Today the family went to Knight’s Action Park. It was the perfect day for it weather wise, not too hot and not too cloudy. I wasn’t going to be able to go until the intake appointment I had at noon cancelled. So then I was able to go and meet up with them since I didn’t have anybody else until 3. It’s been super dry at work in terms of waitlists and call-ins/cancellations. I actually wrote an email asking a certain entity to not reschedule until they could be more committed to keeping appointments.

So after walking Zorro and playing with him for a few minutes, I left for the water park. Everybody was already eating in the pavilion where my mother-in-law had brought in Subway sandwiches, fruit, and chips for lunch. My appetite still was basically non-existent and I ate a few bites of my six-inch sub and then gave it to Judah when he asked if there was anyone who hadn’t finished all of their sandwich. We packed up lunch and then headed into the park to the table with all of our stuff.

While we were there I made everyone get a picture and there wasn’t going to be any waiting until later. Then we moved as a group over to the lazy river where we rode to the hill slides. Somehow Dad got left behind when he was putting away the keys and phones. So we went down the hill slides twice and then the boys and Elianna and Miles went over to the tall slides. Laura and I went back to the lazy river and floated until it was time for me to go. It was a super fun time just being around.

Technically there still is day camp until Friday but as of today the overnight camp season is over. I told you it goes by fast and it some ways it hardly even seems like we had summer. We had a dinner in the dining hall where Josh bought everyone their favorite drinks and then he ordered chicken strips, garlic toast, and a few other things from a chicken place in Springfield. While we were standing in the food line one of the out of town counselors asked if I could cut his hair.

I was a little hesitant just because it’s not like I have a ton of experience. It’s one thing to cut your own boy’s hair. Ethan was a few people ahead in the line and overheard this conversation. He did some kind of cut motion and told the counselor that was probably not a good idea. My feelings were instantly hurt and in some kind of weird slow motion but still moving normally way I turned around and left the kitchen and didn’t eat any food for the rest of the evening. I did drink my drink.

He doesn’t even realize that his information is outdated. The other boys let me cut their hair and ask me to do so. I don’t know where things went wrong between us to where this is the way that he sees me. Well anyway so I didn’t cut the counselor’s hair. We had to go around the table and say what the most shocking part about the summer was from our perspective. Mine was that two new cats had been spotted on the property. We haven’t seen the baby in a while but the mom is around.

My bank ledger keeps showing payments for WordPress renewals. It’s the time of year when all of those renew automatically unless for some reason the card on file has changed due to expiration or fraud alerts that lead to the issuing of new cards. I thought of this because I am struggling with feeling like there is nothing to write. Nothing that is appropriate or proper for where I find myself.

One of the worst things in writing is when I feel like I cannot truly be honest. About how heartbroken, miserable, or unhappy I am and how much I long for a world where I no longer have to pretend or push through. I will just be happy because there is nothing else that can be had or felt in this place that I have heard so much about but never fully experienced.

Sometimes life just seems like way too much to hold onto. I don’t mean taking my own life but more like being okay with dying. I was following an Instagram mom who recently died of stage four cancer. I just keep thinking, “What the heck?? Why??” It seems like such a waste of powers. No one in this life matters. It’s like that is what God is trying to get us to say, and then actually live by those promises.

Today was a pretty laid back and chill day. Not laid back in terms of temperatures but as far as being around the house. I’m really loving the new carpet and going downstairs and it not smelling either when I do laundry or when I walk down the stairs. The plan is to just keep the cats out of the basement. One has been really struggling with displacement and not knowing what to do. Ethan and Laura said she’s spent most of the summer down on their bed. I found her on mine the other day.

I did some laundry and cleaned the bathrooms. For breakfast I went down to the dining hall but forgot it was a bigger week for the camp side and there is also a high school cross country team here. By the time it got to me and Laura they were tearing pancakes in half to make sure there were enough. It was fine for the little kids but the older kids probably would’ve wanted to have more than one. The rest of the meals I just stayed up here and still haven’t had much of an appetite anyway.

Uncle Glenn called to check on Elianna. He said we all need a job like Joshua’s where we only need to work three months of the year. I said we really do, or actually I don’t even know what I said. It was nice of him to call and he had stopped by as well on Saturday evening after the party. My son and I were playing a game. In the evening me, Dad, Elianna, and the littlest watched a show but I couldn’t, I had to try to read something. It’s called The Dance of Intimacy by Harriet Learner. It’s pretty good.

Elianna and I are home from the hospital. Josh came back and picked us up around one. He and the kids had come by after church to visit in the morning and spend some time. I’m still trying to regain my bearings after this and sort it out. She is supposed to take a week off work and take things easy which is not something that naturally runs in her nature. She came with me up to El Paso to drop off my niece with my brother in law. My niece was a trooper and was flexible with all the changes.

When we were at Detweiller and I was moving around from place to place during the races, I had a moment where I remembered that several years ago this would not have been possible. My first cross country season as a parent I ran. I became enthralled with the sport that was just as much a sport for me than it was for them. The first season was the last time that ever happened, but a few nights ago at Detweiller was the closest it’s ever been to being that way again where I was running.

Because it wasn’t just one race, it was three races of watching my kids plus another whole race moving and cheering for a kid who wasn’t mine. It absolutely would’ve been unheard of. And there was gladness and a much more frequent gratitude in my steps while I was doing so, but at the same time there was also a fear. What is this going to cost me and how long will it take to recover from doing this, on a weekend where there were back to back to back days of extra scheduled activities.

I know that God can take away strength where there was some. I also want to acknowledge that he can give and did give me strength this weekend when there was very little. Like actual physical strength and alertness to not be suffering through weakness. Once the hump was over and we were actually in the room things started to move and did not feel long again. My peace somewhere did eventually return and the psychological pain that can so often plague me subsided into a renewal.

Laura was curled up in a picnic blanket on the ground, growing a baby. After Ethan’s race she stayed sitting down, or lying down, or sleeping. When we were cheering for Lydia and it was me, Ethan, Elianna, Abigail, and John. I said to John, “I need a picture of you with your medal”, and his glowing, happy face. It was dark but we were under lights. He said how about after the race. I knew I shouldn’t have listened to him but I did it anyway. He said that way we can get one with everybody.

Long story short Elianna and I are in the hospital where she was admitted for 24 hour observation to monitor a ruptured ovarian cyst. I never wrote about this, but two and a half years ago we had a similar incident like this where she woke up in the middle of the night in severe pain and was in the bathroom. She hunched up sitting on the side of the tub with a white face. I politely excused myself and went back into the back office and called 911 at 3am. They came to the house and everything.

But by the time they had gotten there she was starting to feel better. So they drove us in the ambulance and dropped us off at the hospital. After sitting in the ER for about half an hour we decided to just go home and make a doctor’s appointment in the morning, which is what we did. She had work ups done and that was a cyst too but a smaller one. This time was different in that the pain had been going on for about five hours and was not going away. So we took her to the ER.

After getting there around 1:10AM we got into a room around 4:30AM. It truly seemed like an eternity. I did what I could and told them she was in too much pain to just sit there like that. So they let us take her to the car and we sat out there and checked every half hour until they finally called us in. So they did a CT scan and an ultra sound and this time the cyst was 5-6cm and there was fluid in the abdominal cavity. Apparently blood greatly irritates the greater omentum which causes pain.

The greater omentum is the inner lining that covers and holds the internal abdominal organs. Right around noon we were admitted to the room. So we have mostly just hung out here and dozed on and off and this evening she is doing a lot better. Josh and the kids were at my mother-in-law’s 70th birthday party which was also today. Uncle Glenn came up to visit and so did Josh and Miles. Grandma and my sister-in-law took the boys, my niece, and Zorro home after the party was over.

So this has kind of sucked and was a struggle for a while. The hospital is a completely different world in the middle of the night. Right now I’m just thankful that everything has settled down and that she’s feeling better than before.

This evening was the Detweiller race in Peoria. The boys have been working hard over the summer to get ready for this race where they have different races for different levels and age groups. Ethan got 30th or 31st in the college and post-collegiate open race. He PR’d by nearly half a minute from his 3-mile race from two years ago and was happy with that. John got 17th in the open high school boys and girls race and was the only one from our family or school group who medaled.

Judah got 294th or something like that in the high school boys varsity. His leg was bothering him and he’d just gotten done with night owl week with an altered sleep schedule. I didn’t see him a single time in all the places I tried to see him, so that was a little disappointing. They didn’t run until 10:15PM so it was late and also dark. Each race had hundreds of runners in it and I think at some point I started to feel like the there were just too many runners in one place.

It was a very late night and I wish I could’ve stayed up long and processed more with the boys. Elianna had started feeling pain in her lower abdomen at some point during Ethan’s race. By the end of the night she could hardly walk because of the pain. At first it seemed like it was getting better and so I had somewhat forgotten about it until it was time to go home. We wanted to go to bed but neither one of us was able to sleep and for the rest of the night we really didn’t very much.

I saw the new for the first time in board daylight. We were walking to the dining hall and Josh nodded in her direction and said, “There’s your cat.” She was sitting on the edge of the woods watching people at main camp. I knew it was too early but I tried anyway to get closer to her. She ran away into the woods. I have not seen the kitten but one of the boys said he saw the mom and the kitten on the beach trail heading down from the retreat center. The mom could be a kitten.

This evening I went to a coed book club at a church member’s house. They study a C.S. Lewis book every other Thursday. I’ve been wanting to go to this and give it a chance but it falls on one of my longer work days and hasn’t worked out. I arrived ten minutes early only to be slightly shocked and partly horrified to find out that the first half hour from 7-7:30 is dedicated to casual conversation. I sat there thinking of all the things I could’ve done before I came. A nap. A very much needed walk.

I ended up leaving at 8:45. I need to process this because a lot was going on. We didn’t end up talking about the book much at all, which was partly a relief because I had not read the chapters. I was about ten years older than any person in the circle and besides the ones I see who are in church every Sunday, I knew none of the others. We had to go around the circle and say our name and how we know about mythology. I said that I didn’t know much and am not much of a fiction reader.

The book is TIll We Have Faces which is supposed to be this great book. I did read a google summary during one of my breaks. The hostess gave me a book to read which is titled With All Her Mind. It is a collection of essays written by mostly Catholic women. One time I was friends with an author who was compiling a collection of essays by Lutheran women. There were something like 14 chapters in the book. I remember being totally devastated when she did not ask me to write something for it.

It was supposed to be Lutheran women sharing wisdom with Lutheran sisters. It really did hurt, I was surprised even by me. I was never really into the prissy Lutheran writing anyway. I do think I have gotten less bitter about things over the years. I notice that I can watch Biblical womanhood reels by women who I think are way too snotty and negative toward other women and I do not feel all that triggered and can refrain from the urge to comment. Now feeling love, that is still a stretch.

This morning we experienced an welcome change in the weather. Yesterday at the beach the air smelled faintly of fall. I’m not sure how temperature can have a cooler smell but it does. It hasn’t even been too hot this summer but it’s still nice to have the windows open and it still be comfortable inside. I can tell that I haven’t been to the beach as much with my new schedule. I haven’t had the same summer weight loss that naturally happens. Josh wants to do whole30 starting in August.

That was his idea not mine. He’s on a fitness kick where he feels like he has to work to maintain his muscle mass. They have an extra weight room area set up in the garage. I’d bought a carpet a while ago that didn’t end up working out for the space that I bought it for. So it ended up in the garage where someone unrolled it for this little weight space. I’m just glad it’s getting used. The old mattress from the guest bed that the boys broke from plopping onto to the bed a few years ago is also there.

We tried to buy a new mattress that actually fit our bed frame. The one he bought before to surprise me ended up being a full sized bed even though he’d ordered a queen. We didn’t catch that in time to return it, we’ve just lived with this bed frame that sticks out about four inches on one of the sides and at the foot. So then we gave Ethan and Laura’s bed our double mattress and it fits like it’s supposed do there. But the new mattress that I ordered is too hard and I cannot seem to like it.

So I’ve been sleeping on this twin mattress in our room on the floor. It’s actually really comfortable. We told the kids when they moved in to not be alarmed if they find me sleeping in some other place. The rooms are taken up but the extra mattress from the boys’ bunkbed was free. So I don’t know what we’re going to do about that because obviously that isn’t a long term solution. Thankfully the mattress wasn’t super expensive so if we have to get a different one we won’t be out all that much.

It’s times like this when I feel like how are we not even adults yet. I still can’t even figure out how to get a right bed. Back in the day people went and tried them out at the mattress stores. But anyway it’s been fine and I miss my times of having more time to clean. We moved the bookshelves back to their wall in the basement and it feels more put together. I like when a project stays done like when I organized the shelves. Sometime I’ll spray off and air dry the area rug from my Grandma’s house.

The carpet guys came today to put in the carpet. When I left this morning they were starting and when I came home this afternoon they were done. I really like it and am kind of in shock. The staircase is exactly what I wanted and it all looks wonderful. The open space by the open wall does not even bother me. When I was downstairs taking it in I had flashbacks to the first time I turned the corner of the stairway into the room and fell in love instantly knowing I would homeschool there.

Today I ran into a woman at work who used to work at Hope but now has her own practice. She said that she had just met with the Hope director the other day for over two hours just talking. She asked if they knew I was moonlighting over here. I didn’t even know what that word meant so I had to look it up. My supervisor knows but I haven’t said anything else to anyone else there. It’s not a secret though. I wrote the other two bosses an email saying that I’d moved from my school site to here.

I was feeling really overwhelmed today but I’m just tired. It’s when the margin is taken up too much with many different things. Laura’s mom and another friend came over to swim in the afternoon. It was a perfect day for lake time. We had our date night in the evening and have been consistent no matter the distractions or reasons to put it off this time. Today is the 23rd anniversary of a camper dying after the swim test. He had an enlarged heart and they named an outdoor chapel after him.