le weekend

Sooo, busy weekend.

Due to the fact that my children don't seem to get that whole thing called sleeping, I am very tired. But life goes on. So when Ellis came home from school on Friday, we were off to Lancaster. Again! It's about an hour and a half drive, and it felt overwhelming to me at the time. But it was my grandma's birthday, and I had to be there! It was a brilliantly sunny afternoon. The countryside spoke harvest with crinkly cornfields and pumpkins lined up beside the road. Tractors (or horse teams, depending on the farmer's religious affiliation) were out cutting hay, harvesting corn, bringing tobacco to dry in barns with vented walls.

In the middle of the rolling hills of farms is the little town with my grandma's retirement home. We knocked on the door, and entered saying "Happy Birthday!" She said, "Oh wonderful!"

We went over to my parents' for supper. And mom and i made a movie tour of their new house to show grandma. And then I drove home late.

On Saturday, I went to a baby shower and then hung out at my ILs a bit, while Chris was cramming work for a deadline. We cleaned house later. I'm feeling antsy, like I need to declutter scary corners that have hithertofore been ignored. Maybe it's reverse nesting. Or fall cleaning. Or the desire to decorate, but I have to dust first. At any rate, right now, I feel like I'm fighting a losing battle against Clutter of all sorts: house clutter, mind clutter, time clutter. My head is all in a fog.

I was heartily cheered by a long phone chat with my old college buddy and realized that it had been an extremely long time (over a year?) since we've talked. When we were both newlyweds at the same time, we used to talk on the phone while making dinner. This time, I was making dinner, and she was cleaning cobwebs.

Since routines have changed somewhat around here, I'm trying to make new habits that involve good, quality connecting time in the family. When Ellis gets home from school, I have a picnic snack ready for him, and we sit for hours playing together, talking, looking for airplanes in the sky. And Chris and I try to have "adult dinner" once a week or so. That would be dinner without kids, adults only. It's sort of in lieu of a date. Or an at-home date. If we buy a bottle of wine, it's just as good as a date (even better, in some respects), and much less complicated, because no babysitters, waiters, too much money spent, etc. It suits us just right. So we had "adult dinner" last night. We watched a whole disc of Gilmore Girls and had pork chops and spaghetti squash. I prepared the squash a little differently this time, with parmesan cheese and bits of crumbled bacon in addition to a little salt, pepper, and butter. So yummy. We ate the whole squash.

Our little Christmas concert choir at church has begun rehearsals. It's going to be a great program, and it's so fun to be a part of. But she asked me to sing soprano. Eeek! My voice is so out of shape.

And here we are at Sunday night again, eating leftover pizza, thinking about the week. In some ways I feel excited to jump in there; in others, I feel like I'm losing already.