Wordy Wednesday

Tree’s still up.

Shedding needles everywhere. Sparkling in its dry crispy death. Children all horrifically relieved praying it will stay there until next Christmas. Told them all to be quiet and go play. Anyway, it was a choice between taking the wretched thing down or making my 8 o’clock bedtime and the second won out. I was in bed by 8:30, nose in the Internet, drinking a boring glass of water, ignoring the masses. This might seem extreme, to try to be in bed by 8, but that’s when I’m done with reality and sleep is a really good way to get away from it. Matt carries on till like ten, being awake. And of course the children would stay up till dawn if we let them.

I used to be a night person. I really did. I used to stay up reading Grace Livingston Hill novels by candle light. In college, of course, I stayed up in the libarary “studying” until all hours. But now my days, well, yesterday consisted of organizing the children to cook all the food for the whole week, all of us together. I’d been long promising to teach Elphine to make bread, and Alouicious was going to learn to make soup, and it ballooned out into everyone peeling and chopping and throwing stuff down on the floor and then standing on stools and shouting at me. Basically I kept my cool but when Alouicious asked, probably rhetorically, or at least believing he definitly knew the answer, if I like cooking with them, I squinted my eyes and said, “not really”. Everyone was so shocked, which must be a sign that I’m a good mother, I figured they knew how much I hate to have them all in the kitchen. Sadly, as with almost everything with children, the news that I would rather cook alone did not depress them in the least. They grinned triumphantly, and and gently sprinkled handfuls of carrots onto the floor. Anyway, my quarterly report can know honestly read, Cooking, or something like that.

So today we get to just do school which will seem like eating marshmallows and drinking coolaid compared to flour everywhere. And piano. And the routine of regular life, tree or no tree, that sustains and builds spiritual muscle. Maybe we’ll take it down at the weekend.