I said…

Funny, I can’t think of a thing to say, but let’s see how long this entry gets okay? My mind is happy to flip around the internet aimlessly, looking in to a bit of this, a bit of that. On to facebook for a few, see if there’s any new status updates and what kind of search that leads me on. I’m happily doing nothing in honor of pms and our upcoming family project of putting in laminate flooring. Sweet Honey in the Rock Pandora station plays, but it’s not quite what I want to listen to tonight. Nothing is, but they’re uplifting and beautiful, so I keep the volume turned up. I hear a city bus drive past the street that runs perpendicular to ours. Black Bird comes on. Is that like Sweet Honey? Kind of. I like Pandora that way. I think of making a grocery list, then the thought flits away like a butterfly. I think of looking up grocery lists on the internet. I’ve used them before for suggestions. David who is more out of the loop than I am is impressed and surprised at these helpful grocery lists.
Excuse me, I need to thumbs up this Emmylou Harris song.
My body is like those big Raggedy Ann dolls that don’t look comfortable in the living room chair, but Grandma has had her there so long no one notices. So I lean my head back onto the top of this low chair I am slumped on, I can see the dark sky, hear the chorus of night fliers. I close my eyes and my breathing gets deeper, better.
Along with new floors, we’re doing a house/garage purge, and everything we keep will(God willing) have a place by the end of David’s 3 week vacation being taken for this purpose. I picture that once we’ve completed this project, my mind will be freer, will zoom around the space of possibility and solution like a kind but spirited horse, me on it’s back, my hair flowing behind me in the way it would in a commercial for a great chocolate or a luxurious bubble bath(you know, when the woman is envisioning herself on that perfect spring afternoon in the open field, riding in to the sunset).
I get that while the actual actions are simple and merely material, we are at a turning point. We have other plans for David’s 3 weeks off. Family time, each giving each of our children individual hang out and play time, revising systems, creating new ones, a date night for mom and dad, a garage sale.
I don’t think that all of a sudden life will be problem free, carefree and like a walk in the park. I think it will be closer to our vision for our family, closer to the goals we have set for ourselves, that we will be a bit more available to each other, that friendships within our family will be strengthened, that our children will thrive a bit more because of the effort(ours and theirs). Then I think in a few years we’ll move on to the next step/adventure/fine tuning type thing, whatever it needs to be.
For now though, I am a lump on a white cushy chair in front of the living room window that opens up to one of the last nights of summer. For now I am slow and empty, breathing in and out with few deep thoughts and a desire to visit with an old friend from far away. In particular, any friend I love and haven’t seen in too long. The boys and I each ate 2 cobs of sweet corn from the farmers market. Devyn and I sort of learned a new computer game together. David and I prayed and talked a long time about life in a deep and gentle way. I made my bed. The boys played a game that found all of their bedding in the hallway, which was cleaned up at my request a little while ago by a sweetly compliant Devyn. Matthew skinned his elbow and took a bath, he was the furst to use one of the great big band aids we bought last week.
It’s Saturday, a slow Midwestern kind.