Crisp fall days

Life is finally settling down a little bit. For the first time in months I noticed the beautiful scenery around me on my drive to work. The farm fields were shining like gold in the morning sunlight. The remaining leaves on the black gum trees were a brilliant shade of red. The bald cypress had started turning brown. Driving down the gravel roads at work reminded me of how much I enjoy fall. I love to lay out in the woods on a autumn day and watch the leaves twirling around me as they fall. The days are still pretty warm in Virginia, but the nights are crisp and feel clean. Fall days and early June when the fireflies are out are the most magical times of the year.

I'm glad that Ghost Train is over. Although I have to finish next year's program budget, we are heading into the slow season and I can finally take some time to myself. I'm thinking of heading up to the mountains to do some bike riding... a little camping too. So much has been going on in my life, I need time to myself to reflect on the past few months and contemplate the changes in the next coming months. Then I need to come home and clean up the mess that the past 6 weeks of neglecting house chores has left. Ugh! Did I mention I'm glad that all of Ghost Train is over? I made some great friends during Ghost Train though. All of the volunteers were great, but in particular, I've 'adopted' 3 of the single marines from Northwest River Annex. I let them stay at the house on the weekends so that they could be away from the barracks and relax for a bit. They were wonderful! I woke up to a marginally cleaner house, they cooked, they played with the kids... I didn't want to see them leave, but they are graduating this week and moving on to their permanent duty stations. That's the way of military life. I'm always meeting wonderful people. They come and go from my life all the time. Some I catch up with again years later, others are just fond memories of past times.

I took Dustin to the doctor today after work. He's been coughing for a few days and started running a fever and was just laying around, not acting like himself. Turns out he has pneumonia. He didn't like having his chest x-ray taken. He sat there sobbing the whole time. After each one he's say "I done, I done!" He sounds horrible right now, I'll probably be sleeping on the floor near his bedroom to be close enough to listen to his breathing. A mother's job... there is ALWAYS something more to do. I probably won't be going to work tomorrow either since Dustin can't go to daycare until his fever is gone. That will go over well since we were supposed to have a staff meeting tomorrow, that and I'm scheduled to go on leave Thursday for 12 days. Looks like I'm adding an extra 2 days to that leave.

Well, I've babbled on about 3 completely different topics. I think I'll leave my post at that for now. Take care everyone, and to Scott: What attitude did you choose today? I miss ya... I miss Greg too.