I love my guys, but conversation isn't always easy, nor always to my liking. I find myself working hard (actually I usually always do) to get decent conversation going around the lunch and dinner table, but it doesn't always work and gets tiring doing that meal after meal. We've been watching the Harry Potter series over the last eight nights and that's been a fun way to connect with the boys, but at least one of them gets frustrated at my ignorance (I haven't read the books) and there are other things I'd like to talk about other than Harry Potter...
One obvious way to fix this problem is to go out for coffee with a friend. But the reality is that a lot of my local missionary friends are overseas or away on holidays right now. A quick count puts at least a dozen of my local friends who are overseas at present. Thankfully some of them start to trickle back in the next week. I'm looking forward to catching up with some of them. But not all of them are coming back, and that's an underlying grief that also sits with me at this time of year.
This time of year for us equates to late December-early January in Australia. Temperature-wise as well as schedule-wise. School's out, many people are away on holidays or with family, and the busy-ness of life is often quieter, especially when you have teenagers who don't like leaving the house and you don't have travel planned. The next two "summers" we'll be doing international travel ourselves as we first fly to Australia and then back, so I should be enjoying this stationary, low-stress season. But there's an element in it that I'm not finding enjoyable at all.
Thankfully tomorrow we have an all-day outing planned with one of the few families remaining in our area. We are banding together to get our six boys out and about. The exercise will be good for us all, we've been very lazy and I wouldn't be surprised if that was part of my subdued mood. We're planning to go to the park I took my parents to in June, so hopefully I'll have some nice photos to show you.
I sometimes struggle with Chris, although he's a bloke to start with and always been quiet, he was last year diagnosed with Frontotemporal Dementia and language is a real problem for him. (It was probably the reason he was diagnosed so quickly) Conversation is tricky, as he often can't get out the subject of the chat and so I have no clue where he's trying to get to try to supply the right word.
ReplyDeleteFortunately I get heaps of conversation in my work.
Still, it's always good to have female friends!