free time

I posted only twice in the month of February. And I had an extra day too. I am just crazy busy and posting seems to fall somewhere after lay-on-the-floor-and-do-nothing in my free time.  Ha! I implied there was "free time." The problem? In one word: baseball.

See, if it was just the new job and the old volunteer stuff and the house and the kids' regular activities, I'd be juggling apples but not dropping many. But once the spring baseball season starts, everything goes haywire.

See, they don't assign kids A Day. We don't play on the Tuesday/Thursday 5:30 team. They play on Tuesday 5pm at another location, Thursday 5:30 down the street, and Saturday 6:15 this week and then they toss the schedule in the air and choose different days, times and places for the following week.  Ditto for the other child. Sometimes they practice or have games on the same day, same time, same ballpark. But not often. Usually they alternate days or times to maximize our time away from home.

Then! I have them both in piano. Academic, not sport, good for the brain, something I hope they'll appreciate their full lives... you know-- good for them. They like it, if not the required practice, and usually it hardly dents the schedule.

And I let Pook rejoin the Science Olympiad Team after school. Which required parental volunteer time this year.

And Pook's big award ceremony took most of a day, once we drove there and back through Atlanta traffic.

And Pook's religious education class at church sponsored a Pancake Supper. And I was asked to organize it. One person sent me an email, that night, at 7:15pm from a Blackberry that because her husband was sick, she wouldn't be able to bring the griddle (earlier) that day at 4:30pm that she'd signed up to bring. It was too late for me to implode.

And, my own Sunday school class volunteered to cook the following Wednesday. I baked 50 sweet potatoes and bought six pounds of salad.


I have it all color coded in my G00gle calendar, which (I've mentioned) looks like a rainbow this time of year. I don't do it all; we have to pick and choose and email others that we can't make it sometimes. The scheduling is so crazy that I try to only look at one week at a time, and focus only on a few days.

It drives me crazy, but I don't have many deadlines in my life, so even though it stresses me out, I can focus everything on the next commitment. The kids, however, have things like homework, projects and tests. As you can see from the list of activities, Pook is involved in most of them. Bug, unfortunately, has to go along for the ride each time. I can't leave him at home, so off to Science Olympiad (can you concentrate on homework while the kids to the egg drop?) off to the awards ceremony (can you do spelling words while we wait?) and off to the Pancake Supper (what is the change for $20?)

It happens every year. I know I'll get used to it. (And then it will be June.)