I hate when I say things here and then later when I think of it I’m like, “No, that wasn’t it.” What bothered me last night and what had kind of gotten my internal feathers all ruffled was when four different people asked me during the baseball game what we were having for supper. I actually like when they ask me this. Number one, because when this particular stereotype fulfills itself I think it is so funny. Two, it’s just an honest question about an honest need and I don’t mind that.

But I didn’t have a good answer. And so four times I had to confess my failure to have planned out any meals for the week. I didn’t know what the plan was. I didn’t know what we were having. I haven’t made it to the store this week so I didn’t even have something I could scrounge together for a decent enough meal (one of my specialties), or at least one that would fit my mental standards regarding a meal you would serve to others. We were going to have to stop by the store on the way home.

Which we did. One of the boys came in and carried the basket while we filled it with a few thigs to make spaghetti and meatballs. When we came home I told them that absolutely no one was to be getting on the computers, besides the big kids. They were to practice their piano, something we recently started again. I have feelings about the piano things but I’m not going to go into that right now. I made the spaghetti and heated up the meatballs and sauce. We saved Dad a plate.

It made me happy to come out of the kitchen and see all of the boys eating their food in the living room. That is when I said, “Boys, I’m feeling a little stressed”. “Again?”, one of them said, and the younger ones laughed because it’s one of our jokes. Sometimes it’s “Sorry, boys, I’m just a little emotional at the moment” if for some reason they see me sad and shedding a few tears. “Again?”, they say, and then we laugh about it again. Everyone was happy and enjoyed having food.

I have a rather lengthy take-home final plus three papers to write over the next several weeks. Two of them shouldn’t be too hard. The one I’m more neutral about is the 15-20 page research paper about something we found interesting over the course of our Stone-Campbell Movement class. We’re supposed to have a “compelling thesis” that makes an argument. This is the kind of stuff I feel I should know already but don’t, and don’t really have a good reason other than that I was busy.

Or just doing what I needed to do to get by. The teacher was wondrously kind to not insist on the original Chicago Manual style but is allowing us to use the APA format that we’ve been using for all of the other papers. This is what I’ve liked about basically all of the teachers we’ve had in this program, they don’t expect you to be this brainiac or the highest caliber academic prodigy–it kind of surprised me. We’re all just regular people. There’s so much freedom, and I dare say, love in that.