Challenge...

I've been challenged to post an entry a day in November... many do it... we shall see.  As you can see, I'm off to an iffy start... I'll have to settle for two entries today... as I missed getting yesterday's finished on time.

Today, I have a day off... a scheduling change at work gives me today to catch up on housework.

Housework... I wish I were good at it, but I am not.
I live in a house that is more than 100 years old and yet I cannot do it justice by caring for it properly.
I am often sidetracked by life, other tasks and by things I want to do, rather than things that I should do.
In the great, grand scheme of setting priorities, the people in my life come before the house... for which I do not apologize.

A clear-eyed look at things indicates that it's time for some serious work... new paint and repairs
that will be necessary to keep things going for some time to come.  I've no desire to change the quirks that come from living in an 'heirloom'...  I just need to rethink. 
In advance of colder weather, holidays and homecomings, I need to be able for the house to be the
setting of the human story, not a distraction.

When each child joined us, I simplified... serious, serious simplification.
I had to make the tasks easier, to be able to focus on the humans... not the house.
As children are now leaving our home, I'm finding myself wanting to simplify again.
I begin to think of what we need to please ourselves and how that works with an influx of
happy adult children on various occasions.

I see, just down the road, time to do for myself and time again to do things as a couple.
I don't want to do it somewhere else... I want to do it here.

This past weekend, everyone came home... at different times, for different reasons...
Every footfall on the porch, every opening of that front door, every warm body that sat to my table
is a reason to get down to business and refocus what we need the house to be.
We all come here for comfort, for rest, for a retreat from a world that is fast and furious.
This house, it's time and place, is timeworn and a reassurance of past, present and future... a framework for the lives lived around it.