Test anxiety

I am exhausted. Two Fridays ago I went out of town with a group of ladies and had a great time, Peter in tow! I returned home on Monday evening, cooked dinner and fell into bed sometime after midnight. The next day I washed clothes and packed another suitcase and left with my family for Hong Kong. We were there until Saturday. We got home in the evening and tried to unpack the food and other things we had purchased in HK then I headed to bed, late again. Sunday we had guests all day. It is the day of worship and so we do that and then we fellowship... all day. Our friends left after 10 pm, which was fine because we had a great time, but I didn't get to bed again until midnight. Suitcase still unpacked sitting in my bedroom floor.... house a mess! Monday - homeschool kept me from cleaning or unpacking and I had a Chinese lesson in the afternoon. I went to the foreign market between the two activities, but that was a waste of time because the ATM was broken and I didn't have enough cash to get the things I needed. Tuesday... Chinese lesson in the morning and before that is finished enter out of town guest. I knew they were coming so I spent the time before they arrived unpacking the suitcase... but the house wasn't fully recovered... sigh.

Our sweet friends stayed two days and left Wednesday night. Not one minute was wasted those 2 days. If they went to the hotel to rest then I went to the market or got in our last few lessons of school. Wednesday was also our last day of Kindergarten - officially!!! Thursday... party of course! I woke up and frantically started trying to put my house back together. I think I made everyone mad at me, sorry family. We live in a 3 bedroom apartment that has zero closets, no attic space and only one wardrobe per bedroom. I have to store all our clothes, summer, winter, spring plus the Christmas tree, art supplies, extra bags, shoes, etc, etc, etc in these and there is no place for anything extra. We hoard books so we bought a huge bookshelf, but it is full. There is literally paper, books, clothes, toys and a number of other things sticking out all around the house. At any given time you may find up to 5 or 6 bags laying in the floor. These may be my things, baby bag, Matt's teaching bag, his computer bag, or one of the kids backpacks. Our family of 5 is about to bust the seams of this place. With that said, you can imagine how easily this house gets into a mess. So, back to Thursday morning... me trying to clean/straighten the house was a bit stressful and I had a Chinese lesson starting at 9. At noon my tutor left and I was getting ready to start the cupcakes for Gracie's graduation party. She was bored this morning while I was studying so I had her go through all the crayons and find the broken ones so that we could melt them into new crayons. Note to self... be sure to use an oven safe object to melt the crayons in next time. I had this ice cube tray, that looked like silicone. It looked like it was made of the same thing I cook the cupcakes in, but it was plastic and it melted and filled the house with toxic smoke. Crayon and melted plastic ran all over the oven - the same oven I was planning to cook the cupcakes in... disaster! We acted fast. Our helper put the oven outside on the balcony and I opened all the windows and doors and turned the fans on. I had to use the old oven that acts now as a drying rack for glasses... I burned the first 2 batches of cupcakes and had to cut the tops off. At least that worked. We ate lunch, I fed the baby...oh yeah, during all these things I've been doing I have had to stop and feed Peter every 3 hours. Which is not a hassle at all because I am totally in love with him but it is something else I have to do. So at 2 our first guest arrived and I was so glad because she helped me ice the cupcakes while i pulled all the art supplies down. Matt got home early and I put him to work making our new puppet theater and by the time everyone else arrived it appeared that I had it all together - NOT! But the kids didn't know and they didn't care. They made their little puppets, they played. We had a puppet show or two or three then hit the snacks. Everyone left around 5, I cooked dinner at 6, we ate and my friend helped me review some of my Chinese because I have a HUGE test today. I was exhausted all day, went to bed at 10 and couldn't sleep. Went to sleep, woke up hot. Finally went back to sleep, Lola crawls in my bed and wakes me up. Tossed, turned... got up and started this blog. It is not 2:30 in the morning and I am still exhausted and hoping I will finally fall asleep and maybe sleep well for the next 3 hours before i have to get up and shower and strap the boy on and head out the door to catch me 8 am train to another city to take a Chinese profiency test that I am not ready for in the first place but now will take without enough sleep.

Life goes on!