Friday, October 14, 2011

My Week Of Relaxation


Last Friday I finished the first draft of the sequel to Screwing Up Time. This week was supposed to be my week of relaxation. Week of Relaxation. I may have said those words, but I didn’t really mean them. What I meant was “my week to catch up on all the things that I slacked off on when I was writing.” (See this post.)

So did I get the yard work done? No, I didn’t even get Round-up sprayed. Instead, precious child number three, Jake, had a midterm in Calculus 2 (he’s taking a dual enrollment class—college and high school credits at the same time). Now you’d think that child one, Luke, and child two, Ariel, who are fulltime students at the university would be able to squeeze Jake into their schedule and transport him to review sessions/office hours. You’d be wrong. Luke and Ariel have jobs with weird hours. I drove Jake back and forth, even one time when guess what—the prof wasn’t available. I just love those car trips with no purpose.

Did I get the ironing done? Sort of. I got a pile finished, but not the one I wanted. I wanted to get Cal’s winter dress pants/shirts out of storage, washed, and ironed. (Our old house has miniscule closets.) I didn’t even get the clothes out of the basement. Child four, Matt, was taking the PSAT this week and needed help with the bizarre writing section—I had to explain that “B” was the right answer because the clause was modifying the correct noun even though it broke a grammar rule. I hate defending bad writing.

Did I get the refrigerator cleaned and washed? No. (Though I did throw out the scary food.) Instead, I helped Ariel get information sent off for a summer internship. You’d think that getting a transcript would be easy. At UTC, she just walks into the records office and they print one up. At Chatt State, she had to submit a request form and wait up to TEN days. And they don’t allow you to call and ask if it’s ready. And you actually have to drive down to the campus to find out. Seriously. When it was finally done, we had to fax everything. Except the fax machine was down at the site Ariel had to fax it to. It was finally back up five minutes before Ariel and Jake had to leave for class—Jake had his midterm waiting. He was doing the “I’d better not be late to my midterm.” I was promising, “You won’t be late. You won’t be late.”

So I’m looking forward to next week and getting back to writing. I never get anything done when I’m “relaxing.” 




N.B. If you're interested in discovering which character you're most like in Screwing Up Time, click here.

7 comments:

  1. Sigh. Life always has other plans for moms.

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  2. You are in the season of life when you drop everything to help the kids get their school and job activities done. This period will be over quickly and then it will be planning weddings and welcoming grandchildren.

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  3. Honest to goodness, some day, years from now, you'll look back on these frantic days of juggling kids' needs, household duties, and writing, and you'll scratch your head and say, "How did I DO that???"

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  4. It's funny how life always conspires against you like that. I was at home sick yesterday and thought I'd at least get some writing done in the afternoon when I was feeling better. Uh, that didn't happen. I did the laundry instead, which took way longer than I anticipated.

    At least I hope your weekend is less hectic!

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  5. Thanks, everyone for your thoughts and comments! I love the encouragement.

    You know, the good thing about this crazy week is that I can't wait to print up the draft and get to work. I'm having to force myself to wait until Monday.

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  6. Why, why, WHY? do people still fax things? Why didn't fax machines die c. 2001? From a student services/records perspective, though, I'm guessing they're horrifically understaffed and can't accomodate the check-in phone calls. Which stinks. But probably stinks more for them :/

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  7. Yeah, I thought fax was dead too.

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