Month: October 2010

This is the last full day of a week-long vacation hubby and I had down here at Emerald Isle. It\’s been restful, for sure. We\’ve only gone out to eat once, and the rest of the time we\’ve just lain around reading, snacking, playing with the puppy (well, hubby played with the puppy), and watching t.v. The weather has cooperated, for the most part…had a couple of rainy days. But considering how little we did, the weather wasn\’t really a factor.

So today my friend Terrie is coming here and the three of us are going fishing off the pier. Yes, you read that right, I am going fishing. Not something I like to do, but I am doing it to spend time with her. Terrie loves to fish, so there you go. Hubby is going with us to try and keep me from planting a fish hook in someone\’s behind or otherwise making a total idiot of myself. He\’s a good guy. I like him a lot.

In other news, when I return home, I will work my final week for the company I\’ve been with for the last three years (ten, if you count the seven I was with the other janitorial supply company). I\’m not a job-hopper; I take my work very seriously, but I have felt for some time now (like maybe the last three years or so) that this is not the job from which I wish to retire or upon which I wish to end my career.

The good news is that in three weeks I begin a new position with a ministry here in town. I will be the administrative assistant for the Forsyth Jail and Prison Ministries, a local ministry to prisoners here in the state. My main position is to be the support for the chaplains and outreach ministers, a position for which I am comfortable. I am so looking forward to this new \”notch\” in my career belt, and can easily see myself staying with this until I do retire. I honestly feel that God put this job in my path and is blessing me with it.

Tomorrow it\’s back home for puppy and me. Dave is going on to a different location for a few more days of R&R and will be home later in the week. I\’ve got to get back to the world of work and helping Jen with the boys.

In other news, it\’s time to do some de-cluttering, so I hope to spend some time cleaning out closets and drawers in my home and holding the end of all yard sales in a couple of weeks. If y\’all are in the area, watch for the date and come on out! Because at 1pm, I will have the Rescue Mission truck on my property loading up everything that didn\’t sell and hauling it off. I never take yard sale items back inside my house. Y\’all come!

It was wonderful while it lasted.

Three years ago, when our daughter moved into her own home with the boys, I wasn\’t sure I\’d make it. I missed them, and I worried about them. Over time, though, we got used to them being gone. It was right that Jenni and the boys should be in their own home.

Life settled into a comfortable pace for us. I came home each evening to a house that was in the same condition as when I left it that morning. I also had a chance to decompress from work without walking into a different maelstrom at the house.

That all changed about a month ago. A very tearful daughter showed up at our house on a Sunday evening, distressed and afraid. It appeared that the situation at her apartment, which she was sharing with her boyfriend (!), had gotten uncomfortable. Within three days, she and boys had moved back in our house. Let the party begin!

It took a couple of weeks for us to fully accept that we were no longer going to enjoy a nice, quiet evening for a while. Readjusting to the new house dynamics was a challenge for all the adults. The kids, on the other hand, were celebrating the bigger space and the stress-free ability to now be kids.

But you know what? It\’s a bump in the empty-nest season that I can live with. When I go to sleep at night now, I know that my daughter and my grandsons are SAFE. I know that she\’s not being kept up until the wee hours of the morning by an alcoholic, narcissitic man who doesn\’t care about her responsibilities or how she\’ll be able to function with so little sleep, just so that he can rant about some perceived \”disrespect\” to him. I know that my grandsons aren\’t being stuck in a little bedroom with a t.v. for a babysitter, because he\’s busy with his noisy friends in their living room; or because they just don\’t like being around him. My little grandsons can now speak to their mother without having to watch out of the corner of their eye to see how he\’s going to react.

Empty-nesting is great. We\’ll get back to that. Hopefully, when that happens for us, we will also sleep well knowing that the kids are all in a better situation.

It\’s all good.