mimsy and outgrabe

So, one thing I'm discovering in The Year+ Orientation to Having Three Children is that, surprise, you have to super-duper plan and prioritize. Priorities go something like this: Are the children dressed? Am I dressed? Does anyone smell or show visible signs of yesterday's sandwiches/spaghetti dinner/backyard dirt pile debacle? Will any of the speaking children complain audibly about not being fed? If the answer is yes to the first two questions and no to the last two, we can leave the house for school/camp/store/violin lesson/sports practice/babysitter etc. The bar is lower than it's ever been before, people. This is probably not a surprise to anyone with half a brain, but you should remember that through the course of giving birth to the aforementioned three children, I've lost an incredible amount of brain power. I believe it was A.P. who pointed out that -- three years after having The Boy -- I was just beginning to regain myself, to become more clear...

At the moment I'm forgoing vacuuming; the washing, drying, and folding of laundry; decluttering; dishes; grading; typing up committee meeting notes; working on the creative writing festival; and probably an additional five items I can't remember at the moment because my brain is fried . . . in order to write a blog post.  But it needed to happen, I suspect. Lest you all think I'd died. Also, I'm PROBABLY a lot healthier when I write regularly, even if the writing is not exactly diary-like and consists of simply sharing poems and articles I find on the internet. I looked here the other day and realized I hadn't written since the first day of school. And that, my friends, seems like a lifetime ago. (And yet strangely, I can't believe that September has passed and that we're almost halfway through the fall semester.) Despite A.P.'s assertions that I look like a deer in headlights most Mondays, I think I'm doing all right with the three-kid sys...

Next year, I am going to set my school email account with one of those automatic "out of office" reply messages that states I'm unavailable during the month of July and that I will respond to emails, AND DO SCHOOL-RELATED WORK, beginning Aug. 1. Really. Someone remind me about that, please. 'Cause I'm sure I'll forget and be all like, "oh, whatever, I can handle it," and then come mid-July I'll be a freakin' nut case, all stressed out because, very clearly, I CANNOT HANDLE IT. I'm having trouble focusing. I can't figure out how to see projects, even very small ones like folding laundry or running an errand, to the finish. I begin something, and naturally Vampire Baby or Little Miss Talkalot or The Boy interrupts as it is their wont and their right to do, but then I forget. I move on to something else. And as a result, my entire house looks like one of those antique shops that has shit piled upon other shit -- you know, those c...

I've spawned! Sunday, March 10, 10:56 p.m. To one super squirmy infant (7 lbs, 15 oz, 20 inches long -- for those who care about the stats) who has decided to be just like her older sister: a night owl. We're not sleeping much these days, but we forgive her. She's squishy and fun to cuddle. I'm not taking an official hiatus from the blog, since this blog isn't really an official, respectable piece of interweb fodder anyway, but it'll probably take a while before I can write often or with any regularity. I do intend to write, though -- this is, after all, a very cathartic exercise for me. And having to adjust to this new three-child system may call for a little bit of catharsis, methinks.