This wasn’t a typical week for me by any stretch of the imagination.  But, I thought that you might enjoy seeing the process that I went through to prepare my home for my husband’s return and to plan for Scott and Johnathan’s combined birthday party, which included out-of-town family being here.  So, here it is, one of the craziest weeks of my life.  I have determined that I will do this again once school starts and I do have a typical week, so that you can see that I’m not always so insanely overwhelmed with life.  For this entire series, click here.

Tuesday wasn’t a great day.  I woke up at 5AM and had my normal Bible study and prayer time.  I did finish 2 Chronicles and started reading Ezra, which is cool.  Then I spent some time on the phone with Gregg.  It felt like forever until Thursday when he would be home.

When we got off the phone, I did some blog surfing, Facebooking, and correspondence until the boys woke up.  I posted a picture of an infected area on my hand on Facebook and asked if anyone had ever seen anything like it.  All sorts of suggestions popped up: brown recluse spider bite, staph infection, impetigo.  I was a little concerned at the seriousness in which everyone was taking this, and decided when the office opened, I’d call and make a doctor appointment for it.

I started coffee.

Did my 3 Chores You Should Do Every Morning, but instead of making the beds, I stripped the beds so I could wash all of the sheets.

Then I went to start breakfast.  Only, the two dozen eggs I’d bought the night before were not in my refrigerator.  I went down to my van to see if they were there, and they were not.  After spending twenty minutes searching for eggs, I concluded that I must have left them in the cart in the parking lot.  I was a little bit frustrated.

The menu had turkey ham and cheese omelettes for breakfast, but I just fried turkey ham and made toast.

My friend brought her kids over for me to babysit while she ran an errand.  They got there about 8:30.

I made an appointment for 1:15 for my hand, then cleaned the windows in my kitchen.  I had to get all of my housecleaning finished by Wednesday afternoon, so I was pushing four days of deep cleaning into one-and-a-half days.

While I cleaned the kitchen, I talked at length to Kaylee, who is in Florida with her dad.  I really miss her, and she was upset because she wasn’t there to help me prep for my family coming in town, Gregg coming home, and the boys’ party.  She was also upset that she was missing all of these things.

I started reconstituting some raisins in some vinegar, and threw in an onion into the mixture.  This is the base for my barbecue sauce.  This was to make dinner to take to the BINGO hall to feed the volunteers working for the Glen Eden Youth Center there that night.

While that was going on in one pan, I started on a batch of dog food in another pan.

After I did some laundry, did some major cleaning, and finished talking to Kaylee, a repairman came to look at my dishwasher, which wasn’t working.  He said that the problem wasn’t the dishwasher, but the installation.  While he was there, I called Lowes and had the installation guy speak to the repair guy.  The installation guy told me that his manager would call me back.  I paid the repair guy and he left.

I sliced some bread and made lunch for my kids and my friend’s kids.

While I was making lunch, I started feeling a little bit overwhelmed with everything going on for the week and had to step back away from the counter and just breathe for a minute.  When I felt more in control, I finished lunch.

My friend got back from her errand and I left her with our kids so I could go to my doctor’s appointment.

The hand sore was diagnosed with “I don’t know what it is but it’s obviously infected so here’s our first attempt at healing it in a topical antibiotic cream.  If that doesn’t work, try these oral antibiotics.  If they don’t work, come back and see me.”

I took my prescription to the pharmacy and while I was being filled, I ate a dark chocolate candy bar.  I just really felt that the day I’d had deserved a candy bar.

When I got back to my house, I got on the phone with the Lowes manager and had an argument over whether they needed to fix the problem caused by a faulty installation.  At the time of my writing this post, we’re still working on it.

After I got off the phone, I had a little 30-second crying jag.  I was annoyed at myself for breaking down.  My friend hugged me, took her two kids, and left.

Right after she left, my babysitter for the night called and said that her grandmother was seriously ill and that she couldn’t babysit.  I called the church to get her put onto the prayer chain, then called my friend who had just left my house and asked her to babysit for me that night.

I was really really missing Gregg and Kaylee.

I started on dinner.  I made barbecue sauce, blending the vinegar, raisins, and onion in the food processor and then following the rest of the recipe that I have posted here.

I made three big pans of barbecued chicken, a double batch of hot potato salad, cooked some corn.

While dinner was cooking, I transferred the batch of dog food into the storage container and put it in the fridge.

As soon as dinner was done and packed up, I loaded my kids up into the van and rushed them to my friend’s house.

I got to the BINGO hall about fifteen minutes late, but with dinner so I was forgiven.

I worked BINGO from 5:30 until about 10:00.  I went to my friend’s house, picked up my boys, and took them home.  They were bathed, teeth brushed, and in bed by 11:00.

Gregg called.  He wasn’t able to get a flight out the night before.  Which meant that he wouldn’t make his connecting flight to Dubai.  Which meant that he would miss his flight home.  There wasn’t anything we could do about it at that moment.  We prayed together, and I went to bed.  Exhausted.

 

Hallee

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