Taking a Breather

Well, I haven’t posted much lately. Again.\par
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To quickly update any friends whom I don’t speak to frequently but who read my blog, I will recap the last 3 weeks.\par
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I finished my self-titled “two-week blitz” on Wednesday, Sept. 17. I got a lot done, although not as much as I wanted to. The house feels much more under control that it did, though. The upside of the Blitz was that when I was preparing for Ezra’s birthday party (the main project for the next week) I only had to concentrate on cooking and basic tidying and cleaning, since my big clutter areas were already cleaned up: for instance, my craft table is completely cleaned off. The cleaned off spaces are so recently cleaned off that I’m still in the “guarding them jealously” phase. Eventually that wears off, of course (as I know from experience), but right now anything casually set on one of my no-go zones lights up a corner of my mind with a red alert and I fairly promptly remove the offending item and either put it away or more it to one of the new clutter collecting areas. *sigh*\par
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I spent last week preparing for Ezra’s party, in addition to normal things, like starting school up with Judah again (I didn’t really quit for the summer, just stopped during high activity times or when we were out of town, etc.) and, again, basic household maintenance. Remembering previous running-around-like-decapitated-chicken experiences preparing for parties, I attempted to prepare as much of the food and party things ahead, during the week so that the pre-party time on Saturday, Sept. 27, would go smoothly. I was pretty much successful, too, so I actually had a good time on Saturday – especially when my mom, dad, and sister arrived so that they too could attend the party. On Sunday we went to a barbecue at some church friends’ house, which also worked out very nicely. When we’ve gone there before we’ve had to spend much of the time following the kids around to keep them out of trouble (they have a beautifully landscaped yard and garden – where you can’t see the whole thing from any one spot) : this time they were old enough to run wild with all of the other kids, and we got to visit and play games most of the evening! It was great!\par
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This week I’ve kind of been wandering around wondering what I should be doing. I keep attempting to sit down and rethink my life on paper, like I do periodically, but can’t get my thoughts together. And then at the end of the week I was saved\’c2\~the trouble of trying to stick to a normal routine or think too much, because the kids got sick. First Judah and Ezra came down with a cold, and then on Thursday night Monica abruptly contracted her very first cold and was just miserable. So you know what I’ve been doing the last two days – administering medicine, refilling vaporizers, taking temperatures, mandating naps and early bedtimes, and resting myself when I can because sleeping at night is harder with a baby who startles herself awake periodically from trying to breath through all of the mucous in her throat and nose.\par
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But good news! Monica woke up this morning without a fever, and with much less congestion, and is feeling sooooo much better. She’s still sick, and is sleeping a lot, but her sunny personality is reasserting itself, and I’m even going to leave her with Rose tonight to go out to dinner with Michael – to a fundraiser, but out nonetheless. The boys colds are hardly slowing them down at all anymore, and I’m disallowing a nap this afternoon so that they’ll go to bed early for their aunt. I have a cold myself, of course, but it’s not too terrible, in the way of colds, so I’m looking forward to going out!\par
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Well, that’s it for\’c2\~my update – y’all have a good weekend!