Yea, Though I Walk

through the valley of the shadow of death… Otherwise known as the boys’ closet. I’ve spent way, way too much time there and, believe me, it was a harrowing experience. But more about that later.

On Friday evening I played Showcase Showdown with the kids. That’s always good for a few laughs. Then I let them watch a Loony Toons DVD for 2+ hours (!) while I worked on transcribing a session for the Assembly Minutes. It was like murder this year!!! Something was screwy with the DVD’s (plural, because they sent me a second one when the first one didn’t work right—but it was the same way) and it really tested my sanctification. Not sure I passed. Ha! Just ask Grayson. ;-) The discs wouldn’t play in either DVD player, on James’ computer, or on the recommended program on my computer. I had one program that would play it, but you couldn’t “scrub the playhead” (a new, really dumb sounding term I learned in the midst of this) to go to the spot on the DVD where you needed to be. Instead, you had to hold down the fast-forward button until you got there. You couldn’t even click it and let it run—you had to HOLD IT DOWN to keep fast-forwarding. Starting with 30 minutes of preliminary music. Not only that, but if you let your computer go into hibernation (and not always just that—even if it doesn’t hibernate, but sits a little too long), when you go back it would start the disc at the very beginning again. Meaning, of course, you’ve got to hold the ff button again—longer than last time because now you’re farther along in the disc. I didn’t time it the first few times, but after a while I decided I should use a stopwatch, just out of curiosity. I sat down to work one time and fast forwarded for 24 minutes to get to the spot I needed to be at. I was determined to try to finish in one last mondo sitting so I wouldn’t have to go through that again, but after Loony Toons I took a break to have devotions with the kids and put them to bed. When I got back to the computer the video screen had gone black again. Aaaaaaarrrrrrrrgggggghhhhhhh!!!! THIS IS ABSURD!!! I got the stopwatch. 35 minutes of holding down a button just in PREPARATION to be able to work. It’s totally insane. That means I spent 59 minutes just PUSHING A BUTTON that night. I did have the forethought, however, to grab some reading material before I sat down that last time, so in those 35 minutes I was able to read an article I’d been wanting to get to, as well as polish off the first chapter of Bringing Up Boys—been wanting to read that again now that my boys are a little older. So I tried real hard to think of that crazy disc as doing me a favor—forcing me into some “free time” that enabled me to read some things I wouldn’t have taken the time for otherwise. It was really just an attempt to maintain a little sanity. In the end, the only thing that mattered is that I FINISHED it and got it sent off. ~whew~ I’ve NEVER been so relieved to be finished with a job like that. No, wait… that’s not true. There was the presbytery meeting a few years ago… Ha!

On Saturday morning I went out and found James packing up his office. Whoa!!! The office is the only thing he packs when we move, but even that is usually reserved for the last day or two before we load up. He must be getting anxious to go! :-) His walls (that are usually PLASTERED with Church memorabilia) are now bare—and sort of pretty! (I almost forget there are walls in there most of the time since they can’t be seen… Ha!) It may help the office “show” better and feel bigger now.

Seeing James pack up some boxes sort of gave me the bug, too, but there’s so little I can actually pack right now. There was still lots of sorting do be done, however, so I had a day filled with that sort of thing. I made it through the cabinets on top of the fridge and all of the cabinets in the utility room. I pulled the fridge out and cleaned behind and under it (GROSS!) and cleaned all sides of the fridge itself. It stays with the house when we sell, so that’s one less thing I’ll have to worry about cleaning when the time comes. After that I cleaned out the hutch where I keep all of my books and Katie keeps a bunch of craft stuff. I pulled out nearly half of the books for the garage sale pile, as well as several other things. Then it was on to Katie’s room.

I took a few things off the walls to add to the pile. Before long James showed up and I knew I was in trouble. That man notices EVERYTHING. Sure enough, he walked in and started listing—specifically—the things that were missing. How does he DO that?! The walls and shelves are still full—how could he possibly know what has been taken down?! It’s maddening, I tell you. Ha! He’s actually been really good about letting me get rid of a LOT more than he’s ever allowed before. His hoarding tendencies are much stronger than my own. ;-) Still, I hold back on some things because I don’t want to over-do it and have him spaz out and snap—“It’s just too much! Forget it—let’s keep everything!” Ha!

Cleaned out under Katie’s bed and then headed to her closet. Being a walk-in closet, we use it for all sorts of things: blankets, photo albums, all of our games, sewing supplies, etc., along with her clothes. It felt GREAT to get that taken care of. And as the days go on it’s becoming evident that we’re going to have a HUGE yard sale. Wa-Hoo! Stuff be GONE!

After a long and full day of getting TONS of cleaning and sorting done, we had earned a pizza party. :-) We watched the Veggie Tales Esther show—I don’t think we’d seen that one in years. Great music. Put the kids to bed and ended the day with a nice, hot bath. ~Aaaaaahhhh~

Sunday was a grand and glorious day because OUR PASTOR WAS HERE! Wa-Hoo!!! We have missed him and his family sooooooo much. I’m so thankful to have them back, and thankful that (hopefully!) they can now settle into some sort of a normal life. They are needing to find a house, of course, and having that dilemma solved will help so much. I pray it happens very, very soon for them.

Sunday night the local church transferred our memberships to Alabama. We had submitted our request weeks ago, but with the Clarksons away we had to wait until they made it home in order to have a conference. I cried, of course, but did pretty well holding myself together. Ha! I know there will be plenty of tears when the time comes to actually leave, so they didn’t overwhelm me this time. :-)

Yesterday was the shadow of death day. GOOD GRIEF—I thought I’d NEVER get out of that closet!!! We started the day with our mile walk (last one for Kate’s experiment), so it was nice to start out with big, blue skies, puffy white clouds, cool, fresh air, and some exercise. Then it was time for the boys’ closet.

You know, it’s funny. Sam has been BEGGING for me to sort his closet for weeks now. He wanted to help and wanted to get rid of a ton of stuff. “There must be hundreds of toys in there, Mom—let’s sell ‘em!” But every time I would pick something up he would say, “Oh, um… Mom… Not that because, well, I’ve had that since Texas and… it’s special because… you know—memories.” “Mom, we need to keep that—I got that for my birthday when I turned five, so it’s special to me…” And so on. I kept working (mostly when he wasn’t looking), but would occasionally ask his opinion on something. I opened my hand once to show him some items and he said, “Hhmmm… a bouncy ball and a marble. I don’t know, Mom. They’re both pretty valuable…” HA! Crazy kid. Luckily, we found several foam darts as we were cleaning and he decided he’d rather go have a shoot out with Joe than help me. ~whew!~

I don’t know how it’s possible, but it took ALL DAY LONG to make it through the boys’ closet. We’ve got a lot of loot for the sale, so that’s good. We went through old videos, books, albums, and all sorts of miscellaneous items along with the clothing and toys. It looks and feels sooooo much better in there! It was sometime after 8:00 last night when I finally finished up in the boys’ room. –It went quickly once I finally made it out of the closet! We had devotions with the kids, then I crashed for the night and ended up staying up way too late looking online for houses in Alabama. That’s always fun. It will be more fun to look in person. It will be a lot more fun when we sell our house and our “looking” will be the real deal instead of just to get some ideas!

Today, I’m blogging while the kids are finishing up on school. Then I’ll have one more room to sort (the den) and I will have been through the entire house collecting sale items. Wa-Hoo! I’m so excited. I’m not sure how it’s going to work out… with all the stuff we’ve got it seems like it might take two or three days to get SET UP for a sale! Ha! We’ll see. Then, of course, there’s the laundry and ironing that I didn’t do yesterday. Time to change the sheets, too. All of the floors need vacuumed and/or mopped. And it’s library day. Hhmmm. I guess we’ll just have to wait and see how the day turns out!