It was fantastic! Kids mitigate sorrow (Fancis Bacon). Boy was he right! And today, I spent 23 minutes from beginning to end at the DMV with the Franklin place. It was much better. And mommy gave me cash for the checks. Plus, we got to have lunch with her; it was delish. Thanks for your good well wishes.

The Hummingbirds used to get to North Georgia on April 15th every year. The past few years it has been the last week in March. I love those little birds. To be honest, I love all birds. I can't believe all the beautiful birds and critters we have in our lives. If we only would take the time to get to know them and their habitats I can guarantee we would never be bored. I have been watching and studying birds for over 40 years and still learn something every day.

Ya know, both of my sisters recently enrolled in Masters programs (one for teaching, one for nursing). The nurse-sister is taking all her classes online through an OH university, and doing the clinical work through the CT hospital where she already works full time. The teacher-sister is taking evening-weekend-summer classes, nearly all of them off the campus of the University offering the program, which is 200 miles away. Higher Ed really is making great accommodations for its most serious --- and arguably most successful --- students: working adults. As for avoiding the institution that employs you for fear of rejection... with much love, I say to you "That's stupid." Really! I mean, what's the worst that can happen? They say no? Are you any worse off than you were before? No. But what if they say yes? Wouldn't the possibility of having a diploma from there be worth the risk? Seriously, folks in admissions are looking to fill the school with qualified, serious students who are likely to succeed. They often look the other way at test scores or previous course work for stable adults with ties to the community and stellar recommendations. Before you write it off, ask around... see if you can buy lunch for someone in admissions. Be frank. Talk about your strengths and weaknesses. Put aside fears of rejection and ask them for guidance or a way to make it work. You might just be surprised. Think of all the things in your life you would not have if you did not try because rejection or failure was a possibility. Focus instead on the possibility of success. in the pants> Kind of odd in a way, how your life revolves so completely around your Love of Ed... You've got Big Ed, Little Ed, Higher Ed, and who knows? Maybe someday, there'll be Continuing Ed! Enjoy the EdVenture!

Good grief, Jan! Take it easy and get some rubber grips for the bottom of that step stool! I haven't posted in such a long time but check in from time to time. Was thinking of everyone today, made me think of ghosts, how sometimes we know someone is around, we can sense them, we just can't see them. On the flip side, there stands the ghost with so much to say, but no one can hear them. Work consumes my life these days. Just when I finish deploying an entire Division, there are Reservists and National Guardsmen standing at the door. When I get a moment of peace, I catch a glimpse of my own ghost standing close. I just can't seem to catch her and pull her in to make me what I once was. So I throw myself back into my work and convince myself that it's what I am suppose to do. The NE National Guard are here, I get to work with them next week and I'm looking forward to it. I automatically thought of Gandle when I saw they were arriving, life has a funny way of tieing strangers together. When their advance party arrived earlier this week, they told me I had quite a reputation back in NE. I told them I had never stepped foot in NE, so someone must be writing on bathroom walls again. A big strapping Sergeant, someone I thought as the epitome of a farm boy, stepped forward and said "Ma'am, we don't have many bathrooms in NE so we write on the sides of barns!" Their sense of humor is charming and I've mentally noted that I must travel through NE before I die. I stay out of the garden as much as it's possible for one with a love of gardening to do. The time has come for me to give up this house. As DS puts it "cry me a river, build me a bridge, and get over it". I've cried the river, the bridge is almost complete, but it's so hard to get over it. I keep telling myself it's silly to be so attached to a house. It's JUST A HOUSE, for Pete's sake. But to me, it was more than a house. It was a home. My first real home. I set down roots here and, while those roots can be dug up and replanted, there will be transplant shock. I had found a house to rent, for renting is what I've decided to do at this point, but the gal who is currently in it had her deployment date extended by 90 days. She has graciously offered to let me take over if I'd allow her to rent one room, but I'm over analyzing the situation and have concluded that perhaps this is a sign that I'm not suppose to live in this house. I know, seems silly, but some days I feel like I've missed reading a lot of signs in the past and that's why I am where I am. Or perhaps it's just my way of putting off the inevitable. Whatever the reason, I stay out of the garden for fear that I'll be overwhelmed with sadness at the the reality of having to leave behind my heirlooms. All the kittens that arrived last August were placed in homes, along with their mother. I kept one for myself, a skitish solid black one we call Boo who has attached herself to me and drools when she purrs. Being the stupid human, I failed to have her spayed and it only took her getting out once to become pregnant. Being the stupid human, I miscalculated her conception date (or totally lost a month of my life somewhere) and when I came home from work on Wednesday night, she had delivered one kitten back behind a huge stack of boxes. Later on (seemed like 3 hours later), she delivered a second kitten. So, I now have 2 solid black kittens that will need homes in a few months. And Boo will be spayed as soon as possible. This crazy cat has decided she doesn't like the birthing box, and she doesn't like having them in her cat bed, and she doesn't like having them in a basket. No matter where I moved her and babies to, she kept moving them to the hallway. Cats definitely own the human, I caved and let her stay where she was happy. I seemed to have caught some type of crud that's going around and while sitting here last night feeling like death warmed over, my phone rang. It was my old employee who was medically retired (finally) last year. She got sick, the doctors deemed her heart to be failing. Once they got her stabilized, they found a lump in her breast...it was malignant and had spread to her lymph nodes. This was only 7 short months after losing my other employee to cancer, and this fact is always in the back of my mind. We spent 3 hours on the phone catching up, she had her first cancer free mammogram, but they found nodes on her thyroid and have biopsied that. And she had an internal defib implanted last week. She feels good but lives in fear that some day something will go wrong and her daughter will find her body. So she sold her house, her daughter and hubby sold their house, and they bought a new one...75 miles north of here. I'm happy for her, but the thought of someone else crossing that bridge I'm incapable of crossing depresses me. After a 3 hour converation, we ended with a promise to get together for lunch in a few weeks, while she's still close enough to do so without my having to pack an overnight bag. And that thought once again brought me back to thoughts of Gandle who drives hundreds of miles to a basketball game while I'm incapable of driving a simple 75 miles. And that has what brought me here, the ghosts of strangers standing so close that I can sense them, but not touch them... Maryanne