A cyber-friend of mine was asking about how I planned ahead for our school lessons. In particular, she asked about RightStart math and gathering the things I would need for each lesson. In my email, I told her that I give Levi his copywork and frantically look over the day’s lesson and grab what we need. She said that wasn’t quite what she pictured from my blog posts… (Wry grin.) So, in the interest of complete honesty, here are my confessions:1. I have no self-discipline. Staying on track is a huge effort for me, and rarely happens like it should.2. I don’t multi-task well. I love to plan, but I need time to focus. Time in my own space with no distractions is almost non-existent.3. I enjoy doing laundry and my shirts in my closet are arranged by color, but I never fold underwear. They just get shoved in a drawer.4. I hate to clean house. Hate it. Hate it. I hate mopping the kitchen floor, only to have it look like a natural disaster zone after just one more meal (or snack). I hired someone to clean my house a couple times around the birth of #3. It was so much effort to pick-up the house (so she would have some surfaces to clean), clean the house a little (I was too embarrassed for her to see it really dirty), and then get out of the way for a couple of hours with 2 or 3 little boys in tow.5. I love to eat. But not vegetables or healthy stuff, darn it! I love pizza, and M&Ms, and Dr. Pepper.6. I need tons of sleep. I never get tons of sleep. I’m always tired and crabby.7. I love to check the mail, but I hate to answer the phone.8. I can’t go to bed without straightening up the living room and doing the dishes in the sink, but can put off other tasks indefinitely.9. I get embarrassed really easily. I always shake my head when people confess to their most embarrassing moments and wonder, ‘Why on earth would you want to re-live that?’10. I hate making a scene. I would much rather blend in.11. I am extremely shy around people I don’t know or in large groups. Business dinners and parties are like torture to me. But get me in a small group of people I am comfortable around or one-on-one and I don’t know when to be quiet.12. I don’t like to do new things. I don’t like surprises. I don’t like changes of plans. I don’t go with the flow.13. I have absolutely no desire to ever have a pet. I dislike reading books or watching movies about animals. I get too emotional. (I grew up with dogs, cats, horses, sheep, goats, chickens, hampsters, fish…. so I am really sure on this one. It isn’t a ‘try it and you’ll like it’ sort of thing.)14. I get overwhelmed and emotional very easily. Especially when I’m tired.15. I’m a worrier. When I was little, I always worried that I had some terrible disease. Now I have 3 more little people to worry about.16. I love to plan things. When I was young, I’d plan things I knew would never happen. The planning was the fun part. I’m a chronic list-maker. I’m also a compulsive ‘namer.’ I’ll name cars, houses, garden statues, my next 10 children, pets I will never have….17. I take criticism very personally.
That is a long enough list for now. I’ll post on my current lesson ‘planning strategies’ (with the utmost honesty) in the next week.