The Awakening

It seems I've been running on less than all cylinders lately. I admit to having {great} difficulty in juggling everything - but this is ridiculous! I've been focusing on educating the children, so the housework was falling behind. Then I was semi-ill for a few days, and didn't get much done {except to take the five year old to get a log removed from the bottom of his foot}.

Yesterday I spent most of the day getting the year end homeschool reviews completed -they're due next week. And then I woke up and looked around.

Can you say "Chaos"? With a capital "CRAP!"? Yes, we had the mounds of laundry, a few dirty dishes waiting for the dishwasher to be unloaded, a family of dust bunnies, and the expected toys and books everywhere. What I didn't expect was the TRASH!

It seems that my children, as intelligent and delightful as they can be, quickly regress to swamp-like mentality when I'm distracted. They totally ignore me when told to do something, their arms become broken when asked to actually put something away, and they regard the world as their trashcan! Food wrappers, tags, bits of paper, used tissues - all of these things were flung with great abandon all over my home. ???????

So...just to be clear...I have a BS, an MS and most of a PhD and my current job title is....trash can monitor.

At any rate, I'm now recovered from my fugue, and am once again attempting to do it all. While cleaning last night - and sounding a bit too much like my mother, I must say - I did have the following altercation with my middle child:

Child: I want to go to school. (this while doing the math work she "forgot" to do ALL day - despite frequent requests.)

Me: School? You want to sit for six hours a day and do schoolwork - and ONLY EAT at lunchtime? You don't like sitting still for 10 minutes - and that's just so you can go get a snack! You want to go to school????"

Child: Well....I want to get away from you..........I love you, though.

Me: "Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa"

Yeah, it was lovely. She really wouldn't do well in school, she learns quite slowly and deliberately - and does NOT take direction well. The problem is - she takes speech therapy there once a week - and gets a lovely half hour of one-on-one attention from someone other than me - and gets to play games and get prizes and candy. So...she thinks this is school. And really doesn't believe me when I assure her - it's NOT.

And how was YOUR day???