The Comeback Kid

So it seems I took an unintentional sabbatical from blogging for the summer. I kept telling myself "I'll do it soon, I'll do it later, I'll do it tomorrow, I'll do it next weekend, I'll do it when I'm not so exhausted, I'll do it some day, just not now."

I AM exhausted. We drive to my dad's every weekend, two hours each way, to run errands, cook, clean, and keep him company. My school goes year round, so no summers off. And I have 20 VERY LIVELY four and five year olds every day and that requires lots of planning. And patience (testing it lately, I admit). It's a lot. I let the ball drop on blogging and especially on the Ten Things of Thankful and I feel as though I failed everyone involved with it.

Through much self-regulation, however, I am trying again to write. And thus begins my first TToT post in a coon's age:

1. I'm thankful for Clark for stepping up and offering to take over hosting the TToT when I just couldn't any longer. And additional thanks to Mimi, Kristi, and Lisa for being so kind about all of it.

2. Summer is pretty much over, and I'm okay with that. 

3. I got a special invitation from a special former (as in he graduated in May) preschooler to attend a community theater production that he was in along with several other members of his family. He totally stole the show, and I was honored to be invited to witness it! It also gave me the bug to audition, then I remembered Life and resigned myself to singing showtunes in the car instead.

4. The addition of a garage and workshop to the lake house has nearly come to fruition, and the best part of the whole thing is that the tiny screened porch has more than doubled in size and is a delightful place to relax. We still don't have real furniture for it, but the old plastic stuff is working just fine for now, and anyway, who cares when you can sit in it at night and work on a blog post while dock lights twinkle on the water and crickets and frogs sing in the background?

5. Football season has started again!

6. This is a big one: my daughter graduated from law school in May magna cum laude. She spent the next two months studying at least 10-12 hours a day, took the Bar exam in July and got the results this week...SHE PASSED WITH FLYING COLORS! My baby girl is an ATTORNEY!

7. Friday, lucky me had a colonoscopy. Super fun. 5 out of 5 stars. JK only the propofol gets 5 out of 5 stars. But it's over for another 10 years, so yay!

8. While summer hasn't completely left us (it's coming back later this week with temps in the 90s again - ugh), today, fall poked it's face through the door and gave us a delightful day of cooler temps and bright blue skies. My husband and I took advantage of this gift by going to Silver Dollar City and listening to some bluegrass. 

9. We've had a critter of some kind in our attic this spring and summer, and in spite of having repairs done on the wooden part of our house (it's a Tudor, so mostly stucco) and closing up holes, the little shit has found a way in again. My husband finally had enough and put a live trap in the attic on Wednesday afternoon. He checked it Thursday - nothing. Friday morning, as I was sleeping off my anesthesia, I woke up to him standing over me and saying there was something in the trap. How did he know, when he hadn't opened the hatch to see? I found out shortly, because it sounded like the varmint was doing barrel rolls with the cage across the attic floor. While my husband was retrieving his wildlife removal gear (oven mitts, a beach towel, bungees, and the ladder), the cats and I were following the progress of the cage as it seemed to rocket across the attic floor. It had to be a racoon or possum to make that kind of racket, but when my husband climbed up the ladder and moved the hatch aside, it was...a squirrel. A very athletic squirrel. He brought the cage down to the bedroom wrapped in the beach towel, then secured the towel with the bungees. We read that the squirrel needed to be relocated at least 2-4 miles away, but we did better than that - we took him on a 2 hour car ride to the lake house and released him (with much difficulty; it's a well-made cage) at the park down the street. He shot out of the cage and bounded off. Hopefully, he will text all his squirrel friends and family back in Joplin and warn them away from the house with the crazy man with the oven mitts or we can hope so, anyway.

10. And I did it! I got a post written. I can do hard things!

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