Well, it’s official: all my kids are in full-day school.
For the past three weeks, things have been rather up in the air. I’ve been collecting a list of Things I Will Do When I No Longer Have Kids At Home All Day. Most of them are writing-related, but there are also things like going out and sitting in nature, which I haven’t gotten to do much of the last year or two. Maybe even a little shopping, occasionally. But then, for a while, I thought something else was coming down the pike in my world, that would call all that extra time into question. So I didn’t bother spending the time trying to figure out what my new world was going to look like. And then that “something else” didn’t end up coming to fruition, anyway.
So the first day of school pounced upon me without a whole lot of preparation. This is the first time I have ever found myself reeling on the night before school starts, asking myself, “Where did the summer go? It was unbelievably short. I don’t have a game plan yet for tomorrow when I’m by myself with time to work!”
Of course, yesterday I went from school dropoff to rehearsal to dental appointment, and by the time I got home, the morning was 2/3 gone already, so maybe it’s just as well I didn’t try to make a plan yet.
Still, I’m a person who does well with structure, and who gets stressed with lack of it. Our life with four kids is much easier if we know that Person XY does A on B day, and Person XX does it on C days. We’ve had the same pattern for, well, 5 years at least. But this year our families outgrew the carpool, so that changes the shape of the afternoon. And because I have the full day on my own, I’m taking more of the morning prep instead of trying to squeeze half an hour of work in between 5:45 and 6:20. (Or 40 minutes…or 45…) I’ve actually done the dropoff run the first two mornings. I’ve never done the morning dropoff. That’s always, always been Christian’s job. So clearly, things are going to be in flux for a while.
What I know so far is that the time between the boys’ departure and the arrival of the public school bus will be dedicated to reading comprehension with Julianna. This much I can set down in stone now, and make good use of a small block of time for something that gets pushed aside too easily in the afternoons.
Figuring out how to structure the rest of these days for best possible use of time? That’s going to take a while longer to figure out. But yesterday, remembering my friend’s words: Pace yourself, I paused at 2:35 p.m. and said, “I’ve worked all day. I think I’m going to play for half an hour until it’s time to pick up the kids.”
And I did. I played with a Shutterfly album of Colorado.
On to Day 2. Hopefully a pattern will emerge sooner rather than later.
Kathleen M. Basi 
It’s hard waiting it out, yearning for that new structure to emerge during a period of flux. I’m excited for your new chapter! (And making a Shutterfly album sounds like play to me too!)