Ruining the Hallelujah

When Wesley came home for lunch today, I asked him who invented this day.

I knew, of course, and I also know that I am to be glad and rejoice in it, but I still asked the question in the same spirit that I sometimes ask who invented home-schooling.

I was just coming up out of a chilly basement where I had been sorting laundry, and since I was at a kid's consignment sale this week and brought home clothes for 4 children, there was a mountain instead of a mound. Plus, while I was sorting, the boys turned the new baby monitor into a walkie-talkie (the person who designed the "talk" feature on these units must not have had boys...) and Elasa complained bitterly that she almost had Finley asleep at one point, but that the boys made so much noise they woke him up again.

It was also raining cats and poodles outside, and for some reason, while weather like this makes me more sluggish, it seems to energize my brood. Sometimes, when the noise crescendos and the floors shake, I wonder who will fall apart first. Me, or the house?

Oh, yes. And it was 12:30 and we were not done with school.

(Insert proper grimaces and groans coming from a teacher a bit too old for such things.)

We managed to put the baby down for a nap, muddle through lunch, get the dishwasher loaded, and wipe an inordinate amount of peanut butter smears and pretzel crumbs off the table, and then I told the children it was time for science.

Now I must just say that science has been a struggle this year. I like Apologia's Flying Creatures of the Fifth Day and I think the notebook journals are a good idea, but it feels to me like the time and inspiration just aren't there. That's hard to admit, as I want to do justice to such a fascinating and important subject, but the fact remains that I often feel like doing science about as much as I feel like pulling a wagon through 7 inches of mud.

Today was no exception.

However, I forced myself to sit down on the futon with Elasa and Gavin on either side of me, and since Parker was listening to an audiobook with headphones and Finley was still asleep, we actually got through our reading more peacefully than usual. We read about bumblebees, "Killer" bees, and the difference between termites and winged ants. We even looked up ant farms online since we're investigating getting one of our own.

Then we got out the journaling notebooks and the children dutifully cut out some pictures of the insects we had just been studying. They were to match the insect pictures with the brief little descriptions on the page, and here we ran into some trouble.

The winged ant looked a lot like the termite. Or was it the wasp. No, this is the wasp because it has the long ovipositor, and this is the....Wait a minute, that's the Bumblebee, not the Honeybee, because even though it looks smaller, it has stripes, and Bumblebees have stripes.

Now I was wondering who invented this science book, and feeling rather unkindly toward them.

In the end, we matched as best we could, swiped some glue over the pictures and stuck them in the book, and did a little bit of vindictive slamming of books, even though it probably wasn't very mature.

I finished logging the days work into the children's log books, and finally, Gavin cut the ring off our paper chain, showing that we have only 21 more days of school left.

Cue the Hallelujah Chorus.

Or not.

Truth be told, my mood was anything but glorious, and the relief over finishing another week of school was mired down in hard feelings over life and homeschooling in general.

Like it or not, I had ruined my own hallelujah.

And that's what I have to offer God, and all of you, today. As an interloper on the perfect score of music, as one so often out-of-sync with the Master's baton, I join the rest of creation in yearning for redemption.

I guess you could say I am waiting for the day when there will be no wagons mired in mud.

I am waiting on the perfect Hallelujah.