A new calendar. One of my favorite activities is getting out the new kitchen calendar for the year with its blank squares, and filling in the birthdays for the coming year. The fresh new one reminds me of Dr. Bob Jones, Sr.’s saying that “There are no stains on the pages of tomorrow.” As I look through last year’s calendar to get all the birth dates I also see the appointments, showers, special events, etc. that occurred last year and remember some with fondness and some, like those dentist’s visits, with something less than fondness. One more of those to go before getting back to regular visits. I also see my once-a-year appointment with my regular doctor is coming due. Ugh!

Christmas is officially over. We took down the decorations today. I had meant to do it Jan. 1, but we were all doing different things and just didn’t really feel like it then. When we put up Christmas decorations, I store the regular decorations in the Christmas boxes and then put them back out when we put the Christmas ones away. All the boxes are back in the attic and I am missing two heart-shaped doilies and the little topiary made of pink roses that I have shown often here. I hate to think they may be still back in those Christmas boxes and I just missed them. I don’t have the energy or mindset to go look for them just now.

Almost back to normal. Jim and Jeremy started back to work last week, Jesse starts back to school Monday, Jason is visiting his girlfriend in OK, due back Monday, then has to check in and buy books and such before classes start on Thursday. In some ways I am ready to get back into a regular routine, but I am not ready to start setting the alarm again and having all the busy activities starting up again and remembering what day Jesse needs his piano music and when’s the last time he brought his gym clothes home to be washed (current answer: before Christmas….they’ve been stuffed in his locker for weeks. Should be about ripe now!)

A Valentine’s idea… ArtsyMama had a post about a swap, which is now closed to participants, but the basic idea was a darling one that I am thinking about using this Valentine’s Day.

Do you read in the bathroom? Doesn’t everybody? Not that we ever really talk about it, but by the reading material you see in other people’s, you’d think so. Whenever people say they don’t have time to read I want to ask whether they read in there. Bet linked to a funny an interesting article the other day about reasons to read in the bathroom. I liked that one guy called it the “Fortress of Solitude.”

May you have some solitude this weekend to rest and regroup!

Updated: I did find the missing decorations tucked in other places, so I didn’t have to get back into the Christmas storage boxes, and this morning as Jesse was leaving for school he pulled his dirty gym clothes out of his backpack — they had been there all along! 🙄

From Dictionary.com:

leth·ar·gy: [leth-er-jee]
–noun, plural -gies.
1. the quality or state of being drowsy and dull, listless and unenergetic, or indifferent and lazy; apathetic or sluggish inactivity.

Drowsy and unenergetic —  that’s how I’ve felt ever since Christmas. Oh, I’ve gotten things done — a little laundry, the house in some order, next month’s ladies’ ministry newsletter begun. But I had a whole lot more I was going to do. I seem to be spending a lot of time vegging out playing Boggle against the computer. 🙂

We did have a nice Christmas — loving presents, good food, time together. Perhaps the marathon leading up to Christmas is taking its toll.

I’ve often said I don’t work best under pressure, but I do get more done under pressure. I guess having a deadline makes tasks come into focus and makes it easier to sort through what must be done and put aside other activities. With no deadline it’s harder to get in gear. I keep a master list of projects I want to get to and need to get going on a project: starting is the hardest. Some of the things require a trip to another town because I’ve exhausted my resources here (like finding trims for those curtains that have been on my list for months). I’ll probably try to do that when everyone gets back to school and work.

None of the little things I was going to do this week seem as attractive as curling up with a blanket and one of my new books. 🙂

(Photo is courtesy of ruperthenn at the stock.xchng)

The Lord has really blessed — I got everything on my list from this post done plus got most of my shopping done and a handful of other errands. I found some really great deals — that I can’t tell about til after Christmas — the stores weren’t too crowded, people were pretty pleasant, and I got a special little project for my siblings done (actually Jeremy did most of it) — that I also can’t elaborate on til after Christmas.

I feel about like I’ve just run a marathon, though! After I wrap presents and kind of assess where I stand, I’ll see if I need to do any more shopping tomorrow. I do still need to make a pre-Christmas grocery store run, but I want to avoid other stores Saturday and Monday!! (We don’t usually shop on Sundays, anyway.)

Oh — and I need to do laundry and declutter in there somewhere.

My learning style seems to be “Do it wrong first and then you’ll see a better way.” I’ve been kicking myself for not getting some of this done earlier and I have seen ways I could do better next year. I am thankful the Lord is gracious and helps us and gives us strength.

Jason, my middle son, is having two wisdom teeth pulled tomorrow. Fun way to spend Christmas break, eh? We saw the oral surgeon last summer, and the x-rays showed the bottom two were coming in at an angle that would push the rest of his teeth in, and the roots of one were very near a nerve. He said we could wait til Christmas to have them pulled, but he wouldn’t advise waiting much longer.

He only has the bottom two — the x-rays showed no wisdom teeth at all on the top. So that’s good.

I’d appreciate your prayers that all will go well with no complications as he heals. He’s never been under anesthesia before. He usually handles physical problems, the few he’s had, very well.

I told him at least this will take his mind off the fact that his girlfriend is five states away for the rest of Christmas break…

Our Thanksgiving is pretty laid back. We’re usually all scattered different directions for weeks before and after, so it is nice to have a relaxing day set aside for the family without much planned besides the turkey dinner. We’re not football fans, so we have the afternoon after dinner to take a nap or watch a DVD or talk. I hope you have a wonderful day of thankfulness to the Giver of all good gifts.

I posted this list of what I am thankful for last year, and as I read over it, I couldn’t think of a thing I would change.

It is a good thing to give thanks unto the LORD
and to sing praises unto Thy name, O most High:
To shew forth thy lovingkindness in the morning,
and thy faithfulness every night (Psalm 92:1-2).

1. God Himself, for all that He is and all that He does, and for all that He has done for me. I could make a lengthy list just from this alone.

2. My husband of almost 27 years, his kindness and patience and care.

3. My three children with their unique personalities and all the joy the have brought to my life.

4. My father, mother, step-father, brother, sisters, and extended family.

5. My country. America is not perfect and has its problems, but it is still the best place on earth, IMHO.

6. My home. I have been discontent with this particular house, but I am grateful for having a snug place to live and realize that by some standards this would be considered luxurious.

7. Seasons. I love that I live in a place where there is a definite and beautiful change from season to season.

8. Music. I love it. It uplifts, soothes, encourages, inspires…I can’t imagine life without it.

9. My church.

10 Christian friends.

11. Food, especially the accessibility and variety we have here.

12. Computers!

13. Books. The Best of books, the Bible, foremost, but also the many books I have read along the way (and still hope to read) that have taught, entertained, inspired, encouraged….I could go on and on.

Often when I take Jesse to school, the right hand lane of the main road that I turn onto from our subdivision is backed up a bit. Many people in that lane will migrate to the right after getting through the traffic light to get onto the highway entrance, so often I get into the second lane, and then get back into the right hand lane for my turn at the traffic light after the highway exit. I could just stay in the right hand lane in the first place, but it’s so backed up that I would miss the green light and have to wait til the next one, and it’s relatively easy to change lanes, so I usually do.

This morning I don’t know if I just wasn’t paying attention or no one was turning onto the highway and freeing up that lane, but all of a sudden it was about time to turn and I wasn’t in the right lane yet. I saw a bit of space and swooped in front of another car…but then I felt bad about it. I wasn’t intentionally cutting them off but it probably looked that way. I often tell my children that when they’re driving and they’ve made a mistake by missing their turn or exit, they need to inconvenience themselves by going to the next exit or turn and turning around rather than inconveniencing or even endangering other people. But it is just so tempting to zoom in.

I told Jesse that I’ve often wished I had a device that would flash a sign in my back windshield to the car behind me. Often I’ve wanted one that says to a close follower, “Please BACK OFF!” But I’ve also wished for one that said, “I’m sorry!”

The car I zoomed in front of made the same turn I did, and I thought, “Oh no — it’s someone from our school and they are going to think really badly of me.” But they didn’t turn into our school driveway, and I felt worse that, with a Christian school magnet on the back of my van, I had been a poor testimony.

I wish there was some way to indicate to that driver my regret. But I guess the next best thing would be to avoid thinking less than charitable thoughts the next time someone cuts in front of me and to tell myself they’re not trying to be mean or selfish or thoughtless — they’re just trying to take a chance to get into the right lane.

• According to my blog stats on my WordPress dashboard, yesterday was a record day for my blog with 877 views. The previous record high day was something in the 500s. Most of those appear to be from the Thanksgiving reading, poems, and quotes posts — a lot of people must be looking for material for the holiday. I hope they found something useful. I don’t know if that number means people actually saw my posts or if my posts just came up on an Internet search — probably the latter. Of course, with over 29,000 spam comments (most ably captured by Akismet) since the inception of this blog, maybe a lot of those views were spambots.
• I had written earlier about dental woes…..I had an appointment to have a permanent crown put in this past week and thought I was done for a while. But the dentist said with this one he had had to drill away very close to the nerve (in fact, I narrowly escaped a root canal) so he just wanted to put temporary seal on this one for a few months and see how I do with it. Unfortunately it does hurt when I bite down directly on it, so I don’t know what the alternative is. I don’t want to go through another bridge experience — not only is it traumatic, it’s expensive, especially after just having paid for a crown for this same tooth. But I guess we’ll see what happens. When I went to have my permanent bridge put in on the other side, that part went relatively easily (it was the extraction and drilling earlier that was hard to sit through), so I was expecting this visit — just taking off the temporary crown and putting on the permanent one – to be pretty easy. But getting the temporary off hurt and then the scraping to get the temporary glue off was quite painful. The assistant kept saying, “That’s not too bad, is it?” No, I always sit in the dentist’s chair with white-knuckles hands grasping the armrests. And I get to do it again in a few months since he only wanted a temporary seal this time! Argh. I wonder if I can get numbed for that.
• I don’t know why I put off things I dread when it would be such a relief to get them over with. And I don’t know why I dread making phone calls to make or change appointments, but I do. I finally called this morning to change Jason’s appointment for getting his wisdom teeth out. That was scheduled for Wednesday — the day before Thanksgiving. I had been trying to talk him into changing it to Christmas break because he’d have a longer time to recover. Plus his girlfriend will be here for Thanksgiving break, and it wouldn’t be much fun for her to have her boyfriend sleeping off the effects of anesthetic and waking up with chipmunk cheeks and pain. It took us a while to figure out when to try to reschedule it for, but we finally got that done.
• Speaking of girlfriends….this is our first experience with one. I don’t know if you’re familiar with the whole courtship vs. dating issue. We don’t embrace everything involved with the courtship model, but we did feel the repeated date/go together/break up cycle was not good training for marriage, so we encouraged them to avoid pairing off or having a specific girlfriend during their high school years and rather do things as a group. So they’ve been “in like” before, but this is the first full-fledged actual girlfriend. I have to say it has been nice to have another female around the house! She’s very sweet and everyone seems to like her and she seems to like all of us. They are able to spend most Saturday and Sunday afternoons and evenings here, and it has been fun getting to know her (and seeing how Jason acts. 🙂 )
• We finally saw the Amazing Grace DVD this past weekend. You have to remember that it is a Hollywood film about a Christian and not a Christian film — there are a few words I wish they hadn’t put in — but otherwise I thought it was very good. The film seems in keeping with other things I had read about Wilberforce, and the filmmakers portrayed him as a genuine, heartfelt, joyful believer who acted on his principals tenaciously until he saw them through. It was amazing to hear the arguments of the opposition for the slave trade — the economy, the charges of sedition, etc. — while ignoring the face of human suffering. All in all it was a very inspiring film. I’d like to find a good biography of Wilberforce.
• I’m still working on those missionary Christmas gifts. Even a ministry you love and enjoy has its frustrations…..I won’t go into that, but I am hoping to have even the Stateside packages out this week and be able to close the door on that and start thinking about our own Christmas. There is no more “surface mail,” the cheapest overseas rate. The way it was explained to me was that most customers preferred speed to a lower price. So even still I think everything will get there on time, and I think the higher shipping methods are more reliable. We’ll just have to see what it all costs and then decide if we should change anything for next year. We want to be a blessing and to be generous, but we want to be good stewards, too, and need to find the right balance.

So — it looks like my week is cut out for me. Hope you have a good day!