I Should Be Sleeping

Stress is a funny thing.

The last few weeks have been utter chaos. Weddings, birthdays, baptisms, travel, and carrying and sorting through many, many boxes took their toll on me. Today was the last of a long list of major stresses. I got home and promptly went to take a nap while Surfer Pirate and my mom (who is visiting right now) were in charge of the kids.

I slept for about 4 hours!

Can we say EXHAUSTED???

It took a while to get out of bed when I woke up because my muscles hurt so bad I couldn't move. But the nap left me refreshed and now I'm wide awake even though it's after midnight.

So you, my lovely readers, finally get a new entry from me!



Aren't you lucky?????



I've mentioned before that I was the 3rd generation owner of the house we lived in, in Montana. My mother had lived in the house for 30 years. And, that house had a LOT of storage space. When she moved out of the house, she moved into a teeny, tiny little apartment. 30 years worth of stuff with lots of places to store it + no room in a tiny apartment = lots of stuff left behind.

Through the years, as she's visited, she's gone through some of the boxes. But there was still more to do.

And then we moved to ND and brought all her things with us. For her latest trip, she made the very long drive out to see us so she could finally deal with the last of the boxes. I sorted through all the boxes in my basement to get her things separated for easier sorting and then made a final count, out of curiosity.

32 boxes/plastic bins that were hers!

After two days of sorting through them, I've experienced my first bout of sciatic nerve pain (holy CRAP!!), and she's narrowed down what she wants to keep to only 6 boxes!


As someone who is trying to make life less cluttered, I have to say I'm super proud of her!


Meanwhile, that leaves me with a bunch of fun new things to look through this next week as I sort through the remaining items. I'm so excited to start digging through all the stuff! I already have 3 1/2 yards of a pretty blue fabric that I want to make a dress out of! Plus, one of my favorite things to do when I lived in a bigger city is what I call "treasure hunting" in used bookstores. And now I get to go treasure hunting in my own house!!

But the biggest treasures of all are some random papers that used to belong to my grandparents!

I have always loved to write by hand. I remember reading the play Love Letters (A.R. Gurney) in high school. I think it was the character of Andrew who talks about how he enjoys the actual art of writing - forming his letters the way he'd been taught growing up. I've always felt that same way. Physically writing words is an art.

Because of that, I have a bit of an obsession with handwriting. Technology is a wonderful thing. Electronic communication has made staying in contact with our loved ones very convenient and fast. But there is NOTHING like a real, honest-to-goodness handwritten letter! Handwriting captures the personality of the writer because everyone is unique in how they form individual letters. When I hold a piece of paper written by a person and not a machine, I feel like I'm holding a bit of them right there in my hands.

In the process of going through my mom's boxes with her, I have a little notebook of church things written in my sweet little grandmother's own hand. And I have notes and song lyrics written in my wonderful grandfather's writing! I am so thrilled to have them!

To me, they are as precious as the rarest gems.