A Day in Queen Terri’s Court
August 15, 2009
Reprint from 2001
People are often asking me what a typical day in the life of the Camp family is like. My response is always the same…define typical. They then produce some definition like…Okay if everything were running smoothly what would your day look like.
It then dawns on me that they want the fairy tale version. Therefore I will proceed to give you the fairy tale version of life at the Camp house. Never fear though, I will follow it with a brief (perhaps not), humorous (now, not necessarily then), and accurate (as well as this old queen can remember) day I experienced today.
The fairy tale version:
This is how my schedule reads. Get up at 8:00. I would write “or thereabouts” on the schedule, but there isn’t room. So I set my alarm for 8:00 almost every day. It goes off several times. Then I finally lie in my bed listening to hear what is going on downstairs. If I don’t hear anything, I lie in bed and think about my schedule for the day. If I hear lots of fighting, I go into the bathroom and lock the door.
By 9:00 it’s time to start the JOYS (Joyful Obedient Youthful Service). Of course if I didn’t get up until 9:00 it’s difficult to begin the JOYS at 9:00. But hey…this is the fairy tale version.
At 9:30 we begin our educational endeavors. This is where the schedule gets tricky because I’m working with little ones on their reading, while the older ones work on their math and writing assignments, then I work with the older ones checking their assignments.
At 11:00 I begin read aloud time. We read for an hour and a half while all the children do NOT sit quietly. Even in a fairy tale you have to be honest. Bryan is allowed to play with his train set or his “math” game. He may also color, which is what he does most of the time in his notebook. All the other kids work on their notebooks.
We then have lunch. Then I send all the kids outside to play or work with the horses. When they return we work on the afternoon projects that have come from our reading book or the unit we’re working on, which is usually the same thing, but not always.
At 4:00 we begin another half-hour of JOYS before Steve gets home. The rest of the evening is filled with dinner, playing with Daddy, computer time, perhaps a movie or a game together.
Not So Fairy Tale Version
My day begins at 12:30 am. I hear a cry, “Moooommmm!” I ignore it. After all, the queen has just fallen asleep. Then I hear the squeak of a door and the patter of footsteps. I’m hoping they aren’t going to knock on my door. But alas, they do. John is announcing the cries of Bryan. I decide that perhaps I should check out why he is crying. Upon investigation I find him lying on his bed crying inconsolably. I ask him why he is crying and he says, “arhgilsh shiflkhg.” HUH?
Finally he stops crying enough to tell me that he has wet his bed and he is freezing cold.
The temptation to toss him a dry blanket flashes into my brain. But instead I strip his bed, remove his clothing, clean up the puddle on the floor, put a towel on his bed, and give him some clean blankets, which he decides he doesn’t want. He wants “HIS” blanket. I try to reason with the three-year old that HIS blanket is all wet! He decides that he will be satisfied with his brother John’s favorite blanket instead. I then kiss him and tell him to go to sleep because Mommy is going to be making doughnuts for breakfast.
I had previously set my alarm for 7:15 because Steve got wind that I was making doughnuts for breakfast and wanted me to make them for him too.
I slept blissfully for several hours. My alarm went off promptly at 7:15. I promptly turned it off and turned over.
I was then awakened by a loud knock. “Who is it?” I say.
“It’s me, Bryan!” Comes the joyful voice.
I had removed one contact from my eye the previous night so I had to squint to see the numbers on the clock. I have three clocks in my room. One of them is an hour and twenty-two minutes slow. I didn’t look at that one though. I looked at the one that glared 9:33.
“Oh my!” I thought to myself as I told Bryan he could enter my room.
“I hungy. Go make doughnuts?” He said in a way too perky voice.
I quickly awoke and went down and made the promised doughnuts. Around 11:00 the kids were all full of doughnuts.
I began to check some of the kids’ math that they had done while I was away. As I checked one of my children’s math books, she began to cry. She missed every problem. I realized that she was progressing without knowing how to do the problems. She was just guessing. After drying her tears and spending about an hour just with her, I decided to stop with her for the day and moved on to someone else.
Suddenly everyone wanted my attention. In exasperation Christi screamed, “Can’t you all go some place besides where Mom is?”
Then someone had the audacity to ask, “What’s for lunch, Mom?”
I replied, “fruit.” I’m not making lunch. I just finished making breakfast.
It was raining so no one could go outside.
I sat down to work on this column about five times, but was always swarmed by children wanting me for something.
When Steve walked into the house, I had just started to rally the troops to do their jobs. He got to walk into “drill sergeant Mom” barking orders at everyone and being just a wee bit irritated by the state of the rooms that I had cleaned the previous day.
I had planned a terrific dinner, turkey roll, buttered noodles, and a vegetable. When the water had boiled for the noodles I poured the noodles into the water. When I began to stir the noodles I discovered some larvae type things floating at the top of the water. I dumped the noodles outside for the dogs. And added “throw out everything” that is in the pantry, on my schedule for the next day.
Unfortunately that left me without a good starchy thing. Oh well. I had hamburger buns. We had hamburger buns instead of buttered noodles, not exactly the banquet of a queen.
After dinner I took a hot bath. Then I read to the kids. They went to bed. And we lived happily ever after.
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