7-Quick Takes

  Join Jen and the other Quicktakers over at the Conversion Diary.

1. Sorry for the very slow blogging over the past two weeks. I am trying to get back into full school mode – which for me means:

• All the academics for four kids.
• Supporting Sam as he continues CLEPing through College Plus
• Driving to Izzy’s art lessons, soccer, cross country
• Keeping caught up on the laundry and housework
• Cooking every night
• Grocery shopping every weekend with a menu.
• Keeping caught up on my transcription work.

This is just the bare minimum that has to be done for family survival mode and it’s a shock to the system to get back to doing it all full scale.

2.  In addition, I have some worries this year that are on my mind constantly.

• Sam’s slow progress through CLEP (although he feels very prepared for the upcoing Biology exam).
• Izzy’s still- ponderous reading and writing (although, I must say that since she is an artist, her copy work is beautiful!)
• Gabe’s desire to only play drums with his band and to not do any school work, or any other work of any other kind.
• Noah thinking he might like to become a priest.
• Calvin with problems at work, problems with his course work, and troubling personal life.

Egad, I can feel the hair roots turning gray as I type this!

3.  This has been my toughest year as a church wedding coordinator E-VAH!!  and part of me thinks I should probably retire.  I have empathy with the bridal families, I do. But when you’ve lost your parents, a baby, survived two law suits, and been dancing over that poverty line more years than I care to count, it sort of makes little wedding details kind of – well, picayune.  Not that details aren’t important, but in the large scheme of things I think it’s important to keep perspective!

4.  I have also been having my own dark days (of the soul perhaps?)  I feel alone and lonely, mainly because Mr. Pete has been working so much all the time.  And it doesn’t really help that the kids are around – I mainly feel that I have to make a lot of the tough decisions about them all of the time too – especially my teenage boys!  I feel as if I have to say things with twice the strength, force and authority because I am the mother, the authority – but being only 5 foot 6 1/2 inches to their 6 foot 2 and 3 makes it a little tough.  What Mr. Pete can get across in an instant takes me a drawn out logical debate – it’s exhausting!  Although, to be sure, much of what Mr. Pete says is, “Do what your mom said.”  So there’s that.

5.  I miss mom a lot.  I think about her death a lot.  I think about my own death a lot. 

I’ve been pondering why this grief for my mom is so much longer than the grief I had for my beloved grandparents and my uncle (long-time readers will remember I grew up in a household with my grandparents, my mother, my uncle, my sister and myself).  I can com up with two explanations.

• I was in my late teens when grandma died, and late 20s with uncle and grandpa.  I had a relationship with my mother that was twice that length.
• I was present for a lot of the dying process and it was really a distressing thing to witness.
• One of the clients I type for is a rehab hospital, much like the one mom spent her last months in.  When they talk about ambulating in a hallway, or performing these different therapies, it is that rehab hospital that I picture in my mind, and it is mom that I picture performing these many therapies.

6.  I did have a grace filled moment last week.  I was talking with some moms at the soccer field (which could be an entire post by itself) when one of the moms started talking about yard sales.  So on the way home, I came across a tag sale (which is not quite the same thing) and decided to stop in.  This was a nice little house crammed full of interesting things including a lot of nice Catholic statuary.  In the corner, unceremoniously sitting all by itself, was a bag of crystals.  Probably came off of an old chandelier or other light fixture!  Since my old chandelier was missing quite a few crystals (and quite a few more had been snapped in two by little fingers) I knew I had to get that bag of crystals. But they wanted $25 for it.  I knew the next day it would be half off.  So on Saturday, five minutes after they opened, I was there and got my bag of crystals for $12.50.  I was pumped.

7.  Izzy and Noah cleaning the chandelier and putting on all of the crystals (which matched my old crystals perfectly!)

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