School

This was a big week in my life. After 23 years, I went back to college. It was a long time in coming and in hindsight, something I should have done many years ago. Monday night I went to my first class, psychology 101. As I was heading out the door, Todd stopped me and said he needed to take a picture on my first day of school. The kids thought this was great and said, "You have to sit on the stairs, like you make us do." So yes, I sat on the stairs for a school picture.

With all the fussing about needing a picture, I left later than I had planned to. There was A LOT of students at school that night and after finally finding a parking spot, I was three minutes tardy to class. My professor was in mid sentence when I made my entrance and I hurried to the only open seat in view. It happened to be next to a guy who was an extremely loud breather and had a case of the shaky leg. He was shaking it like crazy, shaking the table, shaking me. Did I mention this was a three hour class?

Tuesday and Thursday morning I go to English class. I took my first quiz today, it covered 14 pages about research papers. I was pretty nervous but, I got 100%, so it was all good. After the quiz, I started to feel a little better about this whole thing. I started to think that maybe, if I work really hard, I might be able to do this.

My Dirty Laundry

I know you shouldn't put your dirty laundry out for people to see, but there was so much of it, I had to put it somewhere. My front loader broke over a week ago, it was only 15 months old!  The first major repair came when it was about 10 months. I realized then that we had bought a piece of junk so I paid the $200 to buy the extended warranty. Turned out to be the best decision ever, because three months later the motor went out. RC Willey called me on Tuesday and told me they weren't going to fix the washer and I was given a store credit.

As I headed to the store, I made up my mind to regress and get a washer with an agitator. Unfortunately, there was only one of those and it was a Whirlpool. I haven't had the best of luck with that brand, so I opted for a Maytag top loader. I wasn't thrilled about how little water it used and wondered if it could really clean clothes. When I got home, I researched it and was surprised to see how many bad reviews it had. I got a little freaked out and called the store and changed my order to the LG front loader. I wasn't happy that it cost $300 more than the store credit I had, but it had really good reviews.

They somehow managed to bump me off the next day delivery they had promised so I had to wait another day. By the time my new washer arrived, my table was full of dirty clothes. I have done about ten loads of laundry in the past two days. I love my new washer so much, that I didn't even mind.

-leaves-

I was walking home from the gym the other morning and saw something I hadn't seen in a long time. Across the street from my neighborhood is a small park. One of my favorite things about this little park are the beautiful deciduous trees that line the back border. I am not sure what type of trees they are, but they have shallow roots that bulge above the surface of the grass. Fall is my favorite season. It comes to town well past the time you would expect it to. I have been watching these trees and have loved seeing the leaves change colors. Not to long ago, I was noticing how many leaves were still on the trees. That is why I was so surprised when I glanced over at them on my walk. There must have been a pretty strong wind blow through here recently, because all the trees were completely bare. The grass was covered with a blanket of thick, crunchy leaves. Not just a few piles here and there, but everywhere. I had never seen the park with so many leaves. It was truly a beautiful sight. I knew I would be going over to get a closer look. After Megan got home, we took our pup to the park. Zoey had never seen leaves like that, she happily crunched over them as she chased her ball. She tried to eat a few and even had some hanging from her beard. I sat right down on a big pile of them and soaked up their happiness. I know it sounds weird, but fall leaves have always made me happy. I was planning on going again the next day, but as I drove by, I saw the landscapers truck. They worked all day, but managed to bundle up all the leaves and take them away. I was so sad. Why can't leaves on the ground have a longer life span around here? They weren't hurting anything.

Happiness.

Sometimes You Just Want to Go Home

As the girls and I were driving around the other day, a song came on the radio called, "The House That Built Me" by Miranda Lambert. Generally, I am not a country fan, but what I do like about country music is that the songs usually tell a story. Sometimes, they even tell stories about other things, besides messy break-ups and troubled relationships. I love the story this song tells, it means something to me. It's about a girl who goes back to the house she grew up in and the memories she has there. She tells the owner if she can just walk around for a minute that maybe the brokenness inside of her can be healed.

As a kid, I couldn't wait to grow up and get out there in the "real world." I wish I hadn't been in such a rush to grow up, not that I didn't really LIVE my childhood, I did. I have great memories of growing up. I loved being part of such a big family. We didn't have much technology back then (except for Atari, which I happened to be very good at.) Most of the time, we had to use a little something called "imagination." We had great imaginations, we played store, bank, church, and house. We roller skated, flew kites, rode big wheels and bikes.

My favorite thing to do was to play dollhouse with my younger sister, Jennifer. We spread different sized books all over the floor and these would serve as the individual rooms in the mansions we built. We made furniture for each room out of blocks. We had couches, love seats, coffee tables, lamps, beds, dressers, full kitchens, bathrooms, laundry rooms, everything you could think of that would make a comfortable home. Our "families" were the fisher price dollhouse people. They fit perfectly in the furniture we built. We would play dollhouse for hours and hours. It was one of our favorite things to do.

Each of the homes I grew up in have special memories for me. Especially the ones on Caballo Court, Lamplighter, and River Heights Blvd. I can close my eyes, and in my mind, still travel around the rooms of each home. These houses mean a lot to me because within their walls, I came to know myself, who I was and what I was about. They were places where I felt safe and believed that anything was possible in life. I could do anything and be anything.

A few years ago, we went through San Jose and I stopped to visit the Caballo house. I wanted so badly to walk through it again and see it through my adult eyes. The lady who lived there told me very firmly and rudely, that was NOT a possibility. I felt sad, but could understand why she wouldn't want a perfect stranger in her home...I wasn't a stranger to the house though.

Recently, on another trip, my sister and I stopped at the River Heights house. I don't know how I had the courage to knock on the door after my last rejection, but the desire to see it again was strong. A very kind lady opened the door and when we told her we used to live there, she was excited and asked us to come inside and look around. They had completely re-done the house. The only thing that looked familiar was the two-way, floor to ceiling rock fireplace that separated the dining room from the living room. Even though nothing looked the same, it was so good to walk through and "feel" it and re-live the memories there.

I guess that's why this song means something to me. When I got out in the real world, all the stresses and pressures of life seemed to overwhelm me. Sometimes, I even felt like I had lost myself. In essence, going back and visiting my childhood homes helped recapture, if only for a moment, a time that almost felt forgotten. A time when I didn't have to worry about the pressures and worries of today. A time where all I had to think about was what fun thing I was going to do next. Lately, I have been thinking about how small a child's world really is, and how the older you get, the larger the world becomes. I hope my children will enjoy the short time they have left at home and not grow up to fast. You can never really go back once you leave, you can visit and have happy times, but it is never the same. The houses that "built me" will live on, even if they're only memories now.