The Year Starts Now

The holidays are over. We’ve caught up with friends, slept in and lounged around at home. We listened to Free To Be You and Me, and watched Singin’ in the Rain and My Family and Other Animals. We swam at the pool. We should be well rested.

But when I think about how much I plan to cram into the year, I feel like going back to bed. I’m doing three units at uni each semester, including teaching pracs. Starting a part time job. Some volunteering - teaching ethics and helping organise the Mamapalooza festival. I’m not on a management committee nor writing a cookbook, nor making things for a fete. I hope to be doing less volunteering at school. I’ll be taking up walking and swimming and stretching at home and giving up late night tv and reading blogs by people I don’t know.

The children’s activities have stepped up a notch. I told them years ago that they could do anything run at school, not realising just how much our school offers in extra-curricula activities, and now, well, they do a lot.

I’ve learned that I’m better on nine hours sleep than seven.

Matilda tells me I should filling the freezer with muffins for lunchboxes and dinners for when we come home late. She wants us to cull about half our possessions, before Monday. I guess the things we haven’t used in six weeks at home are things we don’t need to keep. And she wants us to join an eco challenge. We’re already pretty green, but, of course, we could do better.

I’m just hoping that we plod along according to schedule. No surprises. No fevers or falls or family emergencies, or any of the life changing events that happen when you are part of a family, with members young and old. Not this year. Or next. Can I just postpone the dramas for a year or two? Laugh at me now, but it is possible, isn’t it? Not probable. But possible?