So, lets see.  This has been a busy week.

Sunday:

• Distributed 6 copies of my novel
• Realized M’s b-day was the next day and I had *no* plans
• Didn’t get to freaking out or worrying before God provided for a party opportunity.

Monday:

• Melody’s 6th birthday
• “Monday Marvels” at UAF was about physics. Primarily waves, and applied by measuring the speed of sound and the speed of light (live, in front of ~70 people). Highlights included
  • the chocolate burning in the microwave (which apparently didn’t really matter because the presenter had pre-preped his light-measuring ingredient, and
  • Natasha winning her daddy a cool university sweatshirt (she was very proud of this) by coming up with the elements of a wave’s speed.
    • Frequency and wave-length, if I remember right.
• And Grandma Teena flew in to Fairbanks, for just one night, and the children were thrilled at the chance to see her (though, a little confused in the morning. She had to leave before they woke).

Tuesday:

• Spent the day getting ready for the 2:00 party:
  • made a train out of four little loafs of crazy cake
    • The recipe for which I had to pull out of my head: apparently  packed my hand-written recipe book.
    • The kids had a ball sticking candy all over the frosted cars, mostly piling it on top, as if they were full and carrying hoppers of M&Ms and Jelly Bellies.
    • Used black licorice to connect to cars, and red to lay out the tracks under the cars.
  • Also made strawberry shortcake, because (After I had mixed up the crazy cake) Melody seemed to realize what I was making and asked if she could have a white cake.  I was very thankful she agreed to shortcake, because I didn’t want to decorate two cakes.
• The Party was perfect.
  • a pile of church friends were there, including her *best* friend, who, perfectly, gave her the best present– one she’d wanted for a long time.
  • The cake went just far enough, there was ice cream, and everybody got to climb the ladder by the house to see the baby robins (!) in Grandma Judy’s hanging basket.

Wednesday the hard stuff started:

• Went back to the clinic for allergy results.  The kids and I all have high levels of reaction to milk, eggs, soy, and wheat/gluten.
  • So there’s my egg/migraine connection confirmed
• I’m working myself up to being able to plan out a day or two of meals that just focus on leaving out milk (and soy) for starters. The kids weren’t big egg eaters, anyway, and I haven’t been doing as many baked goods as a year ago, but take away gluten you have either work-intensive homemade food, or a lot of fruits and veggies, to a level these kids are not ready for.
  • So like I said, for now, I’m focusing on milk (cause that’s the first thing we’ll run out of), and with that and other things I just won’t have it in the house.

I’ll say NO when I need to. That doesn’t mean I *like* to.

Also on Wednesday, the realtor’s office called to schedule a showing Thursday night.

So Thursday I dove in to cleaning a house that had been minimally maintained for a couple weeks: Inside (strip the boy’s smelly sheets), outside (mow the lawn, weed the flowerbed), clean out a bay in the garage, laundry, dishes, dog hair, clutter in all the rooms, and, oh, right, I have children with feelings.

And the realtor showed up early. After the office called and said she “might, is that okay?” And I said, no, I’m not done.

This might not have been quite so traumatizing if the watch I was working from wasn’t 15 minutes slow.  So I really thought she had shown up half an hour early.

So the kids, dog and I leave the house (after Joule totally rushes the 2-year-old visiting, understandably *freaking* out the mom.) and Jay is at the park, and I check out for the rest of the evening: reading at the park, biking away from home as soon as I’m done eating. Spent something like two hours at Barnes & Noble with my feet up, trying to get my heart rate down and my inner perfectionist to quit cussing me out.

I’m almost back to normal now.  Have five loads of laundry to fold, but I have a recorded book to enjoy with that. So the real work of today (if I can find the energy for it) is figuring out some food stuff.

I asked Jay this morning if he could forgive me for the house not being perfect, and he hugged me and said *Yes* and called me amazing for what I got done, and said of course I had permission to hang up on anyone who tried to be critical of me.

And I thought, this could be a great example of God providing a buyer despite my not getting it “right.” — We’ve been discussing how much God does compared to what we’re supposed to do. —

Funny thing is, if we do sell, we have a few properties we’re interested in– so we’d have to make a choice.