Octopus! And other things

 

The first full day I was in St. Croix, Kevin and I went snorkeling and Kevin found this octopus. I was out of shape and didn't swim for more than half an hour, but he spent a full hour and a half interacting with this octopus and taking lots of pictures.

He or she was an amazing creature. We have seen octopuses before, but always in holes or crevices. This dude or dudette was on a rock, camoflauged initially, though he flared white when Kevin got too close and curled up his tentacles to look bigger.

He had a mollusk and Kevin, once or twice or thrice, stole the mollusk and moved it, and Mr. or Miss Octopus swam down and retrieved it. Totally totally cool.

There are so many amazing creatures in the waters of St. Croix!

Ok, back to our life here in Ohio. It is cold this week! When I got up this morning, it was 48 degrees, which is chilly for late May!

We have also had a lot of rain and wind. Kevin put some tomato plants out and some of them were snapped off. Sad!

We have had a mild illness moving through the house for a couple of weeks now. It comes and goes. That is kind of annoying but no huge deal.

When I was in St. Croix, I had a strong desire to purchase a Major League Baseball subscription but it s $150 or so and I hesitated.

The very next day they had a half off sale and I jumped on it, so now I can watch the Detroit Tigers. They are doing very well this year so far. The main announcer is very good.

Busy busy busy week

 A few things.

 Our big girls have moved into a new apartment! It is very convenient to Naomi's job and pretty close to Lydia's job so that is good. It is also way closer to our house which makes me happy. It is about 15 minutes away instead of 30 minutes away.

We have a virus floating through the family. Some people are fine. Some people are a little sick. Some person (Isaac) has felt rotten for a few days, poor guy.

I finished editing our new book, which comes out at the end of the month. Yesterday I worked really really hard and my brain is fried. But I got it done! Which makes me very happy.

Daniel, our 12 year old son, is growing like a weed. He is in the middle of a growth spurt and is literally growing an inch every two or three months. He is currently a little over five foot five inches. His two big brothers are over six foot tall. No idea where Daniel will wind up. He has a different body type than his brothers, so maybe will top out at five foot eight or nine like his parents. We will see!

In the middle of all this busyness, we are mostly sorted after the vacation. The food situation has been a bit odd, with people coming and going and our big girls' stuff in our refrigerator. Lydia is gluten free so needs a different diet than us. It is all good, but we still don't feel totally normal.

Are we ever normal?

Anyway, busy week.

Mid May

 Yesterday, Mother's Day, Kevin and I got home from St. Croix at 1:30 a.m. in the morning.

This is our ... 9th trip to St. Croix? I think. It has been an annual tradition.

Kevin was there two weeks, the first with two of our daughters, the second with me. We had a great week together and the girls also had fun.

We stayed in a condo on the ocean and we spent a lot of time snorkeling. I succeeded in not getting sunburned even a little bit. Which is impressive!  Kevin took lots of lovely pictures of plants and animals under water.

So yes, we had a great time.

We got home to controlled chaos. The big girls have moved in for a week or two with all their stuff as they are between apartments. We hope and believe that will be sorted out shortly.

I got to see all nine of my kids on Mother's Day, which is all I really want for Mother's Day.

This week will be a lot of catching up on stuff, plus we have a book we need to do second edits on.

It was great to go to St. Croix, and great to be back.

End of April

 I haven't blogged in two weeks. Lame!

Ok, what has been happening? Answer, a lot.

Yesterday, Kevin and Miriam and Angela flew to the Caribbean for a week in the fun and the sun and the water.  So enjoyable!

Naomi and Lydia are struggling through a challenge with housing. They were supposed to move into a new apartment in early May, and recently received a message from the apartment complex that the apartment needs a fair amount of work and they can't move in until Mid May.

But their lease on the old apartment ends in about a week!

Sigh.

So they will move their stuff to our barn and garage, and stay here for a few days, and the move to new apartment. 

My allergies have been bothering me quite a bit. I feel tired a great deal and I think it is becuase of allergies? Maybe? Not a huge deal but it is nice to contemplate that Heaven won't have any allergies.

A few minutes ago, I finished the first draft of my latest book.

Now I am gonna take a nap!

Chilly April

 So far this month has been chilly. One morning this week it was 25 degrees when I got up. Brrr!

I am at 60,000 words on my latest book. I think that it is going to wind up in the next twenty thousand words or so. This one has been tough for some reason. I have a lot of plot threads to manage which is making it difficult to get everything sorted. But that is Ok.

I have said before that while I admire Stephen King as a writer, I don't like reading most of his stuff because I don't like horror. But I like his autobiographical book, On Writing. In it, he said he was like 150,000 words into The Stand and had to take a break for a couple of weeks because he had written himself into a corner. He finally decided to wipe out half the characters in some cataclysmic event :-).

I decided a couple of weeks ago to drop my Lexapro a bit. I keep gaining weight and am hopeful that dropping my Lexapro will help, as I gained a quick 20 lbs after going on Lexapro eight years ago. I can feel the effects even though I am only dropping it a bit. Anxiety is such a strange beast. A big part of it is feeling worried about stuff that a.) I have no control over and/or b.) are not my problem anyway. Intellectually I know I ought not to worry about things, but actually not worrying is a different animal.

I am not bad, just feel a little more inclined to fixate on random things.

I don't think I mentioned in this blog that we have started attending another church. For the last eight years we were going to a church about 25 minutes drive away.  That isn't crazy, but it was far enough that just popping there for something was kind of a big deal. I have a lot going on at home, with homeschooling the kids and writing and all.

So some months ago, we considered whether we ought to look for a place closer to our house. After some consideration, we tried a church which is less than ten minutes away and really like it. It is a tiny church but we have met another homeschooled family with kids close to the ages of our younger three children.

More than a week ago, Kevin and I actually led worship which was fun.

New Car

 

We bought a new car this week. That is unusual as we generally buy used cars, but this one was not a lot more expensive than used cars of this model, and new is nice. It cost a substantial amount of money, of  course, but we decided it made sense to buy a new car right now.

It is obviously yellow. Yellow is fun and eye catching.

It is a hybrid Prius. We bought an older Prius a few weeks ago which Angela will use to learn to drive on.

Many years ago, when hybrids became more common, Kevin and I agreed that hybrids were a bit dubious because you have two systems -- batteries and gasoline -- in the same car so it seemed likely there would be more problems with hybrids.

Priuses are not like that. They are very reliable. They have amazing gas mileage too, like 50 mpg.

We toyed with the idea of an all electric car but the nice thing about a gasoline engine is that you can just buy gas easily. Electric cars are nice for buzzing around nearby but it is challenging to find charging stations when on longer trips, plus charging takes a long time compared to pumping gas.

I am well aware of the absurdity of our family. We have 11 people total in the family, and we now have 8 cars total and seven legal drivers. BUT Angela will soon have her license and she needed a car which we wouldn't mind being bashed up a bit. Our new drivers usually run into something at least once, though they have never hit another car. They hit trees and stumps and mailboxes.

Kevin will be driving the new car. It is very fancy with lots of new tech. It has some wonderful safety features like it will nudge the car back into the middle of a lane. I am kind of a luddite in that I don't like new tech because I have to learn it.  :-)

So all that is exciting.

Also, the kids seem to finally be over their stomach bug so that is good.

Late March

 We are having a few cool days which is no surprise in late March. I am excited about April as we will soon have flowers blooming and trees covered with blossoms.

The next few days will be warmer and wetter. Very thankful for a dry house to live in along with heat.

My friend D. whom I visited at the beginning of this month passed away a few days ago. I am sad for her family and friends, including me, but so happy for her.

I have another friend who lost a son to a sudden medical problem. It was out of nowhere and heartbreaking, of course. With D., she had been sick for many years and battling more and more medical problems. She loved... well, she loves... Jesus, and was so ready to be in Heaven with Him.

So yes, I am sad for us and so happy for her that she is in a new body and walking Heaven's streets.

It was a gift that I was able to see her one last time before her death.

I am trudging along my latest book. I have three to four hours a day set aside for writing. I don't do it constantly; I often watch a TV show off and on while plugging away. I often need to take a break as new scenes develop in my mind. I am grateful for a bunch of gifts that allow me to write books. Not only am I good at plots, I am also good at forgetting previous plots. I have 28 novels now, all based on Pride and Prejudice characters, and I am good at forgetting scenes and ideas from previous novels so each one is moderately fresh and new, or at least as much as is possible given I am using the same characters!