Middle age...

So apparently, the fact that I alternately want to hug everyone or hide in my closet next to my snow boots is perfectly normal. Lovely.

While tons of my middle aged friends get to ride the hot flash roller coaster, I get mildly warm and take off my sweater, and I'm good. But the mood swings. Woo Hoo!

And then there's memory loss. I can't remember the last time I finished a complete

And then there's memory loss.

And forgetfulness.

And mild forgetfulness.

And mood swings.

And slight memory loss.

Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!

Hal on Facebook...

When I look at the Facebook status bar now, it reads, "How are you feeling, Norma?"

Is that supposed to make me hear the voice of HAL from 2001: A Space Odyssey?

Seven months later...

Totally quit blogging for a while, but I feel like I want a place to trace my thoughts again. So here I am.  Enter at your own risk.

I still miss my dad. He used to read this to keep up with what we were doing. That's largely why I blogged.

My brother, Robbie, lives on the family farm now. He may move for a graphic design job in either Atlanta or somewhere in Texas, but for the moment, he's cleaned out the mess that accumulated on the little 100 acres of fields and woods and is battling entropy in the farmhouse with all he's got.

Robbie and I texted a few times today. He found mine and Jimmy's wedding video. VHS. Archeological artifact. He also found a box of old coins. We know my uncle left them at the farm, but we don't know whether they were for just Robbie or for both of us. So we decided to sell them. We'll use the money to have the driveway repaired.

Kelsey went to Carolina. Loves it. Perfect fit. Joined sorority. Made Dean's List. Double majoring in Journalism and Psychology. Mission "Hark the Sound" = success.

Zane fought the Battle of APUSH. There were a few casualties, not the least of which was our Christmas. Overall, though, I think we all survived.

Zack hates math. We hate math on his behalf. We are not of the Math Tribe. Zack is also playing his second season of i9 flag football.  Apparently we are of the Football Tribe.

Head Coach Jimmy is at it again.

Full-time teaching kicked my butt.  Spring semester is better so far. We're just one week into it.

I'm teaching Honors English II, Honors Creative Writing, Journalism, and Middle School Creative Writing. I'm sure my butt will get kicked again at some point, but right now I'm in my happy place, so shhhhhh...

For reals, though, I love teaching 10th-grade English again. I never thought I'd return to a classroom other than as a parent, but it feels like home.

Last  Monday, Jonathan and April moved out of our house. That's right... we had people living in our basement for six months. It's a long story, but we learned a lot. It was fun. It was challenging. Wouldn't trade it for the world. They moved to a two-year housesitting gig for a couple that went to Kenya as entrepreneurial missionaries. Pretty cool.

We are coming up on a year of leading a small group at church... one of 300+. It's a big church. In the last couple of months, three of the families that began in the group with us have left the group because of scheduling conflicts or because they're planting new groups in the near future, and three new families arrived at the same time. Cool how God works like that. We can tell the Lord is getting ready to do something big. Something substantial. For the first time in a year, we feel like the group is complete.

Uncle Arvel passed away unexpectedly in August. It was almost like losing Dad all over again. I'm glad Robbie and I have each other, though. Losing Dad and Arvel in less than a year has been hard. Understatement.

My momma is doing well. She's moving slowly, but she's moving, which is a huge praise. Her house has been Zane's study center for the past few days as he gets ready for his first semester exams. She began writing her memoirs, and for Christmas we got almost 50 pages of her early years. Pure treasure. There are some finer points of Southern culture (before you judge my capitalization, know that her maiden name is Southern, so THERE) that are quite entertaining.

I wish I were still in a women's Bible study. I miss that a LOT.

I miss my outside-of-schwork friends. I miss coffee dates. I miss shopping trips. I miss road trips. I miss the old Summer Bible Study. I miss sitting by the pool and laughing. I miss long walks through the neighborhood and longer walks on the beach. I miss ladies' nights out. I miss HUGE group email prayer lists. I miss going to Super Walmart for groceries and coming out with supplies for a craft project. I miss being able to park my car without having to have two empty spaces together.

I do love Pinterest, though.

Life changes. About the time I thought I'd never get out of the waking-up-and-packing-lunches-and-driving-carpool-before-sunrise routine, I sent my first baby to college. I like change, really. The same things over and over again are so boring. But I miss a few of those special things that belong to a different stage of life.

Confession...

At first I though we'd been squeezed into an over-scheduled, over-extended lifestyle by the demands of life in the 21st century, and it may have started that way. Now I am realizing that we are right there in the midst of frenzy because we have lost the fine art of rest.

We've been trying to spend the evenings watching "Psych" episodes (Kelsey got them as a graduation present), and I've discovered I cannot  just sit and watch a DVD anymore. It makes me positively twitchy.  I am surfing or planning or chatting or crafting at the same time. I don't even know how to sit and watch TV/DVDs/Netflix without doing something else at the same time.

I think I need to look into Multitaskers Anonymous. 

When your pool water is old...

Remember when our pool started acting up?  You can refresh your memory here. In spite of the regimen of algaecide, citric acid, and flocculant, this spring we had the worst battle with stains and algae we've ever had.

It was so bad, we abandoned googling answers and went straight to asking the neighbor who owns a pool company for help. What we discovered was this: our water is old. Seriously. The same water has been in the pool for, well, every since we moved here in 2007,  and who knows how long before that.

Did you know that chlorine is a gas and to put it into pool water, chlorine tablets contain cyanuric acid as a stabilizer for the chlorine? It keeps it from breaking down under the ultraviolet rays of the sun. When the concentration of cyanuric acid grows to high levels over the years, it prevents chlorine from breaking down altogether. Since the chlorine can't release, it doesn't kill algae. So you add algaecide, which raises the copper level in the water. If your water is already prone to high levels of copper (and this happens especially if you have a pool heater), the copper in the water clings to the pool liner and creates large brownish gold stains.

Now, if this happens several years in a row, other chemicals start to break down. The cyanuric acid breaks down and somehow (magic is my theory) you get a lovely coating of purple sediment all over the flat surfaces of your pool liner.

The water can be perfectly clear, but there are brown stains and purple sand all over the place. The scientific name for this is ick. When you step out of the pool, it looks like the picture below:

Ew

So, you call your neighbor the pool company owner who explains your water is old. You drain about half the water out, refill it with fresh water, and turn over the keys to the gate to the pool guys who will tweak it until it's perfect.

And that's how you deal with old water in the pool. Next March, I will be posting about how you deal with putting in a new pool liner.

So tired...

Do you ever get tired? So tired that you just sit and stare and think about the endless list of things you should get up and do, but you can't manage to actually move. So tired that you imagine you unload the dishwasher and put away the clean clothes, but there they still sit, loaded full and stacked high?

That's how I feel.

It was a long year. Long. I think back to September when my mom fell and November when my dad died. Forever ago. Mom is recovering well. Not without a few bumps in the road, but still recovering nonetheless.

Sometimes I forget Dad is gone, and then something happens that I would tell him about and I think about calling him and imagine how I'd start the conversation. And I remember. It was hard not having him at Kelsey's graduation. She is such a hard-worker. He would have been proud.

It seems forever ago, almost like it didn't even happen in this decade or even this millennium. It's weird.

Since all that happened, there have been countless hours of school and homework and grading and late-night chats and tears and laughter and cleaning and crafting and loading and unloading and folding and putting away.

School ended last Friday, and we rolled straight into graduation and graduation parties. Rolling, rolling, rolling.

Monday morning dawned. I suppose. I slept through dawn, thankfully. On Tuesday, Zane finished up his exams. Summer has officially begun, and we look like the wounded warriors' wing of some scholastic infirmary.

Rest. We need rest, and not just sleep--rest.

I need to watch this again. I'm going to tuck it here to remind myself to rest.

Gradualation...

Because gradually, she is moving into her own life. It's a good thing. It's not an easy thing, but it is good because that's the way God made this world. We are born, we grow, we learn, we leave,  we join lives, we make a life, we give life, we raise lives, we love, we move, we change, we live. Life.

Only dead things don't move, so all things considered, I am excited to see our lives enter this new stage. Truly.

Kelsey graduated on June 1, 2012. It was wonderful. She was beautiful.

The march into the gym. She's the front white gown in this shot,
 just rounding the corner.

Presentation of a very hard-earned diploma.

The family.

The sweet, sweet friends.

My really cool pink flamingo dress.
Who on earth wears a pink flamingo dress to graduation?!

I am proud of my girl. She worked so very hard, and the road was NOT an easy one.

I am grateful that the Lord allowed her to achieve all that she did. She is His, and she shines for Him. She also received many accolades, for which she gives Him the glory. We do too. In case you missed graduation (and since our little nuclear family and our friends Shannon and Jocelyn were the only folks sitting on our family row), here is a list of the recognitions Kelsey received:

--Senior Superlative: Best Leader
--Class Officer: Senior Representative
--Gold Honor Cord (4.0+ GPA)
--National Honor Society
--Presidential Outstanding Academic Excellence (3.5+ unweighted GPA, 85th+ percentile on ACT or SAT)
--ACSI Distinguished High School Students (areas of Academics and Christian Service)
--Medallion Award (voted by faculty): Leadership
--Silver Honor Cord - 100+ community service hours
--Rainbow Honor Cord - Art National Honor Society

While this is a pretty cool list of earthly achievements and all of us are grateful to have some tangible representations of the fruit of all that labor, nothing compares to the work done on our behalf by Jesus. Nothing. Salvation is THE greatest reward we ever receive, and we do absolutely nothing to merit it. It's all Him. It's all grace.

We give thanks and praise to the Lord for the work He is completing in in her.  He simply blows us away.