One Child Left Behind

Dear Mom,

After dropping the Young Man off at IU on Monday morning, My Hero and I took a spontaneous detour on the way home and treated ourselves to a wine tasting at Oliver Winery. It was the perfect, even though accidental, way to transition from leaving our oldest and coming home to a Half Empty nest.

One of the wines I tasted was their Black Cherry Honey Wine. DELISH. I brought home 2 bottles. One for me and ONE FOR YOU! I don't know what goes into making Honey wine, but you and Bonnie Jo certainly have the honey.....

Tuesday morning I woke up excited and motivated to clean the Young Man's room, knowing it would Stay That Way. I won't go into the detail of how full the trash bag was, how many empty PowerAde bottles I found, how many little scraps of paper and wrappers I picked up, or how full the vacuum canister was when I'd finished. Let's just leave it that I haven't seen that much carpet in his room for years and that I get a THRILL every time I walk past his room and look in to see that it is just as I left it. (and I KNOW! I get IT! I deserved to have a child with a sloppy room... I earned that. I admit it. Except in my case, my bedroom floor was littered with record albums and guitar music, not dirty tee shirts and socks..... Paid back in full.)

The thrill of clean and organized is spilling over into the rest of the house. It might be the promise of Autumn, with the crisp evenings and mornings we've enjoyed, or knowing that school is starting soon and I am gladly saying Goodbye to Summer and giving it a good hard kick in its backside on its way out.

We are enjoying the bounty of our harvested tomatoes from the garden. The corn and beans are done. Keeping up with the tomatoes is going to be a challenge. I took advantage of the abundance of fresh Roma tomatoes, and the basil growing in my herb garden, to make and freeze a batch of Roasted Tomato Soup. It occurs to me that I prepared this soup on a warm summer day, from tomatoes and basil grown in my garden under a hot summer sun, with the promise of enjoying it on a cold winter afternoon while thinking of warm summer days ahead. A sort of circle of life here on the cul-de-sac.

And another sort of circle of life...In May we faced the tragedy and heartbreak of losing Patsy (I am still not over that)  And today I brought a spayed Olive home. Bless her sweetness.

All is well.
Love,
Kim