September was a little tough. Alex left the end of August for a 2-week business trip to Scotland and Italy. That left me to take care of everything at home. I also had cross country meets and football games, back-to-school nights, and youth activities to attend. I also delved into organizational projects around the house and garage. The palm tree out by the sidewalk in the front yard decided to produce a ton of seeds that covered the ground. Savannah wiped out on her bike one morning because of those big seeds. She scraped up her knee pretty good. After getting her off to school, I worked on cleaning up the seeds, which I had to do several times until Alex got back to get up there and cut the whole leaf down that had all the seeds.
I also had been having to deal with a leaky water heater. Before Alex left, apparently it had been leaking a little bit. Alex just put a water bucket out there to catch the water, and Jared was supposed to check it occasionally and empty it out. When I went to start organizing the garage, I noticed water all over the ground. I spent the rest of the day cleaning up wet paper and things that were on the floor. I needed to move out bikes first too, so when I went to take them around to the side of the house, the bushes were so overgrown that I couldn't even get through. So I spent the morning clearing out a path through the bushes. It was Alex's birthday, so I sent him a picture of the yard work I'd done, wishing him a "happy birthday..."
After a few days of emptying out the filled water bucket every 3 hours from the water heater and cleaning up the night's overflow, I'd had enough of that. So after I cleaned up another round of palm tree seeds, I called a friend who is a plumber. I got a migraine shortly after calling him and spent the next couple of hours recovering my blurred vision. Luckily I got a handle on that before our friend got here. He diagnosed the problem and said we needed a new water heater (it was 18 years old). Thankfully he took my credit card, bought a new one, and installed it the next day. I still had a headache and felt really tired, but I was able to drive the hour or so to Jared's cross country meet that afternoon. The tender mercy for the day was the traffic wasn't bad coming or going.
I ended up getting Covid that weekend as well... although my symptoms were mild. (I took a test because one of the youth had recently had Covid). Anyway, some friends brought over dinner and flowers one day, which was really nice of them. I wasn't feeling very bad, but I was really tired and also tired of cooking all the meals too.
Since I needed to stay home for the week, I decided to finish the garage. I went through several things, got rid of a lot of stuff, and got some organization in the garage. It was a big project, but I really wasn't supposed to be going out and about with Covid so it was a good chance to get some home projects done. That just meant I wore myself out though...
I also had some challenges with my church calling, with some conflicting thoughts on activities and how much the younger girls should be teaching. My calling had changed a couple weeks prior from 2nd Counselor to Secretary in the Young Women's program. I wasn't overseeing the activities anymore, but I was still helping teach the younger girls. Then my role changed again, and I wasn't teaching at all either, which I really enjoyed doing. So I was a little depressed with the whole situation. It didn't really get resolved the way I wanted it to, but I did find peace in what we had been doing since the beginning of the year. I watched several videos on the church website and read through the handbook. I did feel peace regardless of what had been decided moving forward, and I was grateful for that. I think that's what we have to find these days - inner peace regardless of what's happening around us. For a while my motto has been, "She who is flexible never gets bent out of shape" and that helps me in times when things aren't going quite the way I hoped. I did come up with a new idea on a way to open up discussion among the girls during the introduction to the lesson. I came up with different things to do for the categories of LIVE, CARE, INVITE, and UNITE. The girls randomly pick out one to-do item, work on it for 2 weeks, and then report what they did during the next meeting. It's designed to get them thinking about and actually doing things to bring themselves and others closer to Christ.
To top off the challenges I was dealing with, my collage making program removed the collage feature, so I got behind on my photobooks and blogging... I am still not happy with the "grids" feature on Adobe Express, but Canva doesn't produce collages with high enough resolution for my photo books. So I'm having to work with a feature that requires a lot of manual manipulation to create a collage.
I spent a little more time at the piano during September, which was also comforting. Savannah took some videos of me playing one Sunday. I hadn't played for a bit, so I was a little rusty on the notes, but I'm glad she wanted to record my playing.
I think Alex may have had the better deal in September...
What I was doing... at least the meal and flowers were nice.
A couple of piano pieces:
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