at loose ends

I finished my class on Friday morning, typing away furiously for 110 minutes, finishing with just 10 minutes to spare. That's about 11 minutes per "short answer", which isn't too bad. With open book tests, I tend to second-guess myself and want to throw in at least one or two detailed examples, and I can easily find myself going down rabbit-holes. The time constraint was daunting. With closed-book tests, I don't feel compelled to include every last detail.

Since then, I took the kids to see Night at the Musuem: Battle of the Smithsonian, which was amiably stupid but a good way to spend a rainy Friday afternoon (the kids had a half-day).

Friday evening we went up to Squaw Peak for our usual Memorial Day get-away. The kids enjoyed the pizza and wings that DH brought up when he finally got out of work, and they enjoyed the "dive-in movie" (Kung Fu Panda), although they all got cold in the pool and had to hang out in the hot tub for a while to warm up again.

Saturday we were out to enjoy the sunshine early -- too early, actually. We re-applied sunscreen at lunch-time but they all ended up with varying degrees of sunburn. DS1's as usual is the worst, I think because he spends the most time in the water. We're shopping for those UV-protectant t-shirts for both boys. DD never burns as badly as they do. You can tell those boys have some Scandinavian genes just by how white they are. We left in the mid-afternoon, exhausted, although the kids were not too tired to watch The Prisoner of Azkaban on dvd; DD is finally, finally reading the HP saga and enjoying it, and she just finished HP3, so it was a perfect movie choice for once. I love it, but even so I fell asleep for the last 40 minutes or so.

Today was an at-home day, after church. Both boys worked on school projects and got much done -- somehow they are always more productive if I am in the room with them, even if I'm not directly supervising. There was some cooking and really not much else. DH and I watched The Wrestler, and Mickey Rourke and Marisa Tomei were awesome, but I was a bit disappointed in how predictable it was. It certainly wasn't a waste of time, but after the buzz it got, I expected more. I should know better.

Just as I should know better about staying up so late. As the title says, I'm at loose ends now. I feel as if I should be doing something, but my class is over, and the state test isn't for another couple of weeks. So many tensions are pulling at me: kids, money, cancer, fat. There's nothing wrong, no reason to think anything will go wrong, just this vague sense of uneasiness and uncertainty that always accompanies lack of control, for me. We're coming up on the end of the school year and such transitions are always hard for me. I'll manage.