Desert Magnolia

The frost is nearly on the pumpkin, and I am wondering where in the hell the last almost eleven months have gone! I mean, there were the holidays - always a blur,  then the New Year - always a bit of a letdown/gotta keep moving with school adventure,  then there was spring, my birthday (a no biggie one this year as it turns out), then there was summer (kind of a non-summer as summers go, highlighted by a quick visit from kids), now there is fall and oh man...it's almost the holidays again. The kittens have grown to full size kitties, and they are super fun and funny. We love them. The garden was awesome, and we're still getting a few tomatoes...though our days are numbered there. The big tree with all the leaves hasn't yet let go, but that's about to happen..probably next week when the temps dive a little below Indian Summer levels. Between now and setting up the tree? Finishing up midterms (yes another set...honestly, they never seem to end!), pushing through the re...

The Mom is gone. She looks sassy with her new Halle Berry 'do. She feels good about her Mom's progress and knows she'll be fine. She said she's looking forward to getting home to the house, the boat, her BF, and the ocean. She didn't say when she was coming back. She thanked me profusely for 'everything.' She hugged me and told me she loved me and to keep on being strong and having a good sense of humor and enjoying my family because they are a.mazing, one and all. And then she was gone.

As in to mend again. Or to mend a rend in the emotional fabric of our lives. A little background on this. My Mom and I have an interesting relationship borne of many things, but mostly conducted at a distance. A long distance. She lives far away, in Oregon now, but she's lived further away than that for decades now. Originally, she went with my step dad, a physicist, who needed special equipment to do his research. They went to Germany for 7 years, then to Brazil for another 3. During the Germany time both of my babies were born. And Mom came to visit for those events. And then they moved back for a bit. But though they lived in the same state as us, they lived 45 minutes away from us in a little town. In a weird little apartment attached to a much larger house sitting on a horse farm of sorts but not really a horse farm..they boarded, but there wasn't as much lush pasture as you'd expect at a horse farm. Maybe it was just kind of a desert version of a horse farm....

Saturday morning. Our house. After a most intense week. (I know, lately they've all been intense, but that seems to be the way of things these days.) Sun shines in the living room. My feet are on the coffee table (I could use a  pedicure, I notice), my laptop propped on my lap. Terminator Salvation plays on the TV. Hubby loves the Terminator movies, and Netflix delivered. Daughter joins us for breakfast, then dashes off to work. She's excited at the prospect of actually making some cash for the first time since her surgery, but kind of dreading standing on concrete floors at the restaurant all day. Son calls and asks me to check my email to see if an attachment came through. He sent a paper in yesterday and the TA is claiming the attachment wasn't...attached.  Attachment came through for me, so something jicky is going on with the other email he sent. I text son back and confirm email worked for me, that he should resend the original to the TA to show the time s...