One Week

It's been a week since the floor project ended.

For me, anyway.  Savageman continued dealing with it, and the designer, etc. over the weekend, but I was doing martial arts stuff - including a national tournament in Baltimore where Middle took 2nd in Weapons Forms and 1st in Fighting.  His whole team did great - 6 competitors, 7 firsts in their various events and levels.  A great day overall.

Great for me to get away too.  After weeks and weeks of having the house torn up, working morning until night on the cleaning and decluttering effort, having people in the house, not being free to come and go as needed, sending the kids to my parents' house to get their schoolwork done, missing martial arts classes - I feel like I'm coming out of a fog and seeing my life again.  When I walked into the dojang on Monday, one of my friends commented right away, "You are absolutely glowing.  Everything about you looks different.  It's like a huge weight has been lifted."

How right she was.

There's more to be done, of course - there always will be.  But I've been doing it on my own, a little at a time.  Hanging curtains, replacing cabinet hinges, shopping for appliances and furniture, caulking and painting, looking at staircase ideas, cleaning and decluttering.  I've managed to keep the main floor clean this week, thanks to all the storage that we've freed up in the basement.  Two new storage pieces in the dining room and a wall of shelves in the living room will help even more. 

But we're taking our time with all that. 

In addition to reclaiming the house, I've also made an effort to reconnect with the other people in my life this week.  Lots of time with the karate friends, a long walk with my very good non-karate friend, book club tonight to kick off my birthday weekend.

It's important to me, this social time.  Going too long without it makes me wiggy.  I'm blessed with some very special friends, who took up a kayak collection for my birthday and put it in a homemade paper kayak.

So now I have no excuse.

After the month I've had, some sanity time paddling around on the creek sounds pretty darn good.