Day: September 22, 2006

At bedtime Kiki asked “why is today such a celebration day?” She had good reasons for the question. On the way home from school we stopped by the store. All of the kids had allowance money, so they all got to buy something to bring home. Half of what Kiki brought home was treats to share. Patches also selected treats over a toy. Once at home all four of the kids curled up in front of a movie and shared the bounty. They were all happy together for hours without interruption. What a rare and beautiful thing that was.

It was greatly assisted by the fact that the doorbell completely failed to ring. Usually the afternoons are punctuated by the sound of the doorbell as neighborhood kids run in and out of the house. The number of children in my home will fluctuate between 0 and 11 on a few moments notice. Since afternoon is my low ebb of energy I sometimes have a hard time keeping up with it all. Today it was just my kids and they were all being nice to each other. This was heavenly since I’m fighting a sinus infection that is leaving me exhausted and unmotivated. The lack of motivation caused me to short circuit the bedtime battle by announcing that Gleek and Patches could have a sleep over on Gleek’s bed. The two of them curled up together as happy as a pair of puppies. Then they actually went to sleep. In fairness I told Kiki and Link that they could do the same thing, hence Kiki’s announcement.

Some family bonding has to be carefully planned and managed by me. Then there are days like today which are filled with serendipitous bonding. Of such wonderful weaves are families made. I wish I could always weave us together so strongly with so little work.

Today I walked into the school office to drop off some paperwork and I was instantly recognized by the principal as Gleek’s mother. He then noted which box the paperwork was going into and further identified me as Link’s mother. One month ago he had no clue who I was, now he has me securely linked to both of my kids who attend his school. I have mixed feelings about this. I am very grateful for the caring administrators at my kids’ school. They take time to know the kids by name and to help the ones who are struggling. I am a little embarrassed that my kids have done things which required focused administrator’s attention. I am glad that my kids feel like the adults at the school are friendly. I am relieved that the conversation could consist of statements about how much better Gleek is doing now.

We are now 4 weeks into the school year. I’m starting to feel in control of the schedule. It is a hectic schedule, but I’m not being completely swamped by it anymore. This is good because time is marching headlong toward the release of the next Schlock book and my preparations should be proceeding apace. Unfortunately they aren’t yet. I meant to have a store ready for beta testing by the end of this week. Now I’ll be lucky if I can make that happen by the middle of next week. I’m not sure why my personal schedule spiraled out of control just as the kids seem to be settling in. Perhaps one is a reaction to the other. During the first few weeks of school I had to give the kids 100% to make things work at all.

Now I just want to curl up with a movie or a book and pretend that my house is in order. It isn’t though. And every time I look around I see maintenance tasks which need done, but which I’d rather not do. Things like dishes and vacuuming. In fact my house has reached the state where I think longingly of scooping all the detritus into a box and throwing it away. This would create massive mutiny and rebellion in the children, but it would make the house cleaner.

I think the reason the house has gotten so bad is because neither I nor the kids have had mental room to make sure that chores actually got done. We’ve all been too busy adapting to school. Hopefully I can leverage this weekend and put chores back on the daily schedule of events. I just get so tired of making kids do things they don’t want to do.