Someone just described me as having an exciting life. How true is that? I mean really, I'm a stay at home Mom with a tennis addiction and an uneasy juxtaposition of not enough and too much time on my hands. I do some combination of teaching my children at home and watching them learn in the world while I sit back and ferry their bodies where they want to go to do this. And I retrieve my dogs from the woods across from us several times a day. I suppose it's all in how you describe what you do.

And when it all comes down, it is a pretty exciting life. There was the breath-holding, sweat-inducing, ice dripping down my bra and neck singles match yesterday. There was the grand challenge of taking two five year old girls to Wal-Mart tonight and having them babbling to each other, me, and the other shoppers in their made-up language while I ran over their feet an undisclosed number of times because they wouldn't stop darting in front of me. There's tomorrow, when we're planning to drive up to Wintergreen to watch an Eddie from Ohio concert and see some fireworks. There was the non-child-friendly Thai hot chili stir-fry on the rice noodles tonight that we served to seven children, at least three of whom practically turned inside out. There are the 18 semi-melted orangesicles in the garage freezer because I had to take a friend home and then stop at Blockbuster instead of going straight home after I had been grocery shopping. The book group with 8 7-10 year old boys in it. And the used mattress I'm supposed to pick up from a friend tomorrow so that the twins will finally have something on their top bunk. I guess you can't really argue that it's not dull.

I'm in love with our screened porch. I read out here. I type out here. I blog out here. I spend time with the kids out here. I escape the freezing cold air-conditioned house out here. It's a place that positively reeks of my dogs (and features them as a visual element, since they love it more than I do) and gathers clutter like you wouldn't believe (yard stuff, nature table stuff, candles, sand toys, dirty dishes). But it's warm, cozy, and feels set apart from the rest of life.

I'm reading the Memory Keeper's Daughter, and right now I can barely put it down. I just started it this afternoon, and it's noteworthy that I am even able to start a book at this point in my life. Ollie and I finished Harry Potter 5 yesterday and started on the sixth book, but between reading aloud to him and cleaning up at the end of the day and general exhaustion from getting up too early to play tennis almost every day, I don't find a lot of leftover time for my own pursuits. I need to change that somehow. It's back to the old question of what you *don't* do in order to enable yourself to have time to accomplish the things that you *do* do.

I had a conversation with several different people today about what is different about next year from previous years that it just feels so...complicated and necessary to be planning right now for the fall. And my response is that it's because (a) there are more people to plan for--Frances is a real entity who is a full participant in many of the activities and (b) there really are more offerings for homeschoolers these days. There's the Homeschool Place, for one. But there are also just more organized activities and ones that are asking for a commitment or a reserved space...NOW. It went from art class being a drop-in with potential times on M, W, F. Then last year we sort of asked if the teacher would do a class just for our five families at a regular time each week. And now it feels like we have to reserve the spot and the time now to be insured it's going to be there for us and that it fits in our schedule, which of course means that we have to figure out what our schedule is in the first place, which leads back to the realization that IT IS JUNE!! Not August, not September, not even a full month from when the last "school" year ended, but early summer, when we're theoretically supposed to be on break. The best I can say is, it cannot be helped. Here we are, so we have to go with it.

I am going to sign off and return to my reading before the sleepover erupts again or I find myself being awoken by the crying of another person's child at 2 a.m.