rearranging
baby sis has been too big for her crib for a goodly while now. she has been sleeping with hubs since that unmarked day when the crib became unbearably small for her. with the recent passing of her 3rd birthday and our second anniversary in the "new" house, we still feel too fragile to want to change ANYTHING voluntarily. let's just mask the passage of these 31 months since the funeral as "non-covidic." our most solid craving is for stability. stability is only one of many things in global short supply these days. triple so for those of us who were not blessed with well-established lives to isolate in march 2020.
the school closures due to teacher shortages has rocked our little ship of fools as mightily than the stiff winds of the blue norther blowing yesterday's 70 degree bliss to a bright and sunny 27 degrees for today. it was a restless night for all. i was up early-for-even-me this morning. the rest of the household followed soon after. the combined energy was peaceful but restless and uncertain. theoretically, school will resume on tuesday, buttttttaaaaaa. . . at this stage the uncertainty is bigger than the next wave of covidic mandates.
somehow that restless uncertainty has found its focus in moving big bro into the larger guest room with it's bunkbed and letting baby sis take over his old room and "big kid bed." we are speculating on turning baby sis's old room into an office, but not today. moving two kid rooms will keep us busy for a while.
prayers in progress that we haven't bitten off more than we can chew while navigating the stormy sees.
baby sis really does need her big kid bed and big bro's been spending more time in the guest room than his room since the recent string of sleepovers with a friend. yes, he seems to have managed to find a friend here in these socially distant times. is that still legal?
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They start to grow up so quickly huh?.... I'm sure this must be so exciting for them to get new rooms!!!..... Deep breaths sweetie.... Just keep putting one foot in front of the other and take your time.... You will get there..... Prayers sent.... xo
prayers appreciated, jan.
these might be THE most change-resistant children i have ever loved. i theorate that resistance to change is a natural result of the domestic/cultural chaos which has defined these tender years. still. . . change happens no matter how hard we resist. despite his best efforts, the 6 year old who first moved here under protective custody is preparing for his 9th birthday. the angry 6 year old is ready to hand most of his old toys over to baby sis.
baby sis is the least change resistant of the 3. she took to the free access to big bro's room like an opportunist who has just been handed the keys to fort knox. zoom zoom. . .
big sis is intrigued with the change, but adamant that the changes stay on the other side of her bedroom door. she likes her room just the way it is. works for me if it works for you, princess. it does fit her like a proverbial glass slipper.
big bro's new room is pretty much done. he is going for the "fresh start" of leaving most of his toys in the old room. he started his toy collection here while the farm was just his favorite vacation spot. since the protective custody shift in august, 2019, he has amassed quite the toy collection. hubs and i are not the only ones guilty of over-compensating with toys in an attempt to distract him from the family, judicial and cultural chaos.
this morning finds me with panic attacks and gut knots over the chaos of junk stacked and scattered throughout the rest of the house. stepping small, praying big and taking lots of therapy breaks. itsy bitsy baby steps. . .
You've really got a full plate. Yes, itsy bitsy baby steps so you don't end up completely exhausted. Wish we were there to help. Energy hug!
i guess this phase is done. big bro and baby sis both seem happy with their new rooms. baby sis's old room is clean, mostly empty and awaiting it's new incarnation. what i like to call, "the prepped canvas stage." for now i am simply enjoying the empty space. i have had thoughts of making it into an office, but? ? ? i'm not quite sure how to extract my modest office set up from hubby's sprawling organizational style. the egg shell pile surrounding that dynamic has accumulated since 1980 when i first had to scale his laundry piles to climb into my bed. he has since learned the benefits of laundry baskets, but it remains easier to sleep on the couch and/or find other places to work than attempt to talk about the methodical madness of his sprawling thing piles. insert "blue danube waltz" here.
small steps, big faith and lots of prayer.
Sounds like true love to me, and you managed to make me laugh at the end of a stressful day.
i find love much easier when i don't even try to understand. my job isn't to understand you. i'm just here to love you, just as you are, but i reserve the right to ply self-care to the parts of you that drive me crazier.
hubs and i might have swept away a few egg shells on the rearranging potentials during this morning's coffee. to my current senses, ease of discussion is far more important than any of the details under discussion. keeping up with those details within the flows and stows of life requires on-going discussion.
hubby's corporate retirement is two weeks away from completion. theoretically. his cutting edge position in corporate security is hard to fill. i'm betting dollars to wishes that they will offer him contract work within his first month of retirement, but the stage is set for him to devote full time to developing the fledgling LLC here on the farm. there's a whole lot of rearranging going on in his life right now.
stepping small, praying big and letting god lead the dance.
next week is the official last week of the corporate gig and the start of the retirement budget. my own intro to the current retirement system was through military channels where retirement is based on years of service more than age. the vast majority of the retirees started their service as teenagers and were eligible for retirement in their late 30's and early 40's. the discussion was far more about career changes than life in a rocking chair. in that circle, it is commonplace for folks to start collecting their social security pensions with 2 or 4 other retirement pensions already on direct deposit.
not so for hubby. his father was a devout civilian company man who only worked for one company in his life. his mother was a devout corporate wife long after corporate wives were no longer a thing. according to the family rhetoric, "she never worked a day in her life." i often wonder if the biggest problem in our current culture is what we call, "not working" and "unskilled labor." gee. . . why can't we get a decent meal from our "unskilled labor?"
baby sis's old room remains mostly empty and that's okay. the important rearranging going on this week is in the balance between hubs and i. it's enough. i am pleased with the progress.
The first paragraph is exactly what my older brother did. He's living a cushy life now. Why didn't I think of that?
the fact is that this farm already has a great office in an old brood house which was converted into a one car garage and badly finished off far enough to live in. i removed the garage door, prison level security lighting and repurposed it to an office. is it mere coincidence that hubby was inspired to take his parting telecommuting position around the time i was putting the finishing touches on the conversion? i felt a bit coopted at the speed with which he took over the new office, but only a bit. i havenae been overly attracted to office work in recent years. for most of my life, office work has felt more entrapping than promises to respect me in the morning. buyer beware.
still. . . i have quite allot of office work i could be doing on my own behalf.
this morning's rearrangement burst happened in that old broodhouse cum garage cum farm office. well. . . it was more cleaning than rearranging. hubby's tolerance of dust and clutter is far greater than mine. dust is my allergy bad girl. remind me again how i got stranded in the dust bowl again?
my style of journal-keeping is one of the rearrangements i've had under review for quite allot of years. the details are available, but currently lost in quantity. my analog journal is currently organized in 3 over-filled file boxes which have been shuffled to some odd corner of the farm buildings. hopefully(?) they are still stacked with the office remnants of whatever projects i had going when i was on my way back to the pirate's den. i believe that was 2018. four years, already? ? ? time do fun while you are on the fly.
my digital journal? ? ? that is flung across the WWW, all the way back to the dick tracy watches dug out of sugary cereal boxes in front of saturday morning cartoons. i amnae the slightest bit interested in the job of trying to organize that mess. even my digital graphics library has fallen into apathetic neglect. for now, my digital journal is akin to my dirty napkin journal. fleeting thoughts appropriately delegated to "the circular file" aka the trash can.
herstorically, sharing work space and/or collaborating on creative projects has been immensely difficult for hubby and i. both of us have successfully collaborated with various co-workers of contrary organizational styles, politics, etc. good teams are built on contrast more than duplication. good compositions are typically even better with more than one instrument. how many percussionists does a single musical group need?
my psyco sense is the difficulties hubby and i have collaborating is pure romance. matrimonial blues. poets and pragmatics have been looking for words for that universal phenom since the dawn of civilization.
at present, i am walking the older 2 kids to the bus stop at 6:10 while hubby stays at the house with baby sis. the elders are typically on their way to school and the front chicken coops are open by 6:30. probably closer to 6:20, but what's ten minutes? once the front coops are open, i head back to the house so that i can take charge of baby sis while hubby begins his corporate day. theoretically, this is his last week of that corporate day. theoretically. . . i can't seem to get past my sense of, "i'll believe it when i see it."
the bus stop is directly in front of the office. we often wait in the office and watch for the bus through the window. yesterday's rearrangement was for me to go to the office instead of heading back to the house. i was still back at the house for hubby to be reasonably on time for his last corporate monday.
testing, 1, 2, 3. . .
he hasn't dick whipped me yet. . .
today be day two of hubby's official retirement and day two of my staying here at the office after the school bus carries the two elder siblings off to school. i have been physically sick and pushing my personal limits both days. both baby sis and i have been battling the same respiratory bug since last week. we both seem to be in the recovery stages, with my case carrying the complications of COPD and my ongoing addiction to smoke. my physical senses are craving familiarity in which to nurse the physical illness. clogged sinuses and ragged breathing have me functioning in a fog, at best.
my psycho senses are clamoring to seize the opportunity with both hands and feet solidly planted. now be the moment to establish room for my own work in the midst of all the not working luxuries which have been my life since my own official retirement in 1995.
again i wonder if the biggest problem in the industrial world is what we call, "not working."
week two of hubby's retirement.
i find myself wanting an official name for my side of this transition. "back to work" seems to be the clearest of what is available, but? ? ? where be the paycheck? where be the timeclock to track the hours? where be the chain of command dictating the agenda of the day?
here on the second monday of the latest transition i find myself wanting to get back to the family business-as-usual. i'm a little less shocked at the realization that we have a family business-as-usual to get back to. the covidic weirds **out there** still feel as agitated as our family felt at that funeral 28 months past.
i amnae at all certain the elder sibs have attached meaning to the corporate retirement. hubby's work day and their school day run concurrently. his schedule has not changed a bit on their radar. speaking of which. . . it's time to sound reveille. . .
it's time to get up
it's time to get up
it's time to get up this morning
another day is dawning
it's time to move along
though we might be yawning
we still will sing this song
it's time to get up
it's time to get up
it's time to get up this morning
never mind that both elder sibs have been awake for quite some time. . . it's time to make it official.
week 3 of the corporate retirement. last week found me unwilling to approach yet another new normal. between the start of the second parenting career in august, 2019 and the corona crazies since early 2020, this little ship of fools still doesn't feel stable enough to handle any more big changes. we've stabilized enough to have solid, predictable shapes to our days and nights, but not far enough to test too awful many limits voluntarily. small steps, big faith and lots of prayer.
tax season is upon us. i never kept score, but i believe i've handled the lion's share of our tax returns since 1981 when we filed our first joint return. in 2016 when hubby's father died, he was named "executor" of his father's substantial and largely secretive estate. hubby's parents were extremely private in their own financial matters until the day they died. wifey was the bookkeeper of the family and her passing was a shock to the bookkeeping system. it was showing the shock by the time her husband died 3 years later. hubby's unexpected role of executor of their estate put 2017 tax season into a far more complicated league. add in 3 orphans with government benefits and? ? ? he has been a raving maniac during the tax seasons since. our old method of trading off the tax/bookkeeping duties isn't as simple as it was in the 2016 tax season when we only had to file one joint return for one pair of senior citizens
last week hubby took advantage, with my blessings, of my own ambivalence and started on this year's taxes. here's to hoping this year will go easier than the past 5 years without the corporate distractions scrambling his brain further. dare i hope this tax season will go far enough easier that he can explain his sprawling organizational system to me without digressing off into political rants? just hoping. . . at present, one of my recurring anxieties is that if something happened to him today, i would not be able to run those books without a stiff learning curve. facing stiff learning curves in the midst of a domestic crisis is not my favorite way to learn.