What I've Been Up To

Less than a week until the kids start school again!

Summer has, at times, seemed to fly by and, at others, to have dragged on forever.

I've been busy dealing with the work on my father's house. Things have progressed quite a bit on that front. All the termite damage has been fixed and several upgrades have been made to the structure to make it more hurricane-proof. The contractors are putting up the drywall and soon there won't be any exposed walls left. After that, we move on to the bathrooms.

I've been reading quite a few books this summer, though with the interruptions of life, there are several which I am only halfway through.

I finished A New Kind of Christian, by Brian Maclaren. I had mixed feelings about it. I resonated with parts of it, but was also annoyed by the presentation of ideas through fictional characters conversing and exchanging e-mails. It seemed tedious at times and tended to come across as mini-lectures disguised as meaningful conversation

I'm two thirds of the way through Anna Karenina, by Tolstoy. I'm almost at page 700 with about 300 more pages to go. Apparently, Tolstoy was not skilled in the art of succinctness. However, I'll give him a pass because he initially wrote the novel as a serial for a magazine. Perhaps if he had known it was going to be packaged into one work, he would have wandered on a bit less. I'm enjoying it and appreciate Tolstoy's ability to capture the inner workings of his various characters.

I only just started Surprised By Hope, by N.T. Wright.

I've been training for a 5K in October. So far I can do the distance, but my speed--if it could even be referred to as speed--is quite slow. I won't even say what it is because it's that embarrassing.

The Rationalist has been running with me on the weekends. It's a good motivator to have a nine-year old running with you. After all, who wants to be seen lagging behind a child? The Rationalist is proud to be considered old enough to "train" with me. Mother and son bonding time.

Yesterday, we spent the day at a natural spring. The water was a cool 72 degrees and stays at that temperature all year long. That's frigid when all you're used to is the 88 degree water of the Gulf of Mexico. The boys chased fish and swam in the clear water with their friends.

There are several things I have wanted/still want to blog about, I just haven't had the time.

It's best for my relationship with my children to forgo even attempting it when they are around. I get too irritated with their interruptions every 5 minutes and wind up being cranky with them. It's better for me to just wait until school starts and I have some time to write without worrying about secluding myself from my family for hours at a time.