Gratittude

Thirteen for ’13

January 11, 2013 by Maggie 3 Comments

I decided to limit my goals to 13. I could list 100 and still not address all that needs overhauling in my life. Little by little, I feel that I’ve let things get sloppy. There is only one way to fix it. Fix it.

GOALS

1) Silence. No computer. No people. No kidding. I’ve always had a value for silence. Maybe because I am an only child, I “got it” from a very early age. I don’t know. Whatever’s the case, I haven’t been alone systematically for months.

Looks like: setting an alarm, no matter what time I go to bed.

Start: now.

Finish: none. Death is the ultimate meditative silence.

2) Move in my strengths. I actually know a thing or two, and in one or two areas, I am an expert. A couple of months ago, I had a bit of a wake up call when my brain screamed,”You haven’t accomplished [thing I want] because you have no self-confidence to try.

Looks like: *sigh* making a list of my strengths and deciding in what ways to use those resources to encourage others.

Start: today.

Finish: the list, Feb 1.

3) Rock the kitchen. The fact is, I avoid cooking food and feeding people. It’s unloving. It’s irresponsible. It’s wasteful.

Looks like: Keeping enough food in the house for people to eat. I am bad for getting home without enough snacks. This drives my children to eat all the chips, pretzels, carrots, celery, crackers, cheese, lunch meat, green beans. Then, when meal time comes, there is no li’l side or something. Planning dinners but also, *sigh* lunches.

Start: Today.

Finish: I can shop today. Menu planning needs a longer finish date. The best idea I’ve heard is to create a number of menus and rotate them. Gimme….two weeks.

4) Get a choke hold on the family finances. Choke. Hold. I hope that’s not too harsh of imagery for my more delicate blog guest. I checked us out on Global Rich List. I have no excuse.

Looks like: Giving systematically to God’s Work (not always strictly to the local church). Saving like a mad woman. Possibly refinancing. Executing a will. Aggressive debt re-payment. It might be a service like Manilla. I don’t love being here, but I know I am not alone in the world and this is my blog and I’m collecting on the accountability, real or imagined.

Start: Today

Finish: I need to set individual times on each one. So, today’s action is that. By night fall tonight, I will have estimated finish dates on these.

5) Get serious about writing. I could post a “knock-knock” joke a day on the blog for the rest of my life. I could continue to analyze my navel lint for the next five years. Am I writing or not? Am I any good or not?

Looks like: submitting something for publication to a legitimate source like a magazine or newspaper or a nice website.

Start: yesterday, I bought The Writer’s Digest, Writer’s Yearbook 2013*. It has a number of websites for writers.

Finish: Submit something by the end of February.

6) Love my blog. It seems that when the adoption was final I lost my niche. I still believe in my blog’s name. What-We-Can’t-Explain is a part of God’s Perfect Design for our lives. That’s the best description of my life so far. The greatest things that ever happened were because of what looked like a slip on a banana peel or a cosmic clothesline.

Looks like: a design, a blogging calendar, guest posting, and monetizing. Creating my own or using others daily blog checklists.

Start: Dec 28–The design is underway. January 3 or something. I’ve been invited to guest post I have to accept. I’m shy, see.

Finish: The design stuff I have no control over…could be in a week or two. I will accept on the guest post today.

7) Hold out for quality. My children have developed a general expectation of life that’s mediocre. I commented to someone the other day that kids will appreciate quality if that’s what they’re exposed to. It was like I slapped my own face.

Looks like: Resisting the “I can do that later.”

Start: When I Dress for work this morning.

Finish: When they are educated and have found a husband or wife.

8) School. I am burnt out, but I’m not giving up. At least, public school kids are impelled. This is my gig. Only the ISP headmaster gets to tell me what to do.

Looks like: Getting all my paperwork prepared so when it’s due, there is less stress. Planning the rest of the curriculum until graduation. Looking at college degree plans so I know what they need.

Start: today.

Finish: Feb 1.

9) Take better care of myself. (See #1) I am a big girl. No one is going to take care of my body and mind and spirit. End of discussion. Sure, I’d like to call this one exercise and eat right, but there might be one or two things I need before that.

Looks like: List of needs. Plan to execute.

Start: When I started writing this post.

Deadline: one week.

10) Make a house that I’m not ashamed to have in the background of my photos.

Looks like: Fill the space in the attic that I gained access to when I was in there. Give away junk. Throw away trash. Plan for Renovation work.

Start: this isn’t rocket science. Tomorrow’s Saturday.

Finish:

11) Stop waste in the house. I think this is redundant, but, it is a mindset. Instead of seeing my goals in terms of their worth in sacrifice, I get in the habit of medicating my feelings with a “pass”. Well, $#!@’s out of hand. Money, Time, Food, Utilities, Late Fees, Brain cells (we have watched some really stupid stuff).

Looks like: setting the example myself. Shut up. I hate my life.

Start: with shorter showers and not using the fixture with six bulbs unless I am putting on make-up. List other areas and work on them.

Finish: When kids can run their own homes.

12) The organization thing– create systems that make the obnoxious work easy. Then USE THEM. Even if it is a to-do list. Making the list isn’t the objective. It’s coming under the authority of the list that counts. Looks like: starting that list.

Start: in a minute.

Finish: when I no longer rely on a pile of paper to know what I need to do next.

13) Trust God– I’ve been mad at him over some things that happened really close together that we didn’t get a good outcome on. But even before that, I was going on the feeling that He wasn’t really showing up for me. I was having to do this all myself. I know better. I wouldn’t be even so much as alive without Him. If He doesn’t have me now, none of this really matters.

Looks like: Being joyful when I feel down and discouraged. Not in a fake way, but acknowledging my feelings and listing what is still good or given in the midst. There’s a blog challenge, but I think I might do it privately.

Start: ASAP

Finish: Every moment and start again.

*It’s a magazine… not Writer’s Market. I couldn’t find a link.

Filed Under: blogging, body image, Cooking, Gratittude, homeschool, Loving, making ends meet, Uncategorized Tagged With: Blogging, Complaining-Mine, Family, goals, Lists, organization, Parenting, planning, surrender, writing

Excuse Me, But Do You Have The Time?

November 20, 2012 by Maggie Leave a Comment

To do something fun and friendly?

My friend Sam is in his last year of vet school.

He is the oldest of five children.

He has spent the last six years anyway, busily working away at becoming not just a vet, but a man.

He was on the team that went to India the year Mickey went.

He helped me figure out what was wrong with Low Self-Esteem Dog’s eye, when she tried to take it out herself.

He is seemingly unaware of his eligibility as a bachelor.

He is trying to win a weird prize.

An portable ultrasound for large animal use.

Glamorous, right?

Well, here’s the deal.

It’s a video entry and will be decided by votes.

He is the only student in the competition and most of the people I know, know him.

Except here.

If you wouldn’t mind stopping by and casting your vote, he would be so very thankful.

His is the last entry and it’s awesome as Sam is.

By all means, if you need to watch all the videos, feel free, because I want you to vote your conscience.

Because loving your friends is loving your friends IRL and Blog. Right?

Thanks!

Filed Under: blogging, Extended Family, Gratittude, Thanksgiving

That Summer We Lived with Grandma

September 3, 2012 by Maggie 1 Comment

She lived 25 miles from where my mom worked, and gasoline was up to $.60.

Shut up.

It was the Bi-centennial.

Grandpa had retired from the oil field and they’d expanded the garden. Because there were more people there to help work it.

They had these two old apricot trees. They’d been there for twenty years. Never blossomed. Never put on fruit. Until this year. They made up for all the years of disappointment.

For their anniversary, grandpa had made Grandma a swing. Like a porch swing, only it sat out in the back under the mimosa tree.

The days were long and hot. In Oklahoma, the wind blows continually, not in gusts, but relentlessly. My hair was continually blowing everywhere. So mom kept it short.

She would leave for work early in the morning. And I would take all Grandma’s berry baskets (collected since the great depression) and go drop on the ground beneath the apricot trees. I would fill the baskets and take them in. Grandma washed the apricots and returned the baskets to me. At the peak of the crop, I could fill them up to six times per day. Grandma added this to her full time work with the garden.

They also grew zucchini bigger than my leg from the knee down. And green beans. There were, of course, tomatoes and peppers. These grandparents didn’t grow corn(the others fought the good fight for ‘roasting ears’.). But that’s about all they didn’t grow. I was never thorough enough to suit anybody as a green bean harvester. Which was just as well, as my work made it possible to add apricots to the harvest.

It was not without a good deal of noise, that I did my work. I cried at the injustice and mistreatment. And my wishing for rain gave me the opportunity to wish for the sun to come out. It was more pleasant to pick up the apricots from the dry ground than to kneel in the mud.

Grandma didn’t love to turn the air conditioner on. She saw it as needless waste. Not one living person supported her in this. Oh, in April, we all agreed. You shouldn’t need it in April. But in mid-July? There were no prizes for being the last one to close the windows and turn it on.

She had her swing. She worked like a maniac in the blazing sun or the stifling kitchen all day. When the dinner dishes were back in the cabinet, she’d get a cold drink and her cigarettes, and go outside and sit in the swing with the sun at her back. Under the mimosas, she’d smoke and watch the hummingbirds come to the mimosa blossoms. Mom would sit with her, too. She’d put in a day at the medical office, come home and change and join Grandma in harvesting and canning the green beans.

By the time the weather cooled in the fall, I couldn’t eat apricots anymore. I wasn’t filing it in the ‘great moments of my life’ file. But now, I think about my equal role in the work. I didn’t sit around nagging about the two activities I was willing to think of as fun. A lot of hard work made me grateful as a Pilgrim for time to read or write or play or watch tv.

I think I’ll move that summer from the “Argh” file to the “Good stuff” file.

Filed Under: food, Gratittude, life lessons, my childhood, Uncategorized, where I'm from

Monday Morning

August 27, 2012 by Maggie 5 Comments

This is the extent to which I am even speaking to the blog. I am taking it back to the basics of the invention. A journal. No one is reading, and I have lost my soul, as it were. I wrote because I loved it. I read because I loved finding out there were people who were thinking about the same things I do.

I got all confused with writing to please a reader. So they would come back. Then I thought I’d monetize. But before I got to that I thought I’d participate with sponsors. I am not good. I am bad at it. I freeze.

I guest posted. I guess I did that wrong,too. I think I was supposed to bust it out on social media more than I did. I didn’t hear back from them.

At this point, it’s hard to remember why I’m blogging. My delight went somewhere. The blog is going back to basics.

THIS IS WHO I AM AND THIS IS WHAT’S GOING ON:

After a big weekend, we are “at the school table”. Inexplicably, I have known the answer to the questions, today. The questions are seldom content based, but rather, a distraction from getting down to business(Touchdown “*Bleep*ville Twist-offs!).

There is only one orthodontist appointment, this week. Only three scheduled in the next month; including surgery.

One child has decided what she wants to study for life!!! Victory! The week before, she was planning to live off mom and dad until a pop star or Small British Olympian swept her off her feet. (Hard to do when they’re propped up on the couch.) She wants to be a foreign language translator and is planning to study French, Spanish, and Chinese. Which is awesome.

Over the weekend, we still had peaches from our trip to the roadside stand and needed to use them before they spoiled. We made a cobbler and some preserves.

Future foreign language interpreter peeling peaches.

Add sugar and pectin.

Let sit 12-18 hours. Cook down. Pour boiling mixture into prepared jars. Cook in hot water bath boiling 15 minutes.

Caution: the recipe said it yielded 7 half pints. Try 11 and a half.

Again, a lot easier than I would have thought.

We had more peaches even than that, so the sister, who didn’t work on the preserves because she was mowing the whole yard* by herself for the first time, showered and made a peach cobbler that we shared with our small group yesterday. It didn’t get a photo. Sorry, but it just would have made your mouth water. So, it’s probably for the best.

* Mickey is in a boot, so someone was going to have to step up and she did.

Filed Under: blogging, Brits, Cooking, Gratittude, homeschool

Let’s Salsa!

August 22, 2012 by Maggie 2 Comments

Thursday, last week, we had to be across town and our route took us past the roadside stand where I like to get peaches as often as possible. Yay.

In addition to peaches, she had a basket of “salsa tomatoes”, meaning tomatoes that were a little too ripe for slicing or salads.

We picked up some of each and on Saturday, while Mickey was at his volleyball tournament, we waded into a totally new experience. We canned our own homemade salsa. I used this recipe. And used the links in the post to get the canning information.

First, I threw dinner in the slow cooker. Swiss Chicken.

This photo is a ~~nosehole~~ bad friend and won’t stay right side up.

Then I made some sun tea with a raspberry herbal bag thrown in.

As if I do anything all natural anymore.

To peel, dip tomato in boiling water for 15 seconds.

Then into ice water.

The skin will pull right off. This is fun.

Everyone wants to help.

We chopped onions and green & jalapeno peppers.

Mixed spices.

: This child feels that, if she stirred; she is is the one who claims the glory.

Looks like a fiesta already.

: And she stirs…. cook for 20 minutes after it reaches a boil.

2 quarts, 4 pints.

We’ve never canned before, but we used only jars, rings and lids we had around the house. That’s why it was economical for Grandma.

It came out good, but spicier than I was expecting. About half the tomatoes were orange, causing the color to be exactly the color of a tomato sauce stain on your new white Ann Taylor t-shirt. I substituted lime juice for the vinegar in the recipe and added cilantro.

There are no pics of the canning portion because my help clocked out. There was porch-sitting to be attended to.

Have you ever canned? I was surprised how easy it was. What are your favorite things to save for winter by canning, freezing or drying?

I am linking this post to Wordful Wednesday at Parenting by Dummies.

Filed Under: Cooking, food, Gratittude, life lessons, Story, tea, Uncategorized, where I'm from

Flying Surrender

August 18, 2012 by Maggie 2 Comments

In previous posts, I’ve alluded to my opposition to using medicine to numb an unspecified pain to the neutralization of pleasure.

Week before last I gave up. In a haze of pain, a clouded mind, I got the appointment. By the time the appointment came around, I delivered myself bawling to the doc. She shares my faith and respects my feelings about drugs.

Mid-week they called me with results and asked it I just wanted to go ahead and start the anti-depressants.

I said, give me until the follow-up appointment next week to decide.

Thursday, I read this post by Diana. I asked a question. Got a couple of answers.

Yesterday, I felt better than I have in years. I’ve slept all night every night since Wednesday last week. My focus is 100% better. I have a high powered anti-inflammatory and am not yet pain free. Three visits into PT (One of the girls has a crush on the PT’s intern. suh-pri-ize.).

I’m ready to stop being smarter than the meds, the doctors, science and God. I wrote all that the other day about coffee, sugar and exercise, and the deal is– part of the reason I feel bad is that when things are falling apart I add to the plates I want to keep spinning.

The achilles heel of the good girl.

It’s been nearly a quarter century since I took the medicine. Science has had time to work on it. Science, like it or not, produces things that God uses to care for his kingdom.

Friday morning,looking at logistics for next week, I realize it’s not going to happen without moving things around. So I call and explain my situation and ask if I can have my follow-up visit TO-day. They said, yes.

I determined to ask all my questions. And go with what the doc said.

Bend my neck. Humble myself.

Surrender.

The doctor said that based on the results so far, I don’t need them at this time.

(She said she couldn’t believe the difference between the person she saw in office 9 days ago.)

It seems it’s never the insomnia or fear or stressful events.

Maybe it’s only ever opening my hand.

Letting go of what I’m holding onto that I think is keeping me safe.

Handrails, steering wheels, reins, joysticks. The control.

I used to call it letting go. Now, I call it surrender.

Surrender.

Filed Under: Gratittude, life lessons, surrender Tagged With: health, surrender

Enough is Enough?

August 9, 2012 by Maggie 4 Comments

This will be the post that gets an ugly anonymous comment. (All real bloggers get them.) I can feel it. I have to write it. It is not about a blog or bloggers who link to a couple of memes I am aware of that have to do with what I am about to say. I think the internet has room for all different beliefs. I think they are on trend rather than responsible for the basis of the trend in thinking.

What I have to share today is fueled by my real life experience.

Women tend to get hung up in the idea of not being adequate to the task before them. Tasks. We have to do like the cologne ad from the 70s…”bring home the bacon, fry it up in the pan, and never let him forget he’s a man.”

Actually, the ad was based on a remake of a song (the writer’s grandchildren will probably emerge and sue me. They can have all the money I’ve made off the blog. I’ll dig through the bottom of my purse.)

I digress.

We get hung up.

When we’re small, the only expectations we have to deal with are those of our parents; we don’t have any for ourselves, yet. As we grow, we add those of teachers and peers. At some point, we begin to feel expectations for ourselves, but they’re freighted with what others expect of us. As we become adults, we hope to be productive citizens, adding the expectations of employers, employees, a spouse and the culture to the load we bear.

I’ve been seeing and hearing a whisper on the wind of something I believe will become a movement. It’s on coffee mugs and tote bags. Blogs and Devotional books…

YOU ARE ENOUGH.

I think what this is attempting to say is, “Do what you can and don’t worry about the rest”.

Maybe, “Don’t carry around others’ expectations,”…which are both good things. If that’s what you’re trying to say, say it.

If I’m enough, I wouldn’t need anyone else. Isolation makes people lose perspective. We’ve seen it in a lot of different ways, from our crazy uncle to people who shoot guns into crowds.

This kind of thinking is arrogant. “I am all I need.” Bit of a slap in the face to those who support you and take up your slack.

We need others. Husband or wife, kids, faith community, neighbors (ever locked yourself out of your own house? At night?).

It’s difficult to reconcile self-sufficiency with scripture. Jesus Christ, Himself, had helpers.

What would we do without each other? I don’t know what I would’ve done without my blog friends over the last three years. I don’t know what I’d do without my IRL friend, CMK; she’s like an older sister who felt like mom spoiled me too much. Sometimes, that’s just what I need.

Today, I need a physical therapist, a grocer and a curriculum publisher. Yesterday, I needed a doctor, a pharmacist, and the gal hanging out the drive-thru at the Taco Bell. Tomorrow, I will go out of the house at 9:30 p.m. with the gals, to help decorate for a wedding for a gal who doesn’t have family to help her. Last week, we shopped the thrift store that benefits the battered women’s shelter. A dress we donated was in the display, while my daughter located Hilfiger khakis for $8.

If I’m enough, how come It Takes A Village?

I’m not enough. If I was, I wouldn’t need Jesus. I wouldn’t need to go out for girl’s night out. Or to go to a blog conference or to church or homeschool co-op.

I am so terribly grateful to be less than I need.

Filed Under: blogging, Gratittude, life lessons

Grounded. Together.

August 6, 2012 by Maggie 2 Comments

If you’re new here, and I hope at least 50 or more of you are, my blog is to record things I want my children to know. Now that my face is actually blue, I need a transcript, so when they say, “WHY DIDN”T YOU TELL ME!!!” I can say, “See, Honey, I tried.

Another function of the blog is to give a gentle heads-up to the parent of young children. A significantly filtered look into the future. An opportunity to prepare, but not enough information to scare.

Or whatever.

This is the first time the girls are completely grounded. There have been times we’ve removed certain privileges, but never an across the board “cultural lockdown.”

Here is why.

There’s this wise-sounding piece of parenting advice that reminds parents not to punish themselves.

That is wrong and deceptive.

First, that ship sailed when the pee hit the stick.

Second, If you aren’t willing to be inconvenienced to make an impression on your child’s heart and mind, you will visit judgement upon your future self in the form of the kind of sludge I am shoveling now. It shows what is most important…the child’s character or getting to girls’ night.

–leave Target and take her “I’ll-by-gosh-have-this-Barbie-or-know-the-reason-why” tantrum throwing butt to the car. Text your husband to bring you a magazine and a hot black coffee and whatever was on your list.

–cancel the play date, skip the birthday party: tell the mom, “Sorry.” If she asks why, she’s rude. You can’t make it.

–call the coach and tell him you are missing practice. Yeah, I said it. Another day, I’ll climb on my soapbox about young athletes thinking they’re above the law. Not today.

I count on the above activities as a break from being the organ grinder’s monkey who has to perform if they drop a penny in my cup. Maybe because it’s summer, I hear an endless, “CanI?CanI?CanI?CanI?CanI?CanI?” (Recently, I told them to stop asking coming to me for permission to do things(that call for a ruling) and look around for things they already know they have permission to do.) They’re hip-deep in pre-qualified, socio-cognitively rich, entertainment options.

I digress.

I was on inconveniencing yourself.

Do it, now. Just a few startled looks from now, that child will believe you when you talk.

Don’t be like me.

They are just wrapping up week one of a 35 day “cultural lockdown” (it’s the new grounding [Not really, I made it up and hope it catches on]). I COULD NOT BE MORE GRATEFUL THAT THE ISSUE IS WHAT IT IS. While I am not glad to have “Flaming-Trousered Prevaricators”, I could be dealing with worse.

Currently, I haven’t been alone except to bathe (and then only 77% of the time) in a week. We started school this week. I did it because if we had more to do we would not have had so much time to come up with stupid ideas (or join our sister on the crew of the SS ‘Ignorificance’).

They are ‘killing me softly’.

Being grounded when you’re a kid, you’re not observing yourself. I’m watching them, and can tell they don’t get that they took the risk and, by extension, chose whatever happened when they got caught. They don’t see “this hurts me more than it hurts them” ~~and may cause my death if I don’t get some time away from them~~. They don’t see the whole point is that they’re missing things they’d like to do. And I don’t care.

But I do.

~~No, I don’t.~~

It all depends on when you want to put in the time. You can do it early. Or later on.

Most things in life are like that.

So we’re all just…grounded. Together.

Filed Under: blogging, Gratittude, humor, life lessons, Parenting Teens

Riding the Short Bus to Heaven

June 25, 2012 by Maggie 3 Comments

I’ve resigned myself to the fact that the lessons babies learn in Sunday school are just coming to me in middle age. I’m 45 years old and may have opened the book on learning to receive God’s love in the way that He expresses it.

This weekend, we got together again with friends from our church in the other city. 3 families. 6 adults. 16 kids. I dreaded it , because I knew it wouldn’t be enough time. Ray, whose house we were at, voiced similar thoughts about getting together making him remember. It was a phenomenal time and place. The relationships are proof that God is at work and it all really happened.

We went to the church. Participated in worship in three languages. And in the quiet of the celebration, I realized it is so prideful of me to worry about being understood. I am so busy wishing for more than what God has given, that I don’t experience the fullness of what He has given. And that, my friends, is sin.

If I worry about what is not happening or the scarcity of time or the fear of this being the last time we’ll see each other. Or what you’ll think of our house or kids or the chins I’ve acquired since we last met. I miss out on the growing more “What-Makes-This-Great” memories. The thrill that your kids have grown up so beautiful and wishing you ‘Happy 21st Anniversary’ and how precious and nourishing this time is for my daughters. And discovering that, when I was attending your son’s birth, my son had, just 4 days earlier, come to the orphanage in China. The thrill of simply standing in line at Wal-Mart together. The necessary goodness of sharing late into the night.

Living in the past and the future misses today. Wanting more than is given leaves me continually hungry without being filled, and continually consuming without ever feasting. It is a subtle rejection of the manifold richness of abundance of God’s deliberate personal outpouring of love to us.

I don’t merit anything in the Kingdom. It is all favor. While I wish for more time and more money and a BLT that will make me lose pounds and inches, I rebelliously overlook the FACT that He has privileged us more than most.

It has taken me longer than the average grade school child. But now, I know.

Thanks. Again. Good Friends.

Filed Under: before and after, Gratittude, life lessons, my age, tribe

Good Morning. Ish.

June 18, 2012 by Maggie 2 Comments

Good Morning. I guess no matter where you are on earth… Monday morning is a beginning. I suppose there may be a tribal people living on the top of a mountain in South America who begin their week on Thursday, but more than likely, they are not reading this.

Already digressing and it’s not even 8.

Technically, this is the second to the last week of the school year. Tennessee school year runs from July 1 to July 30. We didn’t do it. We failed. And all three of us get to experience the consequences. We are taking Algebra again. Maybe Science. Next year is going to be a Son of a Gun. I am not apologizing to them. They are supers. We should have been done in March. As it is. They will be completing two Maths next year and possibly two Sciences. HA. With a 4.0.

I have been listening to Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother on cd from the library. Far from being awful to me, I find her to be a mom with an inspirational life. Mistakes? Obviously. Wrong for expecting kids to achieve what they are able to? No. Humble? Now, yes. Telling anyone else what to do? No.

It’s a shame her 13 year-old wore her down. Even the girls were in the back seat yelling, “She’s 13. Don’t listen to her!” They should know.

I fully expect these same children to be writing fan letters to that little girl by Columbus Day.

As I alluded to in yesterday’s post. Complacency or something worse has blinded me to the gradual wearing away of standards in school, behavior, appearance, speech, dress, home keeping, fiinancial management and spiritual life. Little by little, I have said,”Why does it have to be done, “one way or the other”?” Until nothing is being done any way. And I’ve tried to make everyone but myself responsible.

So with my head still pounding, I will call the doctor, then the director of the independent study program.

I can pay bills. Yay. I don’t anticipate that this will get old anytime soon. We have gotten through all the birthdays and celebrations and are now 9see above0 going on a very strict budget for the purpose of financial recovery. We are also going to change banks. After six years of struggle. I have spared you the banking drama. It has now become cost effective to move. And it’s consistent with our new financial attitude…

The local homeschool fest is this week. I guess I am going. Meh. I need a few things. I have to squeeze it in Friday, before…

I am hoping to drive over to Nashville this weekend to meet with friends. I guess. I am so homesick and it won’t be enough. I know what will happen. We will be so hungry and thirsty for fellowship when we leave. We’ll dream about moving [again] for weeks afterward.

Good Monday Morning to you. Where ever you are. Enjoy you fresh new week. What are you going to do with it?