Counting Down

School is starting next week.
My children are not prepared and neither am I!
I loathe the thought of getting up early, rushing around to get somewhere on time, and then arriving to wait in line to let everyone out at their destination. Seems a little crazy to me, the routine we put ourselves through everyday.
Ahh..routine. I know moms who live and die by routine. Bedtime, church, school, zumba. Wow. I just realized how normal most people seem. Im pretty sure a lot of them have dinner at the same time everynight too, like on those hamburger meal commercials.
We do not have any sense of routine- we all have different schedules. I have school 4 days a week, the kids 5, Hubby works 5 days. Football, teenager with job, babysitting, scouts, did I miss anything?
Oh yes- chickens, dogs, 4-H, wii, (my boys try to schedule this in on the actual calendar), garden, dr appointments...the list does go on and on. Our calendar looks like someone threw up a bunch of letters and numbers...we have codes for everything.
I guess I get more done than the average person because I can multitask very well. I learned to do it when I had 4 kids under 8. I did not really have choice, which is why we are so fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants-ish.
I used to want to be "that mom".
Always with a healthy snack, balanced dinner. Always with a bandaid, kind words, pretty smile. Always with the niceset clothes, very domestic looking, in cute capris and a t shirt that is a little fitted, but not sexy looking ( don't want to over do it on front of the kids) Pure white tennis shoes, and perfect, easy hairstyle.
They do exist you know. They are all around me, at football practice, in the schol parking lot, at zumba, in church. Perfectly mannered kids, clean babies and nice cars scheduled for regular maintenance.
Then I woke up one day and realized it was all a huge facade, full of fake everything. I was only seeing a sliver of their lives, the public part they wanted me to see. One girl was so miserable she was filing for divorce and only had 4 outfits to her name, because she spent all her money on her kids needs...she was living with her parents, and just wasn't talking to anyone about it. She had am image to protect.
REALLY?
Im at a "who cares" stage. I don't care if you stop by and my floor needs swept. I do not care if I see you in public and I look like I do when I work in the barn all day. My kids talk back (shocker, I know) and we never seem to have enough of anything, ever. My boys fight to the death over the wii remote, my daughter is a teen with teen issues and my son doesnt even live here anymore because he is a young adult that knows it all! My mother in law despises me (unknown reasons) , my in laws never come around or call, and my car has no rear suspension (currently)
I just do not care.
:)
It is not what keeps me moving, driving foward, caring about all of this crazyness. What keeps me moving is knowing that at some point in this life or the next, I will be rewarded in heaven with Christ for all of the crazyness endured here.
See- who cares is ok. I got bigger fish to fry. :)