Reclaiming Time

Montre Molle au Moment

I must reclaim my time. That is my first resolution for the New Year.

Every year, I think things will get so much easier. Then I am shocked when I feel busier than ever. “After I stop homeschooling”…nope: our life filled up with extra-curricular activities. “After the little one goes to Kindergarten”…nope: my life filled up with coaching and volunteer activities at school. “After the cross country season”…nope: I took on so many freelance assignments I barely had time to floss my teeth. Not to mention travel softball which never stops, and Little League planning that goes on year round.

Now that my Christmas preparations are done and I decided not to take on any more work during the vacation, I am feeling so much more like myself. I hate rushing around! I hate crowds, I hate traffic, and I really hate having my life scheduled to the second. I really love just hanging around the house in comfortable clothes, letting it get a little messy, baking and enjoying my kids.

It seems to me there has got to be a problem when a stay-at-home mom has no free time. Is it society that pressures me to do more, or is it me? I’m sure it’s a whole lot of both. There are all these people who kept asking me what I was going to do with my time and, although I don’t feel like I have to prove anything to them, maybe I am still trying to prove to myself that what I do is valuable.

So somebody asks me to do something at the school and I think, well I have lots of things to do but no good excuses why I can’t come in…and there is one full afternoon gone. I get offers for work and I think, yes I have two unscheduled days so I can bid on two assignments…then both bids are accepted and I am rushing to meet deadlines, getting nothing done around the house.

Lack of boundaries is a big problem for many mothers. In the work place it is easy to set and maintain boundaries, but at home everything blurs together. When your work place is at home, and you have no defined office space or work hours, your physical and mental spaces are both going to get disorganized and difficult to maintain.

In spite of my love of spontaneity, to maintain my sanity I am going to have to lay out a weekly and daily schedule. Weekends belong to the family. One day a week I can volunteer at school. Then the school/workdays have to be subdivided into household chores, errands, and work. If I can do this then I can greet the kids with a smile every afternoon and enjoy my time with them, without worrying about all the stuff I still have to get done.

I’ll have to say NO much more often so I can say YES to my life.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to all my readers. If I meet this resolution you will be hearing from me much more often in the New Year.

High Demand

As the kids continue to grow older and more independent, I have had more time to spend on other projects. While I avoided volunteer work during the newborn stage, I started last year to start saying “yes” to more things, and to sometimes even throw my hat in the ring just because I knew my kind of talent was needed. I always make sure I am putting my time into an interest that will also benefit my children – teaching their religion class, coaching their sport, or putting my organizational skills to work in their sports organization.

For the first time, I allowed my children to take part in winter sports this year, and I am still wondering if that was a good idea. I always liked to take a little time off from all that running around; to enjoy Advent, and my daughter’s birthday, which falls around Christmas. I usually read a nice long book in January, and then do some serious writing. This year I have not had the leisure to either read or write at any great length.

Although we have quite a busy schedule, when we are all together in the house sometimes it feels like I am no longer needed by them in a direct manner. Then suddenly one of them comes to me for help and I am very pleased. The only problem is that this always seems to happen to all the kids at the very same time.

Today my eldest daughter, who practically taught herself while we were homeschooling and catches on to math skills quite easily, came to me for help with her algebraic inequalities. It took about an hour to explain things to her. During this hour, my three-year old daughter continually came asking for me to play a game for her; my eight-year-old son kept asking for advice on a picture he was working on; and my eleven-year-old started crying for no apparent reason.

Done with the primary task at hand, I went on to my second daughter, asking yes or no questions to try to get at the cause of her crying. I finally got at it – she had come home with a C on a test about primes and composites and was afraid to tell me. Note that this is the same teacher who had not properly explained things to my older daughter. So I explained to her that if she didn’t get the math concept it wasn’t her fault, and we worked on understanding the test together.

My son didn’t really need my help; he was just responding to the high needs of everyone else around him and demanding his own piece of me. My three-year-old gets more than her fair share of my attention and needs to learn to wait her turn.

During this time, somebody ate all of my husband’s oatmeal cookies and all of the apples that were supposed to go with the lunches for tomorrow. My husband arrived home, ate the dinner plate I had prepared for him, and asked how I could allow that to happen!

“I don’t know. It’s my writing night,” I replied, and took my laptop upstairs to write this little piece.

Psalms
Chapter 131
1
A song of ascents. Of David. LORD, my heart is not proud; nor are my eyes haughty. I do not busy myself with great matters, with things too sublime for me.
2
Rather, I have stilled my soul, hushed it like a weaned child. Like a weaned child on its mother's lap, so is my soul within me.
3
Israel, hope in the LORD, now and forever.

Painting above: “Lotte (Werther’s Leiden)” by Wilhelm Von Kaulbach

Igneous Rocks, Farmville, and the Horses of Death

“So, what’s new in the virtual world?” my husband asks on Saturday evening, kissing me hello.

“Nothing much. What’s new in the real world?”

Dinner has been ready but I have been keeping the meatballs warm in the oven for the past half hour. I take them out and mumble an apology.

“They look like igneous rocks,” he comments.

“You’ll just have to use my sauce then,” I say, “It’s been simmering for the past three hours.” To prove that, the house is filled with the glorious smell of olive oil, garlic, onions, tomato, and basil, with just a touch of White Zinfandel.

The kids come to the table and answer his original question with an explanation of all the new developments in Farmville. My children have never spent much time on the computer, but since they were introduced to online games and it has been raining quite a bit lately, this online game has become a household obsession.

After dinner, I tell them that I want them to stay off the computer on Sunday because it is going to be a nice day.

“But Mom, I just planted $15,000 worth of watermelon seeds! If I don’t harvest them when they ripen, they will wither and die.”

“Don’t worry about your virtual plants, honey. I’ll check on them from my computer and make sure that doesn’t happen.”

“No Farmville for you, either,” my husband teases me.

On Sunday morning we were treated to a reading about the end times. The deacon tells us that this really is about the present times. We are always to be ready, for no man knows the hour at which Christ will come. I think to myself: Would I want to be caught playing Farmville when Jesus returns?

On the way home, I am chastising them for their treatment of each other. During the Lord‘s Prayer my two middle children had been squirming around and not letting the other hold hands. “If Jesus came back right now, would you want Him to catch you mistreating each other?

I am still working my way through The Catechism of the Catholic Church, from front to back, one section at a time. After lunch I pick it up and read:

“Every action of yours, every thought, should be those of one who expects to die before the day is out. Death would have no great terrors for you if you had a quiet conscience…Then why not keep clear of sin instead of running away form death? If you aren’t fit to face death today, it’s very unlikely you will be tomorrow…”

[quoted in section 1014 in The Catechism; from The Imitation of Christ, 1, 23, 1]

I thought again of the Horses of Death in the recent version of A Christmas Carol. My ten-year-old had wanted to know what they represented. I had explained then that we should have no fear of death if we are in a State of Grace. Scrooge was afraid because he was not.

We went out to set up a new pitching net and spent the afternoon raking leaves and working on softball skills. It was time well spent. Dinner was a hodgepodge of leftovers from the previous three nights. Then we turned on our computers to check on our farms.

Painting by William Blake: “Death on a Pale Horse”

The Ink on the Calendar

Best Buddies

I grant myself two slow months in the year to catch my breath. During January and February, I was able to read two lengthy novels: Anna Karenina and Les Miserables. I was also able to write every day. In the coming months there will be days when I cannot even switch the computer on.

While friends suggest I purchase a laptop to write on the baseball field, I would rather not do that. I want to fully participate in the action of being present there. I see moms spending the whole game on the cell phone and wonder how their children must feel, that she is physically there but mentally absent?

Just when this slower schedule was starting to get boring, and I thought I might run out of things to write about, I wiped February off the dry-erase calendar and started putting up the schedule for March. My dry-erase marker quickly ran dry. I realized with dismay that my mini-break was over. Science fair projects for three kids (all due the same week), baseball games, softball games, practices, birthdays, and my son’s First Communion are all in my near future.

I both look forward to, and dread, the receipt of the game calendars for the spring season. This year the three children will be in different leagues, playing on different fields at the same time. When games fall on the same day, I sometimes feel like I am going to have a heart attack getting everyone where they have to be, hoping my husband can get to the second field on time before the game ends, leaving other parents to believe I’m the “absent parent” as I drop and run. And run and drop.

Just when I will have lots to write about, I won’t have the time! Now all of these are good things – I just wish they could be spread out a little more throughout the year.

And so, while the household chores pile up, I am allowing myself this half hour to write before the children get home from school. The dirt isn’t going anywhere, but ideas don’t sit in your head forever, and kids grow up even faster when you’re busy.

“In all wisdom and insight,
He has made known to us the mystery of his will
in accord with his favor that he set forth in him
As a plan for the fullness of times,
to sum up all things in Christ,
in heaven and on earth.”
Ephesians 1:8b-10

Elizabeth’s Thrifty Quick-Wrapping Tips

I have no empty closets in which to hide Christmas gifts. Therefore, I am forced to wrap my gifts as soon as I get home from a shopping trip. I keep a store of wrapping supplies handy in my bedroom for this purpose. I turn over the top gift in each pile so the kids don’t see their names on anything.

Clear tape: Walmart brand is about one-third the price of name-brand and works just as well.

Christmas wrap: One huge roll, purchased last January at one-tenth the seasonal price

Black permanent ink calligraphy pen with two ends: One thick nub for labeling gifts and cards and one thin nub for inscribing books – available at Michael’s or Walmart. This eliminates the need for annoying, time-consuming tags.

Book of Quotations: For inscribing books.

Bows: One bag of about 25, purchased at the end of the season. I do not put bows on during the initial wrapping. This enables me to lay all the gifts flat for more efficient storage, and carry them in the car if necessary. On Christmas Eve I first lay out all the gifts, then strategically place the bows. For gifts that will be transported, I use ribbon if anything.

First Day of Summer

No, I did not have writers’ block this week. I was just really, really busy!

School was over for my children at 10:30 A.M. this Thursday. I had spent the week getting things done that I knew I would have difficulty doing with them all home. I thought of a friend who, upon my changeover from homeschooling to Catholic School, asked me, “Are you going to become one of those moms who can’t wait for their kids to leave for school?”

I do know people who say they dread having their children home for the summer. I believe I have blogged on this before, but I think the topic begs revisiting after my second full year of having my children in school. Have I become one of those moms?

No, I have not. I do believe I have struck quite a happy balance, enjoying both the times with all my kids home and the times without. While they are gone, I am happy that they are in a nurturing environment with wonderful, loving, Christ-loving teachers who are imparting the same values as us in a different venue. I hear the stories of their friends in school, and have met many of them, and am thankful they are able to spend quality time with other nice children.

When they are home, I remember all of the older mothers who have stopped me in the stores and said, “This time goes by so fast. Enjoy it while you can.” I feel like there is so much living to be done in the time we have together. Because the time is less, I treasure it all the more.

My nine-year-old’s friend came home with her on the bus. She stayed until dinner time, after which we went to get my son’s fifth pair of glasses for the year. We polished off the day with a trip to the library. We brought all the kids’ summer recommended reading lists so they could pick which books they wanted to read for the summer.

Our first full day home, Friday, we went shoe shopping. I caught one of the BOGO sales at Payless Shoe Source and was able to get two pairs of wedding shoes for my girls (who will be junior bridesmaids at my sister’s wedding); two pairs of school shoes for my son (in his present size as well as the next size); and two pairs of flip-flips (for me and my eleven-year old, who is now a half-size bigger than me).

We had a tough time finding school shoes for the girls. The kids’ shoe department stops at size 4 ½. Then women’s shoes starts at size 5. But a size 7 women’s is the same as a size 4 girl’s. Can anyone explain that to me? We have to try to find a women’s shoe that fits my girls’ feet. “Why don’t they make children’s shoes in larger sizes?” my girls wanted to know. I would like to know the same thing.

We went to another store, where my eleven-year old found a quality pair that were a “cool” style. I guess they don’t say “cool” anymore, but it still means the same thing to me, ala Billy Joel. My nine-year-old tried on three pairs and hated them all. She said she was the only one who did not go shopping and I tried to explain that one is still technically “shopping”, even if one does not purchase anything.

Today my next-door-neighbor’s three children came over for two hours. Then my kids went over to her house for two hours. Upon their return, my daughters reported that my son had misbehaved over there. We required that he write an apology note and my husband escorted him to deliver it.

I found some more treasures over at my across-the-street-neighbor’s moving sale. An eight-foot-ladder, some baskets, a toaster oven, a VCR, and some plywood. My husband would like for me to stop bringing home other people’s junk.

It has been a delightful week! I hope the summer has much more of the same in store for us!

“As long as the earth lasts,
seedtime and harvest,
cold and heat,
summer and winter,
and day and night
shall not cease.”

Genesis 8:22

Painting: The Boating Party by Mary Cassatt

Why Big Families Tend To Be Late!

I never used to understand why large families seemed to always be late. Why didn’t they just aim for an earlier time as a cushion for little set-backs? How could they be so inconsiderate of other people’s time? Why were we just supposed to be patient and “understanding”?

Before I had my fourth child, I tended to be fifteen minutes early for everything. Now, we average two minutes late for Sunday Mass and mandatory school meetings, and a half-hour late for parties and family get-togethers. Why might this be?

Let us take the typical after-school activity. I have done all I could to make the evening flow smoothly. I have dinner on the table at 4:00; I have worked out with my husband when and where he is going to meet up with us so my children can be at different places at once; I have all the uniforms freshly laundered and laid out; the checks and order forms for team pictures have been prepared ahead of time. Yet we cannot seem to make it out the door and down the street on time.

This is a 62-minute play-by-play of my children getting ready to go to their ball games.

5:00 I warn the children we are leaving in 20 minutes. I get the baby ready and make sure everything we need is in the car.

5:20 I announce: Time to go! All three older kids still need to use the bathroom and put on their shoes.

5:22 My son runs out to the shed to get his baseball bag, which is already in the car.

5:24 The phone rings. It is the classmate of my almost-eleven-year-old. I tell her we are on our way out. Is it a homework-related emergency? Yes, she says. My daughter picks up. It turns out she just wanted to know what my daughter had written in her journal entry for tomorrow. I am quite annoyed.

5:26 Everyone is in the car. I back out and drive halfway down the street. In the rearview mirror, I notice my eldest does not have her softball hat. I turn around.

5:27 We dash through the house, looking for the hat. I remember she was not wearing it during the last inning last night, and probably left it on the field.

5:28 We are driving again.

5:32 We arrive at the field for Minors softball pictures. The coach has the hat. My eleven-year-old has been asked to fill in during a Majors game at 6:00. My nine-year-old wants to watch. I have already asked another trusted parent to keep them until my husband can get there.

5:37 I drive my son and toddler away from the field and realize I have left my pocketbook at home. I need my cell phone to keep in touch with my daughters and husband. We drive back home.

5:41 I pull into the driveway, run in, lock up, and run back out.

5:42 We are back on the road. I take back roads to avoid rush hour traffic but we still are late. I had already let the coach know we would be a few minutes late.

6:02 We arrive at my son’s baseball game. They are just getting started and he runs to join them.

Phew! Everybody has been gotten safely to their locations and I am just a little hot and bothered by my children’s inability to be ready on time. The evening goes smoothly from here.

Did you follow all that? THIS is why families with several children tend to always be a few minutes late!

Last Minute’s Notice

The phone rang at 8:20 on Monday morning.

I looked at the caller ID and my heart jumped a beat. When the children’s school is calling, the text might as well read, “EMERGENCY: YOUR CHILD”. I don’t know if this happens to other mothers. Being used to having my children ever in my care during my homeschooling years, I am still not completely at ease with entrusting them to others for an entire school day.

I picked up the phone. It was my daughter. “I have cross-country practice after school today,” she informed me. “The teacher said there was an email.”

“Okay honey,” I said, “I’ll be there after school. Have a nice day.”

I hung up the phone and sighed. I had looked for a notice from the team on Friday afternoon and, there being none, assumed I had another week before the season started.

Sundays during track season are very busy, and I often take a day off from the computer. We wake up early for a big pancake breakfast, go to church, drop Baby and Daddy home, and then head to the track for a four-hour meet. We end the afternoon with a backyard barbecue and the usual bedtime routine.

Nothing drives me crazier than last-minute schedule changes. I try not to schedule too much in one day, and then I work my way backwards from the day’s big event to sort out the rest of the day. Now my day’s plans had to be completely rearranged.

In order to be at the school at dismissal, I would have to put the baby down for a nap an hour earlier. That meant she would have to get some outdoor activity and a good breakfast in order to be tired-out enough to sleep. We also would have to fit in a morning trip to the drug store to pick up shock-absorbing athletic inserts for my long-distance runner’s sneakers.

For me, naptime would be taken up by getting together things needed for the other children: a change of clothes, snacks, and pencils to complete their homework. I also had to fetch the cross-country email from my computer, download the attached athletic permission form, and fax it to the school.

I always used to think that things like this only happened to mothers who failed to plan ahead. Mothers had to be on top of things. Those school notices buried on the bottom of the child’s school bag would never happen to me; or so I thought. No sooner than they walk in the door than I am looking in their folders. I even messed that up once this year.

Two Fridays ago, I neglected to look in my son’s folder when he walked in the door. I was on the telephone, and he had a headache. I hung up to tend to his headache, and completely forgot to check for homework. I would discover it at exactly 8:00 Sunday evening, as he kissed me goodnight and I looked in his backpack for his lunch bag. There were some other unpleasantries awaiting me there, including an apple core and empty juice box.

Most of our days our filled with little mundane details such as these. Whenever a wrench is thrown in the works, I have to offer it up to God. Although it is important to plan ahead, the unforeseeables still have to be dealt with. Every time this happens, I have to remember that He is in control.

“The sum of a man’s days is great
If it reaches a hundred years:
Like a drop of sea water,
Like a grain of sand,
So are these few years
Among the days of eternity.
That is why the Lord is patient with men
And showers upon them his mercy.”

Sirach 18:7-9

Pictured above: Haystacks at Giverny, Claude Monet, 1891
This painting is supposedly an impressionistic view of Time.