A White Square Day

A few months ago I had a lot of these days--white square, meaning a big beautiful white square on the calendar with nothing filled in--a "nothing to do day". Maybe I had preschool drop-off/pick-up, but otherwise I was free to homeschool Michael and then do whatever we decided to do. I found that I pretty much could stay on top of errands and chores and occasionally squeeze in homemade cookies or an impromptu trip to the park. I loved it. I will admit that I am a homebody. I don't say this to make you think I just want to stay home all the time, but I do not do well spending my entire day in the car, driving from one activity to the next. Some people thrive on this and love to be extremely busy and out and about, but not me.

Then something changed and I still don't know what happened, but all of the sudden, instead of having one day where I was kinda busy, I had 4 days that were crazy busy. I was miserable by the end of the day and started drowning in chores, errands, homeschooling, and nothing was being done 100%. I kept saying to myself that I needed to stop saying yes or stop trying to fit too many things in, but I kept doing it.

But no more.

This morning at 5:30 am, Michael came into my room and said he needed to throw up. He made it to the bathroom and was sick off and on for several hours. Once I knew he really had a little bug, this relief came over me because I realized that I now had been given a white square day. No preschool drop-off, no Rx pickup, no homeschool group, no 3 mile treadmill run at the Y, no haircuts. As I went to bed last night, my mind was already calculating how I was going to accomplish all the things in my day today. Now, some of these things are fun (homeschool group), some are things I choose to do (like go to the Y to run), but when I start feeling relief about not having to do the things I normally would choose to do, then I know I am doing the right thing.

I don't even really know why I felt like I wanted to write about this today. I guess it's nice to have those lightbulb moments and I wanted to share. This is turning out to be a perfect day--my boys are happy, playing and content to be home. I have homemade bread dough in the bread machine and I'll be making pigs in a blanket with it later today and we won't be in a hurry, so the boys will get to help me. I've changed all the sheets and washed almost all the clothes. We haven't spent any money or burned up any of our precious overpriced gasoline. The weather is beautiful, so I have the backdoor open. But, in a bit, my husband will be home and I'll get to go to the hair salon (even if it is just to have my bangs trimmed) and run one other errand and that all sounds just right to me.

I had to put my white square back in b/c I wanted to say that I used a picture of a white square plate for a reason. I want some of these! Oh, Ikea, why can't you be close to me?

So, back to my "no more crazy busy days": I really mean it. I am a stay-at-home mom. I homeschool my kids. I cook from scratch. Days like today should not be as rare as the animals in McGrew Zoo, they should be the norm. So, starting today, they will.

And in case you don't know about the animals in McGrew's Zoo, you should--it is my all time favorite Dr. Seuss book. I will stop what I am doing 99% of the time when one of the boys brings it to me to read.