Temporal Disconnect

At work, we just got back, really back, into the swing of things after Spring Break.  Sure, we had school last week, but there were two state holidays in there, only two real school days, and one school-wide service learning day.  Half the kids didn't show up for school, to be very honest.  Quite a few were on a mainland field trip which happened over the break, but some of them had the "flu".  Yes, I just went there with the quotation marks.  One kid I genuinely believe was sick because he came back in hacking and sniffing and coughing, but yeah, the rest of those kids?  Slackers with parents who back them up.

Getting back into the swing of things isn't easy - but I made it harder on myself by cooking a turkey on Easter.  It was the most festive meat I had in the freezer, so I pulled it out.  Then I figured, "Might as well make a pumpkin pie and all the trimmings!"  It was so dark and chilly all day on Easter and I got so into the groove of making what amounted to a Thanksgiving dinner, that I actually felt a sense of temporal disconnect - it felt like November with the joy of Christmas coming up.

But no, it's just April.  Yes, summer is coming, but to get to summer, I have to get through standardized testing, increasingly antsy kids, finals, senior project presentations... a host of less fun teaching activities.

On top of that, my garden is nowhere near as far along as I'd hoped to be with all that time off, my house, frankly, could be swept and dusted more frequently,  my sheep need their hooves trimmed.  I just feel like I don't do anything good enough, because I am always just keeping slightly ahead of chaos - at least at home.  Fortunately, when I am at work, I am at work.  Even with the help that my kids provide (which needs to be supervised and is therefore not as helpful as it could be), nothing is getting done to the standard I expect.

That's why, when I made my goals a few days ago, I decided I am giving us 5 years to get basically food self-sufficient (baring mainland-y fruits like apples and bread-making supplies like yeast and flour - flour doesn't do well in Hawaii).  By that time, unless the older kids come back, everyone will be out, at least in college, and I won't have 12 hour days waiting for kids to finish atheletics, and hopefully, I will learn to rhythms and order to keep food growing all year round.  And I will have a dairy animal or two.