Tick Tock

Time is ticking away...we leave for Disney 4 weeks from tomorrow! I am so excited to spend a week in such a magical place with my family! I just have to make it through these next four weeks.

This week's been a tough one. On Monday night Carl got a call that his Uncle Lee wasn't doing well at all...and by 5:00am Tuesday he had passed away. Carl did get to visit him Monday night late, but we all knew this day was coming. So that has been really difficult for him...especially since Lee ultimately died of a disease that Carl's father has, and Carl could possibly also have. The arrangements for a memorial service are still incomplete, but the family does know it will be held on the 20th of November (the body was donated to science, so they can take some time planning a service).

That kind of threw a wrench into our plans for that weekend...we had been planning to visit my grandparents for a long weekend...arrive on the 19th and leave on the 22nd. My grandmother had been looking forward to us visiting for months, so I couldn't bear to tell her we wouldn't be able to visit. I had picked the weekend of the 19-22 because I teach every single day of the week (M-W-F at FSU and T-R at WVU), so the plan was immediately after my class on the 19th we'd leave for Ohio and then the 22nd is Thanksgiving Break at FSU and WVU, so I could take off the Monday without missing class. Since I hated to cancel on my grandparents, I just rearranged our schedule a bit...we leave for Ohio tomorrow morning at 6:00am. I begged the Dean to allow me to miss my class tomorrow - I have planned an online session for them so they will still receive the day's lesson, just online. We hope to be at my grandparents by lunch time, and we'll stay until nap time on Sunday. It isn't quite as long of a stay, but it's the best we can do. Our weekends are now full until January...so maybe sometime in January or February we will try to make the trip again, barring any snow.

So now this weekend is booked up...and next weekend is as well. Carl and I have been asked to host a small get together following the service on the 20th...so upon my return from Ohio I will be a cleaning whirlwind. While I keep my house clean, I don't overdo things right now since I do have a family to care for and two jobs...so last night I made a long list of items that need completed before the 20th. Washing windows, mopping, dusting, vacuuming, clearing some of the toy "clutter" out of the main floor of the house (I used to say all the toys would stay in the basement, but somehow they find a way to migrate upstairs!), arrange the furniture to allow for maximum seating, etc....I just have a lot to do in a week. I still also have to decide what to feed these 30 or so people...I go back and forth with ideas, but I still haven't made a final decision. If I'm going to feed 30 people, I will have to find time at some point to shop for the food, and remember I still have classes next week too...so it's just a lot right now.

Of course, there's Thanksgiving too. This year I decided that I wanted to be responsible for the entire meal - no potluck Thanksgiving at my house! With that comes a lot of grocery shopping, a lot of list making, and a lot of prep work...and of course it's now 5 days after I feed 30 people at my house. On the upside, at least my house will be clean as a whistle for Thanksgiving!

Then there's also the Christmas decorations. They are all in the attic...and need to be decorating my house for the holidays over the weekend of the 27th. So I've now planned for the 21st to be a day of reorganizing the furniture in the nursery (which is where the entry to the attic is) so that everything is against the wall. I will then move all the tubs down to the nursery and stack them...they will sit there in-waiting until the day after Thanksgiving. Whichever day (26th/27th/28th) has the warmest and driest weather will be the outside decorating day (and I can't forget to buy two more wreaths for the windows, and some cute little string trees for the front yard). We'll decorate inside the house on a colder day.

The weekend of the 4th will be cookie-palooza. My mom and I like to get together and bake lots of cookies for Christmas. We plan to scale down a little bit since we'll be leaving town soon after...but it will be nice to have that day. Of course, I have no idea what recipes we'll be using and I certainly don't have all the ingredients bought!

Once the house is decorated and the cookies are made, I can throw myself into the task of Disney planning. Packing lists (including what goes in which suitcase - I don't want to be stuck on a plane with Lovey in the wrong bag!) and itineraries and confirmation numbers, oh my! We also need to buy a digital SLR camera before the trip...we're hoping for a good Black Friday sale. Did I mention we are those nuts who get up at 3:00am to shop on Black Friday? And then go out to breakfast? Well, we are. I also need to buy backup camera batteries for the new camera and the video camera...I'm not spending all this planning Disney to come back without tons of pictures and video.

As soon as we return from Disney I have to give the final exam to my WVU class (literally I arrive in Morgantown on the 17th around 5:00pm and my final is the 18th at 11:00am). I then get to grade all 63 WVU finals, and 10 FSU finals, and post those grades by noon on the 20th.

But then the world is calm - I insist it will be. I work for 4 days in Fairmont, but it will be relatively quiet around campus...most everyone is off. Then I have the 24th of December until the 3rd of January at home. (Such a wonderful perk of being an employee of a University!) Christmas dinner will probably again be something I want to put together myself...but maybe not. I also might consider doing something completely and radically different from tradition...maybe a taco bar Christmas! I suppose at some point we need to buy Christmas presents (thankfully we just finished shopping for Savannah last night)...but maybe I'll buy most of my gifts while we're in Disney World...I better remember to pack light on the way down! I also just remembered the gift to my father...55 scrapbook pages of family trips. I've done 6. I will find time for it...somewhere.

So that leaves one topic that seems to have crept up on me. In five short weeks, I have the green light to think about trying for Baby #2. I think that thought has given me more nightmares than delight. I'm starting to feel the fear that I won't be able to get pregnant again, or that I'll miscarry again, or that things just won't work for whatever reason. When I told Carl that it was only 5 weeks away he said he hates "planning" these things...but he just doesn't understand. I'm fearful of the worst, and planning is what I do. Planning calms me. Lists calm me. Yesterday I felt incredibly overwhelmed with all of my plans changing suddenly and so many meals to cook for and things to pack and clean, etc...but once I wrote it all down I was totally calm. I can see that it is possible to get it all done. I will need help, but that's what the list is for. I can give Carl a job, or ask one of the moms to pitch in, and things won't be forgotten. And I will be calm.

Carl still hates the idea of planning, but once he listened to me talk about my fear of never being pregnant again he's decided to just let me do what I want. He wants another child too...he'd just like it to come naturally...spur of the moment...but I'm not willing to wait months and months for the natural timing to just happen to be correct.

It's amazing how when I proof this post I notice that my life is always so scheduled...who in the world schedules a day to move things out of the attic? Or to make cookies? Or when to try to get pregnant? I do. But sometimes if you don't plan times for those things they get forgotten, or time goes by too quickly and you've missed it. I want Savannah to grow up in a house where traditions of decorating, cookie-making, shopping, are all a family event...and I want to make sure we have the time for it...each and every year.

You know how in some cartoons the cartoonist draws calendar pages flying off the wall to show the passage of time? And all of the pages blur together? My life feels like that. Each day flying by into one long continuous stream of flying pages...