4:30 am - Went to bed. Seriously, I am nuts. I am so stressed out about planning for next year and have decided to bite the bullet and get it done at night when there is peace in the house.

BUT I keep saying this – I am procrastinating. I love the peace and get so very sidetracked.

Last night I tweeted, read email, wrote about what a hypocrite I am, wrote My Daily Life for yesterday, read some blogs, read some homeschool forums (now we are getting somewhere!) and started figuring out the materials we will use for school next year.

I would estimate that 95% of the time was spent on blogging and piddling around and only 5% on actual homeschool planning. I have no right to be upset that I don’t have time to plan school. None.

I thought that now it would be easier. I now have a solid class list for my teen for next year. I am fairly confident about what she will be doing. I thought that was the hard part.

I was wrong. Try to find a good curriculum online that fits what you want to do and tell me that it’s easy. Not easy. Seriously, if anyone has some great resource pages that I am not seeing please let me know.

I really should have done this earlier and gone to the homeschool convention – at least then I could have held things in my hands, sniffed them and decided if they were ripe.

8:15 am – Teen daughter wakes me up so I can take her to help with the churches clothing drive. She didn’t want to sit around here bored all day while I slept and littl-er kids were away.

I rolled out of bed, slipped on some shoes, piddle-dinked and was out the door.

Man am I ever feeling guilty about my ever-present and oh-so-excellent skill of saying, “No.”.

No – I can’t help set up clothes tonight. I am in school planning mode.

No – I can’t help hand out clothes today. I am so tired because I stayed up all night “planning school”.

I have had women applaud my ability to say no. I must have my priorities straight, right? I am the one in a million woman who keeps hubby, home and kids first and foremost and rightly so. Right? I am admired by over-worked mother’s everywhere – right?

Not right. I often times think I am right. I seriously DO need to stay home and get things in order, but I don’t. I stay home, yes. But I do NOT use that time wisely.

Of course I’m just in one of those funks. The majority of the time (or maybe 50-50?) I use my time wisely. Or at least I am using it to rest and de-stress after trying to use it wisely all day.

It’s a habit I hope to break one way or another.

Either I will break my no habit by saying yes more often to outside-of-my-home service opportunities.

OR I will break my feeling-guilty-about-saying-no habit by using my time wisely whilst at home.

Either way something has got to give.

STILL TIRED

11:44 pm - I did not go home and go to bed as I had planned. Heck I got like, maybe 4 hours of sleep and the house is empty and quiet. Pepsi Max is my friend. I have been writing, tweeting, researching homeschool curriculum. I am sort of tired though.

This Daily Life thing is cool for me. I just write and write and write until I don’t have anything more to say. Then I take out some of the rambles and put them in their own post, or delete them altogether (yeah, right, as if that has ever happened). Works for me.

12:35 PM – Going to pick up daugher from clothing drive. No I did not sleep any. Yes I sat on my butt in front of the PC the whole time. Yes I am a whiner who doesn’t do a thing to make things right. Yes I will try to stop whining and start acting.

Yes if I don’t get off my butt soon I will be late.

THE REST OF THE STORY

I did get off my butt. I did go get my daughter.

What ensued at the church was wonderful. God used some crazy cheerful ladies who don’t think about me quite as much as I think of me to get me out of my funk.

When I got to the church 2 said ladies were dancing some crazy dance they made up and laughing hysterically. Fun stuff.

It’s on at least 3 different video devices, one of which is in my home, but I won’t put it up here. It’s more appropriate for an audience who knows and loves these ladies. I think some Sunday morning I will look up and there they will be – advertising the fun times they have helping at the clothing drive.

Oh, and before I saw this nutso dancing one of the ladies came up and gave me a hug. She’s so sweet. Wish I could say her nick name on here (he,he).

I was in slow motion. Just stood there and watched and chatted. Guess what? No one hated me (at least not anymore than they already did, lol) and no one batted an eye about me not being there.

Could be because I NEVER help at the clothing drives. NEVER. OK – so there was that one time. But this has been going on for years. So NEVER is a fair assessment.
Could be because they know that I don’t help with the clothing drives.
Could be because they know me and my stuck up ways.
Could be because they don’t judge. I like that one. :)

So what the heck was the big deal? I just let myself get into these funks.

Lack of sleep and lots of caffeine can do it. Yepper.

Knowing and being friends (and sisters) with the people in charge and KNOWING that they need help can do it. (Well this one really has a point, or not…ahhhh.)

But seriously – why would I pick this one thing, this one organization to feel guilty about? There are tons of things going on in my church that I don’t help with, trust me. I don’t feel the slightest twinge of guilt about not helping with them – because I don’t know anything about them!

SORRY BUT I WILL CONTINUE RAMBLING ABOUT THIS

I was sitting in church Sunday (day after guilt trip) and saw about 200 people who were NOT helping with the spaghetti dinner that was being served right after church.

Why was I the only one feeling guilty about not helping? Why was I the one person in that service who SHOULD have been helping but wasn’t. Because I’ll tell ya – I in no way thought that any of those other 200 people should have been helping. I didn’t judge any one of them. Hmmmm….

In a way I’m right – I should not feel guilty.

It is quite possible that I am not the arms or feet of the LORD. I may be the , hmmm, the left pinky finger. Not too glamorous, not used for much, but watch out when you need to type an “A”, “Q”, or a “Z”. Or when you need to raise your pinky to drinky.

‘Nuff said.