I don't know how she does it

For my two quant exams this semester, I took a good 5 solid days to study, perhaps more. For my final, I now have less than two days to study, and I am totally freaking out. I just looked at the overview of the class that our amazing professor put together, and I don't remember anything, and I can't even settle down and breathe enough to dig in and start studying, so this is my only outlet right now.

The last 48 hours have been mama/student crazy. I rushed all week to write a final paper - that's actually not due until January so that I could submit it with my applications to doctoral programs since two of them require a paper. I stayed up past three am on Wed night trying to finish it and meanwhile all week working on my applications to Dvs and Brk. Then, of course, Chris and I did what I thought I'd never do....some background...There's a great book called, "I don't know how she does it" - it's a novel about a British executive/mom who is working insane hours and also trying to be a mother. The opening scene takes place at 2am with her trying to make some sort of dessert for her daughter's school - but she doesn't have time to make anything from scratch, so she wants to make her concoction appear as if it were. I remember reading this and thinking - wow, that's insane. I'd never do that.

Thursday night Chris and I found ourselves up at 3am, no less, in the middle of this exam hell burning music mix CDs for Liam's classmates. I've been feeling crummy all semester having Liam go to all of these b-day parties but never bringing any presents. Since Chris has been the one coordinating everything, I just let it go, but I really wanted to do something....of course, I also had to have these handmade, more or less, CD covers, complete with stickers, etc. They looked great - Liam's Solstice Mix - we called it, but what were we thinking? Earlier that day, I finished up the final touches on my paper - that's glossing over all of the meticulous bibliography work to put together a Bibliography, edit, etc - wow, it's been awhile since I've had to do that - anyway, I finished up right before 5 and walked outside. It was a beautiful balmy night and right next to the K School is now an outdoor ice rink, as part of the hotel next door, so I rushed over to Fedex and called Chris to come over with the kids, so Liam and Chris went ice skating. I was pretty darned proud of the kid, all things considered. We were then going to head up mass ave ostensibly to pick up dinner, but of course, I really wanted to pick up those nice paper covers for the CD cases...but by the time we did that the kids were both asleep.

I thought I'd have so much time with both of them asleep by 7pm - a rarity - but I was still up late working on the applications. We didn't have the CDs burned til morning, so here we were rushing to get to preschool and Chris to coop and I was putting those darned CDs packages together. Got to Liam's preschool Friday morning for a presentation to the teachers of a gift from the parents - all three of them got iPods - that says something about the school. Of course, I saw that parents got individual gifts for the teachers too. Unbelievable. Then, I rushed home to finish up the online applications. Liam's preschool had a xmas tree sale the week-end before - for about $80 as a fundraiser - we couldn't afford that, but they had a charlie brown xmas tree left over for $10, so i bought that dragged it home. After two hours of not even finishing the applications, i ran (literally) back over to L's preschool for "music assembly" - where i usually come and then take liam home, but we were having a very crazy day, so I had to leave Liam there - he was not happy about that after assembly. Chris came by later for Liam's IEP meeting- more on that later. And I rushed over to have our final class/lunch with NB...(someone later ask me what he said about the Clintons and nutella) - i picked the cafe - a funky vegetarian place as part of this great folk club - i think people were expecting something fancier since the tab was on the K school. As we were walking over to the cafe, one of my classmates said, in reference to my kids, "I don't know how you do it."....stay tuned for part 2