Time Off

Well.  We are still living without air conditioning because I don't want the dust everywhere.  That may change this week.  We will see.

We have about decided to do without the bead board and just paint two different colors on the walls and put up a chair rail instead.  Not because I don't want the bead board, but because of the cost of having the bead board PLUS the cost of the glue to hold it to the walls.  I still might do some.  We will just have to wait and see how good of shape we can get these walls into.

I took yesterday off.  Instead of working anywhere, I made cookies and delivered them to The Angel's house, where they were hosting the cutest little black-eyed grandson you ever saw.  Black-eyed as in his eyes are very very dark brown, so dark they seem to be black, not blackened from falling or getting hit.  He is only 2, so those kind of black eyes are still far in his future, though they will surely come.  At least they seem to come to all other boys I have known.  Life doesn't seem to be complete for any boy until he has a shiner.  They actually seem to like this, at least the first time, for reasons that remain unclear to me.  It's just a boy thing I guess.  At any rate, my spirits were much higher after spending time with that little cutie than they were before.  What would we do without little ones?  I would be lost and not be able to summon up the strength to keep going.

After that I took what remained of the afternoon and laid in the sun by myself for two hours.  I covered myself in coconut oil and got my mattress all blown up, then as I went down the ladder to get onto the mattress, half of the ladder came off the dock.  I stood there, poised to jump but without enough time to position myself properly to land on the mattress like I had planned, when we both splashed down into the pond.  I only used the dang thing to begin with in order to miss the moss floating in spots, which may seem ironic to you, as it does to me.  At any rate, I took a somewhat flying leap into my own namesake and for good measure drug some of it, along with the ladder, which happily floated, to shore.  There I finally got de-mossed, positioned on my mattress, and headed for open water, where I floated undisturbed by anything.  It was heaven.  When I got home the boys had fed themselves and gone on with their lives and did not seem to even notice I had been gone. What's a mother to do?  Praise God and take a nice long nap, that's what.

Lately I am noticing all these things that I am again able to do for the first time in so long.  How many years go by in our lives without our noticing?  You have kids and then little ones, and you change so much, really just in order to survive, that you don't really notice until things change back.  All those years you spent wishing you could still "whatever", then you kind of forget about whatever those things were, and then one day, it seems out of the blue, you can do whatever again, and it seems so odd.  You have to think about whether you still really can do those things, and about 1/2 the time you find you really have no desire to do those things anymore.  It is still nice to know that you can, though.  Even if you don't plan to do them often.  Options: what would life be without them?

Tomorrow it will be back to the grind.  This weekend, though, and this extra day, I have taken time to take stock.  I have not felt hurried or pressured or anxious.  I've just been hanging out.  Sleeping when I feel like it, being up when I feel like it, mudding or sanding or cooking when I feel like it.  It's so nice when you don't have a schedule hanging over your head all the time!  I call this going with the flow, and I find that most often I am the only one who puts myself under pressure.  I now know that I can control that, and having realized this, I'm never going back.  My house will get done when it gets done, and it will be done right.  Most importantly, I don't think I'll have to worry about it again for a long time and I can't even imagine what I might do then, but I can't wait to find out.

I hope you had a great weekend also, and I hope you took time to notice your life at this moment.  It changes so fast and furiously that it feels like a crazy ride at the carnival.  The kind where you get in and you can't get off but occasionally you do see some familiar faces, just for a second, before they are whisked off in another direction away from you again.  You might have time to scream "HI!" at them but you are working pretty hard just to stay safely in your own crazily spinning orb that you are trapped in, and it's all just a blur, really.  I advise you to take some time out, even if you have to steal it from the middle of the night, and take stock of where you are in life and what you value.  Especially in the middle of the night, I have noticed, things seem better.  Your children sleeping invoke much different feelings than they do when awake.  You have time to think instead of react to what they just threw onto the walls or floors.  You might be surprised what is really important and how much time you are spending on what does not, in the end, matter.  To anyone.  Just adjust your course on the river of life, (it's a wide river) and trust that you will end up not where you planned perhaps, but exactly where you need to be.

Because you will, I promise.