I'm Busy. Original, No?

Yesterday I actually thought about putting a helmet on, so that when my head exploded, the helmet would reduce the amount of mess my loved ones would have to clean up.

It has been a long week ya'll.  And it's only Wednesday.

It has been a perfect storm of activities and Hubby working late and me working extra at the preschool.  Things like...

Boy Scout meeting on Tuesday, and oh yeah, they're building belated gingerbread houses to complete their engineering badge and Phoenix is the patrol leader so we have to bring the candy and other ingredients.

Catholic Schools Week all week, with a different theme each day, and we were told at the end of last week what each day would be.  Catholic schools through the decades day about did me in.  We had 15 minutes to walk through Goodwill to try and find some 70s or 80s garb for three kids, none of whom knew what 70s or 80s garb looked like, but were thoroughly not happy that I wasn't looking hard enough to find them something specific.  Studded white pants and jacket, you want?  Shocking that Goodwill doesn't have such things on hand. 

Science Fair due on Friday.  For two different children.  I often wonder what evil monster came up with the science fair.  At our school it has always been a pain in the keester, but at least it was pass/fail and not that big of a deal.  Starting last year, it became a huge deal with a huge grade attached to it.  For both science and language arts.  I am a parent who will not do her child's homework for him, including big projects.   However, there are some things that the child can't do, so I must.  Take and print photos.  Schedule at least 30 people with certain eye colors to file through our home and take an eye test in our upstairs bathroom, which means said upstairs bathroom and the trail to it need to be mostly clean at all times.  A display board must be purchased.  Help deciphering web sites must be given.  Teaching the terms and ideas in the research must be done.  

Volleyball game on Tuesday.  Where I have the following conversation with the dad of one of Buttercup's teammates:

Him: So, are you stay at home or work outside?

Me:  I'm at home with the three and four year olds still.

Him:  You have two young kids?

Me:  Yes.

Him:  You haven't figured out how that happens yet?

It took everything I had not to punch him in the nose.  Of all the comments people make about me and my large family, that one is a leader in comments that annoy me the most.  And this was the wrong week to say it to me.  The. wrong. week.

Parent-teacher conferences at preschool.  While I don't have to attend the conferences of all the kids, I need to be the teacher while the teacher has the conferences.  Get there early, take care of the room by myself for three hours, then come and do it again the next day, except with the other class which is full of kids I don't know all that well. 

8th grade retreat.  On Tuesday, Phoenix didn't have to go to school until 9, then got out a full hour after the other kids.   So I spent the hour taking the other kids to Target to look for non-existent uniform pants, seeing as how they all have outgrown theirs.  Plus, the next day is dress-up day at school, but girls aren't allowed to wear skirts or dresses, and dear Buttercup doesn't have dress pants, so we have to find those in the 15 minutes I've allotted to shopping.

Oh, and I had a few kids to feed and nurture and love on.

It just goes on and on and on these last few days.

Girl drama at school.

Get-together for 8th grade boys at Skyzone.

Soccer practice.

The old lock on the door gets locked accidentally, so we have to run through the mud and and rain to get to the back door every time we leave the house until I have 5 minutes to take the door apart and fix it.

The light in the playroom, completely out of the blue, flickers and sends sparks showering down on the boys and the fuseball table.

On and on I say.

And Hubby is swamped at work.  He had to work late last night.  Really late.  10:30 late.

Just yesterday, I was in the car long enough to drive to Kentucky, visit with my mom, and drive back.  Except I didn't drive to Kentucky.  I simply drove up and down the same stretch of road over and over and over again.

I so wanted to be angry with Hubby.  I so wanted to be the martyr and just go off on him when he got home.  I wanted to blame him for my exhaustion and my exploding head and the dishes I didn't get done and the laundry filling every laundry basket.  I wanted to tell him he was being a lousy parent, leaving me to deal with absolutely everything around here.

I really, really wanted him to be the bad guy.

Unfortunately for my mood, I just couldn't.

He works late maybe 5 times a year.

He doesn't travel, ever.

And I know he would much rather be here helping me and the kids than at work mediating other people's problems. 

There is no one to be mad at.

It is just simply a relatively short patch of time in which everything is coming together at the same time to create a ridiculous amount of things to do.  We will live through it.  We will be fine.  We can even have some laughs.  But it is wearing me out. 

The white flag is in my pocket.

The last straw is dangling.

The fat lady is warming up her vocal chords.

Somebody better warn that volleyball dad to not say something really stupid like, "Don't you have a TV in your house?"  He will get punched in the nose for that one.

I hate to end on a sour note, so I will end with a funny story or two from Turken's conference.

The teacher takes each child out of the room and tests him on colors, letters, numbers, shapes, and a variety of other things.  She told Turken that she wanted him to count, starting with one, and keep going until she told him to stop.  With a completely straight face and dead serious tone, he did what she said.

"One...one...one...one...one...one...one..."

She was laughing so hard on the inside that she couldn't stop him until he said "one" at least twenty times.  In 15 years, she had never had a kid do that before.

She also had to tell me that when the kids are taken to the gym to play, it becomes very obvious he has lots of brothers.  One day, after he tackled the 4th kid without ever being tackled himself, she told him that he was playing too rough.  He looked at her with complete confusion and said, "But we're playing football."

Here's to a calmer tomorrow!

Have a lovely day!