The countdown

There are a lot of things we're counting down to. I don't like countdowns.

1. Moving. Yeah, this is actually going to be fun. We're taking 5 days to drive to the next place and planning on taking a good look around on our way. Someone gets to come pack for me, load a truck for me, unload, unpack, and take the boxes and packing material far, far away. We managed to move 7 times in 5.5 years (which, of course, doesn't include my two moves in the year before marrying him) and this is the first time I've had someone pack for me. Yeah, we could make more money by moving it all ourselves but... why?? My back and sanity have to be worth something. The longest we've stayed in one place was the 4 years we spent in the Midwest, but we still managed to move our things 3 times during that period.

2. Man starting his final phase of training. We've had a lot of job changes over the years and now, after almost 2 years of figuring this thing out, another job change, and a prolonged stay in a place where we expected to stay no longer than a year, we're finally ready for the last little bit before a roughly 4 year stay in one place. He's had who knows how many jobs and I'm hoping this one sticks for a while. -sigh- Who knows.

3. School is starting at the end of the month. It starts on Monday here, but I'm going to go ahead and have them enrolled after we move, since they'd only get one week of school here. I'm so freakin' excited to have the older two in school but at the same time it struck me like a ton of bricks that Tag, the YOUNGER of the older two kids is going to be reading and writing and doing math soon. It seemed perfectly natural and right for the OLDEST to go off and do that but now I'm working my way through the ranks and I'm ecstatic and a bit awed at the idea. I have their physicals and shots all up to date and ready to go, and plans for lunch boxes and thermoses and homework time and daily walks after they're gone... ah, dreams.

4. Our fourth child is pretty close to crawling now. She's getting up on hands and knees and occasionally hands and toes and hauls herself along the ground with her arms appearing to act like oars. She's the only one of my children who has become attached to my hair, burying her face in it when she's tired. She burrows into us and hangs on with a fierce tenderness that only babies seem to be able to pull off.

I've started and frogged a knit wash cloth so many times that I'm becoming disgusted with myself. I know how to do the knit stitch, I'm eternally shaky on the purl stitch (because I hold the yarn Continental-like) but can't seem to manage to do anything else. I've tried cabling but it ended up so wonkety and looking like a saggy Swiss cheese that I gave up. I've tried doing some simple laces that looked like limp, mad chicken wire. I've done hats but they all seem to turn out to shallow or too narrow. I finally picked up a wash cloth pattern that looked very simple. Cool! I thought. It's all knit. Right up my alley. I was tricked by the increase though -- it was a single yarn over that ended up making a really neat border! I was shocked and delighted as it started to take shape and my hands started to shake as I knit and I was so proud of myself. Then Tag took my circular needle out so he could have nunchuks and I had to start all over. I was so in awe of my new ability to make a border (a border!!) that I had to start it over and over again until I quit making a mistake every line. Emboldened by this new development I tried another pattern that looked pretty easy that involved things called "ssk" and "b3" which sounds like child's play. Butter fingers that I am, I just couldn't bring myself to push past row 9 when I found that my traveling vine looked more like an cheese grater that had gone through a tree chopper. I found myself longing for the companionship of my more proficient friends, namely Krista and my Grandma B and Friend C who can all knit rounds around me.

So I've been faced with the reality that I'm very mediocre at all of the things I've tried to pick up and labor over. Even with teaching, which I love, I just don't seem to bring the level of professionalism I strive for, and what kind of knitter can't even bloody purl with confidence?

I guess someone out there has to be comic relief, the sort of person who, sadly, just sort of muddles through anything she tries to do but laughs about it, shrugs, and tries again. At least I can heft a mug of rootbeer float with the best of them.

It's just been one of those weeks where I can't do anything right and it's wearing on my confidence.

So, it's noon and I have yet to get much of anything done because I wonder over and over "what's the point?" Spend 5 hours cleaning and what's my reward? 30 mins puts it right back where it was. Spend an hour and a half cooking and then what? 20 mins of family dinner time and another 2 hours of clean up. I've kind of given up. A couple of nights ago I told Man that I would neither cook nor do dishes. He took us to Chipotle. The night before last, I told him that we could either endure one of my half-hearted creations from what was left in our depleted freezer or he could go to Costco and get a pizza. He semi-cheerfully retrieved the pizza because the idea of a pile of slop made from rice, braats, cheese, and frozen veggies on a tortilla just wasn't working for him. I finally cooked yesterday but stupidly cooked the wheat pizza crust the wrong way and made, you guessed it, very mediocre pizza.

Mediocre compared to what, you may ask. Compared to what I've surprised myself with occasionally in the past. Sometimes inspiration hits and something comes out of the oven that tastes like it had been tweaked by angels, and other times I can't even make macaroni and cheese to save my life.

The lesson from the latest book I've read was "in everything... give thanks." I took some time yesterday to pray about that, searching in my heart for those things I don't want to give thanks for but really should. I got to Man's shoulder, which had been responding to treatment but is now right back to where it was. I cried and said thank you for it, and realized that I don't know why I should be grateful that part of his body is broken. What have I learned from it? What have we gained? I don't even know. It seems like a pathetic thing to grovel in forced gratitude for something I don't even understand, but then realized that, for most of the time over the past few years, I have had to act in faith that I would eventually be grateful for whatever it was that we experienced. When Man lost his job that he had to commute 45 mins for mere weeks before our second child was born, I was angry and scared. He eventually got a job that paid more and was much closer, and then I was grateful. Now, I have to pull a switcheroo and be grateful for the shoulder that torments us both (him more than me, of course), simply trusting that some sort of good will come of it.

Now I suppose I should give thanks for a house whose natural state is the other side of a pig sty despite whatever effort I know how to put into it. Faith can be an uncomfortable thing, but I guess that's ok. Comfort never really got me what I want in life, but it sure is fun to enjoy it every now and then.