7 desperate takes

One

Oh my word, I have so much to do. Every time I think I have actually completed a task, fifty more crop up to take its place. Every time I clean the sunroom, seven neighborhood children, at least, come in and trash it when I'm not looking. Every time I sweep a floor, the little girls get a bin of water and start washing their feet and wrecking everything. Every time I pause and pull a weed, I see like a hundred that I hadn't noticed. Normally I don't care, but for one tiny second, just one, I just want the house to be perfectly clean, just one second, that's all.

Two

Time's a wasting, and the more kids come tramping through my house, the more I'm beginning to get a clue that maybe God is bringing them here. Hmm, I wonder to myself, I could invite them all to church, knowing that they won't come, or, in a manner totally uncharacteristic to me, I could collar them, here and there, and everywhere, and tell them about Jesus. I'd prefer, of course, to develop some small program and invite them all and then have some kind of mesearable progress and get out of the whole question of evangelism entirely myself. Don't we have a committee for this? But also, I Don't Have Time. If they're going to be in here undoing the work I'm so desperately doing, they might as well hear something about Jesus.

Three

My own children are beginning, this week, to get a clue that I really do intend to totally clean the house. I feel discouraged that they are only picking up on this information On Thursday Night Agh, but I am grateful that they've noticed at all. Alouicious, get this, cleaned his room. I know, I was totally shocked. I was under the impression that he was physically and mentally unable to. The girls clean their room all the time, from start to finish, by themselves, but the boys have never done it even once. They start to, they spend like four weeks working on it, they tell me they're done, I go up and find it Worse Than It Ever Was. Finally, after several years of screaming, I understood that they were not able to pick up their own things and put them away and that I would be cleaning their room for them until they suckered some poor woman, who they will not deserve, to clean it and then I would have to spend my golden years apologizing to her. But, you know, life is a veil of tears. I don't get a lot of things that I want. So you can imagine my total complete thorough amazement to find that they actually did discover how to put their own stuff away and make their beds. Well, Aloucious really, with just a tiny bit of unhelpful participation from his younger brother. Wow. I guess Jesus can come back now because it feels like the end of the world.

Four

For some stupid reason, I thought that I could both clean the house, perfectly, and practically finish writing this book, This Week. But, um, it turns out that I can't. But maybe I can finish the Old Testament. Realized I could keep writing about the Old Testament and never even make it to the New. 365 angry Devotionals About The Old Testament. Because life is terrible anyway and you might as well give in and be depressed. Is that too long of a tag line? Oh well, I'm just forcing myself to stop and go for Matthew, after just a few more. Just a few, then I'll totally stop.

Five

I'm planning to blog about this in much more lurid detail Post Event, but we get to go to DC next week and be at a really fancy thingamabob, and part of my desperate anxiety this week is figuring out what we are all going to wear. Oh My Word, what should I wear!?!!!!!! It is so fancy that Matt is probably going to go full clerical. And the boys are going to wear actual ties. And the little girls are covered in fancy beautiful dresses. And I, well, I have a whole closet full of clothes, which may surprise you given how moderate and minimalist I am in all my doings. The very picture of restraint, I always like to say about myself. Oh my gosh. What shall I wear? Black or orange? Those are my choices. And oh dear oh dear, I wish I really had done the thirty day shred for real instead of lying on the floor watching it and cussing. Sorry, not cussing, praying. Praying for the will to live.

Six

So, yeah, the thirty day shred, oh how I hate thee. First of all, let me say that I know that for strong wonderful people thirty days will just make them more awesome. I did the thirty day shred in thirty days, once, like four years ago. But now I'm four years older, or maybe only three, who even knows, and I'm tired. I've spent five months “trying to” lose seven pounds. That's how tired I am. I am plum worn out on every level. Every so often I sit down and enumerate to myself all the different ways I am tired. My mind is tired, my feet are tired, my emotions are tired. My mind is tired. Oh I already said that one. My body is tired. And, apparently, and how does anyone even know if this is true, if you exercise, you're supposed to gain more energy. And happiness. Mmhhmmm. Exercising just makes me more angry, like I wasn't angry enough already.

So, I can't do the thirty day shred in thirty days. I cannot push myself to work out every single day. I'm a sinner. I am weak. I've tried. I just keep failing. But I do seem to sort of be able to do about 20 minutes of the shred maybe four days a week, sometimes only three. And, because I'm weak and a failure, and can't count, pretty well by now I just do whichever level of the shred I can face that day. And only with the sound off, because, wow, I can't listen to her happiness about exercise any time of day, let alone in the morning.

On the upside, I've stopped puffing for breath going up and down the basement stairs. And I was able to sprint across the parking lot trying to save a foolish child, one of the neighborhood ones, from his wish to drive his bicycle into the road. So it must not be a total loss.

Seven

I can hear Elphine crashing around cleaning the kitchen. I yelled at her because it was her turn yesterday afternoon and she totally blew it off. Sounds like she's broken the top half of the washer off. Oh, and there's the dog vommitting on the floor. Oh yay. So, I gotta go. Have a great weekend! Go check out better takes than this!

And here's a picture of my tree, again. Pip pip.