30 June, 2016

A pre-holiday flurry

I'm knocking things off my list of things to do and trying to fend off new things to add. On the list I published on Monday I've done most of the things in the top section. 

It is the last point (editing) that seems to have no end! With three magazines in varying active stages at present, I feel a bit like I'm fencing, I've got stuff coming from various angles and throwing some out there myself as well. Very soon I'm going to have to put an artificial stop to it all and start serious preparing for camping. We leave in only about 35 hours.

Here's some of what we've been up to:

Yesterday I got to play with a cleaning "toy", it did
a good job, but it was tiny and had no handle, so
I was on the floor with it.

Others got to do heavier work, though sitting on the floor for about three hours highlighted that I'm no longer as young as I used to be. 
Things can get tight here. This is moving a washing machine out.
David's been mending holes in the floor of our tent (very important because it doesn't look like we're going to get away without significant periods of rain). Last night I also patched up the tent bag that I made a few years ago.
Tent and tent bag: being mended inside
as we have nowhere outside to do it.

Instead of being grumpy with my family and obsessing
about how much computer work I needed to do, I
picked up my computer and walked to our local coffee
shop this morning (this afternoon I'm at another location).
It was a good strategy, taking me away from all that could
distract me and focused my attention well.

All this activity has been tinged with sadness. The people we helped clean and move yesterday are leaving us "permanently". Their lives have entangled with ours in many ways in the last few years (including using their sewing machine to initially finish that tent bag I mended last night). It will be sad not seeing them around. And we received more somber news about our field director's health this morning, plus news yesterday that the head of school (CAJ) had suddenly resigned.

It will be a relief to go away from the craziness for a couple of weeks, but the sadness won't go away so easily.



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