And It's Only Monday

Brandon is out of town. That always makes the days longer, especially for someone who wants to start winding down at about 5pm when the real work of the day is just revving up. Sometimes I wish my kids were all still little again so I could have my evenings back!

To make matters worse, Rachael is sick and slept in my bed last night, keeping me up a good part of the night. I've been exhausted all day--not so great on a Monday when I need to get ahead of the week before it runs away from me. As a result, Rachael spontaneously fell asleep from 4-6pm (oh, that would have been nice for me!) while I was busy with the older kids, leading to a loooooong evening/night.  I just got her down about 5 minutes ago at 12:30am. Oh, yeah. Feeling good. 

Not that I could have gone to sleep early anyway. Even though I knew Kate was having problems getting her assigned partner to respond to her calls and meet with her, Kate told me this morning that her end-of-the-year/big-portion-of-her-grade history project is actually due tomorrow (a video, nonetheless) and this little chica still hadn't met with Kate, let alone done any work! So we spent hours upon hours learning how to use imovie this afternoon/evening/night and started/finished her "group" project. I was so mad at that froofy, flaky, selfish, rude, thoughtless girl! I wish I had her mother's phone number. After three unreturned phone calls and being asked by Kate several times at school when they could meet (and standing Kate up once already), this girl finally showed up today for fifteen minutes after school, read what Kate wrote for her while Kate videotaped, then said she had to go to a dance rehearsal!

But bless Kate's little heart, she did it. Pessimistic me kept telling her there was no way we could learn and put together a video in one night, but she insisted she could. And she did. It's not going to win any Emmy's, but it meets the requirements.  Kate was even nice enough to put that ditzy girl's name on it! (While I hotly emailed the teacher and explained the situation, wanting to ensure that little twit gets a big, fat ZERO!  Can you tell I'm mad???) 

End-of-the-year-project-hell wasn't limited to just one child. Will's tri-fold display of Wasatch County is due on Wednesday, but since he has an end-of-the-year soccer team party tomorrow, he had to finish his project tonight as well. Oh, the fun! No, I do not do my children's homework for them, but every mother of a fourth grader knows how much guidance is needed when it comes to "crafty" school projects. 

I'm telling you younger mothers of small children, be grateful for your evenings that revolve around dinner, bath, and bedtime! 

Speaking of dinner, on top of everything else, the dinner I made turned out really, really gross, so the kids ate cold cereal and Ramen for dinner. (And I ate cake in secret, as a way to self-medicate. Isn't that nice?) And then I realized I was out of bread and needed to run to the store so I could make sandwiches for lunches tomorrow. Always love that at 8pm. 

Did I mention that it's also that time of the month? And I had my own Deseret News article due tomorrow? (Just clicked send right before I logged in here.) 

Now that I got that off my chest, I think I can finally go to sleep myself.  It's 1am.  We leave for school in 7 hours . . .