Today didn’t feel quite as productive. One of the boys and I were talking and we think it’s because there’s a lot to do in the second bedroom. For the first time since we started I felt overwhelmed. It’s better tonight though. We just kept finding things to throw away or put into piles. One of the beds was taken out and the blankets run through the washer. There are no more beds in there now.

No one wants to read about this, but somehow I still find it interesting. The details of people’s lives are interesting to me. I get tired of listening though like everyone else. Some friends from high school got together on Tuesday and one of the girls talked for nearly a half hour straight. I don’t understand that, like how it doesn’t seem to occur to people to give others a chance to also talk.

We have so many LEGOs here it’s truly insane. There are currently no more surfaces to set them, no more drawers left to store them, no more milk crates left to display them. I told the boys it could maybe be a winter project where they match the book with the set and try to see it “as is”. No guarantees for all the pieces but it might still have the close enough of what you are looking for.

The first room in the bedroom project is basically done now. Tim came and finished up the floor this morning. During the morning hours Dad and the kids moved the bigger things upstairs from the downstairs. The bunk bed was taken apart and put back together. The dresser came in parts to make it easier for carrying. I worked on laundry while they were doing all that.

As I’ve been going along I’ve also been noticing other places around here that need attention. I also can ignore them, unbothered by the clutter. I feel a steady patience, not rushed or hurried. The schoolroom is going to end up getting cleaned out again along with the bedrooms. This time I had the boys clean out their desks and surrounding areas. I can get rid of those now.

We really do attach emotional meanings to our things. I don’t know why we do this but it’s definitely something we as human beings do. We have a fairly large house so there is room to store more. It also makes it easier to justify keeping more. I still have two storage tubs of cloth diapers that I kept after getting rid of many more. My son was often with me while I bought them on ebay to clean, flip, and make money.

I always thought maybe we could do a homeschool business project together where he helped me sell them online as a practical life-lesson. I kept my favorite ones in case we ever had to house refugees or family members with an infant. If I had a baby now I would use disposable ones without question. Now I’m wondering if maybe I could still sell them in different lots and make something–$50?–to put toward his college.

I’ve still been staying pretty close to home these days. I did go down for lunch today to say hi to the kids. I ended up sitting together with four of them and we looked at the college track schedule for the fall. I told my son that Dad and I had already marked it on the calendar and were planning to come and visit him for fall break. There’s a track meet in Des Moines that would be drivable too. It said it was only five hours.

We went down to the beach for a little bit today. I’m trying to be intentional about getting down there. My father-in-law has been in the hospital since the end of May and recently was discharged to a local rehabilitation facility where he can get continued physical therapy. Dad and the kids went to visit him this afternoon. I stayed here and rested, taking a nap. When I woke up it was almost time for supper. They got back in time to head down to the beach for the cookout.

It’s been a long time since I’ve felt this dedicated to a project. Today I thanked the Lord for giving me the energy and resources to work on it. My husband and I were talking about the schedules we keep and how very different they are. Mine changes and varies. His does too but he overall keeps the same, more predictable routine.

I’ve been thinking more again about marriage lately. It’s been a little over two years since the marriage intensive we attended. I know I’ve said it was impactful, but I’ve never really gotten into the specifics of what exactly it was that we did or learned there. I have written more about it in almost every paper I’ve written for school.

I did order a new marriage book to read. This one is called The Meaning of Marriage by Tim and Kathy Keller. I’ve heard good things about it for years so I thought I’d finally read it for myself and see what I think. I thought it was supposed to come today but with the holiday there wasn’t any mail. If I can I might try to write about it more.

The kids have generations camp this weekend. Generations camp is when kids age 4-4th grade can come to camp with a parent or grandparent. Sometimes moms and dads come together and other times it’s mom or dad with one or sometimes two kids. Our kids are old enough to go to regular camps now but either Josh or I would take the younger boys for their time.

Most of the kids were gone at camp this past week. Whether they’re going to camp or not, they spend much of their time there. We saw another fawn on the way home from lunch. This one was sleeping in front of a tree. I tried to get closer but it then ran away. It made me think about the way we’d come so near to the other one and how peculiar, how uniquely different that was.

This evening I went out and talked with some of the parents while they took a break from capture the flag. It really is still crazy to me how much can accumulate in a house over years. There’s a difference between resignation and peace and I like the feeling of peace much better. Resignation is giving up hope altogether, while peace is at rest with the Lord doing his work.

I’ve forgotten how much I don’t like shopping. You go into a store thinking you’re just going to look at area rugs. Next thing you know, on your way out, you walk back through the rest of the aisles where you notice a wreath. The Lenten cross still hangs on the door, and you think this would be a pretty replacement. The price is reasonable.

And then you remember you never replaced the welcome mat for the house front door. People are coming in and out these days, more than normal with the summer activity. You ask the girl straightening shelves if the store carries welcome mats. You notice how young and pretty she looks and want to tell her, but that would be weird.

There isn’t much selection to choose from. This time of year they’re all picked over. They have a rainbow and a dark or light brown. You go for the light brown because it matches part of the colors in the wreath. This price isn’t all that much either. To finish it off you return to the garden section with the plants. You want something yellow.

The ensemble wasn’t quite as striking and coordinated as I’d hoped, but I do like the wreath. The woman in line behind me even told me she liked it. Back when I used to shop a lot more I eventually decided that I wasn’t going to buy anything, a shirt, a house item, a decoration, etc, unless I truly “loved” it. I remember that now.

The interview went well today. I liked the place and felt comfortable with the overall setup. Today we finished pulling up the carpet and painting. The dumpster truck was supposed to come today but sometimes it takes a few times of calling. That’s one of those things I don’t mention anymore. I used to notice it every time I walked by.

The next phase in my schooling journey is finding a practicum site for the fall. I had actually hoped to do it this past spring and had a site lined up at a drug rehab facility. The professor in charge of approving our paperwork wanted me to find a different site because students had recently had negative experiences there with not being able to get enough supervision hours. The practicum requires 100 hours total of observation, documentation, and face-to-face client time.

I have an interview this Wednesday with Memorial Behavioral Health director of the partial hospitalization program. It’s for people who come for the structured environment and therapy sessions during the day, but are able to return to their homes on evenings and weekends. Something I am interested in is group therapy, which is commonly done in outpatient or step-down programs like this one. It is a way of fostering and experiencing healing in community.

The bedroom cleaning project is coming along slowly but surely. I’m still in the first room, so the early stages of what I hope to get done. I feel as though I’m experiencing a sort of reverse form of nesting. I have gone into a self-imposed time of solitude where I am not interested in anything but what needs to be done here. Part of me says not to delude myself, that I’ve attempted projects and fizzled out on them before, that it’s pointless because it’s just going to get messy again.

About three in the afternoon I suddenly ran out of energy. I rested in bed, which I’d already done and fallen asleep in the later morning. I didn’t fall asleep the second time but wished that I would have. It takes away the sleepiness from my eyes and resets my body. Sometimes I get a second wind in the evening but I don’t think that’s going to happen today. I was telling my sister the other day, maybe back when we were at state, that my bed has become my favorite place in our house.

At least it is when I’m tired. For all the hours I’ve spent in the school room you would think that it’d be organized and spic and span right now. It’s currently become one of the temporary holding spaces for various things I’m moving around. Nothing heavy. Housework is something I really do enjoy even in the midst of all of these years of wondering how it is I’ve spent so much time here and still find myself surrounded by closets and rooms needing straightened. I cherish the mystery.

It was actually pretty amazing seeing the place where the raccoons went. The woman who took them had over 30 raccoons. She had an inside room for the smallest ones, and a room for the medium ones where she begins weaning them off their bottles and transitioning over to solid food. May and June are the busy raccoon season. Eventually they get big enough to go outside into the taller than human sized caged in living spaces.

She had bottles for them when we got there. I told her we could stay and help feed them if she wanted. I truly can’t imagine having that many raccoons to take care of. They drank their bottles and then had to go into a much smaller space than they’d been in before. I wanted to take them back. The woman who trained her has been raising raccoons for 30 years and is 83 years old. She has other animals too but raccoons are her favorite.

People really do have their gifts. The woman we brought the fawn too had five or six other fawns. She also had several owls and a fox. The deer had likely fallen into the lake and was swimming in circles when my daughter first noticed it. She and a friend kayaked out and made a V from behind where they guided it over to a side where there was shore. When it didn’t not stand up itself and get out, she picked it up and set it on the trail.

It’s hard to know when to intervene with animals. You can think you’re helping when in fact you’re making things worse. One woman I called recommended bringing it back to the other side of the lake where mom would be much more likely to find it. The other woman I talked to understood that but was also concerned about possible aspiration and subsequent pneumonia after being in the water. For that it would need antibiotics.

I decided to take her to the woman with the antibiotics. There was also a noticeable bump on its head that I did not examine super closely. The fawn ended up having a fractured skull with the bump being a puncture wound mostly likely from a coyote. After being in the water the deer had slept for a while, was awake and even alert for a while, ad then slept most of the ride there. They were very nice people and I was glad we had taken her.

We found a place to take the raccoons a little over an hour away. There was a lot of calling and texting around. I had actually started praying about it so I also need to mention that God answered that prayer. Yesterday afternoon my daughter and I drove them there once camp was over. We also had a fawn who needed medical attention. We took the fawn to her place first and then we brought the raccoons to theirs. She said they looked great and that we’d done a good job.

The fawn ended up dying after a rough day in the wild. I cried when we drove away from the raccoons because I can’t seem to remain neutral with things like that. Really I can’t stay neutral with any of it but if you grieved over everything you’d never stop crying. The mosquito guy came and sprayed around the house. I accomplished things here and there around the house. My daughter and I planted strawberry plants that a friend’s mom had given us and had been sitting out front.

Dad took the boys shopping for camp supplies this morning. He brought home some dirt for us to use in the raised bed where we were planting the strawberry starts. The camp kids went out tonight to go somewhere for supper. There are usually leftovers for them in the fridge but on weekends they seem to be ready for something different. Going out to eat on the weekends during camp was one of the very best parts about working here. The first place I remember going was Chili’s.

My schedule was all mixed up today. I was up for a while in the earlier morning. There wasn’t much to say or do or therefore now to recollect. I do remember feeling disappointed when I found out the camp breakfast was cereal and fruit. The boys were sleeping pretty soundly so I decided not to wake them. The other I had to wake up because he washes dishes and would have to go work.

So I went back to bed and stayed there until ten. I fell back asleep, but the rest of the time I just didn’t get up. I felt more depressed for whatever reason. You hear people mention the struggle to get out of bed. I think any actual time I’ve been legitimately depressed I have had to get out of bed because there were other people around who were also depending on me. This time nobody was.

The afternoon was fun. I had a play date with a girl who is here for the week. She was one of my sister’s best friends in high school. She’s had one of those lives that truly opens your eyes to the world. We went down to the beach and took the paddleboard out. It was the first time this summer with the perfect weather and breeze to do it. The rest of the day then was mostly good again too.

The Athanasian Creed really isn’t that long. I was thinking that yesterday during church when we said it. Every other year it’s always seemed long. I used to dread Trinity Sunday because you knew an already long service was just going to be that much longer. Our church services can go almost an hour and a half, which I still think is long compared to other area services. Maybe someday I won’t think an hour and a half is long either.

Yesterday I went to a reception for a high school friend who was recently married. She played the violin for our wedding and we both played clarinet in the band. A few other girls from my graduating class were there. With the exception of the twenty plus years we’ve lived apart, it’s funny how we all still relatively seem like the same people. One of them mentioned getting botox now. I almost asked where is it in town that she goes, as I have at times wondered about looking into it myself. We zoomed with a couple of other classmates who hadn’t been able to make it that day. It was a little weird and sometimes hard to hear but it worked.

It was a nice time and I didn’t end up feeling tired afterward so that was good. I’ve mostly stayed away from the camp things so far, taking care of my own meals and feeling a sense of focus on the room tasks I’ve started. I’m not doing a garden this year or anything outside needing any additional upkeep. The boys and I took a several bags to goodwill before lunch. After that we made a very quick trip into Walmart for clear shallow storage totes. I’m going for uniform storage this time. The idea is for everyone to have their two or three bins to keep their personal items that don’t need to be in bedrooms but they aren’t ready to get rid of.

We went swimming again this afternoon. I got in this time and it felt good to do so. I used to tell friends or family when they came that they have to get in or else they’ll get old. What I meant by that is there comes this point with outside water where if it doesn’t look the cleanest you stop getting in. That’s not why I got in this time. I was hoping it was going to be good for my nerves. Sometimes there are turtles but I didn’t see any today.