Back to school traditions and rituals.

I'm in complete and total back-to-school mode. Happens every year about the time the Target school ads start to run every break on HGTV and Food Network. Even spent my last "official" summer weekend doing craft projects for my classroom. I look forward to school starting. Always have. I have a list of things to be done before going back. Some of these are:

Get my roots done.
Mani-pedi.
Edit work wardrobe.
Begin the "early to bed, early to rise" training.
Go into my classroom and clean up after the cleaning crew.
Touch base with teammates and plan for planning.

Making the list (gotta have a list) brought me back to something that's been popping in and out of my mind over the past week or so. How much has changed on the back-to-school list?  Still wardrobe questions, still supply shopping, still wondering who will be in my class this year. Other than the obvious (I didn't start coloring my hair until senior year in high school), the idea has always been much the same - what to do to put my best foot forward for the new school year?

This past weekend, while I manned the hot glue gun and crazy scissors, Mom was toiling away at the sewing machine. She made fabric banners for my classroom that I will use for my students' birthday timeline. Mom was happy to help, and it was fun to work together.

It got us talking about all those August weeks in the past when we went shopping for patterns and fabric for my new school clothes. My mom would make the cutest clothes for me, sewn with love and great care. Except for the pins sticking me during fittings, I loved this back-to-school ritual. I had input in fabric choice and pattern selection, and I knew no one else would have an outfit like mine. My mom worked outside the home, so making my clothes was something she did on nights and weekends. Made those clothes all the more special.

What are/were your back-to-school rituals? I'm adding a new one to mine - making sure Mom knows she is appreciated.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch...

So, I leave Connecticut, spend one night in my own bed, then it's off to the ranch for a week and a half. I will continue to use over-scheduling as my excuse for not blogging, along with the fact that, while the stars at night are big and bright at the ranch, cell service is nearly non-existent. Enough excuse- making.

Mom and I returned to the hill country to spend our traditional week of summer with my niece Ashley. Love,love,love that girl! Despite living a fairly privileged life, she is happy with the simple things. We played dominoes, read books, road around the property in the Polaris looking at flora and fauna.

Ashley is now friends with the family that has the property adjacent to my brother's ranch. On a visit to Texas earlier this summer, she was invited to ride their horses, ride around in their golf cart, and just be a kid in the hill country of Texas. She immediately fell in love with their dog, Rosie, and Rosie loved her,too. One night on our most recent visit, she was invited to go with them to chase jackrabbits. Ashley admitted to feeling bad for the rabbit, but she thought the whole experience was quite fun.

Other highlights of the week included a visit to Inks Lake, running an antique mall, doing mixed media pictures of cactus plants, learning the cupid shuffle,and a boat ride on the Colorado river. Ashley has always been something of a rock collector, and she added to her collection by picking up interesting stones at the ranch, on a beach in the middle of the Colorado, and at a rock shop in downtown Bertram.

But, probably the most fun Ashley had was "doing Nana's hair." This event began several summers ago when we went to New Braunfels. Ashley brings in her bag of hair do-dads and creates some very avante garde styles, supplementing her hair accessories with anything else she can find - straws, string, you name it. Mom is an absolute trooper, giving Ash total creative freedom, and enduring several revisions of any style.

I love that my mom is so willing to play, and so gracious about the outcome. And, I love that Ashley will always have these memories of summers with Nana and Susie.

Greetings from the land of Lorelei and Rory...

I have been in beautiful Connecticut for two weeks now. In that short time I have taken two graduate courses, two final exams, written four papers, completed one project, walked about a mile a day, eaten ice cream from the UConn ag school dairy, and called the family at least 10 times. I have seen chipmunks, squirrels, deer and groundhogs (yep) on my way to and from class, and located 8 different species of trees I've never seen before.

I have discovered the Mansfield General store, which is like something straight out of Gilmore Girls - a general store/diner/antique store where a guy with a base and a guy with a guitar play accoustical and folky renditions of Paul Simon, John Prine, and Talking Heads songs. Serious!

I have been to Mystic, by way of giant frogs on posts on a bridge, seen Bad Teacher with a group of good teachers, and seen a small collection of Theodor Suess Giesel's illustrations (right here on Campus, at the Benton Museum, where you can shop, have a latte and watch a lady mod podge chairs.)

I have learned so much about gifted education, and yet so little. I have also learned a lot about myself - what I can do, be, become,-and I have met an incredibly brilliant, generous, and talented group of people, who I consider colleagues and friends.

It has been a busy, enriching, creative, stressful two weeks, and one of the best times of my life. Tomorrow, Confratute begins. Another grad course, but with mime, fun technology, and cocktails. Hopefully a chance to go back to the general store to see if Luke or Layne's mom are hiding out.

Goodnight from Storrs, Conecticut.

College bound ...again

What a difference 35 years makes. The last time I left for college, Mom stood in the driveway crying. This time she may be crying, but it will either be from the weight of my suitcases, or from getting up at 4 a.m to get me to the airport. I leave tomorrow morning for the first of three very intense summer sessions that will, hopefully, result in my being awarded a Masters degree in educational psychology. The pups know something is up. They are glued to me. I will miss them. I considered setting up Skype so we could visit, but aside from the silliness of the idea, I'm short on time, and would need much time to get Mom comfortable with the technology. The very fact that this resource is commonplace makes me think about how many other things are different from the last time I went away to college.

In 1976, there were no cell phones, no GPS, no personal computers, much less notebooks, tablets, iPods. I had to call my parents, collect, from the DQ in Columbus, and then again, from the "plugged into the wall" phone with attached receiver, once I made it safely to school. I took my record player and albums for music, except for in the car where I relied on my 8 track. I typed my papers on a typewriter. Yesterday, I got an email telling me to bring my printer unless I wanted to walk to the library with my flash drive to print my papers. What science-fiction voodoo!

All changes have not been in technology. I have changed. Aside from the obvious wear and tear, additional pounds and gray hair (oh, wait, my hair is still sun kissed dirty blonde, as far as YOU know), I have changed. My purpose and focus have changed. I won't be trying to meet cute boys (unless they want to carry my luggage), or testing my new-found freedom from parental control this time. I'm jazzed about the classes, the professors, the experience!

One thing that has definitely not changed is the support I get from my mom. She has been helping me plan and pack for weeks, but more than that, she has encouraged me to do this. To go to graduate school decades after my first run at college, to leave her with the responsibility of the dogs, and the challenge of the DVR.

Thanks, Mom! I promise that his time I haven't scheduled classes around soap operas, and I won't be getting any party pics with a drink in one hand and a cigarette in the other. I don't smoke anymore, and you never fell for the whole "they give those to you to hold so it looks like everyone's having a good time" story anyway.

I'll call you on my cell phone when I get to the dorm.

General Hospital

I realize that by documenting this info I am setting myself (and Mom) up for ridicule, but what the heck. I am a General Hospital junkie. My addiction started in college. I had seen GH a number of times before that - Nurse Jessie, Audrey, Dr. Steve, but as a communications major at UT, I was treated to daily broadcasts in the communications building. It was the era of Luke and Laura and disco. My addiction was further fueled by the men of Tau Kappa Epsilon. As a TKE little sister, I knew I could always count on calling the frat house for a ride somewhere, or a GH update. Yep, the men of TKE were addicts and pushers of the daytime drama. This was before the days of DVR or even SoapNet updates. If you missed an episode, you had to wait for the Saturday newspaper's soap recap.

I loved me some Rick Springfield (Dr. Noah Drake), Frisco and Felicia, Elizabeth Taylor as Helena Cassadine, and Demi Moore as Jackie Templeton. Even after college, I would tape (VCR) the show. Through all of this Janelle (Mom) would just shake her head. Sure, when I was a baby she watched As the World Turns while she was doing her ironing or something, but she just couldn't understand the commitment.

At some point, I was able to shake the habit. I would check in from time to time to see Stone, Brenda, Holly, and Robert. I was really into the whole Carly, Tony, Bobbie, Jason, AJ thing. (For those of you who don't have the first clue, Bobbie is Luke Spencer's sister. They grew up in a brothel, with Bobbie turning tricks as a teenager. After changing her life, Bobbie became a nurse, married Dr. Tony Jones and had a son. Enter Carly, the kid Bobbie had as a teenager and gave up for adoption. Carly set out to hurt Bobbie by stealing her man. But Carly got pregnant by AJ, said the baby was Tony's, then Jason's....... ). But it wasn't enough to get hooked again.

Anyway, a few years ago a couple of my teacher friends were talking about GH and I got curious about what was going on. I was living with Mom by now, so I had to hide my watching, or face her ridicule. I would DVR the shows, then watch when she was doing something else. the real Lucky was back, and he was involved in a love triangle with his on again off again love, Elizabeth, and his half brother, Nikolas.
But then, it was summer, and there were only reruns and bad reality shows on tv. Mom started to come in to the room and sit down when I was catching up on the show. Next came the questions - "who is the baby's father?", "how many kids does Sonny have?", "is that Luke?", "where's Laura?"

By the time school started in the fall, she was hooked. When I got home on Friday afternoons she couldn't wait for me to change clothes so we could watch the entire week's episodes of GH. I even caught her cheating once. She would watch the show while I was at work, then pretend not to have seen it when we watched the recordings.

On Saturday, I leave for grad school. I won't have time to watch soaps. Mom will have three weeks of recordings at her disposal. Will Luke return during this time? Will Brenda stop being annoying? Will Michael follow Jason and Sonny into the mob? Will Mom watch without me? Tune in to find out!

P.s. Yay Carly and Lucky for your daytime Emmys. Mom told me about the wins. Ha!

Pickers' Paradise

My sweet friend, Jessica, says you should give yourself a treat after working hard, or doing something that's not much fun. This week, I have been reading and studying really hard (leaving for UConn on Saturday), so I've treated myself to some afternoon excursions. Mom comes with, and we explore the area around Oatmeal. We love the hardware store in Bertram, the Sonic in Liberty Hill, the shops on the square in Marble Falls, the short drive to Inks Lake and Lake Buchanan, and the food at the Maxican in Burnet.

We are big fans of American Pickers, and haves passed many picker-worthy places, but haven't had the courage to stop in and ask to go through somebody else's junk. We kinda stick to the antique shops and flea markets. One really cool place is Pickers' Paradise in Burnet. I have been looking for a little table for one of the rooms at the ranch, so we stopped in. There is a big metal barn with lots of junk in it and outside of it, and a little house next door. The afternoon heat led us into the air-conditioned house. That's where we met Gayle. She is a pretty woman with short gray hair and beautiful skin. She offered us a cool drink, and we set off exploring the "packed to the rafters" house. Not much furniture, but tons of smalls - metal ice cube trays, old books, records, games, cowboy stuff, kitchen stuff, baby stuff, stuff, stuff, stuff. It would be overwhelming if it weren't sorted into groups of like things.

I spotted a corner table, and an old sewing machine cabinet, both priced really well. I wasn't sure about the dimensions, so I borrowed Gayle's tape measure. While Gayle helped me measure, she told us about how she and her husband had bought this place and its contents about a year ago. We told her we liked the name, and that we are fans of American Pickers. She said she had named her place before she knew about the history channel show, but that she had contacted them, and that they (our heroes Frank and Mike) were planning a trip to Texas. Wool hoo!

Gayle said she has been picking most of her life. She's 70' and her kids are grown, but when they were little, she used to make their lunches, load them into the station wagon, and drive onto strangers' properties and ask to look through their junk. She told her kids they were going "Christmas shopping." She said they used to Christmas shop all year. When her kids were old enough to figure out what was going on, they would lay down on the floorboard so no one would see them, just in case they knew the folks, or their kids.

As it turned out, the pieces wouldn't work for me, but it sure was fun meeting Gayle. I hope she gets to meet Mike and Frank, and that they get to go Christmas shopping together.

Pondering Velcro and hog hierarchy.

We've been in Oatmeal, Texas for five days now. Except for the one trip to "town" (Bertram) to use the free wifi at the Hungry Moose, cell service/Internet has been sketchy. I've finished my reading assignments for one of my graduate courses. Written in APA style, the text can be a bit dry. Good thing I can take lots of breaks. It's during these breaks that I ponder some of life's more important questions-like, were grass burrs in dog hair the inspiration for Velcro. Yesterday, mom picked over 30 burrs out of Ruby's nappy white fur. Each time, the removal sounded like somebody ripping open Velcro. When I get back to regular technology, I'm gonna look that one up.

Yesterday we took the dogs to a bark park in Georgetown. I know. Why would you take dogs off a 90 acre spread twenty-something miles away to a bark park? Wellllll, our ranch neighbor, Steve, came over to exterminate the house for wasps, hornets, scorpions, spiders, and rattlesnakes (sort of).He said we could leave the dogs here in their kennels, but that didn't sound like a good idea to me, so we took the pups to Georgetown to add to their burr collection.

Steve's family used to own my brother's land,too. The surrounding thousand or so acres has belonged to his family since before the Civil War. Steve says he guesses that the Indians owned it before that.We've seen some flints and stone tools that indicate this is so.
Steve and his family are goat farmers, but Steve also works for an extermination company in Marble Falls.

Since he was here, I also asked him about help with the feral hog situation. See much of Texas has a feral hog problem. I really want to know how it started. Another thing to research when I'm back to high-speed Internet country. Anyway, that brings up something else I've pondered when I take my breaks. Is there a hierarchy in wild hog packs?

My brother has several deer feeders on the property. He hunts, and we eat the venison. One of the feeders is set up so that you can watch the wildlife from the back porch. We've seen a couple of deer, a flock of wild turkeys, a racoon, and the dreaded hogs. It started out as one hog. A lone black mass at dusk. Could've been a shadow, a bush. I got my binoculars and confirmed that it was a hog. The next day, lone hog came back. About an hour later several of his friends showed up. Made me wonder if he was the scout, the front line, the official food taster or the hog equivalent of a food blogger. Yesterday we counted a dozen hogs at dusk around the feeder. I bravely went out on the porch an hollered "go away pigs!"
They ran away, but it will be interesting to see how many show up tonight.

My brother intends to teach me to shoot a rifle, so I can help rid the place of the hogs. I never thought I would do that, but all of those massive snorters so close to then house, me, Mom, and my burr-ridden pups was a bit troubling.

We'll see. Stay tuned. My next post will reveal the American Pickers connection to Burnet, Texas. Just a hogs throw from Oatmeal.