This is a sad, forsaken blog, but not forsaken from my thoughts. I have several post stubs with a sentence or two, but that's all I can seem to manage. I have things to say and no time in which to say them.
My husband essentially works 7 days a week or, really, his time off is never known far enough in advance to actually plan around. It might be Tuesday this week and Thursday next week and Wednesday the week after that. Even on his days off and into the evenings, the phone never quits. It is just the nature of the job.
The reality here is that I am on-duty almost all the time.
Some people can write while the world collapses around them or, at least while the three year old shrieks, but I am not one of them. Some people can write a sentence or two at a time and create coherence over many days, but I am not one of them.
The bits of off-duty time I do get are spent in household management, cooking and washing dishes, school planning, grocery shopping, and the like. I also like to shower periodically. It's the little things.
We have been at this new experiment for a little over a year. It's not harder than I thought it would be, but I didn't think it would be easy. And sure enough, it is not easy. It's all the things I struggle with, day in and day out.
We have been at it long enough that we need to shift out of crisis mode. Our schedule has been very fly by the seat of our pants all year long. This is starting to take its toll on both of us. We have decided to begin to be intentional about both of us getting some off-duty down time. This is harder than it sounds.
So hopefully soon, I'll have some space to post again more frequently than once a quarter. But until then, know that I've not forgotten.
4 comments:
I wonder if the two of you could make a plan that allows you to get an unscheduled day off when your husband has a day off even if you do not get it with long notice. You might not be able to do a high-planninng sort of outing, but maybe you can have a ready-to-go plan where you push some kids school to a "day off" kind of day (like Saturday) and you take that Tuesday afternoon and you run with it while husband has family time.
Lots of homeschoolers work around a weird work schedule. You might do well to think, "how can we best use a day off? if we can't keep a M-F schedule, maybe we can try to keep a different kind?"
Maybe loop scheduling could fit in with Bearing's suggestion above, if you're worried about what gets missed when Tues afternoon becomes "Saturday"? On the other hand, if his days of skip around, you'll probably get a good mix of missed days ;)
When I had only littles - make that little, just one - and was still in grad school, naptime used to take me so unaware that I'd just devolve into mindless things, not having the time/brainspace even to plan for how to use that precious time, and knowing I couldn't make noise or I'd lose it. Then I finally made a list of "things to do during naptime" so I could rouse myself and do all those quiet focused things I hoped to use the time for, that all fled my mind once there was peace instead of toddler chaos.
Glad you're doing well and just unable to write! I think of you when I see your blog on the Darwins' sidebar. Knowing it will be hard makes such a difference. Mystie (http://www.simplyconvivial.com/) in her review-the-past-year worksheet (forget what she called it) included a place to note lack of support from spouse (emotional, or physical because of crazy work schedule/disability/etc), challenging special needs, low energy mom, etc etc. I thought it was great to get it visible to us how there is a higher cost for some of us homeschooling in some situations than for others in other situations. Your husband's work certainly offers a challenge for the family.
Last year I was hesitant to do school on Saturday because of the strong association the girls have with Saturday being a non-school day, but several things have changed since then. First and foremost, our longtime neighbors with whom they would play outside for all the live-long day have moved across the country. (This is one of my stub posts that went nowhere.) So instead of playing outside, they roll in the floor, whine for TV, and complain about being bored. So maybe some Saturday school will cure a few of those ills.
Saturdays have been my worst day of the week for awhile now because the big kids are either gone or whining, Marian is running loose, Dave is gone, and nobody is home on the Internet. I am not opposed to having some structure there.
Yeah, you guys do need to rest. Keeping up that pace is easier when you get even a day or a few hours a month.
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