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Jellyfish: verb To jellyfish is to drift around without direction, spending large portions of time doing nothing in particular.

Today is a jellyfishing day. I should do a write up about the shipping party. The volunteers were marvelous and exceeded my expectations yet again. There was no work at all left for Friday. The book release party also went very well. I should write about that. I was also watching two of my neighbor’s kids for two days. This made some things easier since my kids had in-house friends available. I should write about that experience. After all the book stuff, I realized that the state of my house was driving me crazy. Instead of coming home and collapsing, I came home and organized. The front room is still full of shipping stuff, but the remainder of the living areas look much nicer. The kids can actually find their toys. I should write in detail about that.

“Should” has remarkably little power over a jellyfish. My thoughts are all mushy. I can’t shape the words to carry my meanings. Maybe I’ll get to it next week. That is, once I’ve done the other hundreds things that I’ve lined up for next week. Jellyfish today. Jellyfish tomorrow. Monday, back to work.

Sometimes we get second chances to do something right.

Patch had his days mixed up. Yesterday was not Walk To School Day. Today was. This time I planned for it. Patch got to ride his bike to and from school with a couple of friends. He thought it was the best day ever.

This is our fourth major book shipping event. Usually I spend a week or more prior to the event so stressed that I can’t even see straight. The children are shunted aside so that I can get the work done. This time I have done a much better job of balancing the work and the business stuff. A part of each day has belonged to the children. This is good also.

Tomorrow is the big shipping day. Hopefully I’ll be able to track down the AWOL flat rate priority mail boxes and all else will go as planned.

The daily schedule for this week:

Get up, pay attention to kids, get them off to school
Work on postage printing, and shipping stuff until my brain completely shuts down.
Welcome kids home from school, make sure I reinforce the things that are happening at school because I’m in the process of helping two kids make course corrections.
Try not to get snippy at the noise of joyful play.
Make dinner, manage homework time, put kids to bed.

The shipping days and book release party are Thursday and Friday. I think sanity/relaxation are somewhere on the far side, but it is kind of hard to see from here.

I waved to Gleek and Link as they took off on their bikes to school, then turned to Patch.

“Hurry Patch. It is time to get into the car and go to school.”

Patch stopped in his tracks with a shocked look on his face. “But Mom! It’s walk to school day!”

It was indeed Walk To School Day. The green note came home yesterday along with a green ribbon for kids to tie to their bikes or backpacks. I’d forgotten about the note. I looked at the clock. Ten minutes until school start. The walk would take 20-30 minutes. I looked at Kiki, who had missed her bus and needed me to drop her off right after I dropped of Patch. I thought about the pile of work sitting in my office. I looked down at Patch. He was wearing a blue ball cap found in the closet this morning. The cap was too big for him. It came down to his eyebrows and over his ears. This had the effect of making his eyes seem huge. Those blue orbs were pleading with me. I knelt in front of him.

“Honey, there isn’t time to walk…”

Patch’s face crumpled and tears dripped from his eyes. Missing Walk To School day was a major tragedy for this small person. I’d no idea that it was so important to him, or I would have planned the morning differently. I frantically thought for a solution. If Kiki had not missed her bus, I would just have walked Patch to school. He would have been late, but happy…and tired. That’s a pretty long walk for five year old legs. I probably would have ended up carrying him for part of the trip. What Patch really needed was a short walk that ended with his arrival at school.

“How about this, I’ll drive you most of the way to school. Then we’ll let you out so you can walk the last bit?”

Patch considered. This plan would still let him cross streets with the crossing guard like all of the big kids. He nodded his agreement to the plan. We carefully tied the green ribbon to his backpack and hurried out to the car. About a block from the school, I stopped and let Kiki and Patch out of the car. He looked so small with his oversized hat and backpack. She looked so tall and grown-up walking beside him. In a moment I would have to drive on ahead of them to the school, so that Kiki could jump back into the car and be delivered to junior high. But for just a minute I watched the two of them walking down the street together. My oldest and my youngest, holding hands and going for a walk.

I’m glad I could make my little boy happy today.

This morning I found a surprise in our post office box. An online acquaintance, with whom I’ve exchanged email several times, sent us a holiday greeting card. My first though was “wow, this is really early.” Then I looked closer and saw that the card was wishing us “Eid Mubarak.” I looked at the faces smiling up at me. I realized that this family had reached out to my family to share their joy in a celebration, and I wasn’t even sure what the celebration was for. Google lead me to several sites filled with information. “Eid Mubarak” is a traditional greeting meaning “Good Festival” It is very commonly used at the end of the month of Ramadan which ends with the three day feast Eid al-Fitr. I have not yet had time to delve into the deeper meanings of these holy days, but I intend to. Receiving this card made me realize that I don’t know enough about this way of life that is shared by over a billion people worldwide.

I hung the card on our wall in the same place that I hang Christmas cards in December. It makes me happy to see the card there. Also I want my kids to see this smiling, obviously American family, who celebrates Islamic holidays. The kids have already asked about the card and I’ve given them the information I gleaned from the internet. I also shared what I know about the family from the communications we’ve had. I think that perhaps this year at Christmas time, I will read my children stories about other holy days as well as the ones we celebrate. That would be good for us all I think.

The following is a list of things that I feel I should be doing every day, times are approximate and they’re in no particular order:

Sleep 8 hours
Fix and eat 3 meals 2 hours
Supervise homework time 40 minutes
Bedtime snack/story time 30 minutes
Reading with Patch 20 minutes
Talking with Kiki 30 minutes
Talking with Link 30 minutes
Talking with Gleek 30 minutes
Talking with Patch 30 minutes
Helping Link practice physical skills 10 minutes
Listening to Link read aloud 20 minutes
Household chores 1-2 hours
Gardening/outside time 1 hour
Exercise 30 minutes
Answer email 1 hour
Process and ship new store orders 40 minutes
Other Schlock work 2 hours
Blog 30 minutes
Spend time with Howard 1 hour

If you total all of that up, it comes to 22 hours and 40 minutes. This leaves me an hour and 20 minutes per day to manage all those little incidental events like driving kids to and from lessons, sibling conflict, Parent teacher conferences, grocery shopping, keeping in touch with friends, relaxing. My expectations of myself are impossible. I know they are. About the best I can do is hit most of the important things on most days. And yet I some days I still feel like a failure because I didn’t do all of it that day.