Salute to Spouses Blog

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Breakfast plus Holiday plus Homework Equals Mess

Here we are in the second week of school, away from home at Nana’s house. And, it’s now Friday, 0600 on Memorial Day weekend and I have not yet started on either of my school work lessons or my blog!

Perhaps taking classes the month before summer starts with two very active homeschool children wasn’t my smartest move.

However, being the smart, technologically advanced, tool-using mom that I am, I have wi-fi, three different devices loaded with the app for the learning center, earbuds that won’t make me insane and the ability to multitask. It also helps that both of this week’s lessons are on topics I am already very familiar with.

That doesn’t change the fact that unless I watch the whole thing and record the answers to the quiz, I will lose a week before I have even really started.  Which means time. Time to sit and do it.

Unfortunately, my children have other plans for our morning. They say a picture is worth a thousand words. Picture this: behind me my 8-year-old has her head in Nana’s fridge where she and her 6-year-old sister have discovered the hidden whipped cream. They’ve decided apple rhubarb pie is for breakfast. But first, they are shooting shots of whipped cream into each other’s gaping mouths.

Half the earbud is dangling in my coffee, the other half is blathering in my ear about cooking spaghetti squash to replace carbs. I’m attempting to compose a coherent, somewhat witty blog on my laptop, while sitting at the kitchen counter and trying not to splatter bacon grease on the screen.

I do have two more days to complete all of these assignments. But, over this first holiday weekend of the summer I have to take the time to finish them both. This is the part where I have to buckle down and “eat the frog;” do the thing that I don’t want to do because there are so many more interesting things I could be doing.

And, so much for sleeping in.

This is where planning what I call “slop time” becomes vital. I learned a valuable lesson this week. I need to plan at least half a day to be used when I have run out of time.

Let’s be clear, this is not unscheduled free time. I have that planned into the schedule too. This, instead, is time specifically dedicated to doing that which has been missed in the week. I had been planning in a few hours each day, but, have found this small amount of time to not be realistic, or, enough. Time to shuffle the calendar again. I hope that by the end of the first month of classes I will have a pretty solid, regular weekly schedule to follow.

It may be wishful thinking, but for now I’ll take it.

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