New Years thoughts....

Christmas is over and the New Year is creeping up on us. We generally spend the week between Christmas and New Years trying to de-stress from the frantic gift buying season and cleaning the house for the gathering of New Years revelers.

Last year, we went up the hill to our friend's lake house for the holiday. The wife had to work and they wouldn't be able to attend otherwise. I was getting over the flu, and my poor husband started getting a fever on the way up there. So, I spent the weekend nursing him through bouts of fever spikes and soaking sweats, cooking for the crowd, and taking pictures and didn't get to enjoy myself much. This year, the party will be back at our house.

Our kids are getting older now and while that thought is somewhat bittersweet, it is kinda nice to look back over the past year and see how much they have grown. My baby boy will be 18 in March. My daughter, 21 in June. I know that I don't tell them often enough how proud I am of them. They have turned into the kind of kids any parent would be proud to claim. And I love them very much.

My husbands job is still looking ok for the time being, so we are going to focus on getting the house ready to sell. We still have a lot of work to do around here to make that happen but at least we are not pressed for time or money to do it. We still have to do something with the bedroom and our bath, living room floor and kitchen counters. There are a few outside things that need doing, but they will be easy and inexpensive fixes that can wait until later. I am just ready to get out of this place and into my forever home.

The past year has had it's share of ups and downs. We got the house paid off, which is a major accomplishment, all of the vehicles are paid for, the kids both have good scholarships for college, and we have enough saved to be able to do the things we need to do to the house. On the down side, the garden didn't really do well this year and we are starting to feel it in the lack of canned vegetables that are left in the pantry. I may actually have to start buying vegetables from the grocery store again before the first produce comes out of the garden this coming spring.

And our smallest family member, Stuart, a 15 year old house cat passed away the first week of December. He was pretty old for a cat, and had been declining for the past few months. I was heartbreaking to see him getting so weak and know that there was nothing to be done about it. He died peacefully at home and was laid to rest with his favorite things in a spot by the back fence. We will be building a flower bed over his resting place as we did when Katie, our 14 year old Border Collie, passed a couple of years ago. He will continue to be sorely missed for a long, long time.

For the New Year, we will be starting off with a major celebration. Our Alma Mater had a winning football season for the first time in a very long while and has a Bowl Game that will be played the first week of the New Year. We are very excited about it and will be supporting our team in a grand style.

Our son will be graduating from High School in May with very good grades and will be getting ready to go to college in the Fall. Our daughter will be completing her Junior year of college (with perfect marks so far!) and will be starting her Graduate School search.

All of our years of scrimping and scraping are paying off. Our children are moving fully into adulthood as productive, well rounded citizens with bright futures ahead of them and we will have an empty nest. It will be a little odd to not have them underfoot but I think the future they will have will be worth it for all of us.

This New Year, for us at least will be full of new beginnings. And I am actually looking forward to it.

State funding linked to graduation rates

Our illustrious Arkansas State Legislature, in all of their infinite wisdom, have decided to discuss the possibility of linking the funding provided to State colleges and Universities to the graduation rates of the individual schools. What they are saying is that the schools who have the highest grad rates, get the most money.

Now, that being said, the University of AR at Fayetteville is the most exclusive State University in Arkansas. It is in the area of the state that also has the Walton Family (Wal-mart headquarters), the Tyson Family (Tyson Chicken), JB Hunt Trucking, and has been the only Republican area of Arkansas for the last 150 years. They have the highest graduation rate in the state because you have to have a higher GPA and test scores to even be accepted.

But there are also 2 Universities in the Delta region of the state, aka the poor folks. These are Arkansas State University in Jonesboro (where DD goes) and University of AR at Pine Bluff.

ASUJ( Northeastern region) has a history of being a "regional" college but they have recently been focusing on helping students stay in school and graduate with a useful degree. They also have a network of "feeder" schools, aka junior colleges, that offer 2 year degrees and let the students transfer into ASUJ after the first 2 years.

UAPB on the other hand, is a 4 year college that focuses on giving minorities a chance to get an education. They are in the poorest(Southeastern) section of the state, and in Arkansas that means the least educated. Their graduation rates have a tendency to correspond to the general education of the region.

This legislation is specifically designed to keep the rich, well educated area of the state, well educated and rich, and keep the poor, uneducated areas, poor and uneducated.

This is absolutely not what the legislature is supposed to do. They are supposed to educate the poor, economically depressed areas so they are not so poor and economically depressed. This is a classic example of the rich getting richer while the poor get poorer. The Democrats want to keep that minority voting block on the public dole.

It is just so counter-intuitive.

July was crazy

OK, So I have been a little lax in the blogging department lately. I have been rather busy canning, chasing my kids around, wrecking my truck, and putting in a wood floor. My house is still trashed from having to move everything out of the den to lay the floor and I just can't seem to make myself want to put everything away now that the floor is finished. *sigh*

And we have been eating out a lot. We have had company stay over so we go out instead of cooking and that has been really expensive. So we are going to have to really buckle down and focus on the money thing again. I canned enough food so that we will not have to go to the store too much, except for things like sugar and milk, but I just don't want to start using that stuff yet for some reason. Maybe I am just so sick of looking at it all that I don't want to dig through the jars to find something for dinner. It is, after all, stacked up in boxes in the bedroom waiting for a permanent home. Something else I have to do.

This is the last weekend that my sweet, little, bald-headed baby girl will be living at home. She moves into her college dorm on the 22nd. I have a feeling that I will be torn between very sad and relieved that we have finished our job raising her. It just won't be the same without her here making little noises and "Kramer-ing" out of her bedroom. Very Sad.

Band practice started last week for the boy. He has to get fitted for his uniform today. He is really thrilled about that. But that is part of it. Football games in the sleet. Or thunderstorms. Or hot and humid. In a wool uniform. Parades. Contests. Ahhh, those were the days. I remember them fondly.

After school starts back, things will settle back down to some semblance of normal.

Hopefully.

Grandma's Attic...so to speak

We are back from the Ridge after getting my daughter's college orientation completed. It is an exciting time for her. She turned 18 last week and can now officially be considered an adult. I am just getting old. It will be hard to let her go, but she has her wings now and I have to let her fly.

We also spent some time with my mother helping her clean up in my grandmother's house. 50 years worth of accumulated "stuff" sitting, for the last 10 years, in an empty house. It is amazing just how much daily clutter sits in random cupboards and drawers. I think we found about 30 pairs of scissors.

It was actually very sad to be in her house. It seems so much smaller than when I was a child. And there wasn't the warm sunlight streaming in that I always loved when I was a kid. Maybe it was because it was just so...empty feeling. It wasn't like going to Grandma's House. It was like rummaging through some stranger's house, trying to find things of value. I just kept shaking my head, wondering why Grandma would keep some of the things she did. Just how many rolls of electrical tape did she need anyway?

We didn't have enough room to take everything that needed to be taken from the house. We will probably just need to rent a trailer and load it up to bring it home. There is going to have to be some serious work done on the house before it is habitable again. The ice storm in January really did a number on it. I am not really sure the structure is worth saving anymore. There is just so much damage to the roof, a piece of the ceiling collapsed in the living room, the add-on that housed the hot water heater is open to the elements now, and all of the outbuildings have either fallen in or are about to. Regardless, if there is anything in it that needs to be saved, it will have to be removed soon or it will be lost forever.

Needless to say, I had a difficult weekend.