Year 2, Day 189: Termites!

Just when I thought I was getting ahead, the termites in the garage strike again!  This time, three boxes of toys succumbed to them!  Thankfully, most of the toys were plastic, so we were able to clean most of them.  Unfortunately, we had to throw away some Jenga blocks.  We had two sets, so I'm not worried about them, and I tried to be ruthless with other miscellaneous things in the boxes.  And now, we have to go through the other few boxes that are cardboard that are touching the floor.  I'm so mad.  In fact, I had a breakdown.  Jared came to my rescue, once again, and got the process started for me.  I'll be honest, it's at these moments that I struggle terribly with contentment.  I know that this place is best for us 75% of the time, and there are some pros to location, and being at Indian Creek and the kids are happy, Jared's got a good job, etc.  And I know there are many other homes that have the exact same issues we do, no matter how careful the owners have been in keeping it clean or updated.  But, my immediate thoughts in a house crisis goes right back to the fact that I didn't want to move from Canada.  The house there was fine.  No mice, no termites, a little bit of flooding.  We rented, so no major repairs on our heads.  Then I get mad at the circumstances that caused the move.  And the people.  It's still raw.  It's a scab that keeps falling off and the skin underneath is still not healed.  Then my thoughts turn to why I'm really mad is that it's more work I don't have the energy and physical ability to take care of properly because I have an auto immune disease that I can't get rid of.  So then I'm mad at my body, and mad at God for allowing it to be sick.  Then I want chocolate and pop and how much I hate this dumb diet and why am I still craving the "bad" foods.

So, life isn't always "good" in my head.  At least I want to fix my head, because for awhile, I didn't.  I was exhausted after mentally doing those gymnastics, and trying to "make those thoughts captive," and then spending 2 hrs doing part of the cleaning in the hottest part of the day, where it was so muggy and 85 degrees F.  Thankfully, Justin and Keturah saw my distress and helped me without much complaint for a lot of the clean up after I asked them to.  They know they might have to help me tomorrow, too.  Sigh.  Now I have to buy rubbermaid totes for these toys, but I'm not willing to part with them yet.  They are mostly Abishai's current age and up.  But there are also clothes boxes touching the floor, so we will have to fix that as well.  It makes me super nervous to bring anything back from storage.  I do have a lot of that in rubbermaids, but there are many that are not.  Rubbermaid totes, the name brand, which I will buy this time because the cheap stuff is cheap and breaks and bends way too easily, cost $10 or more each.  Another expense I was trying to hold off on.  After we did the initial clean up, I released the middles to their screen time, Abishai went for a nap, Benaiah went to work for Grandpa, Jared went back to work, and I took a nap.  I was exhausted, mentally, and physically.  And we were going to go get grocercies tonight, so I needed to have energy for that.  But even after a solid 2 hours, I found it extremely hard to get up, more than normal.  Do not underestimate the physical effects of mental exertion.  And do not underestimate the ability of the Devil to rain on your parade on a daily basis, especially when you are walking more closely to God than you had been a year prior.

All of that to say, this blog is a family blog, from my perspective, and again, my attitude and opinions affect everyone, either good, bad, or indifferent.  At least Abishai's duplos are finally out of the box for him.  It was Abishai getting into one of the boxes and needing my help that prompted me reaching into the box and discovering the termites on the bottom.  And at least there aren't more than a few boxes to take care of tomorrow.  We did put rubbermaid totes on the bottom of a few piles, but mostly in case of water damage, not thinking about termites.  I'm glad we don't have all our stuff in the garage yet. And I'm glad I do technically have time to take care of it.

Meanwhile, the day started and ended better than the middle was.  Jared made me special coffee (see below).  Then we had a great meeting with Benaiah's school principal, Mr. Nanney, who has a lot of faith and trust in Benaiah and us.  In fact, the kid has the biggest load of classes I've seen, and he's allowed to do Bible class at home so he can have another period free to take another class.  Benaiah and a few other students will be in charge of the worship part of chapel and Benaiah wants to start a Bible study/club.  He also wants to be part of a speech/debate club.  They will try to have the clubs meet during school hours to minimize the time needed after school.  I'm so grateful that Benaiah does take school seriously and rises to the challenges and is willing to try new things.  He has shown himself trustworthy among his teachers.  And I'm glad that the teachers have gotten to know him well and he's not just a number at any of the huge local high schools where you graduate with 700 kids literally.  There's a lot of flexibility when you go to a very, very small school.  And I was willing to take on teaching and guiding him through high school, but it is now a relief that I don't have to figure that out yet as I work out the other life challenges.  I still hope to keep the others home for all their childhood years, but we'll see.

Then the termites.

Then we finished the day with a quick supper and big haul at the grocery store because it's payday!  I hate that we are living paycheck to paycheck again, but at least we have a paycheck and we can make repairs to our house and I can still home.  And I even found grass fed beef patties at Aldi's!  Cool!  And new sparkling water flavors.  Benaiah stayed home to finish mowing our yard while it was cooler.  Then I trimmed Abishai's hair so he won't look like a girl and butchered less than I have in the past.  I just want to keep it trimmed until we are all ready to go see our hairdresser again.  Then, bedtime!

Tomorrow, I won't get to blog because I'm taking my computer to a friend's husband to look at and see if he can teach me how to clean it up better.  It almost froze totally again on me yesterday.  And this guy just advertised his services on our church's home businesses page, so I'm glad to give him a little cash to get this taken care of.  I can't do anything anyway because I'm out of DVD's to put pictures on.  I'll work on other things instead.

Found another cicada shell!  And we knew it was going to be a hot and muggy day because the cicadas were chirping LOUDLY even in the middle of the morning!

Our citronella plants blossomed!  Who knew?  And yes, we haven't had that many mosquitoes, but we also don't have that much vegetation, so the wind blows well through our yard.

Justin asked if he could keep this ball of fur he collected from brushing the dog.  Um, no.  We get that amount of hair at least twice a day.  No need for a souvenir.  

Interesting blooms!

Standing toe to toe and eyeball to eyeball.  These two.  Sigh. Very blessed.

Desperate times call for desperate measures.  When you are using Dad's very old laptop that runs very hot, you get out the biggest box fan you can find to keep it cool.  Benaiah said his legs do get numb from the cool air though.  But maybe it helps him not stink so much, too!  Keeping cool=less sweat=less stink!

I got another Amazon order, which included an anniversary gift from me to Jared, but it's really for me.

It's not our anniversary yet, so why do I need to open this now?

I want to ride in Ice Cream's car!!!!!

I guess I'll settle for Ice Cream's outdoor rocking chair (without the chair pad which he threw on the ground) instead.

It's EZStack!  Plastic shelves that help keep t-shirts from toppling over.  See, it will benefit me the most when I put away laundry!

While at the folks' house, I grabbed a few pictures of other pictures in a collage that Gary and his brothers did when their parents died.  Each son has their own collage.  Can you tell who is who?  Gary is on the left and his older brother Ron is on the right.  I took them because someone asked if Abishai looked that Gary when he was young.  I think you have the answer now.  That answer is definitely yes!

And we like Grandpa's new recliner, too.

The EZStack at work!  It's cheap plastic, and not as thick as the advertisement made it out to be.  But it does work.  You put the plastic sheets/shelves in between each t-shirt so when you lift one of them up, you can slide out the t-shirt without upsetting the whole pile.  Plus, I think it's a space saver.  We'll see if it holds up or not.

Boom! A thunderstorm!  We don't have a screen on this window and it's making for some great fun when it rains.  The kids like to hang out the window a bit and they can't get wet because the eaves go out pretty far.  We had a beautiful thunderstorm Sunday evening.  Jared even tweeted about it several times.

A little special coffee for me.  Benaiah spotted it at Meijer.  Jared made the coffee for me this morning.  It was 100% caffeinated instead of my half caff, so I was a bit shaky later, but it was good!  I can't wait to go visit the store on the west side.  I will most definitely cheat and have a cafe mocha with raspberry shot and a maple cream donut.  After the 30 days is up though.  Tim Horton's is almost a cult, it's so popular up in Canada.  Yum!

Cars. Always.

Finally got through this huge book of dozens of comic books all in one.  You would think a book with little words wouldn't take so long, but you are taking in all the pictures as well.  I found it fascinating because I tried putting myself into a child's shoes in the 60's reading this where any of the sci fi parts of it wouldn't make any sense.  No cell phones.  No computers.  Not even a kiss between Barry Allen and Iris.  In fact, their dates don't always go very well because Barry is always late because he's the Flash.  It was just a more "innocent" time period.  Fun!

After we met with Benaiah's principal, we indulged Abishai's desire to go on the swing for a few minutes.  Yes, that's all 4 kids and Jared there.  Never too old to swing!

Termite damage on a Jenga block!  I thoroughly inspected each and every toy, even the ones the kids cleaned, because I am not bringing a single little termite grub into the house!

Termites love cardboard!  Thankfully, this box wasn't as bad as the first box.  And the third box also wasn't too bad because most things in there were in small plastic bins.

Doing supper old school because we are out of meat! English muffin pizzas!  And everybody loved them!  We used to have them all the time when I was growing up.

Yes, Benaiah is taking two major sciences AND world history all in the same semester/year!  Crazy!  Algebra 2, English, and Spanish 2 are all classes that are related to last year.  And choir goes perfectly with chapel music.  And then Bible with Gary/Jared at home, and then extra curriculars like speech probably on Thursdays.  Benaiah wants to graduate with an honors diploma, so away he goes.  Mr. Nanney also mentioned that next school year we will look at dual credit.  Perfect.  Just how I wanted it.

Awww,....bonding over a little Vegetales "Pizza Angel" and "Don't Got a Belly Button."  And yes, I only let Justin hold my brand new phone.  The other two are not allowed to mess with it.

Until next time....