Woman Plans, God Laughs: My Frustrated Planner for September

I confess, I am having a bad week. I've been planning and planning and planning on projects for this house, and nothing is really coming to fruition. At the mercy of contractors, I can put a date on my calendar in pen, only to have to cross it out and add it again...a few weeks later.

The windows, which I thought would be done last month, are now not even on order at this point. Looks like installation will not happen until the end of this month.

Consequently, exterior house painting cannot happen until the beginning of next month.

And because of that, exterior landscaping...well, at this point, I may have to wait until spring, which means all those bushes we chopped down last weekend? I'll be looking at stumps and dirt for an entire winter.

My garden beds desperately need rototilling and mulching, but with a forecast of 90 plus degree temperatures this weekend, that's not going to happen...which means the weeds will continue to grow back in, which means the beds will continue to look sad and bedraggled.

This house is draining me. I feel it every day. Every day when I sit at my kitchen table or wash dishes at my sink and look at my neighbors garbage cans. Every day when the rooms look like the "before" photos and not the "afters". Every day when I walk down the sidewalk, past the house with peeling paint and terrible windows and beds of weeds and dirt.

I am stuck, stuck, stuck...in this house, in my head, isolated from people and social interaction because, let's face it, I have no friends in this town and prospects aren't looking good either. It's times like these that my mind can take a turn to the negative.

I'm giving my self this verse this month to remind me...think on these things. Don't think about the garbage cans. Don't think about the neighbor that won't even wave back when you wave to them. Don't think about the weeds. Look at the flowers! Think on these things!

I'm not even making a list in my notes column this month because honestly? I look back on the past months and those same things I wrote down still are left undone. So I'm not making house plans because frankly, God seems to have other plans for this house that cannot be written down in pen, let alone erasable pencil.

I'm going to think about Autumn's approach. Cooler days next week will mean that I can finally plant some mums and decorate the porch for fall. I will try hard to find an orchard with some early crops of apples. I will drink apple cider sprinkled with cinnamon, read a good book, and find my happy place.