this is only my 6th full weekend home since july 1; only my 3rd since august 1. and i’m gone the next two weekends in a row also. a handful of these have been with family, or a family member has been with me. but i couldn’t figure out if the fact that my pool needs maintenance and our camping gear is still in a pile on the floor of the garage (causing me to park in the driveway this past month) was solely due to my being a slacker when it comes to house stuff. or, if there were maybe a secondary reason with which i could salve my non-handy-man guilt. waking up at 9:15am this morning, in my own bed, because my daughter was gently nudging me to ask me if a friend could come over — well, that’s a good way to wake up on a saturday.

and tomorrow, i actually get to go to my small group. we “meet” on sunday afternoons. i put quotes around “meet” because, as you can guess from my schedule, it just hasn’t happened much this summer (or, at least not for me). two of the sundays i HAVE been home, we’ve had a church middle school ministry volunteer meeting. we had one for tomorrow, but — thanks be to the good lord and the good middle school pastor — the meeting was cancelled. so i get to go watch a nooma with my small group and talk about life and sit around and have a beverage and just plain old hang out. can’t wait.

of course, back to the original thread of this post — my sitting here writing this post is resulting in my camping gear still sitting in a pile on the floor of the garage. momentarily, i’ll go put it away; then i’ll do a bit of pool stuff; and then comes the good part: when i do any ridiculously small amount of work around the house like this — manly stuff — i can strut around for a bit (a very tiny bit) feeling like i’ve truly accomplished something and deserve, after all, to be a homeowner. it’s a fleeting feeling; but it’s pretty fun while it lasts. then i can play xbox or something.