Friday, September 29, 2017

Comings and Goings at Woodsong

Our three great grandsons were at the farm for the first time in a long time last weekend. About l0 Saturday morning, they had left their tearful grandmother and their little cousin Caroline who had come over to say that final goodbye in College Station. Bryan had stopped to feed the boys as needed and they had fallen asleep before they arrived at Woodsong about l0:30 that night, where they quickly tumbled into bed.

The next morning, however, they were up earlier than Gerald, which is no small feat. Since Tara, their mother, had a game to coach that afternoon, the plan was to visit here and let tbe boys run off energy before the trek upstate. After caring for their dog Duke and letting him out of his cage in the shop, they were fishing, driving the Kubota, playing football in the front yard, and for the first time getting to try out the kayaks that Gerald had prepared for them. I am not sure who had the most fun—Gerald or the boys. I was to go to Katherine's that morning, but I did get hugs and visits as they came and went to the breakfast table where Gerald bought toaster strudel pastries to add to my collection of cereals. I think Bryan was as delighted as his sons because these had been one of his favorite breakfasts as a boy. I don't think any of them wanted one of my 30-second eggs in the microwave but perhaps did eat a slice of bacon.

Early in the afternoon I met them at Cracker Barrel, where Bryan insisted on buying our dinner. I went to the farm for a break before I went back to Katherine's. The men folk all went by to visit her briefly and let her see the boys before they came back to load their stuff and Duke. They would get to see Tara that evening and stay at the hotel until the moving van arrived with their furniture the next morning. Tara had already enrolled the boys in school, and Aidan would start that same day. Maddux and Payton would meet their teachers that afternoon and start on Tuesday. I am sure their Sunday ended happily with that family reunion. Mine not so much.

Do you know what happens when you drop your phone in a full coffee cup and find it there later? I know. Cause I did just that. When I left Katherine's Sunday night, I consciously put my new cell phone (that replaced a very old one I dropped and broke a while back) in my pocket. Usually I keep it on the car seat or the middle cup holder where I can grab it easily if I hit a deer and have to call and wake up Gerald to come and help me. But for some reason, that night I decided I was not going to hit a deer. Putting the phone in my pocket would insure I did not forget to carry it into the house. But I had barely backed out of Katherine's driveway, which requires some concentration because of park traffic, when I noticed an amber warning light was on. What did that tiny wrench mean?

We had recently had a screw in a tire, and I knew from that experience that an amber warning light could be serious. So I decided I better call Gerald before he went to bed and ask advice. He did not know what the amber wrench symbol meant either, but the car seemed to be running well, so he said to come on home. Relieved, I dropped my new phone into the cup holder beside me. I had no trouble getting home and took the phone out only to discover I had forgotten I'd left a cup of coffee in that holder when I drove in to town.

I dried it off the best I could, but it would no longer charge or come to life. I got down the container with rice that I had used for a grand kid's phone that fell in the lake once. But two days stored in the rice did not help. So Tuesday afternoon I took it where we bought it, and the competent young man ruefully showed me tiny drops of coffee when he took the phone apart. I replaced it with the cheapest one I could get there. He asked if I wanted to insure it, but I assured him I did not plan to drop it in coffee again. The good news was he was able to save all my phone numbers, and I like it.

The next morning we had to go to Carbondale for an appointment to get our hearing aids checked out, so we ate lunch at Denny's, a sentimental spot from our college days and since then. After lunch, we went by Gerald's favorite hardware store where he found a couple of small pulleys for his newest project, which he promptly went to work on back at the farm although he did first phone our son-in-law Brian and helped him out by picking him up to take him someplace else in the field.

We have just now returned from our annual reunion of friends from BSU at Southern Illinois University, and it was a good two days. But I will have to write about that later, because Gerald is in the shop finishing up his project to load and store the kayaks neatly and efficiently between grandchildren visits, and I want to go see how that is coming along.












Friday, September 22, 2017

Changing Seasons

The corn fields are brown and soy beans are yellow. Our son-in-law Brian is already harvesting, and that means Mary Ellen too is busier than ever trying to help out as she keeps working hard at her own job. I will worry knowing their sleep will be shorter than ever.

Everything seems to be changing during this season. At the first of the month, we learned that our granddaughter Tara and family are moving back to Illinois as she became pitching coach at Illinois State up at Normal. This will place their family closer to her husband Bryan's parents too, so I'm sure they are happy as we are. (And Bryan will be closer to his firm's headquarters.)

For Gerry and Vickie, Tara's move wll take away the close geographic association with those three Archibald grandsons. That will be a tough adjustment, but it probably helps that they are overly busy themselves adjusting to changes of their own.

Our month started with Gerry and Vickie's quick visit over Labor Day weekend coming up for the surprise 80th birthday party for Vickie's mother. Gerry also needed to pick up some dogs he had bought in northern Illinois. Aidan and Payton both had baseball games, but since Maddux's fall soccer had not yet started, he was able to come with them. They drove all night to get here for a few hours sleep before the party. There was time, however, for Maddux and me to have a long grown-up conversation at the late breakfast table about their family's upcoming move. And besides getting to play with his Johnson family cousins, there was time for him to drive the Kubota and to play in the lime pile Gerald provides for the great grandsons' diggings. Since Nelly, the Boykin spaniel, was also with them, we enjoyed a couple of demonstrations of Nelly's enthusiastic expertise diving into the lake to swim and restrieve the ball she loved having Maddux throw out for her. Gerald went with Gerry to get the dogs upstate, and Vickie had the opportunity to visit again with her mother before another all-night drive back to College Station, where Gerry had to be on the softball field at A&M on Labor Day.

That Wednesday night Tara arrived after the long drive from Texas, and we had a brief visit before we all fell into bed. In her honor, I set my alarm to be sure I was up in time to make the morning smell good with cooked bacon for our breakfast before she left for the drive up to Illinois State's ball field and to start her search for housing for their family. The university was furnishing her a room until Bryan and the boys can join her this weekend.

We were still adjusting to that big family change when we got the word this week that Gerry had accepted a new job as hitting coach and recruiter down at Auburn University in Alabama. So he is in the process of moving dog stuff, trailers, and such to various destinations on the way down to Auburn after a quick visit with Vickie, Erin, and Caroline in Belton. Vickie will keep her plans to care for Caroline while Erin teaches, so I am sure this year will be filled with lots of trips between Belton and Auburn.

Our adult children are not the only ones who have been busy. Gerald continues bringing in garden produce, and he had his second cataract surgery last week. Mary Ellen wanted to be with us and drive us home, so we had a good visit and after-surgery breakfast with her at the neatest restaurant up at Thompsonville. It was good to hear how excited Brianna is with an observation class for young children learning to speak English. She will be student teaching next semester. Fortunately, Gerald's eye is healing faster than the first one, which gave us some concerns. (The optomist kept assuring him the eye was alright and that his meds may have caused the slowness.) He is down to two eyedrops a day again on this second recuperation.

However, during all this busyness with eye drops and garden produce, Gerald also had a big exciting project going. In order to get better Internet reception, he bought and assembled a 70-foot tower out by his shop. Roy Walker's crew came with a boom truck to set the tower up on the concrete pad. We sat and cheered as the machine took it skyward. Our neighbor Scott even came over to admire that event. For Gerald perhaps the best part of this project was visits with his friend Roy where they talked and talked about their youthful days in Wolf Lake down in Union County. Both their fathers were in Woodman of the World Insurance Fratenity, and they shared many memories and old photographs of long ago acquaintances.

Katherine was pleased this week to see the letter from Sam's summer intern supervisor that came to her house–a very long letter critiquing in detail his successful first teaching experience this summer in Austin. It will be forwarded to Sam, but I made her a copy. As a former teacher of inner-city kids, Katherine understood just how valuable his work had been. Sam's girl friend had also phoned her about starting her student teaching this semester, so Katherine gets to stay involved as these two young adults change from the teens that used to hang out at her house into professionals prepared to make the lives of young people better. As a third generation teacher myself, I am pleased to see yet another generation preparing for this important work.

So the season is changing, and our lives are also changing in many ways . And that is way it is supposed to be.