Look over there, it's.... oooh.... sparkly....

No, there's nothing sparkly to look at.  Just a thoroughly burnt out and distracted mind that can't focus on any single idea for more than a minute.  

This is not conducive to completing homework.  I did get one short discussion post done, but I'm not sure it's coherent.  And then I was trying to find time in my schedule for this week's assignments, and totally failed.  There's not even that much that needs to get done this week, it's just that I know how long it takes for me to get all the way focused on it and get it done.  And it's a lot more time than it should be.  I just can't seem to find a switch that turns off "full-time mama" and turns on "student who can string two thoughts together into a cohesive concept with lasting impact on teaching strategies".   There ends up being a lot of wind-down time, involving games, origami, tv, staring blankly into space, wanting to read the books on my library waiting list but they still aren't available to download onto my phone... It's a full schedule.  

I actually do get a fair amount of non-Kaylee time - school, naps, and Dylan is home most nights early enough for me to escape to the hotel lounge for some homework time.  It just never feels like *enough*.  A fellow Stay-At-Home-Cirque-Mom and I were talking about this last week.  We could get our husbands to take the kids away all day, and two minutes after they get home and we get our happy-kid hugs, we're asking for just ten more minutes of alone time, ten more minutes to get done something else that was on our list of "if I ever get ten minutes to myself, I can...."  I thought I was the only horrible parent who is always looking for another way to just get a minute (or ten, or sixty, or all day) to myself.  Turns out, it's not actually a quality of a horrible parent.  Just a parent.  Especially a parent of a toddler.  

Sigh.

The list of things I'm working on hasn't changed since the last update.  I still have knitting to do, homework to finish, packing to start, and everything else.  It's just not getting done in an hour here, ten minutes there.  And there haven't been any nice long days at Starbucks, since Kaylee's been home for Golden Week Holidays for the past ten days.  Tomorrow she goes back to school.  Maybe those 5 hours will be enough to work through at least one of the things, and help me get a better handle on the others.  

Thus ends the midnight ramblings of a tired mama.

Tomorrow - Golden Week Holidays in Pictures.  Hopefully.