A Day in the Life

I’ve been stalling on doing a ‘day in the life’ of post because I keep waiting for the ideal, everything goes right kind of day so that I can tell you all about it.
Oh, you want reality? Ok then.

H got up just a bit before I was done my work. Wanted to immediately go play with his golf clubs on the field outside. I dissuaded him on the grounds that we need to wait for A to wake up & then we have to do some schoolwork. H decided to play golf in the living room.

A got up and the kids had breakfast. (boring, nutritionally unbalanced meal)

I remembered that it was animal-care day. In addition to our cat (who really doesn’t require much care) I have a teddy bear hamster named Caramel and a betta fish. The kids each have their own betta fish. And we have a small fish tank with a couple danios. I clean out Caramel’s cage at least once a week. The bettas need a full water change about every 1-2 weeks (we have them in 3 litre plastic tanks, I fish per tank. Never put a betta fish in one of those little cup things they sell in the pet stores. It’s inhumane!) And I’m currently babysitting a dwarf hamster and 5 Western Toads. So I have 2 hammie cages to clean, 3 fish tanks to wash out, and 1 fish tank to check water quality & tweak as required. The toads didn’t really need anything this day.

I turned on a taped book of Alice through the Looking Glass & we went about doing all these chores while listening. H abandoned me and the pets pretty fast; he had to practice his putt in the living room. A helped me by keeping an eye on the hamster while his cage was being cleaned. I chickened out of doing a full clean of the visiting hammie’s cage – dwarves are skittish, esp. when they’re not used to you. She pees in only one spot so she got a spot cleaning. By the time all the animals were clean and happy, the taped book was over and it was time for lunch. First I had to clean up the kitchen which now was liberally sprinkled with hemp shavings (that’s what I use in my hammie cage) and spilled water from the fish tanks.

H wanted to go play golf outside. He had got dressed, and got all his stuff ready. This is a notable thing as generally he lives in his boxer shorts. Even boxers were a struggle when he was younger, because he really is a nudist. I reminded him that we did plan to do at least a teeny bit of bookwork today, and enticed him with the prospect of a drive to Crescent Beach if we get through stuff quickly. I asked him to read to me while I make lunch. H thought that idea sucked and instead went to make sure he had all his golf things properly arranged.

Lunch. (boring and only marginally healthy)

H finally did his reading. He’s working in McGuffy’s Primer. We’ve been doing Phonics Pathways and Explode the Code all year and he’s just starting to pull some words off the page. He read out loud to me. Not great but OK. We need to move on because I’m totally sick of cats and rats, and I wish Ann would just lose her fan.

A worked on some coloring sheet assignment with cuisenaire rods. I can’t figure out the appeal of this really but she enjoys doing it & I think there must be some benefit in looking at problems like “4R+Y”. She then worked on copying out a poem. This is partly for memorization and partly for handwriting practice. She didn’t get terribly far because it’s quite clear she’s actually still a bit weak from being sick last week.

I called an end to all this because the afternoon was running away from us. We went outside where H demonstrated his putting and driving. He was annoyed that I wouldn’t do it with him. He didn’t want me to just watch. A was playing with a new box of sidewalk chalk. After ½ hour I said that if we were going to go to the beach, we’d need to leave now. So back home we trooped. 15 minutes delay while the kids hunted for a couple buckets & shovels, and I tossed some juice and granola bars into a bag. It’s about a 25 minute drive to Crescent Beach but worth it. A nice breeze blew the cobwebs out of our heads. I collected flat round stones to make inukshuks. Well, actually I guess they should be called cairns since I never attempt to make people shaped ones. Mine are just piles of interesting rocks. Got 6 to balance in one.

Kids each collected some shells and rocks to take home. H decided he wanted some burnt wood too (people occasionaly build bonfires there I guess). We drove home, the kids having juice & granola bars on the way home.

Kids washed their stones and shells in the kitchen sink. They discovered that something stank awfully. Whatever it was got on H’s hands. I was called in to figure out the offending item and to help him clean his hands. It took about ½ an hour to find the offending shell, scrub the stench off his hands and sanitize the kitchen.

I agreed to let the kids watch the Wind in the Willows while I started dinner. R came home.

Dinner, just like lunch, was again banal and only marginally healthy. This time though, the kids boycotted it on the grounds that it was also disgusting. They ate cucumbers instead. H made himself a buttered sandwich. R became a hero at dessert time as he mixed up strawberries with some ice cream in the blender and made this milkshakey sauce thing which he drizzled on top of vanilla ice cream and strawberries in glass bowls. Very showy. I just had the strawberries (that’s another blog entirely).

I straightened out the living room a bit while R cleaned up the kitchen. Then he took the kids outside for more golf and sidewalk chalk. I finished up some work on the computer, and talked on the phone with my mom. I was sorting through some paperwork when they came back. They decided to feed the toads. This involves fishing for worms in a bucket of soil, and cutting up the worms if they’re too long for the toads to handle. The bucket of soil & worms had inadvertently been left too close to the edge of the balcony and had turned to soup during the last rainstorm. R thinks worms can drown so he headed a rescue operation which involved fishing the worms out of the mud, and adding dry soil to the bucket. Kids fed the toads. I tried to ignore the whole thing because feeding live prey to an animal is kind of grossing me out. Instead I stared blankly at my MasterCard statement and the Quicken accounting software and tried to figure out what the hell was going on with the money. As in, why isn’t there any?

Around 9 we began shooing the kids in the direction of the beds. A flossed & brushed and went to bed to read. I brushed & flossed H as he does an awful job on his own. He then went to have a meeting with R. They’ve been meeting nightly for about 5-10 minutes to discuss and draw plans for perpetual motion machines. H is obsessed with perpetual motion machines. While they were busy doing that, I got myself ready for bed, and fed the cat, hamsters and fish.

A was reading in bed until about 10. I was laying down next to H, reading the new Elizabeth Peters book. H kept tossing and interrupting to tell me some detail of his newest perpetual motion machine and to assure me that he’s certain this one will actually work. He finally drifted off.

I’m not telling you any more after that.

I just thought I’d finish by telling you what Wednesdays are supposed to look like, according to my color coded weekly academic chart (also known as my fantasy homeschooling life).
Math/History/Language Arts/Foreign Language/Art

In my fantasy life, we also have 3 delicious and nutritious meals + 2 equally delicious and nutritious snacks, and the children eat them joyously (and clean the table without being asked 3 times). In my fantasy life I also do 1/2 hour daily of either aerobic or core conditioning exercise, and I don't eat 100 grams of chocolate on the sly.