Accomplished a lot today. Composed part of the accreditation document, took Anne’s car to the shop for maintenance, and trolled Duggar defenders on Twitter. I gotta say it was a good day.

Last night I drafted some thoughts for the accreditation document. Today I applied those thoughts into the document. That’s the most I did with my manuscripts today. It doesn’t sound like much, but I really did accomplish a lot just with that.

Tonight for dinner I had a double cheeseburger and a hot fudge sundae. Don’t judge me.

Productive day today. I worked on the self-study for several hours, and composed several thank-you notes. I also had a nice midday break with my wife and son.

A couple days ago I had a nice lunch with my associate minister. She got me thinking about how I approach my worship and my faith. So yada yada yada, I have revised the thesis of my book.

I read books to CKT nearly every night. I’ve done this since he was a baby. Tonight, though, I noticed he wasn’t really paying attention to me like he usually does. Instead, he was playing with a LEGO car he made. The day is coming very soon when he won’t want me to read to him at all before bed. And he won’t hold my hand in parking lots anymore. And he’ll stop sleeping with Froggy. I think I’m going to cry.

AMKT ran a 5k today. While waiting for her to cross the finish line I saw a group of runners wearing shirts reading “Run for God.” I think there are more appropriate things to do for God than run. Loving others, for instance, or taking care of the vulnerable.

Evangelicals are frequently encouraged to think about what they would tell God in Heaven when He asks what they did for Him. How embarrassing it would be if their answer were, “We ran a half-marathon for you. Didn’t you see our shirts?”

I bit my tongue on Tuesday. Each day since my tongue has hurt more and more. Today the wound looks like a zit. I’m not sure I can do anything to help my tongue heal faster.

I am sitting on the deck of a rented house on the North Carolina coast, watching the sun disappear and writing my daily accomplishments. The boys are inside the house playing with toys they found in a hutch. AMKT is at the grocery store enjoying some quiet moments.

On the way here I made a mental list of what I want to accomplish this summer, and what I need to do to meet those goals. I have four writing projects: two journal articles, the book proposal, and the school’s accreditation document. Each demands daily reading, researching, and writing. I’d better get to it. Starting Monday. Maybe.

The semester has ended. All that is left until the summer starts is to receive my course evaluations sometime in the next couple days, and attend our school-wide retreat on Wednesday. Tomorrow I intend to review my five writing projects this summer to determine what work I have left on them. I also intend to run three miles and have lunch with my associate minister.

This evening, instead of running like I had planned to do earlier in the day, I pulled up weeds and bushes in my front yard. I wasn’t really sure which ones were weeds and which ones were bushes, but I didn’t want either one, so I suppose they were all weeds as far as I was concerned.

I loathe landscaping. Things continue to grow after I’ve cut them down.

I spent much of the morning on the accreditation document, and much of the early afternoon reviewing final projects with students. Then I co-hosted a screening of independent projects. As the event ended I fell into another funk. I had intended to exercise after work, but instead I went home and ate two slices of pizza. Then I read a couple chapters of One Nation Under Gods while listening to a classical station on Spotify.

CKT is sleeping in the other room. I can hear his big-boy snores.

I skipped church this morning to grade projects of graduating seniors. I wanted to work on the projects at a time when I knew CKT would be preoccupied with something so that he would not be upset with me for forgoing time with him for time with student projects. So while he was in Sunday School, I was at my school grading work. I got some good work done, but I felt a little empty not attending church.

When I got home I began what I am tentatively calling The Cleanse. I do not enjoy lawn maintenance, and the people we bought our house from eight years ago left us a beautifully landscaped yard that I have managed to neglect. Rather than learn how to take care of my bushes and shrubs (which I think are really the same thing), I’m trimming them back and pulling them up. Today I filled a giant trash bin with once-beautiful nature things.

CKT and I ate an Oreo sundae tonight after dinner.

The day started well. I watched the boys in the morning while AMKT did a church ladies thing. I took them to breakfast, then to campus where we played in the sculpture garden and checked out DVDs from the library. Then we watched Monsters University together, went to the public library to pick up a Shel Silverstein book on hold for CKT, and met AMKT for lunch.

Sometime before we met AMKT, though, I began getting frustrated with my children. I snapped at CKT in the car a couple times, which he didn’t deserve. (I later apologized to him.) At lunch, he told AMKT that he was sick of being around me, which hurt me a lot more than I expected. After lunch I went to campus by myself so that I could grade projects, but instead I just sat in the screening room where the boys and I watched Monsters University a couple hours before, and felt sorry for myself. After failing to focus on student projects I decided to just go back home and take a nap.

When I got home, CKT apologized to me for what he said. We had a fairly decent talk for a few minutes after that. He was upset that I spend a lot of time working on the weekend rather than playing with him; I explained that part of the reason why I snap at him sometimes is because I am busy trying to negotiate time to work with time with him.

I had planned to attend a screening of a short film tonight produced by one of the video production classes. Instead I stayed home with my boys and ate pizza. The day ended well.

My days are starting to become more manageable. My graduate student’s thesis is almost locked, and the major university expectations and events are complete (except for commencement).

My manuscript is coming along nicely again. I haven’t really been able to work on it for a couple weeks, but I’m getting back into it. I submitted a proposal of the paper for a conference a couple weeks ago, and plan to have a completed version by the end of the month.

Harris Teeter is selling Peeps for 75% off. I don’t need any Peeps, but I can’t help but think I need to get some just in case I come up with a Peep-related art project for the summer.