The plan (to bring home the kid)

Life has suddenly excelled. It always happens this time of the year. You think I would know by now, be ready for it, but I always seem to be mildly surprised when it is suddenly here knocking me in the face and whipping my head around. I tell people there are three periods in a year for us; the beginning of school from August to December which starts out hurried, frantic, and finally peters out to a steady calm until the holidays approach. The second half is the middle from January to May which starts out steady and boring and finishes hurried and frantic. The latter part of the year is summer. Summer is great and fast and over before we can blink (especially this summer which was cut by two weeks by our local government officials) and then it's time for the beginning again.

May arrives with warmer weather and projects, that were assigned months ago, due NOW. This year we had an addition to our routine; college ends and the kids return home. In my defense I tried to plan earlier in the middle half of our year. "It is coming," I told everyone. "Let's batten down, prepare, stock up, make plans." But everyone rolled their eyes, Madison griped about finals, Darcy had a play, Tom was on call, and so I was left alone to deal with what I knew was coming. So I picked the end of college as my focus because this was new, something I had never done before, and therefore something I thought needed extra planning.

I started out reminding my husband of the exact day that Madison was finished. I said it anytime someone asked about Madison. "She's great. She's finished on May 7th."  I said it anytime someone asked what day it was. "It's March 15th. Only one and a half months before Madison is finished on May 7th." Then I would expound on it reminding my husband that we had to bring back all of the stuff we had hauled up there, not to mention bring back the daughter.

Tom: "Why are you talking about that in March? That's months away."

My husband is not a planner. He is a winger. He will disagree with that statement somewhat, but trust me, planning ahead is not his forte. He tells me I worry too much (true). He says I need to relax (true). He tells me these things are not big deals (false). Of course it is a big deal. It was a big deal when we loaded up the van and crammed our four bodies in between the belongings drive the ten hours to North Carolina. How could bringing back all of that stuff, not to mention the daughter, not be a big deal? While the other daughter was still here in high school? B I G D E A L. But not much is a big deal to my husband, and everything eventually works out in the end, and "why are you making this such a big deal?"

My friend SueG heard me rant and rave about this predicament, and told me that her niece, who flew even farther from Florida to Boston, stored her stuff with a company at school. I passed that information on to Madison during one of our Facetime chats and she actually looked it up. Lo and behold there was a company that came in and picked up your stuff, stored it for the summer, and had it waiting in your dorm room on the day you returned for the next school year. Husband loved the idea, we signed up for five storage boxes, and Madison's roommate took the bigger items to use at summer school. One crisis marked off my list.

Now on to the plan to get said daughter back home with the large amount of stuff that she "desperately needed for the summer" which included books, clothes, shoes, and books. Up piped SueG who volunteered to road trip it up with me to gather daughter and belongings. We planned it out. I told husband who flipped out.

Tom: "You can't ask her to do that."

We spent two hours going round and round about how to get Madison home. We ended with him going with me, but because he was on call that week he would have to find someone to switch weeks. Six days of me nagging asking him if he had done this resulted in his not being able to go and instead plane tickets were purchased. I am now to fly to North Carolina with two suitcases inside of two other suitcases on Southwest who allows two free suitcases per passenger. I will help Maddy pack up her storage boxes, help her pack up her suitcases, and we will both fly back home.

I suppose I shouldn't complain...we have a plan.