“I am tired in my strongness, but I don’t want to go to bed.”

– Beanie 10 p.m.

I am balancing a kitten on my lap named Calculator whose nickname is Lappylater. The twos of us are sitting on the bed in a hotel room.

Are you lovelies on vacation? you might be wondering. No. Oh no.

We had some plumbing trouble. I think I mentioned that. Yesterday a couple of guys came from a restoration company to tear out the only two floors in my home that were new and cleanable and then placed four industrial sized fans and one dehumidifier. The kids and I were in the dining room trying to do school when they turned everything on.

Have you ever tried to teach school in a wind tunnel to a hearing impaired child?

Don’t.

I asked how long the fans would need to go, hoping the answer would be ten minutes.

“Two days and don’t turn them off because you are just delaying the process.”

We grabbed a blanket, hauled our books outside and reconvened on the front lawn. We also ate our lunch there. My heart just constricted remembering bumping around with Torey trying to make lunch and get ready for a class we take on Thursday afternoons.

I know that there are far more challenging places to be and yet a sign that one’s situation is not ideal is when one find’s oneself looking forward to teaching 17 preschoolers for two hours in a classroom the size of a shoe box as a sort of reprieve from one’s home.

When we returned to the aircraft carrier I looked up the name of our insurance claim representative and negotiated a stay in a hotel. I placed the call from my kitchen to give perspective. She balked at first but when I mentioned that I was sitting in my front yard with the deaf child trying to do school she saw my point.

“How many people are in your house?

I hesitated for the merest moment, “Eight.”

“Really?”

“My sister and her family are staying with us.”

“Your biological sister?”

“Yes!”

“How many rooms are we looking at?”

So we are staying in a two bedroom suite, just because we weren’t in close enough quarters before.

I need to go as Paul is trying to put the kids in bed per my loving and respectful request.

I hope everyone is well and dry and not surrounded by fans.

I am well and dry and surrounded by my fam, but no fans.

Kids, am still working on the world’s longest story. It just keeps going. Will post soon.

It could be funny. Torey fell out of her chair and was clutching her gut when she read it, but she was there at the event and has all the visuals imprinted in her memory. She admits that she is not a trustworthy judge. I love the way that, if you have the slightest sense of humor, you can turn something painful and difficult into a hilarious memory. And if you are willing to apply yourself and retell it you can make someone else laugh too. Writing is so powerful.

When I lived in Japan and Paul was in the States I would get so impatient with having to translate things that I only knew in Japanese. “I’m at the eki.” Oh, except Paul doesn’t know that eki is a train station, so I would catch myself and say the English word which felt like I was speaking in slow motion. I looked forward to returning so that he could see what I had seen. I don’t know how long it took me to figure out that I was thinking that he and my family would see my experience when I was with them as if through osmosis. The only way they might get a feel was if I told them stories and showed pictures, but it would only be a feel, an idea, a glimpse – they would never see everything I saw.

And of course in writing, even if we entertain, uplift, inspire, persuade we can’t enable another to see exactly what we see, but together we invent something new.

https://alisonhodgson.com/2006/09/879/

I have been thinking about marriage a lot lately. Some things are pinging around my mind and my spirit. I don’t know what particular order these things might come, but I just wanted you to know I am thinking about it and that Paul and I are fine, good, but some things are being stirred up about my commitment to marriage and how it is going to affect the risks I take with people in my life.

You know when thoughts and feelings are swirling around and then it crystallizes into a shining clarity. I am beginning to make a stand. I am comitted to my marriage, specifically, and have said I am committed to marriage, in general, but I am beginning to define what that means. I am feeling called out.

Who will go?

Here I am.

Send me.