Tuesday, October 10, 2017

Ms. Last Mintue

Before I had children, and I was a young teacher, I was several things:

1. Ridiculously organized.
2. Always up early.
3. Totally Type A.
4. Always early, never late.

I was the first one to arrive. I used to get to school before the custodians unlocked the doors. I liked this, because it gave me plenty of time to get my school day completely organized and color coded. I would listen to podcasts while I sorted pencils by eraser color, music into grade levels with color specific binders, and marked grades in my grade book with color coded topics.

Now I'm a homeschooling mom of two, and I am always rushing to get places on time. Always, always, always. I have lists and plans but strategies, but more often than not, the biggest thing you'll find me doing with those things is playing catch up.

Basically, I went from the girl sipping coffee in the school parking lot, waiting for the doors to open so she could start the day from a place of precision, to a mom yelling that we don't have time to tie shoes now and just put them on in the car and I'll tie them when we get there, as we somehow roll out the door, rushing to get to co-op so I have a prayer of beating the kids to the class I'm teaching. And, oh, we'll have to stop at Dunkin, because not only have I not had coffee, but the kids usually tell me they forgot to eat breakfast.

I am so far from that girl that I once was that I am a complete and total cliche. The only place we get to on time is dance, and that's because a) Madison is obsessed with being the perfect dance student and would lose her mind if she had to arrive late and do the walk of shame to join her class at the barre and 2) it's a drop off class and pretty much my only time to myself. Most of the time I don't even need to walk them in. Thank God the set up for dance is pretty minimal. If I were a hockey mom, I'd be one who would be sorely tempted to just dress them in their gear at home so we could arrive as close to start time as possible, even though that's actually pretty unsafe.

Now that I think about it, I really am pretty good about getting to dance events on time or early. I think we ran late to only one competition, and even then we were pretty early. I guess having a dance obsessed kid is the key to being on time.

 My Achilles heel in all this is that I feel like I am SO CLOSE to being organized like I used to be, and as soon as I'm totally set up like that again, it'll be awesome and my problems will solve themselves. And I know how to get that way, because I've been on Pinterest and I've made lists and I TOTALLY know what to do. So really, it's not my habits that need to change. I don't need to do anything silly like allowing extra time. I can relax tonight, because I have a plan for tomorrow to get everything done.

Right.

Unless I want to earn the permanent name of Ms. Last Minute, it may be time to throw in the towel.
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