My Parents’ Last Day in America

for awhile.   They are flying to Italy for a 3-year job assignment tomorrow night.  Yes, they are going, even with the ash floating around, and not by Royal Navy ship, either.  🙂   More like an American Navy flight.

How amazing would it be to fly from America to Italy to live for 3 years?    I keep pressing Ian to move to France for several months, but “no go” so far.

Anyway, they’re off to Italy, and it doesn’t really seem so far away.   Maybe 2 years ago, I would have thought that… but my world has opened up quite a bit since then.

It’s odd to think my parents could meet up with my family-in-law much quicker than we could.

I think my dad may have to change the name of his blog.  🙂

Sicker than a dog

Easter morning started off nicely. TLK was off to her dad’s and Ian and I were off to do what we wanted.

We started by finding Home Depot open, which was nice because we needed some bolts for a patio table we bought and then we decided a few plants would be nice, too.

When waiting at the cashier counter during our somewhat lengthy checkout process (thanks to finding a planter with no price tag.. you know how that goes!), I started to feel really ill. I had a major headache that I blamed on sinuses and felt nauseous.

I thought it would pass, so we drove to the cemetary to change the flowers out at my niece’s grave. We changed out the flowers and Ian went back to the car to get stuff to clean the top of the stone with. Half-through his cleaning efforts, I felt really sick, like I was going to pass out, but not until I vomited (sorry), so I drug my body and the old flowers to the trash bin, we got in the car and left.

Half-home, it was really apparent that I was having problems, I think, because Ian pulled out the satnav to find our way home.

“Can we go straight in when we get home?”, I urged. I knew we had stuff to carry in, but I thought I’d be lucky to get in the house before I got sick.

Ugh… I won’t give you the details, but it was awful and my head was about to split in two.

My husband got me a cold towel for my head and I fell asleep (thank God) for an hour and a half.

I think I woke up for about 10 minutes after that and then back asleep again for another hour and a half.

TLK was home by 6 and we’d already decided to delay our Easter dinner till I could hold down food (a good idea, I think). Ian went to Dairy Queen and got us some dinner, which I was amazingly able to hold down. There was something about the abundance of salt… I have no idea why.

I felt better afterward and made it to work today, although it took me ages to really feel present in my day.

It was an odd holiday. I kept remembering the one holiday when Easter didn’t seem to be going to well for either of us, when I thought, “How cool will it be to be together for Easter?”

It was still cool. You can’t get much better than being sick and having the comfort of your caring husband nearby.

So Easter dinner tonight.. ham, mashed potatoes, asparagus, crescent rolls and a berry pie. Yum! So while you might be lamenting about what to do with yesterday’s leftovers, we’ll just be creating ours. 🙂

The Annual Luncheon

We had our annual Employee Appreciation Lunch today, where they served us yummy chicken parmesan, steamed green beans almondine, pasta and snicker cheesecake.   This is the luncheon where we get a gift from the company (a nice automatic umbrella) and someone is appointed “Employee of the Year”.

My friend was appointed.  I was quite excited for her.  She’s been with the company for 30 years.

I was gone from work for 4 hours between setting up and having lunch.  It made the day go really fast.

Not a bad day, really.  😀

Plus I got to come home to my amazing husband and little kid.   It doesn’t get better than that.  😀

A Year Ago Tomorrow

.. was when I was leaving the UK to come home and file our fiance visa. Somehow, 1/2 an Ambien and knowing Ian was coming to America to stay made leaving a bit easier.

April 1 is the anniversary of our filing of the fiance visa. Gathering all the information together was a nightmare, especially while we were 6 hours apart. It really helped that Ian and I were together last March.. filling out forms, digging up supporting evidence of various things and photocopying what we needed. It would have been a long, drawn-out nightmare otherwise.

And here we are… married, legal residents, just filed our taxes and able to do stuff together after a long 7-month separation.

It’s happy and symbiotic.

Swimming Gone Swimmingly

TLK started swimming lessons again this morning after around a year hiatus.  She’s in level 4, where she has to swim required strokes the whole length of the pool.

I was worried at first.   I mean, she IS a fish, but all those summer days in the sparkling pools didn’t actually require too much work on her strokes… just a lot of  jumping in the pool and diving to the bottom of the pool for various things.

Some of her classmates struggled with the first stroke: the crawl stroke.   They stopped 1/4 of the way down the lane for help with the stroke, but they were doing what I would expect a person to do after being off lessons for 6 months.

TLK’s turn came up and she was down the lane in a matter of seconds.  We were so excited.  I was so pleased, I cried a bit.  I’m soppy that way.

She can’t wait to use the diving boards.   I have a suspicion she may actually have to dive off one instead of jumping off.   That will be exciting, too.  🙂

Morning conversations

On the way to be dropped off this morning, TLK said, “Mom? What are your plans for my life?” I snickered a bit, thinking, “She doesn’t know she’ll be in charge of her life entirely, eventually.”

My response: “What are MY plans? What are YOUR plans for your life?”

Where she started talking about various things she’d like to do, including owning her own pet shop.

We talked about university and business degrees that would teach her how to manage people and money. (I’m required to mention university, right?)

Very cool 10 minute conversation. 🙂

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