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Yesterday was pretty much the worst day! Absolutely nothing got done, which really annoys me, too. The boys were awful--they do NOT listen to me ever. Occasionally they listen to Cameron. It makes me so angry that I can't even stand to be around them. It's not like asking Ben to pick up his shoe that is in plain sight across the room is that hard, but he manages to get completely distracted in the five feet from the couch to the wall. And Sam is just defiant--if he is asked to do something, he does the opposite, but reverse psychology doesn't seem to work either--he is too smart for that. Levi has a cold so all he has done for 2 days is cry--not sleep, not eat, just cry. Did I mention that Cameron had to work again...for the second Saturday in a row? That was just great. So, he was completely not helpful because he was working until almost naptime. And if the boys don't stop climbing onto my kitchen counter, I really might just completely lose it. That is the most irritating thing. And they do it about a million times a day--not exaggerating! Seriously, I have already had to yell at them about 20 times to get off the counter, and stay out of the cabinets (which don't have handles so it's hard to lock them), just this morning. And Sam wouldn't go to bed until almost midnight--he absolutely refuses to go to bed until there is NOTHING at all going on in the house. Even if we are in our room watching tv, he will not go to bed. It makes it very difficult to like the child. Especially because he was up at 7 a.m., ready to go. And we have afternoon church, so Sundays are always awful too. ARGH!!! I am just super frustrated--this mom thing is for the birds! I understand why many species eat their young at birth, or abandon them.

Onto other things...the house is a disaster zone. It doesn't really matter how often I clean it--which I really don't have a ton of time to do--it is still a disaster zone. Part of that is because of a lack of time. Part of it is Cameron's attitude about weekends--he thinks that he has been working all week, so the weekend should be relaxing. Umm...yeah that would be great if you didn't have three terrors ripping the house apart every day so that it gets exponentially worse each day and by Saturday looks like a bomb hit it. And really, it is hard to take care of the three non-listening kids AND get the house clean in one day by myself. Cam will help usually, albeit grudgingly, but he has had to work two Saturdays (and Sunday last week) in a row. And really, I hate cleaning. I hate it. It is completely not satisfying to me. And it's BORING! I realize it is a necessary evil, but there is no joy whatsoever in it, because I know that literally five seconds after I get the boys' room cleaned up, they will have torn it apart again. And even if it does make it more than five seconds, as soon as Sam goes down for a nap, he will tear it apart in an effort to postphone naptime. Since I have no other life though, apparently this is the course on which I am destined. It depresses me. I guess that doesn't totally matter either, since there is always something more pressing happening--like Levi in the kitchen finding a chicken strip SOMEWHERE (WHAT??!?!?) and choking on it. And since Cam is still in bed, I guess I will have to go find said chicken strips and dispose of them. Ick!

I still have to prepare my gospel doctrine lesson, which I am totally not in the mood to teach. And I have to be evaluated by my principal this week, so I have to figure out what I am teaching. Something with mythology, but since I rarely have time to plan farther than a day or two (sometimes an hour or two), I am not sure what yet. There is so much that it is possible to cover. We did the basic overview last week. I am going to do the 12 labors of Hercules on Monday/Tuesday. I had 4th hour (my longer, also ahead of the others, class) write a quick, in-class 3 paragraph essay about "What is a hero?" I told them they couldn't tell me about THEIR hero, they had to define the qualities OF a hero. Most of them were ok. They only had 15 minutes, after all. Some were not great. And a few were absolutely astounding. It always makes me happy when my students actually do something I want them to do. Then we discussed how the qualities that we see a hero having (pretty much across the board universal character traits), are a lot different than heroes in Greek and Roman mythology. I started the labors of Hercules that day with them, but the other two classes still need to do that lesson. I am going to finish the labors of Hercules with 4th hour tomorrow, and maybe show part of the movie Hercules (the Disney one) to discuss the differences between the movie and the myth that we are reading. But...what to do after that? There are three other heroes I want to discuss--Jason, Perseus, and Odysseus--and I want to cover word origins and mythology's effect on our modern world. But otherwise, I am kind of stuck. I think we are going to get rid of the mass media/advertising thing with a group project. Creating a newspaper about the escapades of the different gods/goddesses or something. We are also going to cover resumes/application letters with this unit. One of the 12 major gods is retiring, so Zeus is accepting applications for a replacement. I thought this would be a fun way to cover resumes and application letters without them having to be TOO serious about it. They are only 13-14. They can get the concept without having to actually create a boring resume they won't ever use.

Anyway, I have to narrow that down, and grade a million papers today. Cam doesn't know it yet, but he will be helping me, in exchange for the extra almost 2 hours of sleep he has gotten this morning. Hopefully today will improve--it has got to be better than yesterday at least.