One Down, Three to Go

Tomorrow Tyler is officially finished with his first year of college. I can still feel the lump in my throat and the stinging of the tears as we drove away from Emporia that hot, humid day last August. I thought my heart was going to stop beating, but, as is evidenced by this post, that did not happen.

The Confession: It really wasn't as bad as I thought it would be. Actually, it was kind of weird how quickly Ron and I leapt into Empty Nest mode. We could eat dinner at 7:30 any night of the week. We didn't have to wait up until the wee hours of the morning for Tyler to get home and could go to bed early (and by early I mean before 1:00 a.m.). We were pretty much free to do what we pleased (!) when we pleased (!) and it was really very nice.

For Tyler, the adjustment to a small town came slowly. I grew up in a small town (36,000) and went to college in an even smaller town (15,000), but it wasn't that much of an adjustment for me. Going from KC to Emporia was a fairly big culture shock for Tyler. He was used to having a dozen or more places to hang out and Emporia's offerings paled in comparison. At first. But then we heard him talking about a place called Java Cat (how could that NOT be cool), taking rides in the country, riding around looking at the animals in the zoo, and, more recently, going to "The Lake." It sounds exactly like my college experience (we hung out at "The Rock" "The Pits" "The Pines" "Broken Bridge" and "The Haunted House").

It will be interesting to see how these next few months unfold. Stay tuned . . .

It's the Birds All Over

The time has come, as it does every year, when Ron Martin starts spending nearly every waking hour that he's not at work outside in our yard. You know how when you were little you heard that familiar "ting, ting, ting" of the ice cream truck entering your neighborhood and you ran to your mom, who was either taking laundry out of the washer or baking cookies, begging on bended knee for a nickel so you could get a fudge bar that would immediately start melting and running down your fingers and hands and got so sticky that by the end of five minutes there were all sorts of honey bees and flies smothering you? Remember that excitement? That sweet anticipation? The crossed fingers that would guarantee your mom would say, "Just take a whole dollar and make yourself sick with sugar"?

That's how Ron is about getting to play outside with his tools and his hands and his unending list of projects. And so, it has begun. Again.

On Friday afternoon, he was outside doing what he does. I was inside, no doubt watching some crime related story about a woman who ended up murdering her husband with a Qtip because he preferred the company of lawn clippings and compost to her(!) All of the sudden I heard a fairly violent "bbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr." And then I heard it again. It took a couple of seconds for me to realize that Ron was jiggling the screened-in porch door, which is what we do to unlock it from the outside. (Don't get any bright ideas about sneaking into our house to steal the silver and Van Gogh's. I've since installed a very high tech alarm system and a pit bull named Pinky on the screened in porch).

I went to see what all the rattling was about and there he stood, eyes wide open, hands all aflutter. "You, you, you've got to make some more hummingbird food. I just saw a BALTIMORE ORIOLE on the telephone wire!"

I give Ron a hard time because he's just so darn funny. But, seriously. Have you ever seen a Baltimore Oriole? They are spectacular. Flaming orange and ebony black. This is only the second one we've seen in all our years of paying attention to birds, so it really is a big deal.

Later that night I heard Ron sawing and hammering downstairs and this morning he told me he'd built a feeder for the Great Orange One . . . a nice little platform with half an orange nailed on it and a lidful of grape jelly. Apparently this is what these birds jones for after they've had their daily fill of insects. Yum.

Stay tuned for more birdwatching reports. And funny stories about Ron Martin.

Murphy's Law

A couple of days ago I was all ready to blog about the fact that NOT ONE PERSON has asked to see my photo ID since I wrote it on the back of my debit card (instead of signing my name), when, lo and behold, someone asked me for it tonight. AND I COULDN'T FIND MY DRIVER'S LICENSE. At first I was mortified. Then just plain pissed. I think I left my license in the envelope I got back from the bank last week when I made a deposit and got some money back. Ron swears he didn't throw that envelope away so when I got home I got to dig through the trash to look for it.

Talk about humbling. It was more like filthy, disgusting, putrid, flesh crawling . . . you get the picture. Anyway, I couldn't find it so tomorrow I'll have to run right over to the DMV and get a new license. Exactly how I wanted to spend my Wednesday. I guess it could be worse. I could have gotten stopped for speeding (which is what Ron thought happened when I told him I couldn't find my license) and ended up in lockup with JoJo, Crystahl and Daddy Mac. And since Ron's out of town, I'd be there until Thursday. Yeah. That would be worse.