[To start: Thanks so much to everyone who left such kind comments on my last post, right when my husband had rushed off to be with his mom, who's in the ICU. She's still in critical condition, but she's stable, and although no one seems sure of what happens next, this is---for now, at least---good news.]

Needless to say, it’s been a crazy week or two, here. All of the things I’d planned to tend to before the kids headed back to school, all of the fun things we thought we’d be able to squeeze in… well, not a lot got done. And now school is starting in a couple of days, and I’ve been telling everyone how “I can’t wait for school to start! I’m going to have so much time to myself, again!”

This is because I smoke crack.

Well, okay, no, I don’t actually smoke crack. I just suffer from a delightful form of amnesia wherein I experience euphoria at the beginning of each school year, mistakenly believing that the resumption of public education will somehow result in my having more time in every day.

This is a grand delusion on my part for two reasons. First, there are a set number of hours in any given day—whether the children are home tormenting each other or not—and that number of hours is the number of hours you desperately require to be productive minus two; and second, I always forget about the other stuff that happens when school starts.

I forgot that I’m actually an officer in the PTA this year. (What can I say? I lost a bet.) I forgot that the school committee that I joined last year in a fit of activism reconvenes next week. I forgot that when school starts, so does soccer and swimming and homework and oh, by the way, have I mentioned how great it is, being married to a college professor? He’s always around in the summer to help out, and then school starts and… oh, yeah. He goes back to work. In his office. On campus. Which is not here in the house. And then for some reason he is not available whenever I might want him. That jerk!

My calendar is filling up and that vein in my temple is starting to throb and school hasn’t even started yet. And thanks to the events of the last week or so, I haven’t done a lick of back-to-school shopping, either. That’s not such a huge deal, I guess, but you don’t understand what the teachers at this school are like. I love them, but they are the hand sanitizer Nazis. I can send the kids in without notebooks, if need be, but those “suggested donations” of Kleenex and hand sanitizer? I need to pony up or I’ll be blacklisted as a slacker parent. I’m just sayin’.

Somehow I need to get to the store, stat. Just as soon as I finish up some work, pick up some groceries (so that we have food to pack for lunches!), take the kids to Open House, make sure my husband arrives home safely, do a few loads of laundry, answer my email, go to this meeting, and make six phone calls.

Dude. I totally need a nap.

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