Changing hats

A theme for the last two days has been regularly changing gears (or "hats" as my metaphor went in Australia).



It's been the 2 ½ day marathon of parent-teacher conferences at CAJ. Which means I've had the boys at home most of the time. It's just so happened to coincide with a lot of action on the magazine. So, I was an at-home mum, providing food, buying groceries, sorting out disputes, and encouraging homework; while also doing my best to wear my editors hat in quiet moments. But I also had out my missionary/writing hat when I finished off our prayer letter and wrote a blog post.

There were a lot of fast changes yesterday and it was rather exhausting. I'm afraid the boys spent a lot of time looking at screens while I concentrated on getting things done. 

Then at 4.30 I pulled out my exercising-with-a-friend hat as a friend introduced me to our local gym. She apologised for being a few minutes late, but I was actually glad. I got to sit by myself for a moment in the gym lobby and get the right "hat" on.

Then this morning I went to school with my definite "mum" hat on to participate in two hours of conferences with teachers of all three of my boys. Trouble is that many of these teachers are also my friends and all of them are David's colleagues! I tried to keep that "mum" hat firmly on my head, but it wasn't easy. The middle and high school interviews were 7-minutes long! So that was a lot of fast changes: Home Ec, History, English, Maths, Bible, Boy #3, Boy #2, Boy #1. Much worse, I'm sure, for the teachers, who have to do this for 2 ½ days long with so many different students!

This afternoon we have friends over for lunch (my "friend" and "mum" hats) then it's back to yesterday's "mum" supervising homework as well as "editor" trying to get some important emails out to potential writers for an upcoming issue of the magazine. I've got my work cut-out for me. 

Thankfully we have a fun night planned, so I'm looking forward to some down-time then.