random ramblings

The kids have spent the week sick, which has been hell to juggle between my schedule and Odysseus's.  They're finally getting better, just as I've come down with a head cold (which is now moving from my head to my chest.  Damn it).  They're feeling good enough to start fighting, so they're feeling good enough to be confined to their rooms since I'm not feeling good enough to intervene every two minutes. 

I wish I felt good enough to start working with the imp on last week's spelling words and bible verse.  It might keep the little twerp too occupied to fight with his sister...even if it did have the side effect of making him as miserable as I am.

The cats have been...cats.  Cricket has been co-dependent and is back to drooling and slinging drool everywhere.  Shadow has been clingy--she's taken to walking up on my chest and flinging her legs out from under her.  I have to catch her to keep her from landing on my laptop keyboard...at which point, she lays her head on my shoulder and exhales a loud purr.

I have been sick so very much this year--and we're only at the beginning of March--that I'm beginning to wonder if I've been carrying too much stress, trying to keep too many balls in the air between taking care of the kids, and keeping up with my classes and grading.  I cannot let the classes lapse, since that's where most of our income comes from, and I will not let the kids suffer, either.  I can't wait until summer.  And I'm afraid that something's gonna give before then, even though there's not more than about eight weeks of my semester left.

And I'm already dreading the start of Fall semester.

I can tell you one thing that has been dropped, for the most part, since I can't keep up with everything else: my writing.  I've only written something like about 3,000 words since the beginning of the year.  And I do not have the time, or the energy (physical or mental) to do better than what I've been doing.  It just isn't happening, and won't be happening.  I'll be working on getting the things I have done published, and then that will be it until summer, at least.  I'm not giving up, but I'm barely treading water.