Chitter Chatter Summer Edition (2023)

[Ryrin]

[Ryrin]

My youngest son is moving back in for a short time. The house he shared with his roommates is being sold. 
 

One of my dogs, Daisey, needed a dental and she had a small growth on her leg (that was possibly cancer) removed. The Vet said it was encapsulated and she could get it all. There will be a biopsy to be sure. I finally caught up on my sleep. I was checking her throughout the night. The anesthesia made her nauseous. Also,  I thought it was her allergies, but the night before her surgery she snuck out of the house for 5 minutes and got two foxtails in her left eye. They were removed and there was no damage to her eye. 

[Ryrin]

My husband also got a Blackstone griddle for outside. It’s nice! For a gift last Hanukkah, I gave him a steel restaurant table and he already has a smoker. My son is bringing his BBQ. 

[LadyWordsmith]

Hi Ryrin! Mmmm smoker and BBQ. Sounds like a lot of great cooking will be going on at your place! I'm glad your dog is doing better. Hope the biopsy comes back with good results. 

I've spent the last month doing State Testing all over the state (like every April). So glad that's over. I had to administer the ACT THREE different times this year (the most boring 3 hours of my life every year....so 9 this time). Then I just spent the last three days in Virginia for my High School 25th Class Reunion! Had a fantastic time on campus, seeing new students, hearing what's going on with the school, and hanging out with all the alumnae. Got home about three hours ago (then my boys took me for dinner on the way home). 

My son is graduating High School in 21 days! Excited, and frantically trying to get my house back in order after being so busy in April, as my in-laws are flying in for graduation and have never seen this house (since we moved in the middle of 2020). 

[Ryrin]

I haven’t gone to any of my high school reunions. 
 

Lots of work and travel! 
 

Will your son be attending college? Military? Work?

 

My youngest son’s fiancé will graduate with a BS in Nutrition in May. Then she will have 6 months of clinical rotation and then the licensing exam.  
 

I’ll get news of the biopsy 5/9. 

[LadyWordsmith]

He's starting college in the fall. 😺 We found a great school nearby with an excellent Game Design and Animation program (which is what he wants to do). Which is great because he can live at home (which is what he'd prefer) and I don't have to pay for a dorm. 

Congrats to your son's fiancé! 

[Ryrin]

Thank you. That’s so exciting! We don’t have a program like that around here. 
 

 

[LadyWordsmith]

We only have a couple of them here in our state, and not all of them are very good. It was a relief to find a nationally-ranked quality program so close to home. 😺 Thankfully the school also offers a lot of merit based scholarships. 

[LilyElizabeth]

Hi ladies! It's good to see posting in here again. 

 

Congrats to both of you on your grads. Lady, I'm glad your son has found a good program so close to home!

[LadyWordsmith]

Thank you! 

Today has been an epic quest that is not yet over. Somehow, of course, the rain hits and two weeks later the yard is several feet tall (the dandelions are terrifying, seriously) when it's dry enough to go out and work in the yard. It's also hot and muggy today, but we need to get everything weeded, trimmed, and planted 'today' because there won't be time later, and my in-laws are coming this week for Graduation. They've never seen the house before, so I'd really like the yard to be presentable. (This is only the back part that was at all overgrown. Up until two weeks ago it was 'look at all this lovely clover and henbit and low groundcover'....then suddenly giant killer weeds! The front has already been mowed three times because we are nice neighbors). 

We have mostly completed the massive weeding and mowing. Need to weed whack and plant still, but it's really unpleasant so I'm currently inside taking a water break. My son (who did the mowing of the giant grass until the lawnmower died...it's charging again now) has taken himself off to soak in the shower. My husband (who was inside installing our new television. The only one died due to the electrical storm we had last night. It was old and had been fried once before anyway) will be helping me with the weed whacking and digging large holes for bushes. I'm planting azaleas, crepe myrtles, and rose of sharons. And putting small flowers in all my pots. 

[LilyElizabeth]

My backyard looks like what you described, except our weeds are a different variety. In fact we now have a momma kitty and kittens living there. I worry about them in this heat, but nobody will take them. I don't know what to do!

[LadyWordsmith]

Oh goodness! Well, depending on how much you want them attached to you/your yard, providing water (at the last) and shade is the primary importance in the heat. Cats are pretty good at handling heat as long as they have shade and water. If it looks like they're getting enough food awesome (if not supplying just dry food is great, though they will probably never leave if you do). How old are the babies? (roughly. walking/running/weaned?) 

Have you asked your local vets about cat rescues that might take them in that aren't animal control/the local animal welfare? Rescue organizations might be able to place them all in a foster space and see about getting momma spayed. 

[LilyElizabeth]

The kittens are bouncing around. I'd say 6-8 weeks old. 

 

All the rescues are full. We could take them to a local city's animal control, but it is a kill shelter, and we would have to have my son take them in because we don't live within the city's boundaries but he does. That's probably what we're going to have to do. We're putting it off.

[LadyWordsmith]

Totally understood! I wouldn't want to drop them off at a kill shelter either. Unfortunately it is kitten season, so most rescues are full this time of year. (The Neonatal rescue I volunteer for takes them from all over the entire state. We get several hundred kittens a year, and babies all year long. 😞 ) 

[Ryrin]

Hi all! I’m in Kentucky visiting family. I’ve never been before! It’s very green but much different from Washington where my husband is from. 

[LadyWordsmith]

Hi! Have a good time! We drive through Kentucky every time we go East to visit family. It's beautiful country. 

This month has been insanely busy. We had college Pre-Orientation day for my son, and had to get a bunch of paperwork ready for that. But it was an excellent and very well put together informational day. 🙂

Then we had both our (SCA) kingdom's Crown tournament, and our Principality's coronet tournament back-to-back weekends. So much new incoming royalty! 

I have been re-reading the Wheel of Time since January of LAST year (yeah my time to read has been a few chapters a night at most lol)  and I am now in the last half of A Memory of Light and almost to the Last Battle (chapter) and I don't want it to end! (I mean, I do because I haven't read another novel in over a year and a half save ONE brief break for Mercedes Lackey's most recent Valdemar, but that took like, two days to read). But it's such a bittersweet feeling to come to the end of my first FULL reread since the series ended. 

[LilyElizabeth]

It sounds like a busy time for you!

 

That's a lot of incoming royalty all at once. Those tournaments are a lot of fun, though. 

 

That's a long reread. I still haven't gotten through the series the first time. I think I made it to the sixth book and then got distracted by other books and never got back to the WoT. Someday.

[LadyWordsmith]

They were fun! Then our local Barony hosted King's College (our SCA Kingdom's big annual classes event. We had 65 different classes yesterday!), and that turned out great. 🙂

It was a long re-read. But I hadn't done it since the series finished the first time (I had tried to start a re-read years ago but work life was stressful and ate my time when I first started teaching and I stalled out after like, Book 3.... so of course I started over January of 2022 entirely with a goal of just 'reading through it all'). I enjoyed not rushing through it and getting to experience and really think bout each chapter and finally read them all through without the big gaps between them. It was almost as good as reading them the first time (though I think I sobbed through most of A Memory of Light.... and actually finished the last half of the last book in maybe 4 days of necessary binging in June). Whenever I re-read it again (which I expect will be a few years) I may let myself read a little faster instead of trying to carefully catch every word. My original reads I binged each book on release day and that was the only time I had time to read Books 9-14 because life was busy. 

July is mostly focused on house chores now, and making sure everything is ready for heading back to school/work in the fall. I go back to work in 3 weeks (not enough summer!) and my son starts college in 5 (starting with Orientation Week which promises to be very busy, and includes several sessions and activities that will also include parents, right in the middle of my back-to-school work prep). I have some continued organization/sorting/getting rid of stuff to do from boxes that have been sitting in neat piles in my room since my last unpacking/organization binge LAST summer. I need uninterrupted stretches of time to really organize. 

I hope everyone else is having a good summer! What's everyone up to?

[LilyElizabeth]

School starts here for the kiddos on 7/19, so summer is about over. I'm leaving for Northern California (Santa Cruz) on Wednesday night for almost a week. It will be my first vacation, other than weekend camping, in over 30 years. My boyfriend (I call him finance-to-be, because while he hasn't formally proposed, we are talking about marriage all the time) is having his all school high school reunion on Saturday. The rest of the time will be going to the beach and other places. I'm really looking forward to it! 

[LadyWordsmith]

Wow, and I thought our school started early since we go back in Mid-August (I come from the 'school starts after Labor Day' part of the country originally lol). 

Have fun on your trip! It sounds like it will be fabulous. 

[LadyWordsmith]

Hope all is well with everyone. How was your trip Lily? 

How are things with you, Ryrin? Did you enjoy the rest of your time in Kentucky? 

We are deep into school year here and I really don't think my life got any less complicated when my son started college! lol. Not with him living at home. Though he's made the transition from online student to in-person college student very well. His classes are going well, but a lot of that work comes home and I've been showing him how to organize his planning and homework schedule around having to actually physically be in classes 'and' he has his first job (on campus, thankfully easy and enjoyable. He works in the campus Arcade where the Esports team practices and it's open for game free-play when they don't. So he mostly keeps computers updated, deconned between users, and refills the drink machine). 

But this last couple of weeks have been a bit like living in a novel for all the overlapping chaos. I'd like some words with my writer. lol. 

Thanks to some... controversial choices, our Crown Prince got himself removed, and our Crown Princess will be stepping up to reign as a solo monarch. As the head of our college of scribes this means a whole bunch of new phrasing and artwork and projects to get together on short notice before Coronation in October. 

Meanwhile, Monday night after SCA I got home to find a text from friends I had 'just' seen saying "Do you know anything about kittens?" A mama cat freaked out over the sudden cold and rain after it being hot and dry for months, and panicked and left her babies in a puddle in their yard. So I went over and we tried to reunite them (we also went out at 10pm to get baby kitten supplies and I taught them how to bottle feed and stimulate kittens to pee, and all those other things you do with 3-week-old babies), but after mama returned, sniffed them, and decided not to take them with her the next day when she came back after the rain stopped, I brought them to my house, and contacted the Neonatal Kitten Rescue I used to volunteer for before I moved (it's about an hour and a half from here). So we had a night of two more kitties in my house (we have 6 adults who were very curious about the newcomers), and me feeding kittens every 4 hours (which is a 30-45 minute process sometimes lol), until yesterday morning when I got a reply that yes, they could take the babies. So I took a chunk of Wednesday and drove back up to our old town and dropped off the sweet darlings at the kitten rescue. They will be well taken cared for, adored, vetted, spayed, and adopted out to loving homes in several weeks when they're old enough. They will become pampered indoor cats and live happy lives. (And after a day and a half with them I still miss them. But we do not have the room or time or money for more cats). They are darling girls. I will be keeping an eye out for their adoption notices when they're posted to Facebook so I can share them with everyone I know and maybe I'll get lucky and a friend will adopt them. 

All of this on top of my students (High School Seniors) being much less on top of things than I was led to believe by their previous two English teachers. lol. 

I DID finish the Wheel of Time reread over the summer. Let myself breathe for a few days, and then decided it was time to finally get around to reading Brandon Sanderson's other works. So I've read the first Mistborn trilogy now, and I very much enjoyed that. Currently debating continuing on in that world or jumping over to something else new for a bit. 

What's everyone else reading/watching lately? 

[Ryrin]

Hi! I’m back! I had some health struggles this past summer. We finally figured out that a medication was really making me feel horrible not an illness. 
 

I feel much-much better. I’m working on things around the house, going to the gym, swimming in my pool and loving on my doggies. I got a library card and am continuing with my book club. 
 

I found a fantastic book at a used book store in Kentucky. It’s called “The Woman in the Woods” by John Connolly. It was fabulous and then I found out it belongs to a series with about 20 books (I’m burning through them now) with a new one to come out. Crime thriller, mystery and a touch of the paranormal. 
 

My youngest son is back with us temporarily. The home he was sharing with his roommates was sold and they moved to Texas. His fiancé graduated college and is now doing her clinical rotations to become a licensed dietician. Once she’s finished in a few months, she’ll get a job and then they will get a place. He also took his roommates dog (who I love) so new we have four! 

[LadyWordsmith]

So glad you're feeling better! How fun it is to find a new series to love too. I don't think I've heard of that one.

I'm happy to hear the dog is awesome and getting love at your place. 🙂 It sounds like things are going well! 

[LilyElizabeth]

My trip was fantastic! He asked me to marry him and I said "Absolutely!" So, now we're engaged. It was really nice to have all that time alone together. I'm looking forward to the next trip, whenever that is. I want to go to Colorado and spend time with his daughter. 

 

I'm glad you both have such happy things to report. 🙂

[LadyWordsmith]

Congratulations! That's fantastic! 🙂 I'm glad everything is going well for you as well.