Katie Robinson

What a cold, wet, gross day.  The good news is that I have parked in my driveway for the past couple of days, the first time I have been able to do so without being half-way in a bush and having to drop Chris off in the street.  It is beyond nice.

Christopher’s parents and sister came into town last night for a visit to celebrate Chris’ birthday.  He’ll be 24 tomorrow.  This morning, we were stuck in Rivermont because the avenue was closed for the Virginia ten-miler.  We took advantage of it by getting up early to walk down to Magnoli Foods and munch on muffins while watching the race.  Elizabeth and I decided to run the Turkey Trot together this year–the children’s one-mile race, that is.

After talking to Chris’ aunt who is in the medical field, it sounds like Chris and I may have had swine flu about a week ago.  Ha!  Did I ever even mention that I had been sick?  Well, I was.  And I didn’t die.  So, that’s good.

Longwood crosses my mind from time to time.  I miss the campus, the big tree that turned bright orange in the fall, the bells that chimed every hour.  I miss Main Street and High Street.  The rest of Farmville and Prince Edward County, I could do without.  But lately Longwood has been on my mind for different reasons.

Quadruple homicide. Some guy flew in from California to visit his girlfriend and ended up murdering four people.  The police are having to use dental records to identify the bodies since they were so badly decomposed.  It was a professor’s house, so it seems that everyone is assuming that one of the bodies is that of the professor and the other three are her family members.  They do know, though, that one body is the professor’s husband and the other three are females.

There are a lot of dark secrets in Farmville.  I could drive around town and point to various houses, stores, and so on and tell of the stories.  One house where a man killed his wife.  The building in which doctors supposedly conducted illegal abortions in the attic.  The trainstation where the new bell fell on a girl and killed her.  In fact, there is some connection between a relative of Thomas Jefferson and a raped and murdered slave.  There are lots of stories, more than I know, and part of this is because it is such an old small town.  I’m sure every city has its secrets, but, man, how eerie must all of the students feel?  They caught him in the Richmond air port and he confessed.

The bodies were found at 505 First Ave.  I know that street–I drove down it every day for two years.  My first dorm backed up to it.  I know that house.  I feel terrible for the students.  What is wrong with some people?

I am not a football fan.  Hello, Sims 3.  I guess.

After church, Chris spent the majority of the day on campus training for his English teaching position.  I cannot express how grateful we both are that it all worked out.  It has been mentioned numerous times that usually these positions are reserved for those with doctorates, and a big part of why he was able to get the job was because his thesis chair continually emphasized that he’d be working toward his doctorate.  And, well, he is, which is another unbelievably amazing change this year.  Ahh, I know I have gone over this already, but it really amazes me how wonderfully life has unfolded.  Beyond grateful.

As Chris learned about all of his new, exciting duties, I cleaned up the house some, did some school work, and talked to my mom for about an hour.  They are coming to visit next weekend with plans to do some house work and hopefully some play time as well.  My mom, Chris, and I want to go apple picking.  We always have projects to do around the house, especially with that monster hedge needing to be cut, but we should do fun things too.  I’ll see what convincing I can do.

September 11th.  Again.  I never know how to feel all the way on these days–sometimes sad, sometimes angry, sometimes fearful.  It is difficult to separate the reality of tragedy from the manipulation that followed.  I’ll never forget where I was and how confused too–block one, Spanish two, 10th grade.  And then I came home from school to find our furniture missing and my parents missing as well.  They were just moving the office from our living room upstairs to the room over the garage.  Ah.

I think that we may take to the Parkway to hike the Apple Orchard tomorrow.  Maybe.  I hear the hike is rather rough and long, but the loop boasts amazing waterfalls.

Today we went on a quest to find an autumn wreath for our door.  First, we tried Farm Basket, but they didn’t really have too much.  And that place is quite expensive.  Instead, we ended up getting one from Target.  I thought of making my own, but, really, it would have cost about the same and I’m not that into wreathing.  Or whatever.

My cousin Zach has been in town visiting, so we had dinner with him, my aunt, and his sister.  It was great to see him–he has been in Charleston since the summer because he joined the Navy.  He is taking all sorts of science and math classes, like a crash course in high school physics completed in a week.  It sounds like utter torture to me because I am far from being math or science-minded.  That is what he is good at, though, and he got into the nuclear engineering program like his dad. He has a lot of potential, just wasn’t into the whole college thing, so I think the Navy will be really great for him.  I have seen far too many college freshmen dragging their feet through school just to drop out and waste a lot of money because their hearts weren’t in it.  In such a case, it seems a lot smarter to figure out a better fit.

On another note, I’ve been seeing and hearing people use the word “deconstruct” improperly in the media and in print.  It is not synonymous with “analyze,” guys.  Come on.

I have a major crazy headache.  :/  I’m thinking of cuddling up and watching Stardust Memories.  I adore the ending.

Sometimes I do feel like I’m on the wrong train.

Today I have…

gone to church
had lunch with Charity, Andrew, Stephanie, Bernard, and Amber at Olive Garden
felt the need to go for a walk after Olive Garden–alfredo is too good
finished up school work for the week
spent a good portion of my time watching Planet Earth.

I still really hate the current Prius commercial.  All those human bodies and human arms freak me out–especially with that terrifying sun!  It reminds me of the end of House on Haunted Hill or whatever it was called.  You know, with the souls of all the victims stuck in a blob.  That movie really disturbed me.

OK, how about a walk to burn off some of those breadsticks?

The first week of intensives is overrr!  Now just four more class meetings.  I honestly miss English classes a bit, but being in an actual classroom has been really great.  We have some excellent professors here and I really feel like I could benefit from their knowledge and experience.

In undergrad and grad school, we quite often had that one middle-aged adult returning to school.  I always felt bad for them since they seemed out of place among all of us in our early to mid twenties.  Now, though, I am the young one in the class (probably the youngest) among all of the middle-aged adult students.  It is difficult explaining my situation to most of the students.  “I’m taking doctorate classes in education and also getting licensure.  Yes, yes, I have an MA in English.  Yes, I know I look young enough to be your daughter, but I am twenty-three.”  It has been fun and I feel thankful to be completing my education now instead of having to go back later.

I’ve been rather busy with school work, yet managed to have dinner at Stephanie’s the other night as planned.  We played video games, watched a movie, and talked about her wedding plans.  They are thinking about setting their date for May and might look into an outdoor wedding.  Of course, everyone knows that I am the big warner with outdoor weddings.  Allllways have a back-up plan.  Darn that tropical storm Barry.  We got lucky, though, because I actually had considered changing the cermony site to where we had our reception–and where the ceremony ended up taking place–and I wasn’t disappointed at all.  Perhaps extra stressed and uncertain at first, but I don’t think I would have changed much.

Rather soon we are going to take engagement photos of Stephanie and Bernard.  Can’t wait to give them some quality shots.  They’re so perfect for one another.

At some point tonight, I’ll be off on a run down Rivermont and then I’ll make an awesome salad for dinner.  While we were moving and renovating the house, my diet was rather awful and we were not able to exercise at all.  House work in the morning, work during the day, house work at night, and school work through the late night.  I’ve been making a big effort to better my nutrition these past few weeks and I think it has gone well.

I want to pull up the bushes out front and replace them with blue berries this fall.

The blogs died for a little while yesterday, but they are back.  I’m not sure what happened or what changed to fix them even.  This seems to happen about once a year or so.  I did have 65 spam comments waiting to be deleted yesterday, so I wonder if that had something to do with it.  Ah.

On the way home from work yesterday, we decided to go by Blue Marlin to pick up some salmon.  The past few times that we have thought to get fish from Kroger, we just ended up walking away from the counter because it looked so bad and when we would buy it anyway, something didn’t taste right.  I had heard that Blue Marlin, which is a market and a sit-down deli, has very fresh, great seafood that is also reasonably priced and it is on the way home, just about a mile from our house.  It. was. amazing.  The salmon looked completely different, it was bigger than the pieces at Kroger, and it tasted clean and fresh.  To take advantage of the great weather, we grilled the salmon out back and had a dinner picnic in the shade while Chris told me of all the wonders of fish oil.  Fall is coming indeed.

Afterward, we did the dishes and split a pumpkin spiced latte.  We sat outside in the gazebo with our hoodies and talked of plans for Christmas.  I had spent every Christmas trying to get Chris excited about the holidays without making any progress at all.  We didn’t even have a tree last year because we were gone so much.  This year, though, he is just as stoked as me to decorate.

Then we went to the grocery store…  I did my school work… Exercised for 45 minutes…  Passed out on the couch.

I have a ton of school work this week and then an intensive this weekend.  Not looking forward to it.  Agh.