Time is a Flyin'

Gasp! It seems like just a few months ago we were packing up our 2100 square foot home and planning how we were going to integrate 2100 square feet of accumulated belongings into an 1100 square foot condo - with no basement, and wondering if what we would eventually build would have enough room in it for all our "stuff."

In truth, the packing process started as we painted and re-carpeted rooms. Some items have been packed away for well over a year. But by this time last year, DH and I were preparing to make that 600 mile move.

The move didn't just involve us however. We also moved his then 88 year-old father down here, and the preparations for that were even more involved.

We had also moved older daughter down here from Raleigh, NC, so she could attend TTU and live without a roommate.

As we are well into the "emptying the storage unit" phase of the move, I contemplate on all we have accomplished in the last year. Sometimes it staggers me, and I am sure the DH will be happy when I run out of things to do around the house. We certainly have kept busy with packing unpacking and then packing and unpacking again.

Then I look at the atomic clock on DH's office wall and wonder how long I slept last night because it shows the time as follows: 2:40 p.m. CST, APR 30 SUN 09.

What Do I Do With My Pig Dirt!

When our house was finished, our builder brought in truckloads of dirt from a pig farm. I was told by everyone I mentioned this to that we could grown anything in the pig dirt.

The grass started off great, but rapidly turned brown and died. However, we do have a nice green carpet of crabgrass.

As I look out my north facing window, there are six trees on the section of lawn between our driveway and our eastern lot line. Three of them are dogwoods; one is an oak, and one is a tulip poplar. And then there is the unknown tree, which I suspect might be a beech tree. The dogwoods are small and all thee of them are beneath the canopies of the larger trees. When I say larger, I mean 50 to 60 feet tall. On the strip of lawn? between the driveway and the west lot line, there are three more trees in the front. I think two are oaks that are right next to each other and the third is a maple. So we are talking 9 trees in front. The older lawn that was not disturbed by building is actually mostly grass. It's the green stuff closer to the house that is a problem.

Here in Tennessee, when you build a house, you get some landscaping and a seeded lawn. That works really well if your house is completed by September. Ours was finished in May, and seeded then, and that is only a little less worse than seeding in June, July and August.

Last night, we discovered this at a class on maintaining a fescue lawn in Tennessee. So now, DH and I are faced with the daunting task of killing off an area of crabgrass the size of our front lawn when we lived in Michigan.

Oh, did I mention we got rid of most of our lawn tools when we moved?

Back to School Time!

Well, not for me. School started the last week in July. Kids here go back to school while they still really need to run the a/c to keep them from falling asleep in class. I can't even imagine with the 94 degrees out there how they keep the kids alert in class.

Little Podunk town has a school year where they attend classes for 9 weeks, are off 2 weeks and then back in school following this routine until the end of May. Looking at the school schedule they are scheduled for a 10 a.m. dismissal on May 30th, a Saturday. Is this for real?

I always enjoyed the back-to-school routine even as a kid. New school supplies. Not new clothes since I went to Catholic school for grades 1-12. Uniforms. The ugliest uniforms on the face of the earth. I guess they were cheaper than my folks buying new clothes for six kids, but still.

When my own kids came along, I was thrilled when the school year started. I remember being scolded by my youngest daughter's kindergarten bus driver for being so happy she was going off to school! I guess the happy dance was so obvious!

School shopping was always an adventure. Scrambling to get clothes they both liked that didn't match, and weren't tainted by being gang colors - oh yeah, my third grader was crazy about red, black and white. After filling out her warddrobe, we were informed those were gang colors. I know my kids get their eye-rolling from me.

Our girls would always talk DH's parents into taking them shopping for school supplies a month before school started. This was generally a waste of time and money, because the kids didn't have their supplies lists from their teachers yet. Being indulgent grandparents though, they would take them. Most of that stuff got used at home because it wasn't on the supply list.

And the supply list usually had don'ts on it rather than dos. Don't buy this type of binder, I don't want this type of paper, yada-yada. One spiral bound notebook for each class, except for the Journal they were expected to write in daily. But since we had plenty of big box office supply stores, it was no hardship to take them back for what they really needed.

So, as a new school year draws near for my older college student (her last she hopes), my younger daughter informs us she has applied for re-admittance to college to get her degree. Yes! Doing that kindergartener on the bus happy dance again!