Confessions

Confession Number One:  I can't stop thinking about how beautiful Daughter looked on her way to Saturday night's Holly Ball with her date, Jack V.  I don't care how many times I stare at these pictures, I am in awe.  She's beautiful, she's smart, she's funny and she can sink a shot from half court when it counts.  I just adore her and feel so incredibly fortunate and privileged to be her mother.


Confession Number Two: Saturday was the Mathews Christmas parade.  For the first time in I don't know how many years, I didn't go.  On purpose.  I napped instead.  I have no regrets.  There, that's off my chest.  I feel better now.


Confession Number Three:  After work today, I will race to Richmond to retrieve Son, who is returning home for Christmas break.  He will undergo surgery Tuesday in Norfolk to remove bars placed into his chest two years ago.  (Click here and here  for posts written around the time of that first surgery.) Because of all this, I will (probably) miss two of Daughter's basketball games, only because I've not figured out how to clone myself to be two places simultaneously.  I hate missing Daughter's games.  I might not feel any remorse for napping instead of attending the Christmas parade, but I do feel remorse at the prospect of missing one of her basketball games.

Anyway, it is going to be another busy, eventful week here.

I hope yours is great.

Juggling

This was Queens Creek on Thanksgiving evening, as seen from my parents' deck next door. Gwynn's Island and the Islander are in the middle, farthest away.

Although I took advantage of the Thanksgiving break to sleep all day, every day rest up, a mere two days back to commuting and work have negated it all.  Not only is there plenty more work and commuting to do this week, but Daughter has basketball games--one at home on Thursday after work and another at Lancaster Friday night.

I'm awaiting delivery of a new refrigerator this week.  I'm still researching new cars.  (For the record, CBW lacks time and patience and despises shopping for just about everything except vacations.  The prospect of purchasing a car by herself is especially daunting. Can't the Car Fairy just make a practical, fuel-efficient car magically appear in the driveway, already financed and ready to go? No haggling and no loan applications? Is that really asking too much?)   Personal property taxes are due.  Spring tuition will soon be due for Son.  Daughter takes SATs on Saturday.  Son has surgery December 16th.  Last but not least, I've done absolutely zero Christmas shopping, unless you count the soon-to-be-delivered icebox a Christmas present to myself--and I don't.

I think it's time to start playing the lottery.

Let me know if you can recommend some lucky numbers.

Signs

There are lots of signs of various descriptions in Mathews County, and one of the most commonly seen is the No Trespassing sign.  I confess to being simultaneously intimidated and challenged whenever I see one of these signs.

For example, above, the sign partners with the closed gate to say very definitively: No.

But, below, upon closer inspection of what's happening on the left, the sign seems to beg to be challenged.  "I'm trying to say stay out, but if you just step over here, there's nothing holding you back except a little swamp mud."  (And your conscience.)

Not that I would ever disobey a sign.  I'm just telling you what goes through my mind when I see things like this. My mind is a frightening place, especially when I'm exhausted--as happens to be the case tonight.

Then you have your road signs that clearly mean well--with the best of intentions--but have been tampered with and rendered absolutely useless.

For example, this sign seems to say, "Watch out!  It's 15 miles per hour as you leave the roadway, venture into the ditch, back up for a moment, and then take off into flight at a 45-degree angle."

Even though it's only Tuesday as I write this, I feel like I've been working for forty thousand days straight.

There's lots going on (my workload is doubling; my commute remains an hour each way; I need to buy a new car and a new refrigerator but have no time to research either, Daughter's basketball season is underway, which means multiple games per week after that commute from work; Daughter is ramping up for the college application process next year; Son will be undergoing another major surgery next month to reverse a procedure done two years ago; Thanksgiving and Christmas are breathing down my neck; and nothing in my house seems to be working-- for example).  

As I do from time to time, I may cut back on blogging until things level out.  I'll post here and there as time permits but not on any fixed schedule.

Also, if you will, can you tell me how that last sign could possibly have been bent in that direction? Did a speedboat in the ditch hit it?  Did the people cutting grass just decide to back up and push it this way? Or did they cut it facing traffic and just completely disregard the sign?  How do you not notice a sign like this if your job is cutting the grass roadside?

It's questions like these that keep me amused.

For hours.

I look forward to hearing your theories.

Wistful

Wistful is the word that comes to mind when trying to combine my thoughts about these photographs with my thoughts in general.  My thoughts in general are muddled, because I'm still not feeling 100%.  However, Life doesn't care about that; she's still tossing things my way expecting me to catch them perfectly whenever she feels like tossing.

I'm OK, just wish there were a break somewhere in sight and that I felt a little better.  This too shall pass.  It always does.

Anyway, I hope your week is going well and that your thoughts are less wistful and more optimistic.  Mine will get there, just as soon as we have some consistently warm, sunny weather for starters.

For some real entertainment,  click here to read my mother's blog post  about my father's latest feud with the furnace.  Furnaces, that is.

Foggy Morning

These trees border the dirt lane leading to Church Hill Plantation off Route 14 in Gloucester.  I took these after delivering Chesapeake Bay Daughter to school (which is directly across the road) during a particular spell when there was lots of fog each morning.

This mercifully brief blog post is brought to you by an extremely busy Tuesday that began at 5:30 a.m. and didn't end until after 11:00 p.m.

After work I headed to King William for a track meet, where so much happened I wouldn't know where to begin. The various stories, which I'll share when there's more time, were as full of twists and turns as the never ending two-lane Indian trail highway which leads from West Point to King William and back.

There are two Indian reservations along that road, so it's actually quite probable that it was an Indian trail at some point.  FYI, driving in the dark on a former Indian trail when you've been up since 5:30, worked all day, and just spent 3 hours standing alongside a track in bitterly cold weather is challenging at best.

The foreseeable future promises to be just as exhausting busy and exciting.  In addition to Saturday's 10K in Richmond, followed by CB Daughter's party that evening, I'll be going on a little excursion out onto the waters of Mathews in what is bound to be an adventure, if it all works out.

Getting back to the topic at hand which to be honest I didn't think where was a particular topic being focused on started off as Church Hill Plantation,  click here for a previous blog post that includes an overview of Church Hill's infamous ghost story.