HAPPY BIRTHDAY EMILY!!!

The tears have finally dried enough that I can get on the lap top and not worry about ruining it….NOT!! Seriously, I haven’t cried since my little girl headed off to the mine.  I'm not sure if that means I'm cold hearted or a really bad parent.

Now, that’s not to say I didn’t have a rough day on Monday. You see one of the many traditions they have is to bring a 10lb rock from where ever you live, and on the day before classes of your freshman year you climb switchbacks for 3 ½ miles to the top of the M hill and deposit your rock. Then when you graduate you go up, select a rock and take it with you. So Emily selected her rock, packed it over there and on Monday, at around 10:30 I texted her and said, “Good luck on your climb”. She texted back “I didn’t go” and that was all. Follow-up  phone calls and texts were ignored and I became a little wiggy about what exactly was going on. A sympathy post on FB garnered some support and some “Leave her alone” posts from my niece!! Well, it turns out, she just overslept.

But typical Emily, the only contact we have had generated by her was a text telling us how boring the orientation about sex, drugs, and alcohol was and asking for a flow chart on how to do her laundry. I’m trying not to be to OCD about it, but she doesn’t even turn 18 until tomorrow.

By the way…HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO MY LITTLE ORE DIGGER!!!!

My Bat Story

OK, I admit I had to look through my past posts to see if I had already told this story, yeah…all 246 posted blog entries. Man I like to talk a lot, good thing I know how to type pretty fast.

Anyway, I began thinking back since it is getting close to Labor Day, way back to Hurricane Katrina. Yeah, Hurricane Katrina happened in New Orleans, August 29^th, 2005. I remember it well, not because of my concern for the people of New Orleans, but for what happened to me in the aftermath.

The day Hurricane Katrina hit Louisiana my husband got a phone call, because of the situation of residents in New Orleans they needed federal officers to volunteer and go help secure federal facilities in New Orleans. At first I didn’t get it, and then I began to realize that all those lovely federal facilities have lots of expensive equipment in them. Anyway, Scott volunteered and within 36 hours he was out of here on a plane. I talked to him one time, the afternoon after he left. Then I didn’t hear from him again until a week later. It was horrible conditions and he worked 20+ hour days. When he got done, he had to go through decontamination procedures and be tested for diseases for several months after. 
But enough about what he endured…let’s talk about me.

Yeah, that was the week Erik started kindergarten and it wasn’t going very well. Also, my sister and mother left with Jason to go to a triathlon in California (that’s funny, no… none of them were competing, Jason was working security). Anyway, they left Kassandra for Donna and I to take care of on top of my husband being gone and Erik having some serious issues with the new school routine. Did I mention we were in the middle of remodeling our house and I had my bedroom in my dining room?

Anyway, I was a little stressed out, I went in to my bathroom to brush my teeth for the night when out of the corner of my eye I noticed something moving around in my toilet. Needless to say that caught my attention, so I walked over, and there swimming in my toilet bowl was a bat. I’m not proud of what happened next, it was definitely not my finest moment, and I should probably be required to turn in my Biology degree… So I called Donna and this was our conversation:

Donna – Hello

Me – THERE IS A BAT IN MY TOILET

Donna – What?

Me – THERE IS A BAT IN MY TOILET

Donna –What? Are you serious? How did that happen?

Me- THERE IS A BAT IN MY TOILET

Donna – I’ll be right there

I put the lid down (like that would have helped). Donna came over and we stood looking down in the bowl of the toilet and stared at the bat. He was pretty worn out and all wet, struggling against the sides of the bowl. I think one of us suggested that we could flush the toilet, but honestly the thought of that thing in my septic and possibly coming back up was more than I could handle. So I went and got a quart sized fruit jar, and my brave big sister scooped him up in it. We put the lid on and he looked pretty bedraggled. So we got some paper towels and stuffed them down with him, then I showed him to my children. I think Emily was in the bathtub upstairs (she wasn’t very impressed with a winged mouse). Anyway, then I took him outside, nestled the jar in my willow tree and opened the lid. The next morning he was gone.

And that is the story of the bat in my toilet.

A Little Deception

My niece Kassandra describes herself as "one of the special people", and indeed she is. Kassie has Cerbal Palsy, and has both physical and mental challenges. When she was very little the local community used to host Round Houses for parents of special needs children. It was a chance for parents to get away, network, and attend seminars from experts about their children. One of the things they warned the parents about was that while these children are mentally handicapped they are very good at learning to manipulate their parents.

Fast forward about 15 years and it is now Kassandra's senior year of high school. Kassie has a little trouble making it a full week to school. Generally she prefers to take at least one day off during the week, if not a full week. This generally starts the night before her personally scheduled day off, by beginning to cough, sniffle and vehemently declare to her mother that she is sick. She adamantly insists she has a cold (I must admit she sounds very convincing) and that her mother should agree and cancel the school bus. Meanwhile my sister Nancy begins to stew and then simmer. I must admit I would get pretty mad as well if my daughter decided by herself to continually take days off.

And so it was that as of the first two weeks of school, Kassie managed to take a day off in the first week. Meanwhile, on Monday of this week she began her sniffling and coughing. In a momentary stroke of genius, I came up with a little plan...

"Kassie, you know I work in a laboratory, and we have to make sure that people that are coming into the lab aren't sick. So I have this special paper that you put on your tongue and if you are sick it turns a special color and if you aren't...it turns another color. I didn't know you weren't feeling well, but I'll be sure to bring that home tomorrow, that way you'll be able to prove to your Mom when you are sick"

Oh the power...the look she gave me was priceless. The next morning I noticed the school bus coming down the street. Later that day I got a call from Nancy to notify me that my niece was feeling better and wouldn't need the special paper. I have a broad spectrum litmus paper anyway, but just my luck, she really did get a cold this weekend. I've been putting her off on showing her the colors...hopefully my deception can last until May.

Sending my little girl to the mine..

Well, the process has begun. We arrived yesterday at Golden to bring Emily to school. As we got closer to Golden she was pretty nervous or as she put it terrified. A few weeks ago we recieved the news letter that told us our move in day, and how the protocal was for loading and unloading, moving of vehicles, times, check in locations, etc. I assured Emily about the fact that we were coming to an engineering school, and in my OCD way of thinking the most impressive thing about Mines has been their extreme planning of events to the smallest detail. Sure enough, as we approached the school there were huge traffic signs telling the moving in students what street to take, campus officers directing traffic to the "unloading zone". Direction signs all over, the "moving crew" were all wearing specific blue t-shirts, there were girls wearing sandwich boards with a giant ? on them if you had questions. Then we pulled into the loaing zone, Emily was directed up to check in, we pulled up and no less than 5 young men swarmed our truck with big rolling laundry baskets to help. They loaded up the baskets; asked her name and headed up to her dorm. Meanwhile, another young man came over to register her bike and a young woman offered us turkey sandwiches. Getting Emily into her dorm from the truck took - maybe - 10 minutes at most. As we got into her dorm, her bed was set all the way to the top. Her RA came in and asked if we needed anything and we asked how we move the bed down a little, she told Emily to go out and look for the boys with the rubber mallets, within 30 seconds, here came Emily back with a couple boys to move the bed down. Then another RA came in with a flyer for a welcome BBQ for the students at one of the fraternity houses, and said she would walk everyone down there at 5:30. We got her Blaster Card and started to get her settled in, we forgot a few things, so it was off to Wal-mart. Then as we were saying good night to her, she suddenly looked sad and said, "I feel to young". Well...a little late for that!!