I have been stepping rather high, wide and plentiful in the matter of “having a summer holiday” or “taking the summer off” or whatever it is that a person says when they stop functioning and totally neglect all the things they have said they were going to do. I have been doing doing laundry, and toiling through my book to see how ghastly it really is, but I've also been turning a deliberate blind eye to the pile on my desk and the dust in the corners and the filthiness of the children. Also, I just realized, Romulus will be turning nine on Sunday and I could have been doing some stuff about that. But all that is about to end, I swear, when I begin to do the things I said I would do back in May, whatever they were.
No, my days have fallen into a gentle pattern.
One
I am wakened between four and five in the morning by a child kicking at me. I turn on the bible and sleep through six or eight chapters. When I've finally been kicked awake I scroll through Facebook and wonder why it is that everybody in the world is better and more interesting than me. Then I blog, as you know, and try to traverse the great canyon between how great everyone else is and how terrible I am by making myself look better than I am. When the general screaming of awake children over takes me I finally get up.
Two
At this point I could, you know, work out. I could at the very least stretch because of my poor arm. Instead I say to myself, 'oh my poor arm' and lie to myself that it would better to stand in the shower to 'loosen it up'. Once I've emerged from the hot steam–which is truly glorious because of this amazing shower head installed by some brilliant and godly person from the church during our long absence, oh my word, such a beautiful way to totally avoid exercise of any kind–I discover that there is a bunch of things I have to do and that I better put off stretching or anything until later in the day. I toddle downstairs, intending to go all the way down, to Sheol, and quickly change over the laundry. But somehow, when I land in the kitchen, I look around and think I'll just make tea first, and gently soft boil myself an egg. But to do that I have to stay upstairs, so I can time it, so I just go out and have a look around the garden for a minute, and decide to do the laundry a little later.
Three
So there's the tea, and two soft boiled eggs, and a little salt, and a little butter, and a tiny spoon. I arrange it around my desk so that I can “work”, you know. First there's another internet catch up. And then there's the rearranging of all the bits of paper. And then there's turning round and talking to Matt for a little bit, because he's been up since three, and has already done All The Work. We take a turn around the garden together and then he goes back to his way of discipline and righteousness. And that's my que. I'm going to run around productively. So I do, I totally finally go down and put in a load of laundry. And then I wander back upstairs and decide to get a headstart on lunch.
Four
Except when Elphine makes lunch. On Tuesday she baked sausage and boiled and mashed a lot of potatoes and put together an enormous salad. I wandered around the school room trying to disentangle sets of toys and bins of blocks. But on Wednesday I didn't bother with that any more and told Elphine to go play and I splayed open a chicken and baked it over an enormous pan of vegetables. I thought it was pretty glorious and was therefore completely irritated when the children picked at it and were hungry less than half an hour later.
Honestly. What's not to like? But I fixed 'em. Yesterday I put all the vegetables into a big pot and made soup, which, as you know, is every child's perfect dream of their favorite lunch, and made them eat it. I thought it was delicious again as indeed it had been the first time. Mercifully for them yesterday was shepherds bowl and they were able to go in the evening and get some real food.
Five
Once lunch has been enjoyed, by me anyway, the children go to badly clean the kitchen and I remember that I'm supposed to be working on my book and push off the laundry and the working out to do this surely more important work. I rearrange myself at my desk and plug in my earphones so as not to be able to hear the screaming of the children in the kitchen. As I read through my own writing I sniff and feel sad about the futility of life. So many words. So many of them badly arranged. I keep it up through seven hundred and thirty three interruptions, but who's counting.
Six
Finally Matt has a moment to breathe and we take the dog for a walk, sometimes accompanied by children, sometimes not. The dog carries his ridiculous teeth with him on ahead of us and we try to put two words together more than “how was your day” and “it was fine”. We arrive back at home to find the children making themselves supper and watching Leave it to Beaver which tragically goes away from Netflix on the 30th of this month. This is a great unaccountable sorrow looming over us all and so every spare moment is devoted to watching all of it, every single episode, some of them more than once. I must say, I have come to love Leave it to Beaver.
Seven
And then, because that's all there is, there isn't any more, we all collapse into bed. Or at least I do, exhausted from the stress of…oh who am I kidding. I'm not stressed. Not nearly enough. But all that is about to end because, for real, I'm going to do All The Things, like planning my school year, and sorting Sunday school lessons, and painting two new cities of Jerusalem, and mending a bunch of shepherds, and repainting the calendar in the parish hall, and writing eight to ten new lessons, and beginning the enormous task of retyping lessons that are old and scribbled over and in need of refreshment, and then starting the school year, and writing some real old fashioned letters, and coping with the big cupboard full of school stuff that I should have faced in the spring but didn't, and what else. Is there anything else? Probably more things will creep up on me.
But not today. Tomorrow. I'm going to start on all that tomorrow. But first we should all pause and go read some more and better quick takes. Have a lovely weekend!
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