The Great Plan

"Man plans, God laughs."
--Yiddish proverb

"Make no little plans. They have no magic to stir men's blood and probably will not themselves be realized."
--Daniel Burnham, Chicago Architectural Wizard

"What the hell are we doing this fall?"
--Shannon Ford, Bewildered Midwestern Housewife Schlub/Occasional Math Book Editor

------------------

You know what I like even more than office supplies? 

Making plans! 

And I don't just enjoy making fun plans.  I enjoy making all plans.

To plan is to suggest that you have some level of control over the future.  This sense of control is a completely false perception, of course.  Hence, "Man plans, God laughs." 

But it's nice to think that with the right plan in place, all the unknowns of the future will miraculously work out.  Having the right plan means having it all figured out. 

I imagine a world where life always runs smoothly, because I have scheduled and organized everything perfectly.  There will be no last-minute runs to Target to buy the birthday present on the way to the party, no mornings where I have to eat my breakfast in the car, no ordering pizza because it just now occurred to me this would be one of those nights where we'd have to eat dinner. 

I don't know if it's possible to plan your life so well that you're never stressed out by some last-minute unforeseen occurrence.  I also don't know if I have the discipline to plan, schedule, and organize my life to such a degree that I'm never caught off guard.  There are people who can.  My friend Sarah can.  I can't.

But I do like to have some basic idea of what we're going to be doing in the near future.  Which is why I've had a constant feeling of mild panic operating in the back of my mind lately.

I haven't gotten the fall figured out. 

Basically what it boils down to is the following completely uninteresting situation:

See, I signed Nathan up for Tuesday/Thursday preschool again.  We were used to that schedule, and I figured I'd give us one more year to get Nathan's not-a-morning-person self in gear before having to go to school five days a week.  So, Tuesday/Thursday it was.  But then everybody and her sister started telling me how inadequately prepared Nathan would be for kindergarten if he didn't go to preschool at least three days a week. 

Now, you know I'm generally not worried about preparing him for kindergarten.  But you also know that I let other people's comments get to me.  So after the thousandth person told me I was ruining my kid's life by putting him in Tuesday/Thursday preschool again, I inquired about the Monday/Wednesday/Friday program.  But by then we had to be on the wait list.  We are #3 on the wait list. 

A slight further complication is that they have this new Monday/Wednesday/Friday afternoon class they're allegedly opening up, except that each time I have asked about it, I have been told that nobody has signed up for it.  Figuring that I don't want to pay my deposit and commit to anything until I'm sure the class won't get canceled, I haven't signed up.  And I'm sure that I'm not the only parent who is waiting it out to see if somebody else signs up first.  It's like we're all playing one big, boring, pointless game of chicken.  

So, I have no idea what my kid's school schedule is going to be for the fall.  Which is a problem because it has recently come to my attention that I need to get some additional form of childcare for him so that I can do my work and take care of other work-like commitments.  And by "work-like commitments" I'm not talking about my laundry or going to the grocery store, since I don't want to think of myself as some sort of professional laundress or grocery-procurer.  I'm referring instead to tasks like completing the play script I promised I'd turn in by October, writing various unpaid online posts/articles/whatever, and attempting to secure more freelance work.  Although sometimes it's awfully nice to have a babysitter watch my kid while I go to the grocery store, too. 

Anyway, not knowing what days he'll have preschool = not knowing what days he'll need a babysitter = advanced level of stress and anxiety for me.

I couldn't take the uncertainty anymore, so I made a decision.  Kindergarten preparation be damned, we are going with Tuesday/Thursday preschool again, no matter what happens with that waitlist.  And I got a babysitter for Nathan Monday and Wednesday mornings.  I still won't know what my work schedule will be, or even if I'll have work at all come fall, but at least I'll have some form of childcare in place for most days, should work suddenly show up in my inbox.  

Now please keep your fingers crossed for me that I have enough work to justify the cost and guilt of having this much paid childcare.

(The guilt is not because I think paid childcare is bad.  The guilt would be if I were dumping my kid on a caregiver while I didn't have any work to do.  And I know you want to argue that I shouldn't feel guilty.  But, let's face it, most moms do.) 

I do think it is better for Nathan to have a paid babysitter come and constructively entertain him while I'm working, because too often (not all the time, but too often) I resort to screen-based entertainment for him when I need to get work done.  Wouldn't it be better to have a babysitter who can take him to the park or play a board game with him? 

So, plan in place, I have begun to imagine that I could have the most organized, predictable, boring life ever come fall.  I love boring and predictable. 

We'll basically have the same morning schedule Monday through Thursday, and I like to think that means we can organize the rest of the day around this schedule.  At noon we'll have lunch and quiet time, and then we'll have another block of time from 2:00 to 4:30.  Then dinner, and bedtime rituals, and Nathan will go to bed at the same time and get up at the same time and ...

Oh, it will all be so perfect.

And now I'm bursting with a sense of total control over my life.  I love the change of seasons and the new opportunities that each new season brings, especially the return to structure that comes with fall. 

We will get our lives in order.  

Don't tell me it can't be done.  I don't want to hear it.  You see this?  This is my bubble:

  Don't burst it.