Well, moving week is behind us now. And I’m thankful.
At the same time, it was hard to say goodbye to our old place. I have some wonderful memories of being there, and even more great memories of living in that area. Over the last eight years, we haven’t moved any further than about 10 minutes’ distance from any one place, even though we lived in four different houses in that time.
This time, it’s four hours away. And I miss our friends from over there.
We’re currently in the thick of moving preparations at the moment. It’s Wednesday; we’re moving Saturday, and there are still some cleaning jobs, final yard clean-up, and last-minute packing to do yet! But we’re getting there.
My writing time lately has been struggling quite a bit. We’ve been spending a lot more time with other people (mostly goodbye meals), and the stress of having things in limbo especially this last week has really made it difficult to focus. I never realized before what part a tidy, “normal” environment plays into my creativity levels! It’s a fascinating thing to think about.
Anyway, I have wanted to continue doing at least a little writing, just to keep the practice in, so I’ve been pushing myself to do 100 words each day in my story. Keeping going in the midst of change is hard, but at the same time it’s also refreshing to have one constant I can count on in my life.
I knew it was possibly a little foolish to sign up for yet another blog tour so close to our moving date, but I really couldn’t resist last week. I loved Faith Blum’s last release, All the Way the Savior Leads, and ‘Tis so Sweet was a novella, I figured it would probably be safe.
So one hot afternoon after the author sent it to me, while Dad drove our family out to the ocean to cool off, I read. Then, my little sister and I played in the surf and got ourselves thoroughly soaked, having the time of our lives. When we were done cooling off (and trust me, even the cold south Pacific feels good on hot days!), and everyone else had had a good swim, we headed home again—and Dad took the longer, scenic route to get back. Which gave me just enough time to finish this book.
I loved it. A whole book (hey, a novella counts, right?) plus a nice hour at the beach? Just perfect.
Who was the girl laying on her bed reading this afternoon instead of doing the cleaning and sorting she really should have been working on in preparation for moving in a couple weeks?
Me. Unashamedly, me. Because, “I only had eight chapters left…” and please don’t mention the fact that I wasn’t even to the three-quarter mark yet!
Ahem. Yup. I didn’t even take time to move my planner from my nightstand to my desk, like I always do every morning. Turns out, I spent most of my day thinking about the story and wishing I could get back to it instead of reading—which, of necessity, meant I didn’t get much else done either.
But that’s okay, in this case, because I needed to get it read and reviewed and the review scheduled so I didn’t have to think about it later. It was one of my goals for this week. Promise.
Currently, I’m doing a reading plan that involves reading ten different chapters in ten different books of the Bible per day. For me, it’s a fairly flexible one—some days, I only end up reading one chapter, other days it’s just five, but I always aim for all ten. The way this particular plan is set up is that once you finish reading a certain “section” of the Bible, you just start it over—and that can cause some interesting mashups at times!
A few days ago, several chapters really stood out to me, and I thought I’d share my notes from them today, as I’m still thinking about them this morning.
Happy Thursday, everyone! The day is brilliantly sunny outside right now, with a few clouds in the blue sky. It’s also pretty warm out there, so I’m sitting inside with a fan on.
Lord willing, we’ll be moving in two and a half weeks. And although that isn’t very far off, I’m also looking forward to having it done. Mom’s done an excellent job of getting packed up as much as possible ahead of time in places like the library, bathroom, and kitchen—getting rid of the stuff we don’t use on a day-to-day basis.
(Which is wonderful, except for times like last night when I was making rhubarb crisp, and some of the ingredients I wanted to use were packed! 🙂 Thankfully, we had substitutes that worked well!)