Back to Square One

Well, as anyone who has bothered to look at my defunct blog over the last nine months can tell, my last post proved to be eerily prophetic. It didn't take long for me to get sucked into the whirlpool of school obligations, volunteer and otherwise, and for my project to rid my house of extraneous possessions to grind to a halt. So now I get the dubious pleasure of starting back at the beginning, armed this time with some knowledge of what does not work. Lessons learned include, but are not limited to:

• Expecting to carve out time for yourself when you are still doing all of the tasks that made it impossible to carve out time for yourself is just as insane as it sounds.
• One person cannot manage the belongings of four. (I give my husband credit for handling his own stuff, though after over a decade in the same house he still doesn't know where things go in the kitchen.)
• Waiting on people who are both able-bodied and younger than I am makes me cranky.

So what am I going to do differently this time? To go point by point:

Point One: I actually am starting this summer a couple of obligations lighter. Son #3 graduated from his co-op nursery school on June 22nd, and I handed over the treasurer's notebook and responsibilities to my successor around the same time. On top of that, no more co-op means no more work days, so instead of spending my Monday mornings wrangling preschoolers and praying for not-rainy, not-windy, not-too-hot-not-too-cold weather at our outdoor school, I could conceivably go get a mani-pedi every week if I wanted to. Ha. I'm not kidding anybody. I'm far too cheap to spend my money on that. But you get the point. And as of mid-August, son #3 will be in school five days a week, six and a half hours a day, just like his brothers. I think going from his twelve-hour-a-week preschool schedule to over thirty hours a week in school is going to be just as big a jump for me as it is for him.

The other major obligation I am handing over is the booster club presidency. Much to my surprise and delight, a volunteer stepped up in April, just as I was beginning to think I was going to have to leave my notebook on the magnet coordinator's desk and enter the witness protection program to get out of the job. (Never mind the fact that I've been saying for two years that I would do a two-year term--nobody was listening to me.) I'm beginning to suspect that my successor is going to be better than I was, and though I feel a slight twinge at the thought, I am resolutely letting it go. I can tell myself she is building on what I started and all my friends will back me up on that, no matter what they actually think.

Point Two: This is a stickier wicket, since I have three boys and the oldest one is twelve. They all suffer from the apparently y-chromosome-linked blindness that allows them to wade through piles of dirty clothes or discarded toys without ever noticing them. Nevertheless, as I worked on cleaning up Son #1's room yesterday I made him sit with me and help sort through the mountain of papers he had amassed on his desk over the school year. The boys are old enough to clear their own plates from the table, put their own clothes in the hamper, pick up their toys, and generally not act as if their parents are their servants. Which brings me to...

Point Three: My new favorite line is, "No, you can get you _______." As in:

Son #2 (sitting and watching a Pokemon video on the computer): Mom, can you get me some apple juice?
Me (washing dishes at the sink): No, you can get you some apple juice.

This usually results in a dramatic groan, but Son #2, whose hands are not on backwards, does then go get himself the aforementioned juice. One of my many failings as a parent (I'm sure the boys could give you a fuller list than I could) is that I do give in to the temptation to do things for my kids that they can do themselves simply because it is faster and easier to do it for them (though I am hardly the only parent to behave this way). In the long term, this does not help them one bit.

Following through on this step will be a win-win: my boys will learn both useful skills and manners (as well as losing the expectation that the world is going to act like their secretarial staff/pit crew), and I will end up with less to do.

I won't lie. It is a bit demoralizing to think that I ended up a year later with almost nothing to show for my ambitions to organize my house and my life and claim some time for my own needs. On the other hand, the last year was not a total waste of time; I did do some things I was proud of and I may write about them on this blog in the future. But failing once does not mean that I should quit trying. So here we go again...