Eclectic Muddlehood

I am exhausted.

Seriously exhausted.

But in a very positive way.   It is actually somewhat amusing to me that, as a year round homeschooler, I am being struck by the physical, mental and emotional adjustment period that is Back-To-School time.  Athena had no desire to take a break over the summer for more than a few days at a time, so we’ve been clipping right along through the heat and humidity of Southeast Texas, but in the last two or three weeks something has shifted and the pace has suddenly quickened.  It is as if she is tapped into some sort of energetic flow that causes the nation’s children to suddenly crave knowledge and new shoes again with a voracious appetite now that late August approaches.   Whatever it is, the girl is on an educational rampage.  Last Saturday became “The Day of Mesopotamian Madness.”  And she was not kidding when she made that proclamation over breakfast.  I asked her where that idea had come from and she showed me the source of her inspiration– blueberries and scrambled eggs.  Athena had used her breakfast to craft a map for the Fertile Crescent, complete with a blueberry Persian Gulf and two blueberry rivers.  You guessed it, the Tigress and the Euphrates.  She also decided to spend the rest of the day calling me “Mother of the Euphrates River“ whenever she wanted anything.  She used an old crib sheet to fashion herself a robe appropriate to wear to the ziggurat and presented Patris Maximus with a bedsheet, instructing him to do the same so he could assume his responsibilities as temple guard.  Amazingly enough, I was able to scrounge together a dinner that met her strict standards of authenticity- lamb chops, dates, kumquats, apple slices and sebetu rolls (which she helped to bake.)  The next day she wore her Mesopotamian robe to church and to a friend’s birthday party, came home, built yet another building block model of a ziggurat and opened a Mesopotamian jewlery shop in the playroom, magnanamously accepting Artemis as her apprentice and convincing Apollo to trade her animal skins (READ: beenie babies) for a hand crafted lapis lazuli necklace (READ: blue plastic luau party favor.)  It is on weekends like this, witnessing this all-consuming passion for learning shining out from her very spirit, that I wonder how anyone could ever mistake her own unique internal drive for hothousing on my part.  But it has happened.  It shouldn’t matter.  And really it doesn’t matter.  We are doing what works for us and Athena is thriving.  That is what matters.  All the same, it does sting a little to be accused of pushing your child in an unhealthy way when it is all you can do most days to keep up with her need for knowledge and keep meals on the table and just enough clean underware available for everyone to get through the rest of the week. 

Ocassionally though, I do catch a little break.  Apollo and Artemis are teaching themselves American Sign Language these days and will watch these videos, quite literally, for hours. Then, of course, Artemis wakes me up at 4am, vigorously signing something at me in the dark from the foot of my bed, so I pay for letting the video do the work later, I guess. That is the way of things though, isn’t it? Eventually the lesson comes back around to you. Funny episodes of karmic retribution have been taking place in recent days all over the place. The most amusing of which is probably the re-enactment of the Eighth Plague of Exodus everytime we return from a grocery run. I was mid-sentence, explaining for what felt like at least the twenty-first time, that we did not have to immediately devour every last scrap of food we had just purchased before I could even get it shelved, when I began to giggle hysterically. The Triad of Chaos just looked at me and then each other with this “Has she finally snapped for good?” sort of look passing between them. But I couldn’t help it. I sounded EXACTLY like my own mother when her four children, who also moonlighted as locusts, descended on her after her return from the military commissary. Here it was. The karmic boot to the behind for every time my younger sisters and brother and I managed to snarf an entire 2lb. bag of grapes or box of granola bars straight out of the grocery bags plopped hodgepodge across our kitchen floor while my frantic mother raced to store everything before it dissapeared for good. When I finally got my giggles under control, I tossed the Triad a bone and let them inhale a pint of blueberries while I finished putting everything else away.

It has been raining a great deal here the past week or so. This morning the Triad and I sat in the window seat of our kitchen and watched a small creek appear on our property line. We also got to watch the construction trucks attempting slow motion u-turns in our cul-de-sac through a little over a foot of water. But once the torrential downpour subsided, we discovered that the neighborhood actually has pretty descent drainage. The kids had a lovely time puddle hopping and delightedly drawing with chalk on the still-wet pavement after dinner tonight. They ended up drawing out most of the rest of the kids and parents on our block to join the fun actually. More storms are headed our way tomorrow. This sort of weather also contributes to my general sense of exhaustion. Rain just plain makes me sleepy. I better set the coffee pot on a timer for tomorrow morning so at least two mugfuls of steaming inspration and motivation will be ready and waiting for me. Athena warned me over dinner that tomorrow would be “Crazy, Fun Learning Day.” I asked her what such a day would entail and she looked at me with a mouth full of sweet potato and grinned. “I don’t know yet Mommy. That’s your job.”