👋🏼👋🏼👋🏼 Hey there! I’m Kimberly, the woman who traded the traditional classroom for the kitchen table because I wasn’t vibing with the rushed, performance-heavy script of a 9-to-5 life. Now, The Ten AM goes out to thousands of parents bang in the thick of the mess and mayhem of raising humans in the wild, who are still trying to find the magic. I’m a homeschooling mom of two, a coffee devotee, and an RV lover who craves the autonomy of the open road, and here is where I muse on the building blocks of our unscripted life: the rhythm of our days, the chaos of the "in-between," career pivots, cold brews, and finding the courage to raise kids who actually know themselves. Call us rebels if you want, but heck if I don’t grab onto this messy, beautiful autonomy with both hands. It’s a wild, unscripted ride, and I’m doing it with a heart (and a coffee mug) that is (mostly) full. Welcome to The Slow Pour.
My favorite way to ruin a perfectly good Tuesday is to pretend that three minutes is enough time to pack a lunch for a field trip.
There is a specific kind of madness that lives in the cracks between the end of a lesson and the beginning of the next thing. It’s a portal that opens around right before a co-op meet-up, where the woman I want to be (the one who buys local honey and has a sourdough starter that doesn’t go moldy) is replaced by a frantic, slightly damp version of a drill sergeant with a cold black coffee in her hand.
The transition is my cryptonite. It’s the in-between space where the rhythm of the day shatters into a million pieces of missing Velcro and lukewarm string cheese.
We spend so much time curating our homeschool life. We pick the curriculum. We set the vibe. We light the candles. We turn on lo-fi music. We bring in blankets. We sit on the cozy carpet to read together. But then, the real world calls. The Jiu-Jitsu class starts at 11 AM. The music class is across town and starts at 2:30 PM.
Suddenly, the slow-pour morning I promised myself is a distant memory, replaced by the rhythmic, staccato yelling to “Get your jiu-jitsu clothes on! Get your gi! Get your water bottle! Get your shoes! Get a snack! Grab your guitar!”
It’s a mantra, but it’s not a peaceful one. It’s a predictable chant designed to summon a sense of urgency that my children simply do not possess. They are living in the eternal now, which isn’t a bad thing except that I am living in the "we are going to be ten minutes late, and I hate being late" future.
Do you have moments like this too? Do you ever wonder if you’ve actually become invisible? Or worse, if you’ve just become background noise, like the hum of the refrigerator or a distant car alarm?
You know how it feels when you’ve said the word "shoes" fourteen times and yet, there they are, sitting on the rug, staring at their feet as if they’ve never seen a sneaker before?
Sometimes I look at their blank faces and the internal monologue starts its toxic spin: Do they not respect me? Why don't they listen? Am I just a glorified Uber driver and cafeteria lady these days?
But the thought that really hurts—the one that sits in the pit of my stomach while I’m aggressively throwing a lopsided ham sandwich into a Ziploc bag—is this: Is this the emotion they’ll remember me for? When they leave this house, will the rhythm they remember be the quiet mornings, or will it be the sound of my voice hitting that frantic, high-pitched register of a woman on the edge of a breakdown?
I’ve realized lately that I’m the vessel for the chaos. If I treat the in-between periods as hurdles to be cleared, they will feel like they’re being jumped over.
I’m the explorer of this weird, liminal space. I’m trying to understand why a field trip—a thing meant for joy—feels like a tactical military maneuver I’m destined to fail. I’m terrible at packing lunches. I hate it. I hate the way the bread gets soggy. I hate trying to remember if the water bottles are clean. I hate the frantic search for a lunchbox that I have never once missed packing each morning.
But underneath the surface, it’s not about the lunch. It’s about the control.
I want the transition to be as beautiful as the activity. I want the space between math at the table and mats at the gym to be a bridge, not a battlefield. I’ve been trying to unpack why I feel so tense, and it’s because I’ve been treating the in-between as lost time. As time that doesn't count.
Here is the uncomfortable truth I’m sitting with this week: The rhythm of our home isn’t defined by the things we schedule; it’s defined by how we handle the spaces where nothing is scheduled.
We can have the best curriculum in the world, but if our transitions are toxic, that’s the curriculum they’re actually learning. They’re learning how to be stressed. They’re learning how to feel like an inconvenience.
I asked myself: Is it me who’s making this feel so tense? The answer, uncomfortably, is usually yes. I’m the one trying to squeeze five minutes of productivity out of a three-minute gap. I’m the one who waits until the last second to find the gi.
What would happen if we stopped rushing through those in-between moments and started embracing them instead?
Because the truth is, the feeling of being loved isn't found in the activity we’re sprinting toward. It’s not on the mats at Jiu-Jitsu or at the museum on a field trip. It’s found in the hallway. It’s found in the way I look at them when we’re already five minutes late, and they still don’t have shoes on.
If I win the battle against the clock but lose the connection with my humans, I’ve failed the only assignment that actually matters. My kids don’t need a mother who hits every deadline with military precision. They need a mother who doesn't treat their existence like a logistical error.
The in-between is where the soul of our rhythm lives. It’s the texture of our life. If the sandwiches are lopsided and the gi is inside out, but their hearts aren't racing from the sound of my frustration, we’ve won. I want them to remember a mom who was occasionally late, but always on their side—not a woman who sacrificed their peace for the sake of an 11:00 AM start time.
XO,
Kimberly Crossland
