Just Getting Started

Before I started this blog, I spent a lot of time wondering what I would write about; what I could write about. Then I realized that I can write about, pretty much, anything that strikes me at the time - with or without an agenda. I'm a 41-yr-old, divorced, stay-at-home mother of three small children, and the majority of my time is spent in my home, with my kids. I do spend time with friends, and I do spend time working on improving myself. There are endless things I can write about.

Tonight, however, I am at a loss for a specific subject. I spent most of the day trying to get some school work done - an apparent exercise in futility. I'm in my next-to-last semester at Kaplan University, an e-college, where I'm pursuing a Bachelor of Science degree in Paralegal Studies. Usually I have no trouble getting my school work done during the day because it's just my two-yr-old daughter, Collette, and me at home. Her brothers, seven-yr-old Tyler, and five-yr-old Zach are in First grade and Kindergarten, respectively, and are in school much of the day.

Today, though, I received a call from the school nurse telling me that Zach's teacher sent him to her because he appeared to be taking pink-eye. Even though I explained to her that the boys had been messing around with markers the past couple of days, painting black under their eyes to look like football players, and that trying to get it off their faces may have caused his eyes to appear a little puffy, she asked that I pick him up and observe him at home.

Once I arrived at the school and signed Zach out for the day, we walked back to his class to drop something off with his teacher who, at that point, told me she hadn't sent Zach to the nurse. She had sent him to the office to pick up something I had left for him earlier in the morning. Apparently, the school secretary had sent him to the nurse because his eyes looked red and puffy, but she never bothered to ask him if he'd been crying - which he had. Since I'd already re-arranged my schedule to provide for him to be home with me, we just left and came home.

Once he was here, though, he and his sister spent the day just bugging me left and right. If they weren't asking me for something, they were fighting with one another. It didn't matter that I constantly told them that I had school work to do, they just felt the need to continue pulling me away from the computer. All I was trying to do was get a little research done for my two discussion board posts, and get the posts done - something that should have taken me, at most, three hours. Instead, I only got one of the posts done over the course of five hours. Then we had to go pick up Tyler and that was the end of that. With all three kids running around, trying to talk to me at once, and/or fighting amongst themselves, I can't get anything done. Once they went to bed tonight, I relaxed while watching my three favorite TV shows, and then got the second post done. That one only took me 45 minutes. Go figure.

When I stop and think that I've been in school for three years, and have had all three kids here all the time, Collette was born just before I started, I wonder how I actually got through all those classes while taking care of the kids at the same time. Then I realize that, regardless of what distractions I may have had, or still have, I always get things done. The kids get very impatient with me at times, for always doing school work, but I can't get angry. They just don't understand how important this degree is to us. Someday they will, and I hope that my diligence and perseverance will serve as good examples for them to pursue their own goals.