Sleeping In

Everyone has a different way of looking at their calendar. I'm generally looking to see if there is anything on the calendar that will take me away from my home, something that interferes with my very strong desire to just stay home and do things around the house. Which is why we have our Family Meeting every Sunday night, to plan out our week so that I will know exactly how many nights I'll get to stay home.

What? You thought the point was to let everyone in the family know what is on the schedule for the week? Ha! Everyone else in the house has an infallible memory (although most of the teen hormones are also an effective memory-wiping chemical which causes them to forget little things like "chores" and "homework" and "we already had family plans for that night" when it occurs to them to do something spontaneous like go out to see a movie with money they don't have, in a car they don't own, with fuel they haven't paid for). I'm the one who can't remember for five minutes that I have an appointment with ... with ... um, which doctor am I supposed to see this week?

Calendars are merely tools, tools which are intended to drive me insane with anxiety over the ridiculous number of things that are scheduled to occur during the week. Every night with something scheduled on it, is a night I can't go out to my garage and play with my power tools. Or down in the basement to work on programming. Or in the living room to work on a short story. Or in the music room to play my guitar.

Tonight was Scouts. I'm the Family Life merit badge counselor. There were only two guys who were supposed to be getting the training tonight, but it ended up that the entire troop came into the library to listen to my "guidance". I'm not sure whether that was due to the fact that my spiel was that interesting, or they just didn't want to hang out with the other adults and listen to deer-hunting stories. But we had a grand time, talking about what families are, and how we support and love one another, how we learn so much from one another, how we learn to work together in order to transfer knowledge and wisdom from one generation to another so that society will benefit and civilization will survive and prosper. We talked about personal projects and family projects and weekly chores and things that could be done during the winter versus things that could be done over the summer.

Afterward, I talked to my Eagle Scout candidate about the things he has left to do - time is rapidly flying, and he has only three weeks to get it all done! - and then it was time to head home and see how the family was doing.

We're starting some new routines this week, owing to some decisions we made over the weekend. Telephone service and internet for sub-adults is going to cease after 10 o'clock at night; hopefully, that will prevent anyone from having difficulty getting to sleep owing to the huge distractions of remote communications. We adults are still struggling with that concept, but it's going to have to be for us as well, since we've noticed that the internet is a huge time drain late at night, and we really need to be getting to bed on time. I'm hoping it means that we can start getting up on time, too, because I experienced a rather slow start this morning.

It was terribly difficult to get out of bed, and it wasn't because the bed was nice and warm and the room air was cold, or because there was nothing to look forward to at work. No, the problem was that I was exhausted, and just couldn't get moving.

This sleeping in has to stop.