Saturday, November 26, 2011

Peace and Quiet

Aah. I need these days of rest and relaxation. These past few months have been a crazy combination of emotional stress and too many happenings. I can handle the happenings, but the emotional stuff is strangling.

The past four days have been blissfully easy. I would like my life to always be like this. Jesse is home from college, and he is so happy for every single meal I fix. "This is the best _____ I have ever had!" Cooking for starving college students is terribly rewarding. I've baked 3 pies, one cheesecake, and two batches of cookies, besides all the meals that he's requested. He's so easy to spoil.

Duncan has taken to playing chess lately. He'll play by himself if neither his Dad nor Jesse are available to play. I'm not exactly sure how that works, but he has some method going on. Randy is out for a hike. Jesse's shopping at Goodwill. Laurel is being a good girl and getting all her work done for classes on Monday. My laptop is at the Apple store getting fixed, so I can't do lesson plans. I'm not sure I would even if I could.

My only goal for today is to clean our bedroom. It's nearly 4 p.m. and I haven't even begun, but who really cares?

My parents, who live just a minute down the road from us, left to go to Illinois today. My Uncle Max—my mother's older brother— had three small strokes and then surgery to remove a bowel obstruction, and he is not recovering well from his surgery. They have gone to stay as long as they are needed. A week? A month? We don't know. My brothers and I are all waiting, suspended in that strange place of knowing we are going to lose someone we love very soon.

It is hard for me to have my parents gone. I miss them, and I worry about the effect of all this travel on them. My father, who is nearly 87, has made the 9-hour trip five times in the past 10 days. It is hard, so hard, to watch my parents age.

The cat is snoring on the couch. The dog growls in her sleep now and then. The back door slams shut. Three leaves flutter to the ground, two red and one yellow.

Thanksgiving.

3 comments:

  1. We all need these days. I have had a similar one. My husband and older two kids are gone out of state visiting various family. My little two have been upstairs playing in their jammies all day. I have piddled with housework, done laundry, gone for a walk, relaxed, watched some t.v. I have a list as long as my arm of things I would really like to do. But, I haven't and probably won't. No worries!

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  2. PLEASE tell me you have a fancy cup 'o Joe with you as you relax...or perhaps even a class of sweet tea, since it is bit on the warmer side today...

    So glad you are enjoying a bit of a respite...

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  3. I'll be praying for your Uncle Max. So glad you got to have some relaxing down time! Holly

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