My Usual Plan

1. Check the Filofax before bed and again first thing in the morning. If I have court, I want to know about it. The Filofax (mine's red) goes out and about with me and no appointment or hearing gets scheduled without its knowledge and consent.

2. The list--everything that needs to be accomplished in the day gets written down in a spiral notebook that sits on my little table in the kitchen. School, music practices, cleaning plans, exercise, phone calls, sewing goals, dinner menus.

3. Get going. We eat breakfast, clean it up, do our cleaning chores, and start school around 9:00. While the four school children do their work, I check, advise, answer questions, and do my house projects for the day. Always laundry, prep cooking, baking, work phone calls, tidying. Cannot concentrate during these hours, so nothing involved. We try to finish school by lunch, but Giles, who is completely independent, often has hours more of work.

4. Children are cruelly forced after lunch to practice their instruments and expose themselves to fresh air. I clean up the kitchen, start dinner if possible, and then go for a walk. Children are often also cruelly forced to babysit Daisy during this half hour.

5. Usually by 3:30 or 4:00 the list is almost accomplished. This means that I can often sit down for half an hour or an hour and sew, embroider, or (rarely) read.

6. I start cooking dinner around 5:00. That snowballs into our meal together, then we mess around til Daisy's bed and bath. She's usually down by 8:00. I do my law practice paperwork (please! no more than an hour!), then sew, or read if I'm wiped out.

7. I usually have court one, two, or three mornings a week. If I do, the kids do their schoolwork while I'm gone, with supervision from their father. Chores get pushed to the afternoon, and the day at home rolls on as usual.