Please help me make it to the end of this school year!

I was going to write this clever "how-to" post about being prepared to send every one off for their days in an organized and relaxed manner, but who am I kidding?

I am not organized or relaxed and I just want this school year to end.

This week, aside from school, we have 13 baseball events (not including my husband's teams). That's 12 games and one practice for three kids. I have not watched a full game all year, except for the minor league game we went to the other night, because I have to split my time among two to three places on a regular basis. Not just watching but picking up and dropping off as well.

The homework. Someone is struggling in an honors class, someone else has three papers due in one week, and so-and-so hates the computer program he has to use to do his math homework. ("I get 8x5 right every time and it won't turn green!")



I feel like I lose an hour every morning while ushering everyone off to school (kids), work (husband), and going potty outside (dogs), as well as tending to our elderly special-needs cat.

This is the hour between 5:45 and 6:45 a.m. Then the next half hour until 7:15 a.m. is slightly less of a blur because I only have one person left to launch.

[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="2000"] Making breakfast and lunch every morning can be chaotic[/caption]

I work at home, thankfully. I don't have to get myself ready other than a quick washing and brushing and changing out of pajamas into usually into something equally as comfortable but more socially appropriate if I have to drive my oldest to his bus or accompany my youngest down the driveway if I need to bring out a trash bag or put something in the mail box. I have not gone to the bus stop with him in a couple of years.

My "how to" suggestion was going to be "make the lunches the night before." It was obviously not targeted to those moms who  make the most-amazing-ever bento box lunches for their kids. Clearly they do not have any time management challenges.

I am at the point now where I have let my oldest buy his pricey gourmet lunches every single day (while still preparing an after-school snack bag so he doesn't swipe his card too much in the vending machines while he is hanging around after school for sports and/or a ride home). My middle son, who was at one time not eating all day until he came home (because he did not have time for breakfast and his lunch was at 10:30 and he "wasn't hungry"), is now bringing AND buying lunch and taking two recyclable-but-not-refillable plastic water bottles a day because I can't keep up with everyone's sports bottles. My youngest takes his lunch every day (because he is so picky selective about what he will and won't eat), except for the occasional day where he decides he likes more than one thing on the school lunch menu and buys (since I told him "You must not spend $3.25 on a serving of popcorn chicken when you aren't going to eat anything else on the tray!"), in which case, God help me if I don't evaluate the contents of his lunch box sometime before the next morning when it might have been festering all night.

I don't like wishing time away. I want to embrace and enjoy every day as though it were my last. No, actually I don't because that is a stupid suggestion. If it were my last day on this planet I would not be worried about work-life balance. I don't actually know what I would be doing; I just know it wouldn't be that.

We have three weeks before everyone will be done. I can hardly wait!