Getting away from it all

this greenhouse/cafe/farmer’s market situation, two minutes from Caleb’s soccer practice field, that I can’t believe I didn’t discover before

We had spring break a few weeks ago. And since Jason isn’t working, our schedule was completely free to take a little romantic getaway that was his early birthday present.

This Airbnb was alternately described as a cabin, a tiny house, and glamping.

The setting (at least on the cusp of early spring) was peaceful and private. We could lounge in bed with a full river view out the massive window; there was a hot tub outside the door and a firepit and a generous stack of complimentary firewood, enough for us to keep a fire going most of the time we were there. We could go down the bank and poke our toes in the river. We could grill burgers on the gas grill. We could gaze at the budding trees and flitting birds and smoothly running river from the Adirondack chairs. 

It was a perfect way to unwind, say, from professional trauma culminating in layoff a month before.

When we faced school again after spring break, we had exactly eight weeks left in the homestretch. 

I’ve been doing a lot of thinking—and talking to our church’s children’s ministry director—about how to make my volunteering with children’s ministry more sustainable and less burny-outy.

VBS this past summer was, to be frank, rough. There was an unhappy confluence of events that resulted in high frustration in all quarters, and so, many, tears. 

{I mean among the leadership team. As far as I know, the kids’ experience was favorable. And I don’t remember a ton of child tears. But I cried from like Saturday to Tuesday. The war room was flooded with woe.}

One day I looked down and Buck’s tail was on crooked

And as soon as VBS finished, it was time to prepare for the new Sunday school year. 

Something had to give.

brand-new learner’s permit after passing the DMV written test

the kids were all here to celebrate Jason’s birthday

they amused themselves by doing the crab rave

I couldn’t—and still can’t—articulate all of why I was frustrated. But one thing I knew: I was sick of unending admin with no substance of Jesus. From coordinating Sunday school all last school year to coordinating Road to Resurrection in April to working VBS season through July, straight into coordinating the new Sunday school year, I had no end of behind-the-scenes spreadsheets and lists on my clipboard…and no teaching, talking, or hearing of Jesus.

I love a list of lists as much as the next person, but…blech.

Eventually they switched to POV roller coaster videos.

This school year I’ve pretty much taken over the brief large-group teaching time when all the elementary kids are together, before we dismiss to individual Sunday school classes. It’s so short that it doesn’t require any prep to speak of, and I get to spend a few minutes every week talking about Jesus and exhorting the kids to know and believe in Him. 

It’s good for my soul.

Other changes are under discussion, particularly tackling the problem of VBS season overlapping with what is typically the busiest time of year for Sunday school coordinating.

…and another day I looked down and Buck had put himself in the stocks

Lizzy did finally finish her grammar for the year, which means she doesn’t have daily school (except for Bible time) with me until she finishes her online classroom driver’s ed and it’s time for us to do behind-the-wheel instruction together. 

Jason is settling into his indefinitely-unemployed lifestyle. It’s been majorly helpful for me to have another driver during the day to help with chauffeuring. One day he cleaned out the entire shed—accomplishing in one day what I haven’t been able to face for like five years. He canceled our lawn service and bought a DIY lawnmower attachment. He gave notice to get our rental house put on the market this summer. He did taxes. He cleaned out the office. He took Caleb to an antique store that sells model trains. He transferred Ada’s college fund to her name. He mulched. He cleaned out his closet. He bought a guitar.

And his resting heart rate has plummeted since February. 

Spring fever

 

Praise the Lord, the weather has finally turned and spring is here. Isn’t everything better when it’s sunny and warm enough to sit outside in short sleeves?

Caleb’s soccer season is well underway. The last few games have been pleasant, temperature-wise, as opposed to the first couple games that we shivered through. They’re fun to watch, though. I should take some pictures…

School plugs along, despite the kids’ despairing conviction that we’ll never catch up with our work. Lizzy finished economics for the year and she’s supposed to be done with grammar but we just started the final review lessons. Caleb is perpetually behind in Latin and spelling and his logic lessons just keep getting longer and harder. Unfortunately, the more discouraged they become, the slower they work. And it’s too early to make the “every assignment for the rest of the year” lists.

The kids have been registered for next year’s online classes for a while: science, math, Spanish, and computer programming for each Liz and Caleb (they’re in the computer programming class together, which is kind of fun). I haven’t hit my own planning very hard just yet, but I have been rolling it over in my mind. I’m teaching high school-level history and English next year—two subjects I haven’t tackled before.

How hard can it be?

an impromptu Wednesday date night when the kids all had rides to Bible study found us drinking Spanish wine and playing Catapult Feud

I also need to update my personalized health course for Caleb’s ninth grade next year. STDs, birth control, menstrual cycles, drugs… my kids love learning this stuff from me.

So next year I will only have high schoolers. I haven’t made myself a schedule yet, but it really seems safe to say that the demands on my time can only be lighter. Because when they’re not joyfully discussing STD symptoms with me, they’ll be gratefully doing most of their work independently.

That, and we expect to have a college student living with us. Ada graduates in 32 days and she’s already registered herself for her fall community college classes—a process I was completely uninvolved in; in fact, I didn’t even know she had done it until after it was done. Lord willing, a year from now she will complete her associate’s degree and then transfer to a four-year school as a junior.

But for now, and for a while yet, she’s home. And Lizzy and Caleb are here. And we’re nearing the end of the grammar book, and the logic book, and the Latin book, but we’re not there yet. Right now, we have schoolwork to do and sunny spring days to enjoy.

Is there an age when kids stop building blanket forts?

#tbt

Last week I dabbed my eye when Ada tried on her graduation gown and looked all grown up. I remember when she was born. *snif*

Age three, welcoming her baby sister:

Age four, welcoming her baby brother:

Age eighteen; fifty-seven days til graduation:

Warmth

Whether because of our soul check-ins, or the excitement of a welcome layoff, or a couple of lunch dates with friends I had, or because I’ve finally perfected our school schedule for maximal mental health, or (very likely) a string of unseasonably very warm days, or some combination thereof…this Febru-March has been much more tolerable than most.

Although it’s too cold today to entice me outside to prune the shrubbery, which I really need to do because of the aforementioned unseasonably warm days, it feels more like spring than most mid-Marches.

Also too cold to entice me outside long enough to take pictures of our little peach tree, which is blossoming for the first time, or our explosions of cheerful daffodils. Therefore, please enjoy the following pictures which were all taken from the shelter of my home or my car.

spring soccer practice

Buck put himself in the stocks

Buck wearing green for St. Patrick’s Day. Sticky tab was a better choice than trying to put his green t-shirt back on, if we wanted to keep all our fingers.

Breathe the free air again

 

Jason hasn’t done a whole lot of breathing the free air since he got laid off. He’s more working to breathe any air around the congestion that knocked him into bed all week.

The rest of us caught the same cold for varying lengths of time, but it has definitely hit him the hardest, which I attribute to being so mentally and physically run down beforehand.

Here’s hoping he will soon be mentally and physically free.

Answers

It’s been a week.

On Tuesday I drove Caleb an hour each way to a BYO train event, wherein he got to run his own model train on the county railroad club’s layout. 

Along about the same time, I gave up praying that the abysmal conditions at Jason’s work would improve, and instead started praying that somehow we would no longer need this job.  

{In layman’s terms: cusp of AI revolution = bad time to be a software developer. Jason’s cycled through manager after manager, each more dissatisfied than the last with human-level output; not satisfied with him using AI, they want him to become AI, ie, a soulless machine capable of omniscience and astronomical, ever-increasing productivity.}

Wally, Lizzy’s pet-sitting client, who is not a soulless bundle of productivity

On Wednesday night Lizzy was overcome by extreme, unexplained abdominal pain on the way home from the girls’ Bible study, so after calling us, Ada turned around and drove instead to the ER, where we met them. Her sisterly duties discharged, Ada went home; but Jason and Liz and I didn’t get home until 2am after enduring hours of waiting under fluorescent lights for doctors to think of tests, order tests, perform tests, interpret tests, and then scratch their heads when the tests revealed no explanations. Which is a good thing; she doesn’t have any of the terrible-sounding things they looked for. They finally decided it was (possibly? maybe?) a stomach bug. Her pain had largely subsided long before the hospital visit was over, and the worst part of the past several days has been loss of appetite and way too many gushing nosebleeds, which we attribute to (possibly? maybe?) so much time in the dry hospital air.

On Thursday afternoon, Ada headed to our church’s women’s retreat to do work crew; I had opted not to participate and I was happy to be home with Lizzy, who had to give up her plans of also doing work crew due to mysterious and possibly contagious tummy distress. 

Just before quitting time on Thursday, Jason received an unexpected email. Thank you for your service in this company, etc etc. This has been a difficult decision. Growth, profitability, these changing times, blah blah blah.

In other words, my prayers were answered.

Jason (and his 4,000 colleagues) received a generous severance package that will allow us an expansive time to recuperate from a situation that has had his psyche completely tied up in knots. He can rest. He can breathe. We can sigh out the built-up stress in our atmosphere.

As the layoff was effective immediately, Friday was his first day free. He spent most of it signing paperwork, wiping his work devices (which he gets to keep), and reading up on his benefits.

Unfortunately, he came down with a head cold over the weekend. Ada said it’s like being sick on your first day of summer vacation. So our surreal week continues with Jason in bed…but not worrying about getting behind at work.

I’m so relieved. And so thankful to God who answers prayer and will lead us every day of the future.

Got it together

Lizzy feeding Buck mango with chopsticks because we’re nothing if not cultured

Last week on my regular grocery run, there was a refreshingly patient older man in the unfortunately long line. He declined to go ahead of a full-carted customer who offered, waving her off and cheerfully saying he wasn’t in a hurry.

Caleb commandeered Buck’s tunnel that Lizzy constructed so he could move freely between the school room and the playroom (it requires an elaborate rubber-band-and-bent-paper-clip latch system on both ends to keep the doors closed up to the tunnel so Buck can’t escape to the general house, which is also pretty effective at keeping humans from being able to escape to the general house). The wire tunnel cuts directly across the bottom of the staircase, rendering it miraculous that no human has yet killed themself tripping over it. Lizzy was not pleased to find that Caleb had constructed a double train track through it so his trains could move freely between the school room and the playroom.

He ended up right behind me (and my heaping-full cart) when I got to the cashier. With mild amusement, he watched me unload my massive pile of groceries and commented, “This isn’t your first shopping trip.” 

He continued to watch as I repacked my cart with my now-full reusable shopping bags as the cashier handed them to me, getting out my wallet and swiping my card in between bags.

Whether he was commenting on the capacious volume my bags hold, or the efficiency with which I Tetris-ed them into the cart, or something else, he pronounced, “You’ve got it all together.”

Reader, I do not have it all together.

Could it be, though, that I’ve arrived at a ripe old age of occasionally looking like I have it all together?

I got a text from a church acquaintance a couple days ago asking if I would mind talking to her sometime about homeschooling older elementary kids. What curricula do you like? What is your philosophy? How do you handle grades?

I told her I’d be happy to talk to her, at which point she asked if another friend of hers could join the conversation to also hear what I have to say.

My knee-jerk reaction to this upcoming conversation was anxiety. I don’t know anything! Why would someone ask me?! What if I tell them the wrong thing? But even I see that response is unjustified. By virtue of having been alive longer, and having homeschooled for longer, I have experience; ie, the form of knowledge my friends can’t get from googling it. 

As the man in the store said, it’s not my first shopping trip.

Nor is it my first day of school. Or my first day on the planet, or even of being a mom or a homeschooler. I don’t have it all together. But maybe once you’ve lived long enough, you’ve done enough of “it all” that some of it inevitably gets itself together.