No wonder people are suspicious

Time is one of those life skills I haven't quite cracked.

I can wake up on a Monday thinking it is Wednesday, then someone spoils it all by saying it's Thursday and if we don't pay the milk bill this minute, Dairy Daisy will see us in court.

This is bad, because Wednesday was the day I was aiming to be good mummy and stay at home and learn how cook green beans without setting two wooden spoons on fire. Thursday was the day I was going to shave my legs. And now those days are all mixed up and we may eat leg shavings and charcoal again for dinner.

It's not only the days that are hazardous. Mixing up any time at all can be dangerous to your health, so let me warn you about that.

One confusing day when we ate lunch before anyone had breakfast, Squirrel yells out Why is there glitter stuck to the potatoes? You tell me, Squirrel. Maybe I was forced into a five hour craft session starting at 7am while I am wearing a towelling robe, and then lunch needs to happen otherwise I hit the cooking sherry. But now thanks to your glitter consumption I spend the rest of the day naked at the keyboard typing in questions like Do potatoes cooked in PVA and glitter result in intestinal problems? That one will confuse all medical practitioners supporting the online NHS help systems. Forever.

So there is no doubt about it. Some days are just all mixed up and all crossed out. See that calender? Those are not tear-off dates, they are certificates of achievement.

Of course some days in this home educating whirlwind of ours, I achieve more in seven hours than I would normally fit into a seven day wake-sleep cycle. OK, it is mainly stuff the children want to do, and usually because they're chasing me with pointed sticks. At least Shark has a new strategy. She has taken to hyperventilating with stress half an hour before I think we might go out, because being late to arrive anywhere is even more humiliating than having a mother who cuts her own hair. But this is a good technique because now for any appointment I definitely need to leave ready for the drive by the hospital, so these days we are arriving mostly on time.

But look at this week. I have already spun down that cosmic hole of time confusion. Already it is Thursday and no-one told me. We didn't yet do the stuff I planned to do last week. Or on Tuesday. And I still have a to-do list that is unrolling right now along the M1.

In my defence, we did plenty other things on Tuesday. OK, I cannot actually recall them, so I will read my own blog later to try and decipher when and what I should have done, like pay Dairy Daisy for 15,000 bottles of milk over five years.

But there is only one solution when I am not absolutely sure what day it is. Choose the local open pool. A little sunshine sparkles the air. I couldn't have planned better. What's to lose? We are faced with a black hole of infinite timeless existence and this may be the last afternoon where a little sunshine seeps from the sky. And it doesn't really matter what day it is, because let's face it, I don't need to take the kids to school.


And although that lack of ability to recognise and follow that time thing, or to keep to a timetable much beyond getting up and falling over is all downright annoying, and the milkman has probably in all vengeance now run his electric trolley over the cat thinking it is ours, once we step out of a routine then we home educators experience the most fantastic, thrilling, freedom.