Day 486
Friday
Busy day today...but
groceries are taken care of for another month.
I am limping now, though, as a result of my shopping day. I had so many groceries tonight at Walmart
that the clerk suggested we ought to get a second cart after checking out. Sam was my company today and he was agreeable
to pushing one out to the van. He did,
but as we exited the store he ran the cart right over my left heel. I'd like to say I've never been in so much
pain in my entire life, but that's not quite true. Almost, though. It isn't really my heel anymore that's
hurting as much as it is the joint at the
top of my foot, where it connects to the leg. I wonder if it got jammed by that sudden
assault.
It's been a busy week. Well, they all are, I guess. But this one has been especially busy. Actually, this entire month looks kind of
insane. I don't know what it is about
fall time that ramps up the schedule.
Maybe it's just the rush before we settle down into our burrows for
winter.
Last night some friends and I
were making 14 pizzas for Deb's son's rehearsal dinner tonight. I was more than happy to help, but, wow, that
took a long time! I carted them home
because I have the most fridge/freezer space and when I got home I had sticky
crust dough and sauce on the back of my seats (stow n go seating) in my mini
van. I was so tired already and I had to
clean that up, haul the pizzas inside, and get myself to bed. And then I got a text at 12:30 in the morning!
The beeping of my phone woke me an hour later.
It's been kind of a rough
week with Ellie, behavior-wise, which wears on me both physically and mentally. As far as I know, she is a perfectly normal preschooler,
cognitively. But she is worse than I
remember Ben being at this age. And he
was terrifying!
One day Lizzie pointed out to
me slash marks all over the wooden furniture in their bedroom. It looked like someone had taken a knife,
went around the room, nicking furniture rather systematically. Sure enough, one of Will's knives (a huge one)
was out, blade extended. I called Will
about it later and he was shocked. He
didn't know he had left that thing where it was accessible - not that the kids
are allowed in his bedroom, anyway. It
had been carefully placed back on his bedside table, but I was pretty confident
Will would not leave the blade out like that, which was an indication to me
that someone small had been handling it.
I was about shaking when I realized what had happened. Ellie could have been killed or horribly
injured. I eventually did get her to
confess and she was in terrible trouble as a result of her behavior, but how do
I keep this from happening again?
I've had two
"scissor" incidents with her this week, as well. She isn't allowed to have scissors at all, as
a result of previous scissor incidents.
But she found some somewhere and hacked the mane and tail off one of
Lizzie's My Little Ponies. Tonight
Lizzie went to bed and discovered, underneath her pillow, the cut hair from her
big hairstyling doll. It was almost creepy. She picked up her pillow to fluff it for the
night, and laying underneath the pillow was all the hair from her doll! And this is two crimes, actually. Ellie is not allowed to climb to the top bunk
because of her lack of proper fear. I
can't tell you the number of times she has been punished for that very thing.
I am at about my wit's
end. I've decided she can't take naps
upstairs anymore. Short of tying her to
the bed, I can't get her to stay in it. And when she gets out, she does terrible things
to other people's things. I'm just not
sure how I'm going to keep her alive and uninjured. She's a menace to herself.
And she's not the only
one. The same day that we had the knife
incident, David informed me that he caught Sam and Lizzie riding their bikes
down the backyard slide. Argh...So, we
had a long talk about neck and spinal cord injuries and what life would be like
as a quadriplegic.
Paul was so much better at
this type of stuff.
There was one side-splitting
moment in the midst of all this, though.
The other day when Lizzie discovered her poor, shorn pony, she was,
naturally, very upset with Ellie. She
ranted and raved for a bit and then dramatically intoned, "You have
brought shame to our family!"
Oh, man, I about died on the spot! I kept it in, though, and continued to glare
at Ellie, but I was biting the insides of my cheek!
****************************
I'm just worn out. I'm honestly not dealing with the depression
that I was a month or so ago, anymore, but I am so weary. I was thinking today that the past 3 years
and now this one, have been really grueling years for me for a number of
different reasons.. This started before
Paul's death. I'm tired of fighting and
trying to hold my head up. I'm just
plain tired, really!
The school thing is still on
my mind. Out of the absolute blue,
Lizzie said to me this week, "I want to go to school!" I know I questioned her as to why, but I
can't remember what she said now. But I
do remember wondering - is this a sign?
I have not said a single word to her or around her about my thoughts.
My thinking up to this point
has really been only considering sending Lizzie next year. Even though he's older, Sam is still kind of
my "baby" and I'm not ready to let him go yet. But we were walking through the mall today
and I casually asked him what he thought about the idea of maybe someday going
to school. Sam clasped his hands
together and exclaimed, "Oh, I've always wanted to go to
school!" He has? But I remember when David was about his age
he began saying how much he wanted to go to school, too. After we began to question him, we soon
figured out that all he was really interested in was riding a school bus!
So Sam and I talked quite a
bit today about some of the negative things that could happen in a school
setting. Finally, I told him that
perhaps next spring we could visit the local school and sit in on the 2nd grade
classroom for a few hours and he liked that idea.
I don't know anything right
now, though. I keep thinking of the verse
in Galations 6 that encourages us to "not become weary in
well-doing..." Is that all this
is? Am I supposed to keep pressing
onward through these tough days in order to not ruin my children and give them
the best possible education and upbringing?
Or, do I need a break? Maybe I don't need to look at school as a
permanent thing. Maybe a year is all I
need to regain some sense of balance in my life. I don't know yet. But there's still plenty of time to pray and
seek God's will in this area. I'm counting
on Him providing it!
Saturday
I just turned the heat on for
the first time. Paul would be calling me
a weenie, I think. He liked to see frost
on his toes before cranking on the heat for the first time of the season!
I just ran Ben and David over
to church so they can go up to Faithfest.
Will is going to be working with Ben all day and then he'll bring the
boys home and take Ben down to Knoxville
The Littles and I have the
wedding this afternoon. This will be my
second wedding in less than 4 months, also my second since Paul died. I'll be ok.
I think. The hardest thing will
be keeping the Littles corralled during the event and especially the reception,
which will be in our church fellowship room which is a small, cramped space.
****************************************
I narrowly diverted disaster
earlier this week, although I'm still pretty grossed out. I had bought some crescent rolls and one of
the tubes popped open on the counter. So
I had to bake them. I rolled them up and
did that. I was eating one and,
fortunately, bit down kind of softly. I
quickly realized that there was something foreign in my roll. I spit out my food and discovered...a
tooth. Thankfully, it was not my
tooth, though. Lizzie has been losing
teeth right and left lately and she had laid one on the kitchen counter that
somehow got mixed into the raw crescent roll dough. Gross, gross, gross...but it could have been
worse. I could have bit down hard and
shattered one of my own fragile teeth.
******************************
There was one morning this
week when I experienced something unique.
I got up and as I was running water for my shower I realized, to my
surprise, that for the first time in 480some days, I didn't feel sad. I probed my psyche like one's tongue will
search out an empty spot in the mouth and nope - I was good! It was so different to feel that. Now, later, the sadness did return to its
normal spot in my heart and I actually
felt better when it did. But that
temporary reprieve was so different and gave me hope for a time in my future
when I'll feel that on a more regular basis.
It's coming.
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