Better done

We are wrapping up second quarter this week. Eight students in my house need samples/grades/tests in approximately seven different subjects each.  That is asking an awful lot, but it needs to be done. 

Done, mind you- I never said anything about quality.Happily, we finished up our home-school co-op yesterday, making life just a bit less hectic. My girlfriend Tammy, is fond of saying ( or maybe it's her mother, I can't recall) "Better done than perfect." Since Tammy has been my hero since high school, and beyond, I decided to adopt that as my personal motto. I may want it engraved on my tombstone. When things aren't coming out just right, p.s. with ten children, things rarely go just right, I whisper that motto under my breath. So we always finish things around here, just not perfectly. Oops. Oh well.

I have had several 'less than perfect' moments lately. Like picking up my  familys' finally finished Christmas cards. It took a few hours, that Fred and I really didn't have, to put together the collage. I checked it all over and paid for it, so proud of myself for finishing the project with a few weeks of Advent left to mail them all out. Retrieving them from the envelope to show the kids at home, I read out loud "Merry Christmas from the LeGares, Fred, Ellen, Andrew, Peter, John-Paul, Matthew, Joseph, THMOAS, Michael, Mary, Sarah, and Sophia." 

Guess what.The cards are still finished.

So now we have a  Thmoas. 

The good news is, we don't mind the nickname Thmoas. We told sweet Tommy, it sounded like a viking name- yah, kinda  like our friend Thane! Yes, that's it. Its actually way cool!

And I can see it's not just me suffering from this end-of-year-syndrome. My kids feel it too. Take for instance my dear child Joseph. He was assigned to write a "Dear Abbey" type column for the home-school paper in his Greek History class. Only it was cleverly entitled "Dear Aphrodite". He was supposed to make it cute or funny, and completely newsworthy. His tutor is about the most outstanding and accomplished woman I've ever met. Why she is spending years of her life teaching our rag-tag children English, History, and Literature is one of those small every day miracles I am choosing to take for granted in hopes she never comes to her senses. She makes history come alive for the kids, hosting Greek Olympics, celebrating the ides of March by having the children execute Caesar with gasps of 'et tu Brute?' and throwing Roman feasts with all the glory of the day. But Joseph has had as long a first half of school year as his mother, or so it seems. 

Today I opened a very polite email from his tutor telling him he may want to "rethink" what he wrote as it might not be great for the school paper. Too curious to let it go, I opened the original link to read:

Dear Aphrodite,

I am in love with you, marry me.

Love,

Hot Guy

Dear Hot Guy,

I will not marry you,now go cry in a ditch.

Yep, Joseph was finished. That's all he had. And that sentiment about sums it up. Its about that time of year when we all want to go somewhere and cry in a ditch. Between grading, shopping, cooking meals, working, dealing with weather, finishing school, it's normal to want to go somewhere and cry in a ditch.The good news, actually, the best news is, that feeling is actually not bad to have close to us. Advent isn't just about finishing up school work, and shopping, and semester grades- its about remembering we humans are in a desperate-ditch-crying-way and we are in need of some powerful saving.  Christmas does a good job of letting that bubble up to the surface given all the hassles that are included therein.

Hopefully at some point when we are 'crying in a ditch' somewhere, we can catch our breath long enough to remember,the mighty babe is coming.

And He is most welcome in this ditch.