I feel like I've just given birth. The baby is our new school year and I really had to fight and push (and beg for an epidural) to bring it into the world. Summer was so busy for us that I couldn't collect my thoughts enough to put our schedules together until this past weekend.

Today had already been designated as our first day of school, so if I was going to get the schedules made up, it had to be done this last Friday, Saturday and Sunday. It was do or die. Make it or break it. Now or never.

If you're as old as me, you'll remember Murphy, whoever he is, of "Murphy's Law" fame who said, "If anything can go wrong, it will." Some people believe that if you expect things to go wrong they will, and there may be some truth to that, but I was expecting everything to go right!

So here I am, getting ready for my marathon scheduling weekend, and she comes over. You know her (she's pestered you, too) -- it's Aunt Flo. That angry woman walks in my door on Friday and starts hitting me in the head with her purse! And then she starts in on my back and hips (she must carry bricks in that thing), and before long, I'm hurting all over. I took a Tylenol with codeine that night, but I was still aching. She stopped with the pounding, but then hung around me so much all weekend that her incredibly bad mood rubbed off on me, too. I tell you, I got so tired of listening to her that I got foggy-headed and couldn't think (though that may have been from the headache she gave me). I'm hoping that someday she'll forget my address, though it probably won't be any time soon ("See you next month, Auntie..."). Ugh.

Yet I trudged on all weekend, typing up those schedules, and on Sunday night my back went into painful spasms. I kept it up, though, right through Monday, and even today. At last, I'm almost done typing all those little words into those irritating little boxes. The finish line is in sight.

We went ahead and started with what we had, and I think the day went fairly well. Staying up past 1 a.m. as I worked on those things really put a crimp in my plans to get up and make a good back-to-school-at-home breakfast, but maybe I can do that tomorrow.

So...the school year's been "born" and I can relax a little. And, yes, I will be nursing (the schedule, that is -- tweaking it, I mean).