Considering that it isn’t even 9:00 yet, I decided to use this very early evening to catch up a bit. When my husband asked me how I visualized moving day, I said wistfully, “I hope we have a little time to process all these changes.” His sage reply was, “You could spend the whole day and still not have it all processed.” Well wasn’t that the truth?

I spent this past Wednesday morning running so many errands so efficiently that I was feeling a little proud of my management. I even took a picture of how I dealt with a rolling, rattly stow away in the Suburban when I was driving.

I can sprint for a pretty long time and stay relatively healthy in my spirit, but I know when I’m out of stamina for the sprint and that’s when I have to process. I just need to sit beside the road with a water bottle for a while and think about the philosophical underpinnings of the race.

I can assure you that is not what I had in mind when I was kneeling on the floor picking up trash two days ago, and packing the last bits in the girls room. I wasn’t trying for an underhanded little vacation during our moving weekend. I knew I should call the girls to come do the floor stuff but I felt sorry for them because they had  been working so much; a large percentage of the grunt work has been done by the children. Also it is much easier to discreetly dispose of unwanted items when there is no one around.

So there I was putting a few stray socks into the sock drawer when I felt the unhappy familiarity of my knee popping out of place. This has happened to me many times in my life and I usually just pull the kneecap back up and all is well. Occasionally I do a really bad one and it becomes inflamed with outrage. This was such an occasion, despite my begging the Lord and even instructing him that it’s not a good time for me to be hobbling painfully. One of the children retrieved my crutches from the yard sale pile, but even that didn’t go so well. I’m not saying I heard an actual voice, but the Lord instructed me to sit still for a while so that’s what I did. I got a little time to process.

My hope was that I could take a bunch of ibuprofen and sleep it off and I actually was able to bend a little the next day. It was our big packing day in the kitchen yesterday, with Alex’s graduation party scheduled for the evening.

I got around slowly and had lots of help from the ladies in Gabriel’s family. His dad and little brother were also here to help and they stacked most of the packed boxes in the truck on the day before moving day. Gabriel is the most amazing packer I have ever seen. If Tetris was a team sport I’d be on his team.

Last night was restless, both because of an overload of nighttime processing and an ever-present charley horse in my thigh. We woke to a beautiful morning with nary a coffee mug or a French press or a bean in the house. How could I be so unenlightened when we were packing? My mom came to the rescue by bringing us a vat of cold brew from Sheetz ,bless her heart. We dug some plastic cups out of the trash and washed them so that we could drink our coffee and all was well. The only things left in the house were the big pieces of furniture, and a number of guys from church showed up to help us load them. Also bless their hearts and I mean that with all my heart.

Some of my friends came to help clean the house as the rooms emptied. Also BLESS THEIR HEARTS! Things went so smoothly it was hard to believe. As we were eating lunch, Gabriel texted the prospective new owners about the time for their walkthrough, which is a courtesy that is always supposed to happen before you sign papers. We thought they were already in the area. Turned out they were traveling through Chicago at the moment. And that’s how it happened that I stayed back with my trailer load of canoes and bikes and my girls, and the guys took the household stuff and headed northwest. The plan is that I will meet them in the morning for the walkthrough.

I have hours of time in the comfortable guest quarters at my parents’ house to process, but I promise I didn’t try it. It’s just how it works out sometimes.

If I were superstitious person I might have thought that attempting to make coffee with whole beans in the French press was an omen for a rather lumpy day. But as it was I just told myself to get my head in the game and then I made my coffee properly and sat on the deck with Gregory to make a plan for the day. We decided to eat all our biggest frogs first which included cleaning out the grodiness under the appliances, sorting out our junk drawers, and deciding which weird bits under the sinks are worth keeping and which should be mercifully dumped. If you’re curious, the bag for drenching a calf went into the trash as did the little nipples for bottle feeding goats. The space under the basement sink thanks me.

I was astonished at the zeal the children showed in clearing out these areas, and Olivia showed her zeal by taking over an enormous pile of laundry. It was so hot and dry today that we actually filled the lines twice for drying the big stuff like denims and towels.

Another happy event was waking up my sourdough starter from the refrigerator. Sometimes it takes a few days for it to get happy again, but today it was so bubbly that I mixed up a batch of soft sourdough for my mom to bake at her house.

The children and I went over for a few hours and it was so nice to see both mom and dad there at the house. He came home on Friday with a walker and a wheelchair to help him with mobility. Mom had gotten him a lift recliner with money that people had kindly donated to them, but he is actually not using the lift very much because he’s trying to strengthen his core muscles when he stands. The dumbbells he ordered on Amazon came today and he’s been doing his therapy with Mom, including walking as much as possible in the house. He gets very winded with exercise, but his strength is slowly returning and Mom is expending a lot of energy in feeding him nutritious food.

We had to go pick up our lawn mower at the repair shop, which fortuitously took us right past the best soft ice cream in the area and I got the kids cones to celebrate having eaten all those frogs. I read one time that you’re not supposed to treat yourself with food when you have achieved a a difficult goal, but there are just times when you need to get the taste of frog out of your mouth.

Now I am having hummus and corn chips for supper. Also it’s too warm to cook, and we’re not very hungry after ice cream.

Our northwestern house is currently in the stage where we wait for the plumber and the drywaller to do their bit. Supposedly they were both working there today which is wonderful news. I have been longing to get the painting done for a few weeks, and primed as many  walls as I could. Last week I also painted the doors and frames that we are reusing, as well as the trim we salvaged.

When genius burns, one uses any canvas available. Sometimes when paper is scarce, an arm works, although I wondered if he would have to peel skin away to remove the sharpie marks before church. In other news, one of the children said, “Mom, there’s paint on your elbow!” when we were walking in to church.

It’s kind of astonishing when your first baby is suddenly grown up and capable of helping his dad build things, lift heavy stuff, install bathtubs, etc.

Then there’s the last baby with a tender servant’s heart, who saw that I was whooped one evening and brought me a tray of refreshments to enjoy while she treated my feet. The drinks umbrella was something she found in the flowerbed and I sipped the ice water with sweet peas poking my face. 😌 It was lovely.

This is how the attics are situated, and this is what the girls suggest we do with them.

 

That’s the odd bits today. How’s your summer going?