Today marks five lovely days of back to school bliss for all of us. My husband remarked how he’d not yelled at the child in a couple of days. I’ve yelled but more because the kid’s so distracted with school thoughts or exhaustion at the end of the night, he gets a little talk back-a-tive while not brushing his teeth. This week has been the smoothest calmest uneventful transition into the school year to date. Last year, he came home starving every day, exhausted and fried. He’s a bigger kid now and I am thankful.
I have enjoyed my re-entry into the life I laid down to be the summer cruise director. I never thought about resenting my reassignment, I just did what I needed the best that I could. Because all the while there was a promise of what I was going to get back to accomplishing when summer ended. And I have kept good on my promise to myself.
We started to renovate the boy’s room this summer, transforming his former baby room into his big boy room. My husband relented to my pressure to build the desk when he had a spare weekend so I could take over and paint and redecorate. This week I made huge strides with painting the copious amount of woodwork. Seems I left a bit undone the last renovation. Is it ironic I was pregnant then too? And that I plan a tricky paint technique on the wall just like last time as well? You’ll see.
On top of the painting and the general care of the house (laundry, shopping, cleaning), and myself (feed the hungriness, fight the morning sickness, have a seat), I was able to also tackle two other areas that have bugged me beyond my patience for the entire summer.
Summer on the outside of the house means not only dying plants, but spider webs galore and a thick film of filth from pollen and traffic dirt. Not sure what the black brown tarlike spots on the siding near the porch light are but I guess its what’s left of bug dinners. Unable to pull out the power washer myself, I did the best I could to scrub, sweep, and rearrange myself back into a semblance of control.
And upstairs in the guest bedroom, I had just moved the table/desk to stake out a new space to write when the next morning, I found out I was pregnant. That was in early June. Almost two months later, I marched myself back in here today. I began to organize and decorate making a welcoming place to come blog or write. I can either escape from bothersome situations here or walk away and leave my work here, somewhere else besides my living space.
Of course, this room will also serve as the nursery so, at some point, I’ll be rethinking stuff. But for now, I feel like I’ve made more progress in the past five days than I have in three months. And then again, I reset the expect-o-meter for progress in the summer because that’s not what the season is about. Most of us wouldn’t have enough sense to stop. Summer’s supposed to be about relaxing. Which I did a lot. Could even do more. That’s what the holidays are for. Gears are re-shifted because that is natural. I finally get it.
I’ll keep everyone apprised of the projects. Thanks for checking this out as I know you too are busy bees.
