A fond farewell to corn...

Every great adventure has a beginning and an end. Our Nebraska adventure began when we were living in England. Derek came home one afternoon and announced that we had orders to Omaha, Nebraska. I responded with "Where is Omaha? You know...in relation to the rest of the planet." The second question was, "Whomever you have offended, could you apologize to them and get us out of this? Because, if we are being sent to Nebraska, clearly, you have done something terribly wrong".

Derek was a little surprised that I had been quite willing to follow him half way across the world to the Philippines, but had reservations about Nebraska.

It was just that it sounded so...Midwestern. I envisioned a flat, dry, treeless dustbowl. I was not wrong about a good portion of the state, but Omaha and Bellevue were a pleasant surprise. Who knew that Omaha is the home of Arbor Day? I discovered a lush green city rampant with trees and even with culture. There are beautiful museums, jazz festivals, shakespeare festivals, A list plays...It's a good place to be.

Since arriving here, we have put three kids through high school, seen them go to college, seen them marry and then seen them have children of their own. We own a beautiful home where I can sit in the back garden and watch deer, turkeys, possum, raccoons, butterflies, hummingbirds, other beautiful birds and yes, more than a few mosquitos.

We have made amazing lifelong friends here and built a wonderful life for ourselves. In short we have loved Nebraska and it has been a grand adventure, but now it is time to go.

We have a new adventure beginning in just a few weeks. This one is called, "The Adventures of Derek and Leni".  We have raised our kids. We adore them and we adore our grandchildren, but now we are ready to make new and exciting (hopefully not TOO exciting)  memories. There are two truly exciting components to this new adventure. The first is that, while we know we are leaving Nebraska, we have no idea where we are going! The second is that it will be just the two of us and every adventure is better with Derek beside me.

So, what does all this mean?  Well...drum roll please...

Derek has accepted a position with the State Department, Foreign Service. What this means for the near future is that in two weeks we will be leaving for Washington D.C. for orientation into State Department Life, policies and procedures. Orientation will last until the end of September at which time (yes, AFTER giving up his current position and all illusions of security), we will find out what country we will be posted to. Derek will stay on in D.C. until February for additional training and I will come back to Nebraska to get our house ready to sell and see our kids and grandkids as much as humanly possible. 

For those of you who are not familiar with the Foreign Service, we could be posted to any Embassy or Consulate in the world. Unfortunately, there is a small chance that Derek could be assigned an unaccompanied posting for a year, in which case our Nebraska friends haven't seen the last of me yet, but we are making it quite clear to them that I really am willing to go just about anywhere, so hopefully we will be going together:-)

Rest assured, we will let everyone know when we find out where we are going.

To all of you who have made our lives amazing here in Nebraska, we love you and thank you. And welcome you to come visit us where ever we end up. 

You all have made Nebraska a truly grand adventure indeed!

A Fishy Affair

I hate fish! Stupid conniving, slippery little back stabbers! I provide them with a lovely home and then they turn on me!

After six years, it appears that our pond is in need of some repairs. The water level is going down each day at an alarming rate and so we have reached out to our original landscapers to come in and do some work on it. Unfortunately, this requires the removal of the koi living in it. We had to wait as long as possible to remove the fish because it has been too cold. In case you didn't already know, you aren't supposed to disturb Koi when they are cold and in their winter stasis.

So as yesterday was finally blissfully warm, I donned the appropriate fish finding attire and ventured my way into the pond. yes, INTO the pond. I had only a smallish net, so standing on the bank was not an option. The first thing I noticed as I entered the pond was that while the ambient temperature was around 80, the water temperature most certainly was not. The chill of winter clung tenaciously to the water and bit at my thighs. It's a 2,500 gal pond so they had a lot of places to go. I was starting to feel pretty stupid for even imagining that I could possibly catch them with my little net.

In what I am now certain was a devious plan to boost my confidence, I managed to catch one fish very quickly.  I decided I might actually be able to do this after all! I should mention that undisturbed, the water is crystal clear. You can easilissue to the very bottom, however, once I got into the pond and started walking around stirring things up it got very murky, very quickly. It became more and more difficult tos see the fish, especially at the speed they were darting about at. The pond was filled with an entire winters worth of dead leaves and rotted debris that had settled innocuously to the bottom but was now swirling around my calves. I couldn't see a thing. The fish, when I could catch a glimpse, had gone into hyper-drive and were nothing but little blurs of orange. I swung wildly back and forth in an attempt to net one. In addition, I noticed that as I stirred up the water the air filled with the fetid stench of a cesspool.

I don't know at what point they decided to turn on me. I suspect they found a rocky outcropping beneath the water to hold a strategy meeting and planned the whole thing. All I know is that there were no fish visible in the clouded water and then there was a big black and orange one directly in front of me. He swam back and forth at a leisurely pace right on the surface of the water as if to say "go ahead, I'm just dying to be caught". I focused all my efforts on keeping him in sight as I slowly, so as not to disturb him too soon, moved my net towards him. I positioned myself to make the catch. I'm quite certain that what happened next was executed perfectly, according to their diabolical plan. As I went to swing the net at the black and orange demon, one of the other fish rammed straight into the back of my knee startling me so badly that I lost my balance and landed on my butt on the silty bottom of the three and a half foot deep pond. Gales of laughter filled my ears and I looked up to see Derek standing at the patio door. soaking wet and miserable I gave up and pulled myself out of the water. Now I also smelled like a cesspool. rotting leaves clung to my clothes, They had outsmarted me. For now that is. Today I'm planning on going to the store to pick up a fishing pole and some bait. Then we'll see who outsmarts who.

A rant about toilets and other things...

I am confused by the twenty-first century. I never know what to do or how to act because half the stuff out there is twentieth century stuff and the other half is twenty-first century stuff. For instance, I can't count how often I have stood with my hands under the faucet in a public restroom waiting for the water to magically spring forth (twenty-first century style), only to realize that it was a twentieth century faucet and that I must first turn a knob or pull up a handle. "How quaint", I mutter to myself self-consciously as I glance furtively around the room to make sure that no one has witnessed my faux pas.

How about doors? What's the longest you have stood in front of a door before you finally realized that you were going to have to push it open with your own hands? Manually! How barbarically twentieth century!! Has it occurred to anyone yet that we might not have such an obesity problem if we had to push on a door once in a while? Well...that and got rid of Little Debbie's. You might be interested to know that back in the 60's when Star Trek first came into being, those automated doors that the crew always went through didn't exist. They were automated by two guys standing behind sliding doors who would hopefully hear their cue to pull open the doors before Kirk and Spock barreled headlong into them and gave themselves a concussion. William Shatner once admitted to hating those doors because he always had to stride confidently towards them and just hope that someone would pull them open in time.

I submit that the more automated devices we invent to do everything for us, the quicker we will turn into those 'grays' of science fiction fame; the ones with the huge heads and huge eyes and ridiculously long computer compatible fingers, but skinny little withered bodies incapable of pushing open a door or manually flushing a toilet! I say that now is the time to rage against the storm! Rebel now before it is too late!

I would like to suggest that every time we walk through a door that opens for us automatically, we should drop and do twenty push-ups to compensate for the lack of physical exertion foisted upon us by technology.

I would also like to address the rather delicate matter of automatic flushing toilets. Firstly, when I am completely finished, I would be happy to flush the toilet manually. I really do not need it randomly flushing itself six or seven times before I am done. If I want a bidet, I will buy one. Secondly, isn't there some twenty-first century technician who could reset those automatic flushing toilets so that the water doesn't erupt from the bowl like Old Faithful while you are still sitting there? I am not three. I can decide when the toilet is in need of flushing. If you ARE three, then ask your mommy.

I could rant on. Automatic paper towel dispensers...those air hand driers that range from an anemic puff of breeze that takes ten minutes to dry your hands to the ones that rate a 5 on the Fujita scale for tornados. I'm sorry, but I want a paper towel. I know that I should probably be more appreciative of modern technology and all those modern wonders that do everything for us, but really...I'm okay with a little manual labor. A little...manual labor. Now if they want to invent something that will do my dishes and scrub my kitchen for me, then we'll talk.