School holidays kicks my ass. Every time.

Let's apportion blame.

There’s two types of Mom.

The one who is supremely organised with holiday programmes, play dates, fun activities to do or a trip away somewhere for a few days.

Then there is me who is exactly the opposite.

And after 12 years of parenting you’d think I’d be better at school holidaying than I am. But reader, I am not.

I’ve known for months that this lot of holidays would be roughly 3 weeks duration with Easter and teacher only days and ANZAC. School hols are not a surprise.

But still I cannot get my shit together.

This is partly because I’m a working Mom and the world really isn’t cut out for parents who also work full time. Even with flexible working from home situations which I am grateful and privileged to have - school holidays, and managing multiple children is a time.

What makes this worse is having ADHD and being generally shit at managing all the things I need to do. Add in a few kids (there’s always friends of my kids in our house) and it’s mild levels of chaos.

Speaking on ADHD, I wrote a thing about it last week. You can read it here if you missed it - It sucks to suck.

I had a few people email me afterwards say they often experience ADHD symptoms and are going to get checked out. If this is you, please get on the list. Or go privately if you can afford it. Whether you get medicine for it or not, just knowing that there’s a reason for why things are hard - like school holidays, can really lighten the load.

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This made me laugh.

Do you know Barry Malone? He’s a respected journalist who also happens to be Irish and so is funny as all hell. This tweet up here had me in stitches. If you haven’t boycotted twitter yet, I recommend you follow Barry. But more importantly than that, Barry writes a daily Substack highlighting three non-western stories you should know about but isn’t covered much by mainstream. You can subscribe to it, or at the very least check it out down here.

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Speaking of Substack platforms. Isn’t the drafts section a complete wasteland? If you write via Substack, I bet you have a tonne of drafts of ideas that haven’t quite made it off the cutting room floor. Here’s mine.

You see I get an idea about something, and make a start on it with a very rough outline and then come back to it later. Except I rarely come back to it. And the newsletters that do get published, are the ones I’ve written from scratch, and without much planning at all. Just a smash of words on a page.

Over the last couple of weeks I’ve written about how to attempt to manage stress, Why I quit the booze, and about one of my businesses failing spectactularly.

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Finally, to wrap up this new format of a newsletter I’m trying out.. here’s a recipe I spotted on TikTok about lemonade scones. I haven’t tried this but I’m definitely going to. Probably. Actually, it’d be grand if someone with better executive function than I try this out and let me know how it goes! (That was a joke btw).

@stephcooksstuff🍋🧁 Nothing beats freshly baked scones! And with only 3 ingredients, these lemonade scones are super easy to make. Here's the recipe: Ingredients: 4 cups flour 1 cup cream 1 cup lemonade Instructions: Preheat your oven to 200C. In a large bowl, mix the flour, cream, and lemonade until just combined. Knead the dough gently on a floured surface until it comes together. Flatten the dough to about 2cm thickness and cut out your scones. Place on a lined baking tray and bake in the oven for 15 minutes until golden brown. Serve warm with butter and your favorite jam. 👉 Give these 3 ingredient lemonade scones a try and impress your friends and family with your baking skills! #LemonadeScones #3IngredientRecipe #EasyBaking #QuickRecipe #YummyTreats #TeaTime #Brunch #Breakfast #BakingInspiration #Foodie #RecipeOfTheDay #HomeBaking #WeekendBaking #Scones #BakedGoods #DeliciousTreats #BakingLove #BakingGoals #BakingIdeas #stephcooksstuff

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Thanks for reading this newsletter. I really appreciate the time you give to me for this and I hope you get some value from it. If you have any questions you can reply directly to this email or if you’ve landed here from a link, email lou@sweatypals.nz. You can also follow me on Twitter here, and instagram here.

Lou xx