Oh there were so many words beginning with D which could have summed up my homeschooling family thus far…delusional comes to mind, along with daunting, daft and deficient. Actually daft describes me rather than my home schooling journey. On a more positive note, we could also be described as diligent, dazzling and domesticated, although that last one might be a stretch.
But I think discombobulated describes fairly well how we I feel on a daily basis. To be discombobulated is to be confused, perplexed, puzzled or to be weird. Yes, I think that sums us me up very succinctly.
The day begins with me feeling a little discombobulated from the night before. Why is it that 11pm comes and suddenly the need for any type of caffeine leaves by the back door. At around the same time ‘Bright-eyed and Bushy-tailed’ saunters in through the front door. Suddenly I feel like I could conquer the world. Honestly, if only the rest of the world (or at the very least my children) were awake to see this truly alive and very productive Claire they would be astounded, not just by my energy levels but also by my incredible teaching nuances. You see, past midnight? I rock in every single way. It is such a shame no one is there to see it…..
The next morning I am back to my ‘day light hours’ Claire. Still easily excitable and full to the brim with things I wish to share but most of the time a little discombobulated. My mother says I ‘have my head in the clouds’, my girls comment frequently that I am ‘away with the fairies’, T teases me incessantly about my inability to retain any sort of name or number or, in fact, any piece of information in my head (my brain is basically the polar opposite of a didactic one – I wonder would I also be considered brilliant in my own way?) and Gary just shakes his head and I can see him thinking ‘bless’
I hadn’t realised it had got so bad or so obvious until this week. I was helping C tidy up some of her bedroom, when I came across a leaflet explaining how to help someone with senile dementia. I laughed, particularly because it was unclear if she had got it to help me or for herself (she has inherited my innate scattiness). Actually, by the end of our highly amusing conversation it was still unclear exactly why she had it or how indeed it had come to be in her possession.
In my defense, I completely and utterly blame home schooling for my discombobulation. I was intelligent, coherent and very reliable. I was a prefect for goodness sake! And I have a degree. I can’t have faked intelligence that well! I must have had it once. But alas no more. No, now I spend my nights reminding myself of how I used to be and my days in a confused, discombobulated state of existence, wondering where on earth I left my brain….
