In a funk

This week was . . . it was . . . I'm not really sure how to describe it. There were really good parts of this week and other parts were just blah. I'm not emotionally ready for winter. Not even close. This week was darker and colder than I was prepared for. I thought I'd be fine. Like the mornings are still light when I take Veronica to school, and the afternoons are still warm enough that I don't really need a coat. But the days are getting darker and the air is getting colder and I'm sinking into January levels of depression. 

Normally I think the cure for that is to get excited about the upcoming holidays. But I'm feeling like a Thanksgiving Scrooge and Christmas just feels like a lot of work every time I think about it. 

But I'm trying my best to get out of the funk I'm in. I'm currently sitting on my couch with a cozy blanket on me. Brandon lit a candle and turned on the two fake candles. I drinking a bottle of root beer. I'm listening to instrumental Christmas music. I'm really trying. 

So let's go through the last week and visit the highlights. Because it was a good week. It just ended in a slump. 

Last week I took the kids out to the Red Park. They had a lot of fun running around. I called my parents and had a good conversation. 

Here are the kids on the swing. 

On Monday afternoon we worked on moving the "new" couch from our friends Lindsay and Jeff from the garage to the basement. 

First we had to get the old couches out of the basement. That was a TASK! Back when we moved in it took like 5 Elders Quorum guys to get the blue couch bed couch down into the basement. They'd had to take off the door to do it. I'd always known it would be a pain to get that couch out. And I always kind of knew it would have to come out in pieces. 

And well, that's what ended up happening. Brandon, Derrick and I were able to get it up the stairs, but we couldn't figure out how to get it out the door - even with taking the door out. As we pushed and pulled on it I told Brandon, "This couch is completely falling apart. It has no future. Just take it apart." 

So he loosened the few bolts that were still holding the couch bed frame in place. Then he pulled that out. All he had to do next was rip the fabric and a board fell off. Then we just kind of bend and pushed the whole thing out the door. 

The black couch was a little easier to get out, but it was still hard. 

And then we had to get the two sections of our new couch in the door and down the stairs. The biggest problem is the angle. Its really hard to get things in the door and then turn them to go down the stairs. 

The other problem was that I just wasn't strong enough to do the lifting that Brandon expected from me. He'd tell me to do something, but then I'd be like, "Um I can't do that."  Or I'd try to do it and I'd realize it was hard and painful.

At one point I sarcastically said, "thanks for the couches Jeff - Brandon and I are now getting divorced!" 

Derrick was actually super helpful because he could help lift things where Brandon needed them. I don't know what we would have done without Derrick. Here he is helping Brandon take the "standers" off  the couch before they brought it in the doorway.

Eventually everything was downstairs and we were all in love with this new couch/sectional/thing. It looked like it had been there forever. And watching TV on it is the most comfortable thing EVER.  Totally worth it. 

That evening I had a small group study for Bible Study. We met up at my friend Sheri's house. It was a lovely time. I'm looking forward to studying Philippians with this group of ladies. 

Tuesday had kind of a complicated afternoon. Veronica had girls activity at 4:30 and Derrick had boys activity at 5:00. Fortunately I had Brandon and Kaymie to help with rides so I wasn't the only one driving all over the place. 

Derrick's activity was at the Brookdale Assisted living center. They decorated cookies and Derrick came home with a really awesome cookie. He'd had a great time. 

Charlotte and Lydia finished their science project. They were learning about cells and they had to draw something that represented what a cell was like. Their project was "A Cell is Like a Theatre."  They drew the Orpheum. It's from the perspective of looking from the back of the stage toward the audience. They did such a good job! 

Here's Harrold Hill and Marian. (Funny story. The girls told their science teacher, "This is Ivan." and their science teacher was like, "Oh I know Ivan. He's my friend.")

This is the electric booth with Jarod as the director. 

They included themselves in the picture. They are peaking up from the staircase that leads to the dressing room.

And here's the assistant director helping attach a microphone. They compared all these rolls to the things that things like the microconidia and nucleus do.

Here's the picture again.

And for good measure they also drew the lobby. 

The posters on the wall are for the Music Man and the Little Mermaid.

Here's someone cleaning up a mess. 

And this is the (sideways) snack counter. 

They had such a good time working on this project. I told them this was what's called "Stepping into the intersection." It's when you combine your unique talents and experiences to create something completely new. They used their drawing abilities and their experience being in a play at the Orpheum to create a poster that no one else in the school could ever make. 

Wednesday is my new day off and I LOVED taking the day to myself. I put away laundry while watching TV on my computer. And then I went to Walmart and bought a couple things we've needed. 

The big news on Wednesday was that Brandon had a job interview with the College of Southern Idaho. He'd applied to be a maintenance technonogy instructor for a program they have in the evenings. He had a really good, long interview. The lady he met with told him, "I don't see any reason we wont hire you." And sure enough on Friday she sent him an email letting him know that they were offering him the job. Brandon is very excited about this. He likes teaching and he's kind of hoping to pivot more to teaching in the next few years. This will just be one or two evenings a week for now. But it could turn into more. 

While Brandon was at his interview I was playing Chutes and Ladders with Derrick and Veronica. We play this game ALL the time. This was just the first time I took a picture of it. 

Derrick has gotten really good at being a good sport when he loses. We like to play the game where we go up the ladders and go down the slides while we try to reach the top. Then we play it backward where we are at the top and trying to reach the bottom. It's fun. All three of us ended up going down the big slide and it was so funny. 

When Hillary was at our house two weeks ago she'd made plans to come back in two weeks. So she came up again on Wednesday night. But this visit was completely different than before. She's had a hard year and her visit two weeks ago had been a low spot for her. This time she was feeling much better. It was good to see her doing well. 

On Thursday I went to the elementary school for the Thanksgiving Lunch. This is my favorite day of the whole year. Veronica is my only kid at the school. It seems like just yesterday I was eating this lunch with all four kids. And now it was just me and Verónica. 

And the food was pretty good too. 

Here's Veronica eating. 

They also had a balloon parade for the whole fourth grade. They learned all about the Macy's Thanksgiving parade and then designed their own balloons. They walked through the hallways of the school with their balloons. Veronica's was a Mario Balloon. 

Since Hillary was feeling better I'd tentatively asked her if she felt like waxing my eyebrows. She said yes and then offered to give me a baliage. I'd loved the one she gave me last fall. Having lighter hair had made me feel happier during the winter. So I said yes. 

She started working on that when it was just about time to get Veronica from school. Brandon was fast asleep on the couch so he couldn't get her. I texted Kaymie to see if she could get Veronica, but she wasn't sure she'd be close to the school. And so I sent Derrick to get Veronica. He's walked over to get her a few times with me and so this wasn't as crazy of an idea. 

So he happily went to pick up Veronica and about 15 minutes later they both came home happy. They stayed at the house for about 5 minutes and then decided to walk to the park together. I was like, "Wow! This is a big step."  Derrick took his frisby and Veronica took her basket ball and they had a great time together at the park. They were gone for like an hour and a half. 

Meanwhile I looked like this.  

Hillary put the cape over my head to help trap heat. I joked I looked like a witch. 

I didn't take an after picture until Friday morning when I was walking back from taking Veronica to school. (I look like I'm frowning. But I thought I was just looking contemplative.) I'd wanted Hillary to lighten my hair so I looked a little more alive during the winter. I didn't plan on her taking me as light as she did nor did I expect her to do the baliage so high. She basically turned my hair into sunlight itself. It's pretty cool.

Not only did she do my hair, she also re-dyed Charlotte and Lydia's hair. WE CAN TELL THEM APART AGAIN!!!!! Charlotte has red/orange hair and Lydia has blue/turquois. 

Here's the back of Charlotte's. 

She also gave Veronica a haircut to even out her A-Line. Veronica wants to grow her hair out so Hillary made it more even.

This was all a very big deal. Hillary hasn't felt like doing hair very much during the past few months. So this was kind of her practice to see if she wants to get back into it. She had so much fun. This was all like 8 hours of work and Hillary said it didn't feel very long or hard at all. 

On Friday I only worked a little bit so I could come home and hang out with Hillary before she had to leave. She still has a lot of hard things in front of her, but she's making progress and that is so good to see. 

I went to the middle school so many times Friday afternoon. I went there at 12:20 to get Derrick. Then I met with Ivan for about an hour. At 2:30 I picked up Charlotte and Lydia from the school. They had a pep assembly, but last year they decided they hated pep assemblies. So they wanted me to just pick them up. That was fine. But Lydia needed her cello. So when school really got out at 2:50 I drove her back to the school so she could get the cello from the music room. I'm glad we live close enough that driving back and forth to the school isn't really that big of a deal. 

I made pizza for dinner and we ate that while watching Return of the King. That movie is so well done. They kids were probably the most into this movie. They were so worried about all the hobbits. 

At the halfway mark we stopped and had ice cream. Then we kept watching. 

At the end of it they were so happy to see that all the hobbits were fine. 

I loved watching all three of these movies with my family, but I think finishing the Return of the King is what pushed me over the edge with feeling sad. I'd already started feeling depressed about the holidays on Thursday. But I chalked that up to being tired. When we finished the Lord of the Rings movies I felt like I had nothing satisfying to look forward to. 

Like I already said, I'm feeling scroogy about Thanksgiving and Christmas just feels like a lot of work at this point. I just wanted to stay in the simple space between Halloween and Thanksgiving and watch Lord of the Rings and eat pizza and ice cream. Why do we have to make everything complicated with turkey and presents? 

My discontent was not helped by the fact I had to work on Saturday. I have some very complicated billing that I'm supposed to do monthly. But I usually do it every other month because it's such a pain. Well I've put it off for THREE months this time because I hate it so much. I realized it's only going to get worse so I buckled down and got the info I needed. 

But with Hillary in town I didn't want to do it on Friday. And the kids are out of school all next week so I didn't really have time to do it Monday or Tuesday. So that meant I had to do it on Saturday. 

It was just as awful as I expected it to be. I went to work at 10:00 and didn't leave until 1:30 and I still wasn't done with that billing project. 

The only think that made it bearable was that no one else was in the building. So I turned on spotify and listened to THREE Taylor Swift albums. I went through all of Midnights, all of Lover, and most of Red. 

I came home from that and was just off all day. I was just in a funk and could not get out of it. So that was pretty much a lost day. (Well it was a lost day for me. Brandon kept busy. He borrowed a truck from one friend and a trailer from another and took the old couches and some other junk to the dump. He also made sure the kids cleaned the house. And he kept the laundry running.)

I'm still in my funk. But it's been helpful to sit here and write. The candle smells nice. The rootbeer was good. 

And Brandon is in the kitchen figuring out a raspberry pie with barley groats and hazel nuts. I saw that pie in Better Homes and Gardens and told Brandon it looked good. He agreed and so he bought the ingredients when he was buying things for other pies. He even found things like the spice cardamom that we didn't even know was a thing. He's so good to me. 

I'm hoping I feel better soon. And I'm hoping I start feeling happier about Thanksgiving and Christmas. There really are a lot of things I like about those holidays. I just need to remember what those things are. 

Anyway, thanks for reading.