After Ghost died we planted a tree in his memory. When I had seen his days were numbered, I went to Target and bought a roll of burlap in the gift section. I watched him under the piano and bound his burial bag with yellow ribbon. It was gold like he was.

Dad dug a hole in the corner by the fences. That afternoon a couple of the kids and I went to Lowe’s to buy plants. I had no idea what to buy, but what was left of the selection included a pallet of gardenia trees. We came home with one plus one hydrangea plant for either side. I was originally going for symmetry but in the end it worked out. The hydrangea plants were the cherubim. And the open path to the gardenia tree meant the tree of life was no longer barred. There’s even a grapevine, leftover from a Lowe’s trip from several years ago, that miraculously grows.

I never planted the echinacea. I watched it in its pot, tipped over in the wind and dried up by the sun. And I lined up the rocks, and matching more to make a border. Those greens did not outlast the fires, but for a summer, there was Eden in my own backyard.

The cats were happy to have us back. The smell when we walked in was not even as bad as I was expecting. As long as you keep the windows open often enough to air out the rooms then it is manageable. It isn’t at the odorless level I’d like but it’s something I have accepted having to deal with for the time being. What was much worse was the hotel room this morning when we walked in after breakfast.

You really do appreciate the creature comforts of life when you’re on the road traveling. A comfortable bed, a clean bathroom, food that isn’t going to make your intestines uncomfortable, and, as my brother added, time with family just to name a few. This was such a fun little trip. We stayed in St. Joseph again last night but at the cheaper hotel that had a pool, but by the time we got there I was too tired to swim.

Or do anything except to get into bed. Dad took them still. I woke up when they came back and changed out of their swim trunks and turned on The Shawshank Redemption. I don’t think I ever could’ve crawled through the tunnel. The sewer one I could’ve done, but the first one that was just the dirt, I would’ve had to dig it out larger. He was also lucky that the sewer hole wasn’t covered by a grate at the end.

We did not stay up and wait for the new Taylor Swift album. But I have slowly made my way through about half of it on the various rides. We picked up the boys from the dorm on Saturday morning and had about a half hour drive to the meet. For the close ones the team is supposed to find their own rides, so we drove Ethan there as well. It was an exciting race, this time the 1500. My goal had just been to watch it.

I felt like I was going to throw up when it was over. I started walking away in the opposite direction of the finish. Josh sent me a picture and said he was fine. I’d sent him down to the other side to see if he was okay. I was sitting by the concession stand fence shaking and crying. It was a just a release of whatever. My brother sat next to me and said, “It’s alright, Beck.” They all came over soon after and we talked.

I started five songs on the way home from Nebraska. I mean like ones that I’ve written. So far the titles are Figured, Lucky Ones, I Said She Said, and Maybe This Time. The other one I didn’t have a title for yet. I hate to say this but I haven’t been a huge fan of the past few albums. At some point you can’t relate anymore. There are a few okay songs but the rest just seem to be more and more, well, morally depraved.

She does still inspire me though with the way that she writes. It is interesting to see what happens when exploring the depths of female freedom of expression. None of the songs I wrote today were things I haven’t said before, but listening to Taylor made me want to write my own album. It’s just finding that balance of saying what’s true without saying too much, and not just expressing feelings but inspiring new ones.

Elianna didn’t come along. She had a bigger meet in Rochester that she wanted to stay for. Since it was bigger we could watch her events live-streamed, just the times. Apparently this is bigger deal meet that I have missed now for the third year in a row. I was hearing about the things that went on last year and told my son good job.

And also Elianna who I texted via Grandma. She’s staying with Josh’s mom tonight and tomorrow. The boys are staying in the dorm tonight so I hope they all is going well. Josh and my brother walked to a gas station to get cigars and drinks. I was perfectly content to stay here in the room.

Earlier we watched the boys 5k race. It was mostly Concordia boys except three. One of the seniors was going fir his last chance at trying to break the school record. His PR from last year was only a few milliseconds off. He didn’t get it this time but still was running amazingly fast. The remainder of the college meet is happening tomorrow.

My brother and I spent the day hanging out. I had told him that I was needing today to be more of a rest day so I wasn’t going to be doing a whole lot. I made sure there was food to eat and worked on the laundry. Besides that though we had a self-declared lazy day–his words, not mine. We talked on the couch and called several siblings. Later we talked to Mom and Dad when we heard there was severe weather down near Irving.

Dad sent us pictures of the clouds when the storm was over. He couldn’t remember the name of them, but he said they were kinds you didn’t see too often. In the background Mom said something about cotton ball clouds. We had windy and rainy weather here in the evening. Before that he and I and the boys had gone to the store to get some food to take along for the car ride. We’re traveling for a weekend track meet in Nebraska.

We had to go look for Casper this morning. Josh walked all the way down to main camp. I walked out to the road and called to him where he is sometimes across the street in the neighbor’s driveway. He didn’t show up until the afternoon, so we missed his appointment today. We were supposed to bring him in between 8-8:30AM. I didn’t think of it soon enough, but we should’ve brought him in last night when he was on the roof.

*this is only a guess, I don’t know

The kids had a track meet in Pawnee this evening. They’ve had a long day. It started out leaving for school around 7:30. Josh took the kids and first dropped off the little boys. Then he took the older kids to the high school where they were meeting with the others. He drove a bus of about 23 kids into downtown Springfield where a March for Life event was being held. They had Matins at 10 at the downtown Lutheran church.

I wanted to go but stayed home. The day prior had been long. I’d driven up north with my brother and mom to take him back to his apartment after staying with my parents for the past week following an appendectomy. We ended up coming back home with him still with us. He spent the night with my parents last night and then he and my mom met us today at the meet. He’s staying with us for the next several days.

So I’m looking forward to that. With my younger siblings especially, the affection I have for them isn’t quite the same as it is with my own kids but it is similar. It was nice to sit and visit with my mom and brother at the meet. The kids did well even if they don’t always think that they do. Josh drove the track bus back to the school and somehow they were home before me, my brother, and the boys. We ate supper soon after.

Something about my food story wasn’t adding up. In the moment it had happened so fast that I didn’t have time to think about it. But through the rest of the day, on and off, I could not shake a nagging question. They say you’re supposed to use wisdom when bringing up potentially touchy subjects. Is your husband stressed? Is he in the middle of doing or thinking about something else? These aren’t good times to brings things up.

But sometimes all the rules can get to be a little much. What’s a life partner if you can’t even ask them a simple question? If everything must be filtered with these carefully measured amounts of striking just the right balance? I imagined him getting a text from his wife in the middle of talking with all of the pastors. The old ball and chain that you can’t get away from. Drinking their beers and talking around the trading post campfire.

And I thought, you know what? He can answer me whenever, but right now in the moment I was ready to verbalize so I texted from the van after class had been dismissed. “I’m just wondering…”, I started out. I wasn’t consciously thinking this then, but John Gottman talks about using soft start-ups. You’re less likely to activate a person’s defenses. “When you heard so-and-so say something about taking the food…”

Why didn’t you say something know that I had already asked for it?

He didn’t know I had asked. It’d been another one of those instances of miscommunication. If he’d known he would’ve said something. And I was satisfied with that. If that’s all it was well then I didn’t have to worry. It didn’t have to be about why I wasn’t important enough to speak up for in a potentially awkward moment, or why he’d left me to do the work of confronting.

“Well I did.” I had to say it. I wasn’t trying to be a pain, contentious, or obnoxious, or heaven forbid like the woman who’d make you rather sit on a roof. Sometimes I think Solomon brought some of that upon himself. And I think it’s unfair that the women didn’t get to write their proverbs. And if he was the one who was so in love, whatever happened to the one he was in love with?

I would’ve said something, he said. And that was that. We moved on to other things, or rather, I drove home, my curiosity satisfied and heart reassured. I went to bed when I got home with him still down at the campfire. I wasn’t sad, I was simply noticing. There was a time when the chance to be at home alone in a bed together was the number one thing either one of us would’ve asked for.

I follow a woman on Instagram @heybeginnerwife. This morning I saw a post where she was saying that she used to get irritated with her husband because he didn’t notice things she did to take care of herself, in this case a manicure. She finally realized she was being silly for putting that pressure on her husband to notice.

I didn’t like the implications. Why does it seem with this kind of advice that the happiness of the woman doesn’t come from actually receiving something she wants? Rather she finds it by realizing she was silly, by denying her desires, in this case, for her husband to notice and compliment her nice nails. Josh was on his way out to make sure coffee was ready in the CGC. I asked him if I could show him this video. He said sure.

And then I said that I was showing him this video because the woman in it said something I didn’t fully like and after the video I was going to explain why I didn’t like it. So if he could find something to affirm in what I said or see my point then that’d be good. And it was actually funnier because I said that. And I was happy.

Everyone is away from home today. Josh has a pastor’s conference in town. The older kids are at school. The younger boys are at Grandma’s after she picked them up at noon and is keeping them overnight. I have class tonight and Josh will be busy through the night hosting the pastors who come back to camp for supper. As always these are only the tentative plans.

We had an incident this morning where a kitchen helper came to prep a few things. I had asked Josh earlier about the leftover food in the dining hall from last night’s supper meal. He said if I wanted it I better go get it, because someone had discovered it and was making plans to take it home and split it in their own determined way. It wasn’t something that had been asked about.

This made me mad. In what was some kind of internal surge of assertiveness, protectiveness, and probably brazen selfishness, I texted the person and said the leftover food was already spoken for. I didn’t want it disappearing by accident. The person replied and said they were glad that I said something. I drove down later and put the trays in the van.

My stomach has been hurting the past couple of days. I feel hot inside, like my insides are inflamed, my joints as well in my hips especially. And it isn’t just physical. It’s like all of a sudden my wounded pride woke up from a nap and started shouting, “Enough. Enough!” And I write things in my journal like, “I’m really going to have to watch it this month.” I ask for awareness.

I believe in the mind-body connection but I also don’t mean to make it more than it is. Certain cycles are more peaceful and others have more disruptions to work through. It’s this combination of alerts to real things that are needing to change, and then having to process what has already happened and needs to be released and let go of. You realize this is called forgiveness.

Tonight’s banquet went really well. The catered food was delicious and the crowd fit nicely in the dining hall wing. Our speaker was Mary Kate Zander who is the executive director for Illinois Right to Life. She drove all the way from Chicago, and then turned around and went back. I was tired just thinking about it but she also has a five-month old baby which makes total sense. You don’t want to be apart for too long.

I’m not normally much of a political activist type of person, and since I had never heard of this woman, I didn’t really have much excitement or expectation for her talk. But I ended up finding myself captivated by her in some way. Her confidence in standing up in front of people and talking, the way she said, “Can you all hear me okay?”, and when the man from the side of the room said no, she decided just to hold the mic, and proceeded to talk for long time, switching the mic back and forth with her hands.

I hadn’t any idea the stuff that was going on with “abortion tourism”, where women travel across states to access abortions in our state where it is legal. The numbers were staggering regarding how much government support is received by providers. I welled up when I heard the words “Project Love”, which provides grants to women experiencing crisis pregnancies, for things such as overdue rent or fixing their cars.

Camp has their annual banquet tomorrow. Registration is down this year and the proposed reason is because one of the members at one of the churches is having her 60th birthday party. Many of the camp supporters would be going to this event. We went down to decorate today. I didn’t know what exactly I would do but after being in the building I drove the camp truck back up to get the vacuum and my basket of rags.

At work yesterday one of the housekeeping girls was dusting the railing. She held up the rag to me and said something expressing surprise at the dust. This dusting thing has stood out to me lately as something that matters. So one of the boys and I dusted the ledge that goes around the inside of the building and around the windows that people will see. It could use more, but for now it does look better than when we first found it.

I really would clean more here if it lasted. I sent pictures to my sisters this morning of the mudroom. Besides the piano which I take full responsibility for, the clutter strewn all over it, the boots and shoes, the litter box, the standing work desk with two tables, the general state of disarray and fullness, none of that stuff was mine. I did throw the hallway curtain in the wash hoping to find the source of the cat smell that is often there.

One of the curtains touches the floor and I think it absorbs things. Casper lost indoor privileges after spraying on my Jane Eyre book that sits on a lower bookshelf. I’ve got an appointment for him coming up soon. It always takes at least a month or two before you can get in. I don’t say anything of this to be gross. The cleaning schedule we have actually works pretty well we’ve just been busier and it hasn’t been done for a few days.

I offered to help with the cleaning over the summer. To wipe down the ice maker and the dining room garbage cans. The area around the dishes window can really become atrocious. I used to think the answer was training the trotters, when each cabin takes a turn cleaning up after meals. But you don’t have an eye for these things until you are older I’ve discovered. It’s because you’ve lived some life that you notice these things.

Today was a scheduled day at work. It was the 9-5:30 shift so I did not have to worry about getting up early though I was awake a little before 5 and have been up since then. I really do enjoy this job. I still feel very new even though it’s now about five months since I started. So far everyone is still being kind and patient when it comes to my questions, and it does make me wonder how long that can last. You just treat others with respect and kindness and hope they will do the same to you.

When I came home I was hungry. I didn’t get out until 6:30 because the doctor had come a little later and that ended up putting me an hour behind. I didn’t really mind it all I just like to be done and head home when the time comes. Josh and the boys had already eaten and were cleaning up the kitchen with music playing from the living room. There was a plate saved for me in the oven. Food tastes immensely good when you’re hungry. I’d taken a lunch and eaten it but it’s never as much as I’d eat at home.

I’m blanking now on what else to say. The kids had a track meet at PORTA high school yesterday. I stayed for about half of it and took one of the boys home with me. Supper was already halfway started and then I finished making the rest of it so it was ready when everyone else came home. It was very windy outside, but nowhere near as bad as last year’s Williamsville meet. The other moms agreed. I still have to MapQuest my way out of Petersburg, doesn’t matter how many times I’ve been there.