Labor means work

September was crazy. Crazy in the where-the-heck-did-the-month-go sense. Crazy in the can't-stop-to-blog sense. Crazy in the Mommy's-gone-off-her-rocker sense.

Spent Labor Day weekend at Family Camp, and came home completely exhausted. Took part in a very healing family reunion when one of my dad's brothers came to visit for the first time in 15 years. Got to help one of my best friends through labor, and watched baby Eloise Elisabeth be born! Celebrated my grandmother's 75th birthday. Finished teaching my first childbirth series. I'm really proud of that. Wish I'd been able to enjoy the process more and hadn't been so stressed out about finding time to prepare.

Carla went back to work full time three weeks ago, so her schedule's been varied and she's less available to help around the house. The cleaning I'm used to, but my friends know cooking dinner is not my usual routine. Scott likes to cook, and last year he got home early enough most nights to make whatever I'd planned. Yes, I was very spoiled. This year he's tutoring privately two afternoons a week, and has an extra class period to teach, so he's getting home too late and too tired.

Then this week we had a brief pregnancy scare. Followed by extended-PMSing. And at the same time, I finally had a chance to worry about how our home improvement co-op was going to be able to landscape our backyard this weekend considering that I hadn't ordered any materials or called my landscaper brother-in-law to ask for help.

My poor husband. On Wednesday he left school to see a doctor because he was having symptoms of a heart attack. The doctor didn't think it was his heart. I could have told him what it was: he was panicking that he was going to have to go home soon and deal with his already-crazy and possibly-pregnant wife.

But somehow -- with God's grace and a lot of labor from my husband and our friends -- it all came together. This afternoon, as I looked out my back door at the new brick-lined pathway making its way from the porch to the patio and the lawn, I felt rejuvenated. The vision that's been in my head for the last four years, the one that didn't transfer easily to anyone else's head, has materialized. The eight-inch deep home-insurers nightmare of a trench has been filled in and leveled. The flower beds are ready for planting. And I have a reason to sit on my patio and enjoy the table and chairs my parents bought for my birthday six months ago, because it's not just surrounded by dusty dirt.

So, if I don't write again for awhile, it's because I'm busy planting and relaxing in my new garden.

Scott, on the other hand, will be heading back to the doctor for further tests on his heart, and to check out the now purple and painful big toe he thinks he broke last night when he dropped a brick on it.