It's May--the month that kills.

This is the end of May. Like you didn't know that. But May is brutal. It is busybusybusy. Much like December, but without being pine-scented. There is the end-of-the-schoolyear everything: Concerts, tournaments, dinners, awards assemblies, concerts, graduations. And teacher gifts. Let's not forget the angst those cause.

Thursday (probably today by the time you read this) is when the ugliness is expected to come to a head.* Mister and I have four events we simply MUST attend. I will be shirking Preschool Graduation (good thing it's held at a mega-church so Jasper will never know that Grandma was the only who came).

I kind of waffled about my Bollywood dance class. But we're learning new choreography and I'll be totally lost the next time an Indian musical number comes up in my life (Ok, so that will never happen. But a girl should be prepared!)

There's also the mandatory meeting for next year's High School track team. That would include York along with his mother. Any time I hear the word "mandatory" I know what they really mean is "boring" and "talking a lot". Especially about my favorite topic, parental involvement.

Mister has a bunch of important meetings he can't get out of (of course). So I'm flying solo.

Because I'm a dummy I also scheduled dentist appointments for all the kids this week (the kind where they all get fillings), an Ortho consult for Arabella ($3000 for phase one, thankyouverymuch), York at the eye doctor (he might be our first child to get glasses although he swears the constant squinting is not because he can't see).

Additionally Clover will be getting his balls cut off this next week. I hope that means he'll be spending less time meowing at the back door, begging for some free time to spend with his ladyfriends. He's driving me batty. In a possibly related topic, York's best friend's cat is pregnant.

We've already had our last baseball game/band concert/choir awards banquet. Now we only have two Choir concerts/Kindergarten graduation/Field Day (oh, would I mind bringing a cooler full of water balloons? And the kids are supposed to wear water shoes. Which nobody has.)

I almost forgot that it was Arabella's birthday on Monday! She turned ten. And because she is the poor middle child that gets picked on by everyone including her 6 year-old sister, I tend to overdo it on her birthday. It soothes my mother's guilt. You want homemade muffins for breakfast at 6:30 am? OK! Homemade truffles for your entire class? No problemo! Two kinds of pie instead of a birthday cake? Uhhh, I guess so. And you want me to bring you a toasted turkey sandwich from your favorite restaurant that's fifteen minutes away and sit in your school lunchroom and eat it with you? Gulp. All right. Let's just say that I haven't wanted to set foot in the kitchen since then. I'm still cleaning out dirty mixing bowls. That might also explain the nasty fruit fly invasion that's going on. All the more reason to not go near the kitchen.

Guess what I'll be doing the entire first week of June? Staying in bed. I plan on catching up on all those books I haven't read while my kids eat nothing but cereal and Hot Pockets.

Anybody else ready to self-destruct this month?

*I was pretty peeved to find that the world will be ending on the 21st. Couldn't it have been earlier this month when I was still in a good mood?