Crazy Days (a 7QT post)

___1___

You know how some writers insist they have to have a soundtrack of fill-in-the-blank style in order to get anything done? I always thought I couldn’t handle music while writing because I have two degrees in music and I spend the time analyzing music instead of writing. But now I realize there’s another reason. Did you know that every blog post I write these days is accompanied by a soundtrack of “BUZZ LIGHTYEAR, REPORTING FOR SECTOR DUTY!” and “MICHAEL WANTS A MO-VIE, MICHAEL WANTS A MO-VIE” and “I NEED RIDERS IN MY COMBINE!” and best of all, “BLE-BEUH-BLE-BEUH, BLE-BEUH.” It’s a wonder I write anything worth reading.

___2___

You know how sometimes someone says something that hits you square between the eyes, and you think, “Yes! Exactly! Why didn’t I ever see that before?” That’s how I felt when I read this post. Especially the part where she said, “There’s that old saying that when you have young children, ‘the days are long, but the years are short.’ This trip reminded me of a similar truth: the days are hard, but these years are so, so blessed.”

___3___

I was trying to think earlier this week about why this school year feels so much worse than last year. Alex hasn’t picked up any more activities and I’m teaching a lot less. Why does it feel so excruciatingly busy?

Finally I realized I’m doing more of the school pickup–a lot more. Every time I try to expound on this fact it ends up sounding whiny. After all, everybody else has to pick up their kids every day, and plenty of them have younger kids’ naps disrupted by it, just like me. But the afternoons feel so frantic these days, trying to cram in nap between picking Nicholas up at 1p.m. and Julianna at 3p.m. before dashing over to pick up Alex, trying to get Michael toilet trained in between, and I just have this feeling that life isn’t supposed to feel this crazed.

So perhaps you can understand why Jennifer’s words resonated so deeply with me.

___4___

Because you see, there’s the high comedy of Michael grabbing the bottoms to Julianna’s swimsuit and sticking his arms through the leg holes, trying to wear them on his head.

And the wonderful moment yesterday when I was given a moment of insight that allowed me to handle Michael’s first-ever tantrum in a way that ended in snuggles and smiles.

___5___

And I can’t fail to mention this moment, even though my Facebook friends already saw it. This week Julianna’s spelling words are “s” and “sh”-based. Christian was going through them with her, and she got mixed up between “she” and “sit”. You do the math. 🙂

___6___

Wednesday I attended Liguorian Magazine’s 100th anniversary celebration. The logistics of getting all the kids to and from school and my mother here to watch the little ones in the middle of harvest is quite the production. We had to have plans A, B and C in place in case she had to take the boys back to the farm so she could help move equipment or grain.

It was a nice celebration, though. For lunch I sat at a table with an acquisitions editor, a marketing specialist, the one and only Fr. Joe Kempf (of “Don’t Drink the Holy Water” fame), who cracked jokes all through the meal, and three other priests, one of whom was Fr. David Caron, head of the Aquinas Institute of Theology. “It’s one of my dreams to come study there,” I told him.

His face lit up. “What can I do to help get you there?”

“We-ell,” I said, “you could make my kids grow faster.”

(Refer to Takes 2 and 3.)

___7___

Last but not least, I finally finished the little details that were hanging me up on being able to say: MY NOVEL IS READY TO QUERY!

(Now I just have to finish the submission package!)