Who am I?
Where am I?
How did I get here?
These are the questions of a disoriented brain... the kind that had the weekend I did.
Kevin and I have sworn to each other never to have another weekend full of non-stop busyness... I think the last time we swore that was on the weekend of our wedding 6 years ago....so obviously it's not working.
Now, none of it was bad busyness, it was just....lots.
All of it was necessary, all of it was exactly what we needed and wanted to be doing...but now I find myself on a Monday morning looking forward to a day off of the cleaning, baking, laundry sorting variety. These hands and feet are always moving but somehow the monotony of routine feels like a come-down from the excitement of the last few days.
It all started last week actually when we received word that the precious sister moving down would be MOVING DOWN VERY SOON and all of a sudden we were in crunch time. All the months of picking away at the small projects (some of them large, like a torn up hardwood floor) all needed to be finished, cleaned up, moved out and polished to a shine....
And suddenly we were stuffing work into every spare minute the way that cheeky chipmunk stuffs the very limits of it's expandable cheeks with food from our camping cooler. Except, time is not expandable the same way and when your mouth is that full you are likely to choke.... foolish little chipmunks we are.
So, we got it all on paper, where we needed to be and what we needed to be doing... and then soccer tickets fell out of the sky (well not literally, our brother in law E hooked us up) and so we scrambled at the last minute to reschedule some work, found an (awesome) babysitter and took the train to the commonwealth stadium for a soccer game (that was, in my humblest opinion,-- a little boring and a lot cold...but we had fun!)
Then that left Friday to get all the work of Wednesday done and more... except I had made a commitment to Al that meant more reshuffling... reshuffling like tired elephants at this point....but shuffle we did, and then it turned out my Friday ended up open and at 3:00 in the afternoon I pulled my still half asleep children out of their beds from nap and threw them into the van, barreling to Oma and Opa's so they could watch them overnight and Kevin and I could work like a team of oxen from before the Industrial Revolution.
We shop vac'd and we scrubbed and packed and stained and taped and painted and polished... and I shed some very real tears over that house that just seems to be hanging on like a tooth that won't detach.
Soon it will all be over, and we'll add the transition and farewell from that beastly house to the rather large pile of emotional baggage that's been adding up.
Strength of oxen.... strength of oxen.....
After spending the night on the floor of our now empty bedroom, I was up at the crack of dawn (there being no curtains in the house to block the sunrise) and I was scrubbing out the oven cheerfully.
We picked up our children from their grandparents and bombed our way into the city for my nephew's birthday party... which was everything that 6 small children in a busy bowling alley all pepped up on cake with death defying spinny chairs and ten pin bowling balls should be...
By the time we got home and put our kids down for naps, we were somewhat haggard, but there was still more to do.
Kevin ate some lunch and headed back to the old homestead along with his parents AGAIN (now, THOSE two really do have the strength of oxen, I tell ya! They are my heroes)
and was there until late moving the last of the heavy furniture, doing the last of the painting and putting the last of the polish on anything not squeaking clean....
There was no way we were making it to church on Sunday morning...and God told me He was just fine with that :)
We were up early picking up all the sand and soil I won't be able to haul on my own this week for transplanting seedlings and setting up a sandbox for the children (that is, after we find a place for all the furniture that has now arrived from Wetaskiwin and once we get the garage cleaned out so we can get our vehicle back in there.
Somehow in all of this, my friend Al (who also had a gong show weekend btw) found ourselves driving into Edmonton at one o' clock because I had gotten the hair-brained idea that we should stand in a long line up at 3:00 to try and get tickets to see the Little Women Musical at the Citadel Theater for her birthday. We got our tickets and the line-up wasn't bad, but we had hours to kill before the 7:30 show started and when the ticket agent informed us the show was 3 hours long and we calculated taking the train, driving to my house and then Al getting home somewhere around 1:00 am.-- we were both looking a little green.
But best friends are that way for a reason, and we really had a lovely day, trying on purple clothes, manly food that we don't eat when the boys are around (for some unknown subconscious reason) at an English pub and wandering around the grandeur of Fairmont hotel. Of course in my scatter-brainedness (can you really blame this weekend though?) I let all sorts of details fall through the cracks... including leaving my debit card back at the train station....
but all's well that ends well... and the show was really something.... I think I may be breaking into song all day actually, pretending I too am one of the March sisters.
Anway, Al you know I love you and I hope the ambitiousness of my plans only reflect the height of my love for you... but next time for your birthday we will celebrate by taking a nap... on a masseuse table.... while they fan us with palm fronds and feed us grapes...
I have more than survived and managed to get a little sleep last night, so now I am fresh enough to finish this post, move some more furniture and perhaps dump those bags of sand into the sandbox...
Baby steps...let's just start with the coffee first....
Hope you all have a wonderful week!
No comments:
Post a Comment