y=mx+b

I have a blogging friend who asked an interesting question the other day. This is her question.....
Do you think blogs should only show the good days or times or do you think it is ok to be open and real about "some" things?

I started my blog during a very "up" time in my walk with the Lord. I had lots of positive thoughts and entries. Things seem to go in a cycle in my life and then I started struggling and walking through some hard things. I don't share everything on my blog, but I decided I was going to be real and share some of my struggles also. I don't know as there is a right or wrong answer to her question. People are so different.

Today has been a struggle. In Algebra we are given the slope and a point on a line and are having to find the y-intercept. Honestly, I could care less. However it is important in our schooling. So after struggling through the explanation in the textbook (a very technical explantion of why the example worked) and having no success we finally pulled out the tape from Friday's lesson. Bless our teacher's heart. She very plainly puts it in a one, two, three simple step explanation and suddenly there is much less stress in my life. I never thought my life would involve so much algebra!

I started thinking about Isaiah 26:3. I love the way The Message puts it........
People with their minds set on you, you keep completely whole, Steady on their feet, because they keep at it and don't quit.

Do you suppose God is considering algebra in this scripture??

Radicands and Variables

How quickly I forget. If I had one homeschooling wish concerning my memory it would be remembering algebra. Now this is from someone who did NOT learn algebra in high school. In fact I didn't learn much of anything in high school. And that really upsets me now as a homeschooling mom. I thank God for my elementary and junior high years though; I received an excellent education there.

Why all this rambling about my past educational experiences? The reason is simple (as least to me). One of my children is doing square roots and we have an integer and a variable under the radical sign. Now I can do stuff like x+8=10 or even more complicated problems. But when you give me x+5 = 2x-3 and both of them under the radical sign I completely forget everything I ever knew. I know simple square roots, but no variables please. And I have a teacher's manual that only has the answers and not the SOLUTIONS~! If I were paranoid I would think someone was out to get me this week. But since I'm not I'll be doing some algebra homework today.

Oh, did I forget to mention that every positive number has two square roots, one positive and one negative? And is there a radical sign on this keyboard???