Shopping with children sucks



I didn't get my grocery shopping done last weekend.  So I have gone to the store every day this week.  I hate that.  I've also had to take kids with me.  Today, I took one of my coveted copies of Taste of Home with me to shop for a particular recipe for dinner tonight.  Big Mistake.  Because of course I'm going to be distracted by four little urchins.  And of course I am going to leave something behind.  And it might as well be the damn recipe I just bought a whole bunch of food for. 

I always double check that I have everything before I leave.  Four children?  Check.  Are all four mine?  Purse?  Keys?  Sunglasses?  The checker knew I had that magazine with me, because she fished it out of the shopping cart and handed to me.  But I obviously left it behind, and I didn't realize it until I got home this afternoon and got ready to start making the spaghetti sauce.  Damn.

I called the store.  I was on hold for fifteen minutes.  The checkstands are like thirty feet away from the service counter.  WTF?  I keep the phone to my ear, and I call back on my cell phone.  I am put on hold again.  Great... Hall and Oates - IN STEREO!  Nope... can't find it.  I described it in detail - including the NEON PINK post-it that is in plain sight.  Nope... can't find it.  (cough, cough, bullshit)

Mom arrives to pick up an onion (bless her), so she stays and I drive back to the store to look for myself.  The store also happens to be 20 minutes away, since we stopped there on the way home from karate.  I pull up - and hey look - our cart is still where I left it.  No luck.  I go inside.  I check out the check stand I went through.  And well, wouldn't you know... there is a bright pink stickie, calling out to me.  In plain view.  Right there, right where the checker is standing.  Except that it is a different checker.  So nice of the first lady to stash it there... so it could be forgotten.  So nice for the legally blind courtesy clerk to claim it was taken by another customer.

King Soopers?  Fail.

I hate forgetting things.  I hate that I can't get my act together and get the shopping done late on a Saturday evening like I am supposed to.  Without children.  How else can I sneak a candybar into the shopping cart?

Jumping ship from a conventional life

I'm drowning in an ocean of my own making

Four years ago we made the decision to homeschool our children.  At the time, family members thought that it would be just for the oldest child, and that it would be temporary.  I knew it would be for all of our children, and for the duration of their school years.  I envisioned days of exploration, reading, impromptu science experiments, art supplies, field trips, vacations in the fall and occasionally sleeping in.

And we do these things.  Occasionally.  We cram them in around all of the other stuff called life.  Despite the fact that my heart tells me that it should be the other way around - that life should make way for our education.  Instead of doing what my heart desires, my life has been hijacked by responsibilities, meetings, and commitments I should have never made to begin with.

Two weeks ago I had a major freak out.  I wanted to quit.  No homeschool group.  No Girl Scouts.  I was not enjoying myself - why should I continue to do these things when they were beginning to feel so toxic to me??  I just wanted to retreat from everything, circle my children around me and lock the front door, turn off the phone, and - most importantly - never, ever check my email again, for it is always filled with "discussions", nasty-tempered messages and flaky, sorry-to-cancel-at-the-last-minute crap.

I love my homeschool group.  It has opened our minds to the world of homeschooling and brought many important, wonderful friends into my life.  But we have grown by massive proportions in the past three years, and the integrity of the group has disintegrated and we are on the verge of imploding.  And I am sad.  Very, very sad.  We are comprised of 130 families that don't give a rat's ass about the planning, organizing and mission of the group, and the 15 or so families that do.  I see a split hurtling fast and furious towards us... and I don't want to be in the crossfire. 

 

These two issues suck so much of my energy that there is not much left to give in the way of homeschooling - the whole point of all of this anyway!  I got involved because that seemed like the logical thing to do - if you join a group you should be an active part of it, yet I feel so frustrated with the greater membership that I can't even call this a 'group' anymore. 

All this to say that I am lonely.  It has been one endless race to get through the logistics, emails and record-keeping of each day, and yet having any kind of meaningful moments in time are hard to come by.  Last week was so damned difficult I just sat down and cried alone for a few minutes here and there, when I could steal the time.  On Wed, Thurs and Fri I spent all of 10 minutes in my house each day - and I am not kidding.  There was no break in the action.  Yesterday was the first day that I could have a few moments to breathe.  I went to Park Day and one other mom with her three boys was there - we arrived at the same time and stayed for a couple of hours.  It was the best conversation I've had in a long, long time - (thank you Kari!!).  For once, I didn't mind that none of the other 140 member families in our group didn't bother to show up - it meant that we could talk uninterrupted.

When you leave a conventional life behind, you have to guard yourself against alienating yourself completely.  Only those who live the homeschooling life truly understand you and your worries, triumphs and frustrations.  The friendships I have made over the last four years are my lifeline against depression, loneliness and feeling overwhelmed with the awesome personal responsibility that homeschooling is.  My self-perpetuated 'busyness' leaves little time for socializing, and the other moms are so busy too that I am sure they feel the same way from time to time.  I have found that the only way to make it work at this point is to schedule time with friends.  A few weeks back I went for an afternoon walk with a friend, whom I hadn't had time to really 'talk' with in almost a year - and it was so nice to catch up!  Sometimes you have to be unconventional to preserve your sanity.  But once-a-month grown-up time isn't going to cut it either...