Last Normal Night

These are our last few hours as residents of Normal, Illinois.  As of 10:30 tomorrow morning, we will be homeless and heading toward Missouri in a cram-packed U-Haul van.  We will be leaving Hannah here and Jim will be at school in the middle of the Iowa corn fields.

Jim.  Jim has been my rock this summer.  With John in St. Louis during the week and Hannah at camp for most of the summer, all my crazy fell on him.  I hope and pray it only came in waves and his last summer at home was tolerable. But he worked hard at the radio station, worked hard at home, loved the pugs as much as he could and was an all around pleasure to be with this summer.  I could not have made it through this summer without him, and I know we would have never gotten the house packed without his effort and brawn.

I took the pugs to a friend's house for a few days before he got up this morning and he didn't get to say goodbye to them.  Then he helped so long packing our U-Haul that he was late leaving for school.   And then it was not him and John, but Hannah and John who got the last photo in the house together.  Not fair to Jim, and I am truly sorry the day turned out that way.

Do kids ever know how much you really, truly love them?  I don't think they do - until they have kids of their own.  So I hope Jim has kids, and I hope they are soft hearted, kind, witty, intelligent, talented boys like him.  And then I hope he will know how we love him.

And I hope they like dinosaurs, sharks, planets, and Star Wars, (and in that order) because they will have Jim's old toys to play with when they visit Grandma and Grandpa.

It's getting random in here

Random thoughts at 6:30 on a Saturday morning.

Went to happy hour last night with work buds, to celebrate me, Lily and Megan leaving work.  We sat outside, the weather was perfect, the beer was cold and the company was awesome.  Except for one or two people, everyone I care about from work was there - and the irksome people stayed away! How lovely is that??!

Moved Hannah into her dorm room on Thursday.  Even though I got after her big time for not being prepared as much as she should have been, I felt much better leaving her there than I did leaving her at Millikin this time last year.

Last year...

This year.

I have countless bruises all over from packing and moving.  Someone gives me a stern look and I bruise so this isn't surprising, but it's embarrassing.  I have a welt on my forehead after building two lofts (see right and left in the above photo) but so far it's not that lovely black/blue/gray/yellow color that seems to linger with me for a couple weeks.  My bruises look like different types of clouds - I have a stratus or two, a few cirrus, a couple cirrocumulus (those were from carrying the loft for 2 blocks) and a couple major cumulonimbus.  Between those and the bug bites from going outside with the dogs, my skin has taken a real hit this summer...  so to speak.

Maybe I have Hemophilia.  I should look into that.

And I'm sore.  Really, really sore.

I'm SO sick of packing and moving stuff.  It's worse for John.  After moving 75% of our stuff onto a trailer from work and thinking we could leave it there until we move into the new house, they actually needed the trailer.  So he and some other guys moved it onto another trailer.  And then they needed that trailer.  So they moved it into the warehouse.  Yes, we saved a lot of money this way, but this is just getting stupid.  And I worked for hours upstairs yesterday, and it looks like I didn't do anything.  1 week from today this will all be over.  Then I will sit in our house in Missouri, miss the kids, and be sorry that I was so psycho their last summer at home.

Today is National Radio Day.  Give NPR a listen.

After everything is packed, staged and ready to go on a truck on Wednesday, I am going to take the camera and explore Bloomington/Normal.  There is a building that collapsed earlier this summer and it's just screaming to be photographed.  That's assuming I make it to Wednesday.

From my kid

Hannah gave this to me today.  It made me cry.

My girlfriends are coming over tonight.  There will be LOTS of crying.

2:53 am

Can't sleep.  

This is my typical pattern lately.  I come home from work, have a drink to decompress (I realize this is not a good habit to get into), take care of some stuff that has to do with selling the house/buying the house, fall asleep on the couch, wake up, go to bed, wake up again around 2:00 am and can't get back to sleep.  And now my allergies are kicking in.

The stupid stuff that runs through my brain at this hour is a little disturbing.  Where can we put a doggie door in the new house for the pugs?  How much does a stacked washer/dryer combo cost?  How would I look with straight hair?  Gotta call the dentist in the morning.

Then there are the deep thoughts - and not the Jack Handy kind.  How can I move away from here?  90% of my friends are here.  Family is here.  My church family is here.  Hannah will be here.  As much as I gripe about work, I will miss some people there in a big way.  My kids grew up here.  Bloomington-Normal Illinois makes be crazy (State Farm City) but it's home.

I've been so stressed out with this move I've often felt like a rubber band about to snap.  I'm going through so many emotions, I forget what the kids might be going through.  Poor Jim has been stuck with me all summer.  I honestly don't think I would have made it through this without him.

The worst part is that the kids won't have a "home" to come back to.  They will come to St. Louis to visit their parents.

I know this is the right thing to do.  John loves his job down there.  I will find something I like to do there.  At this point, I can step back and see that things have fallen into place quite nicely.  But I will grieve the loss of this place and time, and pray that friendships can grow even stronger regardless of proximity.

Wall o' wine, part deux

First things first.  We sold the house.  We signed the contract Friday morning, and the closing is tentatively set for August 25.  That's less than a month away.  So I'm no longer freaking out about selling the house.  I'm freaking out about packing Hannah up and moving her into the dorm, packing Jim up and getting him to school 5 hours away, and packing up the rest of the house in 26 days.

Freaking out!!!

But that hasn't stopped me from doing nothing all day today.  That's a lie.  I slept in, looked at houses on line, went out to breakfast at Uncle Tom's Pancake House with John and Jim, and now I'm blogging to you fine people while listening to the guys laugh at a ridiculously bad Nicholas Cage movie in the next room.  Later today, Diane and I are getting pedicures and we're grilling steaks on the grill to celebrate everyone being in the same state for once.  Let's call this the calm before the approaching storm.

And let's talk about my wall o' wine idea.  Again, here is the "sketch" (and I do use that term loosely) of my idea..

After being relentlessly mocked at work for my drawing abilities, I decided to do something different.  

Ta-da!  This is another thing I did this morning!  Maybe this is a better representation of what I want my wall to look like.  

Now I have to stop wasting time.  The official packing needs to begin...   now.

 

Wall o' wine

Everyone who knows me is well aware of my love for red wine.  My collection of wine corks is legendary.  My corks have even been used in preschool projects (although my dear friend and preschool teacher Marian went out and bought corks this year, because she didn't think I had enough...  Oh Marian.  You silly gal.)

I always save corks from special occasions.  I always drop them in my purse, thinking that one day I will frame them with a caption of where we drank the wine and what the event was.  What usually happens is that I find the cork in my purse 2 months later, can't remember it's significance, and toss it in the pile with the everyday corks.

Who knows?  Maybe my corks will be worth something some day.  Twist-off caps aren't just for Boone's Farm anymore.

Anyway, I have always wanted to use the corks for some kind of decorating project.  Chances are our new house in St. Louis (if we ever sell this house and officially get there) might have a bar area in the basement and since we are never moving ever again, this is my opportunity to get creative.  

This idea came to me, and I want to get it out there so that a) someone reading this will hold me accountable and push me to actually do it and b) I'll remember what the heck my idea was in the first place.  Stay with me.  

I want a wall of wine.

The corks will be cut  - some lengthwise in half, others a number of times to make little disks.  They will have to be glued onto sections of a material that is hard enough to hold some weight, but flexible enough to attach easily to a wall.  I'll talk to Corey about that.  He'll know what to use.  

Next, with a $45 tool, I found out how to cut wine bottles in half for drinking glasses.  Drinking glasses are cool, but I want to cut wine bottles in half lengthwise.  Can that be done?  Probably not.  What I might have to do is break the bottles and arrange the pieces in a mosaic style along with the corks.  With the little pieces of glass - or pieces of red stained glass - I could even arrange it so that it would look like wine flowing out of a tipped over bottle.  I might have to break up a wine glass or two.  Wine has to flow into something.

Now I think this may have to be done on large tiles.  With broken glass, I would want to put some sort of resin over the top for safety and easier cleaning, and I would think that would keep the corks from getting dusty and yucky too.  Here is my VERY rough idea of what I want it to look like.  Fill in rest of the corks and add more bottles and glasses.  

Wow.  I draw like a 4 year old.  But you get the drift, right?  I'm going to do it.  It may look like crap and never touch my wall, but I'm going to give it a try.  Look for photos of the real thing in a about a year or two!

back at Clay Knob Farm...

You've met Vinnie - now it's time to meet the other critters that live with Dennis and Christy down on Clay Knob Farm.

Here is Sissy, lovin on Aunt Joyce.  What a ham.

And Tommy.  Tommy is an awesome dog.  He is tenacious in everything he does.  He's older now, and moves much slower than he used to.  But he will always be on my top 10 favorite dog list.

You'll have to forgive me.  I don't remember the names of the horses.  They were really lovable, but Chris will have to remind me of their names.  

They posed so nicely in their stalls.  Look at this one playing the camera!  You can almost see her batting her eyes!

This one seemed a little more curious...

These two cracked me up.  They had to put the twine there because pony #1 would open the door for pony #2.  Look at them!  They're besties!

Oscar is a new addition to the barn and has settled in quite nicely.

This guy was more curious about me than I was about him.

Oscar's buddy.  Geez.  Can't remember his name either!!

Chris has some VERY large horses.  Frankly, they intimidate the heck out of me, but they love her and act like big puppies around her.

I love going there.  I can feel myself decompressing when I drive up to their house and park under their huge Catalpa tree.  

I have a great family - some with 2 legs, others with 4.