Day 77--Paying for the Lazy Day

Today was my day to sleep in, but Juliet was extremely fussy, and after 15 minutes, I gave up trying to sleep through her cries and got up to assist Barney in taking care of her.  As such, we ended up getting the kids to school a little bit earlier than normal, which was good because today has been insane in terms of work, and it is far from over.  I have to host a conference call at 8:00 tonight before I will be able to even consider being done.

Because I had such an intense workload, I had little time to dwell on waiting for news we were supposed to get about the possible leasing of the house.  Barney, however, had a harder time with the waiting game today.  To say we feel discouraged would be a gross understatement.  Of course, we never heard back from them.  In this case, I don't think it is pessimism to say that no news is not good news.  We are supposed to hear tomorrow or Wednesday about the potential offer on the house, so that should be interesting.  Who's to say that they won't have changed their mind on the honeymoon though.

It seemed to me today that the best thing that I could do with my limited time resources was to try to stay positive and to try to uplift Barney's spirits rather than engaging in the pity party that I really want to engage in.  So, that was my goal throughout the day, and it seems to have helped some, though not a lot. 

Even though I am still behind in two classes, after my call my plan is to take the rest of the night off to keep Barney company rather than leaving him to his own devices in hopes that we can just relax and try to take our minds off of the housing situation.

Day 76--A Laid Back Sunday

Yesterday, I finished the day with all work completely caught up; today, I finish with a rather lengthy novel under my belt.  There is something to be said for taking an actual weekend, though I may be singing a different tune tomorrow.

The main trouble was a nagging bout of round ligament pains that limited my ability to do much today.  It's an annoying pregnancy woe where you deal with pain in the back ranging from mild to intense caused by the softening of ligaments.  There's not much you can do other than to take it easy.  I'm not sure what brought it on today, but it started before church and only worsened throughout the day.

Barney was very sweet and let me nap during the kids' naptime, which they less graciously decided to forgo today.  But, they played quietly upstairs, and I got to take a Sunday nap--such a great tradition that I need to make sure is taken more seriously at my house.

Barney his breaks in the day by watching a soccer game and then playing some soccer on the Xbox once my back pain started to lessen.  It wasn't much, again, but these lazy days are very few and far between for us.

The next few days should provide us with some concrete information on the direction that things will be taking in the near future with the possible selling or leasing of our house.  At this point, it remains very much a waiting game on our part, and I am so very tired of waiting.  My plan is to throw myself into my quickly piling stack of work and hope that provides a distraction from the tension that builds in me on these days.  I guess only time will tell how it will all turn out.

Day 75--No Donuts but a Picnic

Today started as every Saturday at home does--Mommy and Olivia putter around the house while Daddy and George go to our favorite donut shop and pick up our standard breakfast order.  Only, today, after being gone for 25 minutes, Barney called to tell me he was giving up and heading home.  He was stymied by running into a faction of our town's annual marathon race.  George was heartbroken, but we made snow donuts instead, and it was a small compensation.

I was able to get most of my work done during Olivia's morning nap, and then we packed a picnic and headed to the Botanic Gardens to enjoy the beautiful day and to feed the turtles, who incidentally turned out to have no interest in being fed--very unusual for them.

I finished my work during the kids' afternoon nap and so was able to make dinner tonight in addition to getting the week's laundry done.  After dinner, I read my book for a while, and then Barney and I watched The Social Network.

In short, it was a great day.  The hard days probably make for better stories and definitely lead to more introspection on my part.  Today, I made three homemade meals, cleaned, folded, and put away all of my husband's laundry, and wrote secret love messages on his sandwich for lunch with the mustard.  Nothing earth-shattering, life-altering, or even that noticeable was done on my part.  But, as I read my father-in-law's email tonight about how much he is already missing his wife who just left today, I realized that while these simple gifts of a wife may not always be commented on or consciously noticed, they definitely make a difference in a marriage.

Day 74--Breathing Again

We had no showings on our house today, which is good because it means that I was able to actually catch up on my work.  But, it means we had no showings today, which is always sad to me.  I half-listen for the ring of Barney's phone all throughout the day in case it is news from the realtor or a request for a showing.  We did hear from both interested parties today: the potential buyers have reaffirmed a promise to put an offer on the house on Tuesday or Wednesday.  The potential renters are seeing one final set of houses tomorrow and plan to make a decision likely on Monday. 

It was my morning to get up with the kids, so we made cinnamon toast and had a family breakfast this morning.  It was a hard and busy workday for both of us today, and then this evening Barney took the kids to the park, and I made dinner.  We had baked chicken, and I made a potato casserole that was actually highly recommended by a student.  Barney loved it--it is more than rare that I expirament with potatoes since I don't like them.  I think he really enjoyed the change of pace in our meals.

Then, this evening a dear friend came to visit, which was such a lovely surprise.  George was so excited to see her, even though he took on his shy persona when she tried to talk to him.

Today was as close to a normal day as our life gets these days, and I am very grateful for it.  It might not make for fascinating reading, but sometimes normalcy is just such a gift.

Days 72 & 73--No Time to Take a Breath

The last two days have absolutely flown by in a stream of constant happenings.  Honestly, two days ago seems like a hundred years ago, and it took me a good five minutes to be able to work that far backwards.  Remember how Barney's sister came and stayed with us Tuesday night?  Well, yesterday afternoon Marshall's wife called to double check that Marshall had let us know that he was coming to stay with us last night before another early morning airport run.  I definitely was not aware of this, though I am not entirely sure if it was Marshall or Barney who failed to mention this to me.  Regardless, that meant a long (really fun) night of board games--hence my lack of post last night.

In the meantime we also got a call yesterday that the couple who we thought was going to for sure make an offer on our house a while back wanted to have their god parents come see it this evening from 5:30 to 6:30 for a third showing.  Apparently, they had found some other houses that they liked better but ultimately were unable to afford, so now they have moved back to wanting our house.  In the meantime, we have been moving forward on putting our house up for lease in addition to being up for sale.  It went on the market for lease today.

So, when we found out about the showing, we called the ladies who sometimes clean our house and scheduled a cleaning for this afternoon from 3:00-5:00.  That meant we didn't need to clean, though we still had to make sure everything was straightened and all clutter/mess was dealt with.  It was a short night for all, but I had a plan for exactly how to fit in everything I needed to do today.

While Barney was showering this morning, his phone rang, and it was CSS.  I picked it up, and they wanted to schedule a showing for today between 1:30 & 2:30.  It meant that we had to clean up everything anyway, be out of the house much earlier than planned, and we were not going to be able to cancel with the ladies, so we would have essentially two cleanings for the day.

Suddenly, everything was a whirlwind.  The people came early and stayed very briefly in the house, so we felt very sure that there was no interest whatsoever on their part.  Imagine my surprise then when our realtor called tonight with two pieces of news:

1. The first couple plan to for sure make an offer on Wednesday, when they get back from their honeymoon
2. The early showing today was a couple who want to lease our house

After being faced with zero choices for a year, it now appears that we may have two choices to choose from.  I have been ecstatic all evening (or as ecstatic as you can be while also being completely exhausted), but now I am somewhat nervous because I am a pessimist and what if both fall through?

So that is the update on our life, but the update on my project is this: I am a take-charge woman.  I have ideas, and I want to implement them and move forward.  It would be easy for me to either only pay lip-service to listening to Barney or to just run right over him in my attempts to make things happen (in regards to the decision on our house) the "best" way--i.e. my way.

Instead, I am trying to take a more supportive role in this whole transaction.  While I am certainly voicing my opinions, I am not trying to make my opinion the only opinion, and I have deferred to him on many aspects of this whole adventure.  It's funny how much justification I want to add to this paragraph.  I want to both justify my decision to step back so as not to appear weak or anti-equality of the sexes, and I want to justify not just backing off altogether and letting the man make the heavy-weight financial decisions. 

But, mostly, I feel a strong need to make clear that I am not being steamrolled by my husband or turning into a doormat.  It feels almost shameful somehow to me to play a subservient role, even knowing what the Bible says and knowing that I should not feel that way.  Many Southern, Christian women would probably never admit to feeling that way, even if they do.  I don't see myself as less than my husband's equal as a partner or as a person.  However, it's like I told my husband today when he was trying to coach me on shoe-wear for Olivia: within our marriage, we have realms of expertise.  Women's shoes clearly fall into my realm of expertise.  I appreciate that he has an opinion on her shoes, but ultimately, I am the expert, and unless my decisions regarding her shoe-wear is going to affect our family in some substantive way, then my opinion is the one that matters most.  It doesn't mean that I am not going to weigh his opinion into my decisions regarding her shoes though.

Finances are Barney's realm of expertise.  We have equal roles in the managing of our finances, but the long-term planning of our finances are always something that I have entrusted to him and that he has done very well at.  Making major decisions about the financial side of buying and selling (or leasing) of houses also falls more into his area of expertise.  I have an opinion, and I am sharing it.  But, I recognize that in this area he has more of a substantial vote than I do because of his greater share of expertise.

When it comes to choosing and furnishing our new home, you better believe that I get (at least!) a 50% say on that though :)

Day 72--A Calendar Update

I got an email today from George's dentist, reminding us of an upcoming appointment, so I opened up my online calendar to make sure the visit was on there.  When I did, I noticed that my last entry was for Tuesday, January 18th, and said simply "Olivia sick--throwing up."  In the midst of all that has happened in the last month, I had not thought once to update my calendar.  So this evening, I tried to do just that, which lead to much reflection on the last month.  It will not go down as one of the best in my life, but if it goes down as one of the worst, then I will truly be a very blessed woman.  Things that seemed terrible at the time still seem bad, but they don't seem as hopeless as they did when we were experiencing them.  Even our personal housing crisis, which we are very much still in the middle of, seems to have lost some of its edge for me.  Of course, we had some hopeful news from a couple of different sectors today regarding the house, which probably helps immensely.

Today was actually a really positive day , and looking back over the last month made me appreciate that even more.  Despite ponying up and paying our taxes today, and despite me breaking my food processor while making Barney and George's favorite breakfast (sausage balls), there was so much good.  Barney got his first response in interest of him obtaining a teaching position once he graduates in a couple of months, and we got some news of a couple of people possibly interested in our house (though nothing very definite at all).  In addition, Barney's older sister came to visit us before her impending move 1,000 miles away to be with the man she loves.  She and Barney got to enjoy happy hour before we picked up the kids, and then later we went to a favorite Mexican food place for dinner.

To me though, the crowning point of the day was when we opened up and split some of the "bundtlets" (individual bundt cakes) that I purchased today as a surprise for Barney.  I got a groupon for them yesterday, and I went to pick them out this morning.  I knew they looked yummy, but so often cakes that look yummy end up not living up to their looks.  These cakes though . . . amazing.  I am very sad that I only bought one lemon because it was beyond good.  Barney's sister and George declared the chocolate to be equally awesome.  Tomorrow, we will try the cinnamon.

Today was a breath of fresh air for us, and I am sincerely grateful for it.  Before he collapsed into bed tonight, Barney expressed much of the same sentiment.  I'm hoping for a repeat performance tomorrow ;)

Day 71--New Possibilities on the Horizon

Today was the first day in a long time that I've had so much work to do that despite the fact that the kids were in school and I had no major interruptions on my day, it was physically impossible for me to do everything I needed to do.

And, we did our taxes today.  So, it was fun times all around . . . or not.  Actually, it wasn't a bad day--it was just an extremely busy, task-oriented day, which is kind of disappointing because there were President's Day sales that were calling to me.  I had to ignore the call :( 

In the midst of all of this, we learned that we now quality to hold two mortgages, which was not a possibility when we first put the house on the market a year ago.  So, we also spent time today talking to lenders and to our realtor about putting our house up for lease as well as for sale.  I don't know if it will be any easier to lease it than it has been to sell it, but at least it's another option to put out there.

Days like this are the hardest kinds of days to meet my goal for this project in many ways.  It feels like there just isn't enough time in the day to make Barney a priority.  This afternoon, he was up to his eyeballs in taxes, and I was up to my eyeballs in grading.  I thought I would go pick up happy hour from Sonic and then get the kids so he could finish what he had started.  But, I just kept setting a stopping point for myself, reaching it, deciding I still had more time, and then setting a new stopping point for myself.  Before I knew it, happy hour was over, and Barney was picking up the keys to go get the kids.

I did stop and go with him, and then this evening, I fixed the kids' dinner, cleaned up the kitchen afterwards (which was a feat--Olivia liberally tossed bits of scrambled eggs into all corners of the eat-in kitchen somehow whenever we turned our heads for a second), and handled bath time.  During those times, Barney worked.  During the rest of the time, the kids' playtime, Barney played with the kids while I worked.  To me, this all was an act of love because during my times with the kids, I was taking care of our responsibilities rather than just playing.  Barney got to spend the "fun" time with the kids while I was the bad guy for making them pick up their rooms, put their plates in the sink, and to eat more bites of dinner before being excused.  But, to be honest, I'm not sure that it counts towards this project because Barney would never see it that way.  To him, we split the time we spent watching kids vs. working evenly. 

I'm not complaining about this, even if it sounds that way.  I understand that some things that are priorities to me simply are not priorities for Barney, so when I clean the kitchen, it really is unlikely that it will seem like an act of love to him.  I like to think though that if I quit making the bed every day, quit cleaning the kitchen after meals and straightening the house every morning and evening, he would notice and would not like what he saw.  It just seems to me that it generally lifts moods and just feels better to be in a clean space rather than a dirty one.  But, I don't know; just because I count it a deliberate act of love when he cleans the kitchen maybe doesn't mean I should when I do.

Days 69 & 70--A Rather Laid-Back Weekend

This weekend was pretty low-key.  We did a birthday dinner at a restaurant with my parents on Friday evening (it was my dad's birthday), and a birthday party at George's school for one of George's friends Saturday morning.  Other than church, the rest of the weekend has pretty much been left to our own devices.  The lovely thing has been the weather--we have spent much time outside, practicing baseball (George is about to play baseball this spring, which will be his first organized sport to participate in), going on long walks, and just generally enjoying the day.

From Friday through tonight, I've had numerous opportunities to take deliberate action in showing Barney how I feel about him, from skipping work on Friday to go to lunch and then browse around shops in town, to watching Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps  last night instead of finishing my essay grading  or reading my book (which I really wanted to do), to getting Barney a milkshake for a snack today and then doing steak for dinner, which we watched while eating Man Vs. Wild (never the best dinner option in my opinion). 

He has also been very deliberate about trying to take care of me and show me how he feels about me, from watching the kids while I worked to bringing and/or making me tea, to fixing and cleaning up dinner tonight.

I think that we are both trying to make up for the general low morale that we are both feeling these days.  We are both in a funk over our housing woes, and spending so much of our time in this house doesn't help.  But, the main point that I'm trying to make is that despite the tendency to become easily irritated and despite how easy it is to take our frustrations out on one another, both of us are making deliberate attempts to counter those tendencies.  I find that to be so very encouraging overall.

Day 68--My Own Logical Fallacy

Before I ever fell asleep last night, I began to realize that the ideas that I had just posted about had some serious flaws.  For example, I was advocating to myself a concept of idleness as God's intention for my life.  My idea was that I should not seek out a way to find relief or a cure for Barney because that was me trying to control the situation.  But, in actuality, this would mean that God was directing me to just sit back and wait for Him to bring us a cure, or not, as is His will. 

My idea stemmed from this concept in my head that since the doctor's visit does not appear to have been successful, I was not doing God's will.  I had this idea that if I could just figure out what God wanted me to do, I would see a better result.  Ergo, if you do what God wants, he will reward you with whatever you are wanting, but if you don't follow His will, then you will not receive what you are seeking.  Then, on top of this, I had myself convinced that the key was to just stop doing anything and to let God take care of it for me.

The problems here are numerous.  First, nowhere that I know of in the Bible is idleness encouraged.  Secondly, I am not sure why God would not want us to seek out help for loved ones who are suffering; indeed, the Bible is filled with stories of people doing just that and being rewarded.  Third, of course there is no promise to Christ-followers that we will get whatever we want on Earth as long as we follow God's will.  In fact, in Gethsemane Christ specifically asked for a different outcome than the one that ultimately came into being, despite the fact that He was clearly following God's will.

I do also think that I had some core concepts right in my post.  I believe that I need to learn to seek out and trust in God's will for my life and the path that He set forth for my family.  I just can't let myself think that whenever things don't go my way it is automatically a sign that I've strayed from that path or that the best way to stay on his path is by remaining idle in the same place and not endeavoring to move forward on that path.

So much of what I post about on here these days has to do with things that I am very much trying to understand and comprehend and not things that I already have a good grasp on, so I apologize for how much of it must seem like total gibberish.  But, the writing on this blog has allowed me to grow so much as a wife, a person, and a Christian, and I am really grateful to be having this experience.

Day 67--One Day, Three Doctors, Three Patients

Have I ever mentioned that I have control issues?  I've spent several of the last 24 hours combing the internet for some way to cure Barney's mouth sores or at the very least for some reliable way to relieve the pain.  I've been all over websites (it's amazing how many people actually suffer from this same malady actually), and I decided last night that it was time for him to visit the doctor again--the last time he went was in 2005.  I felt so sure that they would have found something in the last six years that could make a difference or that our doctor here would know something the doctor in Tennessee did not.  This morning, as I was getting ready for my own doctor's appointment (just the regular prenatal appt), I called and scheduled an appointment for him.  Somehow I thought I could fix this--I love our primary doc, and I was just sure he would have an answer for me.

No big shocker though that my attempts at control were not successful.  The doctor gave him a prescription, but from what I've read, there is not a lot to be hopeful about this prescription doing much.  I just hate seeing Barney hurting so much (he's now up to four sores, all in different parts of his mouth), and I feel so helpless and useless being able to do nothing more than offer milkshakes, soup, and respite from the children.  Barney's not laying around or moping, but he has this way of holding his head and his mouth when he has his sores that just slays me--it is an attempt to manage the pain he won't talk about.  And by the time the kids go to bed, he's not going to talk unless it's really, really important because it just hurts too much.  Seeing him hurting like that really sucks.  (How's that for eloquent?)

I have been reminded on more than one occasion in the last day of how many more things could go wrong and be so much worse than anything we have faced in the last month.  In all reality, ten years from now, I will probably not remember this rough patch with much vividness at all.  But despite knowing that this is a temporary pain and a temporary season in life, I just wish I could make it better with some quick and easy solution. 

Today, Olivia fell at school and got a pretty deep cut on her eyebrow, so we took her to the doctor to see if she needed stitches.  They gave her a little glue and sent her on her way.  She may still have a small gash on her head, but it was like they just magically made her all better.  That's what I want--magic glue to make everything all better.  Am I super aware as I type this of just how obvious is that God is working on my heart and trying to teach me a lesson about trusting in Him and relying on Him?  You betcha. 

But, I also know that God's answer is not likely to be to dab on the magic glue and offer me the exact solutions that I'm hoping for in the time frame I'm hoping for.  I want to trust in God and give him control and then to have him reward me with giving me exactly what I want.  That's the rub right there--learning to trust in him and honestly being okay with things turning out in some way that is completely different than the outcome you had looked for.  I always think about two examples in the Bible--the first being of Hannah and Abraham who knew exactly what they wanted to see happen and prayed earnestly to God for that specific outcome, and because of their sincerity and trust in God, he granted them their wish.  For Hannah, it was a son.  For Abraham, it was the willingness to spare a city if enough good people could be found, even though as it turns out, there weren't enough.

The next example is of Jesus himself who taught us to pray "Not my will by Thine be done."  Jesus specifically requests a specific outcome from God, saying "Father, if thou be willing, remove this cup from me," but he follows it up immediately saying "nevertheless, not my will, but thine, be done."

When I am faced with the toughest moments in my life, I always want to be like Hannah and boldly make my requests of God, confronting, beseeching, and eagerly begging for my will to be done.  Despite her amazing example though, somehow I know that the path of a Christian is almost always going be that of the path revealed to us that night in the garden of Gethsemane.  My prayer tonight is to make my path in the life the one of Gethsemane, and I believe that in doing so, I will be doing so much more than all the milkshakes and cups of soup in the world and certainly more than any number of hours of internet searches could ever hope to do.

Day 66--A Sign of the Times

Here's a story about my sweet husband that I really think reveals a lot about how he handles stressful situations: When Barney was in the second grade, he encountered a teacher who apparently did not take to Barney and who also apparently was just not a nice person in general (when she had Barney's little sister about ten years later, many similar instances of unkind doings occurred).  I'm not sure what all this unkind woman did to make little Barney so unhappy, but apparently it was a lot.  Barney internalized it all, never complaining to his parents.  At the same time, he became regularly sick with an upset stomach that just would not go away, so his parents took him to the doctor.  It turns out that through all of his internalized stress, he had developed some serious stomach ulcers.  As a second grader.

These days he doesn't get stomach ulcers, he gets mouth ulcers.  He suffers from what is known as complex canker sores, which means that he gets multiple ulcers at a time that are much deeper and more severe than traditional canker sores, and the breakouts occur at least four times per year.  They show up in clusters on his tongue, gums, roof of his mouth, and the back of his throat.  He has never found a medication that works, and the sores are almost incapacitating when they are at their peak.  They almost always coincide with times of extreme stress, and his breakout this week is his first in a good while.  I am quite positive that it is tied to our housing issues, and I feel so bad for him.  He went to bed at 9:00 tonight just because he couldn't handle the pain any more. 

I know that he feels like he hasn't done enough to provide for his family since we are unable to get out of a house that doesn't suit our needs to be able to get into one that does suit our needs.  Of course, none of these issues are his fault, and he works very hard for the family.  My challenge has become finding a way to show him that he does not need to feel guilty about this situation.  (Not that that will get rid of the mouth sores, but maybe it will help relieve the stress behind the sores). 

The first step is probably de-stressing about it myself.  I have invested much time into prayer over this in the last 24 hours, and today I did not feel the insistent pressure over the situation that I have felt the past couple of weeks, though it did threaten to surface a couple of times.  It feels too little too late at this point though in terms of preventing Barney from internalizing the situation and becoming overly stressed about it himself.  There is a Curious George episode where this dog show director who has managed to lose all the dogs from the show tells the owners to be calm and not to panic, because that is his job and he is going to do just that right now.  I wish I could do that for Barney somehow.  I am excellent at stressing out, and it doesn't cause major mouth sores for me. 

Instead, I am left trying to offer him whatever comfort I can from a drawn bath to eating bland and soft foods with him to rough housing with the kids (in as much as possible being that I am officially as big as a house) so that he can have a break.

Day 65--House Hunting Day

We spent almost four hours today looking at ten different houses in the town where we want to move.  While things were hectic getting out the door this morning, the house hunting itself was very smooth for the first half of the trip.  We were seeing houses that I liked but didn't love.  There was one house that I just loved, but it didn't have any grass for the kids to play on, so it was an immediate and irrevocable no.  We've learned our lesson on that one.  Going through the houses, I felt like there was definite potential in the area even if there wasn't a house that was for me.  There was one that fit all of our criteria in theory, but when we left, we both just admitted that it was not right somehow.  It just felt fine--it felt like if we moved there we would be settling.  I could handle this type of a result--it meant that I had no real reason to need to sell my house right now, since there was nothing that I really wanted to move into anyway.

Then, we went to our seventh, eighth, and ninth houses.  The seventh house was just amazing.  I loved the whole house, and it was not even in the top of our price range.  It had a couple of pitfalls, but it definitely felt like a house that I could live in happily for the next 20+ years.  It felt like it could easily become home for me.  The eighth house was on the same street, and it was also a house I could see myself in, though I didn't love it as much as the first one.  The ninth house was the exact same as the seventh, except that it had a fifth bedroom (a huge bonus) and a very large pond in the backyard (a definite downside for me).  And, it was significantly more in price.

Finding houses that I really loved had a definite and immediate effect on me.  I felt trapped and desperate to get out of our house at any cost.  It is a panicky feeling, much like when I was trying to get pregnant, and I know the feeling stems from not being able to completely control the situation myself.  And, to add to my panic, Jefferson's kicks are a constant reminder of how much greater our need to move will be in the next few months.

On the drive home though, Barney and I had a really good talk, and I prayed, asking God to help me control my panic.  When we got home, we had a quick lunch and then went to work.  Amazingly, I was able to focus really well and got my work completely caught up, which I would have said was impossible.  The panic almost immediately ceased.  It is amazing how sometimes God can really take your breath away with an immediate and obvious answer to prayer.  It always knocks me back a few notches and reminds me just how much He is in control and why trying to anything on my own is such a pathetic idea ultimately.

I am so glad that I built up the nerve to go out and see houses with Barney today.  We may not sell our house anytime soon, and those houses that I love may quickly be the homes of people I will never know.  But, the reminder that God gave me today of how poor of an idea it is to orchestrate this whole move by myself was more needed than I even realized.  I know myself well enough to know that my struggle with control is certainly not going to cease today, but I hope to hang onto this peace for as long as possible and to remember today as a reminder of why it's best that I don't actually pull the strings.

I followed my husband; I humbled myself to the Lord.  The blessings were many, though the house remains as unsellable as ever :)

Day 64--Valentine's Day

I talked to a friend today who said, if today wasn't Valentine's Day, it would have been a really crappy day. I admit openly that I could have been much better today than I ultimately was.

I finally made it to bed at about 1:30 last night, but I got all presents wrapped and all laundry finished. Despite my late bedtime, a car door woke me at 7:00 this morning and immediately my heart sunk thinking about the house and lack of offer. It was a black cloud over my head, but breakfast and the morning with the kids helped tremendously.

After they were in school, I mentioned my gloomy feelings to Barney, and he replied that he thought he would feel the same way and was pleasantly surprised that he didn't. About an hour later though, it hit him, and we both felt quite out of sorts throughout our whole lunch. The feeling lifted somewhat after lunch, but what depresses me is that I allowed myself to get sucked into it at all. Trying to focus on the positives and reminding myself of my many blessings did not allay my sadness at all. Pathetic. It was only exhaustion that finally broke the spell.

And that brings me to point number two. I seem to have walked straight back into the major pitfall that I vowed to avoid last week--overdoing it in the name of perfection. While what I was trying to perfect was not this project but V-Day, it boils down to the same thing. I was so tired at dinner, I was sick at my stomach and couldn't eat. So I met my (non-work related goals) today, but at what cost? There's nothing romantic about a Valentine date who more closely resembles a zombie than the bride she was seven years ago.

Though nothing went particularly wrong today and Barney seemed to like the meals, presents, and general shape of the day, it has not been my finest hour in my personal opinion.

I hope I do better tomorrow. We are house hunting, which is definitely not high on my list at this time. My goal is to be open-minded and to share in Barney's enthusiasm at imaging the future we want for our family.

Day 63--Like a Girl Who Didn't Get a Call after that First Date

It appears that our potential buyers had a change of heart.  Their realtor told us yesterday that she expected to have an offer for us today, but when our realtor checked in with her today, she said that not only had she not heard about an offer but that the couple spent the day going to open houses.

When your house has been on the market for a year, you learn to have low expectations.  But, for some reason, we both thought that we were going to be getting our first offer today.  So, it has been more of a heartbreak than I care to admit.  I am definitely sulking tonight.

The good news is that I was so busy today, I really had comparatively little time to sulk.  I started off the morning with laundry sorting, then church, then more laundry, and then lemon-poppy seed muffins were made for tomorrow's breakfast, followed by homemade heart-shaped sugar cookies for the kids' parties tomorrow.  I had barely sat down to work on some classes when we got a call for a showing this afternoon (feedback: buyer wants a condo downtown instead of our neighborhood after all).  So, we dropped everything to clean up (the kitchen was a disaster zone).  I then went out and did some last minute Valentine's Day shopping and then our grocery shopping during the showing hour.  Barney took the kids to the park.  I came home, fixed dinner, addressed and packaged the valentines and candy, frosted and decorated the cookies, did as much class stuff as possible, and now it's midnight.  I gave up on catching up on my classes (boo) and have not yet decided whether or not to wrap Barney and the kids' presents as had been my original intention.  I also have two more loads of laundry to fold (double boo).  I also gave up on getting the French silk pie for tomorrow night's dinner made this evening long ago.

All of that was listed to say--tomorrow Barney wants me to go out and look around the area we want to move--not official showings but more to get a better idea of the layout of the area and where might be good places to look.  But, I still have a pie to make, am behind in my classes, presents to wrap, laundry to fold, and Valentine's day dinner to make.  I want to give him the gift of going out there, but I am afraid that the cost will be too high in terms of managing everything that I need to do.  I don't know what I will do.

Barney was pleasantly surprised by the shiny car this morning, but the rest of the day has been a little less successful in terms of meeting my daily goal.  There are several factors in this: 1. we were both tense waiting for the phone call 2. while my day was packed, Barney's was not, and I had to struggle not to resent his free time and 3. my lack of downtime over the weekend has created an edge of crankiness in my demeanor that rears its ugly head all too easily, and I feel like Barney too has been more prone to cranky outbursts this weekend for whatever reason.

Tomorrow will come quickly after a short night's rest, but it is Valentine's Day, and I want to make my Valentine feel as special as possible.  So, my goal is to banish my tension and crankiness, try to let go of the disappointment regarding the lack of an offer, and to spend the day celebrating the fact that I am blessed enough to have married the love of my life and celebrating the aforementioned love of my life.

Day 62--A Harried Day

We woke up this morning to our traditional Saturday morning donut breakfast, but nothing about the rest of the day was traditional from there.  We then had to get our house in showing order and get the kids out of the house before 11:00am and then keep them out until the end of the second showing at 3:00pm.

We left the house at 10:57, only to see the first car pull up as we were leaving.  We then tried to get our car washed for the fifth time in two days, only to see a line of 5 cars yet again.  We decided to swing back by the house to see if they were still there, and as of 11:30, they were.  Good sign.  We actually think that there is a good chance we may get our first offer tomorrow, which would be huge (obviously.  duh.)

We then headed to the zoo for a picnic and an opportunity to see the sights.  Both kids were over the moon at this development.  George was particularly excited because he knew that our picnic lunch included Cool Ranch Doritos and Oreos, both special treats and not usually offered at our house.  We enjoyed the nice weather and as many animals as were out.  Though the weather was nice, many of the exhibits were closed because the animal enclosures still had shocking amounts of snow and ice.  However, by 2:00, the kids were getting very fussy, so we headed back to the house, thinking that the second showing might be like the first and be already over.  Of course not.  It was like the very interesting night right before the sickness broke out in our house.

The showing was from 2:00-3:00.  They showed up at 3:01, and stayed for fifteen minutes only to let us know this evening that it would not be a good fit.  By the time they left, we had resorted to playing in an empty lot by our house.  So, the kids were tired, muddy, and well past naptime. 

In some ways though, the kids fared better than Barney and I have--both of us are totally exhausted and ready for bed, but before I go, I am sneaking out for one last attempt at the car wash.  The car is seriously filthy, and it makes it hard to see out the windows.  If I can pull it off, I think it would be a nice little surprise for him in the morning.

Day 61--Like Looking at Permanently Forbidden Cupcakes

Be patient with my back story here; I promise that there's relevance . . .

We first decided to put our house on the market back in early 2009 when we were pregnant with Olivia.  This was right before the housing market really burst into flames.  We priced way too high and had a poor realtor to boot.  There was little to no interest, and within a couple of months, we were re-decorating the guestroom into a nursery and giving up our ability to comfortably host overnight guests.  We tried our hand that summer at the For Sale by Owner route with a much more reasonable price but no more luck.  Soon, Olivia was here and the house went off the market again.

But, once we were settled into a routine with her, the desire to find a more desirable house became much stronger.  Our house is nice but is lacking in several elements that we really want, such as a backyard, a fourth and perhaps fifth bedroom, and a playroom.  Our original plan was to move to a bigger house in the same neighborhood where we currently reside because we really love this neighborhood.  We even put a contingency offer on a house that we loved in our neighborhood during our first attempt at selling the house.  Our offer was turned down, which was extremely disappointing at the time but has turned out to be a good thing (or perhaps a moot point). 

When we decided last March to put the house on the market with a realtor again, we had made a key realization about our neighborhood that we had just not paid sufficient attention to before: the school in our neighborhood is not very good and not some place we want to send our kids, so we were left with the options of leaving the neighborhood or putting our kids into private school.  We chose the former and found a new neighborhood still in our city but that had a much better elementary school. 

When we put our house on the market, we also started to look for houses that we might be interested in purchasing.  We finally found one that we really loved, and then it turned out to be the childhood home of a good friend's mother.  We felt that it was a perfect fit and immediately made a contingency offer that was accepted.  I was so excited to be moving into this wonderful old house.  But, as the deadline for selling our house drew nearer and nearer it was becoming very clear that our house was not going to sell in time despite being listed at what we felt was a very reasonable price.  Soon enough, the deal fell through, and in the meantime we became less and less sure of the area we had picked because though the elementary school was good, the junior high is not, and the high school is not much better. 

It turns out that none of the high schools in the entire city where we live are rated very well, which is shocking to me.  While high school is not in our near future, it is a definite part of our future.  So, after much prayer and conversation, we decided to leave our beloved city for a much smaller town that is within a 15 minute drive of our city.  This new town has very little in terms of amenities, but it has a wonderful school system, much more reasonable housing, and the ability to purchase a nice chunk of land for those interested in such things.

However, despite having picked out a location where we would like to move (and we have been settled on moving to this area for a good six months now), I have adamantly refused to go look at houses.  I've already fallen in love with two houses only to have to walk away from them.  I don't want to do that again.  And, knowing that a contigency offer is not the best route, looking at houses before an offer has ever been made feels like going to a bakery and looking at all the amazing treats only to be told that I will have to wait until some unknown date in the future to get to try anything and that I will just have to hope they have the same selection then.  So, we have not looked at any houses since last spring.

Tomorrow though we have two showings on our house, and both are second viewings of the house.  Barney is very confident that we will sell our house in the next three months at the price we just moved to.  While I haven't looked at any houses, Barney regularly peruses the available selection online, and he has become very interested in going to look.  I am still uninterested in looking.  Actually, I am very uninterested in looking.  Barney has persisted in attempting to excite me about going out to look, which is not something that he has really attempted at all in the past year.

So today I agreed to go out early next week.  It was not an easy decision, and I am still not at the place I need to get myself to before we go look.  However, I feel that ultimately looking at the houses is more important to him than not looking is to me.  Thus we will go, and I have at least two days to work on getting my game face on and to give my self-pep talks the old college try.

In the meantime, we have been hard at work fixing and organizing our house to the best of our ability and as economically as possible.  Selling this house would be a major step for us and a huge answer to prayer.  I will keep you posted :)

Days 59 & 60--An Organization Maven

I had good intentions of posting last night, but Marshall was in town for the evening due to an early flight out today.  So, we stayed up late playing games, which was really fun.  The new downside to this routine is that when we play, my adrenaline starts pumping, and that makes it hard for me to sleep even though we are already going to bed late.  But, I am really, really enjoying the new dynamic that has settled in between Marshall and I and feel like it is another great side effect of my project.  We are certainly not buddies or anything, but I think that we are friends now.  (Does that distinction make sense to anyone besides me I wonder?)

Today was insane, but for good reasons.  We had our first showing since our recent price drop on our house, and during my sleepless hours last night, I created a to-do list of things that needed to be done to make our house more appealing, mostly in terms of organization of drawers and cabinets.  So, I spent all morning organizing and cleaning out the cabinets and drawers in our bathrooms.  Then, my mom came into town to help me shop for fabric for a new blanket for Olivia and the new baby, Jefferson.  During the outing, I told my mom that the one other area that I really want to fix in our house is our pantry.  It's not appealing to the eye, and it is a major detractor to the house because it is in our garage and not in a separated space of its own.  Ironically (or not, depending on how you look at it), when we got the feedback on the showing today, they listed the pantry as the major downside to the house.  However, they want to come back on Saturday for a second showing.  So, my only goal for the next couple of days is to transform our pantry.  I am in full organizer mode here.

Before my mom left, she accompanied the four of us to Target where we all looked at ideas for fixing the pantry area only to determine that I'm going to have to pony up and head to the Container Store.  (What does this have to do with anything you ask?  I promise, I am almost there...)  Despite the fact that I had not even logged into the computer yet for the day, I wanted to drop the kids and hubby back off at the house and head straight to the Container Store to get what I need to get this fixed and help sell our house.  I was even willing to forgo watching my favorite night of TV for the week in order to finish this project.

But, my original plan for tonight was to finally fix Barney his birthday dinner and to sit and have a nice dinner just the two of us.  I couldn't go to the Container Store and make his dinner in the same night.  I had to choose, and I chose dinner with Barney.  He got a very nice steak, homemade mashed potatoes, crescent rolls, and three cheese pasta.  The meal was a success.  I put him first tonight, and even though I really wanted to forge ahead with my project, I know it was the right decision.  Would Barney have resented me for picking up takeout and going to the store and putting his birthday dinner on hold until tomorrow?  I doubt it, after all it is several weeks late already anyway.  Still though, the pantry can wait until tomorrow, and while technically so could putting Barney first, it seems like an awfully bad decision when you frame it in terms of holding off on spending quality time with your husband and putting him as a first priority in your life so that you can make your pantry look nice.

Day 58--A Parenthood Lesson in Marriage

Barney and I both enjoy watching the NBC show called Parenthood that airs on Tuesday nights.  So, tonight we watched the show as our evening was winding down, and it afforded me a small insight into what I want to accomplish, or at least what I am trying to change.

The show features a variety of couples in various stages and forms of marriage, and tonight's episode really focused on two marriages in particular.  In both of these story lines, I found something to learn about myself and my marriage.  In the first, there is a couple who are engaged to be married soon--Crosby and Jasmine.  Crosby is a very laid-back man who has not really grown up despite being well into his thirties, and Jasmine is a very take-charge woman who has strong opinions and no problem voicing and enforcing her views.  In the other marriage, Kristina is a stay-at-home wife whose sole responsibility is to take care of her family and to support her husband.  Barney pointed out to me tonight that when they are speaking to others as a united front, Kristina looks to her husband before speaking, uses body language to convey total support of whatever her husband says, and often merely echoes his statements when she does speak.  While she has a voice in private conversations, he is clearly in charge and the dominant force in his marriage while her role is as the strong supporting wife.

Barney really hates Jasmine's character.  He has loathed her from the beginning and finds very little that is redeeming about her.  His vehemence was never stronger than tonight, and I found it to be very unsettling.  The problem is that I see much of myself in Jasmine.  I have strong opinions, want to take charge of situations, and all too often lack tact in how I do so.  I know many women who really run the show while making it appear that their husband is in charge.  That is a gift that none of the women in my family were blessed with.  Barney made a big joke tonight of making me re-watch (multiple times) a scene where Kristina acted as total support and back up for her husband during a conversation with their daughter, so that I would "learn" the appropriate way for a wife to behave.  He was making a joke, but I think that in many ways it was what I used to call kidding on the square, or making a joke out of something that might not really be that much of a joke.

However, like Jasmine and unlike Kristina, I am a significant contributor to the family's financial situation.  While I may not have a conventional job with conventional hours or an office outside of my home, I am a full time working mother and wife.  Barney has always strongly advocated that I work and has never wanted me to become a stay-at-home mother and wife.  My role is simply not just one of being a support system and caretaker.  On the other hand, I know and believe that my take-charge instincts and sense of entitlement to making decisions is not an enhancement to our marriage.  Essentially, I think that Barney and I both know and are aware that we don't fit into the traditional mold of husband and wife that we grew up learning was appropriate, but on the other hand, we aren't sure exactly what is the best way to meld the traditional views that we hold with the modern family life that we lead.

While I want to make Barney happy, I don't want to do it at the cost of significant personal happiness.  I don't know if that sounds selfish, but I don't think that a marriage is healthy if only one person is happy in the marriage, so deliberately making myself unhappy seems foolish.  My role is and will be for the foreseeable future as a working and financially contributing member of this household.  But, even if that were not the case, I am not sure that I am made in Kristina's mold anyway.  So, I don't want to be a Kristina, but I sure don't want to be a Jasmine either.  As I watched the episode I was not any more impressed with her behavior than Barney was, despite my ability to empathize with her.  When I think back on my own past behavior that somewhat mirrors hers, I am not proud and do not have a desire to continue that behavior.

So, the question then becomes what exactly is my proper role as a wife in this marriage, and how do I learn to assert myself in this marriage without taking over and becoming controlling, demanding, over-powering, or even just bossy.  I think that my reputation for having those characteristics began early in my toddler years, so this is not a recently learned behavior that I am battling.

Much of what I am trying to do this year is to learn how to be a better wife for my husband.  My ultimate goal is to find ways to improve our marriage by improving the kind of wife that I am--deliberately, each day, working to strengthen our partnership and commitment to one another through whatever means works, including finding ways to make him happy, openly displaying my love and affection, and by taking care of my husband and family to the very best of my ability.  Maybe that will sometimes mean stepping into a role that is more like Kristina and allowing Barney take the lead and handle a situation, and maybe that means sometimes asserting myself and my opinions like Jasmine when by doing so I will be best serving my family's interests and needs at that moment.

My picture of what this all should look like is not very clear, but at least I'm getting a clearer picture of what it is I want to do.

Day 57--A Peek into Normalcy??

Today, the sun shone bright, the kids woke up healthy, and they went to school for the first time in what seems like two full weeks (though that is not technically true).  Barney and I had a real work day at the house today, which was truly something to appreciate.  It says something about where you are in your life when you come to appreciate a normal work day over a snow day.  I'm not sure I like what that says about me . . .

While Barney and I enjoyed some peace and quiet, the flip side of that story is that Olivia and George had to re-adjust to the idea of school after such a long period of being out of school, and in our experience, this can sometimes be a rough transition for them.  Overall, the kids both seem to enjoy school.  They have specific friends they enjoy playing with, they both like their teachers, and they come home happy and (at least in George's case) ready to tell stories of things that they did that they liked each day.  But, while picking the kids up from school is a highlight of the day, dropping them off is the hardest part of the day, and this job almost exclusively falls to Barney.

So I decided today to take the kids to school today and to deal with the potential trauma (drama?) that could ensue.  As I was getting ready to take them though, George had a minor meltdown because he wanted his daddy to take him.  Barney quickly stepped in, stating that he would take them to school, letting me off the hook.  But, I volunteered to ride along with him, so we both ended up taking them today.  I think that ultimately this was a good decision so that neither of us had to face the goodbyes alone.  Olivia teared up a little bit as we were leaving and was definitely trying to cling to me, but by the time we dropped off George and I peeked back into her room, she was interacting with her friends and was just fine.  George was more affectionate than normal as we dropped him off, but there were no tears, and his teacher did a good job of welcoming him back to the class and getting him involved with an activity right away.

As we left, we both acknowledged that the school situation that they are in is not the one that we ultimately want for our family, and we became more motivated than ever to sell our house so that we can move into a more permanent situation and make the changes to their school situation that we want to make.  I have been in favor of a pretty significant price decrease for a while now, and after dropping the kids off at school today, Barney agreed to do it.  Our house has been very reasonably priced for a good while now, so we can only hope and pray that this latest drop will actually motivate a buyer.

Day 56--Super Bowl Sunday

Today was as hectic as I thought it would be, but all in all, it was a good day.  We spent the day with Barney's family, starting with lunch at his sister's house (they live about an hour away), and then we hung out with the family there for the afternoon.  George and Olivia in particular seemed to very much enjoy themselves throughout the afternoon.  Then, we headed over to another house in the area for the Super Bowl and to celebrate Barney's niece's first birthday.  It was another fun party, and the whole family seemed to have a good time.

I worked hard to accommodate Barney today by being willing to leave early despite the lack of work that I completed this morning and by being willing to stay through the whole game, despite knowing I would come home to a couple hours of work and that the kids would be way off their sleep schedule as a result.  I found that both sacrifices were worth the enjoyment that both my husband and kids had over the course of the day.  Sometimes I think that relaxing is actually one of the hardest things for me to do, even while simultaneously pretty much always longing for some quality R&R time.  It was good for me to see friends and family today, to get to dress up and feel pretty, and to forget about work for several straight hours.

Our activities for today were remarkably similar to what we did last year for the Super Bowl, and honestly, I think that I had much the same attitude last year.  I knew that it would be an event that Barney would really enjoy and that would be fun for me as well, so even last year it was not something that met much resistance or resentment from me.  I still feel like there is somehow a difference though, and I think that if I had to pinpoint it, the closest would be that last year, this attitude was an anomaly from the stress that I usually brought to such excursions, while now I feel that it is much more the norm.  Regardless of the issues I currently face in my attempts to clarify how best to proceed with this project, I consider this achievement to be a small but notable success in terms of making progress in bettering my marriage.

Day 55--The World's Longest Trip to Chipotle

I wish I could report today that I've had some great inspiration or even managed to organize my thoughts more coherently since last night, but I'm still mucking about here.  So, in response to my confusion, I sort of gave myself the day off.  I slept until 8:45 this morning, and then got to enjoy donuts for breakfast--no cooking for me.  We played around in the city for the morning, and then during nap time I was able to get all of my work for the day done as well as getting in a 20 minute catnap.  Other than doing laundry, I took it pretty easy, though what was nice was that me taking it easy did not translate into Barney having to take care of the kids.  Since the workload was light today and since I didn't need a big nap, we just got to enjoy downtime with the kids in the midst of laundry and other such necessities.

So, when it came time for dinner, I took a similarly laissez faire approach and offered to either make chili or to go to Texas Roadhouse, which is a steakhouse that Barney and I both loved in college and would also frequent for a nice night out when we were first married.  However, there is not a Texas Roadhouse in our city, and the closest one is almost a 30 minute drive.  The restaurant itself is probably not worth that drive, but we've been talking about it and craving certain foods from there for months now.  With nothing else on the docket, we decided just to pack the kids up and go.  And we did.  Only to arrive at 6:15 to be faced with a 60+ minute wait, which was not going to work for the kids.  It probably wasn't our smartest move to decide to go out to eat on the night before the Super Bowl in the city hosting said bowl.  It was very interesting just getting in and out of downtown.

So, we turned around and drove back home, stopping three minutes from our house to pick up Chipotle for Barney (as I said--no more of that for me until post-pregnancy).  I had leftovers.  Then, tonight, we watched a movie, and I finished a book, always a huge pleasure.

While I didn't break my back trying to come up with new ways to treat Barney today, I was very conscious of making sure that his day was good and of doing what I could to make him happy.  It may have lacked the planning that was such an integral part of my concept for this project, but it was a good day--for both of us.  We will go to bed happy and content tonight (well Barney already has, but I'm following right now).  It was nice to have the low-key today because tomorrow is going to be insane.  We've got two birthday parties and a Super Bowl party.  Oh, and to get to where we need to be, we just have to cross past the site of the Super Bowl itself both coming and going.  It will be an adventure if nothing else :)

Day 54--A Definitional Crisis

Last night, something very belatedly occurred to me.  I think that this project is suffering from a definitional crisis.  I'm afraid that I don't really have my terms clear in my own head or even necessarily my goals fully defined.  What I mean is this--is my goal to be deliberately kind each day to Barney, is it to show him each day through a deliberate act how much I love him, or is the goal to deliberately find ways to make Barney happy each day?  I have somehow muddled all three of these concepts into one murky idea, trying to make happiness, kindness, and love out to be synonyms, when of course they are anything but.

This has all come from a (rather painful) personal struggle that I have been facing in my faith walk and from a problem with separating out those ideas in terms of what God has promised us and what His goals are for our lives.  I am learning a slow painful lesson on this that I tried to explain on here and erased  three times before I gave up.  I just don't have a complete enough understanding of what I'm learning yet to enunciate it on paper (or a screen as it were).

But, what I do know is that just as much as I'm making a muck of things in my walk with God, I'm in danger of making a muck of things here too.  I keep thinking about this conversation I had a month or two ago with a woman from the church where I grew up.  She was telling me that she was very excited about her daughter's newest relationship and felt hopeful that this one might be successful because her daughter was finally willing to make sacrifices for the new boy in her life in a way she had never done before for the previous guys she had dated.  Apparently the daughter has been engaged on at least two other occasions, and both of those relationships were with a boy who was more in love with her than she was with him.  The daughter received much out of the relationships in terms of gifts, adoration, and having a personal lap dog.  But, ultimately both times it was the daughter who ended things with the boys who had so adored her.  The daughter was getting so much but it was all the wrong thing.

I don't want to mis-characterize my relationship with Barney here--I don't think that there is an unequal balance of love.  We truly are both soul mates and life partners, and I know that his love for me runs as deep as my love for him.  However, I think that there is a danger to this project that I could allow the dynamic of our relationship to become corrupted if I don't get a handle on exactly what I am trying to do here.  I know that my goal is not to wait on him hand and foot, and I know that my goal should not come at the cost of taking care of myself personally (which it has been lately on occasion).  I've mentioned before that I'm a competitive person, and I somehow started competing with myself on here--feeling a need to one-up myself and feeling like I needed to come up with something new, different, exciting, special, and unique each day.  Not meeting my goal has become tantamount to personal failure on my part.

This morning I got out of bed with a miserably sore throat and incredibly strong back pain.  Ignoring both of these, I gathered the children, and we headed downstairs where I did a little bit of work before starting to work on breakfast.  The menu consisted of cinnamon toast for George, oatmeal for my sore throat, and fancy cast-iron skillet French toast for Barney.  It took me a full hour to get things cooked, eaten, and cleaned, and by the end I was hiding in the kitchen sobbing from pain.  My tolerance to handle anything was dangerously low, and I had no idea if there were anymore reserves to tap into.

I knew even before I started my fruitless exercise for the perfect breakfast that I have gotten off-track somewhere.  Something that started out as such a good thing has turned into an exercise in personal sacrifice.  Somewhere, somehow this has become about me and my need to be successful at everything I do.

The first thing I think I need to do is to go back to the very beginning and re-think and re-define my goal.  I still very much want to continue with this project, but in order to do so, I need a re-definition.  So, my goal for the next few days is to spend some serious time in prayer and reflection figuring out just exactly how to turn this back into something about improving my marriage and--what?? making Barney happy?  showing him that he's loved?  brightening his days?  I don't know.  But, I promise to keep you posted.

Day 53--A Definite Case of Cabin Fever

While Barney may have scoffed last night at my gesture of getting up for him today, he got up for me this morning without hesitation as though our days had switched--a clear sign that he counted yesterday's gesture after all.  So, I got an extra 45 minutes of blessed sleep this morning, and when I came downstairs it was to a sunny greeting and a good morning hug from Barney, the first signs that whatever was amiss yesterday was going to be okay today.  And it was, despite the fact that I had a very heavy workload of work that had to be accomplished today. 

About midmorning, Barney announced that he was going absolutely stir crazy being stuck in the house, so we hatched a plan for he and the kids to go to the local library.  They were gone for about an hour and a half, and during that time, I got a great deal of work and some light housekeeping taken care of.  I think it was a needed break for everyone, and spirits were much better this afternoon/evening than they had been before, despite the less-than-surprising news that school would be cancelled yet again for tomorrow.  Four days of cancelled school in a row for snow has never happened in this area before in the 21 years that I've lived in Texas.

I also finally broke my cooking streak (a necessity partly due to fridge space and partly due to time).  My gift today was a sweet email and along with a picture of Barney and I from New Years that I'm not sure he'd ever seen.  I also made a pact with him today that for either our ninth or tenth wedding anniversary, we are going to go to Africa to go on a safari.  I got to do it when I was fifteen, and it was amazing.  But, I think he'd like it even more than I did, and when I was reading an essay from a student today about his trip to South Africa, all I could think is how amazing Barney would find it.  It's a pact I mean to keep.

I'm not sure exactly what was wrong yesterday, and I would be lying if I said that I did anything to fix it today--it just seemed to right itself in the night, which is a blessing that I very much appreciate.  Early in our marriage, if things felt "off" to me, I would be unable to sleep, convinced it was the first sign that our marriage was doomed for failure.  There was more than one night where I even awoke Barney to make him re-hash the day with me and to try to dig into whatever the problem was and to fix it right then and there.  I can say with absolute confidence that my tactics then were 100% the wrong thing to do, and while it would be just as idiotic to assume that all problems would fix themselves in the night, I have learned enough to know that sometimes going to sleep with unsettled issues can be the absolute right thing to do, despite what conventional wisdom might tell you.

We have had tickets for weeks to go to the rodeo tomorrow, something that is very much a local tradition around here and something we've never done before.  My parents were also planning to attend, but the bad roads seem to have closed that door.  However, we live less than a mile from the grounds, and I called and verified that the rodeo is in an enclosed building with heat.  So, our plan is still to go.  It will be something very different and not inside our house.  We are all looking forward to it.  I'm planning a Western themed day for the family to make things even more fun, and I am hoping it is something that Barney will really enjoy :)

Day 52--A Somehow Unsettled Feeling

I decided to pull out the big guns today and offer up a gift that I don't give lightly--I got up for Barney on my day to sleep in, and I did this with the full desire to continue sleeping (something that I haven't felt much of for the last week).  George was up and wanting cinnamon toast (the square kind Mommy, not the round kind).  So, we gathered up Olivia, put socks on and headed downstairs to make breakfast.  I have to note here that I have cooked something like 10 straight homemade meals without a single break for eating out or eating leftovers, which has to far exceed my record of anything like this in the past.

I was very surprised when Barney came downstairs less than half an hour later, really not capitalizing on his time to sleep in.  He never commented on my early treat, and when I said something about it at dinner, he scoffed saying that since the kids slept in later than usual (to 8:00am) it didn't count for anything, especially since he was up so soon afterwards.  I immediately let the matter drop because things have been slightly strange between us all day.

I honestly cannot exactly explain what I mean nor can I account for it.  I have one untested and definitely unexplored theory related to our finances, but it seems tenuous at best to even assume that is what is going on.  Our life has been far from normal for weeks now, so that makes it harder to explain too.  The best that I could do would be to say that something in his manner or attitude seemed slightly off all day long, though only in his interactions with me and definitely not in his interactions with the children.

It's not that he is yelling at me or criticizing me or ignoring me, but it is like he is just one step away from one or all of those things at any given interaction with me.  My tentative attempts at trying to figure out what is going on have been quickly rebuffed, so I am not sure how best to proceed tomorrow.  The one thing I do know for sure is that he isn't really happy right now, but I'm not sure why or how to fix it.

The kids will be home again tomorrow as school has been cancelled yet again, leaving both of us to be very far behind in work and very short in time for anything other than childcare or work, which of course is not optimal anyway.  I retire to bed tonight with no sure plan of action for tomorrow, but I know that my goal is absolutely to bring back the harmonious co-existence that Barney and I have been largely enjoying over these past couple of months.

Day 51--A Snow Day

I woke up this morning at 4:30am to the sound of ice coming down steadily on my roof.  I knew then what I had feared the night before--today was going to be a snow day, making the chance of me getting a full day of work in very slim.  Because sleep is still fairly hard for me due to the congestion, I never could manage to get to sleep again, so I got up at 5:30 and got a couple of hours of work in before anyone else woke up, which really helped.

I decided that today I would make it a special snow day for the kids, just like I remember when I was a kid.  So, when they woke up, we made sausage balls and snow donuts (basically deep fried biscuit pieces covered in powdered sugar--super healthy I know).  The kids got to shake the donuts in the sugar, and they loved it.

We then played all morning, and then after nap time (which was basically playing in bed time for both kids), George and I made Barney homemade oatmeal cookies and a hot chocolate.  It was one of the first times where George was really interested in the cooking process from the start to the finish, and I really loved sharing that with him.  And, Barney loved the special afternoon treat :)

There weren't any amazing moments, but it was a special day of bonding for all four of us as we cozied up in the house and enjoyed the view of the winter wonderland outside.  We weren't silly enough to actually go outside in it though! 

I am yet again totally exhausted and not feeling great, but I made some really good headway on work today during the early morning hours and the after bedtime hours.  That's probably a good thing since the schools have already announced that tomorrow will be another snow day.  So, I'm off to my bath to contemplate fun ideas for tomorrow.  Maybe I will tackle some arts and crafts or something.