Monday, August 27, 2007

Been A Long Time Gone (or What a Weird Summer)

Hey everyone. Hey. Hi. We've been... uh... surviving the summer of 2007.

Somehow we made it. Moving has been a central theme; Hannah moving home from her time abroad, Kitty moving into the slumlord apartment and quickly out to grandma's basement, Hannah moving from Cannon Falls to Angie & Harry's house in Minneapolis, who, by the way, will be celebrating their nuptials on October 6th. More recently, Brent and I moved Hannah in two separate trips back to Madison where she now resides in a cute little efficiency for her senior year at UW (pix are forthcoming). This weekend we'll move Kitty into her apartment near the UofM campus but not before she and I took a three day excursion to the U.P. In the midst of all this activity, Buggy, Vickie and the Fales kids moved into our house where they will reside for the next year or so until their new house is built over the winter on a lovely double lot they bought for a good price on auction in the city of Cannon Falls. House of Fales was accomplished mid-July after renovations were completed on the top floor creating a living room & family bedroom. Buggy & Vickie most often sleep on the third floor in Hannah's old room where their luxurious, unbendable bed, not making the final corner, was deposited. If we have company, they are ousted to the top of the house and are damn gracious about it, I must say. Things are going well in this communal living experiment. We've all been running here, there and everywhere since, rarely in the house at the same time for the last month and a half. We hope they still love us in the dead of winter when the house gets smaller and the cold weather keeps us locked inside staring at each other. We anticipate long conversations into the night after the kids go to bed at the dining room table. We're planning to change the world -- or at least our part of it. We'll let you know how it all plays out.

On a darker note, we had to put Rocky down on August 11th after a year of random, aggressive incidents he was responsible for with other animals. The culminating event occurred on August 10th when Rocky went after our neighbor's one year old puppy in the morning on a walk. Fortunately, PJ was not injured, even though he was plenty shook up. The next 24 hours were brutal for Brent and I, but we loved him up the best we could, cried our faces off and are now left to struggle with our roles as judge, jury and executioner. We're finding peace with it all. Mostly, we are glad that after 13 long, lovely years, he went off to that mysterious prairie in the universal mist where there is no pain, squirrels and rabbits run slower and no one ever says, "Go lie down". He was a good, good dog -- a peacemaker and gentleman. We will miss him forever.

So, a summer which brought drought, a major interstate bridge collapse followed by torrential rains and disastrous floods to Minnesota, is almost over. We've had more than our fair share of trouble since spring. But, here we are, rolling with the punches like true Midwesterners. I'm ready for fall. It can't come soon enough.