back to school
Got pregnancy brain? Okay, neither do I, but based on my current symptoms I am diagnosing myself with a similar disease: back-to-school parent brain. It has only been three months since school was last in session, but my instances of scattered brain are through the roof. I never seem to notice the hustle and bustle of the school year, until summer comes and goes and we start over again.
On the second day of school, as I was recovering from the first, one of my daughters had an audition after school at a theater. We were required to bring in an 8x10 head-shot to the audition. Of course, I didn’t remember this was needed until the day before. Thankfully, I found a picture that I had saved on my phone and sent it over to the photo department at my local drug store to be printed. When I got the alert on my phone that my picture was ready, I rushed over to pick up the picture so I wouldn’t forget to take it to her audition. I pulled up to the drive-thru window and was happy that there was not a line. Until I realized, there is no drive-thru pickup window for photo! What was I thinking? Okay, I wasn’t...my brain and car were obviously working together on autopilot and took me to the prescription drive-thru window. Luckily, there was no technician at the window to notice my moment of crazy.
A few days later, I thought it was so cute how my youngest daughter thought it would be fun to race our car as she was running to the next house to deliver newspapers. I said to my husband, "Aww, this is great practice for soccer! Wait....SOCCER!" Getting into the routine of going back school totally threw me off, and I forgot that she had soccer practice. We quickly decided that we had just enough time to make it to practice a few minutes late. I drove us home to pick up the other car, with the plan that her dad would grab the soccer equipment, such as her cleats and shin guards, and I would take the other car to complete the newspaper route. We did a mad dash home and then took off in two different directions. Half way to the soccer field, they realized that the soccer ball she also needed was not in their car, and called me to check my trunk. Highly annoyed by this fiasco, I lost my temper as I pulled over and found the ball rolling around in back of my car.
That was just the start of this school year for me. However, I wasn't going to go down that easy, so I made a plan to do what every wise parent knows to do for a successful school year: get clothes out and pack school lunches the night before, use a planner/calendar to track all of our family activities, and plan meals for the week. My mother had only been telling me to do this for the last fifteen years, after the birth of our first child.
I was proud of myself for the first two weeks of school. After that, I went back to my old ways. No excuses, no regrets. Functioning through my crazy is working for me, even when it is not working for me. I am back to waking up two hours early with plenty of time to spare, and somehow still helping the kids search through the clean clothes basket to find underwear or clothes that match at the last minute. I still get irritated when one of my children forgets something important at home and needs me to bring it to the school. I don't always have a plan for dinner, but there is always something in the fridge/freezer to eat, so you don't have to worry about anyone starving. Some nights it is "every man for himself" and I am learning to be okay with it.
