Dog Tired

OK. I hear you all...all three of you loyal readers...heckling me for a new installment. I know I am horribly remiss in my blogging duties, but I am just so darned busy, and tired too. Actually, busy all day, and too tired to blog at night. Here's the short list:

• We are back in the swing of our full homeschool course load for five children. Three have been delightful, one was unsure what side of the fence she wanted to be on (but I learned her), and one resists me every step of the way...every minute of the day. Pretty predictable, and tipped in the direction of success if it doesn't kill me.
• We are still swimming in therapists, pretty much every day. They come and marvel at my dining table school room, and make remarks like "Wow! I never learned that in school!" and "I don't know how you do it, I think I'm getting overstimulated." They are sweet, and supportive, and oh so accommodating...but I'm not sure that they make any difference at all. Boo wants them all to go away so she can feel normal.
• We have a new baby in the house. She's a nearly grown miniature poodle named Lucy. I think I'm in love. The kiddos definitely are, and Baby Boy is in heaven with his new charge. We found her after a long week of searching the shelters, and she was well worth all the driving and searching. Petting her lowers my blood pressure.
• We are back in the swing of dance classes, three nights a week. It's way too much driving, way too much money, way too much fun...but heck, this is how you get to be parents of the year, right?
• Libby-Longstocking is like to kill me with her moving/house renovation project. What a considerate girl to find her dear old Mama things to do with all her spare time. If it weren't for her I might be hanging out in bars.

So that's the brief overview...but it doesn't begin to cover it really. I'm tired, and worn down. My eyes hurt, and my scalp feels tired. I crave peace and quiet, and time to myself. I long for days where I don't have to go anywhere, and no one comes here...but they don't exist. Really, I can't find one on the calendar in days past or to come. I don't know how to say no to anybody, because I really do want to give everyone everything. Saying no has never been my strong suit...holding my head in my hands and threatening to check myself into a mental hospital? Well that I do quite well. Screaming like a shrew and quitting my job? I'm pretty decent at that too.

But it's OK, lest any of you, my three loyal readers should worry. I am convinced I am on the edge of something. Maybe a breakthrough, or maybe a breakdown, but I feel as though I am balancing gracefully on the edge of a precipice. Sometimes I feel as though life is so precarious, that I don't know what to do. Then a short while later, the driving need to "hammer things down" comes over me, and I begin to hammer like crazy. I feel as though the knowledge of what is to come, or what we must do...will come to me soon, and I need to be ready. That whatever is to come, will only become harder and harder as time goes on.

I realize it sounds as though I am mostly groaning and holding my head, dreading the future. Admittedly, sometimes I do, but that's not really what it's all about. It's about having a vision, and realizing at a point, that you have two choices. You can abandon the vision and make things easier, or you can continue and make things harder. I find myself looking at others, seeing how as we age, we often slow down, take things easier, have more for ourselves. At a time in life, where I see my contemporaries following this track, I find myself bracing to pick up the pace, put my shoulder to the wheel, knowing there will be less left over for me than there ever was before.

Isn't it a bit perverse to get excited about such things?