Back to School

I'm going to be honest and just tell you: This semester has gotten off to a rocky start. I have no doubt that I can totally turn it around and make it my best one yet, as I'd hoped it'd be. But right now? Sheesh!

My mother in law is in ICU with complicated pneumonia, so my disabled brother in law is staying with us and has been for a week. James is not better from all that stuff from two weeks ago, but at least he's done with his round of steroids. The heightened stress in the household has a big impact on the kids' behavior as well as their sleep patterns. All this to give you the backdrop to my school year so far!

I am taking only three classes. That may not seem like much, but to me it is a lot. I mean, it is literally the very most I can manage with these preschoolers under foot from 7am until 10pm or so. Maybe if I stuck 'em in daycare it'd be different, but that would also require a higher income bracket.

Anyway, I have a ton of homework, but I've come up with a tight schedule. Let the learning begin!

My Drug of Choice

Piano! I've been playing it every day. Usually, the kids interrupt me. A lot. But I still manage to go through a few pieces, repeat them a few times throughout the day and work out kinks. Few things in life are as satisfying to me as feeling my fingers speed over the keys,  relying only on muscle memory and a sense of fun. I prefer to memorize each tune I learn so that I don't have to fuss with sheet music.

I'm not great or anything. The pieces I play are fairly simple ones (I'm learning this) and I do mess them up a lot. It takes me forever to get a trill nailed down. But I'm in it for the fun.

Our Overgrown Yard

We've pretty much given up on our yard. The lawn mower is no match for this summer. The rain has made the yard all soggy and the brush grows up too fast. It gets caught in the mower and chokes it up every two feet.

So instead, it is all wind and free, like Klimt's garden. There are so many spider webs that one can scarcely cross a space of 5 feet without becoming entangled. I can see them from my kitchen window, long diagonals across the width of the yard, catch the sun now and again in a breeze. The garden is overgrown, but somehow still faithfully producing tomatoes and watermelon. Clover and various ground covers now take the place of grass in most of the yard.

I can appreciate a well-kept yard. All neat and even, nice for picnics and lawn parties. But this is beautiful to me. There's so much to explore!

It's taking over the driveway!

There's a wasp nest in the fence. Yikes. 

This is a good 6 inches deep.

Uh, yeah, these chairs need to go.

These flowers are loving this moist, shady summer.

Watermelons grown in red clay. Sweet, if small.

Pokeberries. 

This garden spider is almost 2 inches, including legs.

The kids pretty much stay in the driveway.

Clover, snakeberries and grasses mingle.

The inevitable guest. 

Wait, Already?

It's been really hard to blog this week. It's been hard to do anything. There must be some strange alignment of the planets or the cosmic balance has gone all rickety, because it's just too much all at once. And all I want to do is sleep.

School starts back tomorrow for me and, well, I have to go put together an outfit.

Ketchup

This picture is apropos* of nothing. I just like to look at it because my little sister Emma is pretty cute and my brother Justus is pretty dang strong to be able to walk around the yard like that. I don't know, it cheers me up.

It's been a rough weekend. James has been in and out of the hospital. They say it's pleurisy and maybe it is. There's been very little sleep between us and plenty of stress. And tension to be honest. 

The silver lining, I've decided, is that this whole ordeal has taught me how much need I have for a phone of my own. So now I have one. It's smart. Smarter than I am, at this point. 

And I'm on instagram, as you can see in the sidebar. #followback

*Reading anything by Alexandre Dumas will lead to the overuse of this word.

This Week :: a link and list post 3

via

So I just spent a few days at a leadership conference required by University of South Carolina Upstate of one officer per club. (Someone from Club Art and Design had to go or we could jeopardize our funding for the year.) It was held at a Presbyterian Conference Center. There was a church, prayer room, religious artifacts, etc. Is that ok? I mean, I had a great time and learned so much, but I'm concerned about state funding going to a religious institution for a group of people of whom only about 60% identified as Christian.

(Of those non-Christians, this was one. Interesting, eh?)

Ok, moving on. This is a pretty great post about real women.

I love this blog, Strawberry Mohawk. Check out this post about movies for little girls! I got some good ideas here. Ambrose is obsessed with The Nightmare Before Christmas. The comment section here reminded me of Coraline. I think that would make a good counterpoint. Right?

This article from Vanity Fair is totally fascinating to me. It's from back in, what, March? But I just got around to reading it. Glad I did.

A Nobel for Manning?

And just in case anyone needed a reminder.

Away

I'm not at the beach, I'm not on a cruise. It's not a real vacation, but I am away. I'll be back to blogging by Friday. 

Our school requires one representative from each organization to attend an annual leadership conference. So I am here for Club Art + Design. It is three days and two nights of activities and lectures from 7:30am to 10:30pm. Yeah. Not a vacation, huh?

But at least it's a little break from the routine for a while. :)