Tearing Down and Starting Over

I have a soft rule not to start a post by apologizing for my lack of posting.  It’s just a boring thing to say, and assumes that people revolve their lives around your writing, and therefore you have disturbed their lives in someway, which in most cases, is not true.  It may shock many writers that no one revolves their lives around their blog.

I apologize to the only person I know who I can count on to look forward to my posts (Hi Mom!) and to myself for breaking my goals in consistently writing, and of documenting our family’s life.  In my defense, nothing this summer has turned out how we had thought, and many goals are being re-written.

And that’s okay.

At least that’s what I keep telling myself.  Knut keeps plowing on, determined to make the most of the working days that the summer offers, and has been pulling the weight for both of us in so many ways.  I’m spending a lot of time practicing patience, talking with my kids, and just getting through each day with some pretty low expectations of myself.

It has been humbling.  I knew pride was my great struggle, but I wasn’t aware of just how badly I needed a good humbling.  When your body is struggling to heal, and there are no outward signs of injury, people just have to take your word for it.  That in itself is humbling.

You have to say over and over throughout the day, “I can’t do that.”  That’s not a phrase I like, and I do not enjoy saying it as often as I have needed to.  It’s not a phrase I like to teach my kids, but I’m learning that it’s a phrase that must be learned if one is to grow a compassion for others.

My anxiety is getting much more under control, though I don’t feel like I can juggle as much mentally as I could before.  I used to be able to juggle so many things in my head at once, and now I feel limited to 2 or 3 things.  That’s an improvement, but has made for some frustrating days where I drop balls that never used to get dropped.  More humbling.  Plus, as much as I like my chiropractor, I’m honestly sick of revolving my week around his appointments.  There’s things I’d rather be doing.

So in farm news, this last week Knut and his cousin, and a few young friends butchered all of our meat chickens.  I have no pictures for you of that day.  (You’re welcome.)  They had it all so organized, and I was impressed by that.  They learned so much too, and are already discussing improvements and expansions to make for next year.  It’s exciting.

There are now 20 chickens in my freezer (our share) and if I had any freezer meals in there before, I won’t find them for awhile.  On the menu: chicken.  That’s pretty easy.

Knut finally got the cupboard doors and locks on the school supply shelf, and I’m looking forward to a week of school where a good portion of time is not spent picking up and rescuing supplies that Elias and Solveig have spread around the house in an effort to destroy everything of value, including my sanity.

Knut and the kids have also started ripping up what was formally the walls to the girls’ room.  We’ve been needing to do that bedroom’s renovation for a few years now, and as we are trying to structure sleeping arrangements of 5 kids in 2 rooms, (generously sized for the age of the house) it’s just so necessary to do this now.  Right now the 4 older kids are all in the boys’ room during the remodel.  Ingrid is still in the cradle next to our bed.  She spends half her night in our bed, and half her night in her bed.  I don’t sleep well when she’s with us, so I’m eager to get her space worked out better.  She’s getting too big for her cradle, which has spurred on this whole project as I want all the kids settled in their new spaces.

The girls’ room was smaller, and now that we have more girls, they are getting the boys’ old room.  The boys old room just needed a paint job, but the girls’ old room needed a bit more.  Ripping down old plaster that was crumbling places underneath the layers of wallpaper, and replacing the insulation in that room are the main things.  Then of course, drywalling it, taping, texturizing, and painting it for the boys.

It’s just created mess.  We debated what would be more stressful for me: having Ingrid sleep in our room for the next year, or having a mess in the house for a few weeks and me not worried about the kids’ sleeping arrangements.  Then the demolition began.  One more project where all I can contribute is picking out paint colors.

Fortunately, my parents are coming at the end of the month, so that will push Knut on to get it done before they come.  We like to make the visit as relaxing as we can.  I cannot tell you the number of projects around the house that he gets done in the weeks prior to a visit from Mom and Papa.  It makes me love them coming even more.

Knut’s sister and family are moving away this week, and we’ve been taking extra time to say our goodbyes to them.  My kids will miss their cousins so deeply, and that has been hard too.  There will still be visits, but it won’t ever be quite the same.

I’m still working on some knitting patterns, all in various stages.  I have some exciting ones coming, if I could just unbury my brain from the things at home that clutter it.  I’ve been picking up some calming, therapeutic projects for the main purpose of just letting my brain settle and organize.  A reboot, if you will.

I wanted to show pictures for this post but I can’t seem to find my camera memory card anywhere.  It’s been lost for a few days now.  So you’ll just have to imagine this cross stitch pattern in progress, that is a project I started just after Ingrid was born.

I had literally been wanting it for months before that.   I hadn’t seen an embroidery design that I loved this much in years.  After realizing I had counted incorrectly, and messed it up to un-fixable proportions, I emailed the designer many weeks ago, explained how hopelessly I had messed up due to my lack of following directions.  I asked if I could order just a few of the supplies to start over, without ordering the whole kit with pattern again.  She turned out to be one of the sweetest people I’ve met online, and was gracious enough to gift me a redo.

So I’m starting over.  Which is okay.  Because creating something beautiful doesn’t get old easily.