My friend, Carol (not the Carol in the story), recently posted the following on her blog and I was reminded again of the importance of all the quiet work moms do, so I’m following suit … This is an excerpt from The Invisible Woman by Nicole Johnson… It all began to make sense, the blank stares, the lack of response, the way one of the kids will walk into the room while I’m on the phone and ask to be taken to the store. Inside I’m thinking, “Can’t you see I’m on the phone?” Obviously not; no one can see if I’m on the phone, or cooking, or sweeping the floor, or even standing on my head in the corner, because no one can see me at all. I’m invisible. The invisible Mom. Some days I am only a pair of hands, nothing more: Can you fix this? Can you tie this? Can you open this?...
I’ve just finished re-reading the Harry Potter series. I was determined to take my time and really enjoy the story. I did pretty well with the first three books or so – I’ve read them a number of times and it was fun to notice the introduction of characters that I knew would become significant later on. But as the books got more complex and the story lines became more mature, I found that I just wanted to read as fast as I could! Last night I could not stop reading Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. I knew I would want to be able to read it today, but I kept thinking, “I can’t stop here!” Last time I read the series, I ended up re-reading the last three books of the series because I raced through them and felt like I had missed too much. This time, I really tried to slow myself down and even...
So, you’ll remember that I took the 30 day New Testament challenge early in the year. Afterwards, I thought I’d read the Old Testament to round out the experience (the entire Bible in a year). There are some cool reading schedules out there (one I’d like to try some time has daily readings from the Old & New Testaments, as well as the Psalms) but I ended up modifying a chronological schedule, making it fit into 11 months instead of 12. So far, I’ve managed to stay on track, although I find myself having to catch up more than I did with the New Testament challenge. The daily readings for that program were so long that I NEVER wanted to get behind. The Old Testament readings average about 3-4 chapters (sometimes only 2) a day – not enough to scare me from skipping a day. Isn’t it funny how...
So, here it is, 1:30 am, and I’m awake and coughing and totally disgusted. I was sooo tired tonight, and of course the kids were up late because we were going to watch the fireworks (which didn’t apparently get rained out, but we went home before they started because it was POURING). Anyhow, the children FINALLY went to bed and I gratefully closed my eyes and conked out. Yet 15 minutes ago I came awake after that sleeping phase where your dreams are unsettled (I was in this loop where all my reading on bipolar disorder was somehow mixed in with this cough) and I was COUGHING. NOOOO! I was already sick the entire month of May. I’ve done my time coughing and coughing and not being able to sleep. This should not be happening. Yet, here I am – I lay down and I cough. Which leads me to a weird thing I have...
So it’s been almost a month since my last post and I’m not sure why. I had thoughts of blogging about our garden (and posting pictures, of course) but in the end I was too bored – it’s a garden and nothing is really doing much yet (except the bugs are eating all the leaves). June was busy – Spencer has been out of school but the littles were back in. The homeschooling was horrendous (I’m so glad Andrew’s going back to school for 5th grade – his new teacher can deal with all his weird tricks to get out of work). Andrew did a week of baseball camp (but I got no pictures and I’m not going to apologize! I dropped him off and ran each day!!). Haley has started horseback riding lessons (again, no pictures – but I AM going to take some soon. She looks cute in her helmet up...