Even her brother, who hasn't risen before 10 am in weeks, got up to give her a farewell hug at 7:30 am this morning. (You can see me in the mirror in the bathroom, if you look closely.)
So, she piled into her boyfriend Chris' Passat, with only 44 lbs of checked luggage and a backpack for her carry-on. I stood on the porch and waved as they pulled away, and came back inside. Pat had his archery equipment in hand, kissed me goodbye, and headed out to the range to meet a new member who wanted a tour.
I couldn't settle down to my normal morning routine of knitting, drinking coffee, and watching TV shows on my DVR. I had a restless feeling, so I used my energy to record some lectures for my Introductory Psychology online class (you can check them out on YouTube -- my channel is creatively named jillseiver).
After finishing the chapter, I decided it was time to go harass Aspen, who had returned to bed after Sierra's departure. His dog, Dash, was sleeping on the foot of the bed, so I decided to tease Aspen by trying to get Dash to jump on him. "Get your Daddy!" I exclaimed, while tapping Aspen's hip. Dash gave out a low growl. "That's weird," we both agreed. So I tried again, tapping Aspen's hip and saying "Get Daddy!" Dash growled louder. Was he playing, or was he really trying to protect Aspen? One more tap provided the answer, as Dash yelped, jumped to his feet, and clamped my forearm in his mouth. Aspen growled, "NO!" and pinned Dash to the bed (I'm pleased that my retired wrestler can still win in the 65 lb Border Collie category). Dash was confused, and submitted immediately. Then Aspen banished him, and Dash fled to hide under Big Pop's desk. Aspen is determined to eliminate that biting behavior, and immediately took Dash out for a vigorous bout of Frisbee, followed by some training.
After a yoga session, I sat with Aspen to get him to sign up for his fall classes. He's been dragging his feet all summer, and now we have only 4 weeks until the quarter begins. He has two classes in his major that he has to take as prerequisites for all of the other classes he must take (he's majoring in software development). Of course they're both full with waiting lists. He's pretty lucky though, because one class has only one student on the wait list, and the other only has 4. It's possible that people could get dropped for non-payment and he could get rotated in. But this close to the start of the quarter, it's not a sure-thing. He is learning that he should listen to my advice regarding school! :-)
He finally got a call-back from Home Depot about the job application that he submitted last May. But again, he foot-dragged about calling back until he finally called 15 minutes after the call center closed. So now he has to wait until Monday.
Did I mention that he's 18? It's so fun to fulfill the stereotype. LOL
My student from Eastern WA University with whom I am conducting a study came over to analyze the data that has come in so far. It may sound weird to have a student over to my house, but this whole thing is sort of weird, because her kids attended the same home-school group that my kids did. Her oldest son and Sierra were pretty tight a few years ago (friends, flirty), and Sierra was the lead in the Shakespeare plays that my now-student directed. It's all very inbred! Small town! Anyway, unfortunately we did not have adequate respondents in two out of the three categories of participant that we need, so we're back to recruiting. At least she was here to help me be brave while Sierra is flying around.
After my student left, Aspen went out to start the briquettes for grilling the steak. I came down from my evening shower and asked what was burning. Pat said I was smelling residual smoke from starting the briquettes, but I thought it smelled like current smoke. Finally, after dinner, Pat smelled the smoke and noticed that no smoke was coming out of the BBQ. That's odd. So he looked out and saw a lot of smoke under our back porch roof. That's odd. He went outside to investigate, and saw smoke coming out of the storage closet where we keep our Girl Scout style fire-starters (egg crates filled with dryer lint and candle wax). The door was slightly ajar, and as he walked toward it, he saw the flashover as the smoldering fire burst into real flames. Three 18-egg egg crates were fully engulfed inside of our storage closet! He grabbed the crates and rushed toward the backyard, inadvertently fanning the flames, so he threw the crates onto the stone patio as soon as he could. Here are the remnants:
As we all recovered and caught our breaths, Pat said, "Sierra's right -- we couldn't even make it one day without her!" She's known it since she was little -- we're incompetent and need her to live.
We miss you, Sierra! :-)
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