Elephants

I've been working on a project this morning...a BIG one...like MONUMENTAL.  It's something I've needed and wanted to do for...um...pretty much ever, but I've never done it.   I don't know why?  Too scary, too time consuming, too hard?  But yesterday someone came over and asked a question that I've answered a million times in the last two years and never really thought about the way I did after she left.  

"Well, now that the kids are all in school, what do you have planned for your days?"  

I gave her a few good answers...organize stuff, exercise, read, clean.  She was satisfied.  But I wasn't.  I thought about that question ALL DAY LONG!  You know that feeling when something pesters you to death and doesn't let you ignore it?  Well, that was this question for  me yesterday.   I thought about what to put in my newly, re-acquired 6 hour space.  I polled the audience and asked  the advice of my husband and some of my friends who wish they had 6 hours to fill.  One of them gave me a list of all the things she would do if she were me.  But I hated that list because she's not me and I'm not her.  So I spent the day cooking things and reading books and listening to music and cleaning corners.  I read scriptures and did family history and even found three generations of people I didn't have before.  I bought school supplies and put brand new sheets on Spell Girl's bed and cleaned out Mack's dresser (again.)  And guess what?  At the end of a very full, very satisfying, very tiring day, I knew that I had once again successfully avoided the REAL answer to that question.  You know, like in college, the way you all of a sudden feel compelled to clean the entire desk and sharpen every pencil when you know you have a massive final to study for?  But guess what else?  Now that all my surfaces are shiny and all my pencils are sharpened, I kinda don't have any choice but to address the ELEPHANT that has been exposed in the center of my very clean room.

So...I'm diving in...head first.  It's time consuming!  It's emotionally exhausting!  It's crazy scary!  But I'm doing it anyway.  Hopefully I'll come to love this big thing.  I'll fill you in on more details later...maybe...but for now, just know that I am happily immersed in that elephant up there.