What's been going on?

We've moved to post wedding mode and I don't know about anyone else here, but my thoughts are turning towards Thanksgiving and Christmas.  I'm actually excited about the holidays this year.   My daughter and I went last weekend and hit a fantastic sale at JoAnn fabrics on polar fleece and my daughter is going to be making some of the gifts this year.   It feels good to have something started in that area.  I have some other Christmas ideas too, so that's part of it.

Give a high five to Mr. Miller, our stray-turned-permanent resident.  He's so cute.  

I've been working a lot.  My co-worker, bless her heart, has been having a very difficult time so I've been doing her job.  I hate it, but I'll do it for her.   I guess.  It's kind of killing me.  I feel like the child in the edge of the pool, quietly drowning with nobody noticing, but I'm trying to keep my head above water and hang in there and hold the fort.  (All the metaphors or analogies, or whatever).  Anyway, I should have a decent-sized nest egg for Christmas and hopefully, post-Christmas home improvements.  :-)  My husband says he'll do 1 major home project once a year and a new year is coming!  I have a lot of plans.  Now we need to (again) renegotiate just how big a "major" home project is.   This year, he only replaced the upper boards on the back deck.  There is some question in my mind if that is "major", but not in his.  He says it is.  (It only took 2 days and cost not a lot, so I'm saying it doesn't count!). 

I did get the day off on Tuesday, went with my daughter to her migraine doctor appointment (still no changes in the migraines, despite all the things we've tried.  :-(    )   and got some cupcakes, as is our tradition.  These are all gluten-free and amazing.   Chocolate, carrot, lemon, and chocolate-strawberry.  

Last night was a fun night for all of us in 3 separate areas.  I met a friend and went to a fantastic Micah Tyler, David Crowder, Mercy Me concert, my husband went to guys night at a local barbeque restaurant and the young people had some friends over for a day/night of hiking in the beautiful fall woods, eating chili, making smores and playing video games.  I don't know about everyone else, but I had a fantastic time.  Those artists really, really bring their A-game to their concerts.  I feel uplifted and on a high even though I ingested no substances and I am exhausted from all the working (8 hours) and then walking and stair climbing and concert dancing.  It's a very, very good tired.  

Today I'm watching Youtube with plans to play the Sims later and maybe take a nap. 

The Wedding.

My brother's wedding was such a wonderful time!  The groom was handsome, the bride was beautiful, her/their grandchildren made the cutest ring bearer and flower girl.  :-)   We had such a great time and she is such a fabulous addition to our family.  The song I had to sing went well, even though I had a cold.  Actually 3 of the members of my family in attendance had colds and the other 3 will probably have it next week because my youngest 2 kids went and babysat their 4 young cousins last weekend and picked up some virus.  We didn't let it ruin our time.  We took cold medicine and carried around hand sanitizer and celebrated big!

Today, though, after church, I'm going to lie about doing nothing and get some rest.  Tomorrow I have to be at work at 6:00 a.m. and it's an hour and 10 minute drive.  So that's great.

The wonderful whirlwind weekend of celebrating and having my son and daughter-in-law here is over and now we're prepping to get back into real life starting tomorrow.  It's kind of a let down, but I have concert tickets for a couple of weeks from now, so I'll start looking forward to that.  And Christmas, which is just around the corner!!

The Zombie-Like State.

I'm still working all the time and the end, which was in sight, may have moved, so I may not be getting any time off in the near future.  I'm frustrated by it, but I don't know what to do about it.  I haven't gotten any work done on my book about kids and homeschooling and I haven't been able to do any pre-studying for my coding class that starts on November 1.  I'm just working and coming home and being sort of in a zombie like state.  It's so much fun.

Speaking of fun, this time, not sarcastically, my brother is getting married on Friday!  We're all excited.   We've been shopping and getting our outfits ready to go and I think we mostly have everything.  I need to contact the pianist today and see if she can get together with me to practice.  I'm singing the recessional.   It's going to be fun.  I'm so happy for my brother and his future wife!

I've been decorating my notebook at work, with my work pens and highlighters.   

Nothing much has changed around here.  We're kind of in a holding pattern it seems like.  Youngest son hasn't found a job, daughter is still studying coding and doing a good job disciplining herself to study. I'm proud of her.   It doesn't make for an exciting blog post though.    They are still playing D&D and board games with their friends several nights a week, shattering the myth that homeschoolers don't have any friends. 

It's silly, but it helps me get through the day to take tiny little drawing breaks.

Fall seems to have arrived here at last with temperatures dropping this week from 98 into the 60s.  It's glorious.  I love it.  I am going to make some coffee and sit outside on my porch and drink it. I'm just trying to savor my off day today.  I desperately need the break.   I won't have another one until Tuesday after next and that is IF my co-worker's medical tests come back good and she's back to work.  It's very iffy.  Please pray for her if you're a praying person.

I feel spend a lot of time these days in the car, but sometimes the sky is really pretty in the early, early morning.  My phone doesn't take good pictures though.  

Still, here are a couple.  

  100 reasons to homeschool your kids.

Craziness.

I'm sorry I haven't blogged.  My schedule has been crazy.  I've been working 5 days a week, 8 hours a day, with an hour commute each way, volunteering at the same place on Saturdays and teaching Sunday School on Sundays.  I feel like I'm exploring new levels of fatigue.  On top of that, this week, my mother in law has had surgery and been in the hospital and I had a doctor's appointment, had to work for my co-worker and last night, spent quite a bit of time shopping for a dress for my daughter to wear to my brother's wedding, so two nights this week I've been out late, in addition to getting up at 5:30, burning the candle at both ends.  I've been very lax with my food allergies diet the last few days and very lax on doing my physical therapy exercises and I am feeling bad because of that too.   I'm sitting here this morning trying to decide if I can drag myself down there to volunteer.  I love the babies, but just getting there is a huge effort.  I don't know if I can do it.  :-(   I'll give it some time and get fully awake before deciding.  It recharges me emotionally, but I think my goal today might be to do something that recharges me physically, like eating right, resting and doing some gentle PT. 

In other news, we're getting a new mattress today.  My husband and I got it for ourselves for our 31st wedding anniversary.  It's being delivered today in a few minutes.  I'm very excited to lie down on it and hoping that it will help my back.  My sciatica has just about made me lose it this week.  It's been very difficult to sit in the car for 2 hours a day.  So, new mattress, yay!

Updates on my young people, former homeschoolers are about the same.  My daughter is working hard on her medical coding course, finishing the medical terminology part as a prerequisite.  She's still doing the art classes one night a week and she had some of her paintings made into prints.  We picked up notecards with the prints on them yesterday.  They're very cool.  Youngest son  has not found a job yet so he's been helping his dad around the house and playing a lot of games with friends, along with his sister.  They hang out with the same crowd, something that happens with homeschoolers, I think.   The oldest and his wife are still in Mississippi and we don't see them very much, sadly but they're doing good.  My daughter in law is going back to school to get her masters and my son is working 2 jobs.  They'll be back here for my brother's wedding next month, which we're all very excited about.  That coincides with the end of me working full time and finally getting a BREAK.

I have not been working on my book on homeschooling these past few weeks for some reason ... so there's no update on that, unfortunately. 

So that's it for us.   It's almost fall!

Okay, now it's pretty much gone.

As usual, the pictures are random.  This is our raccoon who steals cat food.  The cats are used to it by now.

August, that is.   Some good things have happened this month and one is that my daughter has decided to do a medical coding course.  I'm going to do it too.   I loved my job at first, but now my duties have evolved and now I'm a medical transcriptionist/receptionist.  I don't want to be a /receptionist.  I just want to do my job and not answer the phone.  I also don't like the unpredictability of my job.  Some weeks I barely work and some weeks I live there.  I've been basically living there for the last few weeks I am exploring new levels of exhaustion.  I'm so tired.  I sleep 8 hours and I'm still tired.

Anyway, I'm very excited that my daughter has chosen a career path and is getting some training.  This has been a concern of mine for quite some time.

I think the grocery store was trying to tell me something.  "Don't go nuts!"    "Think!"  

Okay, now August is almost half over.

It's crazy how fast the time is zooming by.  I've been at work.  Work.  Work.  Work.  I both hate and don't mind it.  I hate how much I'm gone and how tired and sore I am, but my workplace is a pretty good place.   Today I'm off and I'm thrilled about that though.  I'm exhausted.

We've also been trying to deal with a huge bunch of fresh produce this week.  Our peaches on our peach tree got ripe and we picked them before the woodland creatures got them all and I've been trying to eat as many as I can, freezing some, making some into smoothies, etc.  Also, my father-in-law sent us a bunch of tomatoes, apples, beans, onions, watermelons, and peppers and we've been trying to put those in everything we eat and get those used up before they go bad.   It's been stressing me out, to be honest.  Huge bags of everything all over the kitchen has seemed messy and breaking finding time to do all that peeling and cooking has been difficult.  Today, we have an apple crisp and green beans cooked and in the fridge and a bunch of peaches for smoothies in the freezer.  There's still a lot more to do, but we're making progress.  I realize that this is a particularly first world problem to have.  Too much!  Too much paid work and too much free food.  What a week and what a weird problem.

Peach smoothie~!

Other than that. I don't even know what's going on.  I haven't talked to my family this week as much as usual.   Hopefully, this weekend will remedy that!  The young people here are going to a new game store in our small town now and they're going tonight, so maybe not.  I'm glad they are getting out.  I can remember when we were homeschooling and our homeschool group split up and socialization was a problem.  It's not now, thank goodness, and also, this is the best part, not my responsibility.  They're grown up.  I don't have to make arrangements for them.   I'm both happy and sad about that.
Like I said, it's a weird week. 

Yesterday we had a sale at the gift shop of the hospital where I work and I bought myself the most ridiculous, over-the-top sunglasses that they had.  These made me and my co-workers smile yesterday!

It's almost August!!

Back in my homeschooling days, I would be happily looking at the Rainbow Resource catalog and having a great time picking out a curriculum for our school year, which I would then probably change out in December and start something new in January.  It was always so much fun planning and ordering and getting out supplies.  Sigh.  I miss it.

We're getting ready to celebrate our daughter's 23rd birthday.  Oh goodness.  It doesn't seem possible.   No back to school for anyone this year as our youngest has graduated college.  So it's weird. 

I'm waiting for the peaches on the peach tree to be ready to eat and hoping that something else doesn't eat them before we get them picked like they did one year.   I'm also pondering whether to apply for a full-time position that's come open at work and trying to lose weight (that never ends, but I have lost 30 pounds this year through intermittent fasting!) and casually shopping for a dress for my brother's wedding which is in October!!  I'm very excited about that.  My brother is going to get married for the first time to a wonderful lady that we all love.  I'm going to have a new sister-in-law!

I'm also working a little (very little, sad to say) on my book about homeschooling and playing the Sims 4 hundred baby challenge in my spare time.  I need to play less Sims and work on my book more.   Some things never change.   By that, I mean me.   :-)