Ah Yes, Return to Reality

I totally understand the vacation from your vacation concept now. Last week, we took six days of furlough (didn't want to miss Sunday) to have a little breather--we have more furlough time in a year than one could logically fit in with our schedule, so we decided to take some time this month, the end of next month, and after Christmas (and we still have time that will vaporize!).

I had to drag myself out of bed when the alarm went off (after a customary hit of the snooze) so that I could start my morning ritual of breakfast, the daily homework for Bible study, get ready, put together healthy lunches and snacks for hubby and me (which sounds easy--not so much when his diet is low carb, and mine is low cal/low fat), and check the corps PO box on the way to the corps.

Once arriving at the corps it took me THREE HOURS to just open and sort the mail that accumulated in our absence (granted, I did have a couple interruptions for thrift store vouchers, phone, etc). Needless to say, all I accomplished today was getting my finance packet for last week and this week ready for the mail and write out this week's CCM cards. Didn't get to the email or answering machine...that's first up tomorrow along with my community service worker reports for the municipal court and finalizing our next preaching calendar for September through Easter. Sheesh. I guess the magical little fairies that do paperwork and filing skipped over my desk last week.

Had an awesome volunteer come in today to start to move palettes of food and shelving as we are reworking our food pantry this week to create a more effective & efficient use of space and the FIFO concept (first in, first out) for our food bank shipments. More help tomorrow and lots to still get done, including husband's long-awaited inaugural use of the refurbished floor buffer we finally acquired for the corps and painting the interior of the corps (adios pink chapel and ugly brown brick!)

Complaining aside, last week was a nice break from the normal...while we were busy, I was able to work side-by-side with my husband on several non-ministry related projects. Some of these we refer to as "marriage builders" because we have different points of view on how the job should be completed. In the end though, we figure it out together and haven't had any major catastrophes yet. The end of the week was nice as we were able to escape for a couple days and visit husband's grandma and some cadets on their summer assignment. Can't complain about the discounts we get for a common hotel chain...makes short getaways quick, easy, and super affordable. Getting away was good, we were finally able to rest--literally. When we checked into our hotel, we promptly fell asleep for a 4-hour nap, went to dinner, slept for 11 hours, visited, slept for another 2 hours, visited, slept 9 hours--and would've been longer had the phone not rang. That's one thing that always amazes me is that when we go away from home, we sleep so much that you would think we haven't slept in ages!

Well, I find myself babbling at this moment for lack of something better to write, but I figured I needed to put something down so that the random voyeurs of the world would still know I'm alive. More later...