Posts Tagged ‘mentioning my family’

Home again

Wednesday, January 4th, 2012

Justin and I pulled into the driveway last night shortly after 2:30.  Other than being miserably late in the morning, the travel went very smoothly.  Both of our flights left and landed on time, the gate for our connecting flight was the gate directly next to where the first airplane landed, and all our luggage made it safely home.  Slightly damaged, but nothing terrible.  All in all, it was a very smooth flight home.

This morning, I had to drag myself out of bed for a 9:00 dentist appointment, which I was late to because I set my alarm to ring at 9:30 instead of 8:30, so I woke up at 9:00 and ran out of the house.  I didn’t even brush my teeth!

And then we had a chiropractor appointment at 2:00 where I got to tell about falling down the stairs and get all the kinks twisted out of my neck.  So many kinks!!

Other than that, and picking up a bunch of stuff from the grocery store, we’ve been incredibly lazy.  Our luggage is still on the floor of the dining room — sprawling open because I dug through there to find my glasses at 9:00 and then pawed through there again to find my new tea infuser this afternoon.

I’m feeling miserable.  My tailbone is still kind of sore, especially after all that sitting on hard airplane seats.  But mostly my nose won’t stop dripping and I’m sneezing.  I keep getting chilled and my sinuses are raw.  It’s probably just a cold, but it’s not any fun at all.

Between the tailbone, the cold, the bruise I got from running into an armrest on the airplane, and the mild case of food poisoning I dealt with on Monday that’s still lingering a little bit, I’m just a mess.

I’m assuming that was food poisoning, anyway.  It lasted all Monday afternoon and evening, but I’m feeling mostly better now.  I got a little green in the grocery store for a while this afternoon, but I haven’t been having the stomach cramps since yesterday.  (Tim, Erica, Luke, and Krista, did any of you also eat the stuffed mushrooms at the Chinese buffet?  I’m trying to pin down what it might have been…)

I miss you all.  It was wonderful getting to see everybody!  And I am happy to be sleeping in my own bed and lounging on my own couch watching TV.  But I’ll be honest:  I almost started to cry several times between Sunday and yesterday evening, saying good-bye to everybody.  It sounds like everyone made it safely back to their destinations, even though several of us are still sick.  And I know we’re all ready to get back into our own routines and prepare for everything that 2012 is going to bring.  It’s going to be an exciting year!  And I can’t wait to see you all again in November!

I love you all!

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Merry Christmas!

Sunday, December 25th, 2011

Merry Christmas everybody!

Justin and I are lounging around in our pajamas, eating breakfast, and relaxing a little this morning.  Our church had a big service last night and no service this morning — most of the ministry staff travels to spend the holiday with family and they encourage the rest of us to do the same:  spend time with loved ones and enjoy!

We’re having people over this afternoon, and I’ll have to get up and shower here in a little bit and make sure that the house is presentable and there are enough clean plates for everybody to use later on.

I’m not sure if I’ll have a chance to call later this afternoon, especially with guests in the house, but I wish you all the merriest of Christmases and I hope you’re having a fantastic day and I can’t wait to see you all soon!  (I texted as many of you as my phone would let me earlier and then realized that some of you were probably in church already — SORRY!)

God bless you all and be well!  I LOVE YOU!

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Highlights from my weekend

Tuesday, September 20th, 2011

I didn’t work on Friday! So I got up early-ish and went outside to do yardwork. We got an email from our landlady saying that the Property Owner’s Association (POA) had contacted her to say that the front yard was a patch of weeds. So I weeded it up and now it looks great.

I also mowed the back yard until I found the BIG SPIDER that had moved from where it was previously living near the trash bins to up in between two bushes along the side of the property. At that point I decided that Justin could do the weed whacking and I quickly cleaned up everything and went inside to shower. Where I tried not to imaging large spiders crawling up the shower curtain and failed.

And then had to read a book for Book Club and forgot to call Erica. :(

We didn’t go to Game Night because Justin wasn’t feeling well.

We did go to Book Club on Saturday where we once again disappointed our friend Elizabeth, the leader of the club, by not enjoying one of her favorite books. And we were the only ones who showed up. So when they told us they had double-booked the room, we introduced her to a burger at Five Guys and then invited her back to our house where we watched the new Star Trek movie and an episode of Sherlock and basically hung out chatting until it was almost 10:30 and she needed to head home.

And then she came over after church the following afternoon to watch the second episode of Sherlock with our friend Julie. Our friend Becky eventually made it over as well and we all ate pie and chatted for a while until it was time to decide whether they were going to stay for dinner or head home and do their jogging for the day – they went home. Elizabeth, however, fell asleep on the couch. She woke up around 9 and we fed her and made sure she was awake before sending her home.

Earlier in the afternoon on Sunday, Justin decided that since I’d done so much work on the yard while he wasn’t feeling well on Friday, he would tidy up the house for me.  And that made him the best husband ever because I could focus on paying the bills and then hang out with my friends in a clean house.

Monday, which I know is past the weekend, but I didn’t get around to posting this yet, was a fairly easy day at work and then we started up our running again in the evening, making for a tired and cold Kylene for the rest of the evening with very little cogitating power.  One of these days I’ll figure out why I drop so fast after exercising.

And today was another pretty easy day — I’m just waiting for the shoe to drop at work.  I know it’s coming.  I just don’t know when.

And I finally went to the Christmas site and put up my votes.  Justin will, hopefully, vote on that tomorrow and we can get that moving again.

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Maternal grandparent in-laws

Wednesday, September 14th, 2011

Justin’s maternal grandparents are traveling the country this summer in a camper trailer.  They live in southern California and have traveled up through Wyoming and all the way over to Vermont and now down as far as South Carolina.  I honestly haven’t spoken with them very much about their trip, so I don’t know what they’ve seen, but they have certainly covered a lot of ground in the last handful of months.

The entertaining thing about their trip is simply the fact that they’re traveling together.  Justin’s grandparents have been divorced for many years.  But they have houses next to each other.  When Justin’s grandma has been visiting us before, Justin’s grandfather would call at least once a day.  Seeing them together, I can understand sometimes why they are no longer married.  And yet, they still do a lot of things together, including travel across the country, although they are doing that each driving a separate vehicle.  The whole situation is just a little bit off kilter.

I’m not completely sure I’ve got this right, but this is how I’m remembering their travel plans to our house.  Originally, they were going to arrive in early to mid-August.  They were delayed on the way down by visiting different tourist sites and then by a problem with their refrigerator in the camper.  They changed their ETA to be sometime over Labor Day weekend, which was problematic for us because we’d already made plans to visit our friends up near Athens, GA.  We’d made the plans months ago and informed Justin’s grandparents of it before they left Vermont.  They were able to delay a couple more days, and told us they would get into town on the Wednesday after Labor Day.  We went to visit our friends, getting back into town on Monday.  I went to work on Tuesday and the grandparents arrived later that afternoon.

I’m kind of fuzzy on all that, but it seems pretty close.  I know that they were three weeks late and one day early.  But with all the other things that have been going on, the exact details of their travel times weren’t important enough to remember.

They’ve been here for about a week now.  They’ve parked the trailer at a park about 10 minutes from our place.  I can’t remember when we saw them between Tuesday and Friday, though I’m sure they stopped by the house, and we ate dinner together on Friday.  We went to Hunting Island on Saturday to go to the beach, and they went back again on Sunday morning – we stayed home, but they stopped by in the afternoon to drop off beach accessories.  We had dinner together Monday evening.  Yesterday, Justin and Grandma helped Jessi with her dorm room, but I didn’t see either of the grandparents at all.  Justin’s in Hilton Head with Grandma right now, and we’re going out to dinner together either tonight or tomorrow.  And I think they plan to head out of town on Friday, but plans are all very squishy.

It’s been nice visiting with them.  I’d met Justin’s grandma several times previously, but this was my first time meeting his grandfather.  It’s been enlightening, to say the least, getting the opportunity to see that far up on Justin’s family tree.  Justin’s grandpa helped me get the grill going on Friday when the coals wouldn’t start.  Justin and his grandma had a great discussion about the politics of laws regarding corporations over dinner on Monday.  Pies and pastries keep appearing in my kitchen.  Grandma and I wandered through shops in downtown Beaufort (I got a plate shaped like a turtle; she got Justin a book called “All my friends are dead”) while Justin and Grandpa took a hike on the trails on Hunting Island (at least I think that’s what they did – I was shopping).

It’s been a thoroughly enjoyable visit.  The only thing I could possibly complain about is that I’m never really sure of the plans in advance – for example, I’m not sure if we’re doing dinner together tonight or tomorrow.  And we have a friend who could use computer help and we keep telling her we’d love to help, just as soon as we know if we’re going to be home or not.  But as far as the unpredictability goes, they are certainly on the mild end of things.  They tend to just stay in their trailer or do things on their own.  We’re more likely to not see them for the evening than anything else.  It’s a huge difference compared to another branch on that tree.

It’s actually hard to believe that they’ve been here for a week already.  It’s been a very enjoyable visit with them so far.  I really have to remember to get a photograph with them and Justin before they leave town.

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My sister-in-law is going to school!

Tuesday, September 13th, 2011

I’ve decided that I’m thinking too much, so I’m just going to chew one thought at a time, write it down, and spit it out here.

My sister-in-law got into town last Thursday.  Her arrival was pretty much indicative of the rest of her time here so far.  I was at work that day, but planned to meet up with Justin and his grandma and his sister and go out for lunch at Captain D’s, a seafood restaurant chain.  The understanding was that her plane arrived sometime between 11:45 and noon, but since her mother wouldn’t actually tell anyone the flight information, there was no way of knowing for sure.  Justin and his grandma went to the airport to wait.  I had to run an errand but planned to meet them at the restaurant after that.

At 12:15 or so, they determined that her flight wasn’t expected for at least another 30 minutes, so we decided to meet for lunch and then they’d pick her up after that.  I was already close to the restaurant, so I told them I’d meet them there.  Except when I got there, Captain D’s was closed and the building was up for lease.  So we went to Appleby’s instead.  They brought me the wrong salad and lost Justin’s order completely.  As he was finally taking the first bite of his food, Jessi called to let us know that she was waiting at the airport.

But her school has really been the interesting situation.  She arrived without any financial aid worked out for her semester.  I’m really not completely clear on the whole situation, but I know she kept asking Justin if an email had come in with information about an application that she put in after she arrived, when she could get her grandfather to co-sign on a loan.  That was submitted on Thursday, I think, and by Sunday morning we still hadn’t heard anything.  Meaning, there was no way she could pay for school.

At that point, she went to school and un-enrolled from all her classes.  We started to figure out all the details that would go into moving her into our house for the semester – clearing out space in the upstairs bathroom for her toiletries, clearing out my not-often-used office to make space for her to have a bedroom, finding a way to make space for her to park her car in front of the house, looking for job opportunities for her to make some money….  And she went to the beach for the 3rd day in a row.

Monday morning, I went to the office still working out the details to accommodate our unexpected roommate.  Around 2 o’clock in the afternoon, Justin called and told me that her loan application had gone through and she was heading back to school.  She was on campus, trying to enroll in classes and moving things from her storage unit into her dorm room.  Justin’s grandma made dinner and while the four of us (Justin, me, Grandma and Grandpa) sat down for dinner, she came back to the house, decided not to join us for dinner, packed up all her stuff from the house, and went back to her dorm.

Last night, because the grandparents are traveling via camper trailer, Justin and I actually had the house to ourselves.  This morning, Justin and his grandma were helping Jessi move things from her storage unit into her dorm.

And according to Justin’s calculations, she’s going to be paying more in school loans per month than we pay in rent and utilities…for the next 40 years.

I have decided that as long as she’s not staying in the house with me, then what she does is Not My Problem.  She’s 20 years old and an adult and she can make her own decisions.  When the plan was for her to stay with us, our plan was to treat her like an adult, let her come and go as she pleased, and let her make her own decisions.  Now that she’s not staying with us, that notion still stands – she can come and go as she pleases and make her own decisions.  The difference is that now that she’s in the dorm, none of those decisions will have any effect on me.

I’m happy for her – she’s back where she wanted to be, hanging out with her friends, and going to school.  And if she decided that she wanted to stay with us, I would do whatever needed to be done in order for that to happen – including boxing up all my books and buying a bed for her to sleep on.  But I admit, it is a relief for her not to be spending the semester with us.  And I think she probably agrees.

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