Hard Stuff

Here I sit at home on a Monday, sick.  All of the chores I need to be doing, and I don't feel like doing anything.  A slight fever, along with a cough & headache, are keeping me from accomplishing much.

I need to write a newspaper column! Thank goodness for TPWD news releases, that will just have to do for this week. 

My boys are home with me.  Both have similar symptoms, although I'm the only one with fever. 

I need to run!  Haven't been able to since last Tuesday, before my substitute teaching gig at the preschool.  Speaking of which, I bet that's where I picked up this crud.  Adorable 3 year olds are notorious for spreading germs.  But they sure are cute.

I need to clean my house!  I have a sink full of dirty dishes, two loads of laundry to do, a dishwasher full of clean dishes to put away, and bills to pay.  Not sure how much of that will get done today. 

So, I sit here, in an ibuprofen-induced fog, typing.  At least I feel like doing that. 

Yesterday dear friends invited us over to watch the Cowboys game, and dinner was delicious (don't ask about the game).  Afterwards, the dad of the family offered to take my boys along with him to his deer lease, where he needed to fill his feeders with corn.  My boys needed that.  They need ample opportunity to "rip and snort" (Mark's term for boys running around outdoors), and they haven't done enough of that lately.  They came home telling boy tales of seeing a dead cow, and a live coyote.  It made me smile.

Saturday, Ben was in the shower, and I could hear him squeezing what sounded like the last remains of shampoo out of a bottle.  I asked if he needed a new one.  He replied that Dad had taught him to store it upside down, so that the little bit would be in the cap for next time.  

As he kept squeezing and squeezing, he said, "You know, Daddy wanted us to do lots of stuff.  And some of the things he wanted us to do are hard!"  Amen, little man, amen.  I'm doing alot of hard stuff now that Daddy wants me to do.  It's lonely and sad and I wish that I could just wake up to find this is a very bad, very long nightmare.  But I won't. 

The hard stuff is not going away.  The cluttered house won't clean itself.  I'm still wading through piles of paperwork to be completed, and looking at statements that come in the mail that say "The Estate of Mark H. Howell".  I'm just counting on God to keep carrying us through the hard stuff.  Because I have hope that there's still good stuff somewhere down the road.