General Catch-Up

Next week is spring break, so I have a week off from the kids (and from all my other activities), and thank goodness because I just about lost it with them last night. There's the one girl who starts talking every time I open my mouth. I had to do the "you can't listen while you're talking" lecture and ask her what I'd just said that she'd totally missed because she started chattering as soon as I started giving instructions. Then even one of the good kids was being a pain when I was taking them in small groups to the bathroom to wash the glue off their hands after they did a craft project. She started to run off down the hall on her own while I was still with the other kids in the bathroom. I had to resort to the mean voice to get her to come back.

Of course, next time they'll be hyper after coming back from spring break, so that will be even more fun, and we're singing in church the Sunday after that. I may need the cattle prod. I may possibly be counting down the number of weeks until we end for the summer (8 actual sessions, plus one night of the program for the parents).

I have about four inches of my blanket knitted (out of a targeted 44), and I'm finding I'm more likely to make mistakes on the rows of straight purling than on the complicated pattern rows. That may be because I carefully mark out the spots for each pattern repetition and then count stitches afterward to make sure I made the right number, but I think I can just purl straight across without thinking about it. A couple of times I've somehow dropped a stitch there, and once I managed to get in an extra stitch when the yarn had frayed a bit and I thought it was two separate stitches instead of just one. I may have to leave in the markers and count stitches between markers even on the "simple" rows. But I have figured out how to find exactly where a stitch went wrong by looking at the pattern, so I've been able to recover each time. There's a strangely gratifying sense of accomplishment about doing this project as I see it take shape. I can see how this becomes addictive.

But today is house cleaning day. I've made a lot of progress in bits and pieces, and that's made me aware of just how bad things were. I'd built a nice little nest on the sofa from the spiral notebooks for writing projects, newspapers with crossword puzzles still undone, books and knitting/crochet supplies. Meanwhile, all the remnants of the last cold were on the coffee table, with a pharmacy full of medications. I'm looking forward to a lazy Sunday of catching up on my reading, and it will be nice to have the living room in proper order when I do so. That will also make things easier next week when I go back into serious writing mode.

The office reorganization, however, remains a work in progress. I got really sidetracked, so things stalled at a bad place. Come to think of it, the last time I got started reorganizing the office, I sold a book midway through and the project stalled. Apparently, trying to clean out my office is my lucky charm. I may never have a clean, organized office, but I'll make a living as a writer.