Disappointing Evening

I was going to have Jack for the evening. We were going to go to the air show in Montgomery in the morning. Jack likes airplanes. But Tim called earlier in the day and told me that Jack and Jenn are both sick. I am disappointed again. A lot of the time that I am supposed to spend with Jack doesn't work out. Someday I will talk more about it, but right now just isn't an appropriate time. I bought a new camera because I was going to be doing something fun with him, and because in a few weeks I will be taking Clifton and Toni to the ball game, and because Lizzie will be graduating and I want to have better pictures than I can get with my cell phone. But for now I'm sitting here and feeling lonely and empty. I was looking forward to reading Jack a "dory" and giving him some juice and cheerios before bedtime. Oh well, maybe sometime in the summer they will let me have him long enough for a trip to the zoo, maybe.

My Three Grandsons

Over the past 48 hours I have gotten to see all three of my grandsons. It is a rare occasion that I get to see all three of them within the same month. Unfortunately the reason I got to see them had to do with medical situations that my family has. Fortunately, everyone will recover and will be fine.

Another one down

Long ago in a distant blog probably on another site I wrote a post after a micro-manager supervisor from the depths of hell decided that she wanted to stay home with her children. I titled that post "One down, One to go". It's probably been 4 long years, and I have long since stopped working with the one to go, but today it was announced that the one to go is finally going. No more fears that one day I'm going to walk in the door and find out that One to go is suddenly my sup again...What a great day this is! The thing is that One to go is the person that I blame for the over the top stress that resulted in my breast cancer. If I was told that I'd be reporting to her again, I'd have to leave my stable job with great benefits, and I don't want to do that. Honestly, I wish her the best. I hope she is leaving to start a great job where she will find all the hyper type a perfectionisim who will match her management style. I'm just so glad that it won't be where it can ever effect me again.

Scholarship

Just when Lizzie was beginning to lose hope of getting a scholarship, South Carolina offered her a $10,000 a year academic scholarship. She is very excited. She has been committed to going there since she saw the campus last summer. Now it is looking like it is within her reach. GO GAMECOCKS! I guess I'm going to have to buy her that tee shirt.

Finding my past

Saturday morning was a hard one. I walked into the ROTC trailer to help get ready for the last drill meet ever. I knew it was going to be an emotional day form me; a lot of lasts. I walked around and noticed the trophy that was the first one earned by the unit. My son was on that drill team 15 years ago. I saw the model plane my other son had built a few years later. After we got to East Paulding High School, I left to find some breakfast. I followed my Megellian to find the nearest restaurant, and imagine my surprise when across the street from it I found a piece of my past. When I was a child the store in the picture was surrounded by woods and was on a small two lane road, not a busy intersection. It was built with hand made bricks in the mid 1800's and had weathered the Civil War battles that raged in that area. It was purchased in 1922 by my grandmother's cousin, Levi Sanford. He hired his sister, Effie and her husband, Newt Cheeks to run the store. As a child, we would stop on our way home from visiting my grandmother in Alabama to visit Aunt Effie and take her gifts and greetings from my grandmother. I never saw their house, we always stopped at the store. In my head I can still hear their son, Buddy saying "Y'all kids go over to the cooler over yonder and get yourselves a co'cola." There was a trick nickle screwed into the floor in front of the register and when we'd try to buy candy with the nickles and dimes our grandparents had given us, he'd tell us that we didn't have enough money but there is nickle on the floor we could use. Then he'd laugh loudly at our efforts to pick the nickle up. On this day when my soul was already being flooded with memories, all of these memories too. Later, after a very strange drill meet, we returned to the trailer to put the equipment away. I realized that this was the last time I would enter the trailer. It was pretty emotional for me. It was emotional for the seniors who were realizing that they wouldn't compete here again. The store is actually much smaller than I'd remembered, and I wondered if I return to the ROTC trailer in 20 or 30 years if it will seem much smaller too. This is just the very beginning of the lasts for me, but like the Lost Mountain Store the program will go on without me.

FW: Drill Meet Performance Times on Saturday

Why I'm not sleeping in on Saturday.

-----Original Message-----
From: AFJROTC: Chief Futral
Sent: Thursday, March 04, 2010 12:38 PM
Subject: Drill Meet Performance Times on Saturday

Tentative Schedule:
Armed Regulation: 10:06
Armed Inspection: 9:40
Armed Ezxhibition: 2:40
Armed Color Guard: 12:20
Unarmed Regulation: 9:12
Unarmed Inspection: 8:10
Unarmed Color Guard: 8:40
Unarmed Exhibition: 1:36

The times are tentative but should be close.

Ladies hair braiding at 5:15 AM at the trailer Saturday. We will need some mothers to help with the braiding. We have to be ready for inspection when we get there as the team goes on for inspection second.

Male cadets should arrive at 6:00.

We need to leave the school about 6:30 for East Paulding HS. The cadets will be given a meal ticket for lunch.

Thank you in advance for your support of the drill team, AFJROTC, and me.

The Chief
--
SHS AFJROTC
The Chief