May 19, 2014

Too expensive to travel on Memorial Day.

New date is May 27.  

Travel on Tuesday.  Interview on Wednesday.  Travel back Wednesday night.

I've waited all this time, but now I find myself getting anxious.

Restless. 

Impatient even.

I just want to get there. 

I just want to meet everyone. Get a feel for the place. 

Get an offer and then decide.

I want to get back to work.  I need to get back to work.

Yard work and home repairs are fine to keep me busy, but it's just being busy.

I like seeing what I’ve accomplished around the house for Mom and there is a feeling of satisfaction as well. 

I am SO glad that I could be around to help her with small repairs around the house and in tackling some things in the yard; like trimming trees, weeding and mulching and even the mole eradication project (which is still, by the way, in the early phases. The moles presence still evident daily)

I just need to be back doing something that feels like I’m contributing my real skill set.

The skill set for which I was educated and trained and have decades of experience doing.

The skill set at which I have excelled.

And since I work in visual Media, I want to be contributing to influence minds and educate viewers and readers and listeners. 

To move them to action and impact their daily existence with what they see…with what I have a hand in showing them.

As cliche or corny as it might sound...to make a difference in a way that I know how to make a difference.

I am close.

I hope.

I pray.

…..

Harry and I started the day by picking some posies (purple and white Violets and Grape Hyacinths). We put them into a small bouquet for Miss Margie. 

The stems were tied together with a Kelly green satin bow.

Today starts Harry’s lessons in the letter 'v’. 

What better v-word on a late spring morning…than Violet?

“Miss Margie will be soooooo surprised,” Harry giggled. 

He hid the small bouquet behind his back. 

We walked up the front steps and rang the doorbell to Miss Margie’s house.

Then we waited.

Harry was smiling from ear to ear his “I’m so excited” smile. He bounced up and down on his tippy toes.

Miss Margie opened the door.  

Harry, unable to wait one minute more, quickly brought the bouquet from behind his back and thrust it upward, handing it to his teacher.

Then…he ran off to play.

…..

The little weather App on my phone says that it’s 55 degrees today.

It does not feel like 55.

It was raining earlier and now it’s just drizzling from time to time.

It is cold.  That kind of bone-chilling cold. 

Miserable.

I went out into the drizzle to pick another bouquet of Violets and Grape Hyacinths for the house…to lift our spirits on a gray (still drizzly) and cold day.

You can smell the fragrant Hyacinths everywhere.

Sigh.

Posies.

The weather, yesterday, was so wonderful.

“Oh, what a beautiful day to be out in the sunshine,” Harry announced to me when we walked outside.

Harry and Grandma and I took the two-wheeled cart out into the big woods to dig up ferns to transplant to the back yard. 

We are planting them (or transplanting them) under the big pine that I trimmed a few weeks ago.

I love ferns. 

They are so amazing in structure and color and well…just everything.

Harry says, “Ferns are Mommy’s favorite.” 

Making the trip in the cart to the back yard.

Still in the BIG woods. 

Still unfurling from its fuzzy beginnings.

We were able to find three distinct kinds of ferns in the big woods, although I know there are many more.

I was in charge of digging them up, capturing as much of the root system and surrounding soil as possible, to make the transplant easier and hopefully, more successful.

Grandma was in charge of taking the fern from the ground and loading it gently into the cart.

Harry was just trying to avoid being pricked and scratched by the prolific, and sometimes ferocious, berry bushes. 

He rode back to the house in the cart with the ferns. 

He said they were “his friends.”

Back in the yard, I was again in charge of the digging.

Mom and I, together, decided where to put the ferns; what kind where, spacing and actual placement. 

I dug the holes (trying, sometimes unsuccessfully, to find a spot in the soil that wasn’t a labyrinth of pine roots). 

Grandma transplanted the ferns to their new home.

I spread mulch around the ferns to keep the moisture consistent around them that they will need in order for their roots to grow in the new soil and to grow prosperously where they are now planted.

Grandma finished weeding her Hosta bed. 

She tackled some of the overgrowth in an area that used to be her yard but that had been "taken back" by the woods.  

The Hostas.

She is taking it back again, for the yard.

We discovered some “Jack-in-the-pulpits” along the edge of the lawn where it quickly turns into the woods. Mom originally called them “Johnny-Jump-Ups” but after consulting with my sister, she found an illustration in the Readers Digest North American Wildlife Guide.

The illustration.

That book has been an amazing source for my “living in the country" re-education.

Laura said that Granny Andersen (Mom’s Mom and our Grandmother) had probably called them Johnny Jump Ups.

Jack-in-the-pulpit.

I mowed the lawn.  Set up the picnic table, benches and umbrella on the back deck. 

It’s the same deck that Harry pretends is his “ship.” The same ship that he fishes from with the garden hose and catches “Ooh-ga-las.” What he catches always changes its name, but the ship has sailed steady for weeks.

We accomplished a lot in the yard this weekend.  

Grandma and I were both tired and sore.

There are still many, many things to do...

In the mean time, we are enjoying what we've done.

Mushroom growing on a decayed stump.

Mushroom.

Apple tree about to bloom.