KE in NH, CT, & NY

My oldest, Michaela, is 19.  

Weird. 

She was home for the winter break and hung out with us for a while and that is always fun.  Andrea and Scotty LOVE her and think she pretty much god's gift to our family ...and in some ways she is.  :)

I'm kinda three steps behind where I should be at any given moment in life ....of course there are occasions where I really step up my mom-game and prepare in advance for something...  I'm getting better!  Anyways, sweet Michaela had the joy of being the first one ...and I'm confident it was meant to be this way.  

She's figured things out on her own, signed herself up for things, harassed me to not forget deadlines, and covered for me when I did.  She has pretty much done what she needed to do to get to where she is and for that she is awesome!

Well, she has survived her first year and a half at RIT and thanks to her AP high school credits and a BAE systems internship she managed to secure because she signed herself up for a Women in Technology program in high school ...she is ahead of the game and started early on her first co-op job of college!!!  At Datto.  I have no idea what that is...  They deal with data.  On a computer.  My knowledge of data pretty much tops out at access databases!

Paul and her are now able to have conversations about ...ummm, see I can't even think of fancy computer words to insert here.  Let's just say that the computer science major and mechanical engineer have lots of conversations about lots of computer stuff.  I work in a forest so I just listen and nod.

Since she isn't going to classes, just working this semester Michaela has found herself an apartment, signed the lease, paid a deposit and is now living with random strangers in Rochester, NY.  It just got real.  

See, when your oldest kid is at college with other college kids you still think of them as a kid ...after all they are still running the halls throwing bouncy balls at each other and chasing each other spraying grape soda.  They are for all intents and purposes... giant, stupid kids living unsupervised.

Now she has a job.  She will go to work. Go grocery shopping, shovel her own walkway, check her own tire pressure, and hopefully make her own lunch to take to work...  :) AND pay her own college bills next Fall when she returns to RIT for classes.  WHOO HOOO because $5000 a month is getting pretty tiring.

What was also very weird was watching her drive away when she left.  She was headed to Connecticut to a hotel on a "business trip"...  then to New York to start work this week.  She took her stuff, loaded the car, and left in the car we took her to elementary school in.  

Weird.

Good job KE.  You are kicking butt at this life thing.  We only harass you so you keep going...  :) xoxo

Crickets

Well, now I see why I stopped writing ...in Denmark and Germany I could write about the weird and interesting things I was experiencing and here in New Hampshire life has become pretty normal ...but as I type that I realize that maybe my normal has changed...  I am, after all, from California.  (kinda) 

Which, had I been a good little writer when we first got to New Hampshire I might find more things that are weird and interesting, but now they are "normal".  Like a Jug Handle.  Oh look though...  I thought I might have written about that a long time ago ...and SEE HERE ...seems I didn't have much to write about then either.

Okay, well, enough about NOT having enough to write about.  How boring is that.

Okay.  Saturday.

Saturday I bought crickets.  I had a million errands to run.  I literally went to nine different stores doing the dreaded "after-Christmas-returns"...  UGH.  While returning guinea pig treats ...because we had to put down Buttercup, our last, little guinea pig.     Side Note: Talk about a tough day.  We are screwed when it comes time to lose a cat or a dog.  Our family was devastated to lose Buttercup, including me at the vet holding little Buttercup with her sad squeaks.  The worst part was making the choice to put her down and being the one involved.  She was almost 8 years old, which is like 104 in people years.  She became paralyzed and then stopped eating.  Super sad.  We miss you Buttercup!

Anyways ...it just occurred to me that buying crickets might seem weird.  (Which again justifies my prior thought that my "normal" has drastically changed since moving here.)  We have a crested gecko named Squishy.  Squishy likes to eat crickets.  So I have to buy crickets.  Live ones.  Which at first it was really hard to feed a live animal to another live animal, but we've adjusted.  New normal...  seems to be a theme here. **sigh......

SO.  I buy 15 live crickets in the middle of my return-o-palooza, but then I realize that it's too cold to leave the crickets in the car to continue to returning things... and going home is NOT an option.  I can't stop.  My new 32 hour work week has me totally booked Monday through Friday ...and I can only keep track of receipts for so long. 

SO.  I have to take this bag of crickets into every store for the rest of my day.  Which, honestly, I've done before (new normal), but the bag was always small enough to put into my purse.  This bag was huge!!  ...aaaaaaaannndddd thinking about it now, I guess I could have just let some air out of the bag, but that didn't occur to me at the time.

I "had" to hide the big bag in my coat.  So I walked around stores and stood in lines holding a big, fat, air and cricket filled bag in the side of my coat.  It looked like I was stealing things.  One man at Lowes asked me if there was anything I wanted to buy and looked at my coat and I figured out that he thought I was a horrible shoplifter so I said, "oh, it's just crickets" and pulled the bag out.  He didn't say anything.  You're welcome Squishy.

Well.  That was a lot about nothing.  Isn't that like Seinfield?  I hate that show.  Mostly because of Jerry's voice.  It's ridiculously annoying.  Almost worse than a British accent....  or maybe worse?  I'm not sure.  Maybe someone should make a sitcom about my life...  for reals. 
 

It's not a new years resolution.

I promise that it's NOT a New Year's Resolution to start writing here again.  I am well aware of my inability to keep up with life much less create new goals!  Maybe my New Year's Resolution can be to vacuum every day ...like for reals, not just program the Rocky the Roomba every night and call it a day.

Happy got me a fancy, cordless vacuum for Christmas and it literally propels me around the house, my arm is tired from "holding it back".  Anyways, I'm not sure at what point a vacuum fell into the "Christmas gift category", but it did ...oh well, what can I say, I'm 40.  This is my life!  Today I walked around barefoot without dog hair sticking to me and I was happy.  Turns out a cordless vacuum makes me happy.  Know what doesn't make me happy? ...spelling vacuum.  It's a stupid word.

Anyways, I miss my family.  That is why I've decided to write again.  Thanks Grandma...  :)  ...or Bruce and Ingrid.... maybe a combination of you both. :)

Well.  That said...  I literally have nothing exciting to write.  Aside from accusing a Verizon call center employee from sitting around with his finger up his nose today, I've had a pretty normal day.  It was -11F so my nose hairs froze on the way to the bus stop, I wore snow pants to work all day (because I work in  barn), and to end my day ...as a big middle finger to the state of New Hampshire I bought popsicles for the afterschool club to eat as a "snack" as they sledded into the below zero temperatures of the dark night.  It's funny to "hear" kids, but not really see them....  :)

The kicker is.... my kids think this cold is normal!!  Andrea bangs on the frozen mini-van door as if it's a normal occurrence in life and Scott has yet to wear a coat to school... Two days ago we had a COLD DAY ...not a "snow" day, but a "cold" day ...a day in which it is SO cold that school buses can't start and frostbite will kill small children in a matter of minutes.   ...and my son is at the bus stop....  In. A. Sweatshirt.  Really?!  I think his brain froze a couple winters ago...

Ok.  Sappy alert.  My life has taken me to an awesome place where I have an amazing group of friends.  My kids are being successful-ish, my house is warm, and I work in "barn/forest" full of kind, compassionate people who would do anything for me.   My husband literally just handed me a bowl of Doritos as I sit by the fire.  If *needed* a gallon of milk tomorrow, which is going to be the biggest snow/cold storm ever, I know I would have 15+ people willing to bring it to me ...and that's cool.  This is what I hope for for my own kids.

...Oh, in my defense the Verizon guy deserved it.  The conclusion of my three hours worth of phone calls ended with me having to get a letter from my bank stating that they will pay Verizon $32.00.  What?!  So they have banned my credit card and Michaela doesn't have a working phone....  LONG story, but I'm right; everyone else is wrong.

Pictures really don't show the cold.  Trust that it is seriously cold!!! xo