Stocking: Four weeks of school: will I survive?

Four weeks of school. Four weeks of school. Four weeks of school. This is my chant now. After five more school days I will change my chant to Three weeks of school. Three weeks of school. Three weeks of school.

It’s May. May is crazy. I used to think December was crazy and then I got to experience high schoolers in May. May is crazy, and somehow, my refrigerator doesn’t get filled. In May, high school baseball is still going on. Little boy baseball just started. Junior high track is winding down. Three kids with three sports, which means practices and games and meets.

The high schooler is in choir and there is an end-of-semester choir concert in May. The 4th grader has an Idaho History Program. Two kids have a piano recital. Now add in a few family obligations, four games and meet this month, and my evenings are crazy.

I opened the refrigerator the other night after getting home at 7:30 – again – and discovered that there was nothing in that fridge with which to make a decent meal. When did my refrigerator get so empty? What were my kids eating to survive?

I’m sad the snow has melted and the sun has come out. That means I need to mow my lawn, and my flower bed needs attention. The weeds have started to take over the flower bed, and I’m thinking that the Round-Up variety of attention might be the best route this year. Somehow I need to hold on until end-of-year presentations and projects are done and homework stops coming home. Then I’ll enlist my kids (who never complain about yard work) with help in the yard. I’ll teach them how to use Round-Up. Four weeks of school. Four weeks of school. Four weeks of school.

At some point last week, I looked at my watch and it was still 12:16. It’s been 12:16 for two weeks now. I just need to go get a new watch battery, but I never remember when I’m running through Wal-Mart to get milk (which evidently is the only thing I keep stocked in the fridge). I’m running on my way to or from something and I just want to get where I’m going. Stopping to fix a watch is not a priority. And like the gal I work with said the other day, “Well, it makes a lovely bracelet.”

Four more weeks of school and then I can get my watch fixed. I can keep the fridge stocked. I won’t be running all over. Of course, there are solutions to this dilemma. I could home school my kids, so we don’t have any more school events in the evenings. I could teach them piano myself. I could ban them all from after-school activities. That would solve the problem of May. However, I work full time to pay the bills so homeschooling is not an option. I work full-time so teaching piano myself is not an option. And honestly, after-school sports teach my kids so much more than mowing the lawn ever could.

So I endure May. I chant Four weeks of school until I can chant Three weeks of school. I buy groceries at 10:00 on Saturday night. And I wonder how many other moms chant themselves to the finish line in the month of May.