March 17th

March 17th, 2017 is the day we closed on our Athens house and headed up to Iowa. I can't believe it has been a whole year.  March 18th, 2017 is the day we pulled up in front of the house with the Uhaul.

So, that is how we got here. This past year of blogging answers the title of my blog.

When we emptied out the Davenport house after Dad and then Mom passed two years ago, we didn't have time to sit down and go through all of Mom and Dad's things that we didn't sell at the estate sale. Sherry hauled everything up to her house and piled it all on her pool table.  This past weekend, two years later, we finally finished going through everything and either throwing it away, burning the papers, placing things to read later in a tub, and taking things back to Davenport for a garage sale.

Mom saved a lot of paper things, and photos. She made four copies of everything.  Things would be published in her small hometown paper like this " Sherry and Mary Walling spent the weekend in Earlville with their grandparents".  Or this "Rose and Harvey Holscher had their granddaughters, Jo and Elizabeth spend Saturday night with them". Mom would make four copies. Mom made many scrapbooks too.  We had a great time going through them and it wasn't a problem letting things go. Maybe that is why we had to wait two years.

Mom even made four or more copies of photos. She even kept the negatives to all of them.

We decided not to look at each one knowing we would see the actual photo sooner or later.  Plus our necks were getting sore holding them up to the light.
I promised Mary and Sherry that I wouldn't post the photo of them looking at negatives. They thought they looked weird and bad.

When we felt the need to step away from all that paper, we would go downstairs and help Sherry paint her doll room a beautiful lavender color.

This is the same color as our bedroom in Davenport. I had almost a gallon left over and it was just the right amount.

We would also go into their backyard greenhouse to look at Stuart's magic.  He makes an empty greenhouse turn into the beginnings of a beautiful world of color, from seeds.  I have never seen the stages and it is quite amazing how he does it. This is the stage of plants just starting to grow. The greenhouse will open in four weeks.

We noticed that Clayton Potman had grown into an old hipster.

Sherry pulled out all of the treasures we bought for her succulents. She said she would tell us to stop buying these containers when she had enough.
She forgot to tell us to stop.

She once got a drill press for Christmas, or her birthday, I can't remember. She drills holes in all of these pots to put her succulents in.  She had one more box to finish drilling because we had gone to thrift stores and church sales that morning.

Before I go on about Sherry's succulents, I have to add this picture of something we found at a thrift store.

I was also excited to see what they sold in this small Wisconsin town tavern!!

Sherry puts her beautiful succulents into these beautiful and sometimes crazy pots.

Sherry imagines what kind of plant would look good in the pots and then plants them.

I hope you notice the ugly monkey.  When I bought him at the thrift store, the cashier picked it up, looked at it, and made a funny face. I knew she was wondering why anyone would buy that.  But doesn't he look great now? We can't wait to see if it sells and see who will buy it.

This is what I came home with.  They even grow grass for cats.

While Mary and I were in Wisconsin, Mike sent us a picture of the 10 inches of snow Davenport was getting. It was so strange that Davenport, Iowa was having a blizzard and two hours north where we were, not one snowflake.
When Mary and I drove back, we could see where the line of snow started.  We decided to detour off the the usual drive to look for a house once owned by our Dad.  We found in all those papers that our grandmother bought one half of the double house for $1 and love and affection from her Aunt.  That is what was on the actual legal document. This one half of the double house was then inherited by our Dad.  We had no idea.  We later found papers showing he sold it in 1952 when Jo was born, our oldest sister.

This is in a up and coming neighborhood in Dubuque Iowa, where Dad grew up and most of our family went to college. Dubuque is a pretty cool place.

Luckily, the 10 inches of snow had already started to melt because the ground was so wet.

The piles this morning  at work are like artwork.

Hopefully, that is the last snow for the season. Still dreaming of spring!

Dreaming of Spring

Still cold here.
One year ago this week, I traveled to Iowa in my car with a suitcase, two cats, a T.V. and a chair.
I then flew back to Georgia to help Mike and Chase and Dexter finish up loading the Uhaul. The closing on our house would be March 18th.

I have been thinking about last year, especially the spring time that will soon be here.
I have decided to reminisce with pictures, knowing that soon this will happen again.

These are last year's pictures from our yard.

My sisters and I had a little taste of Spring when we headed down to South Carolina for a long weekend in February. Sherry, Mary and I went to Jo and Gary's house because Jo's son, our nephew Thomas was home with his Fiance' from Korea.  Jo decided to have a small party on what would have been our Mom and Dad's 68th wedding anniversary. It was worth the trip. We haven't seen Thomas in forever and we were very excited to meet DaHay.

They brought gifts from Korea such as snail face masks, hand creams, and extra cool socks.   They brought three bottles of Soju. The caterer thought she was drinking wine but it is actually anywhere from 16.8% to 53% alcohol.  She was a very loud and happy woman and luckily, had a designated driver.  I should mention, the food was excellent and she didn't have Soju until the party was over while we cleaned up.

That night, Gary made up the air bed for me. This is what I found.....

But now we are back in Iowa.
Mike is still taking his daily walks.
It is still cold here.

Learning About Snow

As mentioned in the last blog, we had a white Christmas. Soon after the family went back to their homes after the holidays, we had a couple of warm days which melted all of the snow. It then became bitter cold and icy,  and that is when Mike decided to head south for three weeks. I had to stay because of my job.  A couple of days before he left, we woke to an extremely cold morning with icy conditions. I kept checking my phone and email for a notice that our University would close. It never came so I headed to work with everyone passing me.  When I finally got to my office, I told my boss I was waiting for the "stay at home" notice. He laughed and said the University never closes.  The next day we woke to 50 degrees! How can this be when the temperature had been below zero for a week?  I headed off to work without my hat or gloves.  Around noon that same day, an email was sent stating we could leave work at 3pm. I was confused. The University never closes and it is 50 degrees?  I asked a colleague and she told me to look at the radar, an ice storm was coming.   I sat in my office and nervously watched the rain and then the ice come. They should have let us leave earlier.

3pm finally came and I penguin walked to my car across campus. Remember, my hat and gloves were at home.  By the time I got to the car, my fingers were frozen, and so was my keyless entry key pad.

I pushed in the code....nothing.  I started to panic because my hands were frozen, my ears were gone and I couldn't get in my car, where my car keys were.  The email from Nurse Nancy flashed in my mind with her tips for safety in the winter.  One tip is to keep a spare set of car keys in your purse. I could never figure out why, but now I know.

I had to think fast.

I pulled out a credit card and chipped away at the buttons I needed to push.  I pushed again, nothing.  I pulled out my office key and pushed in the code with that.  At last! I heard the door unlock.  It took another few seconds to pry the door open.

I was so excited!!! I was in my car.  It hesitantly started and I threw on the defrost full blast.  I then grabbed the best thing I have ever invested in.

I jumped back out and started scraping, to no avail.  There was too much ice. I would have to wait until the defroster started working.

I would jump out, chip, freeze, jump back in, rub my hands, jump out, chip, freeze, jump back in.....over and over again.  I couldn't last too long outside because of my hat and gloves sitting in my warm house!  It took me over 30 minutes to get to the point where I felt comfortable driving.  I learned several lessons that day.

It warmed up again and Mike headed south.  Binx sat at the door for a whole day after Mike left.

Later he gave me faces to let me know he was not happy that Mike was gone.

Pete didn't miss Mike as much as Binx did. 

It was lonely that first week that Mike was gone and I didn't do much.  When the second week of no Mike came around, I decided to tackle a large project.

When Jo was here, she agreed that the built in hutch in the dining area should be painted.  My project was to paint this before Mike got home, as a surprise. The house would be a mess, which he can't stand, and he also wasn't sure painting it was the right thing to do.

The house did become a mess and I had hutch parts all over the house as I painted them.  I had to do it inside because it was starting to get cold outside again.

This project took longer than I thought it would. I didn't finish before Mike got home.  He liked it and thought it looked very nice.  I think it looks better too.

Now back to learning about the snow.

Monday at work, another storm came. I waited for the University to let us go early. They never did. I sat in my office and watched the storm hit us.

I found my car to be much easier to manage with a snow storm than an ice storm. I still don't have my extra set of car keys in my purse though.

Every morning this week, we woke to two more inches of snow on the ground.  Mike stayed with his parents one night during the week so I had to shovel before work! We heard from the neighbor we have had more snow than total of last year.  This is another day of the week's radar.  Yes, I do work when I sit at my desk but this is just so fascinating to me. 

This morning, I decided to take a picture of a couple of  snow piles we made, just from our driveway.

So, what have I learned about snow?

1) Shoveling is an excellent workout. Who needs a snowblower anyway.
2) Cars and stop signs need to watch out for me when I make a turn when driving in the snow.
3) A cold weather snow is a light weight snow.
4) A warm weather snow is a heavier snow.  We can always tell by what method our neighbor removes his snow. If it is the leaf blower, the shoveling will be easy for us. If it is the snowblower, we know our muscles with get a good workout.

Two more inches expected tonight!