Summer I Hardly Knew Ye

Summer is over. I figured it out last night as I was busy cleaning out a year's worth of paper crap in our file. You know, the file that supposedly has all the report cards, school notices, and let's not forget the bane of homeschooling - records and logs. People see the nice flat surface of the file, which is the only clean flat area in the room besides the floor, and just start piling stuff on it. Then they pile more stuff on it. It's like a black hole in our house.

Who am I kidding - every cabinet, closet, and shelf is a black hole in our house.

In the process of cleaning the file out, I found a 7 inch stack of unopened mail (so that's where our bills went!), a rebate check that we've been scouring for, 3 library books that were due a month ago, and a partridge in a pear tree.

I've put off the cleaning for the whole summer, just like I've put off everything else over the summer, but since school for the older two officially starts on Monday, I gave myself the "4 children with no epidural" pep talk and dove in. It's actually pretty good for a chronic procrastinator like me to start a whole 4 days before the deadline. Anal-retentive about cleaning and organization, I ain't. In our household, that would amount to insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.

Next on my organizing list is the bookshelf. You know, the bookshelf that supposedly has the kids' school books lined up nice and neatly so that they can just grab the right one and get to work themselves while I'm wiping the baby's poo off the floor. Except right now it's a big mess. We're using a swim floatie and baby powder as bookends. I'd love to post a picture of it, but unfortunately I can't find my camera. The last place I saw it was on the bookshelf.

When summer first started, I thought, yay, I finally have time to do all the things I need to do and had been putting off. Among the items on the list was revamping this blog. You can see how that went. I was very happy, however, to scratch off "drag all children to the swimming pool daily." Almost off the list is potty-training my youngest, which is otherwise known as "letting your child pee and poo all over himself and the carpet until the neighbors can smell it." Who wants to come over?

Only 4 more days till the end of summer. Who cares if it doesn't technically end until September 22. For all intents and purposes, it's gone. Sigh.

Note: It is 5 days later. School has begun. The bookshelf looks the same.