The last couple days have been amazing, with high highs and low lows.  Can’t live that way for long. 

After a difficult week full of half-days, my nerves, my patience, and my sanity have worn thin. 

A friend of mine called to see how I was.   She knew about November at my house, the extra kid, my sister’s surgery, my grandmother’s fall, my mother-in-law’s stroke.  She also knew that a couple of my children got in trouble, the oldest being my fourteen-year-old son.  He’s been doing all those things I did at fourteen and it’s been very frightening.  Two weeks after I turned fifteen, I ran away from home.

She knew about all that and she knew that the stress was wearing my husband and me very thin.

Anyway!  She called last night as I was making supper.  I was frazzled.  I had struggled to get my word count to match up with the Nanowrimo word count.  I fought with my son to get him to do the right thing, to apologize to someone he offended, to follow through with a phone call to begin the rectification of  a situation he created, to verify that he had his homework in.  My follow throughs with him get twisted into his stinkin’ thinkin’, “You don’t love me.”

“No, I’m not going to let you get away with this because I love you.”

She asked me where the children were. 

I told her.

She told me to answer the door.

It was wonderful.  She came in, bearing gifts.  She had flowers, beautiful flowers.  She had a gift bag for me filled with a care package type gifts.  There was a cute blue bear.  I’m not much into stuffed animals or cutesy things, but this hit the mark.  She brought me a new tall mug.  It’s red with white snowflakes, very cool, with two very fancy cocoa packets inside.  She brought me pretzel’s covered with white chocolate and choc peanut butter Hagen Daz Ice cream.  It was just wonderful.  She said, “Happy December, November is done.”

My husband came home and was focused on me.  He had found a pickup he wanted to buy.  His hatchback has a sticky accelerator and exhaust leak (into the cab), not to mention it leaks oil like a sieve.  But he stopped to listen to me and my day.  I took twelve minutes of his time, face to face, and he was only focused on me.

He ended up purchasing that pick up this morning.  It was a good buy.  I’m not going to go into that here, but I will say that while he was gone, I had another bad interaction with my oldest son.  It was the second bad interaction today, but perhaps, just perhaps I reached him.  We talked about why my love doesn’t seem like others’ love.  We talked about those ‘spoiled’ kids who get whatever they want, whose parents walk around trying to be all buddy-buddy, but they’re not doing the kid any favors, because they’re not reaping consequences.

When I was a young woman, I floated a check for five bucks.  It hit the bank before the money did, and no one would help me pay the overdraft or the check.  Why?  Because they didn’t love me?  No, because they did.  Much better I reap the consequences for a five dollar check than reap the consequences when I try to float something much larger.  I reaped what I sowed.  And now my oldest son is forced to do that exact thing.  He’s sown some seeds and now he’s having to reap them.  We’re along for the ride, but we’re not rescuing him. 

Are we all angry with him?  Yes. 

Do we love him still?  Absolutely.

The conversation was much longer than that.  I gave him painful illustrations of what it would be like for him if we didn’t love him.

Moving on?  It was resolved peacefully.

When my youngest was done with her basketball game, I returned to the house in the snow that was falling around us.  I nearly wrecked with a suburban.  He glared at me all the way through the intersection.  Dude, I totally stopped.  Get over yourself and turn on your HEADLIGHTS so you can be seen.  Slow down!

After an afternoon of grocery shopping with my husband here in Cheney, flirting with me and treating me to lunch, and thrilled over his new purchase, I returned home to...  a fight between the four kids.  Great.

But then up again. Tonight, we went to my friends’ house.  They fed us potato soup and rolls, cheese and crackers.  We ate trail mix and popcorn.  And then can you guess what we did?

We got in the hot tub in the middle of this snow storm we’re having.  It was beautiful.  The guys rolled in the snow and jumped in again.  We opened our mouths and caught snowflakes on our tongues.  Their neighbor lady had to check out what was causing all the noise.  We had an excellent time.  The sky was overcast, the snow brilliantly white and cold.  Our towels and sandals were covered in snow when we got out.  We changed, visiting for a couple last moments, and then dusted our cars off of all the snow that accumulated since we arrived, and left.

So after arriving home and napping on the couch, my husband, the hero, was called into work.  It used to be that I hated his having to leave the house so late at night, but now I think I understand it better.  It’s ten o’ clock at night, and I’d like to go to bed, but I can’t because there’s two inches of standing water in my bedroom.  What do I do? Who do I call?

I’ll tell you who.  My husband. 

So hopefully, someone will have a better night, and I’m praying for safe travel.  There’s been 100 accidents in the the Spokane area during the day today.  People bein’ stupid; drivin’ stupid.

Lord, thank you that today is over, that this week is over, that this month is over.