I need to take attendance and create the PE log for this grading period. It’s due today. I am… clearly not doing it yet. I have been too busy pressuring my kids to get their stuff done in the past few days to get my share done. Instead I figured out how to spend almost $2,000 worth of school funding money. I probably wouldn’t be done with that project if Sarah hadn’t had an unexpected few hours to browse at the same time as me. Thank you, Sarah. That was such a huge help. It took at least 8 hours of my time to do that project… and Sarah probably put 2-3 hours in as well. Yes, home schooling is work for the parent. I’m shocked by every person who asks me if home schooling is easier. Uhhh… in what way? I don’t have to enforce being dressed and out the door at a reasonable hour…

My wonderful Jenny gave me a great gift today. She told me that they will not be able to vacation with us this year. She didn’t belabor it. She didn’t make it a long drawn out guilt trippy sort of no. She didn’t tell me about how other people are more important so she will spend her time/money on them. She just said they can’t this year.

I am so happy with her I could cry. A good solid respectful “no” is a treasure. I totally understand that vacations are costly and difficult to arrange. I have no expectation or feeling of entitlement that I should receive that kind of money/time expenditure. But I’m told that I should ask for things I want. A messy no is really hard. This was lovely. I’m so happy.

And that means I can talk to my family about what we want to do and not think about anyone else’s preferences. My kids are asking for snow and the beach. I don’t think they understand how contradictory these requests are. It shows their limited California weather life.

So maybe we will have a split trip. Or who knows. Maybe we will have to pick one after I look at the price of air travel. I just know that now I get to future trip and hang out in my happy place where I think of what I could do instead of what I am doing.

Pregnancy is so miserable.

P&A have been inviting me to the Bahamas for years. Maybe…

It’s a big world. Our bank account is recovering from the remodel hell. Maybe… we’ll see….

Maybe we should wait until after the house is sold? I don’t know. We’ve got some serious logistics to look at for the next 12-18 months….