Kathleen McCall:
Occasional�� Muse�

2004-08-22 - 5:58 a.m.

Undisciplined

I'm drowning in paperwork. Stacks of it, sheaves of it, piles of it. It's back-to-school time.

Older Daughter is filling out some of her own this year. "Some of these are almost exactly the same!" she said crossly. "And there's so much in here we don't need!" Welcome to the public school paperwork system, baby. There's a card in my Rolodex with all the information on it; all you have to do is recopy it fifty times onto the forms, and figure out what all you can throw away, and for God's sake don't lose any of the important bits or we won't be able to get your class schedule/your picture taken/whatever this year's inducement/punishment is for turning in your paperwork. Entire small forests fall in the name of "Semi-Emergency Release for Unanticipated Minor Disasters Requiring First Aid," "Full Emergency Release for Incidents Occurring on Field Trips More Than Ten Miles From School," and the startling number of papers you have to sign indicating, "I Have No Need or Interest In This But For Legal Reasons Must Acknowledge That You Guys Sent It To Me."

We're scheduling, too. You have to be THERE at 7:40, and she has to be HERE at 7:50, and I have to be at work at eight fifteen; nope, can't do it. What if YOU go a little early, and YOU go a little late, and...no, that won't work either. Well, what if I drop YOU at a friend's, but only on Wednesdays, and other days...it's like a finely wound machine, with no slack at all, no room for the inevitable lost shoes or the bad hair morning. I know within a few weeks it will have settled into some working compromise which will get us through the year, but from here it always looks precarious. Over the summer, we've degenerated into mornings that allow us to be ourselves: Younger Daughter to roll out of bed late, grumpy and uncommunicative, and to greet the world slowly on her own terms - Older Daughter in a silent and amusing battle of wills with me to see who can get up and commandeer the computer first. (She was going to get up at 5:30 and take it over this morning, and I know she must have heard the keyboard already clicking and given up. Ha!) Now we're facing a long string of alarm mornings, alarming mornings, race around and find those SOCKS mornings. Mom, you said you'd wash my pants last night and you didn't and NOW what am I supposed to wear? I hate this kind of yoghurt. I AM brushing my hair, I AM. Yep. Here it all comes.

It makes me a little tired to think about it, but the truth is that I do a little bit better under the pressure of schedule. Forty-seven and I have never acquired the amount of self-discipline it takes to live a fully self-directed, guiltless life. Can't do it. Might as well suck it up and live with the external schedule. It's probably good that I'll never be able to retire.

I start out with such stellar intentions, such a long and organized list of the things I will do over the summer when my schedule is more free; it all looks so do-able, in May. I just have to try! And maybe a thing or two off that list DOES get done - but it gets done in late August at the last minute when I realize I can't stand to let the summer go by with nothing at all accomplished. I always believe I will continue to get up at 5:30 all summer, and shower and dress by seven, and use all my daily hours to the best end - the amount of things I could do in that time, in two and a half months! Most of my summer jobs are not scheduled, but I'm sure I will do them on a schedule anyway, just because it's so...so..so adult. I will. I'm unstoppable.

I may be unstoppable, but I'm easily divertible (that's like a covertible, only the top falls all the way off) and I'm easily slowed. I will eventually start getting up later, and then going to bed later; I will put off the shower to allow children to bathe, and washers to run, and it won't be long before I'm still in my robe at noon. If you're still in your robe, it's just efficient to get the nap in BEFORE you get dressed. I could go to work at ten, but hey, I could also go at noon, or maybe even three, why not? It's really too hot to start painting today, or maybe I should wait until it gets hotter. There are interesting things to read on the Internet, oh Lord look I've been on the computer for two hours. Like that. It just happens. I take my vitamins, and it happens anyway.

So the bookend to May's bright optimism is August's endless paperwork. All the places we're supposed to be, which all conflict with other places we're supposed to be, and no way to make it, but we do. I don't much like the stress, but I have to admit that I will work pretty hard to be on time when other people are expecting and depending on me; cut me a little slack, and I'm a slacker.

I'd rather be noble and harried than guilty in my bathrobe.

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