Manic Mondays

Contemplating my great to-do list (Monday's list always seems to be the most daunting, don't you think?) the one thing that made me smile and hop with excitement was the one right on the top; "Post in Blog". That made me skip out of bed, and face the daunting task of preparing three children for school, plus all of the aftermath from our two-week holiday from reality, with much better grace than normal. Home may be  a haven away for everyone else around here, but this is where I work. On vacations though, I figure that if the rest of the family gets a break, then I will take one too. As a result, certain jobs have been neglected of late, quietly piling up, awaiting my return.

This morning Mr. Tilney shovelled the walks, then hurried off to school. After cleaning out some juicy and smelly specimens from the bottoms of backpacks my school crew (Jared, Seth and Jack) headed off. With a cold winter day before us, just the two of us at home, Bruce seems set for hibernation. He's still in his pajamas, reading a book and singing to himself upstairs.

It would be all too easy to follow suit. I do have a tempting pile of books from the library... and over the past two weeks I've honed hibernation down to a fine art. But no, I need to be a good little Bookaneer- at least for a few hours- and get things done. There are several other things loudly clamouring for my attention. One such thing is the little matter of food: today's school lunches were creative to say the least, scrounged up from leftover Christmas cookies and whatever we currently have in the fridge.  Seeing as I don't not want to repeat this for dinner, we'd better bundle up and trundle off for groceries. First though, I have the great joy of writing here.

Do you like poetry? I'm not talking about that dreary stuff that was crammed down our throats (rather like salad)  in an effort to make us more well-rounded, cultured individuals at school. I'm talking about the stuff that makes you laugh, smile and even think for a moment. The words of Shel Silverstein or Jack Prelutsky have always been a favourite of mine. I call it my "poetry pickle", for whenever I'm in a writing funk, upset, or just feeling mischievous I like to play with rhyme, stanzas and meter. It helps me not to take myself too seriously. Life provides ample inspiration for this, so I thought that each Monday I will post an original "pickle" that I've scribbled about stuff. Here's today's.

Back to Reality...
We got off to school
Quite smoothly today-
A quite big surprise
For me.
So with a great sigh
As I wipe my eye
I'll take down the Christmas
Tree.

That's it for today folks! After all, there's grocery shopping, laundry, and all those other necessaries to do. Have any ideas for next week's poem? Share them in the comments below. Until tomorrow, keep out of trouble and happy reading.

~K