The Mid-Summer Panic

It has long been a part of my general personality to get the doldrums in July. You wait all year for glorious June and then, all of a sudden, it is freaking July. I abruptly discover the year is rushing by and all those summer plans probably are not going to materialize. Everything feels out of reach.

I come by this disposition honestly. A high school marching band career, majoring in instrumental music, which means marching band, and marrying a high school band director means, for all intents and purposes, the year is over come the second week in July for any independent goal you might have. Even though we have not been slaves to that particular schedule for over a decade, it is embedded deep in my psyche.

This summer isn't any different. I felt the first twangs of that old, familiar feeling when the children went to visit my parents and I had only gotten the living room and one small bedroom cleaned up before they left. In the middle of that week while cleaning the girls' room, I realized it would take me all week to finish and the panic arrived in earnest. I felt the promise of summer crashing around my feet. I had hoped to finish the girls' room and be well into the bonus room** before they returned home, but that bedroom took much longer than I anticipated. Isn't that the way it is? It all takes much longer than anticipated.

The week after their trip was the 4th of July so obligations outside the house limited my ability to make progress at home. This past week involved daily swimming lessons, which were excellent, but only left bits of the afternoon available to work on the bonus room. The past two weeks have been spent working on the upstairs in my least favorite way--in 45 minute chunks.

I hate that feeling of never gaining traction, where you know you have been working but the volume of stuff means no one else can really tell. Also I have been hampered by the fact the bonus room is a major thoroughfare. I cannot set up an organizational system for sorting and purging and just leave it. It has to be set up and put away every single day lest someone get trapped in a house fire.

I am also attempting some version of balanced living. I am trying to walk everyday and take the children swimming once a week. No matter how hard I try, going swimming busts the entire day. Two children have rec softball a few nights a week. But right now, balanced feels more like an opportunity to do several things badly.

This coming week, the kids will be at our parish's VBS program. I should get a long stretch of time every morning to get the bonus room finished. Maybe then I can move on to the kitchen or my bedroom. I hope to get more accomplished. History tells me I won't.

The local schools start in two and a half weeks. I am feeling the pressure to get to planning the next year, but I am not in a headspace to do it since I have been focused on housecleaning. The store displays oppress me. I am supposed to have chosen the curriculum I need for a tutorial I am assisting with next year by Monday if I want the tutorial to pay for it. Tomorrow. I guess I'll have to buy it myself whenever I get around to thinking about it. Call it a housecleaning tax.

I don't know what I will get finished. I am starting to pare down my goals. It almost certainly will not all be completed like I had hoped. The closets, except maybe my own, will probably not be touched. I want to finish the bonus room, sort and purge children's clothing, clean the kitchen, clean my room and my closet, do the paperwork, get some of the bookcases in order, plan the new school year. We will see how far down that list I get.

I will keep on working and walking and swimming, doing what I can do, while swallowing that mid-summer panic that time is up, my obligations supersede my preferences, and I am never going to be finished.

In the meantime, throwing away crap is harder than it seems. It feels so wasteful to toss that perfectly good piece of plastic that should have never existed in the first place. I have to gird myself for all the plastic crap that is going to meet my trash bag this week. And what do you do with this pile of dress-up clothes?

**I don't know what to call this room. We call it the bonus room, but that implies it is over the garage, yes? It's not. It is a long rectangular room with the upstairs bedrooms adjacent. It's like an upstairs living room. What might you call that kind of room? 

Swimming Lesson Economics

When people discover you have five children, they immediately gasp and lament how expensive children are. I generally shrug. Children are about as expensive as you allow them to be. Yes, there are definitely expenses that add up over time and birthing them safely is a humdinger of an expense, but most childhood "requirements" are nice options if you can afford it, but otherwise it's really not a big deal to skip when you can't afford it.

And then there are swimming lessons. Swimming seems like an important life skill that should be prioritized if at all possible.

Our history with swimming lessons is a bit fraught. We do not have a pool. Our neighborhood does not have a pool. The nearest available pool is at the local rec center, which requires a membership to use. Swimming has not been a regular part of our lives. Money and time. Money and time. One reason I sprung for the summer rec membership is to help get my kids in a pool more often.

The rec center offers swimming lessons without a membership, but they aren't very good since it is generally one 16yo girl paired with five or six swimmers for 30 minutes. Lots of blowing bubbles in the water, not a lot of stroke instruction. With a price tag of $90 a child, it's not a good deal. We have resorted to them over the years, but I'd rather find something better.

The majority of the private lesson instructors in this area requires that you have access to a pool. As I said, we do not have access to a pool. Once I scheduled lessons with a woman who was highly recommended who told me she could arrange pool access for us. She charged $100 per kid with a four to one ratio. She cancelled the Friday afternoon before the Monday the lessons were supposed to start because she could *not* arrange pool access for us. This happened to be the same week Marian was born. I might have cried.

Fast forward a couple-three years and I found a woman who offered lessons at her house every June, and only in June, for $100 a child with a two to one ratio. It was a drive--35 minutes--but swimming lessons, right? The week went well and I felt I had finally found a solution to the swimming lesson problem. Come the following March, she sent out an email declaring she was no longer offering lessons because she was expanding her regular work. The swimming lesson problem was not solved.

Last year, I couldn't even think about lessons. I told the children I'd think about it in September after the baby was born and look into off season lessons. I did not look into off season lessons.

This year back at the beginning of April, my sister happened to mention a swim school in her neighborhood. She thought I knew about it. I did not know about it. It runs all day long, all summer long.

The school was almost full for the summer, but by some miracle, the instructor had one four slot set of lessons available in the morning for a week in July. *This* week in July. It costs $125 a child. I was lucky to get them signed up. Every available slot was gone by the end of April. It felt like divine intervention. The schedule could not have been better.

The set up of this swim school is that the owner of the pool is a swim coach. He employs his swimmers to work one on one with each student. There are only four students and four teachers in the pool at a time. Since I have four children in need of lessons, we nicely consume exactly one session all for ourselves.

As I drove over this morning, it occurred to me that he makes $500 for each and every full session since that is what the lessons in this full section are costing me. My mind boggled with the possibilities. If you run 30 minute sessions back to back for eight hours, you can gross 80 thousand dollars over the course of the ten week summer swim season. It was amazing to consider.

My mind immediately jumped to my former wage. I earned around 42K in take home money working full time, 40 hours a week, 50 weeks a year. Could you really make more money giving swimming lessons over the summer? Also why aren't I a stronger swimmer and have a pool and only work 10 weeks a year?

It turns out he does not run back to back sessions, but a new sessions starts every 45 minutes. This is only 10 sessions a day for a total of 50 thousand dollars, gross, over the summer.

I do not know how much he pays his teachers, but they are teenagers. They cannot be demanding top dollar, I wouldn't think. I would guess his expenses can't be more than half his gross. Don't you think a teenager would work for $500 a week giving swim lessons? That sounds like a generous wage to me, but I don't know about modern expectations.

An easy speculation, making a ton of assumptions, is that he clears, after payroll, taxes and other expenses, between 20 and 25 thousand dollars a summer or approximately half of my professional working wage. Wow. He could tweak his setup and make more if he wanted. He could squeeze in more lessons or employ fewer teachers by offering a 2-1 ratio instead of one on one. He could do some of the teaching himself. He could only employ one other person, have a 2-1 ratio, teach, and clear as much money as I made working all year round.

You really can make a livable, if not extravagant, wage giving swimming lessons during the summer and do nothing else. The mind boggles again. All you have to do is know how to swim well enough to coach, have a steady supply of teenagers wanting to be Michael Phelps, have your own backyard pool, and live in a climbing suburb full of parents for whom swimming lessons is a non-negotiable. Easy, right?

As for me, giving all my many children access to swimming lessons has turned out to be very expensive, indeed. 

The Purge, Part 4

At long last the week arrived. The children were all gone. Well, not all the children were gone. I had exactly one lonely Ella with whom to contend. She spent the week quite fussy in the suddenly silent house. Now the moment of truth arrived where I would face down the dragon of the girls room. 

This room hasn't been cleaned with any urgency since the Darwins visited our humble abode for an overnight back in 2015. Even then there was a lot of artful hiding rather than true organization. This time, I wanted to sort and organize and clean in earnest.

Here is how the room looked before I started, but I cannot call them before pictures. You see, when I cleaned out Sam and Marian's room the previous week, the older girls felt something move within them and decided maybe living in a trash heap was not an ideal situation. They brought in a 30 gallon garbage bag and filled it half full with detritus, found all their dirty laundry and put it in a basket to be washed, and located fifty, yes FIFTY, stray dirty socks whose matches lived in the stray sock bag. Thus the room in these pictures, believe it or not, is noticeable cleaner than it might have been a week prior. 

So there it is. Weep with me.

Honestly, taking on this room was psychologically challenging. I was hoping to have already been finished with it before the children left for Grandma's for the week.  I knew I would run across items that would require consultation. There are so many papers that looked like trash to me. I didn't want to throw away some treasure, but I also needed a lot of these papers gone. 

Every day I entered this room with my headphones on, wearing a baby, armed with a garbage bag. 

Occasionally I would convince baby to spend some time in the play pen. Inexplicably, I did not take any pictures of these magic moments, but here is the corner of the play pen, which took up a large portion of the open space of the room. I pulled the nightstand out into the next room in order to make room for the playpen.

It took me three entire work days to pull all the stuff out of all the places. If there was a spot where a paper (or sock or chapstick or barrette or tiny something) could be shoved, it was definitely full of stuffs. Oh, the garbage I found. It looked as if entire bags of candy had been eaten while the wrappers were tossed thoughtlessly to the floor. I do not understand. I am not strict with candy. They eat candy probably four days a week. My only real rule is that they do not take food--any food--upstairs. And yet candy wrappers were shoved under every available surface in failed clandestine attempts. 

So how did I pass the time as I worked? Back when I was working in an office, I listened to many, many podcasts, but since I have been home, my opportunity for listening has been extremely limited. I took the opportunity to fire up all the back episodes from Catholic in a Small Town. I yelled out in horror as Katherine announced she is now commuting over an hour each way to work in Atlanta. Noooooo. Don't do this on purpose!!!! I am now caught up to April and am waiting with bated breath to see how this is going to turn out. Will Kat say, "Take this job and shove it?" Stay tuned.

Once I got everything cleaned out, I had so many piles to sort. I had intended in the beginning to sort into piles as I pulled all the stuff out of all the places. I began strong, but I soon lost the motivation. So many piles. So many places. So much stuff. I eventually began tossing items in the general direction of where I thought it might end up. The decision fatigue was setting in hard. This is where I profess my love for Legos because I know exactly what to do with a Lego. It goes in the Lego box. 

As I sorted the giant piles, I listened for a while to the memorial service for John Ward on YouTube. Ah, John Ward. How can I ever explain it? He was the voice of my childhood. We listened before we could ever see it. Before cable sports, there was the Vol Radio Network and always John Ward telling us what happened. You think your radio guy was the best, but you're wrong because John Ward was the best. THE BEST. It was sad realizing no one in my house could possibly understand. 

Eventually, I whittled the piles down to reasonable. I purchased a paper box for each child which they will be allowed to keep their papers in. All papers in the box. All paper outside the box must be trash, right? 

After five long working days and a full grocery bag of trash to accompany each day, the room was ready to be vacuumed. Vacuuming took a long time. I vacuumed under every surface. I even moved the bed.

I had to vacuum a literal pile of dirt. A potted plant fell a long time ago. I am not sure when. Years may have passed. I really don't know. The vacuum had to be emptied three times as I vacuumed this room.

Finally, the room was finished. Really finished. It isn't perfect. I did not sort shoes or drawers or books. Yet it is so, so, so much better than before. The afters:

 

When the girls arrived back home, they were so excited and even grateful. I think they were paralyzed by the mess and did not know how to fix it. We talked about practicing the habits that will keep the room clean. These habits will be strongly reinforced in the next few weeks and I certainly hope I never have to spend five days cleaning out this room ever, ever again. 

Next up: the bonus room. It's sadly not much better than the girls' was. 

The Purge, Part 3

School ended about two weeks ago and the housecleaning has begun in earnest. Except not really. Between my swimming attempts and so many doctor's appointments--Marian got five shots and didn't even cry, but those eyes got pretty wide by the end--and other obligations, I have only just begun. The thank yous I said I would do before I started cleaning aren't finished either. I decided to take a write a little, clean a little approach. Also the week my children are gone on vacation to my parents' house has arrived and I am nowhere near working on the kitchen. That's the way it goes. It always takes longer than you ever expected.

Anyway, on to the first room! Well, the first official room. The first room was actually the living room, which had descended into a bit of squalor by the end of the school year, but is always in a semi-messy state so it doesn't really count even though it did take a bit of time.

The first official room is Sam and Marian's bedroom. The befores:

So there it is.  Yes, Marian, age 5, still sleeps in a crib. Yes, we have a bunk bed that has boxes of clothes in need of sorting and suitcases on top instead of a mattress. Baby steps. 

Even though I am calling this part of The Purge, this is not the part where I purge. My strategy in the bedrooms is to get all the toys that do not belong out of the room, pick up the trash, and create a little bit of order. The real purge will happen in the room adjacent to the bedrooms, but again, baby steps. 

There is not much to say about process here. Ella enjoyed her stint in baby jail, AKA Marian's crib. 

I filled two grocery bags worth of garbage in this little room. Does everyone's children take scissors to cut paper into little pieces of confetti to sprinkle all over their floors? Just mine? In the course of clearing the floor, I moved the pile of stuffed animals and discovered a half filled black trash bag. Who? Why? How long?

This discovery did lead me to develop a new theory of garbage collection. 

I am about to reveal one of my neuroses to you. I feel guilty about throwing away garbage bags that are not full. Isn't it wasteful to under-utilize a bag? I should not throw it away until it is full, even if it takes a few days because then I am not wasting space or plastic.  I am being efficient with my supplies.

This, friends, is nuts. 

My new theory is that I should throw away the bag at the end of every session, even if--gasp--it is not full. My peace of mind in guaranteeing the removal of garbage is worth more than the efficient use of the never-ending supply of free plastic bags from the grocery store. I have learned through hard won experience that if you don't throw out that half-full bag, the children will helpfully redistribute the garbage for you or, inexplicably, pile their stuffed animals on top of it. What's sad is that I really had to come to terms with this idea. 

So in addition to my two full grocery bags of trash, I threw out the buried 30 gallon bag that had been sitting at the bottom of a pile for an unclear amount of time. Small victories. 

And behold, after two days of work, the results:

It's not perfect. I need to put hooks behind the door so their bags have a place to go. The top of the bunk bed still has suitcases and boxes of clothes that need better homes. (The clothes are in line to be sorted after the upstairs toy room is purged. Maybe?) The stuffed animal solution of cramming them all into that one laundry basket is not great. Maybe I should get a second basket? Trying to get the children to part with any of them is like pulling teeth. I have dusted nothing, and I need a solution for their personal papers so that they don't get spread all over the house. But it is a good start.

The next room is the big girls' bedroom, which is a horror. A horror. Wish me luck!

Swimming Update

On Monday, I took all the children out to our property. Did I mention we bought some property last year? I can't remember. Probably because I was 9 months pregnant when we closed on it. So last August we bought seven acres of land just about ten minutes away from our current house on which we will, one fine day, build a house, if ever we scrape up the money to do such a thing. This property is hereafter referred to as "the land" until we can agree upon a proper name. I feel like it should have a name in the manner of an English estate. Suggestions?

Back to Monday. We recently came into possession of a goodly number of bricks that needed to be transported to the land. Everyone wanted to help Daddy unload the bricks, but only one person can ride in Daddy's truck so I was engaged to bring the balance of children to help Daddy unload bricks. It was north of 90 degrees, the middle of the afternoon, and a good time was had by all. By the end of the day, however, it was apparent I had made acquaintance with a veritable colony of chiggers who had enjoyed feasting upon my tender skins.

Tuesday was a horror of itching and by Wednesday morning, my ability to resist the urge to scratch was waning fast. "We are going swimming," I announced suddenly at about 10 o'clock in the morning, thinking the water might could lessen the itch.

Unlike the well-planned and prepared outing I had hoped for at the end of the last swimming trip, this was a circus of cat herding. Desperate times and all. Nothing was together. The children's swimsuits were damp from sprinkler running the previous day. I carried forth anyway. We finally got out of the house at 11:30am. No, I didn't bring any food this time either.

I signed Ella (and Sam and Marian) into childcare, remembering Ella's ridiculous crawling socks, at 11:55am. The lady pointedly asked me if I knew when childcare closed. "Yes. 1pm," I responded. "No, 12:55pm," she answered. "Or before that if possible," another woman chimed in. Sure, lady. I internally rolled my eyes. Out the door, big girls to the gym, and to the locker room.

I got into the pool with my green floaty noodle at 12:05. Sweet, sweet relief. I was right. The water *did* take the itch away. I swam back and forth. I was, by far, the slowest person in the lanes. Still, my newly purchased earplugs allowed me to put my head in the water without dying. I even once swam half the length of the pool and back without my floaty noodle! I will get stronger. I will. I enjoyed 30 minutes of itch free bliss.

Out of the pool and back to childcare by 12:45. Ella is crawling around without her socks. The woman hands me her socks and tells me these socks are insufficient because Ella keeps pulling them off and that I need to bring better socks next time. I blink. Does there exist a baby who does not pull off her socks? Has the person who created these rules ever met a baby? No matter. We carry on. I'll see if I can find the baby slippers.

I gather all the children and make ready for the pool. Sunscreen application is less hectic because it is cloudy so I am less concerned with total coverage on the big kids, and I bought a lotion for baby which is easier to apply. I blow up the baby floater ring I bought for Ella. This is my solution for two non-swimmers. Ella can sit in the ring, but I can let go of her in the moment if I need both hands for some reason. All kids into the pool. I walk with Ella in her float ring on one arm and Marian in the other arm. I also made sure that a big kid is assigned to Marian if ever I needed to turn my attention away from her. No attempted drownings this time.

Ella, once again, falls asleep. Is this stress? This is so weird to me for her to sleep every time she is in a pool. Her pool exposure has made bathtime a little less excruciating, though. She still cries, but not as long or as loud.

At ten minutes to 2, the whistle blows and it is time for everyone to exit the pool. I guess there is a ten minute break at the top of every hour? We are learning. This is our cue to leave. Still, in total a solid two hours of chigger itch relief. Everyone out of the pool and dried off and hurry, hurry, hurry because I have a hair appointment at 3. Time management is not my strong point. We still haven't eaten lunch.

I pull into the driveway at 2:40. It's pouring down rain. I run into the house, hastily nurse a baby, jump into the shower to soap off, get dressed, grab the baby in the car seat and run back out the door at 2:55. All the rest of the kids stay home with Dave to eat lunch. I roll into the salon at 3:15 for my 3pm appointment. My hairdresser looks at me and says, "I was starting to get worried. You are never late." She obviously doesn't know me very well.

I am going to do this summer swimming thing if I bust wide open.

Morning Swim, First Attempt

(Note: I wrote about half of this yesterday before collapsing from exhaustion. Just pretend you are reading this yesterday.)

Back in April, I bought a summer pass to our local rec center because I wanted to give the children more opportunities to swim and also get myself into a swimming pool more often. It has long been a fantasy of mine to go swimming on a regular basis. If you dug around the interwebz, you'd probably find more than one place where I mentioned my desire to go swim laps. Or whined. I might have been whining. My goal for the summer is to try to hit the pool once a week. Today, after the bulk of the schoolwork has been finished at long last, I decided to do a trial run on a morning swim.

The indoor pool opens before I ever care to be awake and is largely reserved for lap swimmers. The outdoor pool opens at 10am. The plan was to leave home around 9, get Ella and Marian (and maybe Sam) signed into the babysitting room by 930, send the big kids to the gym, swim laps for 30 minutes in the indoor pool, round up all the children, and give them an hour in the outdoor pool. We should be home by noon, in time for lunch.

Here is what actually happened:

We didn't leave the house until 1015. Why the delay? Nobody got dressed when they got up like they had been told. Nothing was together. Breakfast wasn't finished until after nine. We ran around trying to get everything ready. Lots of arguing about goggles. I am slow. Children stare a lot.

     Action Item #1: Get it all together the previous night.

We arrive at the rec center. I boldly walk to the front desk and declare my ignorance. I ask how to get into childcare and how to get a locker. I sign for a locker key and have to leave my car keys.

Sam and Marian agreed to stay with Ella in childcare. Since this was their first time, I had to fill out the information sheets for each of them. I learned that, surprise! all children must have some kind of foot covering in order to be allowed free movement. Even the 8m old. The lady told me Ella would have to be confined to a jumpy chair. Something, something protecting feet from getting stepped on? How socks accomplish this, I am unsure. Also siblings are not allowed to pick up baby. Oh yay. Certain this will not end well, the childcare worker picks Ella up and turns away from the door and I sneak out. The time is 1050.

     Action Item #2: Find footwear for Ella.

I make my way into the locker room. I shove all our supplies into the locker, take my coverup off, grab my towel, and without shame, carry my green floaty noodle into the pool area. I discover all the swim lanes are claimed so I have to decide which person I get to bother and ask to share a lane. I decide to ask an older lady who seems to be swimming slowly. She agrees.

And there I am. In a pool! I am sorry to admit I have forgotten how to float. I need that green floaty noodle. However I am undeterred.  I start kicking laps, back and forth. I try to float on my back. I remember how to do this, but discover that getting water in my ears makes my eardrums feel like they might explode. Was it always like this? No matter. The slow, older lady regularly laps me. My legs burn before I swim one length. No matter. I am swimming in a pool like a boss. A boss with a green floaty noodle. I swim for 30 entire minutes. I attempt to get out of the pool. I cannot pull myself out of the water. I have to cross two rope lines to get the steps. Under the water, ears exploding, under the rope, out of the pool. I did it! I swam by myself for exercise!

     Action Item #3:  Figure out how to stop the problem of the exploding eardrums.
     Action Item #4:  Remember how to float.
     Action Item #5:  Get stronger.

I dry off and go to retrieve Ella from childcare. It's been an hour and close to noon. (How does it take 15 minutes on either side of the pool?) I open the door to find her crawling all over the floor. They decided to make an exception to the no crawling without socks rule just this one time. Whatever. I am told she got significantly upset several times, but Sam and Marian did an outstanding job of calming her down. Everyone survived! Grace and Olivia appear out of nowhere.

Now back to the locker room to get all the children ready to swim in the outdoor pool. This takes a ridiculous amount of time. We finally go out to the pool and have to apply sunscreen. This takes an even more ridiculous amount of time. The Kroger brand spray sunscreen doesn't want to spray. It takes my two hands and a lot of pressure. I have to rely on the children to spray me. They could barely work the can. Ella has to be sprayed too. She is unimpressed. The stranger child watching her scream while I tried to cover her in sunscreen observed, "I feel sorry for that baby."

     Action Item #6:  Don't cheap out on sunscreen.

Finally the children are given leave to get in the pool. It is now 12:30, 30 minutes after I expect to be home. We are having a learning experience. Ella is hungry so I feed her. She and I get in the pool at about 12:40. She is unsure but splashes a little while I hold her on my hip. The lifeguard whistles everyone out of the pool at 12:50 for a ten minute break. We are, indeed, having a learning experience.

The children want a snack. We don't have food. I am that kind of mother. We decide to wait out the break, get back in the pool another 15-20 minutes and then go home.

While in the pool after the break, I have Ella on one hip and Marian on the other walking back and forth at 3.5 feet in the very crowded pool because neither can swim. Marian asks to go play on the slide that's at 1 foot depth. She quickly changes her mind and attempts to drown herself by walking back out to me further than she can touch. Fun times. (M was fine. It's mostly horrifying in retrospect since I didn't know she was coming and I turned around to find her flailing for me. She didn't even cough any water.) Ella, in the meantime, falls asleep on my hip. This makes twice she has conked out in a pool. Is it that relaxing or is this a stress response?

     Action Item #7:  Try to avoid the 1 o'clock pool break.
     Action Item #8:  Talk to Marian (again) about pool safety. (How do you keep two non-swimming children safe in a pool at the same time? There's only one of me.)

Finally, it is time to go. We get out, dry off, and head back home. We pull into the driveway at 230pm. We are starving. Crankily, children are tended and fed. I eat lunch at 3:20. I collapse in a heap for the rest of the day.

     Action Item #9:  Figure out how to go on a morning swim and eat lunch before late afternoon. 

So there it is! I successfully executed a swim outing. It didn't go exactly as planned, but I managed to do it. I fought multiple rounds of discouragement but decided it was a preliminary run. We will try again next week.

The Purge, Part 2

This really isn't a post, just an update to say we are still doing school. Hurrah. I feel time slowing creeping and I want to be finished probably more than the children so I can get on with organizing all the things. Did I say children? Well, I meant child. Two of the three children are finished with their schoolwork. The third perseveres. Mostly though, I want to think about how to approach the work.

The first thing I have to do on my summer vacation is not related to school at all but to the baby. I have not written any thank-you notes for anything related to Ella's arrival. I heap ashes on my head. I am sure people will raise their eyebrows at getting an acknowledgement nine months after the fact, but I will send them anyway in my humiliation. It's not that I didn't mean to write them. It just kept not happening.

After that bit is finished, I have decided to start in Sam and Marian's room. It is a mess, but easily brought back to reasonable. Any ideas for stuffed animals? After that, I will move to Grace and Olivia's room, which really cannot be described. I know they have a floor because the living room ceiling has not collapsed. That's all I can really say about that room. Then, I will work on the toy area in the room that connects the upstairs bedrooms. Those three rooms will probably take me two weeks. Maybe? Hopefully not longer. Hard to say. There's so much stuff.

I will then move to the kitchen, I think. Or my closet? Depends. I want to do the kitchen while the children spend a week at my parents and are not home. I think that whole week will be dedicated to the kitchen. The pantry, the closet under the stairs, both fridges, all the freezers, under the sink, the drawers. I have to be careful not to be sucked permanently into the kitchen.

I think the last item on my agenda will be the paperwork. I think. It's hard to know what you should give a cursory pickup and what you should take the time and deep clean. The goal is to deep clean all of it, but I am trying to prioritize. The bookcases and several closets need totally reorganized, but what can wait?

So I will keep you updated on progress and grope around trying to find the next best thing to do. Ideas, as always, are welcome.