My son and I walked down to the beach before it was time to go to class. I’ve been itching to get down here and swim again before fall comes. Today was a beautiful warm day and I thought maybe we’d get a chance this week to go swimming but you’d be amazed with how hard it is to fit it in anymore. We’re supposed to leave tomorrow to visit Zorro for a couple of days. My littlest sister is a teacher up there and has a place.

I told her not to worry about feeding us and that I’d feed my kids. It would just be me, my littlest, and Elianna. The boys had a cross country meet this evening up Lincoln. This would normally have been my night for two classes but today I only went to one. I just cannot anymore with these classes, especially the ones that are late. So I told the teacher I wouldn’t be there tonight and that I would also be missing a class next week.

One of the classes was already cancelled so I figured that would be my skip day so I could go to a meet. My son and I were working on his writing book this morning and it was talking about making your sentences less wordy and more concise. I thought it was funny because the examples of the sentences he was supposed to rewrite reminded me a lot of the things I write down here. But to try to write here would ruin it.

The house is coming along super nicely. The entire front is finished so now they just have the back and the sides. Many people have commented already on how much better it looks. It just was run down and needed a refresh. I wanted to say that it was an Indian summer but technically Indian summers happen later in the fall. The lake was the lowest I’d ever seen it before because it’s been so long since having a regular rain.

Some people were here today to put new siding on the house. I cannot even believe how much of a difference it makes. Josh told me in the morning that they were coming and I was a little bit caught off guard. I said something like that it would’ve been nice to know they were coming. He asked me what difference it made. I said it’s because it’s nice to be prepared for people banging on your walls and being outside your windows.

I just love it so much. My mom and I picked out the color while we were waiting for my dad to get done with his surgery. I liked the color of my in-law’s house but didn’t want to be the exact shade of blue. I don’t even really like blue as a color for houses. But there were so many shades I couldn’t choose from the others. We ended up going with a “deep mineral” which is sort of a deeper blue but with more grey. I like the dark of it.

The pumpkins are going to pop and look so pretty up against it. So will the deep green bushes that we planted several years ago. I hate to say this but it just looked so bad before it didn’t really matter much what you did to it to try and freshen up the look. I am hoping this will motivate me to take better care of the outside area and not feel so depressed about how junky it looks. I mean, after a while you just start to get used to it.

Some people I think get envious because it “must be nice” to have a free house. I do not argue that it isn’t nice to not have to worry about a mortgage or paying your utility bills. The housing is wrapped up as part of the salary. I think it’s kind of a normal thing to want to work on your house and make the needed and sometimes even unneeded improvements. I don’t like being depressed and giving up on my surroundings.

People need to feel like they have the power to change their lives. When you are unable to change the things that are wrong it creates the paths for conditions to turn into despair. I am of the mind that marriage has to have two people changing. People have to first try, and then there has to be happiness with the change that is happening. Life is too short to not be happy due to failing to appreciate the good and love all around you.

The boys had a cross country meet this morning, once again at Lincoln Park. Hopefully this’ll be the last race where they’re contending with heat. It’s really something how when they start the season it’s hot and by the end it can be pretty cold. We have another trip to Nebraska planned for the end of next month where we can see another meet there. Grandma wants to plan to go next fall sometime she hasn’t seen one yet.

This is my weekend to work. For whatever reason it’s getting more and more psychologically difficult in the time leading up to the days I have to go and also when I am actually there. It’s been a good way to pay for school and and have extra money to give to the kids for theirs. I just do not like the feeling that something can go wrong at the drop of a hat. I am contemplating asking if I can drop it down to four hour shifts.

This past evening it was nice because the supervisor, the CNA, and I all sat down and ate our salad bar together. Usually you eat alone in shifts but with being down two residents at the current moment it opened up more time to have that spontaneous opportunity. You wouldn’t think 14 to 12 would make that much of a difference but it does. At some point I realized too that the calendar changed and we’re in autumn now.

I’ve still be rather obsessed with watching Charlie Kirk videos. I don’t binge watch Netflix or follow regular TV shows, so I guess I feel somewhat justified in my time spent on this. I didn’t even know this person and that’s a big reason I’m watching them. Like, to find out who this person was whose death I felt so much from such a far place away. I mean, I would see his name pop up here and there but I wouldn’t have recognized his face.

A client brought me a cinnamon roll today for our appointment. I had three appointment today and enjoyed every one of them. The therapy relationship is kind of a strange combination of part friend, part reflector, part listening ear, and somewhere in there being at least somewhat familiar with our common human patterns both internally and relationally. After the therapy I met up with Laura’s mom for lunch.

She was picking up her dress to take it to the dry cleaners. We’re still absorbing the remaining moments from the wedding, like the potpourri jars she made with some of the flowers and table decorations. Laura sent me the highlight video that her uncle had made. I walk past the dining hall and the flower pots are still there. Elianna popped in to say hello so that was nice. She’d been at camp the past two mornings but I missed her.

It finally rained. Every night when I tuck in the boys I tell them to empty the two dehumidifiers. Even when it doesn’t rain there still is the moisture in the air. Sometimes I will empty one before I go upstairs. There is a sink in the laundry room where I alternate between using that and the tub. I keep thinking maybe when school is over then things will be better, I can give more time here. Better is always for a future time.

I showed a second video in class this evening. Thank the Lord we only have to do four videos now instead of six. I had actually thought of saving this one for my grid but I wanted to go ahead not hold it back. The part that I thought was the best part of the showing was the part the instructor had the most (constructive) critical feedback on. He sensed an incongruence, if ever so slight, between the counselor’s words and the client’s experience. He heard struggle in the client’s voice, but I was reflecting back positivity and hope. One of things I said to her was, “The denial is starting to fade”.

Because after months of longing and wishing there was finally this tiny moment of acknowledgment that the “joy” she feels from her (adult) life-long drinking is not actually worth the long term pain. I told him that before I leave here I want at least an 8 or 9 out of ten on these videos. They aren’t graded or ranked. So when I asked what it is I needed to have more of he said it basically comes down to emotional processing.

This sex class I am taking on Monday nights is kind of a joke. The teacher still hasn’t put up a syllabus or posted anything in the modules past week one. I’m not complaining. I’m more just fascinated that this can somehow be a class and we will probably somehow pass and even get a decent grade. I actually even like the teacher. Kids can be mean and talk about her but she seems like a okay person and is also nice to me.

So the first night we had to go around and answer, “How do you like your sex?” Before that she had asked us about how we like our burgers. It was supposed to be a lead in which I found was actually helpful. The second night we had to break up in groups and make lists of all the official anatomical sex names. After that we had to make a list of every slang term we could think of for both male and female parts and actions.

Last week we didn’t have class because it was cancelled. This week we talked about sex education and where we learned our information. We did a 20 minute meditation where we were supposed to still our thoughts and pay more attention to our bodies. There is a girl from an African culture who talked about gender roles and coming of age rituals. At some point we have to stand in front of a mirror and talk about our bodies.

On Friday night we went to a Cardinals game in St. Louis. They were playing the Milwaukee Brewers which is the favored team of my brother-in-law and my nieces. The Brewers’ record is better than the Cardinals’ record this year so the Brewers were favored to win. It’s been hard watching the Cardinals lose so much over the past 12 years or so. Those two World Series wins within that 5-year period of time really spoiled me as to what it’s supposed to be like when you like and follow a baseball team.

But the Cardinals won so that was nice. After the game Josh and the boys drove back home and Elianna, my mother-in-law and I stayed over night at my sister-in-law’s house. My niece had a cross country meet in the morning so I wanted to make sure we made it to that. They have been to several meets and camp events and such and none of us had been down there since last August when they moved. You have to make those efforts.

The boys had a shooting retreat which thankfully went well. After the meet we went out to lunch and had a nice sit-down meal. After that we went to a small petting zoo where they had ducks, chickens, pigs, cows, goats, and a bull. My brother-in-law gave us a tour of the Lutheran high school where he works. Ethan had a meet in Lincoln during the morning so I was watching that and congratulating him for his time. Laura sent a picture to me and her mom of her and Ethan plus three other friends from back home.

Well my supervisor reached a breaking point and finally expressed his frustration with me. The ledgers from the Monday assessments had not been posted. The one from the black man did not have a diagnosis. Neither one has been fully completed and one had several missing sections. I had not collected a debit or credit card, why? I was handling all of it with a steady voice until the words “I’ve gone over this with you 4 or 5 times.”

I mean, I can’t fault the guy. I would be frustrated too, and I was, that I was looking stupid, that I had tried to ask for help and he had tried to give it and I still wasn’t getting it. I’d tried to tell him on the day he ditched me for the secretary that I was forming bad habits that I knew I needed to correct, specifically with the assessment charting. I’d tried to tell him also before that I need to physically do it for the tech instructions to stick.

So that kind of sucked but I mean I partly deserved it. I mean it really did suck but you also cannot expect these bosses to not have their own frustrations that they deal with. On Wednesday I accidentally busted a hole in the wall when I was opening the closet door to replace the soap in the bathroom. It is what it is and all I can do is try to do better and do what I can still. Today I did at least meet my direct client hours requirement.

Every evening feels like a slow creep toward the empty nest. I don’t remember when I first started feeling it, but when my first one entered double digits there arose an awareness that our time together was hypothetically more than halfway over. In the previous house the evenings brought with them the urgent countdown to bedtime.

Since we’ve moved here bedtime comes with an ache. It’s a subtle knowing that another day has passed that we will not have a chance to relive. It is the motivator for going downstairs and giving the boys their goodnight hugs. At the very least, if a goodnight hug was all I was able to do for them that day, it was enough. Last night they didn’t want me to leave, as we had started a mini conversation. They are intelligent and humorous.

And fun to be around. Tonight we skipped the games and had a talk about assassinations and history. Dad is more of the history person, though I too like the figures and stories. Last night they wanted to sleep outside again but I told them no. When they asked me why, I hesitated to tell them, but they did not push me too hard.

That last part wasn’t right because I was trying to hurry up and finish. It’s not that I’ve got this and will do a good job. It’s more akin to what Dallas Jenkins says when he talks about bringing his five loaves and fishes. It’s more like saying, “This is what I have…so…here” and then offering what I have. I wouldn’t even use the word give. Giving to me gives me a vision of pushing something forward to someone in front of me.

Offering to me is more of a lifting up. It’s a vertical motion. I think the point that I was trying to make with the two previous stories was that “It might not always be comfortable but I don’t want to hold back”. That was the thing about Charlie K as I have watched and listened to his videos. I actually thought he was kind of a butthead sometimes. But he was courageous, and unafraid to be who he was without fear.

So I guess I’m hoping to be a little bit more like that. All the doubt and second-guessing can be crippling at times. Like I truly do not even care about “excellence” or “mastery” anymore in these days. Or changing the dressing on the PICC line or working on REACH. I resist change so much sometimes because the projected outcome in my head does not match up with what I want. But the burning inside is not livable either.