Snapshots from D-Day

There must come a moment when all past plans come to an end, and the end that was once in sight has settled, surrounds you, and you now have landed directly inside it. With our raccoon live trap now poised to catch the wily critter from under our back courtyard deck, a cast iron bathtub set and glued in place inside a fully gutted bathroom, kids in school, it's time to take an easy seat on Jan's new recumbent bicycle and watch the sunset at Tenney Park as

Jan's new Catrike three-wheel recumbent bike, poised for the flat trails of Madison,
and grocery basket firmly secured over the back wheel

Carly and Julia push their bikes (pic above) out onto the man made peninsula jutting into Lake Mendota.  That was the day's end; what came before was the intricate process of moving Abby into her dorm room at Tripp Hall, overlooking a further western shore of Lake Mendota.  Three floors up, and air conditionless, we found that the rigor of moving a new person into the rooms was sweaty work.

3rd floor Tripp Hall, overlooking the cafe courtyard

Multiple trips to Target later, for small corner chairs, sheets and even shampoo later, Abby finally had a five hour meeting to go to on campus for a leadership club which gave mom four more hours of dorm room dawdling.  The new college student was very thankful for all the help and we now have an eldest child living on her own... a few miles away from home anyway. Luckily, in Madison, you are never far from the offered relief of a watering hole, so we selected Pasqual's, the nearest one to Hilldale Target Store,

the very mecca of back to school to school in the city.

Carly starts full days of school at Edgewood and fifth grade volleyball begins today.  Julia is a quarter way through tennis season and guitar and debate club.  Abby is a "Class Act" participant and approximately twenty feet from the great city jogging trail, waiting to get her chance to volunteer at the Lake Mendota Sailing Club.  The moment could come when Abby sails past the Tenney Park peninsula as her sisters wave from bikes watching the sunset, dad behind taking in the pic.

A Year On Monona

In a year of transition there is always room for anything from racoons to Harry Potter rituals.  The school scene has changed since Northwestern, and now we have swapped the shores of Lake Michigan for the smaller shores of  Lake Wingra on the westside of Madison at Edgewood HS.  School starts early here, the schedule is on a day by day cycle, and a dress code doesn't allow for offhand remarks on shirts, but the setting is something right out of Hogwarts and the education as good as it gets.

For an induction ceremony for freshman and new transfer students, the faculty dress up in their grad regalia and offer up speeches of wisdom so to help convey the core values of a Dominican school. Truth, Compassion, Justice, Community and Partnership are to be put to true use over the course of the term here and each student must log somewhere nearing a hundred hours of service work in the community or at school to graduate.  The induction ceremony finished with students lining up through the halls cheered by faculty and then being received by parents at the front of the building.  Fortunately, there were no shifting school walls or eyes peeking out of paintings.  The next day, the first full day of classes, oddly there was an away tennis match scheduled in Neenah – Julia played three doubles matches, won all three, and won their division for the tournament. The next day... full of classes, new syllabi and hopefully accurate locker combinations.

Back at home, after two weeks of a cast iron bathtub becoming a furniture fixture in our living room, it was hauled upstairs and ready to be built into the room that has been carved out for us for a couple of months now.

Once fully re-done, the bathroom that sits right around the corner from our master bedroom, will allow us not to have to squeak past Carly's room in the night stealing a turn in her bathroom.  The pace of finishing this bathroom is taking cues from all the slapstick move-in and remodel books every written, with sometimes non-communicating contractors that make progress in such random fits that you really wonder if there is the "other house" that is being worked on.

Finally what would life be like in the inner city, across from a river and stretch of woods, without a racoon who has decided that our stone courtyard flooring provides a great roof for a den.  It has been spotted by the neighbor and our carpenters and the reports are coming back that this is a big one, and one who, for whatever reason, enjoys a bite of courtyard wiring here and there and has decided that those leading to our fireplace must be especially enjoyable.  So we are seeking ways to live trap the critter and let him loose in some other unsuspecting neighborhood far away from this one.