This is what happens when my children are on vacation (you know I still find it odd to write that I have “children” – plural – when did THAT happen?! But, I digress…)

I get sucked into some sort of time vortex where:

1) I wake up at 6 AM even though there is NO reason to – besides feeding them breakfast because their tummies stay on school day schedule

2) Days last a lot of hours or too few, depending on how I look at it. If it’s time spent breaking up fights, preparing/planning meals, cleaning up after them, etc. – then it’s way too long. But, if it’s time spent doing the things I like to do (reading, writing, watching a good movie) then it lasts about 2.5 minutes

3) I go to sleep on a Sunday praying that I’ll get to stay in bed past 7AM the next morning and when I look at a calendar again it’s Wednesday

Woe is me, right? Beginning today I’ll get some peace and quiet during the day, but that comes at the lovely price of waking up at the inhumane hour of 5:45 AM. Another benefit, I’ll know what day it is and you know why…because I have to keep track of their extra-curricular activities and what time to pick them up and all that jazz. This.is.my.life. I really have to work on making more “me” time. It’s amazing how quickly time passes while doing stuff for other people. I’ve even put my Spanish classes on hold while I get a handle on my days. I know me and I need alone time to recharge or else I’m going to be useless. I’ll just add “balance my time” to the list of goals for 2012 – I’m big on check-off lists, so it WILL get checked.

In the meantime, any suggestions will be greatly appreciated!

I’m sure there was a time when expats had to wait weeks or even months to hear news about what was going on back home. You know, something goes down and you have to wait for a telegram or a letter via snail mail to learn about the news. You ended up living in a sort of expat bubble where by the time you got the news so much time had passed it didn’t shock as much. After opening up Yahoo! at 9:30 on Saturday night to see that Whitney Houston was dead at the age of 48, I really wanted to go back to those times. I’m usually not that effected by celebrity deaths, because I

always think – well, I didn’t really know them. But, something was different with Whitney (yes, we were on a first name basis). I mean, regardless of all the trouble that she has had in the past and how uncouth her behavior has been in public, this woman had a gift.