Joshua’s Birthday, Mama’s mood, taxes due, work, the garden

Today is Joshua’s birthday. He will be 32 years old. That hardly seems possible but Mama and I will be married 33 years this year and that seems to have happened far too quickly so I suppose it must be so. I don’t know if anything is planned for a celebration of the date among his friends in Victoria, TX but I certainly hope there will be.

Monday night passed by rather uneventfully. Mama was in a somewhat moody state when I got home although she could not tell me why and was anxious to not allow it to spill over on me. So I quoted a line from The Incredibles, “I know you are still mad at me but I’m just happy you’re alive.” (Something like that). It took most of the time we were at FBI to get her spirits to lift but she finally came around and by the time we got back home she was pretty much back to her usual self.

We have our first test for the courses we are taking next Monday night and both Mama and Victoria are in a frightful panic about it. It will be multiple choice and we have been provided a detailed study guide for the test so I cannot be too worried over it. Mama, Victoria and I are spending evenings filling in the answers on the stud guide in order to be prepared – but both of them are still a little overwhelmed at the very thought of taking a test.

I left the envelope with our payment for taxes with Mama so she could take it to the post office this morning. I was a little hesitant to do so because she is also mailing out a group of letters and bills to Grandma and Grandpa. We both talked about the horrible mess it would be if that check ends up in the package routed to West Virginia. I will be relieved when Mama tells me it is registered to be delivered to the IRS. Though I am not anxious for the money to be extracted from our checking account, the consequences of it not being done are most unpleasant.

At work things are starting to return to normal – or rather a new normal. All of us are adjusting to the recent loss of personnel. Many are getting oriented in new assignments but the vast majority of us are rearranging our schedules to accommodate additional responsibilities that had to go somewhere when the person recently responsible for those tasks was let go. It is a longstanding truth that we only find out what a person does when they are no longer there to do it.

The combination of warm rainy days and pleasant nights has given life to our garden and orchard. It looks like every seed we have put in the ground has germinated. There are newly sprouted seedlings everywhere; green beans, peas, corn, sunflowers, okra, onions, summer squash, zucchini, cucumbers, strawberries, etc.

This could end up being a good bit of work.