Addendum

For three weeks I looked forward to yesterday.  I had the usual Tuesday arrangements in place for the kids but I had no class.  I was going to crank through so much work.

Count not thy chickens before the hatching concludeth, ladies.  At 8:20 I got a call from school saying I needed to pick up Marty because he had fallen on the way to school and had a giant goose egg.  I zipped right down to school to find a boy whose head was much improved.  "I feel perfect," he said.  He asked if he could stay.  They said he had to come home, though, so I could watch him for signs of concussion.

I dropped Joe off at preschool and saw a big sign saying school ended at noon yesterday, not 1:00.  It was the first I'd heard about that.  The woman who babysits Pete during my class lives right around the corner.  I'll just do as much as I can in the window I have, I thought.  But she wasn't home.  Fifteen minutes later she pulled into the driveway, apologetic.

Marty and I went up to the university library together.  Library time is a scarce commodity for me, and I was gearing up to make the most of it.  Get this: the whole computer system was down.  The entire library was at a standstill.

At the student union's computer shop I was able to google the references I needed (since I couldn't retrieve them from my university email account), and by the time I returned to the library the computer system was limping along.  The lab, where I had planned to work on my stats problem set, was still shut down.  But I was able to print out and copy the articles I need for the next segment of my lit review.  By the time I finished in the stacks, the lab computers were running and I raced through my stats assignment. 

I let Marty pick a place to go for lunch as a thank-you for his patience (he read Calvin & Hobbes while I worked, in between asking me questions about statistics) and then we went to pick up Joe.  During the hour when I had anticipated working in a silent house, with three kids at school and one asleep, I had three kids at home.  (Nap? Pete said. Why would I do a crazy thing like nap when my brothers are home in the middle of the day?)

All this to say: yesterday was a crazy day (that's not even the whole story, but I'll spare you the rest of the details) and I was pretty tired when I sat down to post last night.  What doesn't come through, I don't think, is how much I am enjoying what I'm doing.

I haven't written much about our transition out of homeschooling, in part because I don't want to alarm any prospective homeschooling mothers.  The truth is that I am finding life as a part-time doctoral student far easier than life as a homeschooling mother.  The laundry is always caught up, dinner is usually planned, the Christmas shopping is all but finished, and I'm on track to finish the semester with an A in statistics and a completed lit review.

Some of the reasons why I found homeschooling difficult (satisfying, absolutely, but also difficult) are specific to our particular situation:  perfectionist mother not using a packaged curriculum, plus a high-voltage kid (both in terms of the brightness of the bulb and the vulnerability of the circuit to shorts).  I am realizing in hindsight that I was overlooking my need for stretches of silence last year, and I am relishing the quiet minutes I have this semester. 

But whatever the mix of temperaments in your house, I think homeschooling is hard.  Even if your children get along swimmingly 95% of the time and fling themselves into their work with gusto, homeschooling requires organization and patience and creativity.  In some circles there's an ugly stereotype of homeschooling mothers as denim-jumper-clad hausfraus who don't have what it takes to make it in corporate America.  But you know what?  I bet someone like Danielle or Lissa could rule the free world without breaking a sweat.  (Are you reading this, Danielle and Lissa?  I'm looking for a good candidate in '08.  Bean-Wiley? Wiley-Bean?  Think about it.)

Anyway: if you're reading this as a mother curious about homeschooling, please don't let me deter you.  My point  here is just to say that so far, fitting grad school into my life has been fairly straightforward.  There's plenty of work to do.  But at this point, three months into my first semester, I'm doing it gladly.