The Best Days

My best days are home days. Why? Because on home days I get stuff done. And getting stuff done makes me so happy. Accomplishing my list of to-do's is a thrill I never imagined when I was a little girl dreaming of being a grown-up girl. I'm not sure that little girl would've thought that sounded all that exciting, honestly. She probably would've thought that the grown-up version of herself would count her best days as days she dined at fancy restaurants with powerful and popular people or shopped in the best stores and bought the latest fashions or held important meetings in high-rise offices.

Nope.

The best days are the ones where I have nowhere to be outside my own four walls. Ideally, they go like this:

6:45 am: get out of bed and get kids up, dressed, fed, lunches packed etc.

7:30 am: leave the house for school

8:00 am: return from school

8:00 am: do all the reading-- this includes my Bible study and any nonfiction books I'm working my way through, journaling

9:00 am: breakfast, household chores, whittle emails down to below 25 in my inbox (my happy place)

10:00 am: write

12:00 pm: break for lunch, check emails, Facebook, Twitter, etc.

12:30 pm: write, wrap up loose ends

2:00 pm: run, shower and get ready to retrieve children from school

3:15 pm: leave the house

4:00 pm: return home with grumpy children in tow, try not to lament over the loss of quiet sanctuary. Supervise snacks, chores, homework. Listen to complaints, fighting, and needs that have built up during the course of the day. Try to be loving, kind and patient. Fail most days.

5:00 pm: do something about dinner

6:00 pm: eat said dinner

6:30 pm: clean up from said dinner, do remaining household chores, cajole children into doing their part

7:00 pm: supervise bath time and any final needs, think over what needs to be done the next day. Make list of to-do's. Feel hopeful.

8:00 pm: begin bedtime process which will intermittently go on for the next two hours, grab snatches of time during this two hours to read, watch tv, and surf Pinterest for more recipes you probably won't cook and craft/decorating/organizational ideas you will probably never do

10:00 pm: drag tired self to bed and read a few pages of a novel while denying that you are actually too tired to read and should probably just shut off the light

10:30 pm: wake up holding your book with no recollection of what you read or where you left off. Admit defeat and shut out the light.

Understand that my days rarely go this way and, starting at the end of this month, I will be required to leave the house three days per week in order to fill a substitute teaching gig and attend a weekly Bible study at my church. Which means there is only 2 remaining days per week in which this can even possibly occur.

But I will hold onto those two precious days with both fists. And dare anyone, or anything, to come between us.