Ah Bollix!

Ah bollix.  There’s the evenings gone. 

It’s pretty bad folks.  Pretty bad indeed.  The stress levels are through the roof again.  I was forced into the scratcher at a pretty indecent hour over the weekend.  And there I stayed for 12 hours.  I was lured back into it on Sunday afternoon for a two hour nap.  That night I was asleep by 11pm and up for 8am Monday morning.

I’m in bits, I tell you.  Teeny tiny bits.

And it’s all because of school.  The school that hasn’t started back yet. 

See, the problem was getting settled.  Actually daring to relax during the holidays in the first place.  Nice lazy 9.30am breakfasts of pancakes and orange juice.  Then, if they felt like it, the boys got dressed.

I would make a casual suggestion regarding a trip to the pool.  It was always taken up and if we put our backs into it, we got there an hour later. 

Dinner may or may not have happened on any given day.  Settling instead for pizza, more pancakes, sandwiches or a late lunch in town. 

Long afternoons in the garden and bedtime at 10pm to recharge batteries in order to do it all over again the next day.

Then Cúl Camp happened.  Oldest Boy was playing football every day from 10am till 3pm and the stress of having everyone ready for that time.  The nice, relaxed, chilled out mammy of the last 5 weeks had disappeared and the screechy, sweaty one had taken her place. 

Bad.  So very baaaad.  Makes me think of the 8.45am school start.  Our lives will be dictated by the clock once again and I will have to dig out the sleeping bag, travel mug and order a massive box of bananas from the supermarket because we will be spending all of our time in the car.

I am thinking too much about something that happens every year and every year I get on with it.

But this year it’s doing my head in.  Big time.  I like the easy goingness of summer holidays.  I rather enjoy the not having to be anywhere unless we feel like it.  I bloody well love the sheer laziness of it all.

I do not miss the frantic mornings and the different pick-up times and the homework and the uniforms and the lunches and the bath times and the bedtimes.

So I’ve come up with a solution. 

No.  Not home-schooling as was suggested to me already.  As much as I love my kids being home, I don’t love being around them all the time and actually need a break up and down.

The secret to my easier life is simple.  Let them all finish up at the same time.  Put an end to the 1.30 and 2.30 collection times.  And abolish homework.  It’s done in 10 minutes (junior classes) and half an hour (senior classes) anyway.    

So I suggest they all end their school day at the compromised time of 2pm.  I am not particularly interested in the Croke Park Agreement 

This one is mine.  We can call it the Ah Bollix Agreement if you like.