I have been struggling with motivation lately. The website has just been something I’ve not been excited to work on lately. This WordPress update is partially complete, but there are a few thousand images and documents to be uploaded. I was hopeful that I could get Jared to help me with it while we were in Austin in June, but that didn’t happen. I had planned to take an entire week in July while the kids were gone to work on the website, but I ended up getting sunburned horribly and spent that week in bed basically moaning. That sunburn was July 4 weekend, and here it is August 1, and I still have spots of skin that are healing. It was bad. Really bad. (Don’t try to help your husband build a porch swing fire pit cut and then cut three acres of grass in a swimsuit, especially when it’s the first sun your thighs have seen all season. Ow.)
Other areas of stress in my life seem to be doing better, but as I said, I’m still struggling with motivation. My release as Seminary teacher was postponed until the end of the summer so that I could help a student complete a semester of makeup work. She finished her makeup work requirements last week. I went over to her house every week and gave her a lesson, so basically I’ve been teaching home study seminary for the past two months. I’m glad that she completed her work, but I hope that it wasn’t so easy on her that she feels like she can skip out on a semester again next year. I don’t get into the makeup-work-as-punishment thing, and I do expect her to work, though I think the work should be pleasant. I think it’s important that we show students that scripture study can be a part of daily life — it doesn’t have to take over our lives, like we think it might when we’re young.
While the kids spent three weeks out of state with the grandparents, Jared and I were able to get to the temple. These new temple movies make me laugh. It’s actually hard to hold it together in parts. It is nice to see a different emphasis, but all the Eve Weeping seems a little overwrought to me. I was so hopeful the new movies would be shorter…. We need an express session, especially around here where the traffic to the DC temple means it takes between 1 hour and 15 minutes up to 4 hours or more, one way. I’ve had several friends who had to turn around and go home to their kids and babysitters before they even made it to the temple. Jared booked a hotel near the temple last time we went up, which was fun, since the kids were out of town. Both are back now, which means I’m spending my time school shopping, carrying them back and forth to their activities, and shouting at them to stop leaving dirty dishes all over the house. Not gonna lie: those three weeks sans-kids were pretty darn great, even if I was sunburned and bed-ridden for a week or more.
