Julie and I have been all sorts of antsy to get started on the remodel of my parents house. After 6 months of being in limbo it has been great to finally make a plan. Being unable to execute that plan though has been nigh unbearable. It’s like being on the starting line of a race, you’re told to get on your mark and get ready, but nobody ever yells “Go!”
Somebody yell “GO” already!
I can’t even say for sure that we’re ready. I don’t know that we know for sure what to do first, or if my parents have any set-in-stone plans. I’m sure that time is going to fly by this summer, so we probably should have hashed some of that out already. C’est la Vie.
What to do next
We have been having discussions about what to do next. We need to make arrangements to get the rest of our stuff from Missouri out here to Utah. Things that aren’t coming to Utah need to be sold, like our livestock and probably the tractor.
I did go to the high school and middle school and registered both Caitlin and Joshua for school next year (another post on this later). At some point we’ll have to see about getting new UT paperwork (Drivers Licenses, car registration, etc). I hope that can wait awhile though.
Mostly though, things haven’t changed since we made the decision to stay in Utah. I keep going to VA appointments 2x a week. Julie keeps the kids alive and doing well in school. The difference now is that we feel good about having a plan, and antsy about getting started on it.
I’m going to try to add a picture to the end of each post from now on so that you can see us. I’m sure the pics will be more appreciated than my words anyway!
Task: Run as far as you can for 12 minutes, and finish any lap that begins before time ends.
This is our standard Saturday run. Keeping it consistent helps track if someone is getting better, getting worse, had a bad week, etc.
Achievements
The huge accomplishment this week goes out to Nikki! She did her best running ever and did one more lap than she has ever done before!! Way to go sweetie! You were awesome.
Caitlin also had her best ever. She did the same number of laps as a few prior runs, but completed it today almost 30 seconds faster this time! She is getting much better really quickly now that she has decided it is something she wants to be good at. He success and growth have gone hand in hand with her terrific attitude.
Julie had her best day ever, but said afterward that it hurt more than ever too. Not just in body ache, but her actual joints had some pain while running, so we’ll be babying her to make sure she doesn’t get injured in her quest for better health. She was almost 30 seconds faster than her previous best time. You rock babe!
Others
Kristie and Charlee were both consistent. Kristie was slightly better than normal, and Charlee slightly worse. Those variations happen from week to week.
Josh was our big negative today. He had his worst time and fewest laps since we began. He had gone and helped his grandfather with some plumbing earlier in the day and spent a good bit of time hauling full 5 gallon buckets out of a crawl space. His legs were sore and tired when we started, so we didn’t expect him to break any records. He was still our fastest, just not by as much as normal. He tried hard and gave his best though, so it was still a good run from him.
Had an incredibly vivid dream last night. The length of the time span involved seems insanely long. It began with us living in the house in Myrtle, MO. I came home from a trip to Little Rock and found all of the kids gone. When I entered the house I heard Julie screaming in fear and pain. I ran into the bedroom to find a guy on top of her, in the process of raping her.
With just a moment to make sure I was seeing what I was seeing, decided I couldn’t use my sidearm with Julie there, so I jumped on the guy and a fight ensued. It wasn’t very long until I had him in a choke hold, which I held until I was sure the guy was dead.
The dream skipped the dealing with the clean up of that event; no dealing with police, hospital, etc. However, a few weeks later we found out Julie was pregnant.
Pregnancy
The pregnancy was what this dream was really about. I was dealing with my wife being pregnant from a rapist and making decision on how to deal with it. My sympathies to anyone and everyone who has had to do this in reality.
The majority of the dream was the discussion and decision making Julie and I went through. We seemed to have several discussions about giving the kids up for adoption or whether we would raise it. We didn’t discuss the idea of an abortion. They weren’t fights, with one of us wanting to get rid of it and the other wanting to keep it. They were discussions with both of us discussing things like whether we would resent the kid because of how he was conceived, how the other kids would treat him, how other family would react, and whether we thought we could love him, etc. (We knew it was a boy somehow???).
So my brain spent the majority of the night discussing with itself the merits of keeping a kid conceived by rape. I suppose the benefit of such a dream is that it makes the decision real, it adds the feeling of being an actual decision needing to be made. A theoretical discussion would cover the same topics, but without the real emotions involved.
Decision
And for what its worth, my brain decided that we’d keep such a kid. If it were reality I don’t know if we’d make that decision. Obviously Julie’s real emotions/reasoning would be different than what my dream created for her. I assume my thoughts and emotions would be the same, because I thought it was real this time. Hopefully we’ll never have to find out Julie’s real-world thoughts on it.
Would you keep a kid conceived by rape? Do you think you’d be able to ever love the kid? and not look at him with resentment or anger? In my dream I thought I could, but I don’t know if I’d really be able to. I think I’d want to keep the kid, but I think it’d be harder to KNOW that your emotions would be positive toward it.
Dream and Reality collide
I’ve said before how I can have a hard time telling the difference between the real and the imagined. In my dream we had gone through the fire and moved here to PG, just like we really did. So my dream concluded with us living here like we really are, only Julie had just had the baby.
As I woke up I reached over to find Julie and she wasn’t in bed. So I thought she must be up feeding the new and fictitious baby. I laid there for a good 30 minutes thinking about the kid and dealing with my emotions about him (I think we named him John). After at least a half an hour it started to dawn on me that it wasn’t real. That I still only had 8 kids. That those memories were of non-real events. That is hard to accept sometimes because the emotions going through me were very real.
After stretching out my back and shoulders (often required to stand up) I got up and out of bed. When I got to the staircase it fully hit me that it wasn’t real. JR was at the bottom of the stairs and seeing him confirmed it was just a dream. I remembered that just yesterday I had known that JR was the youngest.
Count them! Only 8 little Jensen kids!!
Conclusions…
You mean other than that I’m psychotic???
Yes, I’d consciously kill a violent rapist I caught in the act.
Yes, I’d be willing to keep a kid conceived like that.
Yes, my medication should probably be working better.
Maybe I’m biased, but the Jensen’s do sure make cute boys!!
Can you match the Jensen boy to the right number?
Above you have 4 pics of 4 Jensen boys at approximately the same ages. I have a gold star for anyone who can match the Jensen to the correct picture above.
Do you think you know? Even Julie had some questions!
