Tragedy Hits Home

I know I've made an attempt to convey some level of anonymity here.  I've refrained from naming the specific town in Vermont that we're now calling "home."  (Facebook friends & local friends of course know exactly where I live, but this is a public blog & I have readers that I've never met).  What I'm about to share will more than likely give that away completely, but I've decided that that little piece of pseudo-security was worth sacrificing in light of what I'm about to share. 

Let me start by saying this.  Vermont is ranked one of the safest states in the country.  This is a place where you can leave your car running in the Dunkin Donuts parking lot while you run in for your morning coffee.  A place where we were actually laughed at by our landlord when we asked for the house key (said he hasn't locked his door for 30 years!).  I looked up the latest statistics & Vermont's murder rate per 100,000 people is one.  One.  Missouri's is 7.  (Not to mention all of the other criteria they calculate.  And keep in mind that there are 600,000 people in our whole state whereas Missouri has millions).  And I looked back as far as 2001 and there hasn't been a murder in this city specifically in the last 11 years at least.
Mathew & I were raised in one of the most dangerous cities in the world.  (Currently ranked #3 in the world.  Go STL! lol).  We certainly weren't in the heart of the violence by any means, but heard enough of the tragic things that went on from day to day on the news & in the papers that we essentially became numb to it.  It was life.  But now we're far far away from all of that.  In a place where it's so easy to get lulled into that sense of security.  Where it's easy to forget that bad people can truly be anywhere.

Last Sunday, a woman was reported missing.  A woman about my age, a mom, a science teacher at the Academy.  Her car was found on the side of the road in a neighboring town still running with her two year old son, unharmed, still in the back seat.
Monday she was found dead.
Wednesday, a husband & wife were arrested & confessed to the entire nauseating & senseless crime.  All of the horrific details were given to the public and, while I won't spell them out for you here, I will tell you that it was unbelievably awful and seemingly completely without motive.  His words were that he wanted to "get a girl."  No more, no less.  He only knew her because he plowed her driveway a couple years ago & called her because he knew she would be good-natured enough to come to his "aid" when he said he needed help with a broken down car.

I never had the priviledge of knowing this woman.  But from what I hear she was a great person & an inspiring teacher, and that she absolutely adored her son.  It's absolutely horrible that something like this would happen to her, or anyone at all.

So why am I telling you about all of this?  Well, in a weird way it has made me so much more proud of where I live.  Yeah, I know I just told you that a really really bad guy just did the most horrible thing a person could do not far from my home.  But what I haven't told you yet is how my town reacted.

Since Monday, our town has been eerily quiet & somber.  There are 8,000 people in this town.  I'm certain that she didn't know *everyone.*  Yet everyone was saddened.  It seemed as if everyone lost a member of their own family.  Come Tuesday, there were luminieres lining the whole street leading to the academy where she worked, each personally handmade by her students, and great big "We love you Ms. Jenkins!" signs hanging from the building.   By Wednesday there were donation collections & fundraisers popping up in every business & at every register at the grocery store asking for donations to support her son who was left behind.  All week there have been moments of silence for her on the radio & dedications in her honor.  And today.  Today was the most impressive of all.  There was a memorial service for her this afternoon.  And today, the entire town has been draped in pink.

Every tree is lined with pink ribbon, many front porches are decorated in pink.  Even the cars at the three car dealerships in town are covered in pink balloons.  And nearly every. single. person. in this town is wearing pink.  Even my boys went to school today wearing pink bandannas around their heads in support.  Absolutely no one has turned a blind eye to this.  NO one is going about their daily business as if nothing has happened.  NO one is allowing this abhorrent couple to gain anything by what they've done.

So yes, in light of this recent event, I am even more proud of the place we've chosen to raise our family.  We of all people know that you can't run & hide from bad people.  There are going to be people no matter where you are that make bad choices.  But I am so proud to know that I not only live in a beautiful place, I live in a truly beautiful community.  And that is what makes me proud to call this place "home."

American Pickers

Ever watched that show?  Fascinating.  How two people know so much stuff about random crap is beyond me.  And the people that hoard said random crap are equally entertaining!  Mathew watches it from time to time & sometimes I watch it too.  (And frankly, sometimes just watching the show about them digging through piles & piles of junk stresses me out too much, so sometimes I don't!  I know, I'm whacko).

Anyhoo, When we acquired this crazy house, we also acquired all of the JUNK that this elderly couple stored there over the last 30 some odd years.  Most of it truly was crap.  But some of it looked pretty cool!  Most of it not necessarily to our taste, but stuff that looked like it might have value to the right collector.  So, what did we do?  We sent an email to the American Pickers show!

No, we did not get selected to be on the show.  Don't get too excited. ;)

But, we found a guy to haul away all the scrap metal & we found an antique dealer or two to take some of the old furniture, and we unloaded truckfulls of trash to the dump & went on our merry way of tearing down the walls.  Most of the junk is long gone, but there still are a few things left hanging around that we haven't found homes for.

Old photo from what the house looked like when we bought it.  Awesome, huh?

Soooo, Mathew is at the house yesterday, working on the porch and a few other things, and this random dude just shows up.  (He almost took the day off.  Glad he didn't!)  Says he's a "picker" and saw us working on this house, and he wondered if he could take a look around.  Ok, cool.  Whatever.  Well this guy found quite a few things that he was excited to have!  Several of which we didn't think had value at all & we were just going to get rid of!  After it was all said & done, we made about 500 bucks from the random junk that was left lying around!  Plus that was a few less things we had to worry about hauling away.  Sweet! :)  How cool is that!

Now, all of the windows are in in the whole house and it already looks SO much better.  With all of this beautiful weather we've been having, we're having this weird "construction ADD" I like to call it.  ("Ooh, we could start this project next!  Oh wait, if we do this then it will help the outside look better.  Oh, but we really need to start on this part...")  Aah!  It's hard to decide where our priorities are at this point.  We're just so excited to be getting stuff DONE!  Fireplace footings are poured & the floor is cut out, but we had a freeze after that was started & the basement still isn't thawed out, so that's on hold.  Matt tore out half the front porch, but found that the brick under the window needs to be re-mortared before we can rebuild to porch, so that's stalled.  The weather's nice enough to finish the back roof, so that's being torn out as of today.  And Mathew is attending an electrician's class tonight to make sure he knows what he's doing to wire the electricity.  A little bit of a lot of things are being started.  I'll be excited to see what gets finished next! :)

On the homefront though, Mark has some exciting news.  He got his braces taken off!  Woohoo!  Such an exciting moment for a kid. 

He'll have to get them put back on in another year or two, but for now he's enjoying the freedom.  Gavin, on the same day, had to have two teeth pulled to move along his orthodontic journey. :(  Poor dude.  But he did a great job and the tooth fairy was quite kind, so he's okay with it. ;)  And Natalie?  Well she's just busy being her cute little self.
I'll update again soon! :)

Progress!

Such a catch 22. I'm sad to see winter go because here it is just so beautiful. Plus, we've been so busy with the house stuff & work & everything else that I feel like we didn't get to enjoy it as much as I would have liked to. (Next year, mountain fun every weekend, I'm tellin ya!) Now I'm not being totally naive, I'm sure we'll probably get slammed with another snow storm soon before it's all totally said & done, but for the last several days it has been niiiiicceee... and we've taken full advantage. I'm so happy to have warm weather! (Not you midwest people's version of warm lol! But we're ecstatic with our 50 degrees! ;)) We can actually go to the house & put in several hours worth of work & not have crying, shivering, miserable kids hanging on our legs. "Can we gooooo noooooowwww??" Oy.

Of course, with just my luck, as soon as we have this gorgeous weather I have to work nights the last couple of days & miss it. Bummer. But Mathew had a pretty funny story from today. (Well, funny for me because I wasn't there to deal with it! lol) So anyway, today he took Natalie & Copper to the house to do some work to let me have quiet in the house & get some sleep. Usually we'll tie him outside to play (no fence yet to just let him roam) but Mathew planned to put in a few windows, so he let the dog play inside & keep Natalie company instead. (He's needy & gets lonely all by himself.) So Matt's in the living room doing his thing with the windows & the thought does not occur to him that he has just created this great big gaping hole in the wall by taking the old one out. Copper thought "FREEDOM!" and seriously leapt out of the window and took off! (He he he!! I can laugh because I didn't have to chase him down the busy street!) Well, Mathew's not exactly Copper's number one fan. He tolerates him because the rest of us love him so much. But this seriously pissed him off lol. He chased him for a little while, about a couple of blocks up to the grocery store, when he said "screw it. I'm not chasing you anymore. Bye bye." So he turns around & starts to walk back to the house. Copper thinks, "well that's no fun" and just followed him home. End of story. Ha ha! That dog is lucky he's cute let me tell ya. ;)

So anyway, now we have all of the windows in the living room installed! WooHoo! I'm seriously so excited to finally see something be *improved* on the house now instead of just torn apart! I drove by to see it on my way out to work & was just beaming. Yay! No more boarded up window in the front! :) Matt says he was drawing a lot of attention too as he was putting them in. Everyone's out walking on this gorgeous day and he said at least 4 people stopped to talk to him. So here's what it looks like:

Yeah yeah. It's still ugly, but those windows make such a huge improvement!! He's hoping to finish the windows in at least the front of the house tomorrow. Yay! Hopefully I will be able to stay awake & help him out. We'll see how that goes... ;)

Spring Break! Wait, what??

Something in my boys' schedule snuck up on me yesterday that I completely forgot was coming so soon. Spring break!! Wait a second... it's February! (insert puzzled look here. I'm sure you've got one too!) It was explained to me at the start of school and I had completely forgotten that it was already upon us. You see, most schools in the midwest where we're from will have a traditional Spring Break in that it's, well, in the spring! There's nice weather, green grass to run in, maybe a staycation type fun planned by the family. That kind of thing. But here, spring isn't the exact same picture. People around here call spring "mud season." I'm sure you can imagine why. Snow actually sticks around all winter long and just piles ontop of itself. (I seriously got sad last week when we had a day of 40 degrees and it started to melt to the point I saw my first blade of brown grass for months!) Even with this warm-for-Vermont winter we're having it's been white all over. And it's funny to watch the weather on the news here and compare it to the St.Louis or Kansas City broadcasts. My whole life the weather man would act dissappointed that snow was coming, drivers would complain, parents would freak out that they needed to find childcare for another snowday off of school. But here, the weather guy says "Great news for the upper valleys, they'll be getting 3-7 inches overnight! Unfortunately it looks like it will just be rain down south...". Craziness! It's very weird to hear. But anyway, my whole point to my little sidetrack is that snow is celebrated here. Snow equals fun. And snow is what makes money for the Vermont/NewHampshire areas. (Skiing, snowshoeing, snowmobiling, snowboarding, you get it). Soooo, break time is scheduled in the peak of the snowy season so the kids can get out and enjoy the snow! And with perfect timing, we got about 6 inches of snow last night! Woohoo! So hopefully we'll be able to at the very least take the kids sledding this weekend. It's kind of funny. You'd think with living in the mountains we'd have an abundance of places to take the kids to sled instead of boring flat Kansas. But we really do have to go out of our way to find a good spot. Most of the hills around here are either covered in trees, are too steep, have a building built into them, or end on a very busy street. So I hear the country club is "the" place to sled. I think we might go check it out! :)

And for the millionth time, I apologize again for the great big lag between posts. I finally finished my orientation period at work and hit the ground running. It has been rediculously busy and I have either been running for 12 hours straight at work or passed out at home recovering from running around for 12 hours straight at work lol! But I am LOVING my new job and feel like it's right where I need to be. It's a huge change of pace for me but it's awesome. And Mathew & I (mostly Mathew. He's been working his tail off) have finally gotten ALL of our belongings in storage gone through. Two full storage units have been eliminated & we are down to one. Tons have been sold/donated. Tons more at least repacked & consolidated. And now all I have is 10 more boxes of files to shred in my living room... yaaaaaayyyyy...... :/ (not so much). Almost all of the demo is done in the house. I just need to find the time to get there to bag up all of the debris. (Yuck!) And a brand new fireplace/chimney is in the process of being put in. Yep. Great big hole in the middle of the whole house. But it'll be awesome. I'll post pictures once we have something to show off! :)

Snowboarding!!

Okay, how cool is this!?! Part of the curriculum for school here in Vermont is to learn a winter sport. Amazing! So kiddos from Kindergarten thru 3rd grade do indoor stuff (Gavin is taking gymnastics & surprised himself by loving it!) and the kids fourth grade & up get to go to the mountain for some winter fun! They get the choice of skating, skiiing or snowboarding... one guess which one my little dude picked. ;)

So Monday was their first day. Matt, though he's never snowboarded a day in his life either, signed up to chaperone, so he got to go too. I on the other hand, had to stay at home and bite my nails for 6 hours until they were home safe & sound. But he did great! And they had a ton of fun!

Of course, true to form, Mark thought he needed to be perfect at it right off the bat & needed some reassurance that practice makes perfect. But I have a feeling he'll be teaching his momma some tricks in no time. ;) Three more Mondays my baby boy will be up on the mountain-top while his mom takes care of kids with severe head traumas from skiing accidents....... Think I'll have any nails left by February?? :S

My New Vocabulary

As you can imagine, moving to a whole different part of the country means learning a whole new world of slang & terminology. I thought it was weird moving from St.Louis to Kansas City & getting used to "pop" instead of "soda" or "69 Highway" instead of "Highway 69." That was nothing! Since being here I've had more than a few moments where I'm sure I looked like a complete idiot not knowing what in the world the other person was talking about. Here is a list of some of my favorites:

#1: "Jimmies." Nope, not Jimmy Walker. Would you believe this is what they call sprinkles?? We went to the local ice cream shop a few times and stared at the menu a few times before I got up the nerve to ask, "Okay, who's Jimmy & why is he 50 cents!?" lol

#2: This brings me to #2. "Creamy" has always been a descriptive term to me. (i.e. "Mmm. This soup is so creamy...") Well here "creamy" is a noun. It's what they call soft serve ice cream!

#3: A "Johnny." Seriously, I have no idea where this one comes from. And this is where the "Stacia ends up looking like an idiot" part comes in. I had a patient ask me for a new "johnny." I was clueless. I'm a nurse & had to ask my patient what a "johnny" was. Apparently it's a hospital gown. My bad.

#4: It's not just called "trash" around here. Nope, it's "rubbish." I thought they just said that in England? I guess they do in New England too!

#5: A "Flatlander" equals any person who is from anywhere else but the north east corner of the country. Being from KS/MO, guess what they call me! lol




#6: Had someone ask me if there was a "bubbler" nearby. No idea what the heck they were talking about. Found out later it was a drinking fountain. Again, my bad.

#7: "Wicked" has absolutely nothing to do with witches or general evilness. In fact, it's a word New Englanders use for "really really." Okay, lots of people know this one, especially thanks to SNL skits. But seriously they use it all the time! I caught Mark using it in conversation the other day & it took everything in Matt & me not to snicker. It was pretty "wicked" funny. ;)

#8: the "package store" makes me think something along the lines of a UPS store or something like it. Wrong again! For some reason it's the term for the corner liquor store. Who knew.




#9: "Massholes." Learned this one pretty quick. From a self-proclaimed "Masshole" during hospital orientation. Seriously, people from Massachussets tend to be pretty cranky & negative as a whole, and what's funnier is they seem to be proud of it! lol I've also learned that they have major issues with road rage. Consider yourself forewarned.

#10: A frappe has nothing to do with the fancy coffee drink you'd get from Starbucks or even McDonalds. A "frappe" is actually a milkshake. A milkshake is just milk with flavored syrup. Then there's a coffee milk, and a float... it's all very complicated.

#11: A "grinder" to me sounds like some sort of tool. Like a meat grinder or a coffee grinder. But a "grinder" is a sub sandwich. Why, I have no idea.

#12: This is what I would picture when you say "carriage." But here, a "carriage" is actually your regular run-of-the-mill shopping cart. Sadly, not as fancy.



In Vermont they don't tend to have too terribly heavy of an accent, maybe a long "o" once in a while. But as I head over to New Hampshire (or New Hampster as Natalie likes to call it) the accents get thicker, and as I head to work it's even more Boston-esque. There's really no such thing as an "R." As Natalie gets older I start to worry a little bit more of the lack of "r" in some of her pronunciations, but I think it'll go unnoticed around here! lol

Oh wow it's been a long time since I've posted. Sorry!! I guess time just escapes me as of late. I've been busy with work and I haven't had much to report on the home front.

One thing I can update on: my new job! OMG I can not tell you all how much happier I am! As soon as I walked on the unit for my first day, I sighed a sigh of relief: I'm home! :) The PICU here has two faces really. It definitely can have the intense super sick PICU admits that you can conjure up in your imagination. But most of the time it's more of a step down unit. By that I mean kids that are too sick to be on the floor, but not intubated & on death's door kind of sick. So I've been able to ease into this new world of pediatric nursing. I'm having so much fun! :) I actually told Matt on the phone, during my drive home after day #2 of 3, that I couldn't wait to come back to work tomorrow! I haven't felt like that in ages! :) So, in a nutshell, I think I'm going to like it there. I have so much to learn, but I'm really excited to start a whole new chapter in my career. And lesson learned: whatever I do in the future, I just can't step away from caring for kiddos. It's in my blood I think.

Other than that, I don't have much to share. It's been consistently cold here, but nothing big deal. The boys still walk to school every morning, and they're so used to the cold now that even in the single digits I have to beg them to put on gloves & a hat! lol I hear you guys in the midwest had some super warm days lately... followed quickly by tornado warnings... I gotta tell ya, I wasn't envious! ;) Mark starts winter sports with school next week and he'll get to go snowboarding for the next four weeks. He's SUPER excited. Matt will probably chaperone. I SO wish I could go too just to take pictures of that one lol. So I'll be sure to update on that. Plus, the boys are finally taking skating lessons. They're getting better & better every time!

After Matt's accident the truck has been in the shop for the last couple of weeks. In exchange he ended up with a crappy Kia. (No offense meant to any Kia owners out there... we're just not fans). So going through boxes has been crazy slow because he doesn't have the truck bed to work with to haul back & forth. But slowly but surely we're getting there. The bane of my existence lately has been the huge stack of boxes of old files from our former mortgage company. Law mandates that you hold onto customer files for a number of years post closing, so we had a ton stored in our basement & totally could have gotten rid of them a couple of years ago had we been able to get to them. But now we have to shred file after file after file.... ugh. It's rediculous. My living room looks like it snowed in there. But we'll get it all done. In the mean time I'm taking up Dory's mantra:
Just keep swimming... just keep swimming...