1. I keep waking myself up with the hiccups. What the heck is going on with that? It gives me some time to get a little more reading done, since the hiccups are loud and violent, and I have to leave the room to let my husband get some sleep. (He doesn’t make me, I just think it is a nice thing to do.)
2. I had intended to get my quick takes posted last week, but I was on a Mom’s Retreat instead. We watched the video series “The Genius of Woman” by Katrina Zeno. (She also has a book on the same topic: Discovering the Feminine Genius: Every Woman’s Journey.) She weaves together teachings of Pope St. John Paul II’s “Theology of the Body” and “On the Dignity and Vocation of Women” to show how our identity is affected by our gender and how to live fully in the Body of Christ as a woman. She also talked about how Satan attacks us specifically as women and ways to combat that. Beautiful teachings! The best part of the retreat for me was getting to laugh and cry, to learn and explore beautiful parts of the faith with great friends, who I have rarely seen for the last year or so – when we switched schools. We also escaped the heat and went up to the cool pines to a cabin for our retreat. It was just wonderful and I can’t wait for our next one, next summer.
3. Every time I try to bump up my posting schedule, I fall on my butt. Not literally, of course, although I suppose I shouldn’t rule that out as a future possibility. I’m sure it would be difficult to type much with a wounded behind. My plans are not His plans or vice versa or something. I also tend to think of blog post topics in the car and my brain flushes as soon as I open the door and they are *POOF* gone forever. So if I could just write while driving, this would be the most awesome blog ever. Until then… I’ll just keep forgetting what I meant to say. Maybe I could teach my 4 year old to take notes on my thoughts. That could work, right?
4. I have now lived for six weeks without a dryer, and it hasn’t killed me yet. I can’t hang the clothes outside, since my kids have terrible seasonal allergies. (Which I used to think was just a made up thing until I had kids who either couldn’t breathe or had murder-scene-equivalent nose bleeds because of allergies.) Therefore handing them clothes and sheets impregnated with pollen is a really bad idea. Thankfully, this house has a room that we are using as mostly a storage room. The middle of the floor is clear and the perfect place to set up drying racks. This one from IKEA is my favorite.
I also have this one from Costco, which is pretty awesome because I can hang lots of big shirts, pants, and towels at once. It also has a hanging rack up top. But it’s really tall, I have to be careful when I move it because I am forever whacking it on the ceiling fan.
Between the two of them I can dry two loads at a time. I actually own a very nice dryer, but it is a gas dryer and there is no hook up in this house. Because of reasons stated below in #6, we have not purchased a different dryer. I’m not in any big rush, this just hasn’t been as bad as I thought it would be.
5. Okay, so I knew this year was going to be busy, but what the calendar looks like and what it feels like day after day are two totally separate things. I’m not sure if you know this, but there are, in fact, only so many hours one can be awake every day. What I am learning is that this year will require an intentionality heretofore unexperienced in our family. We have always been more of a fly-by-the-seat-of-our-pants kind of family, in an organized sort of way. But there is much less room for error this year. Especially if everyone wants to eat dinner! (And they always, always do. Darnit.)
But as one child was falling apart this morning, after going to bed too late two nights in a row, I realized that I need to not just be intentional about when the work gets done and the cooking, shopping and meal planning, but also about the down time. I need to consciously set aside time for each of us individually, and all of us as a family to just be. I’m not exactly sure how to implement this – whether I should direct my children to something or just let them figure it out themselves. I’m sure we will fine tune it as we go. What works for our family?
6. I came literally down the mountain from my retreat this weekend and then was dragged figuratively down the mountain immediately after. We lost our buyers for our old house, then Sunday night/Monday morning, Phoenix was hit with an epic storm. Here in the desert, the ground is baked hard and dry through the summer, the water has no place to go. This is a picture of a major freeway:
We received and emergency alert on our phones at 3am Monday morning that there was a flash flood warning. My husband, Jay, immediately went to out house-on-the-market (it took him 40 minutes to drive 7 miles, the flooding was already so bad!) only to find water gushing into the family room. The one where we had just replaced the carpet. He spend hours pumping water away from the house, suctioning the carpet, and doing everything he could to stem any damage. Later in the day we had a restoration company come out and look at it, but we couldn’t afford their quote. (Reasonable quote, we have just been, well, sucked dry by this house; we painted it, repaired it, replaced carpet, etc.) The man who evaluated it was very nice, however, and he helped me set up our rented high power fans and told me the steps to getting it cleaned up and dried. It is coming along nicely, just with lots of work and it still cost a lot, in spite of us doing it ourselves.
It’s worth noting that while we lived in this house for 6 years, that room flooded twice. Once when I went to bed and forgot to turn off the water to the pool, and once from a storm. Since we moved out of that house in mid-July, it has flooded twice with freak-of-nature level storms.
7. Because of the above, I am opening up an Etsy store, Tools of Grace, where I will sell my mass books, handmade rosaries, and eventually baptism gowns. I have been making rosaries now for 8-9 years and have mostly just sold to friends. It is imperative now, though, to dig ourselves out of this hole. I will keep you posted and bug you in all sorts of ways when I open. The site is live now, but there isn’t much to see yet. Hang in there, lots more is coming! Keep your eyes peeled, and send a few prayers that this will help us out. Thank you!
Go see Jen@ConversionDiary.com for many more quick takes! God bless!