It’s Amazing What You Can Fit Into A Day!!

It’s almost midnight and time for me to crawl up to bed. As I write this blog, I am struck again by the repeating thought that I would never work this hard for anyone else’s dream.

Today began early. After vacation time up at Mom’s, I almost resent waking up to an alarm now, but at least it was 7:30 instead of 6:15. We got up and started breakfast, but our neighbour, Fred, showed up earlier than expected, so Nick bolted down his food to head outside and begin the Great Deck Demolition. We coaxed the deck through one more winter because we just couldn’t afford to build a new one last summer. This year, the boards are rotting and the steps have collapsed, but Fred has offered to oversee the project with Nick doing all the labour, so we are squeezing it in now before we head off again.

I got the girls dressed and tried to tackle the day’s e-mail before I headed off to fill in for another Weight Watcher leader from 11:00 to 1:30 pm. Once you’ve covered the material in your own meeting, it is easy to share the same information with other groups and fun to see new faces. This meeting was a lunchtime one, so I had to make sure I kept things brief. It went well and , as it turned out, my Regional Manager was there observing/critiquing me, so I am glad it went well.

I headed home afterwards only to discover that work had progressed much faster than expected!! The deck was gone and Nick now needed to rent a pickup truck for the day to haul the old deck lumber to the dump and pick up the gravel needed to put a proper window well in for the window under the deck. Since this window leads directly into my office with all my computer equipment and the soil under the deck had settled, we’d had to sandbag the window a few years ago to keep all the water from collecting outside and trying to come in! No one had eaten lunch yet, though Erin had made up a peanut butter sandwich for Bethany and used a heart shaped cookie-cutter to put a shape into the middle of it, so we piled into the van, drove Nick down to the car rental company and then picked up lunch on the drive home.

I tried to get a bit more work done after the girls were fed, but after squabbles erupted for the 5th time, I put the computer on sleep mode and went upstairs. I am playing the Legend of Zelda - Ocarina of Time on our Game Cube and the girls had been pestering me to get to the Temple of Time so that they could see our character grow up. LIke I really needed to be coaxed into playing for a bit!! It was fun, but now that everything is suddenly changed, I am all lost again in the game!

Fred and Nick made their trips to the dump, got the window well installed and started spreading out the rest of the gravel over some landscape fabric before the huge rainstorm hits tonight or tomorrow. He fired up the barbecue and did double duty while I made salad and the rest of the meal. They raced to get the job done while the girls helped me with the dishes and then I managed to coax them into “playing nicely with each other” (which 15 minutes later turned into each of them drawing in their rooms) while I finished graphing something out on the computer and working on a layout for a client. I checked e-mail quickly before putting the girls to bed only to find out about a Hoffman order and another copyright infringement on a Brazilian site... so it was off to the translation site to help turn a “Please don’t do this” message into Portuguese!

As I headed up the stairs to tuck the girls in, one of the other Weight Watcher leaders called to see if I could do the early Friday morning meeting so that she could get her boys up to camp. Once you have done a subject twice, doing it a third time isn’t that much harder... and I get bonus pay when I do more than 2 meetings in the same week. It did make me chuckle when I thought of the pattern sharers who think I am a multimillionaire....

Erin was thrilled to get to stay up to watch Canadian Idol tonight. Nick found it hard not to fall asleep on the couch. I had the whole dining room table taken up with paint and canvas again, which Erin had to check out each commercial break, but it lets me work on a whole set of a design at once. They went off to bed once the show was over, then I turned off the TV and painted until that whole colour was done on each design.

I fired up the computer about an hour and a half ago to finish up the 4 banners I needed to make for the Vacation Bible School at our church in August. The person in charge wanted to get everything set up before she heads off for her vacation because we will be away when she gets back.

As I finished that job off, I suddenly realized that I hadn’t really blogged since getting home, so this became my late night ramble. Do I still think I am lucky to do what I love for a job? Of course!! Would I work this hard for someone else’s dream? Never!! I'm glad each day only has 24 hours, though.... I don't think I could have fit anything more into today... or should I say yesterday??

Back In My Cave... And Surrounded By Laundry!

We made it home safely today from Mom’s and now I just have to sort through two huge piles... one of mail and the other of laundry! No sign of my original order of canvas from Zweigart. The replacement order sent to Mom’s arrived just 4 days before we left, so I have been cutting and tracing and painting like mad! I’ll unpack my paints first thing tomorrow while the girls are getting to know their toys all over again so that most of the canvas orders can go out this week.

It feels good to be home in my own house... but back to work I go!!