Already the end of September, nearly.

Oldest son is going to be celebrating his birthday next week.  We won't get to see him, unfortunately, since he has moved away, but we'll have a video phone chat.  Technology helps a tiny bit in dealing with loved ones moving away, but it's hard to get everything in in half an hour a week.  :-/   Here in Kentucky, things are moving right along.  We've got half the kitchen floor done and maybe will get the other half done this weekend?  I don't know.  The young adults have a game tonight that they'll be attending, at 5 and they haven't started yet (it's noon-ish), so I don't know how much they will be able to get done.  We've gotten used to the construction zone and weaving our way in and around the tons of furniture in the living room.

Kitchen construction mess with gallery wall (still unfinished) in the background.   Fun times.  

My front yard buddies.  They are there every day when I go to work.

Just a pretty end of summer day - the view from our mailbox.

We've changed our board game nights to weekly, the girl is joining yet another D&D campaign that one of her friends is starting which makes her have 2 on Monday, board games on Tuesday, 1 (D&D) on Thursday, 1 on Friday and an occasional 1 on Saturday.   Her brother has one less that he is in since he has college classes on Monday.  A bit much maybe, but as you know, socialization WAS an issue with our homeschooling, so I am glad they are getting out there and socializing now.  They need it.

With board games, we had 1 family who does a lot of sports and their attendance is very sporadic, one family who moved away, one kid who drives herself who can't afford gas money to come all the time and so we've been kind of struggling to get an 8th player for a while.  We've had 7 regulars which is kind of an odd number :-)  and finally, we convinced a young lady from church to start coming and the first week she was there, we picked up some extra kids from the game store and the sports kids came back and we ended up with 12 players!  Who knows what will happen this week, but I think moving it to every week has helped.  Nobody has to contact me and ask if it's this week or not.  They can just show up.

My dog is going to miss me when I am at work all the time.  

I'm getting ready to go into a season of working 5 days a week for 6 to 8 weeks, which I am not looking forward to because it's too much for me, but I can (barely) handle it for a few weeks.  I admit it, I'm a wimp.  I'd love to have a work at home position, kind of, but I do think getting out there, walking a lot and meeting and talking to people has been good for me.  I know I need the money.  We've had some expected and unexpected expenses this month with the remodeling, finding out our fridge had been leaking and having to buy a new fridge and having to pay a large portion of our son's tuition since he dropped a class - my savings is looking pretty low.  I've still got plans to go to Ikea and get a new entertainment center and then after that, I'll be ready to share some before and after (or before and middle because we aren't done) pictures of the kitchen and living room.

All of this is going on in our lives and it is good, but I have a friend who had open heart surgery earlier this week and has not been able to come off to the ventilator and may have a blood clot in his lung, so there's kind of been a heaviness hanging over us this week as we wait to hear about him.  Praying it's good news.   If you pray, pray for him, please. 

Living in a construction zone.

My family has been working on the floor in the kitchen all week.  Hard.  We are all living in a construction zone.  My husband's days off end on Monday and I'm not very hopeful that they will pull this all together in 2 days.  Meanwhile this morning I'm waiting for them to wake up and trying to figure out how I will do the dishes with the fridge right there. 

The pantry is done

The fridge is in front of the sink.  

Guess I won't be cooking today. 

We got a new rug!

I was volunteering the day a local pallet store had rugs for sale, so my daughter and youngest son picked it out.  They did great and I love it.  

Finally, maybe.

We may actually get some of the stuff done to the house we've been trying to get done.  The contractor finally called me back and is coming Tuesday and also now my husband is thinking maybe he'll do the work to save money, so there's that.  I'm very hopeful that the house will be in good shape by Thanksgiving, at least the public parts of the house. The laundry room, master bath and bedroom need makeovers as well, but that will have to be for another time.  I'm cautiously optomistic about this getting done now, which is an improvement.  Part of what it took to get out of my ennui was the courage to call the contractor again and ask for an appointment.  My daughter encouraged me to do that and now I feel better.  Although that means I will need to spend my day off on labor day cleaning my kitchen.  That's fine.  I didn't really have plans anyway.

Son and daughter in law are settled in Mississippi and I think it's probably for good.  I am very sad over that.  I'm working on adjusting but it's hard.  As you all probably know, video chats are just not the same and I have been grieving.   Maybe we'll see them at Thanksgiving or Christmas.  I don't know.  We need to work on getting a place for them to sleep when they are here.  We have an air mattress, but air mattresses don't work all that well for 2 people.  I may get a sofa bed of some sort.  We just got new couches from them when they moved, but they are recliner couches, good for sitting, but not so much for sleeping a whole night.

We've settled into this season, I guess, with youngest son starting back to community college a couple of weeks ago.  He dropped a class he didn't feel like he needed and accidentally dropped below full time, losing 3/4 of his financial aid so that has dipped into my savings for the house.  He's keeping busy with schoolwork and playing D&D on Monday, Thursday and Friday, Pathfinder on Saturday and board games on Tuesday.  My daughter is doing all the games as well, and is still "officially" working on the house with me, but since housework has been stalled, she has not been as busy with that.  We really need to be serious about finding her a job.  As you know if you've been reading this blog, she's very shy, so I may have to help her again.  Last time, I actually just took her along to an interview I had arranged for myself, told them I had accepted a different job (which was true) and presented her as an alternative to me.  They hired her and she worked quite happily there until the school started experiencing financial troubles.  Sigh.

The dogs have both been in cones for almost 2 weeks, Cosmo because of a sore on his leg and Freckles because she had to have eye surgery again.  Freckles has had a cone before and took to it like an old pro, but Cosmo has been hilarious running it into things. The whole first day, he just laid around and moaned and whined, but he's gotten somewhat used to it now.  He still knocks it into about 3 things every time he moves and walks behind us bumping it continually on our legs.  I think they'll both get them off on Tuesday. 

Anyway, that's the update.  Again, trying to adjust to life's new pattern, and find the new normal.