Three more days.

The school is doing everything in its power to suck me in. There’s an athletics banquet today, and emails desperate for volunteer ice-cream scoopers have been arriving in my in-box. I have ignored them.

There are two scheduled beach trips. More grown-ups are always helpful when adding a hundred kids to an ocean. But I haven’t volunteered.

Instead, I have revised two chapters. I’ve churned partway through a scene list. After two false starts, I’ve managed to properly outline a non-fiction chapter.

My kids have created a list of things they’d like to do this summer. It includes waterslides, berry picking, aquarium visits, movies, beach barbecues, pools, suspension bridges, and waterfalls. Nowhere does it say: “give Mommy writing time.” Somehow, they left that off the list.

But there’s nothing like a deadline to get me working. And I still have three more days to go…