Tag: Iowa

Oh, the weather outside is frightful…

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…It doesn’t show signs of stopping…

This week was full of weather, among other things.  From the much-discussed polar vortex to today’s (tonight’s) ice storm, it’s been a frosty week.

Don’t believe me?  Here’s the proof:

Frosty trees always inspire me.
Frosty trees always inspire me.
2014-01-07 08.31.23
This was even prettier once the lights were on.
This was even prettier once the lights were on.
So pretty!
So pretty!
Beautiful...and treacherous.
Beautiful…and treacherous.

And, joy of joys, we’re supposed to get two inches of snow on top of all the ice.  And I have to brave the weather tomorrow so that someone can come and look at my house.  Here’s hoping they put in a reasonable offer.

(c) 2014.  All rights reserved.

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Snow boats

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It snowed here yesterday.  October is far too early for snow, in my opinion.  If you ask me, the first – and last – snowfall should occur on December 24.  It should hang around for Christmas, but then it needs to vamoose on December 26 so as not to interfere with my travel plans.

Clearly I live in the wrong state.  Sadly, my dreams of wintering somewhere more tropical are not likely to come true any time soon.

This little burst of winter got me thinking, though, about winters past.  I didn’t always hate the snow and the cold.  When I was a kid, I used to relish them.  I loved sledding and ice skating and building snow forts.  I loved walking atop the frozen snow in my neighbors’ yards on my way to and from school, my stomach quivering as I wondered how long it would be before I plunged ankle-deep into a frosty hole.

Fruitful

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In my post from Tuesday (that should have gone up Monday, but was delayed), I talked briefly about all the fruit we have at our new place and how it reminded me of summers at my grandparents’ farm.  I’d intended to get back to that in my post from yesterday (again, delayed), but I ended up going a different direction.  So today, let’s take that trip to Grandpa and Grandma’s house.

My grandparents lived on a farm about half an hour away from us.  My grandmother lived all but six months of her life on that farm, as it had been passed down through the years from one generation to the next.  It’s a century farm, and I’m proud to be part of that tradition, even though the acreage has been sold off and all that’s left now is crop ground.  I’d like to someday buy the acreage back, but so far, no luck (the one time it was up for sale, the timing was just not right and we couldn’t do it *sigh*).

When I was little, the acreage included much more than it does now.  When you turned in the driveway, the house was on the right and the old garage was on the left.  The old garage has now been leveled, but the foundation remains, and the new owners put up a basketball hoop.  Just west of the old garage was a corn crib, which I believe still stands, and to the west of that was a barn.  It was lost in a fire several years ago – the new people had heating lamps in the barn for some animals, and somehow the place caught fire.  If it hadn’t been for a passing fireman, of all people, the whole farm might have burned.

Moving memories

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1094527_10201786529601589_1779662465_oSo, I didn’t get my post uploaded yesterday for the October Blog Challenge.  I was a little bit busy yesterday, busier than I thought I would be, anyway.  We closed on the purchase of the acreage we’re moving to, and it involved a lot of driving – to the boys’ daycare and back (an hour round trip), to the acreage for the final walk-through (forty minutes round trip), to the bank for the closing (an hour round trip), back to the acreage to drop off some things (another forty minutes round trip), then back to the boys’ daycare to pick them up much later than I had thought I would be (another hour round trip).  In between all of that driving, the closing took about an hour, we had to eat, there were errands to run…By the time we ate supper, it was after 8:00 p.m.  It was a very long day.

Seymour was planning to take another load out to the acreage today, in addition to buying some things to start working on the basement right away.  Since we haven’t yet sold our house, we won’t be moving right away, which gives us time to do some remodeling and painting before we have all of our stuff in there (and it’s going to be a tight fit – we’re moving to a smaller house than what we currently have, and we have a lot of stuff).  That’ll be nice.  But I’ll be glad to be finished with remodeling.

So, how does this relate to memoirs and backstory, or even to relationships?

Change is falling all around me

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Autumn in New York

Beautiful fall color (Photo credit: blmiers2)

Can you believe it’s September already?  Overnight, it seems like fall has struck.  The grass in the ditches is suddenly golden, the temperatures at night are nice and frosty, and football is now everywhere I look.

I love fall.  The colors are breathtaking, the temperatures are perfect, and fresh apples abound (I’m a sucker for the smell of fresh apples – nothing beats it).  Fall is a time of change, though, and I don’t always do well with change, so reconciling my love of fall with my strong dislike of change will be interesting this year.

Whether it was the beginning of a new school year or the start of a new job, fall for me means change.

Time flies!

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Another week has come and gone and with it, another month as well.  This past week seemed to drag by – there was more than once that I could have sworn that time really was standing still.  But at last it’s the weekend!  So what does that mean?

It means that I’ll blink and it will be Monday.

There’s a NASCAR race in Newton today that Seymour is at with a friend, so there was much cleaning last night and this morning.  Tomorrow is the annual family reunion, so tonight I’ll have much cooking to do.  But right now?  Right now, the boys are down for a nap and I have time to get some writing and/or editing done.

And what am I doing?  I’m blogging because I’m too worn out for all the thinking that writing and editing involves.  And I had something I wanted to post about, but now I can’t remember what it was. *sigh*  Perhaps if I could get rid of this darn headache, I could remember more than just my name… 😀

***

Well, I haven’t gotten rid of the headache, but I did kill a couple hours reading stuff online and then a couple more hanging out with an old friend.  Time to feed the kiddoes and have a little quiet time before the craziness of tomorrow!  Have a great night, everybody! 🙂

(c) 2013. All rights reserved.

 

Things I love

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  • Look at that sky! It just makes you feel good to be alive, doesn't it? :)

    Look at that sky! It just makes you feel good to be alive, doesn’t it? 🙂

    The sound of laughter in the morning.

  • Long talks with old friends.
  • Cuddle time.
  • Sunshine streaming through my window.
  • Bright blue skies dotted with fluffy clouds.
  • Crisp fall air.
  • Lazy weekends.
  • The smiles elicited by a bedtime story.
  • Impending visits with distant friends. 😀

Speaking of impending visits, I am beyond excited for August 8!  One of my oldest friends will be flying out from sunny Californ-I-A to visit dear old Mom and Dad and guess who’s couch she’ll be crashing on?  That’s right, mine! 🙂

All sorts of fun things are in the works for that weekend.  Of course, fun for me would be staying up all night with a boatload of pop and watching movies till dawn.  But I’m sure other things will be involved, too.  Some major catching up is in order.

But for now…to the writing cave!  My boys (all of them) are down for naps and I’ve got a word count to hit.  Enjoy your Sunday, my lovelies!  How will you be spending it?

(c) 2013.  All rights reserved.

I’ve got sunshine

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It’s another beautiful day here in Central Iowa!  We’re still dealing with some flooding, but at least the rain has stopped coming every darn day.  Unfortunately, that happened a little too late for a lot of people, some of my family among them.  I’ve been adding pictures to my Flood of 2013 Pinterest board – the water levels are just amazing.  Even now that the constant rain has stopped, more or less, the rivers and creeks are still awfully high.  A lot of fields still have standing water in them.

But that’s not what this post is about.  My brain is currently being pulled in three different directions, so today’s post is going to be light and pretty.  That’s right, it’s another photo post!  After all, who doesn’t love pictures?

“What? Haven’t you ever seen a guy eat cake before?”
A little bit of sunshine on a cloudy day. 🙂
No, it’s not blood. Someone had fun with the ketchup while Mommy’s back was turned.
And Cricket’s frown got turned upside down…literally! 🙂
Gotta love silly father-daughter pictures. She makes the best faces. 🙂
I don’t know why my face is in focus and Thumper’s face isn’t, but it’s still super cute.

So that’s a brief look at what we’ve been up to lately – eating cake, playing in ketchup, and making faces (and writing like mad when I can find a few minutes of silence).  This weekend we leave for our first camping trip of the season and I’m looking forward to family togetherness and more camera fun.  And my Tomcat will be returning from two weeks with his dad, which will make it extra special.  So if I’m even more absent than normal in the coming days, zat’s why, my lovelies.  I promise to return with pictures a-plenty and perhaps even a fish tale or two!

(c) 2013.  All rights reserved.

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Water, water, everywhere…

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rcsign

Photo courtesy of the Marshalltown Times-Republican

If you follow me anywhere else online, you’ll have seen by now the various flood pictures I’ve been sharing (seriously, much like the water, they’re all over – both my personal and public Facebook accounts, Flickr, Instagram, and soon Pinterest as well).  Despite that, I’m going to post some more here anyway.  The extent of the damage won’t likely be truly realized for a long time yet, and the recovery will probably take years if this turns out to be anything like previous floods have been.

I know I’ve mentioned the Flood of ’93 several times already, but we had another major flood just five years ago that I had forgotten about until a friend mentioned it on Facebook.  I mean, I didn’t really forget, but I had forgotten that some of the severe flooding had been so close to us.  All you seemed to hear about was what happened in Cedar Rapids and Iowa City, but there was plenty of severe flooding in the Waterloo-Cedar Falls area, too, and I had forgotten that.  I think the reason that ’93 is stuck in my head has to do with my mom; seeing all the photos she took of the local damage really imprinted the severity of the disaster on my tender little psyche.  The flooding in 2008, while devastating, just didn’t have the same personal connection for me that the floods of ’93 and ’13 have.

Anyway, we drove through quite a bity of flooding again on Monday as we tried to get home.