He can, but he would have to get up earlier. The older two walk home most days, weather permitting.

These are all great ideas... I'm teaching 6-8th math this year, so they don't all apply exactly, but they're still good!

The high school shares a parking lot with the grammar school that I teach at, and there is no high school bus if you live within 1.5 miles of the school. It's just a matter of having to get him there by 7:10, rather than having an extra 30 minutes or so. I am not required to be in my classroom until 7:45, but I do find it useful to be there at 7:15 every morning! (I drop the younger three in the before-school program the school runs.) This is something that I am struggling with. DS13 takes viola and piano lessons after school, and just joined the youth orchestra in the summer. DS10 takes trumpet lessons. DS13 & DS8 each have 2 soccer practices during the week, plus travel games on the weekend. It didn't seem like so much when we were at home during the day! Thankfully, the last soccer game of the season is today. (yippee!) Next year, DS13 will be in high school, and he will have to make some hard decisions about after-school activities. And I've already put a bug into the 8yr old's ear about playing baseball (which is all in-town) rather than soccer (which is travel) in the spring. This I will do.

Both. I need both! I appreciate everyone's support, commiseration, and "been there, done that" advice. I kinda wish I had asked for the advice earlier!

If I quit mid-year, I would not ever be able to work in this school district (the city that I live in) again, and I would feel immensely uncomfortable & guilty if any of my kids wanted/needed to stay in the public school after I had left them in the lurch. That bridge is much too big to burn. Unless something catastrophic were to happen, I am in this for the full year. I have streamlined as much as I can in the morning. Eating breakfast and making lunches are still issues, and this is a function of picky eaters/personalities/too small a kitchen/"do I want school lunch today?"/food allergies. Also, I think there are just too many choices sometimes - I had a bowl of cereal every single morning for breakfast, kindergarten through high school. My kids have had me home for the last 10 years, so there was always much more variety for breakfast & lunch and we need to simplify this to fewer (& easier) options. We keep working on it. Some days are better than others.

This is honestly one of the main reasons that I haven't quit. I've started developing relationships with these people, and I know how hard it would be on them all if I just quit. Several teachers have quit/retired/left for medical reasons already this year (and one who was on medical leave died this past week). The school is already short-staffed. I couldn't willingly make it worse.

Thank you for this. Mourning is the right word. It's a huge adjustment and I'm feeling the loss of what we gave up.

I used to keep a bullet journal religiously, but I've had trouble keeping it up since I went back to work. I have a big calendar on the side of the fridge to write family appts and kid activities that I need to update. It has been a rough adjustment. I knew it would be, but I guess not to what extent. My therapist refers to it as 'playing tetris in a blender', and that's a pretty apt description - so many moving parts, and nothing solid to stand on. I do think that upping my ADHD meds for a while should help (I was doing SO MUCH BETTER before I started working!). Now that the soccer season is over (tomorrow!), I'm hoping to have time to maybe go back to the gym, or at least get some exercise in at home a few times a week. I have let my own health (mental and physical) slide since going back to work. I also need to get to bed earlier each night, but it's hard when I've been so overstimulated/overwhelmed during the day and I need to decompress before I can go to bed. Two more hours of sleep each night would be helpful!

Subbing is no where near the same amount of money, and really wouldn't be worth it. Plus, I need 2.5 more full-time years to be vested in the pension system.

I might put just put aside a bit of money each week for a cleaning person to do the bathrooms and floors. This would take something off my plate and be worth the cost. I've been having groceries delivered, because I can add to the order all week and not have to lose two hours to grocery shopping. The fall soccer season ends this weekend, so I'm hoping that things will slow down a tiny bit and we can do more fun things again on the weekend or evenings (though, there are still 3 music lessons and an orchestra practice each week).

I think it depends on the day, and the kid. I've been saving about 80-85% of my pay each week. Though, taking this job has been expensive to start! Everyone needed school "stuff", and I continue to have to buy things for my classroom every week. He knows, mostly. When I said that he's taken over the laundry and the dishes, I meant that *in addition to* the stuff he has always done. He does as close to half of the driving kids, the housework, etc. as he can. He puts the kids to bed most nights. But, he also works two other jobs in addition to teaching high school (he teaches night school at the high school one night a week, so he's not home on Tuesdays until after the kids are in bed, and he's teaching one asynchronous college course so he's got random student zoom meetings during the week). One of my main stressors is getting everyone up and out each day, and he cannot help with that because he leaves for work by 5:15am each day. I get up at 5, get the kids up at 6, and we need to be in the car a few minutes before 7am so my 8th grader can make it to his math class at the high school by 7:15. (It should be a 5-min drive, but the school traffic is awful!) But, I am the one with all the mental load, still. Who needs shoes? Where are the warm jackets, and who needs a new one? When is the next dentist/orthodontist/pedi appt? etc. I will also readily admit that I have a hard time giving up mental load to him, as I have control issues and I want/need things done a certain way. It's also just easier to have one person in charge of all of the logistical stuff. 1. The youngest is enjoying school now, but September was rough. He's also been the sickest. The 8th grader is enjoying the social aspects; he loves being around friends. He also enjoys being in the band (he's learning a 3rd instrument). He does realize that he's not getting quite the same level of education -- he asked me the other day, out of the blue, if we could start learning Latin again! The 3rd grader loves being around kids all day, but the need to be good, quiet, and still during school hours might just kill him. He comes home absolutely fried each day, hungry and tired and out of spoons. I also think he's gone backwards in his reading from where he was in the summer, so I'm trying to figure out how to get that in with him each day without him thinking we are doing more school. My 5th grader is completely academically unchallenged with 5th grade work, but our goals for him are social this year. (He's got a recent ASD diagnosis.) I am happy that the Special Ed director at the school recognizes that the school academics are not appropriate for children with his abilities, and she's trying to figure out how we can challenge him while also leaving him in the 5th grade classroom so that he can continue to interact with age-appropriate peers. 2. I need 2.5 years to be vested in the state pension system. In four years there will be kids to send to college, which is why I figured it was time to go back to work, as I could pay off debt, make repairs/upgrades to the house, and buy a new car before we need to start paying for colleges. 3. Dh has taken 3 of the 5 sick days so far between us. I've had my dad and his dad each come stay a day with a sick kid. My mom retired last week (::happy dance::), so she said that she would be happy to help as much as I needed. And just in time, too, as I have a professional development day next week and all my kids have the day off!

I have so many words, but they are mostly incoherent....... I decided to go back to work. I didn't NEED to go back right now, but I felt maybe this was a good time, so I enrolled all four kids in the local grammar school and I took a job there, too. I'm fairly sure that I made the wrong choice. Don' get me wrong - I love the *teaching* part. I love the kids and the relationships and the math. It is every other damn thing about it that is awful. Awful? Stressful? Stupid? Disappointing? IT IS SO MUCH MORE &*%$ WORK TO GET MYSELF AND FOUR KIDS UP, DRESSED, FED, LUNCHES PACKED, AND OUT OF THE HOUSE EVERY DAMN MORNING. So much more work to get everyone home and fed and homework done. No time -- NO TIME -- to do the things we loved to do together - museums, day trips, playgrounds, rabbit trails in the curriculum, learning what we want, leisurely trips to the library multiple times a week, outside time in the daylight and fresh air, etc... And it almost all falls on me. DH has taken over the laundry and the dishes, but that's the mindless, easy, little stuff. I still have all the heavy lifting, plus more now that we're outside the house. EVERYONE IS CONSTANTLY SICK. NOT A SINGLE DAY WITHOUT COUGH/FEVER/SNIFFLES/EAR INFECTIONS/STOMACH VIRUS/ANTIBIOTICS/ER VISITS/MORE COUGHING/MORE SNIFFLING IN TEN WEEKS! I've got a follow-up next week, and I will have put on (more) weight and my ADHD meds will need to be upped, because it's not cutting it anymore. [I wrote and deleted many other paragraphs about my kids and all the ways learning at home was better for them. I'll just skip that for now.] There's nothing to be done about it. I made the decision, and now I have to stick with it. DH says, "you can change your mind at the end of the year," but I cannot imagine that he would want to give up the salary I'm making once we're used to depending on it. Not a day goes by that I don't seriously think about quitting... DH went to the library to pick up a book for me and the librarians at the desk were worried, because it was *only one book* and we hadn't been around much. She asked him if I was sick... He told me this story and I started weeping in my kitchen. The only people who are sad for me and my kids are the librarians. My DH and my BFF and my family all think it so SO GREAT that the boys and I all go to the same school together! It must be so wonderful! So convenient! So much fun! They have no idea what I made us all give up. I miss homeschooling. 😞

DS13 would have a flare whenever he had inflammation of any kind - vax, loose tooth, scraped knee, ingrown finger, cold, whatever. I would have expected him to have a larger-than-expected flare after getting both a covid booster and a flu shot at the same time a few weeks ago, but he's been having a long-term recurrence of PANDAS symptoms since he had a mild case of covid in May/June. He's improved a lot since his symptoms returned, but he's still not back to where he was before getting covid. I'm really hoping that this does not become his new 'normal'.

So, this morning she emailed and said that he did "excellent" and that she "highly recommends" him for the honors geometry class. 😁 I will have him sit for the alg2 exam after school starts, to get that out of the way (before he forgets it all!) and then he will be all set to start at the HS next year in a pre-calc class. As always, thanks for letting me vent!

We just listened to The Magician's Elephant on a long car ride and my boys (5, 8, 10, & 13) really enjoyed it.