General Bo-Peep

Soccer season kicked off last weekend. If you've been wondering why the posting has been a little thin around here this week, it's because it is taking all available brain power to figure out how to apportion two players, two parents, one mini-van and one uncontainable toddler over two overlapping practice times, two overlapping game times, and two fields that are not even remotely near one another, let alone overlapping.

I'm not good with space and time. Other people could probably figure all this stuff out in their heads. I need to be standing over the Lego table, pushing a Hot Wheels mini-van and five Playmobile figures around with whatever you call that stick the generals use to play with their toy soldiers. But I would probably wind up whacking someone with the stick.

I've been experimenting with an online calendar to help me know whether I'm coming or going (as it turns out, both). It's been very helpful, because not only can I see the day, week, or month at a glance, I can tell it to send text reminders to my mobile phone. I have it set up for the alerts you'd expect, like, "soccer practice, 5 p.m., field 5B." But I also have it set up to remind me to "pick up kids after school" and "make supper" and "put the kids to bed". I suppose other mothers just notice their children are not home, or hungry, or asleep in their clothes on the floor. But I'm not one to hover.

Isn't just soccer and scheduled activities that kerflumox me, either. Even hanging out at the park, I have a hard time keeping track of everyone. I've heard that ducks, or maybe it's geese, only have a set number of offspring, because that number is as high as they can count. I am definitely one over my limit. It seems to be against some law of physics for three boys to move in one direction. I took them to the playground yesterday after school and I spent the whole time running. I felt like a border collie. I was shouting, "Come back!" "Too far!" "Not in the creek!" "Where's your brother?" What they probably heard was "Yip! Yip! Yip!"

I'm still exhausted from it. And game day is tomorrow. If I survive this tour of duty, and we are still in the Middle East, I will go over there and straighten things out. It should be a piece of cake.