I woke up with an aching back. Took three Advil and went back to bed long enough for it to take effect.

Sometime after I’d started working, my teenagers’ friends woke up and went home. (Two brothers slept over last night.) And when one of my teenagers woke up, I became aware of the following facts:

1) The boys bathroom door was locked.

2) The hide-a-bed couch would no longer hide.

Now, add those facts (which seem to minor now that the house is quiet and I’m no longer working) to the constant, never-ending bickering and whining that my four children produce and I turned into a screaming shrew. One of my 15-year olds said, “Mom, what’s wrong with you?”

I said, “Do you really want to know?” He said yes, he did.

So, I said, “Okay. It’s like this. Right before a woman’s menstrual cycle begins, her body is flooded with hormones that make her very irritable. I’m at that stage right now and I’m already irritable to start with. I wake up irritable. Add that to a bathroom door that is locked and a broken couch and I am very crabby. So, it’s in your best interest to STOP TALKING TO ME.”

He, my expert arguer, didn’t argue. He just said, “Oh.”

It’s true, you know. I am super irritable at this particular time of the month. It’s like being possessed by the anti-Mel. The sight of popcorn kernels on the new carpet I just purchased and put under the now-defunct couch drove me into a wild screaming frenzy. And trash! Why do my children think it’s all right to discard food wrappers and drink containers on the floor? Who taught them this? Because it wasn’t me!

When I finished working at 5 p.m., I unlocked the door after a solid forty-five minutes of effort. And while I was rampaging around the house, searching in vain for a simple screwdriver (my children steal and destroy all my tools), my son–the cause of this trouble–found something to use in lieu of the screwdriver and the lock sprang open.

The couch, however, is a lost cause. They apparently spent the whole night last night with the weight of four teenage boys lounging on the opened bed which was not sitting firmly on solid ground. (They didn’t scoot the couch back far enough so the bed could unfold completely.) The couch is old and used and stained, but still, taking it to the dump will be a monumental hassle.

I cannot believe how many items the teenagers have destroyed over the years. Shane has broken three bedframes. They have decimated four mattresses. They broke several chairs. You should see what they do to wire hangers. I do not know how all this happens, but apparently when I’m not looking, they set off bombs in the furniture. That’s the only logical explanation.

* * *

Look below this . . . two posts in one night! And furthermore, I’m going to try to post every single day in July! And not only that, I’m giving up sugar, white flour and white potatoes for July, too. Read all about it over on the other blog.

1) Decide to have a garage sale.

2) Spend a week answering children: “Yes, you can sell that. Ten cents.” My daughter spent a lot of time pricing her items all by herself, including pretty much every coloring book she’s ever owned. She’s not much for coloring.

3) Spend every spare moment for a whole week sorting through cupboards and drawers. Face the storage room. Move all items to the front living room. Trip over boxes for a week.

4) Borrow tables. Set up items. Place ad on Craigslist. Make signs. Load Mother’s items into van and transport to my house.

5) Wake up early on Saturday morning. Price items. Set out signs. Sit in driveway for whole glorious summer Saturday morning.

6) Wait.

7) Wait.

8) Greet sporadic shoppers.

9) Box up remaining items.

10) Drive to thrift store. Unload back of van.

11) Spent $20 at Dairy Queen.

(The kids each made a few bucks. Zachary earned himself $20 or so. Grace ended up with five bucks–and handfuls of jewelery picked out from Grandma’s stash. My mother made $70. It was actually kind of fun, but that’s the last garage sale EVER.)

I dreamed last night about swimming with the walruses.  They frolicked like chubby, graceful submarines, all whiskery and jolly.  And I felt such joy swimming with them in the blue-black lake water.

Weird, right?

I’ve been swirling in a slow-motion whirlpool of change and endings and too much work.  School ended last week, we are saying good-bye to our church congregation–a good-bye dinner last Sunday which ended with my 10-year old sobbing into my shoulder–and just because I know how to pile it on, a garage sale this Saturday.  Oh, and in exchange for only working 6 hours on Mondays and 4 hours on Tuesdays, I am now working 12 hours on Wednesdays, 10 hours of Thursdays and 9 hours on Fridays.  Two of those nights end at midnight and the mornings begin at 8 a.m., so I am not just burning the candle at both ends.  I am a towering inferno of exhaustion.

(So many metaphors!)

None of our kids wants to leave our church.  As i mentioned, the 10-year old has been demonstrating the most grief, openly crying at the mention of leaving.  One of my teenagers sat down tonight and said, “Mom, can I still go to our church?  I don’t want to go to another church.  I want to go to my church.”   I believe this attachment is good and healthy and reasonable–none of them really know any other church–but alas, it must end.

The stress of everything has catapulted me into a frenzy of overeating.  For instance, a key lime pie someone baked has been a nightly source of comfort and regret to me.  Oh delicious key lime pie, why must you be so soothing and simultaneously fattening?

I hope to be here more regularly.  I need to be here more regularly.  Writing is good medicine for what ails.  If you can’t swim with walruses, that is.

My uncle has raved about Joanna Weaver and asks me repeatedly if I know her.  Alas, I know her only through the pages of her book, Having a Mary Heart in a Martha World.  I bet Joanna would be an awesome friend to have in real life.

Joanna uses the biblical story of Mary and Martha to illustrate and teach us how to draw closer to God.  I would go on and on, but the daily demands of my life prevent me from doing so.  (Ha ha, that’s a little joke, because the book is about dealing with the daily demands of your life and finding a “joyful life of intimacy with Christ that flows naturally from into loving service.)
You can read a little about this new edition of her book here, on her blog and enter a contest to win a free copy.

This book is lovely to look at, easy to read and chock full of encouragement and empathy.  It includes a 12-week Bible study guide, making it ideal for individual and group study.  You can buy it here.

Guess who emailed me tonight?

Lori!

Oh, the mighty power of the blog!

She was singing a jaunty little tune in the shower when I told her that she needed to hurry.  She slid opened the shower door and said, “Why?”

“Well,” I said, “Today you’re going to to the doctor for your kindergarten check-up.”

Water droplets dripped from her hair.  She smiled a tiny smile, said, “Oh!” and slid the door closed.

A moment later she popped her head out to ask, “Am I going to get shots?”

She accepted her fate without tears, but a lot of talk.  I thought that my 15-year old son was the chattiest person ever, but she ranks right up with the most verbose of them all.  I told her only twenty minutes before we had to leave, which cut down on some of the angst, but she informed me that she did not want to get shots and “why do I have to get shots?”

I told her that the shots were keep her from getting some bad diseases.  Like what, she wanted to know.  Like polio and mumps.  “And chicken pox?” she said.

Well, no, because I opted out of chicken pox immunizations.  But let’s not quibble over the finer points of vaccination exemptions.

She looked so cute in her pink-polka-dotted tank top and blue jean shorts.  She brought along a stuffed animal, “A leopard?” I said and she said, “No, it’s a tiger.”  But it really was a snow leopard no matter what she thinks.

At last we were ushered back to the doctor’s office.  She regarded the scale with some distrust, but stepped up.  Almost fifty pounds.  She’s in the seventy-fifth percentile for her height and her weight.  Perfectly proportioned, the doctor said.

She climbed onto the examination table with its covering of crinkly paper.  She answered the nurse’s questions and asked  an endless stream of her own questions.  I could tell she was just waiting for the shots, ready to get them over with.  So I explained that the shots would be last.  The nurse did her thing, the doctor came in and did her thing.  Oh, the nurse asked, “Do you smoke, Grace?” and Grace looked at her in silence.  Then she smiled, like it was a joke.  I guess they have to ask that question of all patients.  They also must ask, “Does anything hurt?” and I thought maybe Grace would mention that her toes are sore from dragging along the bottom of the baby pool.  But she did not.

Finally, after all the preliminaries and a long stretch of waiting while we listened to a baby crying in another room, the nurses returned with three shots.  I held Grace on my lap, facing me, and the nurse swabbed her arm, then inserted the needle.  Grace didn’t make a sound.  Then the second shot on the second arm.  Still, no response.  Then the last shot, which the nurse mouthed, “This will sting.  Hold her firmly.”  So, I did and after that, Grace cried.

I held her close and said, “It’s over.  You can cry as much as you need to.”  And so she did cry a little.

We followed up that milestone (kindergarten shots!) with an early lunch at iHop (we never eat there and the service was terrible so we probably never will again).  Then to GameStop to search for very old video games to go with the very old Nintendo Entertainment System we got at a garage sale.  Then to Target to buy a toy since Grace was so brave.  We returned home three minutes before I started working at 1 p.m.

Throughout the rest of the day, she commented about the diseases she will not get:  “Molio, and what else again?” she said.  “Polio,” I said, “and mumps and measles and the coughing disease.”  We will speak endlessly of diseases for the next few days, I’m sure.

* * *

Grace amazes us.  She dove off the diving board tonight head-first, a regular dive.  She can also swim underwater from one side of the pool to the other (the short side).  She’s turning into such a social creature, which is stunning considering how clingy and shy she was for her first three or four years of life.  Now, she chats with anyone she deigns worthy of her attention.  (And not everyone is.)

[Add your own brilliant concluding sentence here to tie up this blog post in a witty and entertaining manner.] 

I’m glad you asked.

It’s like this: I’m the Sherpa and my teenaged boys are the ill-prepared tourists with a dream of climbing Mt. Everest. I’m dragging them along, roped to them, and they are dead weight. And I’m trudging up, bearing their unwieldy bulk, pulling them up vertical slopes but not because they care anymore. Oh, no. I’m doing it because I care, because I am determined to get them to the summit. I’m doing it because it’s my job. They gasp for air, they stumble along and I strain to get us all up, up, up to the top. We will not give up.

And when we reach the top? I’m thinking about pushing them over the precipice and parachuting 24,000 feet to the valley below, free at last.

Okay, not that last part. But the Sherpa part? That is what homeschooling reluctant students in June is like. Grueling. Thankless. And almost over. Two finals stand between us and freedom.

The past few days have been grueling.  The twins are finishing their freshman year of high school through a virtual academy and all their assignments had to be turned in by Friday at midnight.  (Hello, overdue Research Report and math unit featuring polynomials, whom I haven’t really seen since high school.)  But, oh wait, I work, too!  On Thursday, I worked eleven hours and on Friday, I worked nine, ending my shift at 9 p.m.  We did math before I worked and after, ending the day with a long session of rewriting research reports.
The good news is that we are only three finals away from freedom.  And next year, we are going to be independent homeschoolers, no longer affiliated with the virtual academy we’ve used for the past four years.

My ten year old is done with school.

My five year old can’t wait until school starts.  Kindergarten beckons.

This morning, we slept in, as much as is possible with a five year old who is eager to greet each day.  She didn’t start bugging us until 8:00 a.m., however, and we managed to stay semi-conscious until 9:30 a.m.  I promised to take her garage sale-ing today and my husband joined us–the 5-year old, 10-year old and me.  (One teenager was still sleeping and the other had spent the night at a friend’s house and was not home yet.)

We only hit two garage sales due to our late start.  At the first, my son found a 23 year old Nintendo system, complete with four games.  The woman guaranteed him that it would work and gave him a price break:  only $5.  The woman and man had lovely lilting accents–I thought Scottish, maybe, but when the man gave me change, he commented that the money was so different here, all the same size and color–and I said, “Oh, have you recently moved?” and he said, “No, I’m here on holiday visiting my daughter.  She’s moving to California.”  Meanwhile, he is counting out dollars and I’m studying him and notice tuffs of hair in his ears and cat hair woven into his navy blue cardigan sweater.

At the next garage sale, my daughter looked through several dozen stuffed animals.  The woman at that sale pointed out a puppy in the “free” box with a broken leg, but she explained that it would flip over if you turned on the switch.  And then she pulled out an identical puppy, only without broken legs, a well-worn puppy with matted fur and a bald spot near its tail.  She extolled its virtues, told us that this puppy would walk and flip over.  She demonstrated this, but with the switch turned on, the puppy merely clicked and shimmied.

“Oh, weak batteries,” she said.  “But you can buy batteries at the Dollar Store.”

My daughter was sold.  I was skeptical.  This puppy was $2.00, which is a fortune in garage sale terms.  I said, “Would you take a dollar?”  And she said, “Well . . . it’s not overpriced.  It’s a really nice toy.  But, well . . . “  And I said, “How about a dollar fifty?”

Which was about a dollar forty-five more than it was worth.  However, my daughter wanted it.  And I am a push-over.

At home, I put in new batteries and the puppy did nothing more than it did on that woman’s driveway.  It clicked and swayed, but did not walk nor flip.  I checked the bottom of that puppy and noted its date:  1985.

So, today, we bought toys from 1985:  Nintendo and a worn-out battery-operated puppy.  The Nintendo actually worked, however.  My son couldn’t wait to play the original Zelda game.

Later in the day, my husband took our son to a baseball end-of-the-year pizza party and I took our daughter to the pool where I finished reading The Same Sweet Girls.   I loved that book!  I have already passed it along to a friend who showed up at the pool.  My daughter swam for three hours, pausing long enough to eat a bag of M&Ms.

Tomorrow’s Father’s Day.  I have failed to prepare anything spectacular for Father’s Day.  I exhausted my efforts and creativity at Valentine’s Day (I bought him an iPhone) and managed only to purchase a box of Hot Tamales candies for him.  We’re going to spend the afternoon at the pool.  The sun is forecasted to shine and so we here in the Pacific Northwest canNOT believe our good fortune after several weeks of cold rain.

Of course, it will only be seventy degrees, so I’ll still be wearing a sweater at the pool, but it will be love nonetheless.

(Oh, and I filled the van with gas:  17 gallons, $73.  This is insanity.)

My husband’s forty-seventh birthday was today. We went to dinner and a movie. And my daughter wrapped him gifts: one purchased and three regifted from her room. (She chose a children’s Bible, a football and I can’t remember the last.) She likes to wrap gifts and uses the big scissors and wrapping paper and a roll of tape for each gift-wrapping session. Really, a whole roll of tape. I love her enthusiasm.

What’s weird about getting older and being married to someone who is also getting older is . . . well, getting older. My dad died three weeks after he turned forty-seven. My husband just turned forty-seven. It’s just so weird that my dad died when he was so young . . . and so weird that my husband is now the age that my dad was when he died. My dad seemed so . . . grown-up and dad-like when he was 47, so many miles and miles and miles ahead of us.

And now we’re there, sort of.  We’re getting old.  At least my husband is:  I’m four years younger than him.
Anyway, I am so glad my husband was born, so glad I married him almost 21 years ago and so glad that he’s not going to die in three weeks.

I tried to skip church this morning but my 5-year old would not hear of it. “How about if we go to church first and then the movie?” she asked. So that’s what we did.

I did leave the slumbering teenagers at home, which saved some aggravation until we returned home, ready to pick them up for the movie and found one 15-year old boy unshowered (and refusing to admit it until pressed on the issue). I insisted he shower and we arrived in our movie seats after the previews had started.

The movie (Kung Fu Panda) was entertaining enough, but of course, OF COURSE, there was a small child sitting directly behind me asking non-stop questions of her daddy throughout the whole show. “Daddy, why is he sad?” “Daddy, why doesn’t he want noodles?” “Daddy, what’s his name?” And Daddy answered her in a normal talking voice through every single scene of the whole movie.

Hey, Daddy, how about saying “shhhhh!” and how about warning your child, “In movie theaters, we must be quiet.” And how about not taking your child to the movies if your child is not able to sit quietly and watch without TALKING TALKING TALKING during the entire movie? Huh? How about that, Daddy?

A-hem. (And, sure, I expect kids to make noise during movies, but this was extreme. This child talked without stopping during the entire movie. EVERY SCENE, EVERY CHARACTER. I could hardly hear the dialogue. My own five year old turned around to see who was doing all that talking.)

When we returned home, I set about working with my teenagers on their research reports. I cannot adequately describe the agony of that task. So I will not.

After two hours, I took my daughter to swim. The temperature had warmed up to almost sixty degrees. Brrr. I am now reading The Same Sweet Girls. In fact, I stayed up much too late last night reading. Much.

Upon our return home (after her bedtime!), I exercised. I’m keeping a commitment to myself to exercise every day in June. (See the other blog for more gory details.) After that, I ran to the store to buy birthday cards (my husband turns 47 tomorrow) and a white shirt for my 10-year old’s school project. They are doing something with those shirts tomorrow, so I had to go out tonight.

And thus ends another exciting day. My husband was gone overnight on a retreat, so we now launch into another week having hardly seen each other this weekend. And it will be a doozy, too, with baseball play-offs, birthday parties and the baseball pizza party.

Then the school year is over. And I am happy to report that I did not stab anyone with a pencil, though at times, the temptation was almost irresistible. (Bet you haven’t heard a homeschooling mother admit that before!)