The New House

We have officially arrived in our new house. It's wonderful! It was a busy couple of days moving all the stuff out of the duplex and into the house, but thanks to many friends and family, it all came together. I don't have my pictures together yet to show it all, but am planning to do that soon as we get more of the boxes put away.

We're mostly settled in, but there are still some pesky boxes and things lying around that I have no idea what to do with. Don't you hate those things? Keep them or get rid of them? Most of the items are ending up in the basement again to be used at a future date. However, we are proud of ourselves for having gone through much of our things and given them to Ken's sister Maria so that they can try to be sold at her garage sale, the proceeds of which will go toward a new snowblower this year (keep fingers crossed we at least make a little).

It's been such a busy summer that I can hardly understand where the time went. I feel bad not keeping in better touch with friends and family, but I feel as though I've hardly been home. Once Ken came back, we bought our house within 1 week, the next day I left for the AP English Reading in Louisville, KY and was gone for 10 days, then I returned home only to start packing and then leave a few days later for our honeymoon trip to Hawaii. Again, we were gone for 22 days, and once we returned home, we had to get down to business and seriously pack up the house for the big move. I just hope we can get most of the things we need settled before I return to work in a week and a half. The craziness of the semester will set in quickly enough (especially with the 6 classes I'm teaching and my new faculty mentor role I've been asked to take on). Thank goodness Ken will be around home through October when he'll eventually have to go back to work!

More updates and pictures to come later!

Summer 2010 Adventures

Greetings All! I know it's been a long time since I posted, but a lot has happened and there is a lot to report. First and foremost, Ken arrived safely back to Iowa on Memorial Day 2010. It was a wonderful way to celebrate such a holiday. Many family and friends gathered at the Reserve Center to welcome them home. The two buses were led in by the Freedom Riders, a motorcycle group that escorts returning soldiers in to Iowa through their destination. Very cool!

Since he's been home, he's caught up on some much needed sleep and enjoyed visits with friends and family. About a week after he returned home, I had to leave for my annual AP English Language Exam reading in Louisville, KY. While there, I had a great time catching up with friends, Jan, Devon, and Suzie, Rachel and Jackie. Oh yeah, and we did actually do some work in there too. But the cool thing was getting to be someplace new, someplace I've never been to before. I went to the Muhammad Ali Center, the Louisville Slugger Museum/Factory, and Churchill Downs to watch the races. Also, one night, some friends, including Susan K. whom I went to graduate school at UNI with, drove down to the Waverly Hills Sanitorium for a night-time ghost tour! This was so cool! The old building is huge and it was cool to be someplace that the Ghosthunters team had investigated. I highlly recommend such a toor if you're ever in the area.

One other pretty major thing happened the day before I left for Louisville: Ken and I bought a house! Yes, I did say a house! Once he returned, we knew that the time was finally right to do such a thing. The interest rates are incredibly and historically low, we could still take advantage of the $8,000 tax credit (extended for 1 year for soldiers overseas for the past year), and it was a good time to plan a move as it is summer and we could do it before school starts up for me in August and Ken returns to work at Deere sometime in the fall.

In my opinion, we found the perfect house! It's in a really good neighborhood in Waterloo, relatively close to both of our jobs, and it has all the features we wanted in a home (and then some!). It is an older home that has a lot of charm and character, built in 1940. It has 3 bedrooms, an office (with built-in bookshelves!), a formal living room with a fireplace, a screened in porch that someday we hope to turn into a 4-seasons room, a totally remodeled kitchen, a big family room, double garage, and already-landscaped and fenced-in yard. Perhaps one of the best things about it is that we don't have to do any work once we move in (aside from some painting of rooms here and there). We are not exactly the fixer-upper type, having no skills in that area. We can totally see ourselves living there for many years. Oh, and it has 2.5 bathrooms! OMG! I am so excited about that! One of them is even attached to what will become our guest room, so please come visit and stya with us really soon! I can't wait to entertain and welcome friends/family as soon as we get settled.

Now Ken and I are in Iowa City with his dad and Evelyn. His dad needed to have a procedure done to check his heart and did have to have a stent put in, so we stayed overnight. Once Ken and I arrive back in the 'Loo, we're off to look at some furniture this afternoon, then we will be enjoying time with family at the Sturgis Falls days celebration in Cedar Falls this weekend. The next few days will find us continuing to pack up the house for the move next month, and then we're off for our official honeymoon in California and Hawaii. Once we arrive home, we'll close on the house and begin the move out/move in process.

So I think it is safe to say that the summer of 2010 has proven to be a busy one, but one that will be forever memorable. As my friend Lynsey says, "Our life will be all downhill after this summer" what with all these events, trips, and projects going on. I hope she's right! I'm ready to settle down and relax.

Come visit us at the new home place soon!

Reflections on the End: 1 Day to Go

So many of the things on my last blog entry that I said I had yet to do are done. School is done and so I'm settling into my summer routine of sleeping, cleaning, sewing, playing, gardening, and taking full advantage of the Cable I'm paying through the nose for. Tonight: 48 Hours Mystery, The OCD Project, etc. Flipping channels around mostly while I decide if I'm actually tired enough to go to bed after taking my cat nap this afternoon. Yes, the insanity of the school year is fully compensated for in May, June, and July!

Last week, my friend Lynn and I headed to Nebraska to do some work on the new house she bought out there. It was a busy week: we painted, we tore up carpet, we hauled stuff away. I never knew we could accomplish so much in 2 days! We also found time to have fun and hung out with her daughter, the grandkids, and drove into Lincoln to hit some sewing stores and score some good deals!

Since I arrived home, I've been keeping in touch with Ken about his impending arrival home in about 1 more day (Monday). He's in Indiana now taking care of final briefings and such. I'm so ready for him to be home, I can hardly stand the waiting anymore. Just to think about being able to talk to him whenever I want makes me giddy with the thought that I can actually be "married" now. A whole year of so little conversation with him has really been strange and very hard. Such an experience really puts the ole relationship thing to a test. The trust, patience, and love really get tested when you can't just pick up the phone to call each other (well, at least I couldn't) or get an immediate response to a question or issue that's going on.

As this deployment comes to an end, I absolutely must send out millions of heartfelt thanks to all my friends and family who supported me through this situation. Thank you for checking on me, making me laugh, listening to my fears/stresses, for dragging me out of the house when all I wanted to do was hide from the world, and for sending little notes/gifts of support throughout the whole time. Most of all, thank you for being there for me and understanding this situation in the best way you can. Many of you expressed your lack of familiarity with what it means to live with a spouse gone for so long and in such a scary place where the future is uncertain, and while you shared that you didn't know what I was feeling, you also did the best thing possible for me: you were always there when I needed you and more importantly, when I didn't know I needed you. You are all wonderful, and I'm a blessed person to have you in my life. I only hope that I can be as good of a friend to you as you have been to me.

For the first time in a long time, I feel good about things to come. While in Nebraska, I got a call from Ken that said he was back in the States. It took a full day for that to sink in. He was almost home. He was safe. He was on the same continent! I could actually call him on his cell phone. The next day as I was tearing up carpet and tack strips at Lynn's house, I suddenly stopped and said quietly to myself, "It's almost over. It's almost over." After a year of worrying and feeling sad, overwhelmed, worried, lonely, guilty for being here while he isn't, I finally let myself release some of those feelings. I'm hopeful that this next stage in our lives is all that we dreamed it would be.

Welcome Home Kenny!

COUNTDOWN!

Finally, it's all coming together. Here is the countdown:

4 - Weeks until Ken comes home.

3 - Days left in the semester.

2 - Sets of portfolios left to grade.

1 - Trip to Nebraska to make to help a friend move.

0 - Energy left.

I Just Needed a Break!

Today was a day very much unlike me. I arrived to my office at 6:15, as usual to hurriedly finish the last few papers I needed to grade before my 8:00 a.m. class. By 6:45, I knew I'd had it. I couldn't touch another student paper. My head started hurting, my stomach got queasy, and all I could think of was going home and going back to bed. You must understand, that this was not an easy decision for me. You're looking at the blog of a girl who missed 1 day of high school in 4 years and that was because my car wouldn't start one winter morning....yes, I am that big of a dork. It's hard for me to not be at work unless something is physically wrong with me or I am on death's door. The only day I missed at my previous job was because I threw my back out. I was back by the next day though I was in a lot of pain, and though I hated the job anyway, I was there.

Back to this morning. I just couldn't do it. After a week of dealing with student who hates me (who, by the way, decided that she would complain to my dept chair about me yesterday and who decided she will come back to my class after all even though I'm a terrible person and she can't learn anything from me), grading papers non-stop because portfolios are due just around the corner, and all the other daily stuff I've been feeling and dealing with, I just couldn't take it anymore. And so, yes, I went home! I left messages for the dept. secretary and my dept. chair telling them I was here but was going home ill. I asked them to put notes on my door for students, and that was it. I was out of there!

By the time I got home, it was roughly 7:10 a.m. I put on my pajamas and crawled back to bed. The next thing I know it's 12:30 pm and I have two cats in bed with me. Very cozy! I pulled myself out of bed, had a little soup, and tried to grade some papers. After two hours of being awake, my head started pounding and I went back to bed. So, from 2:30-5:30 I slept again. I think it was the whole psychological thing of grading papers and thinking about students.

Now, it's 10:00 p.m. I suppose I should go to bed so that I can go to work tomorrow and finish out the week. I still have 15 papers yet to grade sometime tomorrow as there may be students coming to get them. Yet, after today's events, I'm left wondering, "what's wrong with me?" Am I fighting something? Am I just exhausted? I love my job, so why am I so fatigued just thinking about going back there right now? I suppose I'm just exhausted, but that's not good considering that there is still about a week left in the semester. I don't know how I'm going to do it. All I want to do is go to bed and pretend that this semester is over. Perhaps I shall go to bed now and dream of the day my finals are turned in and summer officially begins.

Weekly Update

I just wrote Ken an email updating him on the state of things at home. Thinking that it also sounded like a good blog post, I decided to include most of it here for my 1-2 readers. :-) Note: Content has been edited for nature of blog and interest of readers...

Well, it was another interesting week as the live-alone wife of a soldier deployed to a foreign country in a time of war. Playing homemaker, working woman, and caregiver to three cats is certainly time consuming. Things at home are fine though sometimes things get hectic with trying to keep the house decently picked up, mowing the lawn, getting the garbage out, and remembering to pay bills and get the rent paid. Often I have the house picked up on the weekend, and by Wednesday it looks like crap:dishes in the sink, empty water bottles on the counter, hair care products in the bathroom and cat hair rolling around the house like little tumbleweeds. By Friday night, I can hardly stand it and so I take what was once "Date Night" and use it to scrub the place down. Very romantic and exciting, eh? That's what I did this Friday night. I was so disgusted by the state of the house that after vacuuming the whole place, I brought up the carpet cleaner and did the bedrooms and hallway (wood floor in rest of house). Much needed! I also gave the bathroom a good scrub down by doing the toilet, tub, floor, and sink. I even put a new plastic shower curtain in. Wow! My first shower in that baby was like staying in a luxury hotel! By the end of the night while the dishwasher was swirling away, I had time to do a little sewing in my clean little house and went to bed in crisp clean sheets. Heaven!

Work is work. I went in a t 6:00 a.m. every day to get some work done. I can get more done in the morning anyway. Even now, it's 8:28 p.m., and I'm ready for bed! I was very productive though in the mornings and felt pretty good by the end of the week in terms of all that I accomplished. Sadly, I'm behind now again as I received a batch of papers on Friday that I didn't touch all weekend. I am going to be revising our course curricula this coming year though, changing our current system of only 2 developmental writing classes to 3! Yeah, in one of my freer moments, I came up with this brilliant plan which will ultimately make more work for myself. Real smart, huh?

The infamous writing student who has hated me all semester now hates me even more than ever. How can that be, you ask? Well, she received another failing grade on her 4th paper and once again blamed her bad grade on the fact that she believes I don't like her. Well of course I don't like her! How can I like her after all the crap she's pulled this semester? Still, she is graded in the same manner as all the other students, using the same grade sheet, scoring with revision comments, and the most objective system possible I use for all students. This time I even had another writing teacher read her paper too to get those comments and to make sure that I wasn't subconsciously grading her down. That teacher said she would have graded her worse than I did! I felt vindicated! Anyway, this student informed me on Friday that she won't be coming to my class anymore for the rest of the semester (2 weeks left) because she doesn't like me and because I'm not fair. Fine by me. One less thing to worry about.

I've also been taking on several textbook reviews lately too. Two for Pearson books and one for Cengage. I just received an email asking me to do another one for Cengage, so I'm excited! The money is most decent and definitely worth the time. I'm thinking....Vacation Money!!! Hawaii, Niagra Falls, Yellowstone, Rhode Island, here we come! (Rhode Island = Warwick, RI home of the TAPS team from Ghosthunters.)

Anyway, the cats are good. Little Miss Girl Cat (still working on a new name) is bossing the boys around and chasing Artemus all over the house. It's quite funny to watch. Not much else new on that front except that I'm sick to death of people calling me a crazy cat lady! I finally started telling people that if I had 3 children, no one would say such a thing and call me the "crazy child woman," so why do that when I have cats?! I hate the double standard for pet people vs child-bearing folk. Now, I'm leaning more and more to the child-free lifestyle just to make a point.

Okay, I think I better go to bed now. I'm going in at 6 a.m. to get work done, then teach 9-11 and 1-2, and then have my teaching class from 3-5 (ugh) tomorrow afternoon. In that, I have to give a presentation on what I do in the classroom to attend to multiple literacies and learning styles (BORING!). I had to write that paper tonight. Normally, the old me would have had that done weeks ago, but the new overly busy me has learned to not freak out and be so OCD about such things. Doing projects, writing reviews, and grading papers is happening at the last minute. Who knew I could do such a thing!

The semester is almost over. The official countdown to my Kenny coming home may now begin!

It's a Girl!

Meet Miss Holly, our new little girl kitty. Miss Holly joined our home a week ago. Her former owner had to go live in a nursing home and was unable to care for her anymore, and so Miss Holly needed a new home and came to live with us. Her owner was the mother of a family member in Ken's army group, and since we've gotten to know each other through this deployment, I knew about the owner's situation and offered to take Miss Holly in. She came with the name Holly, and since I have a friend named Holly, I'm still working on what to call the cat. Miss Holly seems to be the best fit so far since she does know and respond to her name ( I don't think I could change it on her.)

It was an interested first week as Miss Holly, Tucker, and Artemus adjusted to one another. The first week was filled with hissing, growling and swatting, mostly by Tucker and Artemus. Miss Holly just stayed away from the boys, for the most part, but she really had no fear from them and was perfectly happy wandering around all parts of the house and staking out her new territory. She's extremely cuddly and is on my lap almost before I can sit down. She follows me around and is seeming to get closer to the other two. I think it's a matter of time before I find them cuddled up together on the couch.