making progress.....

ok, so.....we made great progress this week as parents.....in that we survived the reality of a child who managed to move without our physical presence.....granted......we packed up his selected possessions from home and sent them up east with another child to act as proxy.....and we conferred several times daily in hopes that said child had communicated with the other parent for advice and/or good counsel...'oh, he didn't call you either?'.......we may have located an aerial view of his new neighborhood, but we have no confirmation of which house he now calls home.......as for us.....our lives will remain much as they have always been.....our child will be able to call up snapshot visions of our kitchen, and my terrace, and the porch.....but we have only our recollections of the last time we saw him-on graduation day with his gown and diploma under his arm waiting for us to insist that we take this things home for safekeeping......i have created a summertime reading nook in his basement bedroom.....the club chair and hassock up against the sidewall with a pole-light....it is private and cool and a pleasant place to read on a Sunday afternoon......when the weather gets colder I will be back upstairs by the woodstove...but for now i enjoy the solitude of a room that has passed from eldest to the middle child but not to the youngest given the secluded outside entrance.....in my dreams the door opens into the greenhouse......problematic with the blue plush carpet......if we tunnel into the large cistern that sits unused just uphill, we could seal-off the bedroom door and create a new entrance by the hotwater heater.....on a winter's day the greenhouse might just be warm enough for yet another reading nook.......i reflect on these potential scenarios as i break from the book at hand.....not that i am actually reading these days....i have moved into the audio age full-force.....with an entire book downloaded onto my phone.....i listen even as i type.....as i drive to work, as i take time for lunch at my desk.....there is enough room on the....chip?..... that i have 3 novels downloaded for that day when i finish the current book....as well as talking points of the major works i will see at the national gallery in london this october....as well as a narrated walking tour of westminster.....ah.....making progress....

unconventional

ok, so.....i got into a spirited discussion with several of my closest kin over the weekend about the notion of whether or not i am unconventional.....of course, the discussion started out not really being about me, but me being me i somehow made it so......below is the dictionary version, which is worse than i suspetced as the definition of unconventional....

Main Entry: unconventional
Part of Speech: adjective
Definition: very different; odd
Synonyms: anarchistic, atypical, avant-garde, beat, bizarre, crazy, eccentric, far-out, freakish, freaky, free and easy, idiosyncratic, individual, individualistic, informal, irregular, kinky*, kooky, nonconformist, oddball, off the beaten track, off the wall, offbeat, original, out in left field, out of the ordinary, unceremonious, uncommon, uncustomary, unique, unorthodox, unusual, way-out, weirdo*
Antonyms: conventional, formal, normal, standard, usual
* = informal/non-formal usage

sadly, the synomyms that i feel best describe my life choices are in the minoirty of the list....on the other hand, i have never desired to be descrbed as standard, normal or usual......so i suppose that unconventional IS the more desirable of the descriptives.....

the audit

ok, so......this week was dominated by a local accountant and his very pregnant assistant.....who performed, under a pricey contract, our required yearly audit.....yikes.....the former director was asked to leave upon the results of an audit....and even though i have done my best to avoid his controversial ways.....i still hold my breathe that all of our accounts are in order.....

million (and a half) dollar houses.....

ok, so......i took 2 vacation days off to drive my mother and my daughter on a whirlwind tour of ohio memories.....including dresden where my favorite aunt and three of her four children live on the family orchard....and then through holmes county...the amish country where i was born and thrived til 5th grade.....and then on to cleveland where my mother was born/raised and where her only sibling still lives and where her niece lives in the family homestead that dates back before the war( read that as civil war).... when my mother's father died, the newspaper published not a photo of him, but of the house and its role as one of the last stops on the underground railroad.....but i digress from the trip....made tolerable by 'the help' on cd.....the lives of my cousins (on both sides) make my life seem like a cake walk by comparison.....and may i say for the record that my mother is no more senile than either her blood kin or extended family.......my aunt's catch-phrase 'million-dollar houses' has become family legend to describe all that is ostentatious, indicative of northern ohio and better than anything we (from the south) could aspire to......on this trip the price of this standard jumped up to a million and a half......which i immediately texted to my middle child....and then covertly angled the text message to my daughter in a conspiratorial gesture...... we had a quiet chuckle of the inflation.....that moment may have been the best on the trip.....

amen, amen, and amen....

ok, so.......i have three reasons to rejoice.....my eldest is back from his two-year Fulbright stint, mu middle child has a (perfect) job lined up for after his internship, and the first-ever meeting between our youngest child and her birth father went better than expected.....