Apparently the eleventh-anniversary gift is steel. For strength, they say. Well - why not?
I figured I ought to write something at last, since I keep meaning to put down all of my (very fascinating, I'm sure) thoughts, and then I keep not doing it.
Well, my first semester at the community college is just about over, and it's been a good one overall, though certainly it's had its challenging and occasionally boring parts. Looking forward to next semester even though it's shaping up to be much busier.
My life is pretty busy, too - probably fewer commitments than in Binghamton, but it's surprising how much more time-consuming some of my current commitments feel. After all, prayer meeting at Good Shepherd was only (theoretically) an hour long, and I was only five minutes away. Red Cross stuff was only about an hour long per time, and only about three to five minutes away. And Carrie and I could interact in low-stress, casual ways (or leave partly-finished crosswords on the table for the other to work on). Here, all my drives to church are twenty minutes long, and midweek church commitments are 90 minutes or more. Driving to Albert's, too - even though, thank God, it's only twenty minutes now to get to him instead of 50ish, or 360-plus - takes the same twenty minutes, and is time-bound in the sense that I can't just start dinner at 5ish anymore and eat at 6:30 or 7 with Carrie. And as for Megan, well, she's even busier than I am, so most of our interaction is a quick mutual greeting in the morning (sometimes no more than an average of 1.5 words each: "Good morning." "Hi"), whatever time we clear for Downton Abbey or whatever, and very practical things related to running the house.
As for interests, you would be surprised how distracted I've been lately about my "garden," by which I mean, "my series of four planters out on the back deck," not to mention "the project for which I did not even come close to budgeting enough money this month, but have greedily if joyfully gone ahead with anyway." I'm growing these and (if they indeed sprout and grow) these, plus one of these (not from seed, so the picture doesn't necessarily match the brand; I bought it in young-plant form from a plant sale on campus), and also various herbs and even a few of these for edging (I suspect I'll wish I'd planted more). I am so looking forward to the time when I have eggplants and strawberries and herbs to harvest, and zinnias and marigolds to admire, even if I perhaps also have to fight with the local fauna for the rights to the flora. Also, I've probably never been so concerned about the threat of frost.
I'm up this late because I'm cooking applesauce chicken in the crockpot, and hit the awkward window where it's too far along to just go to bed, but not nearly far enough along to stop the cooking process. But I'm going with it, since I need a dinner tomorrow that won't take more than a few minutes to put together, since the rest of my post-work time is probably going into making crescent-roll apple dumplings (possibly with only half the butter and sugar...but possibly not) to take to the contra dance that some church friends and I are planning to, God willing, attend tomorrow night. That, and once again turn my car's backseat flotsam and jetsam into trunk flotsam and jetsam. I wonder if I can find some vacuum somewhere to use, too.
I'm tired, though, so I'll check that chicken again in a few minutes and hope against hope that it's done early. May you have a good one yourselves.