Happy New Year!

I made it back safe and sound, but was too wrapped up in life and updating my website to post anything. Dane and I went out a couple of times while I was back home. He knows about as much as what's going on in Center as I do.

I have yet to run into anyone I recognize while in Center... outside of family, I mean.

Had fun bowling New Year's Eve, and then went to a party that wasn't my traditional New Year's Eve party. I had a good time, but I did miss my old NYE gang.

PLJ&T had their traditional NYD gig, and it was fun (I got there very late... I woke up somewhat early (for NYD, anyway), and decided to lay down for a nap around 11:00. Leigh called and woke me up at 3:40. I'm such the loser...)

We had a work day at school yesterday, and today we dismissed early because of this lovely ice-storm we're having. I'm looking forward to the loss of power and freezing cold house. With luck, there could be some frozen water pipes in the mix! Hooray!

I have something akin to the flu. I don't know how to tell a cold from the flu, so we'll just call it either/or. It's yucky, but what are you going to do.

Here's hoping for a snow day tomorrow, so I don't have to call in sick!

We're starting fractions this month. I need to go figure out some activities to use. Everyone have a good January... and there are only 25 more shopping days until my birthday! Or is it 24? Do I count my birthday or not?

I'm going home...

I'm heading out for a couple of days. I should have been gone some time ago, but I overslept.

Don't let anything exciting happen in KC while I'm gone!

Field vs. Pasture

Tricia read my blog, and has this to add (and opted not to put it as a comment, I guess...):

This is the farm girl talking....... A field is a piece of ground that has been or will be, with the intent, tilled for the purpose of growing a busheled or measurable crop.
A pasture is a piece of ground that is grassy, and may or may not have been sowed withsome type of specific seed, with the intent to graze animals (put out to pasture), or propagate the seed sowed.
The piece of ground you refer to is most likely an overgrown lot, unless it
is the Stewart's land you refer too, and that is a pasture, or at least was when we were kids.

So there you have it, folks. However, it was always referred to as "Opal Palmer's Pasture" (I've since remembered it was referred to as a "pasture"), which makes me wonder if at some point she didn't keep some sort of animals there. I know there was a fence at one end of it, so maybe she did at one point.

Going home...

I've been meaning to write about this since Ruth and I first went back to work on Dane's NEW AND IMPROVED room, but haven't had a spare moment.

I don't know how much I'll get into it now, but there was something about seeing the town I grew up in so changed, and mostly it didn't seem to be for the better.

I had to wonder if kids still rode their bikes around town in the summer, and if families still knew each other as well as they did when I was a kid. We weren't 8th generation Centerites or anything close, so it's not like my family was known for generations... but still, I had older brothers and an older sister, and it wasn't like we'd arrived a day or two before I was born.

There was this big field or pasture (I'll have to look both words up for clarification on the difference between the two) behind our house. We would go there to fly kites. It was really nothing more than a big grassy area in the middle of the large block we lived on. It's till there. The tree we had a tire swing on is still there.

Lots of things are still there. But there just seems to be so much missing that I have this huge urge to write all about it. It feels like I have to explain to people, like Costello trying to explain to Abbot that what Abbot sees when he looks out the window isn't what Costello saw when he was just looking out that same window a short time ago. Only on a much larger scale.

Anyway, I just wanted to get that out there. The passing of time is an awful thing at times. I think I might have to come out against it.