A avalanche of thoughts

Note: I've changed the format of the blog to a "dynamic" view.  Let me know what you think.  I can switch it back to a more classic look if this is too difficult to navigate, but I thought this looked kind of fun.  Also, I've optimized this blog for easy viewing on a mobile device.

Lately, I've felt like I'm drowning.  Drowning in thought.  Drowning in care.  My studio is a mess so I feel unable to create.  Billy has still not adjusted to being the only child in the house on school days and is impossibly unhappy.  My lack of recent blogging has brought about a train wreck of thoughts inside of my head -- piling up until it's hard to articulate what it is exactly that I want to say.  Writing is a release for me.  Getting it out on paper or the screen brings my thoughts into order, and when I don't make time for it, I feel like everything just gets jammed.  On top of all of that, Daisy broke her arm while we were camping two weekends ago, and on Monday this week, I came down with a nasty case of food poisoning just as Greg was leaving for a week's trip to Wisconsin (thank you US Army).

Mercifully, Greg managed to carve out time that morning to bring the older three children to school and Billy to his Mother's Day Out program before he left for the airport, which was amazing (getting into a moving vehicle at that point? Not a smart option for me.)  Later that day, my friend Lisa brought Billy back home, and bottles of Gatorade to help me survive.  Another friend, Rachel, picked up all 4 children for the afternoon to play and have dinner (for a total of 7 children at her house.  That woman should get a medal).  The only thing I managed to accomplish that day was to rest and consume liquids, but I definitely went to bed that night feeling loved and well cared for.

The upside of all of this is that, now that I've recovered, the stark contrast of sickness and health has made me feel like today I CAN FLY.  This week I'm setting in motion several things to bring about some needed change: Billy will now be attending the Mother's Day Out program twice a week instead of just one day, giving me a break, and giving him the socialization that he is apparently desperate for (as it turns out, God did not make that child to be alone.  His only options for happiness are as follows: 1) the other children are home  2) we have a playdate  3) I hold him in my arms all day like a newborn.  None viable for the everyday/all-day.)  The other is that I am reorganizing my studio tomorrow -- Thursday is usually Cleaning Day, but I got ahead of the game yesterday when I gave my house a good scrub-down, so I will be taking full advantage of naptime tomorrow and set my creative space to order.  I am behind on birthday gifts, and I'm not even thinking about Christmas yet, but it's all about the first step.

After dropping Billy off at "school" this morning, I grabbed my laptop and headed for Starbucks to write this blog.  I feel like such a poser, but in this moment, I'm just luxuriating in the freedom, no mater how unoriginal.


Blogging at Starbucks with my MacBook -- it's never felt so good to look so lame!

Greg will blog all about our camping trip since the whole weekend was just all sorts of traumatic for me (getting stuck at the campsite rained in/flooded roads with Daisy suffering from a broken arm, tree branches falling in the night nearly on my brother Jonathan's tent/head, our tents leaking ON MY FACE and on Sparky, etc.), but here's a mosaic of all of the food I made for our camping trip:



We've had such terrible drought here in Texas, so with constant threat of wildfire, we have been shut down into a full-out burn ban.  That means: not campfire (obvs), no grilling, no campstove, and not even any lanterns.  What this translated for me and Heather (we went with our friends from Germany/San Antonio again) was that we needed to create complete meals that could be eaten cold.  Of course we weren't about to just eat cold hot-dogs, beans out of a can, or peanut-butter and jelly sandwiches.  We put together our creative powers and spent two days baking and cooking up all sorts of cold grain salads, roast meats, etc.  My brother Jonathan flew in to camp with us, so the night before we went to the campsite, he also marinated and broiled a skirt steak to serve over Romaine lettuce.  He was afraid that all of the Vegetarian Bean Salad options might bring about a crunchy-hippie-revival.

Daisy's arm (which was injured on our first afternoon of camping) was broken just under the shoulder.  Since she is so young, the Dr. says that her body will know how to put the bones back together, and since it is so awkward/impossible to put a cast up that high on her arm, he says that just the sling should suffice.  This means she is not allowed to jump/run/climb for at least two months.  She's 4, so she TOTALLY understands this.  And by that, I mean that YES, she has already fallen on top of her broken arm at least 5 times (the child doesn't even have to be running.  So far she's managed to fall over backwards in her little chair at school, fall off of the stool in the lunch room, and trip in a non-existent hole in our backyard.)  I am now an expert at checking for shifted broken bones.  If I don't have a heart attack or a stress melt-down before she heals, it will be a miracle.



Wow, I feel better now that I've gotten all of that out of my head. And yes, that was a lot of words. But if you've reached the end and you're still reading this now, thanks for sticking around. I'll be writing more often. It feels good to be back.