“I’m so tired.” It seems I hear that or say that a hundred times a day. The last few weeks have been so crazy that even my kids are saying it. When you can zap the energy of a fourth grader, you know you’re too busy! Here’s some of the stuff we’ve been doing this month:

• At least eight Christmas band/choir concerts in the last two weeks. That’s seven too many, in my opinion.
• A work Christmas party that involved way too much worry for the amount of involvement I had in it.
• Making a gift for said Christmas party.
• Another work Christmas party that required wearing an ugly Christmas sweater and hoping it wasn’t ugly enough to be chosen for the dance off that determined the winner of the ugly sweater contest.
  

  Alex, on the far right, did not participate in the contest. Too cool for an ugly sweater.

• Hosting three students after the pipes went cray cray and flooded the college (see this).
• Preparing for and implementing registration for the spring semester 130 students. Sounds easy. It isn’t.
• Grading a million papers, giving a million tests, and writing a million syllabi–that’s Andrew’s stuff, but it affects us all.
• Managing life while Andrew was in California last week.
• Nursing a child with strep throat, two with serious colds, and taking them all to at least seven doctor appointments of various types.
• Christmas shopping.
• Surprise physicals for life insurance policies. At work. I mean, technically they weren’t surprises, but since I forgot about them, they were.
• All the regular piano lessons, gymnastics classes, early band practices as usual.
• Supervising class evaluations in all of the classes at work.
• Three, half days of training on the horrible and difficult-to-understand-and-use computer system at work, after which I decided that I should definitely be given at least an associate’s degree in computer programming. Hey, I work at a college. My boss should be able to arrange something, I think!
• Dealing with days that have gotten so short and cloudy that it seems we are living in the Far North. I would not do well in Alaska in winter.

There are more, I’m sure. I’m just happy that Christmas break is upon us, the kids get to sleep and rest more, and all of the band programs are DONE for now.