Expert on the etiquette of perilous times.
Have done:
Awoke to sinus pain at 2 a.m.
Read a book until some time after 5 a.m.
Passed out again
Crawled out of bed at 8 a.m.
Rescued two toads from the love of the Bean
Taught school
Made a run to the pharmacy to get meds for allergies
Commanded everyone to wear shoes whilst in the construction zone
Removed the last of the cedar shakes
Had a long phone call regarding a ministry for which I volunteer
Busted up a brawl between the homeschoolers that broke out while I was on the phone
Gave First Aid to a Bean who slipped off her shoes and sliced her toe in all the excitement.
Negotiated peace between the warring parties
To do:
Take a Bean to the doctor for a tetanus shot
Go to the library
Shop for groceries
Make dinner
Workout
Launder all of our laundry
Pick up the dining room and our bedroom
Walk the dog
Sleep through the stinking night
The pool is blue! Paul and I can, once again, hold our heads high…well in this regard.
School is out. We got a late start, but worked hard and and finished early. We still haven’t moved our schoolroom back upstairs. Today I called every one up to help me carry the cedar shingles downstairs. Why did we have cedar shingles? Brace yourself. Just because walls of every sort of paneling, faux brick and faux rock were not enough, the former owners just had to have a wall of cedar shakes.
If I was that sort of blogger I would have taken extensive before pictures…I didn’t. Picture hideous and be satisfied. You can’t handle the truth. I certainly couldn’t. The kids and I are going to be redoing our schoolroom this week. A month ago they help me remove the shingles. Today we put them in the garage and tore out the carpet in the front of the room. Our upstairs is one giant 55 foot long room, but about a third of the way down there is a step up. We have the declared the schoolroom the first third and plan to take down the wallpaper, paint the paneling, the walls and the floor and, hopefully, have a skylight installed and call it good for now.
I want to do this with the kids, for this to be our project and to have fun working together. Paul and I were both taught that work is long, arduous and fraught with anger, frustration, bitterness and fear. We started to teach what we knew and then decided to learn something new. We’ve been working on our work ethic the last year. I want the kids to know that work is just another way of being together and that we all – oh dear I am beginning to sound like a bad corporate employee campaign – who cares.
What if I really believed that Together Everyone Achieves More? Seriously, what if my kids, and Paul and I really GOT that there is a work God has begun in us as this little family and that it will only be brought to fruition as we love and value each other, as we fully receive each other. That’s what I want. I want my kids to know that together we have a work, that only we get to do and I want us to look for it and then do it with joy.
But you can have the fig tree and its fat leaves like clown hands
gloved with green You can have the touch of a single eleven-year-old finger
on your cheek, waking you at one a.m. to say the hamster is back.
You can have the purr of the cat and the soulful look
of the black dog, the look that says, If I could I would bite
every sorrow until it fled, and when it is August,
you can have it August and abundantly so. You can have love,
though often it will be mysterious, like the white foam
that bubbles up at the top of the bean pot over the red kidneys
until you realize foam’s twin is blood
-Barbara Ras
from You Can’t Have It All
I posted this poem not quite a year ago, in November. This morning, reading it again it struck me that today I have an eleven-year-old, a black dog and August. The eleven-year-old I only have for another month, the black dog, only God knows and August, just this one day until another year.
Oh, and I have love.
Today I want to have all that I have and abundantly so.
May you as well.