Today: Sleeping late, Sarah splashing joyfully in the pool, laughing with friends, making crowns with a gaggle of princesses, sharing an abundance of food and goodies, driving through the rain, snuggling up in front of The West Wing, and now a show on the Galapagos...

Tomorrow: Playing school, errands, doctor appointment, gardening, therapy appointment... As much as possible, a lazy summer day...

We had Sarah's birthday party, today. I knew it was going to be fairly lowkey, but it turned out to be even moreso than I'd expected -- basically my parents, Joe's mom, and 2 friends of ours from college. In keeping with our new Simplicity theme :), we ordered pizza and made cupcakes-from-a-box (Sarah picked out red velvet cake, of all things -- now with more artificial food coloring!), and just did a lowkey spread of dippables to start with. We made fairies and crowns/tiaras and masks, and played a couple rounds of charades, and generally had a long, exhausting, satisfying day.

We didn't use up nearly as many of the art supplies as I'd expected, so Sarah may be planning *another* fairy tale party in a few weeks, just to do some crafts and have some cupcakes with her friends...

My parents got her some wonderful stuff, including a craft tote full of goodies and a sewing kit with loads of gorgeous fabric, and my MIL got her other wonderful stuff, including _and tango makes three_, which is just adorable. It makes me want to go to the Central Park Zoo. And two of the other books my MIL got her (Harriet the Spy and Secret Agents Four) make me want to curl up on my bed on a Saturday afternoon with a glass of iced tea and a plate of apple slices, and be about 10 years old again!

Joe has tomorrow off, so we're all gonna sleep in, then Sarah and I are going to head out to see friends for a few hours, and then the three of us are going to play with some of Sarah's new board games (she's setting up her Game of Life as I type!). Yesterday we went out the Island to a family baby shower with folks we don't see nearly often enough. We showered the mom-to-be with loads of Burt's Bees baby goodies (my favorite stuff to use on Sarah when she was a little one) and my very favorite Belly Balm from when I was pregnant. It's been a good weekend, but I'm so very glad to have it behind me -- I feel like, finally, I'm now done with the sense of running-in-place I've had since school ended, and can really sink more deeply and truly into relaxation...

I'm finding that digging my way out of the end of the school year is a lot like digging one's way out of depression -- getting back to "normal" isn't the end of the work -- it's just the start of catching up on everything I fell behind on while I was down there... At least a couple times a week I get overwhelmed by how much I still need to do -- outstanding phone calls, email, errands, etc. -- or the memory of something else I flaked on while I was so busy. Everytime I think I can see the light at the end of the tunnel through my piles of ToDo lists, something else seems to happen to tip the piles back over into Overwhelmed! And then I have to pull back to a manageable "okay, just get three things done every day, and don't worry about the rest of it righ now" or I'll just hide under the blankets and do *nothing*.

This week, though, I finally feel like I really, sustainably, see the end of playing Catch Up. I can see that, even if other stuff comes up, I will still be able to keep slowly moving forward. It's really good to be able to see an end to the chronic waves of guilt over stuff I've forgotten or flaked on or just never finished. I can see from here what a relief it'll be to get out the other end of this weekend...

Stuff

Caramelized onion soup. Mmm... *sigh* Other things I've tried, the last several weeks: cauliflower soup (reliable and much loved companion that it is), broccoli and garlic soup, moroccan chickpea soup, brownie soup (I thought I'd try it heated but wound up sticking with cold, so it's like a really thick chocolate milk -- very satisfying), roasted sweet potato soup, mashed potato soup, portabella mushroom soup, roasted pepper soup. All good, some more satisfying than others. Overall, though, I'm struggling to remain patient with this process. I'm actually pretty blue about it all, at the moment. I crave a crisp salad sandwich (lettuce, chickpeas, avocado, tomato, cucumbers, olives, drizzled with dressing and stuffed into a roll) or sloppy lentils (again on a roll) with a bright new pickle on the side...

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We've transitioned pretty well into our summer routines, so today I started adding my contemplative practices -- slotting them into pre-existing spaces in our daily rhythms. I'm nowhere near perfect at sticking to my intended routine, but even the little bit I managed today made for much more clarity and peacefulness. It sprinkles my day with breathwork and chi kung exercises in the morning, contemplative prayer later on, lovingkindness meditation during our afternoon Quiet Time, chanting in the kitchen, mindfulness practice tucked in with the most repetitive housework...

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Yesterday I made some snarky comment while we were watching a food network show. Some showbiz person was judging the Shrek cakes, and I found his criticisms insufferable -- snippy, irrelevant, whiny, and generally what I would expect from a self-involved primadonna. I commented that actors shouldn't be allowed to talk. Sarah asked why, and I made additional snarky comments about the guy's emotional maturity/sophistication (or lack thereof) and questioned his ability to think with any degree of nuance.

Today in the car on the way home from getting ice cream (there's a lovely place in Montclair that makes their own, a couple dozen unusual flavors, and we'd grabbed Joe as soon as he walked in the door to take him with us for a belated Afternoon Adventure), out of the blue Sarah said something to the effect of "Mommy, it bothered me when you said that actors shouldn't talk, yesterday, because I plan to be an actor when I grow up." I hope I responded as well as I should have at being called on my snarkiness, but I know I at least managed to say that I'd be more careful in the future, and that absolutely, actors are just as smart and thoughtful as anyone else, and just like anyone else I shouldn't judge them all based on the silly comments of one person. Mostly, though, I was having trouble thinking beyond, "Oh my God! Good for you, Sarah!" I'm... I'm feeling really pretty good that she felt comfortable saying something. Really very good. I said as much, later tonight -- told her that that was exactly the right thing to do if someone says something that makes you uncomfortable -- to speak up clearly and calmly, as soon as you've had a chance to figure out what you want to say (even if some time has passed since the original comment). I could never have done the same thing, at her age. I'm not sure I could do the same thing *now*, if I needed to say it to one of my parents. I'm really very proud of her.

I am utterly wrecked. Second day in a row of moving/packing/cleaning at the school, and today just sucked every bit of energy out of me. I've got something like 25 bits of email I should really be responding to, and I can't even make myself *read* them all.

We played school first thing, this morning (not taking any time for our solo-time or my chi kung work) -- Sarah wanted more gnome stories, so I made a decent attempt at making one up -- and then dashed out the door to spend the day working. We got a good amount done -- moved a bunch of boxes, got loads of books out via freecycle, tossed piles and piles of detritus... Sarah and I finally got out around 5:00, dropping the mat off on our way home.

Now we're home doing a sort of combo -- solo-time with expansive play/puttering time -- so I'm mixing puttering with online time, and Sarah's playing while watching the Garfield movie in the background.

I'm getting a little panicky, realizing how much stuff has piled up, this week, while I was focusing on decluttering at home and packing at school (and getting into our new routines). Maybe I'll make a giant ToDo list just to get it all out of my head, pick the three most important things to do now, and then go take a nap...

I punted Sarah's dentist appointment, yesterday -- neither of us had the gumption for the long, emotionally exhausting, effort involved. Next week is soon enough.

So instead we played school, walked around our property a little talking about signs of Spring, and spent a good chunk of time hunkered down in the front yard, enjoying the jumble of clover in which we imagine fairies could happily live. We didn't find anything to add to our Nature table, but Sarah suggested recording some birdsong for that corner. In a happy coincidence, when we finally went back inside, I discovered that this website of rainforest sounds had just arrived in our daily Clickschooling email. We used them as background for the rest of the afternoon's puttering. I may put a similar soundtrack on the ipod so we can keep birdsong at our fingertips -- almost as good as keeping it in the nature corner...

Today we played school really quickly (we're currently doing lots of math stuff -- reading Penrose the Mathematical Cat and telling lots of gnome stories (inspired by the Oak Meadow math curriculum)), then went to school to help pack and move all the school stuff out of the church basement. It's both sad and satisfying to be leaving that space finally/already. It's also sad and satisfying and strange not to be the one in charge of keeping track of everything, anymore.

I'm trying to heed the advice I got yesterday: "Do as little as possible". And so now, after our lunch-and-a-movie (an episode of Animaniacs, today), I'm going to do my chi kung exercises and then lie down for a nap. Maybe tonight we'll go out and pick up a bookcase for the diningroom, to help corral all these books...

Transformations

I've been on my leave of absence for... I guess about 3 weeks, now. Originally the plan was for Sarah to stay home with me Mondays and Tuesdays, and to go in to school W-F (alone on W and F, with me on R). Instead she's chosen to stay home with me, so far. Which is fine with me. But for the last few weeks, while I've been letting myself coast completely, it's meant hot and cold running TV for her, 24/7. I'm happy to suspend our TV guidelines on true *sick* days, but this is not that sort of thing -- and we can only live like this so long before it becomes enervating and depressing, instead of a fun treat.

When we were homeschooling together full time, we drew a lot of our inspiration from Waldorf -- in terms of the rhythms of our day/week/year, in terms of a focus on story, song, and nature, and in terms of my (generally unspoken) focus on emotional/spiritual age-appropriateness (steering away from overly analytical explanations of things during that first, dreamy, stage of childhood, for example -- because I know I have a tendency towards the wordy, analytical answer every time). When we started at the school, most of that went by the wayside -- some intentionally, some not.

When I started thinking, 'okay, we're going to be home together most days for the next 4-5 months -- what do we want our lives to look like?' I found myself going back to Waldorf (and specifically the Enki and Oak Meadow materials I'd collected during our first years of homeschooling). I spent the early part of this week reading mostly my old Enki books (I'd passed along most of the Oak Meadow stuff to friends), talking with Sarah, and considering what a restorative, balanced rhythm would look like, for us.

Enki suggests looking at the way you're already doing things, and identifying just the one or two places in your day where you'll *most* benefit from transitioning to a more rhythmic approach. But, frankly, I'm just not up for leaving things mostly as-is while we make just 2 changes to our days (I think they're assuming a much more highly-functioning household as a starting point than what we've got right now). So Sarah and I talked about it, and we're going to try to gently transform our whole day at once -- with lots of compassion for ourselves, and lots of "hey, great, we stayed on track all morning -- let's take a break to mindlessly veg in front of the TV for an hour!"

We're unschoolish (I don't tend to call us "unschoolers" -- I find that once you adopt a label, it's too easy for people to say "that's not unschooling -- to be an unschooler (or vegan, quaker, pagan, attachment parent, etc.), you have to do such-and-so". I've got no patience for that and I'm unwilling to subject myself to it), so within the larger rhythm exactly what we do shifts from day to day or week to week. This week we've been going back to the comforting rhythms of our early homeschool days -- cuddling, then spending a little time on our own stuff, then coming back together to have breakfast and play school and plan out our afternoons. It feels really good to be back in that space...