I get any smarter in the process? Yes I did. I learned to keep my ISP username and password handy, like not buried deep in my email inbox when I have no real access to my email inbox. Yes. I feel much smarter now.)

Now that I am back online, I resolve to appreciate that I have this amazing resource, the inter-world, even more than I already did.

(Because it sucked to not be able to check email, write and check blogs, and read up on what's happening all around me.

Specifically, it sucked to be unable to:

• look up Archimedes with my son when he was trying to remember all his inventions and discoveries.

• look up Leonardo da Vinci's life when we'd just gone to see an amazing exhibition of 60 of his machines.

and • look up Cressida Cowell's How to Train Your Dragon website while we are TOTALLY immersed in the books and in making dragons and inventing dragons and drawing dragons and playing dragons.

Well…I guess we can look it all up now! Hooray!)

And I resolve to also look around and smell the roses, grevillias, wattles, and flowering gums, when the computer is off. Because I don't need this internet thing to live—I mean, I survived, after all.

But I love the sense of connection, the access to learning, the ability to share thoughts, ideas, all my wonder at the world, that the internet provides.

And I love how easy it makes it to homeschool. I take my hat off to all those who did it before the internet. You guys are AMAZING.

And I feel lucky that we can all be together here, in this melting cyber-pot, this world in the ether, where I can be friends with a person from Maclean NSW and a person from Alabama and feel as close to both as if they were living next door. I feel so lucky for that.

Ah. I know I wasn't gone long. But I am so glad to be back.

ps If you could all conveniently forget that I wrote I'm addicted (I mean not addicted, cough cough) to celebrity websites, I sure would appreciate that! I could send bribes, if that helps?