Things are becoming clear to me...

My kids are out of school as of Thursday and I was looking over their report cards last night. A's and B's of course and they both need to work on organizational skills and using time wisely. No great surprise there, as their mother is the queen of procrastinate and then hurry and get it done... though I've gotten better about that lately, and I totally blame my mom for it.

See, growing up, mom never made us clean our rooms until they were making her so crazy she'd flip out and scream at us to DO IT NOW OR ELSE! Actually, she was like that with all behavior. And so, we (and by we, I mean I) grew up thinking that was the way it was. You put things off until they can't be put off any longer, and then you bust ass to get 'em done. Nevermind the amount of stress that induces.

And yet... I find myself falling into that same pattern with the girls. So I'm making a concerted effort to stop it. We've instituted a couple of things that I sincerely hope we can keep up with until they're habits.

1. 15 minutes of working in their bedroom every night. The goal isn't a clean room, it's developing the habit of picking things up and putting them away. I don't care if I go in there at the end of 15 and it's not clean... as long as they've been actively working in there for 15 minutes. Yes, eventually the room will be clean and they won't be able to spend 15 minutes working, but in the mean time, they're developing a good habit.

2. I'll spend the same 15 minutes every night working on a room in the house. Doesn't matter which room and doesn't matter if I get it completely clean in that 15 mintues.

3. I'll also make sure one room in the house is always clean. This week, that room is going to be the kitchen. It will be CLEAN every night before I start my 15 minutes in a different room. That way, I always have a room I can look at and remind myself that it's really possible :-p

So, we'll see how it goes. Next month, I'm starting the girls' summer reading program. I still need to get the list of books together. But once I have it ready to go, they'll each have to spend 15 minutes every evening reading, and then tell me about what they read. Study habits, ya know?

Oh... and speaking of studying, I remembered last night that I was supposed to pay tuition on Thursday and didn't. So, I logged onto the school's website and had been dropped from my classes. Fairly annoying, right? But then when I went to re-enroll, I saw that there was an opening in the political science class I wanted to take, but which was full earlier. So YAY I enrolled in it, paid my tuition and was done.

Next stop was the campus bookstore website. The textbook that's required is $65 used. It pisses me off enough that I have to pay $500 for a summer class... I shouldn't also have to pay $65 for a USED BOOK. So, I copied the ISBN# and headed over to Amazon where I found the book in 'like new' condition for $2.99. It should ship Monday. It's like a garage sale, only rewarding and stuff.

So, as of July I will be a student again. I really am too old for this shit.

In other news, we're going here today... there's a car show in conjunction with this festival and Doug's entering the purple convertible. Then, we're off to Fuddruckers (can you say billion calorie burgers????) for a 'Cruise night'.