cramming it all in

I think part of my problem is that I have reached the saturation point. Up until we started our new "homeschooling plus fourth child" year, I could pretty much get anything I wanted into the schedule with enough tweaking. Now, there are, very literally, just not enough hours in the day to do it all. I have made the mistake of trying to cram it all in anyway, something that has left me exhausted and trying to fold laundry at 11pm. I've read that many of the Saints got by on just a few hours of sleep a night. I am not a Saint. And frankly, not getting enough sleep is a downright near occassion of sin for me. Speaking of being a Saint, I love this quote by Flannery O'Connor...

"She could never be a saint, but she thought she could be a martyr if they killed her quick."

Anywho, when I start daydreaming about the kids being gone at school all day, I know it's time for me to reevaluate. I'm taking a couple of days off school to slow down and catch my breath, destress, regroup, retweak the schedule, and try again. Today we spent a good part of the day outside...I highly recommend ditching your lesson plans and spending the day outside every so often. In the spring, anticipating the Summer of Tess, I decided we needed something low maintenance in our flower beds. I sprinkled a wildflower seed mix in the beds around our year old baby dogwood trees. Not a great idea. The flowers grew bigger than the poor little trees. And wildflower beds, though low maintenance, are not *no* maintenance, and I hadn't been out there to weed all summer. So, today we weeded...each big kid took turns on "Jack patrol" while I weeded with the other. We pulled everything out of the dogwood beds, leaving them clean and bare and ready to be filled with pansies. Then Maria and I dragged several large tree branches that dropped on The Night of Ike to the curb for the city chipper truck that will be coming around next week. It felt good. The sun felt good, the dirt under my nails felt good, the exercise felt good, it all felt good, except for the slug I accidently grabbed a handful of. And being outside really makes me feel better about ditching school too, because it spawns so many conversations about which bugs are good in the garden and which are not, when the birds will be migrating, what might be living in that burrow under the maple tree out back, and what kind of grunge is making our dogwood tree's leaves look not so great. It's prime time for examing ladybugs, making bets about when the leaves will begin to change, and watching the slugs freak out and run for cover when their weedy homes are removed. I'm vowing to get outside every non-raining day with the kids for at least a little while. That's always the first thing to go when the day gets busy, and I think that's been a mistake.

Also good for bad moods....get yourself one of these....





borrow one if you have to, and go hide in a room away from everyone else for a while....

and while you have the chance, be sure to chew on these a little bit....



and blow some raspberries on this...




and don't forget to smooch all the sugars out of these creases here...



See! Better than Prozac. They should bottle this.