Monday Morning Haze

It’s good that it’s probably going to rain today because I can’t be dithering around any more. Today, and indeed all week, is the true moment when the rubber, you know, of a tire, hits the road. As in, I do lots and lots of stuff and get our lives together because next week we’re gonna start school. And don’t go asking how I’m gonna start school when I haven’t even done my plan for the year. I’m gonna do my plan this week, I am I am I am. And part of doing my plan is gonna be stopping saying ‘gonna’ and starting saying ‘going to’. Woke up in a night sweat knowing that I definitly wrote ‘gonna’ more than once in my actual book. Oh the shame. However, I know I never did actually write ‘prolly’ even though at least one finger was itching to. Thank heaven for editing.

No, this week, it’s going to be grand amounts of work all the way. Lots and lots of planning and cleaning. I know I say that every Monday but this week, it’s going to be for real. Today I’m going to clean the children’s rooms. And tomorrow I’m going to do all those plans that I’ve been talking about. And on Wednesday I’m going to tackle the school room. And on Thursday and Friday I’m going to fly around in a circle above the house on a broom wearing a black hat because by then that’s what everyone’s favorite opinion of me will have become. ‘I’m not a witch,’ I’ll be able to say, ‘I’m your mother, now get in there and clean that up.’

This will be the week upon which I look back, when I’m in the mire of February, and berate my former self for both not working and working. My February self will say, “You should have thrown more stuff away and you should have spent every waking moment outside.” The fact that these two sentiments are in complete opposition to each other will not matter to my February self. I will have cast a nostalgic glow over the August self, believing that in the past, everything was possible that is no longer possible. Just as, to reach even further back, my 2014 self picked lots of berries and made jam, while also maintaining an ordered and gracious home. This can’t be so, but in my heart, I believe it anyway.

So there we are. Living in the present and also not living there.

On the other hand, Egglantine gave me her favorite pig, as a present. I understand that this relates not at all to the topic under discussion, but this is the sort of non sequitur that characterizes all our lives and interactions at the moment. Oh? Did you think we were talking calmly over lunch about how beautifully vbs was carried off? Sucker. We are really shouting about why blueberry bushes Have Been Planted in the Back Forty. They Have Been.

And on that note, I will arise and go, both to Jesus, and to Aldi. It may be, indeed, that he will go with me, and whisper sweet messages about how many boxes of German chocolate to buy. Pip pip.