[Have you read the first part of this story? You can find Part One here: I Dreamt That I Felt Beaten...]

Ok, I’m pretty wiped out here, but, I promised to continue the story after lunch and, well, it is ‘after lunch’ – just a little more after than I’d intended. I had a major sleepy attack earlier and this story was just not coming out of me! My typing fingers were on strike! They’ve come back to me, thank goodness!

When I left you, the kids had just left for school, with Patrick telling me as he was leaving that the floor in the basement was wet and the carpet was stinky. Oh great. This has happened before and the last time it did, it was the A/C unit down there leaking. As soon as they left I went down and confirmed it to be that. I came upstairs and eventually remembered to turn OFF the A/C (duh! took me a while…) and procrastinated about calling the husband with the bad news.

You see, we’ve been swamped by bad news lately. First, his grandmother went in the hospital. Then while she was in there, his mother collapsed and was admitted, as well. Next, Granny was released and came home and a few days later, mother-in-law came home. In the meantime, Granny has a surgery scheduled in Birmingham and went back in the hospital last week. That right there is enough to make us all loony. Between making sure the houses and the animals are both taken care of – and trying to take care of Granny when she was home, who was partially paralyzed – we were worn out!

And we have to travel back to October to talk about one of the ‘thorns in my side’ today. On October 28th, I broke my pinky toe and a bone on the bottom of my foot and the darn things are being super stubborn about healing. It had been a bit sore lately from having to drive my mother-in-law’s truck (I’ll get to that next), but, it hadn’t been too bad. And then it accidentally got stepped on (quite exuberantly) while I was shooting some hoops with my kiddos. Eeks. It’s been horrible ever since.

So then there’s the vehicle thing. My van started overheating one day last week. We’re not exactly sure what is wrong with it, but, it is out of commission for now. And when mother-in-law goes to be at the hospital to be with Granny, I have to drive her truck to go take care of her horses and dogs. And I’m back to mooching rides for the kids right and left. Argh. And I guess for groceries in a few days, too.

So to my count, we have a ‘broken’ Granny, a broken-but-somewhat-fixed mother-in-law, a broken-down car, a broken foot, an A/C unit that’s not working all that great as the temperatures climb, and now an A/C unit that is leaking onto the basement floor, ruining carpet, getting boxes wet and gosh knows what else.

Whew – tired yet?

So let’s go back to that dream I had, shall we? In the dream, I was really run-down, tired, sad – all of it. I was in the living room and the front door was standing open and up the front deck and in the door walks my dad, with a phone in his hand. He comes in and hands me the phone, telling me it’s my mom and that they’ve both been worried about me. (What – their mom and dad sonar went off, just knowing I was sad? Cool, huh?) I think he tells me it’s really because they couldn’t get a hold of me, so they knew that meant I was sad. And it was just really damn cool to see him and to have him show up in the middle of the day – like he used to when I lived in Dallas. I miss that. It was stay-at-home-mom and retired grandpa time and I really liked it. So I mostly just woke up missing that.

But believe you me, as the day wore on today, that ‘beaten’ feeling creeped in stronger and stronger. And I wound up feeling, today, exactly like I had in the dream. Isn’t weird and kinda spooky when that happens? Stuff that happened in your dream – happens? But also kind of earth-universe-connected in a cool way, too.

All the facts, feelings, and goings on of today are looping in and out and in and around my brain and a lot of this is coming out garbled. But that’s okay. Here’s the cool stuff. I was standing in the kitchen at one point and I was just really feeling the beaten-ness and all of a sudden I realized two very cool and good things:

1. My children are healthy.
2. And oh my goodness, what a good thing the A/C broke (read:has to be turned off) on a cloudy, cooler day.

And that’s when I realized that it was all going to be okay – and that this too shall pass. Whew – thank God! This is a bad day – or even a bad week – or maybe even a bad month – but, it is not a bad forever! I don’t know about you, but, in the middle of a bunch of muckadoo, I’m pretty well convinced it’s gonna be like that from here on out! Silly me!

Guess what I found a little later after that? I was so excited! Look:

Oh wait, you can’t see it. Let me shine a light on the little guy:

It’s my new little cucumber plant! My first one to sprout up – and I just planted them about two days ago! What a sweet surprise that was! See, things aren’t so bad, now, are they?

I planted roma tomatoes, better boy tomatoes, and cucumbers:

I’m a weird one, I guess, but, nothing cheers me up like digging in the dirt! Honest! I love it!

So I’m gonna keep lookin’ up and muddle on through all this nonsense!