A New School Year...

Well, it's that time again.  A new school year has begun and I'm so NOT READY!  With sixth grade staring me boldly in the face, plus Kindergarten and Second, I'm thinking, "Doomed, I'm totally doomed."

It's like this.  I'm an organizational freak.  Everything must be planned and ready.  Otherwise I kind of wander around wondering where I am and what day is it and do I need to do the dishes or laundry or what?

You're thinking ADD or clinically insane and I get that.  But it's just the kooky person that I am.

So I've spent the Summer moving, coping with loss of family members, coping with how expensive it is to live miles from everything that used to be five minutes away, and other things.  And something terrible has happened.  Amid all of my goings and comings, Summer fled and the school year came and I find myself unorganized and unprepared.

Okay, in all fairness I had planned to be leading a co-op and those plans were going swell until the whole thing fell through due to lack of teacher participation.  So I'm not a total loser - I had made plans.  It's just that now I have to start over and my always-be-prepared, have-your-power-point-ready, make-sure-your-graphics-are-awesome personality is suffering from serious I-don't-even-have-an-excel-spreadsheet done mentality.  Not even one spreadsheet.  Insert scream here.

How the mighty have fallen.  Mighty?  Okay, insert humility here.

So, here I am face-to-face with sixth grade.  It's not just sixth grade though.  It's sixth grade Math.  Can you say Algebra?  Control the urge to scream again, but it's coming.  It's out there waiting for me and I must face it prepared - with spreadsheets and graphics in-hand.  Otherwise it will destroy me!  Really!

Breathe.  I had a boyfriend once whose mantra under stress was "Relax, Breathe, Move gracefully."  I need to channel that right now.

Okay, tangent aside (hee hee, geometry pun!)  I need to get real and get going on this.  Time is flying and algebra is coming!  Pray for me.

In the mean time I must say that the school room is the most organized room in the house; the curtains are hung, the decorations are on the wall, the bookcases are beautiful (sigh), and the place is pretty dog-gone organized.  All that awaits is...teacher with a plan in hand.

So that means I must either embrace the laptop fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants method, or get my backside upstairs and organize the office and my treasured Mac with multiple printers and stupendous graphics, etc. so that the plan can materialize.  I'm thinking laptop mode may win out this year.  Have you seen the mess upstairs?  Could the move-in fairy please come and finish unpacking?  And after that the garage-sale fairy could organize and label all the stuff for that, and then the donation-fairy could...but I'm rambling, aren't I?

Here's to another school year, perhaps sans graphics and power point presentations, but filled with lots of love and learning.

God is good...

You know sometimes we pray and think, "He probably won't answer this soon but I know He has a good reason."  And then last night the thunder peeled and lightning split across the sky.  Then we heard...rain.

Rain.

Beautiful buckets of precipitation falling from the sky in answer to my blog-prayer for...rain.

God is so good.

It's such a little thing, an answered prayer.  Or is it?  To think that in a world of billions he heard me and others with like-minded prayers and answered with a resounding boom across the sky is quite uplifting and confidence building.

What if we all prayed for a country of people and leaders who serve God?  What if we prayed for an end to famine?  What if we prayed for an end to violence and war?

We do.  We pray for those things.  Maybe it's just that we're not as united in our efforts; this drought has certainly created a single-mindedness among us.

But for the rain, Lord; thank you.  Please send more.  Thank you, Lord, for the rain.

Let us learn to be single-minded and united in prayer for the things you wish us to make supplication for.

Amen.

How Dry Am I?

So we moved into a house that sits on a lovely 1.2 acres.  Well, it was lovely.  Before the grass died.  Before the trees started wilting and the elephant ears turned brown and flopped over.

It all looks so dry and thirsty.  The little water we give them doesn't help much.  I think about all of my great plans to dig up and replant and create lushness.  Hmmmmmm.  Lushness, the very word is an oxymoron.

Did we ever have lush lawns and problems with flooding in Houston?  It's hard to remember those days.

I used to laughingly say we lived in a swamp.  Houston is, after all, pretty much a giant swamp filled with bayous, marshes, and Spanish-moss laden trees whose roots bathe in the moldy, marshy mud.

Lovely vision, isn't it?  Funny though, I've come to love that greenest of greens and lushest of foliage covered plants, be they succulents or deciduous.

In Oklahoma the brown of the prairie is a staple in life and in Summer, it sucks the green from everything.  By September one is longing for Autumn.

When is it going to rain?  Please Lord, let it rain.  I don't want Texas to turn into the prairie.  (Okay, I know some of Texas, well a lot of Texas is prairie but not the part where I live, mostly,)

I'm channeling swamp right now - could really dig it.  Swamp would be good.  Even with the snakes and alligators that come with it - okay well, not in my backyard, but in the wild swampiness where they live.

Just a wee, little bit of rain to dampen my flowerless flower beds and my formerly grass covered yard would be so nice.  A nice cool shower to sizzle against the hot metal of the gutters and metal flashing that longs for relief.  Oh, to sing in the rain!

Heck, I would sing in a hurricane.

Well, a mild one anyway.

I can't stand driving around in this heat!  I just want to hibernate inside and avoid the heavy blanket of yuck that awaits us out there.  Tomorrow is our out day - lessons and more lessons.  Hot SUV (black interior - ugh).

Here's an aside; we have begun letting the cats have the roam of the house at night.  We used to keep them in the utility room to sleep, but I feel they've graduated from old house to new and have earned some privileges.  It'll take some time, however, for me to get used to hearing things falling in the night.  Frantically, I leapt out of bed the other night thinking one of the kids had fallen down the stairs or something.  Oh no, just cat antics.  Whew.

So back to the drought.  Or not.

Next post will be fun, and floppy, and cute.  Needs pics though and I, along with many others in same house, am pooped.

Night.

The Place for Angels...is Heaven.

This year has been a tough one.  It actually started last year with my Uncle's death, then this year my Grandma died (March).  My husband has lost family members, most recently his Uncle Joe.  While attending Joe's funeral I got a text from my lifelong friend since 7th grade - her daughter had passed away at the age of 21.

Elle was a charmer.  Always smiling and pleasant.  Laughter was a trademark and her smile would light up any room.  I didn't know her well yet I knew that she fought mighty battles with ne'r a complaint.  She was born with a disease I can barely describe and spent her life on strong medications which tried to control her raging immune system.  Sometimes she won the fight, sometimes she would fight for weeks in hospital.

I mostly had to listen from a distance while her mom relayed the information and made numerous trips from Colorado to Arkansas.  It's a long drive and not an easy one.

We can learn so much from her, though.  I certainly can.  Her simple joy in living every day.  Her smile despite many reasons to frown. 

I think about this as I contemplate the past year and all of my frustrations with loss, moving, and failures.  What would Elle do?  She would probably put on her ipod and sing some great classic rock-n-roll tunes.  The kind you and I grew up with.  She'd login to facebook and chat with friends, upload a few pics, and then hang out with her sister before calling it a night.

Time was not her friend and yet she never fought it.  I do.  I fight time.  All the time!  So I'm going to take a page from Elle's life and make it a reminder to me that time is not the enemy.  Thank you Elle for the example.

Elle was small, petite, blonde, and beautiful.  An angel in anyone's book.  She was our angel and as everyone knows, angels must return from whence they came.  So Heaven welcomes her home, and we will miss her.  God bless you Elle, our love and prayers are lifting you higher.  Lord, receive her into your loving arms.

Elaine Elizabeth Hamilton

June 1990 - August 2011

Update...

Well, we moved.  Whew.  That's done.  Unpacking will take, well, forever, but we're here and that's what matters.

I've bit the bullet and bought bookcases for the school room.  Wah - hoooooooo!  What a blessing.  Then I bought a new school table too.  It's a gorgeous 8 foot harvest table.  Can you say sturdy?  It's just yummy!

The rest will come slowly and more likely once this heat and drought dissipates.  Although I did trim the hedges, aren't you proud of me?  So needed it.

My darling son had his appendix out.  Came out of nowhere in the middle of the night.  Two hospitals and countless doctors later a surgery was done and my brave little soldier was recovering.  Mom was sleep deprived for more than 48 hours and was pretty cranky at one point but thank heaven a bed was procured and some sleep acquired.  That is an awful feeling - needing to sleep but knowing you can't?  The prayers and support were so great from friends and family.  It got us through.

Let's see, my mother went to ER for an allergy attack, I missed Mr. Happiness's cello lesson because my watch stopped, we celebrated the Giant's birthday, fixed the lawn mower, watched as our co-op fell apart and dissolved, unpacked the scrapbook room, and realized one of my yahoo groups was moderating me and posting my messages two months late or just deleting them.

But I am happy.  I will trust in the Lord in all of this and wait for His plan to reveal itself.  This may be the plan, actually, I'm pretty sure it is.  Can I rejoice when things go haywire and love life all the same?  Yep, I can and I will because no body and no thing have the right to cause otherwise unless I let them.  First person pep talk, giddy-up and go on being happy.

Life certainly feels different here.  It's slower, everything's further.  Gasoline is expensive so stay home!  But we love it.  The days seem longer and the neighbors more friendly.

I am basking in the glow of the "big house" and making plans to turn it into a charmer as time goes by.  I am looking forward to regularity; school days, laundry, cooking, etc.  Here's to that.