Foiled Again! When Life Gets in the Way of My Plans

Today was the day we were going to get back up to speed after a three weeks' holiday. The study was reorganized, the plans were revamped a wee bit, and everything was in place for a triumphant first week of lessons for 2012.

So of course something had to go wrong.

This past Friday, Miss Priss awoke with a mild fever, congestion, and complaints of chest tightness. She suffers from asthma (not acute, but she does take two meds every day for ten months out of the year), so any chest issues make her mama nervous. Off to the doctor we went. After a strep test (negative), blood test (counts were a little off), and a chest X-ray for pneumonia (also negative), we trooped back home with instructions to use her nebulizer machine every four hours and come back on Tuesday.

We tussled with a fever all weekend; last night, it reached a high of 103.3, but today the highest was 101.5. She had chills this afternoon and generally feels yucky. We'll see what the doctor says tomorrow morning.

Not to be outdone, Tiny Girl suffered her first migraine last night. It didn't completely disappear until this afternoon. Now she too has a mild fever and chills. So I'm taking her to the doctor with us tomorrow.

I ask you, ain't that always the way?

Instead of twirling into our second term, today saw me brewing herbal tea (which I do all the time, anyway), dispensing medicine, fetching cool cloths for foreheads, rewetting said cloths, and snuggling with pitiful babies on the couch. I also tried hard not to feel a tad tetchy.

But why, oh, why is it that my best-laid plans go awry? Not my fly-by-the-seat-of-my-pants "plans." Not my let's-see-what-happens "plans." And certainly not my let's-just-get-through-this "plans."

(Aside: it occurs to me that it's a good thing these so-called "plans" see us through when I need them to do just that. Otherwise, I might not be able to hold everything together on those days/weeks. But that's beside the point here.)

It's the plans I'm proud of, the ones I've mapped out on a spreadsheet, the ones that inspire visions shining in my imagination like the cover of a Sonlight catalog -- those are the ones that seem to beckon trouble with an irresistible bull's eye. And before I know it, I'm making new plans that have nothing to do with our lessons and everything to do with life.

Educating my children at home teaches me, too. I've loved learning academic material along with them and also seeing things I'd already learned come alive again in their eyes. But some lessons are more for me than for them. I've had to learn to be more flexible and to roll with it, baby, as Steve Winwood sings (his best song, in my opinion).

My best-intentioned plans will lose none of their glow after a few days' time on the shelf. The babies need tea, medicine, cool cloths, and their mama right now. So I changed my plans.

I squelched my tetchiness and snuggled on the couch, sipping tea as my girls napped.