Heaven help me, It's Wednesday!

Since the advent of the infamous Geico commercial featuring a camel in the office, most of us know that Wednesday is also known as Hump Day.  I, however, would like to find a new nickname for Wednesday. Something like, "Panic and loose your darn mind" Day, only catchier.  It is anything BUT getting over the hump of the week that I feel on that dreaded day of the week.

Am I the only one who lives in a dream world on Monday?  A world where responsibilities magically disappear into a mystical vortex of procrastination? It's a lovely world where I can take my time and get just Monday's tasks done, and even sometimes prepare in advance for the Tuesday, as well.  As a homeschool mom, that means Monday is when I take my schooling time to introduce the oh-so fun and whimsical week's topics-o'-learning, and then spend the next 3-5 hours trying to talk Hannah off the ledge of fury and resentment she teeters on when challenged with new, and therefore presumably difficult tasks ("Oh 'Challenge', you sneaky sneaky Machiavellian beast, you!) while Caleb tinkers with legos and Sarah immerses herself in whatever book she's reading.  Later after Hannah comes off whatever angry tantrum she's served up for that Monday, I smoosh in a load of laundry (to be forgotten about for 2 days or so) and hurriedly throw salad together for Ryan's lunches for the week before making up dinner and collapsing in an exhausted mess after the kids have their bedtime routine.  Okay, so maybe it's not really a Monday dream world, but it is the day I forget ALL. THE. OTHER. THINGS. THAT. NEED. DONE.

So what about Tuesday?  Tuesday is Co-op day, which to the homeschool mom is synonymous with "the day that NOTHING else gets done".  On Tuesdays we spend our mornings in the hurricane of lunchboxes and getting dressed which is commonly known to all regular school parents' experience, but which, admittedly, I SUCK at due to lack of practice and a generalized morning laziness.  The chaotic morning rush is followed closely by a scurrying off of tiny persons in mismatched clothing and unzipped backpacks, and then topped off with the occasional mumbled curse-word from Mom as we tumble haphazardly into the van to rush off to co-op.  After that, from 9 til 2 we learn ALL the things.  That is, all the things Mom doesn't teach the rest of the week, like art, chess, and how to squeeze 9 kids around an ipad at lunch to watch 1 kid play Minecraft.  When co-op is over, it's time to rush to the library to return/exchange books and then trudge back home by 4... where Momma crashes onto the couch and is good for absolutely nothing for the rest of the day. Really, I concede I cannot hack it as the mom who works and picks up kids from school and then works more at home.  I admit it.  Moms who work outside the house totally win the which-mom-is-tougher-War, in my humble opinion. But I digress...

Wednesday, then, is when I remember all the other things that didn't get done on Monday and Tuesday.  Wednesday starts with the crashing realization that we have no bread to eat (because I haven't made it on Monday), no food in the pantry (because I haven't been grocerying yet...yes, "grocery" can be used as a verb in the South), and other than 1 load of mildewy quasi-washed jeans, no clean clothing in the drawers, and usually no toilet paper in any of the bathrooms.  This Wednesday I actually was wakened by Hannah wailing over and over "Sarah!! Help meeeee!" on the potty at 5:30 a.m.  and when I questioned the little dear, she said she'd run out of toilet paper when she woke up a half hour earlier to go potty and had been sitting there crying for the past half hour for her sister to get up and help her get TP.  After I finished secretly giggling over my daughter's poor problem solving skills, I determined that I need to make refilling the TP more of a priority on Tuesdays, lest I have to wake up at another similarly ungodly hour to a wailing child with a heiny problem.

Once my little darling was wiped and sent back to bed, I would have loved to get back to bed for a little nap, but that is when I realized that I have three days left in the week to do everything that must be done to prevent my house from becoming an apocolyptic mess that will crash under the weight of all the dust, crap laying around, and unwashed laundry!  And then, because I'm ME and not the "Fly-lady" or one of these other fabulous, sparkly Mommy-bloggers who start their days before the sun with chores and a leisurely bible study on the Proverbs 31 woman, I proceeded to fret and worry for the next hour and a half before wake up time rather than drag my butt out of the bed to do some of the stuff needing done.  Because that's how I roll. 7 a.m. means we head downstairs, and for the next 4 hours I spend my time alternating feeding people, reteaching all Monday's subjects because not one of us recalls what we did (besides listening to Hannah rage at the unfairness of life), baking bread, and washing 4 loads of laundry plus one mildewy mess from Monday just hangin' out in the washer.  After school I announce that it's pre-lunch playtime, which means everyone is expected to haul their butts outside for sunshine, fun, and games.  This means Hannah and Caleb throw the same epic conniption they have EVERY day at outdoor time, with Caleb howling, "I HATE the Sun!!" and Hannah accusing me of using that time to sit around and eat bonbons and watch t.v. (totally untrue, I assure you... after all, I got that done Tuesday afternoon after co-op).  Lunch is hastily thrown together and served up to 2 sulking tykes outdoors...plus one Sarah who would prefer to eat hers in the chicken yard so she can share with Snowflake the leghorn.

"But Momma, Snowflake likes turkey sandwiches, too!"  Ummmm, NO!

Following lunch I squish in a quick workout so I can once more feel powerful and strong like Buffy the Vampire Slayer for a teensy portion of my day.  I love that time... it's a lovely time when everything else melts away and I can usually tune out the children opening the door every 5 minutes to ask if they can come inside yet, and I can live in the fantasy land where I am woman, hear me ROAR.  Unless I'm a teensy bit late with all the other morning stuff, in which case Mommy's workout gets thrown out the door so she can make up time to do the more mundane stuff of life.  At 1 school begins again for another couple hours of History, Science, and Crafts, and then there's a half hour of cleaning up the crafts while I lament the fact that I was moron enough to schedule arts and crafts day for Wednesdays.  It's 3:30ish when we're finished, which leaves me 45 minutes to accomplish alllllllllll my other chores, meaning I can either vacuum, clean up after baking and the dishes rotting in the sink, fold laundry, clean the chicken coop, OR rush off to grocery before I have to get dinner started, orchestrate bathtime, and clean up so we can host Lifegroup at 7. Somewhere in there I have to throw on real-people-clothes, as well, so people won't know that I spend my days in my pj's (I totally do, by the way).  Notice that I only got a couple of the things on my long list of stuff to do done?  Yep, that means Wed. night is spent fretting over how I'm going to get the rest of it done on Thurs. and Friday.

Somehow, it always manages to mostly get done by Friday's end (Grace of God?) but I surely don't care for the Wednesday rush.  But, after all is said and done, I must say, I'm usually grateful for what I DID accomplish on those days, and thankful for a healthy, strong body to work with and a sweet little family to serve    And it's a good thing for Moscato, time with Ryan, and DVR'd versions of my show on Wed. nights, because they make almost everything better at the end of the day. :)

After a brief hiatus...

  Welllllll maybe an almost-2 year hiatus, but who's counting?  Apparently some people are, because in the last couple months I've had LOTS of people asking about when am I going to blog again (okay, maybe not TONS, but at least 4 people, which is something like 100-150% of the total number of adult people I get to converse with in a week!  Staggering numbers, I tell you!).  So what's up?  Where ya been Mel?
  Well let's see... first of all, we are full swing into the elementary school years now, which was really the first strike against blogging for me because NO ONE NAPS.   Did you hear that?  I now have zero moments of silence in this house unless I hand my kids some forbidden contraband item, like sharpies and a brand new unblemished couch,  and say, "Go to town kiddos, Momma's chit-chatting on the internet!"  I am currently still working on inventing some tool to remove my kids from my butt that doesn't involve passive allowance of property destruction of some sort, but it's still in the work-up phase.  Elementary school also means, ahem, that I am teaching instead of doing all-the-other-things.  Everything else waits til 3.  Sigh.  At least I can vent on Facebook from time to time (since what else am I supposed to do but make fun of my kids' silly comments when they are working on worksheets?) but other than that, it's all business from 8-3, baby!
  Strike two for blogging, then, was the removal of TV time from our house.  "WHAT?!" you say. "Are you now AMISH, Mel?"  Believe me, around here some days it feels like it, especially since both removing TV time AND finding out Ryan is allergic to MSG, meaning practially.every.blessed.food must be made from scratch.  But, I found my kids were spending time watching t.v. and scheduling their day around their favorite shows, instead of using their time doing kid-things* (*See above note about their idea of fun and property destruction and use your imagination... someone told me those things are, gasp!, actually good for kids and their development, or some such nonsense).   In point of fact, I have not died yet from the removal of the electronic babysitter, but have actually seen positive growth in my children's imaginative play.  Sarah even once told me she likes not having TV anymore because she gets to play longer after school.  I didn't even have to tie her up and tickle her to get her to say it, I swear.   And, bonus, they don't go around singing the stupid jingles from their shows all day, either.   They've now replaced the "Silent E Is a Ninja" rap from The Electric Company with either 1.  Any/all Frozen songs, or 2.  Hilariously misheard Christian-Pop lyrics.  Ah well, you win some, you lose some.
  Then strike 3 came.  Moving.  We moved our whole frickin house-load of stuff from one place to another.  If that's not enough to pause a blog, I don't know what is!  If you knew how much "STUFF" Ryan accumulates, you would understand.  He's like a tall, brilliant, preppy version of "Hoarders".  Friends asked me why I needed to bring along our deli meat slicer or our restaurant grade steam kettle that weighs, no lie, 150 lbs, and I had to tell them its because they're his PRECIOUS and he will lose his schmidt if he ever goes looking for those things and can't find them.  Sigh.
  So now it's a year and a half since moving, you say?  What took so long since then?  Well, reader, after we moved and renovated an entire floor of our house, then we decided to move Mom and Dad into our guest house, requiring a renovation of that guesthouse and the garage.  This was because life with Mommy and Daddy nearbye makes me oh so much more sane and gives me a big bunch o' help when I need it.  But it also took a long time and lots of energy.   Then, because I am a bit unbalanced, I decided to add more creatures to my family that I am responsible for, so we built a chicken coop and added 8 squawking fluffybutts to our property.   One of our little hens is so hilariously mentally unstable with her frequent, prison-break-style, death-defying attempts to get into our neighbor's yard that I not-so-affectionately refer to her now as "Loco" despite Sarah's insistence that her name is "Elsa".   She may get a guest post or two some day... I confess that somewhere deep down I like her pluck and nutty ways.  Or she may end up in the soup.  Time will tell.  
  So let's see... I covered where I am now.  Maybe, just maybe, I'll make it back onto this computer for more than 30 minutes of uninterrupted time again to add more.  Or maybe this'll just explain why it's so quiet around here on Blogger lately.  Who knows?  As it is, I couldn't even take a hot shower for 20 minutes today without having to stop the shower twice to answer, "MOOOOM!  Can we paint the basketball hoop?"  and, "MOOOOOOM!  Can you open my yogurt for me?? Cuz Hannah and Sarah won't come in and help meeeeeeee!"  So, you see, life is happening here, people!  But I sure do hope to make it in from time to time because I very much missed blogging and putting my thoughts down so that I won't forget this crazy life later when it's all boring and quiet and stuff.
P.S.  Did you see I won a "Cutest Blog On The Block?" pin while I was away?  Squeee!!  I have no idea how you get those, but I'm super impressed with myself right now, I won't even lie.