So a really bad storm tore through our area (Pittsburgh area) Tuesday night. They are saying no tornadoes just gusts, but there is a continuous line going through our neighborhood where large mature trees were snapped in half or uprooted. And then we are like 1.5 blocks away from that line and just a few branches came off our trees. It is only along that line the devastation is so epic.
In any event, we have been without power since then, which is rather messing with our plans for getting the house ready to welcome back S24. On the plus side, we belatedly remembered we can plug a refrigerator into our electric car, so we are not losing any food, and we can also charge phones and laptops and such.
Also, the air feels great, probably because all the pollen in our area was blown approximately to Philadelphia.
D24 has been fairly incommunicado this week. Figure itās because itās crunch time before final exams start soon. She texted this morning, said she got an A on a French oral exam. Professor told her she has the best pronunciation in the entire class and has really good vocabulary. Makes up for the C she got in AP French in 11th grade. Sheās pretty stoked about it. Also, she said in their Bio class, they had to do DNA-to-RNA translation and apparently through this, the professor āRick rolled all of us.ā
both S24s fly home tomorrow! Freshman year is doneālast exams were today for both. Doesnāt seem possible. Why do I feel teary for them? Maybe because theyāve been talking about how they will miss their college friends over the summer. They both had great years. I canāt wait to see them. It feels like just yesterday I was wondering how to get all the stuff across the country!
D24 came home Saturday night, and took her last exam (online) from home today at noon. I hope she didnāt rush through it! Tomorrow she has the second of two interviews at restaurantsāshe is already āhiredā for the first one, but on a very part-time basis. If the other offers her more hours, she might just take it. If they are both part-time, she might attempt to work both. I think it will be an interesting summer! Also, since she decided to try sorority recruitment this Fall, we went shopping this afternoon and bought a dress. Got to get ahead of the game before the tariffs kick in.
However, in the meantimeāwe have a persistent basement leak issue we think is related to the massive storms. Could be worse, we donāt have a tree in our bedroom, but finding people to work on a non-emergency project right now is challenging.
Meanwhile we were just at the animal emergency room from like 11:30pm-4:30 am. Turns out NiceUnparticularDoggy has pneumonia. She should be fine, but that was not on the schedule.
So . . . actually looking forward to 9 hours in a car!
Yikes, lots of unfun happening your way recently. Enjoy the road trip!
D24 has two exams in the rearview mirror and two left (one today one tomorrow). She thought the two sheās taken were not too bad. She had been really nervous about physics, but afterwards said out of 40 mc questions, there were only 3 that she had to completely guess on.
Iām making the drive to ROC tomorrow to bring her home on Thursday. I originally planned to drive up today and bring her home right after the exam ended, but she asked to stay an extra day as she and the boyfriend want to have one more day together. Sheās meeting his parents for dinner tomorrow night. I will be meeting the boyfriend Thursday, as weāll all have lunch together after the car is loaded up and before we head home. I guess itās getting serious!
Iām going solo as my H doesnāt have as much flexible PTO as I do, and also so that the entire backseat can be used for transporting stuff home (Iām attempting to do this move-out in a sedan. Pray for me.).
This is reminding me of the house projects we have coming our way soon. We paid the neighbor kid to check on house weekly, and so far our kitchen fridge has gone out and apparently a woodpecker has done some damage on the side. S24 already scheduled a repair person to come look when he gets home next week. Poor kid came home for Thanksgiving and was the one stuck cleaning it plus the gas was turned off for some reason, so he was cold and had a mess on his hands. Heās an angel, said donāt worry, Iāll deal with the pollen apocalypse too. Always a lovely blanket of neon green to deal with.
Already posted about two finals Saturday and two Monday. Didnāt ask until today, of course Saturday is back to back Orgo and Physio with a 7pm-7am EMT shift tonight.
D24 has 6 more days of classes and I fly to meet her next week, help her move stuff to storage 20 minutes from campus, we fly home the next day. Sheāll be home for a couple weeks doing training and working before heading to boyfriendās home in CA for a week, then to backpack with D21 in Yosemite NP, then on to D21ās graduation with the rest of our family. This is the tentative plan. I expect this summer to be much of this type of thing, all family members living at home and working nearby, kids taking some trips to visit boyfriend/girlfriend, hosting them at our home later in the summer, and maybe getting a few days together as a family in the San Juan Islands. We shall see.
Big news here is that our house of 21 years is under contract and we are set to move from Seattle to Charlotte area in mid June. Weāve been wanting to move to a sunnier, warmer place closer to family for several years but waited for girls to graduate and be settled in their college lives. Weāre living a wonderful community of friends but are excited and ready for our next chapter.
D22 and D24 will
Miss their high school friends and their house but appreciate that we stayed for them. Both are home for a few weeks and then off for summer opportunities so wonāt have to deal with the move chaos too much. Theyāre happy that weāll be a much shorter flight away and even could drive to them if need be.
Apparently exams finished well. S24 prefers final exams to final papers, but five is a lot! Nonetheless he got through it.
Meanwhile last night he ditches us to do dinner with friends, and then starts texting us about how much he actually needs to pack before we show up. Uh oh. He has to be out by noon, soāearly start!
Things are moving along for on time departure. But the big news is one of the women in his extended friend group decided to upgrade him to boyfriend two days ago. So now he is planning a summer road trip to see her and other friends out east (of us).
Sheās pretty stoked about it. Also, she said in their Bio class, they had to do DNA-to-RNA translation and apparently through this, the professor āRick rolled all of us.ā
