Elianna and I went to the Y after school. She did a speed workout on the track while I walked. The whole thing took about 20 minutes which I timed. After that she went with me while I tested out a few machines. I just wanted to see which ones I liked. I’ve kind of had this craving to exercise more or to do something different to work out my legs.

My attempt at 30 minute walks did not stay constant, but my overall steps average is up 1,000 steps than it was from the last year. Each year it’s consistently gone up 1,000ish steps. John Blase had in his Instagram stories some quote from another person saying how people use words like grit, fortitude, strength and the like to speak about workouts. It went on saying that if the hardest thing in your life right now is a workout, then another word in your list had better be gratitude.

I think what the person meant was that workouts aren’t really that hard compared to many other difficult things that people endure in life. And if you aren’t going through something terribly awful right now that you should truly be thankful, not in a shaming way, just in general. But that’s not what made me “heart” the post as soon as I read it because that’s not the first thing that came to my mind.

What I originally thought the post was saying was that if you have the physical ability to work out at all then you should be grateful. Like if you can stand on two feet or push your body to exertion, this is something that is a gift and ought to not be taken for granted. I was reading Marilyn’s caring bridge site this evening and her father wrote a post about the blessing of normalcy. At the moment they were home, she was feeling better, and he was grateful for the normal things of life.

I liked the rowing machine the best. Earlier in the day I visited Hoyleton friends in Litchfield. We met for lunch as it’d been two years since the last time. When I saw them (today) my nerves had that feeling of too-much-ness, too much excitement and too much joy and it’d only been a few seconds. It’s hard to explain and it’s too much to.

It’s cold out tonight so all the cats are inside. I can’t stand to think of them out there when it’s cold. Obviously it’s been worse but with the weather making more dips into the thirties at night it makes it feel like we’re not in autumn anymore. November is a rainy month and it’s been cloudy and rainy with today even having tiny snowflakes.

I skipped internship last night because I couldn’t get in the door. I was already on the fence about going but I made myself go. Thankfully they usually let me right into the side door but this time there must not have been anyone at the desk. I tried the front doorbell a couple of times and then went back to the side. I didn’t have the patience.

So I went shopping and bought a few things for our Joyful Hearts Christmas gift bags that we’re putting together over Thanksgiving. There are about 30 bags we’re making up that the cousins can help put together one day. It doesn’t have to be much just something colorful with things inside that they can take home and do whatever with.

Honestly I needed a break and just a regular free night. I went to Ross afterward and found two ugly sweaters that I thought I could wear to be festive. They sadly didn’t fit but I will make sure to take them back this time, hopefully to find something else that does. I bought a wintery looking shower curtain with cabins and people skiing downhill.

It was a Nordic theme. I almost bought a second set for the downstairs with one of those furry toilet covers that had a reindeer head on it. It was $22 so I didn’t get it but I might still go back. I put the new one up today and was very happy with it and also the new curtain liner. I thought of the phrase retail therapy and that’s basically what it was.

You know how sometimes it goes where you can actually have a lot on your mind but it isn’t really anything you particularly want to talk about, or wouldn’t really know how to express even if you did? Whatever that is, that’s what it’s like. I started a post earlier about all the things I was stressed about but who wants to read that time after time?

I used to talk about how the trees were on fire, and I used to feel that way about you, before wind and rain and mountains formed mysteries. They say, or rather I read this morning, that a person changes six or seven times when you’re married and you love all these different versions of the person you knew once before the one disappeared.

But that’s not it. You walk along the road and think, “That’s the same gait you had when you were 17 years old”, when you unknowingly memorized the way their steps hit the pavement. I know better than to be stubborn, so I will give you that yes, a person changes but also something happens where given enough time you start to love in reverse.

The boys and I finished their leaf project this morning. I saw their bright colorful letters and my heart cracked open with feeling touched by their creativity and initiative. Before that one of the boys had been on the couch coughing. Every couple of years there’s some sickness or bug that lasts longer and hangs on more than the typical timeframe. The cough was repeatedly gag-inducing to where the bucket was getting regularly used.

And then they feel better. We wondered where we could put it. I was initially thinking between the bookshelves in the schoolroom but then one of them suggested hanging it over the bookshelf in the living room hallway. I liked that idea. The top of the bookshelf was empty, and a little shorter than waist high. So we wondered what else we could put there. My one son is in a ceramics art class this semester. We found one of his projects.

We have similar items from when my daughter took that class. I brought two of them out from the kitchen drawer designated for miscellaneous trinkets. To top it off I found a picture from 2020 that I’d printed of all four of them from the first day of school. They were posing in the hammocks, one hung above another with two kids in each one. Everything doesn’t have to be displayed, but I like when we find a good use for things.

I woke up at 8:16 and immediately thought of the big kids at school. I’d missed them getting ready and leaving. I used to always wake up with the early alarm but somedays now I can sleep right through it, waking up to a pillow tucked in behind my back. It was raining outside with the gutters now dripping like they need to be cleaned. I found the boys in the living room and then Dad in the office. He’d put the towels downstairs.

“Did Elianna say anything about her appointment?”, I asked. She did, and I was supposed to text her the address to the place. We had a meeting at the downtown building to learn more about the vet assistant program. It was a very helpful meeting. The vet assistant is like an aide and the vet technician is like a nurse. She wants to work as an assistant while working on the online tech program that takes around two years.

The whole school discussion had me suddenly itching to enroll in more school. Concordia Seward has an online Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist program which looks like I’ve taken at least a third of the classes. I tried calling them and the counselor for that program was out to lunch. She took my information.

But I never heard back today. It was just that terrible itching feeling where I just wanted to be done with school and where I seriously wondered why I was dragging it out. Like maybe the best thing wasn’t actually to do it like this but to just get as much done as I could as quickly as possible. Why did I think this was what my family needed? It felt today like what I actually needed is to be done so we can all move on with our lives.

Sigh. It’ll all work out. Being gone this morning meant I wasn’t there with the boys. Sometimes at night you get these feeling of mom guilt, like you didn’t mother as well as you could have and are sad about it. I scratched the homeschool group for tomorrow so we can have the morning to finish our leaf project. Why doesn’t their school always seem like enough? It’s the only one I ever look back on and wish I’d done more of.

Where are you now, Where are you now
Do you ever think of me
in the quiet, in the crowd
~Mumford & Sons~

Elianna had her NHS induction this afternoon. Last year she didn’t want to apply but this year I told her she need to. I get that it’s just kind of stupid sometimes the way these clubs and organizations evaporate with the high school years and don’t really mean anything. Miles even says it made no difference with his college. But there is a principle to things as well. When someone embodies the qualities that the organization stands for, I feel like you should apply and be recognized for those qualities.

After that she left with Miles. One of his friends from church had opened a food truck as a personal business. So they were going to visit that. Soccer is over so he is home for the weekend. He’s learning Spanish from one of his teammates and the boys were giving him a hard time about his most recent haircut. It was done by one of his teammates who hasn’t given very many haircuts before this. Once this teammate’s arm is out of a cast from a soccer injury, Miles is going to ask if he can try to fix it.

The rest of us hung out at home this later afternoon and evening. We had a nice day and I love our Sundays at home. Dad got a text from a former member in Hoyleton saying it’d been 11 years to the day when the tornado came through and caused so much damage to their house and property. He was remembering and thanking him for being there to help clean up. I looked at him, puzzled. As he told me the story I heard new things and vaguely remembered old ones, I guess glad he had been there.

Today I worked a half shift on the wing where I do weekends. Things have changed there even in the short time since I’ve started. Several people have passed away and in their place have been admitted residents who are more total care. I remember when I started there being intimidated with all the lifts, walking by them and thinking, “I’m not sure this is for me.” It’s a job. I’m glad to have it but jobs like all things are fleeting.

While I was there, Dad and the kids were at Grandma’s house filling up another dumpster. There was still a bunch of stuff in two of the sheds that they pretty much emptied. After that they went out to eat and the question about Elianna moving in with Grandma was brought up. It’s been nonchalantly thrown out there as almost like a joke. After graduation she can go to Lincoln Land and move in with her dog.

She said she’d be glad to have the companionship and she wouldn’t have to pay rent. There’d be grass to mow or other ways to help out. This has me wondering about the growing empty rooms, that still have every set up like somebody lives there. The boys might like to have a room that doesn’t leak or have mold growing up the drywall, but there’s no reason now to get ahead of ourselves. It’s been partly cut out.

I made the one who’s been having sinus troubles sleep in the school room, just to see if it’d make a difference. Now they’ve all been sleeping in there so their room is currently empty too. It makes me laugh. His sinuses seem to be slowly clearing up but now another one has his own cough. I still have pediatric incentive spirometers stored in the linen closet that I ordered during Covid. I almost made a post about it back then.

They use them in hospitals to give to people with coughs. You breathe in on this tube and it’s supposed to help your lungs stay clear. “C & DB” means “cough and deep breathe”. That’s what you’re supposed to encourage patients to do when they’re in bed with pneumonia. In the night I will say to them sometimes, “Use your incentive spirometer”, and they do.

I finally broached the subject that’s been making me uncomfortable with regard to my supervisor. I actually cried in his office because I didn’t want to leave this time without getting it out, trying to articulate the answer to his question, “What’s coming up for you?” Well basically today was the first day since I’ve been there that I’ve actually said anything while observing in group.

But the whole point of me doing this is that I’m supposed to be practicing and getting experience. The words did not come out, it was just this sharp pain, almost unlike any I’ve experienced in a while. “Basically I don’t want to be a disappointment.” There is no reason for me to feel this way. There are no memories or conscious traumas I can point to that explain what is happening.

I heard Brene Brown saying in an Instagram reel once that narcissism is the shame-based fear of being ordinary. I’ve never seen that reel again but hearing it made me go, “Whoa…” I don’t need people’s pity and there is nothing I’m trying to spin here to make bad things seem any less bad than they are. I just can’t bear to have to start or do something and not be great at it.

I’m not even looking for compliments from this person. I just need him to know how I feel because he is the person I have to deal with. I’m able to get out a few more words about the road from potential to actual, that I know I can do this it’s just breaking through the discomfort. It’s not talking or doing the groups in front of people, it’s doing the groups and talking in front of him.

“I just feel self-conscious”, was how I summarized all of that. I don’t like it but that’s the way that it is and I do feel better now after bringing it up. I looked up a Reddit thread later about being self-conscious and there was a helpful distinction someone made. There’s no way to avoid the heightened consciousness, but it’s where it is focused, on being interestING or interestED.

The boys and I went on a leaf hunt today. Really it’s past the prime time to do that, but one of them asked if we could do a leaf hunt instead of school. I can’t remember how many times we’ve done this, it wasn’t that many, but it’s something they remember as something we did. The exciting thing was way back when, when I let them go on the trails without me.

They divided into groups with big kids in change of little kids to gather as many different kinds of leaves that they could. Once we were home we spread out the leaves sheet that took up the space of standard wall poster. In retrospect I’ve become more and more aware how it’s not always so much about the knowledge. It’s the experience.

I told them we all had to work until noon. That gave us two and a half hours for me to wrap up the last of my presentation worksheets, and for them to do their usual schoolwork. We finished right about on time. It was cold outside and I said for one to put pants on. They have their reasons. There are plenty of oaks here but I also knew where the other ones are.

I was thinking the other day and then again more recently that if I ever was diagnosed with some rare and aggressive cancer that I probably wouldn’t pray and plead with God to spare my life. I have prayed that before and been answered in the past with yeses. But anymore I think I’d ask for a different kind of miracle. I would ask for the grace to die well.

It’s not that I’ve lost the will to live, per se. It’s just that when you’re begging to be healed in a fallen world you’re asking to be remain in a world with pain and strife. You’re asking to live in a place hostile to human life no matter how much God still upholds the universe he once created for our thriving. I’m not saying cancer is a certain death sentence, but I would not have the strength or the will to go through treatments. It’d be more like, “You know, Lord, it’s fine. Just take me home.”

Are there wonderful things here? Sure. Are there works for us to do by which we participate in the further spread of God’s Kingdom until Jesus returns to gather us up from our callings and graves? Absolutely for sure. For other people I would pray this, for the extension of life and total healing. But anymore, in this moment, it at least feels like I would say it.