Too tired to post

But I'm going to anyway. Actually, I'm procrastinating on a project I have going. Whatever. I'm here, tired from keeping myself up late and waking early. But that's why God made coffee, right? Right.

Ok, then. Indianapolis was ... hard. Hard and easy. Easy in that I felt pretty much myself, hard in that it's never easy taking three kids on a second long road trip in just a few week's time. More complaints than last time, but since it was a new place (vs. Ohio), it was more exciting for them. I had charge of them for an afternoon while Dr. D visited his father in the hospital, and I surprised myself by bringing them to the Dairy Queen and buying them whatever they wanted (within reason - it was almost dinner time).

But then we got to the hotel and they'd double booked our room, so after a minor moment of flipping out (there was no way I was going to cram all five of us in one room - I know, lots of people do it, but I'm not lots of people - I am so sick of not sleeping), we got ourselves switched to another hotel a few miles up the road. All was well. Went to the pool, slept fine, had a yummy breakfast, more pool, back to the condo where my mother-in-law is staying, and said our good-byes.

A short, sweet trip.

If only I didn't feel so desperately bad about it. About not letting Dr. D go on his own (he didn't seem to want to, but it would have been better for him, but I didn't want to be stuck home alone overnight), about not being as supportive for my mother-in-law as I should be, about being a narcissistic self-absorbed prig. Sigh. Did I mention I'm tired? Maybe I'll write a letter to my mother-in-law. She would like it, and I would get to procrastinate even more!

End of the Week Summary

What? But it's only Thursday! True enough, but we're going to Indianapolis tomorrow and Saturday to hang with Dr. D's mom. She and his dad are there for six weeks (or more) while Dad undergoes stem cell replacement. (Something to keep in prayer for the one person who actually follows this blog.)

So, here's what we did.

Monday: Nothing. I don't remember Monday. At all. Funny, that.

Tuesday: Leading Little Ones to God lesson 59; exercises 64 & 65 in Math; started reading Famous Men of Rome (see earlier post for St. Nick's poem written in response).

Wednesday: Busy day. Fish had a Dr's visit where, as I was updating his new Dr. on his medical history, I totally forgot that he'd broken his collarbone when he was two. That was such a traumatic event - I can't believe I didn't mention it. I said, "Oh, I think the only time he's seen a doctor was when..." Dum-me. Then I had an appointment after lunch, and after that I wanted to finish edits to a manuscript so I could get it out already, so school didn't happen.

Thursday: Read and repeated Psalm 100 (we're going to memorize it); Math exercise 66; McGuffey's Second Reader lesson 42; Scholastic Success for 2nd Grade lesson on common nouns (done extremely well, even if barely legible); found quartzite and obsidian in the backyard (looked them up on a rock identification website) and discussed volcanic vs. metamorphic rocks. Not sure how much stuck, but it was fun for me. I love this stuff. I'm such a geek.

Oh! I just remembered Monday! We had a house showing, so I spent the morning cleaning and trying to occupy the kids with things that wouldn't make a mess, then spent the afternoon at the ice cream parlor and the library where St. Nick discovered the non-fiction section. Then we went out to the deck, and while St. Nick paged through his dozen or so books, I tried to keep Fish and Pie from throwing all the library's mulch into the lake. Fun!

More after Indianapolis. Can't say I'm looking forward to this one.

Romulus and Remus Come Alive

Today, as I was reading Famous Men of Rome (Haaren and Poland), St. Nick announced that he knew this story. It's in our book of myths! I got it and we found the page of the Romulus and Remus story. Then St. Nick abandoned his Legos and got paper and a pencil to draw a picture. A Cute, starkly cubist* picture of an animal with two people riding it, and a very angular (almost Aztec?) sun and clouds.

He then dictated a poem that I wrote down. Here it is:

The Wolf and the Babies
by St. Nick

This is the wolf,
This is the sun,
These are the babies on his back
When the clouds
Run in their run.

His favorite part of the Romulus and Remus story, however, was not the wolf. Rather, it was when the boys grow up and return to cut off Amulius's head.

*It's interesting to me how St. Nick seldom tries to draw things realistically. His drawings are very angular, but with contrasts of curves, and even when he's drawing something "real" like his brother, the drawing will be very much an impression - self-consciously so. Funny since we've not studied art at all yet. I know I was always trying to capture the thing as realistically as possible at his age (and still now, on the rare occasion I try). I don't know what this says about him as a person, if anything, but I like it.

Sigh ...

The buyer backed out.

Maybe the selling part is harder.

Maybe it's all hard.

Ugh.

Really, I'm slightly glad for a little more time - things on the house-search end weren't happening how I liked. Too much pressure; it just seemed to be happening too soon.

I do hope it's only a little more time, though.

Pre-Home-Inspection Excitement: Fire!

So, we have home inspection and appraisal today. And we wrote an offer on another place last night. And yesterday afternoon a fire broke out in the alley and our garage started on fire.

No, I'm not kidding. St. Nick was playing outside with Fish (digging for worms - I know, exciting), and I heard him opening the back door. I got up thinking I'd have to quick get them to take their muddy shoes off, but they got quiet, like they were going back to play. But then St. Nick started yelling Fire! Fire! Fire! And I hurried out intent on telling him not to cry fire when there's no emergency. Only I looked out the back door and saw FLAMES!!!! Quite a lot of them right at the back corner of the garage.

After calling 911 I saw that the wind was blowing the fire away from the garage, thank heavens, but that if it shifted, the whole thing could go up. The boys asked, "What can we do?!" and I said, "Pray the wind keeps blowing the flames away from the garage!" So they started praying, but after another minute without hearing sirens and watching the flames lick the side of the garage every time the wind slowed, I went in and grabbed our kitchen fire extinguisher and tried to spray it from the side of the garage first, but the smoke drove me back. Then I went in the garage (terrifying St. Nick - he thought I was running into a burning garage, which I suppose I was), and then out in the alley where a neighbor had gotten his garden hose and was trying to hit the flames with that while I emptied the fire extinguisher on the flames closest to the garage/on the corner of the wood. Then the fire dept. showed up and put out the rest. Excitement!

They think someone walking in the alley tossed a cigarette in the bushes beside the garage. The garage itself only sustained a tiny bit of damage. And great timing, right as our Realtor was showing up with the "Sale Pending" sign under her arm and the day before inspections.

I don't want to think what could have happened had St. Nick not been out there or had we been away from home. Yikes! Poor St. Nick was beside himself last night, terrified that a forest fire would break out (the house we made an offer on is the one in a wooded area) or that the house would start on fire or or or ...
http://www.studiolum.com/wang/russian/fire/russian-forest-on-fire-2010.jpg
The most reassuring truth of all for both St. Nick and myself: there is One in control of the winds - winds that truly did not shift and kept our garage from sustaining more than minor, mostly cosmetic damage.

Decisions, decisions, decisions ...

Since our house is sold, and we're set to close in less than a month (aaaggg!!!), and we have 15 days after close to clear out, we need to put the hustle on to find another place to live. Yikes!

We've been on a whirlwind of home tours since Friday afternoon - some interesting finds like a very cool retro 70s place with green shag carpeting and some of the most incredible vintage furniture I've ever seen. Straight out of the Godfather movies. And an at-the-end-of-the-trail place where we had to stop twice just to get to it - first to let the wild turkey pass, then to let the three deer pass. And a home in some pricey suburb that was so pristine I don't think I'd let my kids live there, not to mention the reek of Botox in the whole neighborhood.

Why did I think selling our house would be the hard part?

We have it down to two (with a strong third) options. One is Dr. D's front runner, the other is mine. They are about as different as you can get. One is south and east of town, large lot but in an older suburb. There's a shallow creek in the back and the yard is fenced (hooray! for neurotic moms such as myself). There's also play equipment, a nice deck, and plenty of space inside. All our "requirements" are met for bedrooms and living areas. But the house needs some TLC. Okay, the walkout basement needs a lot of it, but we like house projects, right? It's not like we don't know how to lay tile or paint a room or replace an oven or ... It's also in a neighborhood, which could be good, or not so good. Not a pretentious neighborhood, but there would be schooled kids and St. Nick is very peer-dependent when he's around other kids, plus I'm such a hovering mother (says my mother-in-law) that I'd never be comfortable with him playing at other kids' homes. And we'd be farther from my mother, but would probably have ample babysitters in the neighborhood. We'd have to change some shopping centers and such, and it would take Dr. D about 16 minutes to get to work (vs. about 10 from here).

This place has some perks, like the deck, a screened three season porch, play structure, fence, bathroom off the master bedroom, nice French doors to one room (that don't close quite right - TLC again), and a formal dining room. But it also has only three bedrooms on one level which means the boys would double up, or we'd be on a different floor (in the basement, but TLC needed yet again).

The other option is straight east of town. It's closer to our usual shopping center than where we live now, would be fairly easy for my mother to get to and is only 18 minutes from Dr. D's office. But this one is on five wooded acres, and it's across from a state game area, so we wouldn't be having a development popping up. We would have no neighbors to speak of (two houses are nearby, as in a hike through the woods on either side). It also satisfies our requirements for space. It's slightly smaller, the deck less showy, and could also use some TLC, but is more move-in ready (i.e. the oven closes all the way! Bonus!). It's also more expensive.

This one also has perks. The bedrooms are spaced pretty well (and there are more of them), the kitchen is in better shape, and there are the coolest built-in loft beds in one room - two of them with little desks built beneath and such. The boys would love it. But ... there's no fence. There are literally hundreds of acres of woodland right out the back door and very very few houses. I don't tend to talk to my neighbors unless I have to, but at least I know they're there, and I'm not sure I would trust the kids not to wander into the woods and get lost. But I love being out there - it's so truly private and serene. We could do so many amazing homeschool activities in those woods, and hiking and bike riding and so so much more (Dr. D could get some use out of his chainsaw! He loves his chainsaw). But it's a tri-level, so lots of stairs. And no dining room, so we'd have to store or sell our dining room furniture. Not something I'm necessarily bothered by, since it's odd to have a formal dining room full of furniture that's never used (though we use ours every day, which it was not built for) but I don't know if I want to sell it. Then I'd sell my formal dinnerware too, which I guess is fine since I haven't used it in at least five or six years. It pretty much just sits in the china cabinet looking pretty. Sigh.

Oh, bother. What to do?

Going, Going, GONE!

And I don't mean my mind! (Well, that's debatable.)

Our house! It's SOLD! (Pending if you want to split hairs, but with a solid offer!)

We just signed the paperwork! Our agent has asked us to clear our weekend to tour available homes and is hoping we can write an offer by Saturday!

I don't know when I've ever used this many exclamation points in one post!

Side benefit: this weekend's open house has been canceled! I was so not looking forward to the same old routine of clean and stage a room, have the kids go in there to play because, hey, their toys are all straightened and look so much more FUN than usual, only to have to go back and re-clean and stage that room while they wander off to a different room to repeat the process. But now I don't have to! Yippeeeeee!!!

Spring

Mud Pie just took off into the front yard singing a funny little song only she can sing. She ran back so excited she could hardly get the words out. "Mommy I found a BIG yellow flower!" We talked about it for a minute, then she played chase with Oscar, and now he's resting on the deck and Pie is standing, simply standing in the yard listening. It's a noisy place, the forest.

We never had this in the city, and not just because Pie wasn't walking well yet. We had two or three doors, sets of stairs, cracked porch to navigate just to touch anything green. The fragrance of lilacs was tinged with the neighbors' stale cigarettes, their leftover beers toppled in the grass, rotting things in trash bags.

We had a small maple in our backyard. Only one branch had leaves. Every time I looked at it, I felt sad. It was dying, as trees do, but it was our tree, our only glimpse of Eternal amidst cracked concrete and urban blight. I felt like that tree, strangled by the city, by its dangers and mess and stench and constant closeness to humanity in all their unpredictability. I seldom fought the doors and cracked porch and uneven sidewalks.

There is a dying tree in the forest out back, but I won't let Dr. D cut it down as he would love to do. I love the tree's stark symmetry, its leafless tallness against the lush green of the woods. Here dead things are not blight, they point the way to life. In the city our maple would be cut down, hauled away or chipped. Here, if left to nature and not Dr. D's chainsaw, it will fuel generations of life of all different sorts. Bugs, birds, moss. Even if felled by Dr. D, it would fuel our stove all winter.

Here my brokenness is not death. My soul-darkness does not make me useless, fit only for the flames (or wood chipper). I may feel stripped to nothing, gangly and lifeless, but I can still grow.

And maybe, just maybe Mud Pie, Fish, St. Nick can flourish too.