Day: April 21, 2006

Our spring break schedule has been… irregular. I’ve been having a great time sleeping until I’m ready to get up. I actually think that getting enough sleep has been a huge factor in the amount of stuff I’ve been able to accomplish this week. Unfortunately when I sleep in, breakfast becomes catch-as-can. That generally throws the rest of the meal schedules off as well. The lack of schedule is hardest on Patches. I haven’t put him to bed at all this week. I keep finding him asleep in front of a movie. One night I even discovered that he’d crawled into my bed an fallen asleep. He put himself to bed when he was tired. It makes me a little sad and guilty. The kids deserve a true bedtime with stories and talking.

I definitely need to have a plan for summer.

Garage sale season has begun. Actually it began several weeks ago, but I’ve been too busy to pay attention. Since I need to clothe my children for the next year I really needed to start going and today I ventured forth in search of a sale. I took Kiki, her friend, Gleek, and Patches along for the trip. That’s more children than I usually want to take, but since they all had their own money it was less painful than I expected. The first sale was a bust for everyone except Gleek who fell in love with an anklet and toe ring. The second sale had something for everyone. The last sale only had a puzzle for Patches and an educational moment for Kiki and her friend. The education came courtesy of a box full of “Urinal deoderant cakes.” As we got back into the car Kiki told me about the box and asked what they were for. I got to explain what a urinal is, what it is used for, and why someone might want to use deoderant cakes for it. The girls were both fascinated and grossed out.

We came back to the house where Kiki and her friend went for another round of “The Queen’s Necklace” and I proceeded to clean out the family van. The van had not been vacuumed since sometime late last fall. This meant that the layer of crumbs and wrappers was thick. I hauled three grocery bags of garbage, two loads of toys, and a vacuum cleaner full of crumbs out before I was done. Now the car is all clean and pleasant again. Yay.

The rest of the afternoon frittered away and now I’m headed into the evening hours. Since all the kids stayed up way too late last night I intend to put them to bed on time. Spring break is nice, but I need to start reasserting regular sleeping habits so that the return to school on Monday isn’t too much of a shock to the system.

I’ve spent some time this week pondering the upcoming summer schedule. I have to find ways to put structure into the days. If I don’t have structure, nothing gets done. Fortunately I’m much better at self-imposing structure than I used to be. I’ll probably write up a summer plan in here eventually, but right now all the possibilities are loose in my head bumping around and waiting to be made into a real plan.