How the Week Is Going

Right now? It's gully-washing outside. So much rain. This makes us nervous because our contractor repaired the bad spots in the ceiling at the farmhouse, but we don't think he's repaired the roof yet. Seems a backwards way to do things, unless he put some buckets in the attic, which he may have done. If the roofer he chose didn't show up, he said he'd do it himself. Maybe he did and we didn't notice? Hmm. Getting a house worked on is nervous business.

It's Thursday. We must, must, must be out of this house by Monday evening, and somehow -- how? -- be "living" in the farmhouse by then. It seems nearly impossible. I shifted around all the stuff (boxes, bags, junk, etc.) in the storage building so that Anna's bed can fit in there, so she'll have a clean, private place to sleep. We'll move the futon from the front bedroom to the office for Julia, and vacuum/dust the office for her. It has a thin layer of drywall dust on everything. Then only Adam and I need a place to sleep. I think we'll throw our mattress on the floor in the front bedroom. It's rather frightful in there -- more drywall dust from the sheetrock work in the living and dining rooms. The contractor said he would do a good clean-up. Here's hoping so! We told him our deadline. I hope he understands that starting Tuesday morning, his worksite will have a family of four with two dogs, living in it.

My new job is going okay. Monday was average. Tuesday was good. Yesterday was a bit stressful. It helps that I've worked with middle schoolers before for years, and worked with troubled kids. In a group of 20 kids, you're certain to have some who've had bad days (or bad lives), sadness at home, are bullies, are whiners, are struggling academically. It's a juggling act, and managing 6th graders is a bit like herding cats. I expect it to smooth out with time. It is a challenge to find activities for them that they enjoy and are enriching, and to fit it all into the bigger schedule.

Julia had a slightly better week with her math class, thanks mostly to her brother Peter who has been tirelessly Skyping her most evenings, walking her through it. But honestly, that's not a doable situation for him for the whole semester. And she's been doing that at a friend's house where she really enjoys being in the evenings -- a house a bit calmer than ours right now. We have minimal furniture left in the house, no pictures on the walls, hardly any food in the frig -- typical emptying house scenario, but it adds to her stress, which is high. She needs the comfort of home to cope with the coursework, and right now home isn't very comforting.

Adam is managing. He has so many balls to juggle in the air -- hefting furniture, working with the contractor, taking care of a dying congregant and her family, helping drive Julia to New Bern, trying to get his Jaguar running so he can drive it to the farm, comforting me as I start a new job, cooking dinners for us, managing his own stress. It's a little overwhelming right now.

Anna flits in and out. She has only a mattress on her floor, poor thing! She works long hours waiting tables and rests much of the remainder of her time, when she's not helping us tote stuff to the farm. She's been losing weight because she's on her feet so much, they don't feed her at the restaurant, and we have minimal meals here right now, in the middle of our chaos. I'm hoping, so hoping, that things will settle back into a normal routine soon. We are all quite weary with the weight of the constant state of discomfort.

But -- we have much to be thankful for, and I don't want to forget that! I'm working to adjust Julia's class load so she can manage it herself. The farmhouse is coming along. We seem to have moved adequate amounts of furniture thus far. I don't hate my new job - haha! (Some people do find themselves in that situation!) Life is manageable, as long as we don't have to do it like this too much longer. As Julia said last night, she realized at one point that her whole life had somehow changed, and she didn't know exactly how that happened, and she doesn't like it.

I understand. Sometime in early June life started to unravel for us, and we have not found ourselves able to knit it back together into the happy state we had. Too many stressors have occurred simultaneously for all of us, so we can't support each other well, although we try. Have you ever had a time in life that became dark and scary, when the thunderstorms rolled in, the sky became black and gloomy, and you wondered where the sunshine went? August is my least favorite month, and I think this August is my least favorite of all the 52 Augusts I've known.

Okay, enough whining! By this time next week, I hope to tell you that we are living on the farm. Exactly what that will look like, remains to be seen. I hope we're not eating our meals under a film of drywall dust.