A Day in the Life: And to think that I saw it on Sunshine Acres Street!

A typical day at Sunshine Acres Academy:

I awake peacefully and fully at 4 a.m. I bounce out of bed to go for a long morning run and do my morning meditation, then I feed the cats and the....um...goats and the pigs and the sheep and the mules and the geese....yeah, that's it.

I cheerfully bounce into the gleaming kitchen, beautifully dressed and hair styled with a sort of artless whimsy, to prepare a full five-course hot breakfast from scratch for my gleaming children, who had all cheerfully risen at the rooster's crow. (Clearly, we're a cheerful bouncy family.) Naturally, they've cheerfully made their beds and dressed in sensible and lovely organic cotton clothing and done the laundry and mopped the floors and re-organized the basement. On Fridays they also strip and refinish the wood floors.

My kindergartener gets out his physics and geometry and Latin. Right now he's doing a unit study of Shakespeare's sonnets while his sister writes her own sonnets and his little brother immerses himself in his current passion, rocket science. We finish school in about an hour, leaving the rest of the day to engage in stimulating intellectual discussion......

(Shhhhhhhhh!)

....while the children create beautiful art and music as I harvest our nutritious vegetarian five-course meal from our organic garden.....

(Hush, I can hear you!)

All right. My mother is laughing so hard that I can hear her from here. My sisters are snorting and laughing tears. Knock it off you guys.

I do so get up at 4 a.m.

Sigh. The gig is up. The only time in recent memory I've been up at 4 a.m. was the time I showed up at my sister's house at 4 a.m. to leave for Eastern Oregon. (Guess whose husband and children were still in bed?) And I don't think I've ever bounced out of bed. Fallen, yes, and perhaps bounced a little when I hit the floor.

Uh, the rest of the stuff is true. Yeah. No, really.