I am not a full-time homeschooler. I’m only a part-timer thanks to the awesome university model classical school my kids attend. They have classroom teachers who write the lesson plans. I simply have the responsibility of doing two home-days per week. This, it turns out, is too much responsibility for me. It didn’t start out as too much responsibility. It was lovely at first. As my job became more demanding, I had the help of our wonderful nanny. But, life goes on and she got married (the nerve) and had her own baby. We were left limping along without a devoted adult and growing work obligations. This year was garbage time. So, to my future self who may look back with longing at the university model days, I present a day in the sucktastic life of working a demanding job and partially homeschooling.

5:20am – I awake. I am thinking about what I need to accomplish at work, what we will have for dinner, and whether I have booked all of the necessaries for our trip. I start my morning prayers, but become distracted and start reading about the weekend primaries.

6:00am – I am making breakfast, getting dressed, doing make-up and hair, and making my bed. I wake the kids. The boys don’t want to get up, so I hurry their sister out of bed and then tell them that they are losing to her. They are up, dressed, and out the door to feed and water the chickens in less than 10 minutes. This game always works because they are overly competitive and my daughter doesn’t care, having figured out that she does fewer chores if she dawdles over her toilet. I keep wondering when the boys will figure this out, but so far they still fall for the old, “You’re losing to your sister” line. I complete breakfast, pack my husband’s lunch, braid my daughter’s hair, and wrangle the boys’ hair back into shape after their acrobatic sleeping and dressing.

7:00am – Everyone sits at the table for morning prayers. I grab some toast, a banana, and my medicine and head out the door. I come to a screeching halt in the driveway so that I can run back in for a file I forgot, a spare charger for my phone, and a cup of coffee. My husband will drop off the kids at school after he gets them to finish eating and finish their morning chores. With any luck the beds will be made and the breakfast dishes picked up before they leave.

Until 4:30 – I do my work thing. The kids are picked up by their great aunt. I get a text right before I leave informing me that my daughter forgot her soccer shorts. F…Great (only clean epithets cross my mind and lips when I get bad news). We’ll have to run by the house before we actually go to practice. I leave the office and remind myself not to speed or allow panic. It’s soccer practice. She doesn’t even run the right way most of the time. The Lord has mercy on me and all the other Monday sojourners and there are no traffic jams on the way. I am listening to a really interesting book, so I am able to keep my resolve to not speed or lose my cool. Take that, lack of virtue.

5:00pm – We actually get home with enough time to have everyone change before practice. We also got to walk to practice, which is great because the parking is The. Worst. For some reason, the weather turns super chilly in the hour we are at practice and I am freezing by the time we get home. I handle this with heroic virtue much whining.

6:15pm – We’re back home. My husband has a meeting this evening, so I’m gonna let myself off cooking. The kids will have frozen pizza that I jazz up with some mushrooms and extra cheese. Chef Boyardee are me. I’ll eat some leftovers. We begin tomorrow’s homework.

7:45pm – We’ve finished 2 or 3 subjects a piece and no one had to be yelled at beaten threatened encouraged. Go kids! We grab pizza and hot chocolate and settle in for a bit of a movie. They choose Nanny McPhee. My favorite line in this movie is, “I understand you have extremely ill-behaved children.” Been there. We’ll try to hit one more subject before bed that way we will only have 1 or 2 subjects to finish in the evening tomorrow. I have early meetings and a haircut in the evening, so we need to finish as much as we can tonight.

10:00pm – I’m off to bed. Tomorrow I get to go to the gym at 5:45am, so I’ll try to keep myself from staying up tonight.

Five-days-a-week school, I am longing for you!

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