I should say that was always until this time. Not only did I
not want to come home, I did not want to leave HHI. I did not begin letting my
thoughts turn toward home and what I may be missing. And by the time I arrived
home, I was not at all engaged in what needed to be done. And therefore, I have
missed not one, but several beats.
This has caused some slight turbulence on the re-entry into
“real life”. Yes, shocking though this is, vacation is not real life. It meant
getting up when I wanted to. Which meant up before 7 every morning, except the
first morning when I slept until about 7:20. And was the last one in the condo
to get up. I think my husband was close to sticking a mirror under my nose to
make sure I was still breathing…because I NEVER sleep in. And yes, 7:20 was
sleeping in. I’m not a sleeper-inner.
By the same token, staying up past 11 is L.A.T.E. for me. I
turn into a pumpkin…ask my Hope Group.
So today the 5am alarm was early. And I ended up snoozing
until 6. Oops. No time for that 2-hour Quiet Time this morning. Ok, there never
is time for that, much as I would like there to be.
And I ate junk on vacation. Maybe one fruit and one
vegetable per day. Maybe. But that was a higher average than my husband and the
PBA. Oh yes. J.U.N.K. How can you want
to leave that? I mean, we always junk-food it up on vacation, but for some
reason this time it was so much more appealing. And I have yet to really stop.
Steak N Shake for dinner last night. As you’ll read below, yesterday was too
taxing for me to ever consider cooking.
Which leads me to my next point. Yes, I did some bike riding on vacation,
and some walking
but nothing which really caused me to break a sweat. I haven’t worked out in a
week and a half. And I NEED to work out. In case you are confused about why,
see the paragraph above. Maybe tomorrow I will start. Both the healthy eating
and the working out. And if I don’t, I doubt I will tell you anyway. Don’t
judge. And don’t ask me about it either.
OK, nothing sounds too bad thus far, right? Well, I’m not
finished yet. There is other random turbulence.
My 11yo had a soccer game yesterday in a town we passed the
day before on our way home. This was not a big deal but frankly getting in the
car again after the 13 hour drive the previous day was not exactly what I
wanted to do. My friend KN nominated me for “Mother of the Year.” And I accepted
the nomination. It was worth the time and effort, as my son had his best game
of the season so far. But I will confess that I had my mental jammies on while
I was there. And changing into my actual jammies was the first thing I did when
I got home from the game.
Because of all the effort it took for me to sit through
church in the morning, sit in a car to and from the game, and also stand there
and WATCH the game, I was understandably exhausted last night. So nothing got
done around our house. A big thank you to my husband for folding all the
laundry I did manage to wash the night before. And for picking up the
previously-mentioned fast-food dinner. Hey, I already had my nomination for "Mother of the Year", so I kind of let the evening meal slide.
Though I didn’t accomplish much, I did have the forethought
to check the calendar for Monday, seeing that in addition to our regular
homeschool day, we had our co-op, our music lessons…and an orthodontist appoint
which I had forgotten about. Glad I checked the calendar.
One would think that this oversight would cause me to check
the calendar for the rest of the week, right? Nope. So let me just take a
moment to say for all the Internet to read, I L.O.V.E. that my dentist does
reminder phone calls the day before your appointment. Because I have a dentist
appointment tomorrow afternoon which was totally not on my radar. Whoops!
Please note: as soon as I got off the phone with my
dentist’s office, I did go and check the calendar for the week. No other
surprises. At least no other ones that I noted on my calendar. Surprises,
however, rarely tend to schedule themselves. Deep
thoughts here, aren’t they?
This morning, as I perused my To-Do List, I knew it was time
to settle up the checkbook and pay some bills. Always a good idea when you’re
clearly brain dead, right? Well, I thought that couldn’t stop me and I forged
ahead. Math not really being my strong suit anyway, I had a slight coronary
when I couldn’t figure out why the bills so greatly exceeded the amount in the
account. Mind you, I’m still old school and I do it all on my paper register.
And yes, I have the bank send me a paper copy of the transactions each month.
If I didn’t, I would never remember to check it. And trust me, my family wants
me to check it. Often.
So, back to the coronary. No worries. All is well. I think I
only lost a couple years of my life in the process. Fortunately the PBA were
doing their math work while I was doing the checkbook so I was able to stop the
focus on my issues and help them. When I came back to the checkbook, the muddled
thoughts had cleared: my husband and I each had another paycheck deposit in
there which I forgot to record. OK, that makes MUCH more sense. No worries…even
with the calculator, I checked my math twice. And got the same answer both
times, thank you very much. Calculators are my friends. And they might be my
only ones after confessing such stupidity to you, my reading public.
One more bump in this re-entry is our dumb dog, you may recall, has us well
trained. And frankly I’m surprised that my neighbor continued to care for him
the entire time we were gone. Had it been me taking care of someone else’s dog,
I may have thrown my hands up in the air and said, “Good luck, dog!” But she’s
clearly nicer than I. I’m hoping that my pay-off will convince her to take care
of him again in the future, and yet I would not blame her if she said no.
So in addition to my more than slight embarrassment over his
behavior, my dog is not acting in a way which makes himself endearing to us.
He’s decided that he’s supposed to go to the bathroom right by the backdoor. He
did this twice on the evening we got home (before we even went to sleep). And the
past two nights, he’s done this at night, while we are asleep. And does not let
anyone know that he needs to go out. So we find the little (or sometimes big)
surprise when we get up in the morning. I’m sure that he was mad that we left
him, but really? Does pooping on the kitchen floor really make me want to take
you anywhere? To answer you, Indy, it does…back to the shelter from whence you
came. OK, just so you know, I probably wouldn’t do that, because my 11yo would
never speak to me again, but something’s got to change. And by change I don’t
mean that we start taking him on trips. Any thoughts or suggestions you might
have, please share with me and the fan-ship. All 20-some of you.
The last couple of balls which had been dropped are as
follows:
- The lawn DESPERATELY needs to be mowed, and the straw mats which were down for the re-seeding need to be removed, before removal rips out all the grass that has grown...but there's no time for that on the radar any time soon
- We have friends who moved today and we didn’t help them. Not one bit. And I promised to help unpack. But I am happy to report, I mean I was so sad about the fact, that by the time I got there this afternoon, they had mostly unpacked. Awesome! But I did take them a pan of brownies. Chocolate covers over a multitude of failings. Yes, you can use that if you want, even though I doubt that I actually made it up, but it seems to fit in here nicely.
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