Wednesday, June 24, 2009

Goin' to the Chapel and We're....

*pause for dramatic build up*

So!

Joe has asked me to be his bride. And I have, of course, accepted him. And we are both pretty happy about that! It will be wonderful to make the life we already live together a legal thing and to have just one day that we can celebrate the happiness we have found in one another with those who love us. We are planning a very low key affair, small, sometime in December most likely.

The proposal was pretty laid back, low key, very intimate. We have been exhausted from this move and the renovations on the new house. We finished moving out on Saturday night and on Sunday morning hit the new house hard, getting boxes in the rooms they go in and arranging furniture, organizing the kitchen (Thanks Mom for all your help!), hooking up appliances - you get the picture. After the day before, moving into the new house in 100+ degree heat, around 2 PM Sunday I just hit a brick wall. So fatigued I could weep. Mom headed home and Joe sent me upstairs to get a shower, saying we could just read and relax the rest of the day. I was so relieved! I came down after my shower with a wet head, no make up, wearing the rattiest pair of hot pink yoga pants you ever saw and a tank top. I cuddled down on the couch, a breath away from drifting off. He was in the kitchen putzing and came in with his wine decanter and two glasses. He had opened up a very good bottle of wine and I assumed we were just toasting our first moments alone in our new home together. He poured, handed me a glass and we looked around at all we have done and talked about it a little bit. I cannot describe how tired I felt...it was surreal to be that fatigued. I could barely life the glass. We toasted the house and then he just smiled and said "So...will you marry me?" I think I laughed and I said something along the lines of "haha...you don't mean that!". He said he did mean it. I asked him if he was serious and he said that he was. And all I could think about was how AWFUL I looked at that moment! I said something along those lines and he said if I was any more beautiful he couldn't stand it. And then I started crying. :love:

No ring yet and no date set, but those things will come and I am enjoying looking forward to them and talking with Joe about them. There's still a TON left to do in the new house, but it is shaping up beautifully and we are feeling pretty happy with the decision to buy it and renovate it. We had our first margaritas on the back porch together last night while Joe grilled some chicken for us in our first home cooked meal since about two weeks ago. Right at this moment I do not care if I ever have take out again! Give me Joe's grilled chicken any day.

Joe started his new position on Monday and it is going well. Nick and Alex are back from camp, over the swine flu and staying busy this week with vacation bible school (they are counselors there) and Alex playing softball with the youth group at church.

I am feeling very, very blessed these days.

Thursday, June 11, 2009

Remember to be happy

I was reading the journal of another mother who lost a child to cancer this morning. She spoke in it of coming to a startling conclusion...that she has to remember to be happy. The grief is always there; it has become the foundation, and she was reminding herself to remember to seek out happiness and joy. I do not think I necessarily have trouble being happy but there are definitely times (perhaps more often than not) that I forget about the pursuit of happiness, particularly every day happiness. I am often startled at how many times I find a sense of internal irritation at voices from others interrupting my thought pattern; how many times I am intolerant of changes of mood, scenery or emotional ambiance when I have gotten my thoughts lined up in a particular course. I am not good at changing directions. Children in particular make it difficult for me. Their moods go from one spectrum to another without thought or reasoning. They don't get stuck in any one flavor of the soul; they sample from the world of emotion freely and exhaustively. But always, always they are in pursuit of happiness. Even when they are upset, it is usually because of something that interrupted that pursuit, not upset in general. Joe and I have a lot of joy and are good at pursuing dreams and ambitions together. My boys are still boys and playful, silly and spontaneous. But I often sink into irritation when I should not, simply because it feels like a great labor to move out of my internal dialogue and into their external one. I seem to have forgotten how to play. It is something I need to practice. It makes all of them so happy when I am open and receptive to external positive influences, less brooding, less protective of myself, less closed. I need to remember to actively seek happiness. I am blessed that so much naturally occurs in my life. I need to enjoy it more fully.

Wednesday, June 10, 2009

Summer

Summer is really here! It has gotten fairly hot out rather rapidly for having had such a mild spring. For a while there I wondered if the Texas heat was actually going to make an appearance this year. Of course, I need not have wondered. It is here, as expected. Nick and Alex are leaving late on Saturday evening (they pull out at 9 PM) with the Scouts to spend a week at Scout Camp in Colorado. I love being in a place financially that we can make this kind of a trip reality for both of them, and I love how each time they go on one of these trips without their father or I, they come back a little bit more of the man they will become and a little bit less of the boy that they were. That being said, my heart is giving me pangs on a regular basis throughout the day. This is Alexander's first major trip with the Scouts. Nick has done this one before, but not Alex. And given all of Alex's medications and reliance on them to sustain life along with the fact that he is my baby, I am having a great deal of anxiety about this trip. He, of course, is chomping at the bit to go. I try not to imagine all the things that could go wrong, but it is proving difficult. I worry. Letting go is hard.

The house is coming along nicely. Joe is doing a ton of work there during the day and I am rather envious that he gets to do that while I am stuck behind a desk and telephone. I love watching the changes unfold as they take place and working to make that happen, though coming back at the end of the day to a house that is different than it was at the beginning is fun too. I feel like a slacker though. He is doing all the hard stuff and I just show up, ooo and aaahh at the beauty of it and then feed him. Its keeping us busy though and will for some time to come. I do love working by his side and cherish making those memories. We work well together.

This is pretty dull, but all that I have time for right now. School started for summer this week and registration for fall begins on the 23rd. I have immunizations to accomplish and an application to turn in for nursing school...and I got notice yesterday that it is time to start forming Team Joseph again for the Heros for Children 5K fundraiser in mid September. I can hardly wait to do that again.

Thursday, June 4, 2009

Busy

I think my reading audience has dwindled from the 1000+ I had while Joseph was ill to a scant maybe 15 or 20 at this point. I just don't feel that urge to write very much anymore, or at least not as much to write about my grief. Perhaps this is a time of redefinition where I can rediscover the ironies and humors inherent in life and start practicing harder letting all the angst and sorrow become more of an underscore rather than the primary melody. The truth is, I am a little sick of myself right now. I am tired of the emotional waves that keep coming through this whole moving process.

We close on the house on Friday afternoon and this weekend will be an intense one of demolition as we remove about 80% of the floors and base boards to make way for the contractors who will start next week. We'll start painting too. I have to pick out wallpaper. Who uses wallpaper anymore? I don't even know where to go to shop for it and am hoping my Mom will have both ideas of where to shop and wisdom about what looks good once its up. Here in Texas as a general rule walls are always textured and wallpaper is not really a possibility unless you are willing to refinish them first. But this house has several rooms with smooth walls and very loud, dark wallpaper. I suppose I could still paint if it comes off easily enough, but that's a pretty big "if". I have never really seen a wallpaper pattern that whispers an impassioned "Live with me for ten years at least!", so we'll see how I do with that. I could use help shopping and picking it out, but my social time with girlfriends has taken a hard hit since Spring with all the house buying and school stuff going on. I hope once we are moved and in that things will start to settle down again. We close tomorrow and move in the weekend of June 20th officially. We are leasing this house back from the new owner for two weeks....a motivated, single young man who currently lives with his parents and works for a bank, buying his first home. I hope he will be happy here. We certainly have been and its bittersweet to be moving away so soon. Two years is a pretty quick turn around.

So life has been a whirlwind of tile, hardwood flooring (not laminate...I hate laminate...pressed cardboard Yekkkkchhhh!), carpet samples, paint colors, blinds, area rugs, furniture (we got the coolest new breakfast set on Craigslist this week...see pics), turn this off, turn that on, move money here, activate this account there...we have so many debit cards floating around right now we had to mark them with Sharpies to keep track of what is for what.

I am hoping to go to the house tonight to take a ton of "before" pictures. It won't be completed renovated when we move in but a large chunk of it will be started...namely the floors done and the entryway repainted. I am hoping to have the kitchen painted and the boys' rooms by then as well. Maybe even the master bedroom. I am getting a bit ambitious. School starts this weekend too and I have not even bought my book yet.

I apply for nursing school by the end of next month. I got my requisition in the mail from my PCP to check my titer levels and see what immunizations I need of the list required to apply for admission. My transcripts are in order and my application filled out and ready to send in. I doubt I will get in this time. I have one pre-requisite that I am still missing and will take in the fall. But I am going to go ahead and try. Sometimes the Spring admission has fewer applicants, so I may be able to get accepted still missing that pre-req. We shall see.

Nick is ill for the first time in three years. Breaks my heart for him and kind of ruins the last week of school for him. Hopefully he will be feeling better today now that he has a couple of days of antibiotic in him. Alex will be getting the Presidential Award at school today for his grades and citizenship. He is very proud to have a certificate coming that is signed by President Obama.

That's all for now! Have a wonderful day! Here's the new table...that thing in the middle is the pedestal showing through the glass top.