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.

Ennui.

Ennui:  a feeling of listlessness and dissatisfaction arising from a lack of occupation or excitement.

Board Games.

We're still playing board games in our homeschool group every other week.   It's been a lot of fun.  From what I can tell from reading back pages of my blog, we've been doing this for 3 years or so.  Along the way, some kids have joined and some have moved away or just quit coming, and we've picked up some from the board game store where we meet.  We usually have 7 or 8.  It's a decent sized group and the kids have made some real friendships.  I debate sometimes dropping my involvement, but I do seem necessary in some ways, as the hostess, bringing the snacks and making sure we have a place to meet.  The game store keeps changing their hours and the library rooms are often booked on the nights we need to meet, so it is a challenge.  I'm not sure where we are going to meet in 2 weeks since we were doing Monday nights and my son scheduled himself for a Monday night class.  He is the leader of the group.  He gets a game on the table and keeps things moving along.  We only have 2 1/2 hours every other week, so we want to get as many games played as possible. 

Favorites include Werewolf, Superfight, Concept, The Resistance, Coup, Love Letter and Saboteur.  Last week we added A Fake Artist Goes to New York and Spyfall 2.  Old favorites like Dutch Blitz and Clue sometimes show up on the table as well.  Most of the games for a smaller number of players are not played as often because they like to play together and rarely split the group into 2.  We recently divided our game bags into 4 players or less and 4 players and above bags, but then we went on vacation and pulled a few out and messed it up.  I need to reorganize them soon. 

Even with all the scheduling annoyances, it's been a good experience and I'm glad we started it. 

I've just been at work.

Work.  Work.  Work.   Everyone has taken a vacation in July so I've been covering for everybody.  This is my first day off in quite a while and what did I do, I caught a virus.  I went to the doctor today and that's about all I've accomplished.  My kids were running around getting things done though.  The oldest and his wife are moving away from us (sob!) next week so they brought us some furniture and while they were here, took some of our old furniture to Goodwill.  Then they went out and picked all the peaches off our peach tree.  They look green, but they are really tasty.  We've had that tree for years and haven't ever gotten to eat any of the peaches, so we are thrilled.

We took a vacation last week to Gatlinburg and all 6 of us got to go, so that was fun - a little bit of family time before they move.  Needless to say, with work and vacation, all the plans we had for the house have not been done.   They're still here waiting for us. 

Busy.

I'm busy and I'm not really liking it.  I've got 2 1/2 weeks of full time work ahead of me and I know myself.  I know that by about the third day, I will lose the will to live and think "how am I going to get through this?".  Our new boss stopped by for a meeting and I asked her if I could work part time the first week, because I can't really sub for the person who is out (we don't do exactly the same work)  but I could come in and give the other person a lunch break, etc.  but then my 2 co-workers butted into our conversation and now it seems like I'll be working all day long.  It's hard for me with my arthritis and Sjoegren's to have the stamina to do that, but I guess I have to.  :-(   I also asked off for the Monday of the second week when no-one else is off and my 2 co-workers indicated that the always needed me on Mondays because the workload is higher, so I'm working that day too.   Really, I work so hard and I have figured out their computers, so I'm fast and most days, we get completely caught up by 1:00 p.m. and I can't imagine why I'd need to stay until 4:30.  Sigh.  Next time I am going to ask to speak to the boss privately.  Good grief.

Things are going okay around here otherwise.   My son and daughter-in-law have decided to move away and I'm not happy about that, but there's nothing I can do so I'm working on accepting it.  We will have to put aside money and time to go visit them pretty often.  Daughter is still working on the house, though much more slowly than I would like.  Actually, everything about the house is going more slowly than I would like.  We need a lot of work done and I can't get anyone to come out and look at it, so it's at a standstill.  It's frustrating.

Youngest son is getting ready to go back to school.  He and the girl have had a busy, busy summer playing Dungeons and Dragons and board games with friends, but he's going to have to cut back on that when he goes to school.  He's going to have to do some homework this semester, and take more hours --- 16!  He will be busy, busy.

That's all from here, I guess.   I'll share some pictures of various things we've seen and done.  Now that we are finished homeschooling, this blog is mostly about what we are doing at our house and to help me journal about our lives.   If anyone else is coming along for the ride and reading it, thanks for hanging in here this long.  :-)

These 2 things are hanging up at work.   

This is a game we played at my son and daughter-in-law's house, last week, when I was busy with things I enjoyed being busy with.  :-) 

A drawing of mine that I'm proud of.