On Monday, my husband went to work.

“This is my first day of work this year!” he giggled, hoisting his bags over his shoulder and heading for the door.

“Do you want to go stand by your truck with your lunch box and I can take a photo of your First Day of Work?” I asked.

And then he giggled some more.

The light is different here. The beginning and ending of each day is longer, the light gentler. Taking pictures indoors is, once again, a rewarding option. Probably because this house doesn’t have a green plastic lid on it:

We’re halfway through our Reading Week. It’s fun.

It’s also time consuming. You can’t really get anything else done when you’re staring at a page.

It’s a good discipline for me to set aside my Get Something Done attitude and work at absorbing words.

But, like I said, it’s fun. So then I get sucked into absorbing and don’t do much doing. Which is the point!

But because I’m a Producer and an Analyzer, I start worrying that I need to find balance and then I get all stressed that I won’t. Which is not the point.

1. Queenie did a blog up-do and I’m tickled pink. Just look at that header! She’s a great writer: honest and wry with a hearty dash of wit. Love her. (She’s also my sister-in-law once removed. Or something. We don’t talk—we just read each other.) Some of my favorite posts:

*The first week of homeschooling
*Birds and Bees
*Not a poem

2. Glennon got her teeth cleaned.

It’s my boy’s birthday. The book I picked out for him at the library couldn’t be more fitting, title-wise.

He’s taller than me, you know. He might be mouthier, too.

I love him. Some days I even like him.

I went shopping last night. When I got home, this is what I wrote on Facebook:  

I went to Sharp Shopper tonight. I feel like I need to debrief. Or go to confession.

The cheap prices, the choices, the ginormous quantities…they blew me away. I was left with a full cart, a fuzzy brain, and blurry vision. So I went to a little restaurant and refueled with this salad. And then I hit the library, BAM.

Today I’m doing a lot of sitting.

And a lot of eating.

Speaking of books: what newly-released books should I be made aware of? I’d love a good read-aloud. (I aim for a middle school level.)

Also, do you know of any good books for teen boys? (Especially ones—books, not boys—that can be downloaded for free through Amazon Prime.)

Because…WE HAVE AMAZON PRIME. We did away with Netflix (whimper) and took the jump into full-blown North American high-speed consumerism and I love it.

Except I’m not really into spending money yet because we have no budget since we can’t find the folder with all our budget papers. Kinda inconvenient, really. Makes me panicky, if I think about it. We had a good system going and now the system is gone and we are going to crash and burn. Especially now that we have Amazon Prime.

We’re figuring out the Kindle downloading thing, and we’re learning how Amazon Instant Streaming works (mainly by getting as much practice as possible via DOWNTON ABBEY SEASON THREE, BABY), and yesterday I realized my plastic wrap wasn’t tough enough, I sat down and ordered my fancy favorite wrap and it will be here tomorrow which is positively amazing!

Except I can’t shake the worry that I’m damaging the environment with all the shipping this and shipping that. But then I think, the UPS truck is making his rounds anyway—is an order here or there going to really make a difference?

My older daughter is now the same shoe size that I am. She is begging for my flip-flops, my sandals, and my boots. Does this mean that if I have a willing and eager recipient for my old (but not completely worn-out) black boots, that I am justified in getting a new pair?

Hm….

Spanish is (relatively) easy to learn, but it once you start moving between countries, it gets complicated, like so.

When scrolling through this month’s photos in Picasa, I’m always caught off-guard by the pictures at the first of the month…

…and the pictures now.

What different worlds!

Seeing our Guatemala house brings back a wave of memories, rough and jagged and bulky, and my throat constricts. Not because I’m sad or homesick, but because of the intensity of the change. The vast difference. The sharp abruptness.

Here, I have a quart of whipping cream (and a quart of half-and-half!) in my fridge (O, white giantess that stands in the corner, purr-ur-urring), and there I had none. I like (scratch that—adore) my dairy-filled fridge so much better than the little dinky Guatemalan one!

I don’t feel guilty for liking this one better, either. It’s just that there are two worlds and they are so different and I lived in them both and thinking about that makes my throat hurt and my eyes smart.

That’s all.

I’ve dubbed this week The Reading Week. Because that’s what we’re going to do.

We are going to read.

There is so much wonderful, fun stuff to do here that I find myself paralyzed.

All the people!
All the food!
All the events!
All the books!
All the projects!
All the work!
All the choices!
All the things!

So I picked just one thing for this week: books. We’ll read what we have on our shelves, and then I’ll expand my re-entry experiences to include An Expedition To The Library.

Going to the library feels like a momentous occasion. Like a feat. Like A Major Undertaking. My sensitive nerve endings will have to retract for the event. I will have to tamp down the awe and dizzy delight and overwhelmedness and hone in on titles and make selections.

It will be easy once I’m there, I know. Second nature, like driving and putting detergent in the washing machine. But there is anxiety beforehand. (Yes, I had anxiety over the detergent.)

Part of me wants to savor this tenderness. Newness, or RE-newness, is a precious commodity. Something tells me that I must sit up, pay attention, and slow the heck down. (The other part of me hates transition and wants to get on with it already.)

This week, the slow-the-heck-down part of me is reigning supreme. We will read, to ourselves and to each other. The togetherness, the papery, inky pages, the stories, the glow from the woodstove—all these things will conspire together to shore us up and ready us for the next step. When we are ready.

PS. I thought about doing a quotidian post for today, but then scrapped the idea. When in transition, there is no quotidian.

In Sunday school this past weekend, we were asked to think of a time in the last few days when we had dual conflicting emotions. The class was about Playback Theatre, and the three leaders, after listening to someone share, acted out what they heard.

Right away, I knew what my conflicting emotions were—gratefulness and wanting to hide—but I didn’t dare share. I was too raw. Speaking involved the very high risk of full-on blubbering, so I kept my lips sealed and just watched.

See, I was filled up and overflowing with gratefulness for our friends and family, their hugs, their practical gifts, their warm welcomes, their caring questions, their understanding and compassion. And I wanted to hide from it all. My face hurt from smiling. I couldn’t remember everyone’s names. People looked different. The wave of love and hugs was crushingly overwhelming.

I wouldn’t want it not to be that way, of course. If people didn’t overwhelm us, I would feel abandoned and neglected. They were doing everything right and nothing wrong. So was I. There was no other way but to weather the storm.

(That day, I was half sick, too. On Saturday I developed a sore throat, maybe even a fever. As much as I couldn’t wait to go to church, I dreaded it. Deeply. Which was a really conflicting emotion for this people-loving girl.)

So that was Sunday.

Settling back in is harder than I expected it to be.

When we returned from Nicaragua thirteen years ago, we knew it’d be really hard and we were not disappointed. We had a new baby, no house, no job, my husband got a little thing called Cancer, and I got a little thing called Prego with a Side of Morning Sickness. Fun times, y’all.

In comparison, this time around is super easy. We weren’t gone long enough to lose friends and routines. We have our house, our put-up food from 2012, our pets, our things, our budget (if only I could find those dang papers!), and our job. Slipping back into our old patterns is fairly effortless.

And yet it’s not. We’ve been home for a week and we’re still doing nothing more than the day-to-day existence stuff.

When my husband said that he wanted a couple weeks off from work when we got back, I thought he was crazy. He’d be bored! We’d be sitting around doing nothing! But now I am so glad he has off. We’re not doing anything and yet it feels like we’re doing everything. It confuses me.

Grieving is hard physical work, I’ve been told. The emotional work sucks up energy and brain power and leaves the griever exhausted. We’re not grieving, mind you—we’re not even feeling down, really—but that’s the best way I can describe this blurry, plodding zone we’re in. We get dressed in the morning and feed the animals and ourselves. We send emails and unpack a couple boxes. We do laundry. And then the day is over. There is no mental energy for thinking beyond the present.

Which is another way to look at this disorientation/reorientation stage: we are fully, helplessly, through no choice of our own, In The Moment. I am a huge multi-tasker, thriving on a whirl of activity and stimulation, but right now, no thank you. I don’t have the wherewithal to think of what we’ll do tomorrow, let alone plan our homeschooling year or even make a weekend menu. It’s just one foot in front of the other. Find the kids’ shoes, call the insurance agency, renew the medications, unpack the clothes, scrounge a secondhand bed, scrub the toilet, buy dog food, fill the car’s gas tank, set the mouse traps, make soup, etc.

It’s all good (really! we’re so happy!), but it’s All I Can Handle.

The children are doing fine, adjusting to a more relaxed schedule, independent play, and rural
living—i.e. no friends to run around with for hours on end.

At first, my younger son wanted to visit other people’s houses so badly that he was borderline panicked. My friend reported that when he arrived at their house, he explored the whole thing, top to bottom. Maybe this is how he is reorienting?

(Funny note: he couldn’t figure out how to turn on our shower. Nine months is a long time in the life of a seven-year-old.)

Also, it’s weird hearing my children yelling at each other in Spanish. It’s a bit disorienting because:

 my kids + Spanish + my home = NEW.
 

The Spanish words peppering our conversations and the fact that my husband and I truly do not have a secret language anymore (oh dear), serve as reminders that even though we are home again, there has been a shift.