I’ve got a lot to do…ACK!

Making all kinds of efforts to put things in order this week before I actually do start school next week. I think I've mentioned this before but I used to just plough forward doing everything at once–school, reorganization of the entire horse, fifty two jobs at church, tralalala–and being totally frustrated at everything. Surprisingly discovered over time that I do better if the house is functioning in some kind of “order”, not that everything is perfectly put away, but that the big piles of clutter that so readily and easily accumulate are beat back into cowering submission. Strangely and wonderfully was able to say to a child, “you blow through all the laundry today and tomorrow, I will be tackling the office” and then to another child, “you get this kitchen cleaned up so that I can deep clean it”. So instead of toiling along doing all these major tasks myself–catching up on the laundry so that I can face down the kitchen so that I can finally get to the office–I just did one yesterday. Panicked quietly as I was sorting through hills of years old papers about the moment when they will all leave me and I will be doing all the work alone again, but then remembered that I'm not the one who trashes Everything. I don't walk into a room and fling my coat and shoes down on the floor, like an entitled over rich celebrity. I don't get fifteen drinks of water all in different cups and leave them wherever my hand happens to fall. I don't take whole bins of markers and scatter them like the seeds of wreckage and despair. When I come home, I hang up my coat–srlsy, it's August, and I've been putting my coat on sometimes to go out, or even to stay in–and put my purse on the counter and make a cup of tea and am able, I guess by the grace of God, to put the milk back in the fridge without being screamed at.

Where was I? Oh yes, so I'm going to start school next week. And that is also because I've been fretting over a hymn and a scripture for the year. Last year it fit together so nicely–Matthew 18, the Unjust Servant (I'm terrible about verse numbers, a whole year of saying it over and over and I still can't remember) and Forgive Us Lord, which is a wonderful hymn and fits up against that text providentially well. The year before that we did John 3 and Numbers 21 and the hymn didn't fit quite so well. Can't even remember what it was. The year before that John 15. So this year I'm thinking Isaiah 55, and the shape note 'Africa', but I don't know if I can pull it off. Also don't love the canticle settings for Isaiah 55 (it's canticle 10, for those who really care). I thought there was a really lovely one but I can't remember it and can't find it so I must have imagined it. Anyway, I don't want to start until I've settled this important question. And also, I have to paint the twelve apostles for Catechesis. Unless someone wants to paint them for me, and do a beautiful job! Not just slap some paint on them and call it a day. Oh yes, and solemn communion is starting this week, so that's kind of a big deal.

Of course, there's no good time to start school, just like there's no good time to have a baby. Come next week I won't have completely put all my ducks in a row, or my papers in a pile, or my tomatoes in jars. There will be some big tasks still looming over me, causing me to look into the future and fret, and I will just have to start anyway. The thing is, with school, I've come to the point where I can no longer multi task. I can't get a child started in math and then put in a load of laundry and begin a batch of granola and then circle back and help someone edit a paragraph. Once I go into the school room, the greatness of each person's needs and the accumulation of all of them together means that I don't come out again until at last 4:30, if I'm lucky, I mean blessed. Maybe as the year goes on I will gain more freedom and the bread and granola will flow once more, but right now, the moment I start will be the moment that all the other good things I'm doing fall to the floor.

Still, at least I don't have to buy piles of back to school stuff for them, and get them dressed every day, and stand out in the icy cold waiting for the bus. There is good and bad on both sides. And here's some flowers from my garden, and I hope you'll have a nice day if that's the kind of person that you are.