The J6 Journey: Year 4, August 16th-18th, 2019: Our Last Summer Weekend

Oh boy, I'm so emotionally and mentally exhausted. No more hot topic videos on YouTube for me for awhile, especially since I have to dig in and deal with the hot mess that's me and the host mess that's Keturah. Puberty sucks! But I've got some great friends and sometime when I put out an SOS on Facebook, I get some great advice. I was also reminded of some things I wanted to do anyway. Uncle Bill suggested reading two Psalms together with her every day and that's perfect! Easy to do, no lecturing, just simple Scripture. Others suggested some bloodwork to make sure her attitude and sleepiness isn't a vitamin deficiency or diabetes or something. I'm going to hold off on that one for a bit because of my surgery and her issues aren't new. Some suggested it's just puberty and to wait on prescription medication until she starts her menstrual cycle. I just ordered more of a vitamin I really like for kids that has probiotics in it AND whole foods. It's not cheap and that's why I didn't give them the full dosage all the time, but I'm going to try it with her since she won't use essential oils and won't be able to swallow the horse pills I swallow. We've been to counseling, we've taken her on dates, we've used positive reinforcement, and she's still waking up with a nasty angry attitude after 13 hrs of sleep. What she really needs is Jesus in her heart, but she hasn't accepted him yet. At this point, I'm hoping the positive influences from her small group leaders, the youth staff, her peers, and events like CIY help steer her in that direction. We've talked about it, her older brothers were baptized at age 7, she knows what it means. It's her decision and up to her. We could always vocalize our testimonies more, but we all know how much I struggle with sharing my positive thoughts and walk with God because it hasn't been at it's strongest. It's definitely getting there. I'm no longer mad at God, but rather crying out for help with Keturah, with Benaiah graduating, with my own health, etc. I've gone from mad to sad, meek and mild in the last few months. Ok, not necessarily mild if you consider how snappy I was today at her because it's been a long week and my mole wounds are itchy.

But even with all those random thoughts today, I did come up with a pep talk and figured out what we can do for a routine starting on Monday. Since Keturah and Justin now have separate school tracks, I can work with Justin the morning, and work with Keturah in the afternoon. I still want to keep "office hours" and take off my teacher hat between 3-4pm, so, if Keturah hasn't finished her work, she will "bring it home as homework" to her other parent to help her finish. Bing! Schedule done! I'm going to let her sleep in tomorrow (Saturday) as much as she wants to see when her body actually tells her to get up. If it's something like 15 hrs, then I think we have a bigger problem, but if it's about the same time as when we make her get up, then it's technically ok for her age. But, in order to keep the household running, I have to give her chore of emptying the dishwasher to Justin (I usually run it at night) and she gets to brush the dog instead. One of my frustrations with her late wake up time is that the dog has to wait for breakfast and we have to wait on clean dishes to be put away. I know that waking up late morning is not the norm, but I believe that anyone, including myself, can train themselves to get on a schedule of whatever they need to do at the time. Consider 2nd and 3rd shift workers. As long as the length and quality of the sleep is what it needs to be, I'm going to run with it for now. She wakes up tired, but I don't know if that's because she's growing, she's hormonal, she's sleeping too much, or her quality of sleep isn't good. She only wakes up once to use the bathroom and goes back to sleep within 15 minutes. Sometimes it takes her 45 minutes to initially go to sleep but that's mostly situational becuase the household hasn't settled down or she's had screen time right before bed or even that she hasn't exercised at all during the day. Plus the sun is still up at 9pm so that doesn't help. She stays asleep except that one time. She doesn't recall any dreams. We can work n the situational stuff and then try melatonin if need be. But she's her mother's daughter and I'm not the best example sometimes or most of the time with my own anxiety and lack of control and anger. So, we have to work on all of it.

I also spent some time trying to preread Justin's schoolwork. Ugh! My brain has such a hard time focusing! I'm just not in the habit of reading books on worldviews. I've become a soundbite millennial! But I want to push my brain and I desperately want to have these deep conversations with Justin, so I'm going to push myself this year (I say that every year, so we'll see). I hope that he's able to understand it better than I. And if push comes to shove, maybe Jared can step in. That was one of my goals today. My next goal is to fix the budget tonight now that we got paid, yippee, skippy! Glad I started the blog early (partly because I didn't want to read anymore.) Benaiah worked today and made a mistake so he had to stay late. He came home to shower and then went to a movie with Ava since he got paid yesterday and has a little bit of spending cash. He took out his "fun" money in cash though so he would stay within his budget. Yeah! Dave Ramsey method! Lol. Jared came home a little early and then he and Abishai went to an open house for one of the pastors in his Friday morning group who is moving to Mexico with his family to do mission work. And now it's quiet again. The bickering between the middles is constant and driving me insane. I have to keep them in separate rooms. I know I'll have to figure out a way for them to get along soon enough, but I don't have the mental energy to deal with that right now. Another day.

And Abishai just said he doesn't want to be a policeman anymore. He just wants to be Abishai. Yes, of course you are just Abishai. I don't have to worry about his self esteem right now. He did get his siblings to play with him off and on today. It was a little too warm to be out and about, so we stayed mostly indoors. And it's supposed to get warmer over the next few days. Blech! Is fall here yet?

Update: Shauna was up and explaining decimals to Everly today. She said she is resting and the incision is a little sore. But so far so good. Yeah!

I got really frustrated late last night with the itchiness of my arm because the off brand bandaid was irritating my arm horribly. So, I scrounged around for gauze and tape. Well, I found this wrap from Justin's broken arm and since I couldn't find any gauze, I came up with using a pantiliner to absorb any extra vaseline stuff. And I left it on all night and it did fine. The stickiness on the edge of the pantiliner somehow stuck to the wound so I had to carefully remove it. Then I got a notification later on that the hospital grade bandaids I got weren't going to get here until Tuesday, so I made a stop at Kroger to see what else I could use and I'm happy with the results. Non stick gauze pads and medium grade cloth medical tape. It has stayed on well since I put it on and yes, it still itches a bit, but it's definitely not bad. Oh, and I did leave the wound open for a few hours so I could put some benadryl cream on the surrounding skin to calm it down a bit. Essential oils, too, AROUND the wound, not in the wound since it's still very open.

Sleeping beauty. We need to figure her out.

That's my boy! He's a hopeless romantic, I tell ya!

The wound on my arm currently. I'm pretty sure some of the yellow stuff is from the vaseline. I'm sure the ones on my back are similar looking.

Abishai and Keturah set up a "trap" with the a pulled apart blue lei. Check out the video below as to wear it all leads!

Saturday. I'm just worn out, end of story. And Jared's nose has decided to "explode" with another sinus infection. But I managed to take Keturah to her friend Jordan's birthday party at the same skating rink we went to for Keturah's birthday. On this time it was a lot busier and louder! Keturah and I didn't know anyone else there except for Jordan's family. So, I read part of a book for Justin's studies (that's going to be part of the daily blogging I think, lol), while she skated, had pizza and cake, and watched Jordan open her gifts. Keturah ended up wanting to leave early because she had fallen down a lot because of other skaters around her and she wasn't having the one on one time with Jordan I think she was hoping for. She won't admit it, but I think she felt alone and an outsider because I think most if not all of the other kids were from Jordan's school. Keturah had a good enough time, but I didn't mind leaving early either. I just didn't want to engage with people today. Justin mowed our yard and Abishai played video games and with his toys, while Jared blew his nose all day. Benaiah got up in time for work. Then we had dinner and I took Abishai for a walk to the Grandparents' house where he played for a bit, and I had some unexpected one on one time chat specifically about Keturah and her schooling. Then Abishai and I walked home the long way and chatted. I like talking to him while we walk. It's too sweet.

Jared had gone outside for 5 minutes today to plant a bush/tree and in those 5 minutes, whatever allergen/ragweed or whatever was in the air, made his sinuses work 100x normal. And this is why he saw an ENT last week who wants to do a CAT scan of Jared's sinuses and a skin allergy test in September. Our insurance company and HSA account is being well used this year, that's for sure. I'm just in a lot of residual pain from being tensed up on Monday when my moles were removed and I can't find the right type of bandaging that won't irritate my skin. I've tried leaving it open and putting essential oils around the wound on the irritated skin, I've tried lotion, I've tried topical Benadryl, but even the lightweight surgical tape is leaving a mark. It's one of the things that has me questioning the cyst removal surgery. But we'll see. But as I've said before, pain is pain and it wears you down and makes you irritable no matter how you try to deal with it. For now, I'll just try to bring down the inflammation with all the supplements I can think of and by trying to get more sleep. Jared has the wifi set to turn off on my computer and my phone at 1am, and that's helping. I still can turn on the data on my phone, but I don't use that as much because we share it between the 5 of us. I might do a last minute check of email or weather or something.

Otherwise, I'm not sure what more productive thing I can do at the moment besides read for Justin's schooling and that's very hard for me since I'm way out of practice but I want to try. I'm sure there are other less urgent things I could do, but I fear that I'm not doing the things that have a deadline, which is silly since almost everything is up to date I think. That's it for now, normal Sunday ahead.

Abishai came into our bed about 2am because he couldn't sleep because Benaiah's snoring was too loud. He slept with us the rest of the night and I must have been exhausted because I slept through all his tossing and turning too.

Abishai went to an open house for a family Jared know from one of his groups that is moving to Mexico to be missionaries. and apparently he fell in love with their playground at the church they were at. Sweet!

It's a good thing we went straight south as far as we could before heading west to the skating arena. It POURED as we went through the first intersection to the west of us, so much so that we couldn't see markings on the road or buildings1 Yikes!

I always take the backroads to anywhere south of Greenwood because it's so much quieter and there's no stoplights or traffic and I can view all the pretty farmhouses on my way.

Singing Happy Birthday to Jordan. She had a combined birthday party with another friend.

Jordan and Keturah August 2019

Normal Sunday. We had David and Stephanie Wright at dinner at Gary and Leah's, which was awesome because we've been friends with them for years and years, beginning way back in our college age Sunday School class when we were dating. Elliot also joined us for dinner, which made Keturah sad because she wants to invite her friends. I guess we'll have to learn to take turns, right? Right. Yeah Sunday. I can't think of anything else to share at the moment.

Even from the inside of our car, Abishai recognized Ava's car from the rearend! Awww!

Preschooler speaks.

Jared's new word for sinus infection after spending less than 15 minutes outside. Yeah, year round allergies!

Joshua Harris was my idol for the purity culture. He wrote "I Kissed Dating Goodbye" and then a follow up after he married the wife he's now divorcing talking about how it all went. IKDG talks about not having any physical touch before marriage and respecting the other person because her or she is a gift and if you've already opened up a part of you to someone, it's hard to get that back. You only have so many "firsts" in your life like first kiss, first hug with a guy, first time holding hands, etc. I quoted IKDG to Jared while were dating. I remember writing that specific letter in the library at the local tech school I attended. Basically, it's courtship before marriage. Great stuff in my opinon but most people were "victims" of the purity culture becuase they felt shamed when made poor choices. I know I did, but because we were careful and focused on other htings in our relationship in the beginning, we are still married today. Joshua Harris is a homeshcool graduated and his family was well known in the homeshcool community in the '90's when I was homeschooled. I've even met him at a conference once. But now he has denounced God and divorcing his wife. He pastored a church for over 10 years, too. So, it's a very personal blow. But like Gary said, it doesn't matter what the author is doing now, the trust is still in the books. Great thoughts.