This is only my second week of working two shifts a week. I like it. I’ve had the last three days off and thought I was going to be busy.
Monday I had planned to drop off the two barn cats at the spay and neuter clinic at 6:45 am and then take a day trip north with my neighbor so she could pick up a rooster and check on some goats we had sold to a lady there. Tuesday I was planning to go to Bible Study Fellowship, make soap and work on narrowing down a decision for where to pursue my BSN. Today was supposed to be the household chores and errands day, plus a buyer for my last two does was supposed to come pick them up today.
Instead, I cancelled my day trip with my neighbor on Monday, anticipating too much packed into one day. I took the cats to the vet as planned and started making soap. By half way through the day a sore throat was coming on. I shrugged it off as allergies or maybe too much fragrance oil in the air from soap making. I went to the gym and while I was there I broke into a cold sweat. Sure I was running a fever, I wiped down the equipment I was using 1/2 way through my workout and went home. No fever, but by the evening I was miserable.
Tuesday morning I woke up looking like I had an allergic reaction, my face was so swollen, my throat was sore but not as bad as Monday night and I felt like I had been on a roller coaster for three days. Ugh. I slept off and on all day. James had taken Tuesday off so he got the kids off to school and spent the whole day getting ready for the county inspector who was scheduled to come sometime between 8 am and 4pm to check on his progress on the front porch job. By late Tuesday afternoon I was feeling much better, thought I had slept off this virus and decided to go attempt some kind of exercise. That was a bad idea. As soon as the blood started flowing the virus woke up and said, “We’re not done!” I went home, showered and went to bed early.
Today I’m feeling better, but decided against doing much moving around so as not to arouse the nasty sleeping virus in my body. I was expecting the lady from somewhere between Flagstaff and Williams to come pick up my last two does today, but around 12 she texted me that she and her hubby had overheated their older pickup and were now waiting for a tow truck. Sale not cancelled, but postponed until an agreement and meeting place and time could be arranged since it doesn’t look like her vehicle will be up and running any time soon. (I might just ask her to pay for gas and make a trip up to the Grand Canyon on one of my days off and take the two does with me.)
I did get some housekeeping done, some laundry and some correspondence with family. One of the best parts of today was when I decided to just go outside and attempt to plant some scallion-like bulbs, peas and leeks. I don’t know what it is with me and gardening. I think it’s just lack of faith. From inside my cozy house, the view out my window to the dry desert dirt that is my front yard, littered with thorny weeds, seems to steal away the idea that anything might grow if I plant it. I look out there and it looks so barren and dry. But when I get off my duff, walk out the door, grab a pair of gloves, water hose, garden tool thingy, seeds and get down on my knees and start pulling weeds, tilling dirt, adding water and poking seeds into the ground I feel a mysterious sense of health. There’s just something about putting your hands in dirt with the intent of killing weeds and growing flowers and vegetables that clears the mind and makes you feel better! I need to do it more often.
James is not a happy camper right now. He spent the last three days off digging gigantic squares in the ground where the footers (?) for the posts where the new front porch will go. He even built forms to put in the squares in the ground to pour the concrete in. But when the inspector guy (who was very loud and brash) came and told him he was overkilling the post holes and asked where the property line was (which James wasn’t prepared to answer and didn’t know exactly), he felt like he had wasted time, labor and money getting ready for the guy to come. After the inspector left he started digging around to find out where the property line is, what he found threw a giant wrench in the whole plan. Apparently he is going to have to fill and re-dig these footers a foot or two closer to the house than he has. Not good.
Ryland is currently at his swim team practice. Connor is probably home trying to explain to his dad why he’s 15 minutes late getting home. That won’t go well. One of my two middle school aged sons has a “girlfriend” (Read he likes a girl his age and she likes him and they blush and text each other smiley faces and talk about how much they hate ceramics class. I know. I read his text messages. That was the agreement when he got a smart phone- parents have free access at all times.) This is a big turning point in our lives as parents and his life as a boy becoming a young man.
I remember being 13. I didn’t care about boys yet then. By the time I was 14 I liked Bobby Troop, but he had no idea I existed and I was a foot taller than all the boys that knew me so I had no boyfriends. It was probably a good thing. I’ve been praying for the girl that likes my son- that God would use her influence in my son’s life for His good purposes. From their birth I’ve dedicated both Connor and Ryland to the Lord. I pray that God would use their friendships, even the girl kind, to draw them closer to him.
There’s lots of scary things in the world when it comes to teenagers and dating. Everything in our culture is sex-crazed. There is no innocence in dating or courting or whatever you call it. I know the world my sons are growing up in has a totally twisted view on the relationship between men and women. I just pray that God would use all the relationships in my kids’ lives to draw them to Him and that he would keep them from destructions that come in all kinds of teenage foolishness.
Sheila Dougal 