Schedules

Good morning! Yesterday wasn’t quite as fun-filled the day before but that isn’t to say that it was dull or boring in any way. I have decided that all the technology we have is making people boring, though. I mean, sitting around and playing with electronic devices all day long? How exciting is that? It might be fun for the person doing it (although I suspect in the long run it may not) but it certainly is not for those around the person.

Amena did not miss the bus this morning, which is always a good thing, but she is going to a friend’s house after school and then to the dance at school and she didn’t tell me if she got a ride home after the dance or if I need to pick her up. Always something.

The goats were enjoying the sunshine yesterday.

Cedric is ready and has more than half an hour before the bus comes. He has a camp out for scouts this weekend and needs to be to the Carignan’s by 5:30 this evening. Right now he’s doing the homework that he didn’t have last night. It is a good thing it isn’t terribly difficult, just more parallelogram areas. For this page they give the area and the base, the area and the height, or the base and the height, and you have to figure out the missing information.

Yesterday the boys did school in the morning and in the afternoon asked me more than once when the third Hobbit movie will be out on DVD. That was pretty exciting.

Joanna came over in the late afternoon to take Seth out shopping. They only had a couple of hours because he and Cedric needed to be at Hannaford to help with the shopping for the campout. That was interesting. They gave each group of two or three boys a list with instructions to get what was on a part of the list. The parents and leaders stood around in the produce area near the door and visited. That was actually not nearly as bad as I thought it would be. I got to visit with Deb Trottier and Cindy Plouffe. Actually, it was quite interesting and watching the boys in action was rather entertaining.

When we arrived in the parking lot, there was a yellow Camero that Cedric had to drool over. Joanna pulled up behind us with Seth when we’d been there about a minute and since we noticed other scouts and their parents, we went ahead and went in the store. When we were all done, the Camero was still there and Cedric had freed up some space on his iPod so he could take pictures of it.

When we got home none of the boys wanted to go to bed. Seth actually told me a few days ago that he thinks because he and Joseph do homeschool, that they should be allowed to stay up later because they don’t have to get up as early. That was funny. I informed him that his older sisters and Daniel had to go to bed at 8:00 even though they were homeschooled. He wasn’t too happy about it.

Anyway, when we got home, Joseph was watching a movie and it was after 8:00 and of course no one was interested in going to bed right away. I’d managed to get Seth and Joseph there and get the light turned off but when Paul got home, the light was back on and Seth was sitting in bed playing with the Legos Joanna hot him. I went out to help bring things in and Paul said, “The boys should help since they’re up.” I’m not inclined to agree. If they’re still up with the lights on, they shouldn’t be rewarded by not having to go to bed. Cedric did help bring things in. Amena was working on homework.

I’ve been thinking lately a lot about schedules. It used to be that we had a schedule. We did school in the morning and afternoon basically from 9 to 3 but it was hardcore before lunch and easy after. We had breakfast at 7:00, or close to. We had lunch at noon. Dinner at 6. Everything wasn’t perfectly ordered, but things generally happened according the schedule give or take up to about 30 minutes or sometimes even an hour. Bedtime was at 8:00 and although all children were never in bed and asleep by then, they generally were by 9:00. I’ve always allowed about an hour after bedtime for things to completely settle down and expect younglings to appear and need something periodically during that time. What I do not appreciate is continued appearances after 9:00. It was from 9 to 10 that I had my hour of downtime in the past. Now I don’t get that. I don’t get it then, I don’t get it at any point during the day. Paul comes home, fixes something to eat, and goes to hide in his cave of an office. I’d call that downtime with very few interruptions. He lays in bed for an average of an hour in the morning before actually getting up with very few interruptions. I’d call that downtime as well. And I’m really not complaining, but I am thinking that our schedule needs to be reworked. Since Paul isn’t going to start going to work at 5:00 in the morning and therefore want to be in bed by 8 or 9, I think I’ll need to work around what he does do. The problem is that I can get up at 5:00 but in order to do so, I need to get to bed by 9:30 so I can be asleep by 10:00. Yeah.

Maybe if I get out and go for a walk every day I’ll get what I need. On the other hand, it’s really hard to do much writing when you are out walking.

Up for today is school, a trip to the library, a trip to the Country Chicken. Hopefully a fixed electric range. The part that the repair person brought yesterday was not the right part. He said the problem is that LG made about six different versions of the model we have. So far, he’s gotten the correct part for two of them but not the one we have. He was hoping that LG would be willing to overnight the right part. If they did, he said he could come tonight or tomorrow morning to install it. I’m hoping.

And that’s all. More or less. I’m thinking I want a fire earlier today because although we had some nice days last week, we’re cold again. Currently 12° with an expected high of 35°. I am not excited. Still, have a fantabulous day!