Getting traction

It's another "getting traction by writing about the past couple of days" post.

Last week
Last week was a flurry of meetings and aside from that I mostly only got to the most urgent of things here at my desk. Lots of excitement as we ramp up towards transitioning our eldest to Australia next month and the rest of us to Australia in July. But enough to de-rail me from my usual fast, but somewhat efficient pace. It was like my brain had gone into manic mode and I found sleep difficult: either I struggled to calm down enough to get to sleep at the start of the night or work up part way into the night and struggled to get back to sleep.

Ah, the fun of having other wrestling mums to share the joy. So much
better than doing it alone!

Saturday
Then came Saturday. It was a usual Saturday for this time of the year—we got up early and went to a wrestling meet. But it was a slightly unusual wrestling meet, with the middle schoolers joining the high schoolers for a joint meet for the first time we've ever experienced (in seven years of being on this wrestling circuit). That meant they expanded to three mats running during the day, one mat in an adjacent room. So even though our team was small (only seven wrestlers in total), we often missed seeing them wrestle.

It was a fun, but frenetic day. I loved being back in a bigger group of parents and hanging out all day with them was fun. But the gym is an echoey one and eight hours of that was exhausting.

Watching friends watch their son introduced for his regional final.
I was sitting in their seat the last two years. It was nice not to have that
personal pressure, but rather to support others.

It was great to see our middle-school son have success. He won all three of his bouts and got gold in his weight bracket. Great encouragement for him as he's struggled in the last year or two a little with injury and "a lot of knowledge but not enough practise applying the knowledge and not enough strength to do what he wants to do".

It was also exciting to cheer for the son of our friends. We've camped with them and spent numerous other times with them (sharing meals, sharing cars, attending sporting events). It was great to see their son excel on Saturday, even if he did give us a bit of a scare in the first half of his finals match by being way behind in points.

I talked, or felt like I talked, for 12 hours! Certainly the only time I wasn't surrounded by people was in the toilet cubicle. Talking over the noise on top of cheering loudly for certain wrestlers meant my voice was strained at the end of the day.

I loved being with other parents, and was able to touch base with a couple of mums from other school that I already have an acquaintance with. Sharing the disappointment with one of them as her son lost his final.

I had an opportunity to sit with another mum-friend in an unusual situation. I'm not ready to write about it here (and I may never, because I want to respect her privacy), but it was an opportunity to have a ministry of presence to someone in need. She described me as being a real help to her and that was a great encouragement, though really I was just available to her need to have someone to sit with in a crowd and listen and I didn't do a lot other than that (and answer/ask questions).

Sunday
It was a much-needed rest day. Church as usual in the morning and then nothing much else for the rest of the day. I did sneak some baking in later in the afternoon.

Monday
This was a staff work day (or student-free day, as we used to call it in Australia), so the students were at home and got up late. David went in for a leadership team meeting and then did other teacherly work at his school desk in the afternoon. I took the opportunity to get up a bit later too (having lost sleep last week, I figured this was looking after myself in a way that I needed to).

The big elephant yesterday was that snow was forecast. Our eldest's job was to go into school to help with snow clearing and he hung around until it looked like it had started to "stick" to the ground and pile up late morning (it began snowing around 10). He worked there until dark last night and came home wet and tired.

We also had an overnight guest last night. One of the couple who we visited at the end of November. He was supposed to have a meeting at school this morning, but it got cancelled last night once they realised the extent of the snowfall. Alas he'd already made it to our house for the night, so he stayed and went home this morning after the craziness of rush-hour.

With boys at home and people coming and going yesterday I didn't get much traction on computer work and that was frustrating. But I did have some good quality time with boys. Two conversations particularly that I wouldn't normally expect during a usual week. One was especially important regards how the younger two are processing their big (and favourite) brother leaving home in just two weeks.

Tuesday
Well it snowed well into the evening and this morning we woke up to a winter wonderland. There was a good 20cm of snow on our front doorstep and I went out after breakfast to shovel our entry and the piece of road that functions as a footpath. It is all on the northern side of the house so doesn't get sun at this time of year. From experience, if it isn't shovelled as soon as is practical, it tends to melt on a warmish day such as we have today (around 6C) and then freezes to the road as the sun goes down, turning into slick ice that is hard to remove in future days.

The advantage of shovelling is that you get to meet your neighbours. Though one of my neighbours gave up shovelling almost as soon as she got out there. She rightly said that there really is nowhere to put the snow (our road only just accommodates two cars passing slowly). I shifted our snow slightly to the edge, piling it against our wall and behind the telephone pole that sits in the gutter (our front wall sits on top of the gutter, there is no verge at all). I also shovelled a short path at my elderly neighbour's entry (the one who is fanatical about gutter-sweeping).

Our overnight guest left mid-morning and I've been trying to get some traction on my computer-based work. Not so successfully, but just chipping away. 

But it's time to get back to chipping away at it.