Concentrate!

021, originally uploaded by diahn.

My youngest son, J, always sticks his tongue out when he has to focus on something. He runs and jumps and bats like this and I'm always afraid he's going to bite it clean off someday.

Onto the musing...have any of the rest of you noticed how incredibly difficult it is to concentrate on anything? Just this week alone, I have to make sure that we all make it to 3 dentist appointments, an eye doctor visit, basketball tryouts, a field trip, Awanas, classroom mom time and a mission conference for church. That doesn't include posting on this blog every day, fixing breakfast, lunch, dinner and snacks, doing laundry, dishes, and scrubbing toilets, two days of homeschool, art lessons, supervising chores, doing more laundry and a whole other list of things I do that make my brain too tired to think of right now.

Thank God I don't have a job.

It's a wonder I ever get time to paint or draw with the kind of schedule we keep around here. But somehow I do. People ask me all the time how I have the time to do it? Well. I don't know. I come from a long line of busy people, I guess. I do it because to not do it would be akin to just not having the time to breathe today. I doodle on my lesson plans because they are sitting right in front of me. I carry a sketchbook with me everywhere I go because I know I'm going to have to wait for someone at some point. I rarely watch television, except for the morning news and a race or two on the weekends.

Sometimes I skip vacuuming.

And dusting.

And showering. But not so often as I skip vacuuming and dusting.

The reality is this: our house may not be in immaculate condition, but we're together and we're learning and we're loving each other and we make time for what is really important to us. We concentrate on family and education and God and sports because those are the things that are most important to us. I concentrate on art and photography and literature and building 20 feet tall steel sculptures because that is important to me.

Okay.

The 20 feet tall steel sculpture hasn't happened yet, but I'm working on it. If could hold my tongue just so...