D.O.N.E.

I am so done with harvest.

Thankfully, as of 4:00 today, harvest is done with me too.

There are parts of harvest that I enjoy....really, there are.  There is something about the hype, the adrenaline, and the experience that everyone should get a chance to be a part of.  It is a time when family -- brothers, cousins, nephews, nieces, grandkids, in-laws...and outlaws... -- all come together to work toward a common goal.  Or just to hang out and have a combine ride.  Or to offer well-wishes and prayers via facebook.  No matter the role, everyone plays a part.

However, this year's harvest seemed especially tiring.  I am not sure why, but one particular theme song from my childhood kept playing over and over in my head...."You take the good, you take the bad, you take them both, and there you have..."

Harvest.

It's not as catchy as "...the facts of life, the facts of life...", but it definitely fits. 

For those of you dying to know, here's a snapshot of the week:

BAD: Breakdowns.  That word is a sentence all by itself. It's a subject, verb, adjective, and adverb all wrapped up into one. Ugh.  Breakdown #1 occurred about 2 hours after we started cutting a week ago Friday.  Breakdown #3 caused us to lose nearly all of Monday.  If you are not a harvest type of person, let me just inform you that a 12 hour breakdown makes everybody especially grumpy. 

Breakdown #ninety-gazillion occurred last night at midnight.  Imagine my delight.

GOOD: We thought the 12 hour breakdown was going to cost upwards of $10,000 and potentially force us to end harvest and hire someone else to finish.  Turned out it was a $5.00 o-ring.  Although time-consuming, every single breakdown ended up being relatively inexpensive. 

BAD:  Sickness. Spiking a 103 fever during harvest makes life miserable for any child, and for the families having to juggle plans, people, and schedules.

GOOD: Although all 8 cousins stayed the night at grandma's together and were thoroughly exposed, no one else got sick.  Amazing.

BAD: Breathing Treatments.  Calls in the middle of the night from your child who is staying at grandma's are scary.  The words, "Mom, I need a treatment" are not my favorite any time, let alone at 3:48 a.m.  And just when we thought harvest is over and all is well, the same words came out of his mouth about an hour ago.  Harvest is done, and we are still treating.

GOOD: I was negligent  in preparing for harvest in the meds department, but I scrounged up 4 vials of the needed solution.  We used the last one yesterday.  I almost didn't pick up the new script at the pharmacy yesterday afternoon because we were almost done with harvest and he was doing great.  Had I not decided to go ahead and get the medicine, I would be sitting in the ER at this very moment.

BAD: The relentless wind.  It was awful.  The wind made it hard to see, hard to breathe, and hard to enjoy being at the field.

GOOD: The relentless wind also made it possible to start cutting early every morning and stay in the fields late, late every night.

BAD: Kids. Not that the kids are "bad", but harvest basically ends up becoming a time of complete freedom, tons of fun, unlimited play time, staying up til all hours, and excessive video gaming. What is wrong with that? Nothing! Until you have to bring them home and re-introduce the realities of life.

GOOD: Harvest is also a time of  great cousin-bonding, trampoline jumping, sand-castle building, wheat truck riding, soccer playing, game playing, and sleeping like sardines in grandma's basement.  Many life-long memories are made.
 . 
BAD: Scary storms. One rolled through Thursday evening.  We had plenty of warning on radar that rain was heading our way.  What we didn't realize was coming was the mega huge wind.  Facebook posts like "90 mph wind in McPherson!" freaked me out a bit.  I am pretty sure my phone call to my husband went something like, "YOU HAVE GOT TO GET THAT COMBINE OUT OF THERE N.O.W.!"

GOOD: All our people and equipment made it back to the shed.  They were a minute or two later than what would have been considered safe....but....they made it.

I guess this all goes to show that every cloud really does have a silver lining.  There is good in every bad situation, and things really do happen for a reason.  Sometimes we may never know what that reason is, which, personally, drives me a wee bit crazy at times.

Like my 10 year old said earlier today, "The worst thing about harvest is that you never know what is going to happen, everything always changes, and we never can have a plan.  And I LIKE to have a plan."

I have no idea who he gets THAT from.

I'm sure he has never heard that from me...

Take Me Out To (or of...) The Ball Game

Baseball is a tough sport for someone who struggles with attention and focus.  

Bug hunting is more fitting for my 7 year old.  The only requirement for that activity is choosing which bug (spider, snake, rodent...) to chase or catch.  No attention span length required.

My little guy has mixed feelings about baseball.  He loves to bat.  His perfect game would consist of 100 times at bat with no fielding required.  

Sometimes he is super excited for a game.

Sometimes he isn't.

Sometimes it changes every five minutes.

Tonight he was ready to go. All was well until three minutes before the game was supposed to start. One moment he was warming up, the next he was walking toward me with his coach, an ice pack, and tears streaming down his face.

The story went something like this:

"The coach threw the ball to me and accidentally jammed my thumb. I don't want to play tonight.  I am not going back out there. I really don't want to play!  I don't even like playing baseball!"

Needless to say, it was going downhill quickly.

I cranked up my mommy logic and explained that the team really needed him, because who would play short stop if he didn't play? And, of course, they needed him to bat so he could hit some people in to score.  I did all the 'bend your thumb down, bend it back, wiggle it' mom-appropriate checks; and when he grabbed it and yanked it diagonally and told me that hurt just a little, I knew he was fine.  

He still wasn't buying it.

He was NOT playing.

I transitioned into 'let's be tough' mode and show your teammates and coaches how you can overcome pain.

I may have mentioned ice cream.

After a few more determined "I don't want to's," the truth came slipping out.

"Mom, if I go back there, I don't want it to look like I have been crying." 

Ah ha.  No problem.  Wipe the tears.  Pull the hat down low.  Good as new.

And off he went.

And he played short stop.

Hit some runs in.

And scored a run.

I must be psychic.

We Really Should Have...

...read this book before we started gardening.

Three years ago we started this gardening venture.  Had we read The Complete Idiot's Guide to Vegetable Gardening, we may have been able to avoid being gardening idiots.

Alas.  We are still learning.

We pretty much figured out the potato thing the first year.  And the onions.  Those are fairly difficult to mess up.  The second year we decided we were genius lettuce growers since we discovered that planting it in stages is much smarter than planting it all at once. It has taken three years to realize that spinach just has.to.be.picked.early.  Earlier than you would think.

We have also grown peas each year, with some success.  Hot and dry weather the past two years was not helpful, but we still put some up in the freezer.

Since last gardening season, our family discovered a liking for sugar snap peas, which gave us the great idea of growing them ourselves.

Turns out that was mistake #1.

We had grown peas, so we assumed it worked exactly the same way.

Mistake #2.

We did not research for 1 second how to grow sugar snap peas.

Mistake #3.

We planted, watered, and watched them grow.

And grow.  And grow.  And grow.

I mentioned to my beloved husband that maybe we needed to put up some kind of support for the plants.  But we didn't.

Mistake #4.

We planted three rows.

We should have supported each row so it looked something like this.

But we didn't.

And ours can't be described any other way than "Welcome to the Jungle". They look like this.

Three rows have turned into one big pile of mess.  It takes everything in my being to muster up the courage to wade through the vines to pick these.  The fact that I can't even see the ground makes me about 99% sure that a snake may make an appearance at any moment.

And that would most definitely be the end of my gardening career.

Pick an Answer, Any Answer

As I was growing up, I considered tons of career options.  Teacher, social worker, counselor, accountant, business owner....the list seemed endless.

Unless it was in the medical field.

If it included blood, needles, or sickness, it was not an option.

My mom is a nurse and managed an entire emergency room.  My aunt (her sister) is a nurse and works daily in surgery.  I have several cousins who are nurses.  I have yet to figure out how that gene skipped over me, but it not only skipped, it hurdled itself way out of the realm of possibility.

It's not that I faint instantly at the sight of blood, or that I spontaneously combust if someone pukes in my presence, but I do feel woozy, question my stability, and basically avoid anything gross or remotely medical.

Couple that with the fact that I can diagnose anyone as a terminal case after only 20 minutes on Google, and it is just better when my children do not have medical issues.

Unfortunately, my little guy has a medical issue.

One that does not go away.

At least until he hits puberty....or so the latest research tends to suggest.

This medical issue -- PANDAS -- is one that I have come to dislike very much.

I understand that I need to be thankful (and I am) that he doesn't have cancer and chemo treatments, diseases which require transfusions, or conditions which bring about lengthy hospital stays.  I really am grateful for that.

But considering my issues with all things medical, this diagnosis is one that has caused me to question every parenting move I make....and every doctor I visit.

The short story is this: Strep makes something go haywire in my little guy's body.  He is asymptomatic, so we don't know when he gets it.  When this happens, his crazy antibodies attack his brain instead of attacking the bacteria. When his brain is attacked, he demonstrates an interesting array of symptoms - various tics, emotions, and behavior.

This is constantly making me second guess what the cause of his behavior is and whether or not it is something he can control.  I find myself having a whole lot more patience and understanding if antibodies are laying siege on his brain than if he is just acting like a goofball and making idiotic choices.

Unfortunately, there is no way to know. Ever.

Unless we would have weekly MRI's - that would potentially give us a bit of a hint.

Uhhh.....No thank you.

Oh sure, there are lab tests to measure the antibody level in his blood. We have done these several times. However, even the doctors disagree about the validity of these results.  Doctor #1 wants lab work done every 3 months, and additional times when new "strange" behaviors occur.  He feels that the antibodies should fluctuate in correlation to behavior.  Doctor #2 says that research is showing that the antibodies measured by these blood tests are not the actual antibodies that are attacking the brain. 

Great.  So which ones are the ones on the warpath?

Of course, antibodies you can't measure.

Seriously, how does anyone really know?

What caused this little medical rampage is this:  We have noticed a progression of new obsessive/compulsive and tic behaviors that have made us feel that he is once again cycling up (If you Google PANDAS - and I really don't recommend it - you would see the term 'cycle' quite often.). 

I called Doctor #1 and Doctor #2.  I left messages about what we were seeing.  Doctor #1 called right back and requested lab work.  Doctor #2 has yet to call back. We did the labs.  The goal is to be below 250-300ish.  He has consistently run right around 500.....for one year and 3 months.

The result this time: 250. Doctor #1 said because the lab is normal, that the behaviors aren't PANDAS related.

We should be doing the happy dance.

Oh wait. We still have very strange behaviors....which are NOT getting better.  And if they are not PANDAS related....why is he doing these things?

Which makes me think Doctor #2 may be right.

Which makes me want to scream.

Actually, I don't care who is right, I just need some answers.

Yesterday would be good.

This man....

Is a...

motorcycle-riding
cliff-diving
water-skiing
fire-fighting
life-saving

...risk taker.

He is also a...

basketball-coaching
baseball-practicing
combine-driving
game-playing
encouragement-giving
 
...super amazing father.

And a...

God-fearing
Sunday-school teaching
Christ-serving
Spiritual-leading

...man of God.

Happy Father's Day to the best husband and father that a family could ask for.

Family

Every now and then it is important to take a moment and reflect on life's many blessings. 

These people....

They bless me. 

They are my Illinois family.

All except for one aunt and uncle who live in Lawrence, but we love them too.  They get extra kudos because we share the same last name, which is not the family name.  That, and they are Jayhawks.  They, of course, get bonus points for that, too.

This group consists of people who have...
 ...babysat me
...allowed me to babysit their kids
...officiated my wedding
...talked for hours offering advice
...known me my whole life
...married into the family and become some of my dearest friends
...been heroes to my boys
...stood beside me as my maid of honor
...inspired me to make hard choices
...played for hours with my kids
...loved me unconditionally

See the nice little lady in the front row of the family picture?  She's wearing the pink sweater.

Yes, sweater.  It was only 80 degrees.

That's my grandma.  She has put up with me for many years, even up to a month at a time during the summers of my junior high years. Amazingly enough, she still always looks happy to see us.

This past weekend we celebrated her 90th birthday.


I seriously hope I have genes from this side of the family.  She is 90 years old, still able to live on her own, and drives a brand new shiny red car.  She also plants and maintains gorgeous flower gardens like this. 

The great family in front of the flowers is the one who hosts the hubs and I and our crazy kids each time we visit.  We talk a lot, laugh a lot, and stay up late chatting until at least one of us falls asleep while sitting on the couch.  I'm happy to say that the person falling asleep usually isn't me!  Usually.


The family has changed over the years.  Little ones have come along...

 

Past little ones are now all grown up (and are very nice to play with the new little ones)...

This family plays a lot of games...

Even the little tykes...

 

This family takes competition to a whole new level...

Especially when it comes to baseball.  Although "baseball" might be somewhat of a loose term for the games that took place.

The best part...three generations playing together.  Fifty-somethings...forty-somethings...thirty-somethings....twenty-somethings...and six, seven, and ten year olds.  Together.

All acting like they are 14.

It's the stuff memories are made of.

Refocus

My poor blog has been neglected lately.

This seems to happen frequently.

It's not that I haven't had anything to write about, and not so much even that I haven't had the time.  More accurately, it has been because the past two months have been permeated with self-reflection, pondering, analyzing, praying, and making some tough decisions.

For the first time in a long, long time, I was completely undecided at contract time.

It is normal for an educator to do a little retrospection when it comes to deciding whether or not to sign on the dotted line.  This choice is a bit different than in some occupations, where a two week notice is sufficient to make a life change.

However, this year was more than just a short reflection.  It was agonizing.  Painful. Heart-wrenching.

Before I portray the wrong message, allow me to reassure you that it is NOT my job that is painful and agonizing.  I love my job.  I love the students.  My colleagues are amazing.  The problem appears to be me and my ability to prioritize.

While processing why I was struggling so much, I shared with a colleague that I think I unknowingly allowed my priorities to become completely flipped around.  By the end of April, they seemed to look something like this:
1. Career/School
2. Kids
3. Spouse
4. God

This is a recipe for disaster on so many levels.

Not only were these all messed up, but important categories, like 'Friends', were barely even on the radar.

I knew immediately that I had to do something to get these back in the right order.  I just didn't know what that "something" was.

I thought it might include something BIG....like resigning from my position at school.  It seemed logical to me that time was my problem, and the only thing on that list that could be removed to free up more time was my career.  

The kids and the spouse were relieved to hear that I wasn't thinking about removing them.

Still, my husband wasn't so sure.

Not about not removing him.

About removing my career.

In one of our many talks, my husband was the one who said, "Who ever spends two years getting their Master's Degree and then quits their job?"

Good point.  I would guess that is not very common.

Again, let me clarify.  It is not that I wanted to quit my job.  I just knew that I was over-stressed, over-tired, and self-absorbed. So I wondered if God was trying to wrestle the job out of my hands and asking me to give it up.

After much prayer and processing, we decided this was not the case, and that a mega job change may be a bit of an overreaction. 

So I signed.   For which my heart is thankful.

However, the priorities must change. Now.

So, the focus of my summer......is Refocus. Reorganize. Realign. Re-prioritize.

Starting now.