Wow, it's been over 4 years since I updated this blog, but I wanted to publish the news that I finally achieved my lifelong goal of completing college. I graduated this June with my BA in Early Childhood Education from Governors State University. So to all the non-existent readers of my dead blog, I share my great accomplishment.

My short time between trimesters is about to come to an end. I start classes again on Monday. I have two classes starting Monday and continuing till June 26th, then one class starting June 27th. It will be a busy summer since I'll have tons of reading and work to do in just 6 weeks. One class has 4 books.

I am proud to report I got two A's last trimester. Not bad for a menopausal half-wit with no memory power.

This will probably be my only post till the summer trimester is over.

Good bye slightly normal life. Hello hellish college student existance.

Weirder and Weirder

Ok, I've grown used to slowing down or stopping my car for groups of deer crossing the road, but yesterday on the way to work I saw something I'd never seen in real life before.

A small furry object with a high rounded rump and dragging something behind scurrying across the road made me slow down in curiosity. "What the heck is that!" I wondered aloud. As I got closer I was able to identify it from pictures I'd seen.

It was a beaver. He was returning to his swamp of choice after cruising the inhabited side of the road. I wonder if he was taking a break from chomping trees to raid the garbage cans across the road like his neighbors the racoons.

Weird, huh? What's next, a white rabbit in a waistcoat?

Horse Cents

For nearly 30 years of my adult life Chicago has been my defacto "hometown". Now that I'm back in the States, I living with my oldest son's family. He works in Chicago, but his house is in a rural area at the end of the metra train line. I've never known how to refer to the area. It is a suburb of Chicago? If I call it a suburb will it insult the locals? What do they call it? Is this "down-state"? What the heck do you call this fringe area between mega city and cornfields?

Yesterday something happened that pushed me over to the "rural/down state" designation forever.

At 11:45 we looked out our windows to discover our property was full of horses. No fewer than a dozen horses from Peacock Ridge stable whose property meets ours at the back, had made a real "spring break" and were celebrating with lunch on the lawn. While we city folks were trying to decide what the name of the stable was, where the heck were the phone books when you needed them and is this a situation to call the police; the cowgirls arrived in jeeps and began herding them back.

We've had a stray pony in the yard before, but never a whole herd of horses.

Next time this happens I'm jumping on ebay and having a horse auction: For sale: 12 horses for a "real steal": Immediate pick up. Cash only. Where is/as is- no questions asked basis.

Wake up and smell the onions

It's 12:40 in the Am (that's just after midnight, folks) and my hubby is cooking up a storm. The house smells of the wonderful aromas of frying onions and spices. He's cooking some spinach and beef curry so Large Hulking Son will have something to take in his lunch tomorrow when he starts taxi driving school. Another generation of Chicago cab drivers is about to begin. Hopefully, LHS will only drive long enough to work his way through college.

If you put you nose close to the computer you can smell the love.

You are all Deputized

Someone, anyone, everyone save me from myself.

If any of you, or some of you, or all of you are ever with me at Baskin Robbins PLEASE remind me that I am lactose intolerant and can only handle one scoop.

Thank you.

Now I will go moan and groan in my bed.

Dreams UN-deferred

It's been an eventful week. Lots of things have happened: mountains have been climbed, dreams long put on hold, but not forgotten have been re-activated.

I had my interview with the head of Special Education last Thursday and by Wednesday I'll know if I got the job at the local elementary school. I don't like waiting. I'm ready to jump into a new year, a new job. And there's the added suspense that if I don't get this job, I'll have to start all over in square one searching for another.

I have a countdown for the much anticipated arrival of my hubby. I was expecting him in December, but I must have been a bad girl, cause Paki-Santa didn't come to my house. He says he's coming in 20 days and I hope he really means it this time.

This week daughter Owl climbed a mountain... in the shape of the 10k run in the Dubai marathon. It was a huge feat for her because she is asthmatic. We are all really proud of her for the effort she put into training and running the event. She's flying on cloud nine because she beat her expected time by 5 minutes. I wonder how long joggers high lasts.

I started to climb my own mountain this week. I enrolled in college for the final push to get my teaching degree. I have two classes and both seem really interesting and EASY! Hopefully that first impression is accurate.

It almost didn't happen. One day I was a newly enrolled college student with 4 classes on my schedual, the next day Mr. Hubby feeling lonely and depressed by the recent sell of the family restaurant, his new "retirement" and move to the UAE, and the prospect of missing me for 2 years decided to withdraw his support from my college bid and call me home to be his retirement buddy. I dutifully canceled all my classes and sulked the whole day in my jammies. I was torn between wanting to be with him, knowing how lonely he is and how poorly he handles loneliness and "down-time" and knowing if I didn't persue my dream now I would never have another chance or an adequate supply of aging brain cells to attempt it in the future. I moped around all day in a depressed daze, sleeping and reading a poem by Langston Hughes, A Deam Deferred:

What happen to a dream deferred?

Does it dry up
like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore--
And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crustt and sugar over--
like a syrupy sweet?

Maybe it just sags
like a heavy load.

Or does it explode?


By the end of the day I realized that day that a dream is a wonderful thing you have while you are asleep, but to make a dream become reality you have to wake up and work hard. I have to protect my dream from people who tell me I don't need it, I can't do it or I should forget it. I've worked hard to climb the college mountain all my life. I re-enrolled in two of my classes. Since then I've talked to Hubby and he's agreed to continue his support of my decision.

I've made it to base camp. Now I have to carry on alone to the summit. Who wants to be on my support team?