I have mentioned this on this blog before, but it bears repeating:

In every homeschool, there are days you execute the plan, and other days you'd just as soon execute the children.

Guess which sort of a day we had today?

(Oh, and if you're thinking, Hold on a minute!  How dare you say 'every homeschool'?  We do not have days like the latter at my house, ever!  then I offer my sincerest apologies along with a request that you kindly not tell me about it.  Because misery loves company.  On the other hand, if you're thinking that you never have days like the former, feel free to go ahead and say so.)

At some point during this miserable day frought with bad tempers and loud bickering and torn trampoline nets, I started thinking those inevitable thoughts that go something like this: Do I homeschool my children because I have lost my sanity, or have I lost my sanity because I homeschool my children?  And I couldn't think of one good reason why I actually continue on this crazy course.  It's what one of my friends calls a "big yellow bus" day-- a day when nothing in the world sounds better than putting the kids on the big yellow bus and waving goodbye as it turns the corner.  I mean, really.  Why do I continue to torture myself this way?  It isn't worth it.  Sending them to school would be so easy.  Etc, etc.

After a few minutes of this, I looked at my planner and saw that today is the day I have marked with a .  (That comes about 8 days before the day I mark with a , and it means, "This is the week where I don't get into discussions about issues that push my buttons and I don't think about anything too hard because everything is going to make me either  or .")  And so even though the miserable course of the day was entirely the fault of the children (really, truly; I wouldn't lie about this), I needed to be careful not to make it worse by making more out of it than it really was.  So when one of the children tearfully talked about the rotten day we were having, I told them what I told myself:  "Let's not let one bad day make us want to pitch everything."  So we agreed and then made ramen soup and got a little more schoolwork done.

There are days (like last Tuesday) when it's okay to say, "Oh, we're having a bad day; let's just blow off the rest of the list," and other days when to do so would be to give postive reinforcement to negative behavior.  Because today was one of the latter, we'll be finishing schoolwork after dinner tonight.  (Or they will anyway; I'm going to try not to get too involved.)  Ugh.  Maybe tomorrow we'll execute the plan.

Thank God His mercies are new every morning.