I’ve reached that point that all parents reach, where they’re actually looking forward to having their kids out of the house. With one week left to go, I’m ready to finally have the house to myself. Since my house is also my place of work these days, I’m even more anxious. Work has been accomplished this summer, but far less than I wanted. It has been a joy, truly, to spend time with my family, to have mostly unencumbered time where we can all decide what to do with ourselves. There’ve been visits to the pool, leisurely walks to the farmer’s market, and lazy rainy afternoons spent playing games.

But now I want to get some things done and this week, what I’m staring at is a list of things that have (mostly) nothing to do with me. There’s back to school shopping, a high school tour for Geeky Boy and then for the parents, laundry, general cleaning, etc. Yesterday, most of my day was occupied with this stuff. I took the car to the mechanic, went to the grocery store, cleaned out the fridge. In between, I worked on an article that is due today (on which we got an extension). I’m kind of tired of my stuff happening in between everyone else’s stuff.

I set myself a few goals while I was on vacation, which I will discuss in another post, but I’m finding it nearly impossible to work on them while the kids are here and the schedule is still crazy. I woke up this morning hating that it looked like I couldn’t work on at least one of them and cursing myself for putting it off until next week. Lame, I said to myself. Lazy. Excuses, excuses! But seriously, when your day is filled with a) trying to get the kids out of bed, b) feeding said kids, and c) getting them to finally finish their summer homework, it’s hard to focus. Sigh.

And then there’s the guilt of feeling like you don’t love your kids enough because you want them out of the house.