The Quiet One

Every week, Tuesday threatens to destroy me until it doesn't.  It starts with wake up, as if the kids are going to miss the bus, this is usually the day.  It's also trash day and that means waking up the middle two early to take down the garbage.  I make the lunches.  The kids also have band so they need their instruments.  Launching the top four, it is now the next 3's turn.  They have papers to sign and things they forgot, but we make it to the bus and all have left the home, hair brushed, socks and shoes, coats and in some cases hats, and today, mercifully, no one forgot their lunch.

One returned home, she feels sick.  My morning is now shot.   I phone the doctor's and do my upstairs patrol --which means gather all the clothing and the trash and make the beds, make sure the toilets aren't clogged and the sinks speckled with toothpaste.  I turn off the lights and shut the doors.  On a good day, I make it through the main and top floor, on a great day, I mop and hit the basement.  Today is not a good day.

Our bed needs stripping.  I'm not scared because we have a new washer and dryer.  We'll test those suckers out.  Alas, the dryer for the first time, failed me.  My comforter did not get comfortably warm until three cycles through.   We go to the doctors, and the CVS, and back home.  I rest for half an hour, which means I rodeo the laundry along and clean out the sink and clear out emails.   It is time to take the teen to her job interview.  Then I swing back home to pick up the kids from the bus, and then back to the two schools to get the tweens, the track star and then the job interviewer.  I snag her to do a quick shop while she waits.  We drive home, unload and start dinner.

It is Tuesday.  Two have CCD, and another has basketball.  They are sequential, not congruent, to ensure maximum inefficiency of my time.   At 8:30, we begin the long trek home so they can eat a second dinner (not wolfed down), and finish any homework.  I begin dishes and check the laundry and pick up the shoes, coats, lunch boxes, papers and socks.   The house feels wrecked and disorganized. I feel wrecked and disorganized.  Putting them to bed, my daughter handed me a note she'd drawn during a break in the action. "I LOVE MOM." It has me with a crown.  I have been paid in full by the quietest of my children, when I felt most spent.

It's the quiet ones the Holy Spirit uses.   Going to have to watch this one.