I yelled today. I did not mean to yell, but I did. Before we get into why I yelled, let’s get into the events before that.
As an educator, for most of my career, I have worked at late start schools. I have enjoyed those schedules the most. The time when school starts doesn’t change when I wake up. I’m normally awake by at least 5 a.m. I prefer to be awake and working in solitude during the early morning hours instead of dashing off to work. Now that I am homeschooling my sons, I decided we are having a late start school.
As many of you know, my husband and I started our publishing company almost a year ago. We are currently producing our third book. I reviewed the final version of the manuscript and started looking through illustrator applications again. If you know anyone who can draw black characters, let me know. Then, I provided the author with an update.
Next, I edited work for a few publications I edit for, and I thought about what I would write next outside of writing this chronicle daily. This reminds me of journaling. I started journaling in middle school and continued through part of college. The only difference in this journaling is that it is public.
I made breakfast around 9 a.m. and afterward, my boys got dressed. We went to their school to pick up free meals. Typically, I would not have gotten free food because I know there are other families who need free food more. The school district made bags of food for every single family to pick up. I’m grateful and thankful to the staff that made all of those bags. My sons have been inhaling the food in the pantry, so any extra snacks are appreciated.
From there, I drove to Walmart and purchased a shoe shelf. I needed one more and the last time I went, the one I needed was out of stock. Luckily, there was one in stock today. After that, we dropped off two bags at Goodwill. This is the perfect time to spring clean, right?
Of course, my kids were hungry once we got back home. They had lunch. We started another load of laundry. Then, we got our box of dried herbs from our summer 2019 garden and cut them and put them into containers. I wrote about that in more detail on my gardening blog. Click here to read more. While my boys were working on that, my admin counterpart and I worked on the middle school building schedule for the next school year.
After that, I had to edit a document for work. This document is one of the documents my school has to turn in so we can hopefully become a Title I school next school year. This is why I yelled. My boys got into not one, not two, but three arguments while I was trying to edit this document.
Sorry to my husband’s colleagues who probably heard my elevated tone in the background while he was having a conference call. I told my boys not to speak for 20 minutes, or else. Yes, I stooped to the or else threat because…well because I can!
Once I finished, I explained the importance of understanding that we must get along while we are all in the house together. I’m not sure this message resonated. Also, I think my ‘or else’ threat was still fresh in their minds, so they were trying to look like they agreed and would do better.
They did Lexia and typing practice. We completed another activity on the Calm app. I was so calm that I fell asleep. After I woke up, we watched another video about St. Patrick. This video was not animated, but one of my boys enjoyed it. It was called St. Patrick: Apostle of Ireland. I was pretty tired. I gave my boys free time, and I fell asleep again. I woke up to a voicemail from my mom. She wanted me to call her and give my thoughts about whether schools in Indiana would close for the rest of the school year. I told her it is probably going to happen.
Now, it is time to call it a night. My plan is to not yell tomorrow. Tune back in to see if I don’t yell.
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