1. Monday was a rough day, as I attended the funeral of my friend's 12 year old daughter, who drowned last week while tubing on an area creek. I did get to talk to my friend before the service, and I am so thankful for that opportunity. She is beyond heartbroken, but hopefully, the healing process has begun.
2. Tuesday was a big day, as Emma and I traveled to Fayetteville, Arkansas, for college orientation, and it became very clear that my baby girl is going to be leaving me in two short months. The thankful here is that SHE. IS. READY.
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| Baby Girl in front of her dorm. Move-in date is August 11! |
3. Another thankful: it only takes one hour and thirty minutes to get there, unless there is a lot of traffic, which there usually is. To get there from here, you have to drive through Bentonville, home of Walmart, and an insanely busy area with highways seemingly always under construction. But she'll only be ONE HOUR AND THIRTY MINUTES AWAY. That's not so bad.
4. When we first arrived at the campus and had to drag Emma's overnight stuff from the parking garage to the dorm she was staying in for the night, I wasn't feeling the thankfuls. But we made it (it was hot) and the check-in procedure went smoothly.
5. While we were in the check-in line, I was noticing all the Texas moms waiting with their kids. They were all tanned and hair fixed and cute clothes and, well, there's a "look." I was standing there, feeling rather inferior, when I noticed a mom in front of us who DIDN'T have the Texas look. We ended up chatting, our daughters ended up chatting, and Emma and I made new friends! They are from the Kansas City area, and we hung out for the two days of orientation, which made the whole thing SO much better!
6. I stayed in a hotel that night and had a king-sized bed all to myself. Ahhh!
7. The parent sessions were deadly dull (yes, it there IS such a thing as a stupid question), especially the morning session on Wednesday, but by noon when I met up with Emma again, she had met with her adviser and scheduled her classes for fall semester. She is now officially a student at the University of Arkansas.
8. We learned how to call the hogs. I am not a big fan of audience participation stuff, and believe you me, calling the hogs is something you have to do with 100% participation, but I did it and it didn't kill me.
(The following is short - watch it!)
9. I participated in Six Sentence Stories this week for the first time in a coon's age. If you want to read my entry, it's right here.
10. I found a new-to-me blueberry farm today, and I picked seven pounds of blueberries in less than an hour. In all honesty, I probably picked more like eight pounds, but a few ended up in my belly. Thank goodness they don't weigh you when you come in and when you leave!
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| Have you ever SEEN so many blueberries on one bush?! |
Something did sting me today, however, which is a first in my many years of blueberry picking. I don't know what it was, since lucky for him, I didn't see him do it, but it's been twelve hours and it STILL hurts. Worth it, though.
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| Hey, safety first. |
That was easy! Why has it been so difficult for me to do this for so long?
The rest of my weekend is going to be spent going to Bushwhacker Days with my dad, then to the stock car races. Do we know how to have a good time around here or what? I will also do another round of basement cleaning while at my dad's. Yay.
Remember to be thankful for all things, large and small.
My heart hurts for your friend who lost a daughter, it's a pain like no other.
ReplyDeleteCongratulations to your daughter, and enjoy the Bushwacker Days and stock car races!
I've never seen any one person so sad in my life. It was heart breaking.
DeleteThanks! She will be a terrific Razorback! The races were sooo much fun! Great people watching.
So glad you are back and participating. I don't have any words for a mom who has lost her child. Does healing every happen. I'm glad Emma is getting acclimated to her new college experience. I have a feeling she'll be more ready than her mama when the time comes. Off to read your six.
ReplyDeleteThank you, Val. It has meant a lot to me to be welcomed back by so many.
DeleteI don't think you are ever completely healed from something like that, but my prayer is life becomes endurable for them.
Emma is SO ready for this adventure. And I am, too, but it will still be hard to have her gone all the time. The house will be very quiet without her!
Hey!
ReplyDeleteI always like it when you post here (or at the Six) 'cause it's so interesting to see life as it is lived in such exotic foreign places. no, seriously, it must be like, when at the end of 'Blazing Saddles' the final fight scene breaks through the war of the soundstage, spills out into the streets of the movie studio backlot and all.
Must be cool to watch Emma go to orientation (which, I suspect is the fun of a child to college without the empty room at home effect)... she will surely do well.
And it sounds like you exercised admirable restraint when interacting with the Texas moms...
Life here in the middle of the country must seem very foreign to you! Emma was nervous about orientation until she got there, and then she was excited. It's such a pretty campus! Oh, and I did NOT interact with the Texas moms. I just judged ;)
DeleteI'm so sorry for your friend. I'll keep her in my thoughts; what an incredibly difficult time it must be for her.
ReplyDeleteHow nice that you and your daughter met people you got on well with. I bet it made the experience much more enjoyable. I love the photo of the berries with the seat belt around them. Don't let them get away ha ha!
Thank you for the kind thoughts for my friend and her family. They need them.
DeleteIt made the two days of orientation so much better to have new friends to share the time with. And hey, that's $20 worth of berries. Gotta keep them safe!
This is an awesome list of thankfuls, both big and small, and in the case of your friend, hearttouching that you were there for her, caring is the best gift you can give at times like that.
ReplyDeleteI know that Emma is more than ready to begin college and she will make you proud just has her brother has. Good for you for being a supportive mom at orientation and for giving her wings to fly! It is nice that she is within driving distance if she needs you or if you need her.
Your six sentence story this week was fantastic, and reminded us all very quickly of how well you write! I was glad to see you joining in again.
I loved your blueberry adventure and a big bag of berries you got safely home. LOL and the idea of them waiting you upon entry and exit, that we go badly for Papa Bear too :-) We're getting stung part doesn't sound so fun. We fight a never ending battle with wasps out here and it scares me, having once been swarmed by bees.
I know from Facebook that you did indeed have a good weekend with your dad, and I am so glad you get to spend time together making good memories. <3 Wishing you a happy week of summer ahead!
Thank you, Josie! I'm so excited for Emma and this new chapter in her life. I really appreciate your kind words about my Six Sentence Story. I do love to write, and I'm glad my dry spell seems to be mostly over. Wish you could come pick blueberries with me and eat them, sweet and warm, right off the bush. My sting doesn't hurt anymore, but there's still a bump under the skin and it ITCHES. The weekend with my dad was lots of fun! I'm glad his knee replacement has allowed him to do such things as go to the stock car races again.
DeleteOh, what an incredibly sad thing to have happened. Nobody should lose their life like that, but summer activities do take lives. We get drownings on the lakes all around me here in Ontario every summer.
ReplyDeleteSuch an exciting time for you and your daughter though. It's nice you both met a friend to make the whole adjustment of the orientation weekend go a little bit smoother. Under two hours away isn't the end of the world. No plane required to get to one another at least.
Glad you had so much family time and some delicious blueberries, minus the sting. Hope it's feeling better now.
This area is known for lakes and streams, and people are on them and in them, especially in the summer. And accidents happen, too often.
DeleteEmma is outgoing and will have no problem making friends at school. I'm the one who doesn't do that well!
Sting itches and there is a hole where the stinger was, but I think I'm going to live!
That first thankful is a heartbreaker for sure. I'm always amazed at people's ability to find the thankful in something so tragic. I'm so sorry for your friend's loss but hopefully the healing process is beginning.
ReplyDeleteI love all your thankfuls, both big and small.
Yumm. I love blueberries and I suspect my boys would have polished off a bag that size in no time.
It was such a sad, sad day and sad, sad tragedy.
DeleteThankfuls don't have to be big, do they?
Seven pounds of blueberries might give your boys a tummy ache!
I'm jealous of your blueberries. Our season hasn't started yet in Maine but it's coming soon. One more year and we'll be sending our youngest off to college. We did the college tours this spring. It's coming fast. Sounds like the orientation for your daughter went great and so nice that she'll only be an hour and a half away. Our oldest is seven hours away so no weekends home for her.
ReplyDeleteI'm jealous that you live in a beautiful place like Maine! Neither of my kids wanted to be so far away that they couldn't get home for a weekend when they wanted, and I'm okay with that. My son will be three and a half hours away when he goes to med school in August and that's about his limit, at least for now.
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