When I first read meme on Julie’s blog I thought she had misspelled memo. But then she tagged me. I'll get even someday.
Right now I’m obsessed with 5 things: my family, house plans, the Bible, Julie’s blog, and all the things I am not getting done. All interconnected.
1. I have a great family and I love it when we all get together. My nine children are very supportive of each other and enjoy each other’s company, so I ‘m grateful that most of them live relatively close to us. They are all grown and basically on their own. The “baby” will graduate next month from law school. There are now 17 grandchildren ranging from 11 to almost 2 weeks. I have super in-laws, too. I dearly love them all.
2. My family leads to my second obsession, house plans. When we all get together, our house is way too small, so at an age when most people downsize we are making plans to build a house with a great room and a large open kitchen. Do you have any idea how noisy it can get in a small kitchen and a 15’ x 17’ living room with 30 people all eating and having fun, with an occasional crying child thrown into the mix? We bought a lot to build on several years ago and have learned much about planning a house, developing a cul-de-sac, working with people who don’t do what they say they will do and then charging you for it, how long it takes for the city to approve development plans, etc. I have planned every square foot of our house (several times) and am convinced that once it is done I will know much better how it should have been done. The plans have evolved over a period of more than two years and are very different from what we started with. Hopefully, we can actually start building in a month.
3. The Bible keeps us busy all day as that is what our assignment is on our mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Since I spend about 5-7 hours a day proofreading the revisions, footnotes, input corrections, etc., along with making sure everything is where it’s supposed to be, I have become quite friendly with the Bible. It’s a fascinating book. The Old Testament is challenging, beautiful, ugly, poetic, shocking, frustrating and inspirational all at the same time. There is so much to learn from the mistakes and achievements of others. Isn’t that life?
4. I don’t let myself write in my blog while I’m at the Church Office Building but I do read Mental Tesserae and a few others plus the comments when I need a break. (See Blogs I've stumbled on over to the right there.) Did you know that Pres. Hinckley (president and prophet of the LDS Church) said that people over 50 should put their feet up for 15 minutes in the morning and 15 minutes in the afternoon? At least that’s what I’ve heard, so that’s my excuse. It helps maintain good circulation in one’s legs. Poor circulation is a problem most of you still have to look forward to. But, I digress. I enjoy reading what other people are thinking and experiencing. Hence the blog obsession.
5. All of the above contribute to the fifth obsession: All that I’m not getting done. I was going to make a list but it got too overwhelming. Suffice it to say that paperwork, laundry, messy closets, cluttered cupboards, the garage which will not permit a car to enter and the front porch head the top of a long list. The front porch is the worst. A year ago we had a flood in the basement – of the worst kind! Sewer back-up! They call it black water, but it looked brown to me. We were standing in 3 to 5 inches of “poop water” trying to get stuff out. “Black water” contaminates anything it touches so speed was of the essence. It’s known as forced dejunking. We carried stuff out to the trash, the porch and to the neighbor’s huge garage. They volunteered. Why is there still stuff on the front porch a year later? Well, after tearing out and replacing the bottom 2 feet of the walls, repainting and recarpeting which necessitated taking EVERYTHING out of the basement, I don’t want to just haul everything back downstairs without going through it. Every time I start to go through it I don’t know where to put the stuff, especially things that aren’t mine. (The next time I raise 9 kids there will be a rule that when you move out you take everything with you.) The fact that I hate to throw away anything I might use someday contributes to the problem. So I make a futile attempt and decide to tackle it later. The only thing that saves us from being a total neighborhood disgrace is that there are large overgrown shrubs which hide most of the boxes and stuff.
Speaking of overgrown, this post is out of control so I’ll end and go make another attempt on the porch.
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2 comments:
Where do I begin? I'd like to make a list of all the ways this post makes me laugh but I don't know where to start.
My favorite line though was "the next time I raise 9 kids..." Ha. I didn't know you were planning on reincarnation. By the way, I'm pretty darn sure none of that junk is mine so go ahead and throw the rest away. :P
Wow! I learned a lot about you from this post. I come from a family of 9 children and my parent's old garage (they just built their new bigger house for the growing family) still has a lot of other people's junk living in it.
What a great mission you are serving. I had no idea that was what you were doing.
Good luck finding your front porch. At least you have tall shrubs!
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