JUST A THOUGHT

ADAM

KATIE

My first entry on my blog. If you're wondering about the name of my blog, emptyhousefullmind, let me explain. After 20 years of being a full-time, stay-at-home, carpooling, laundry folding, volunteering, grocery shopping, care taking and most of all fully enjoying it all mother, my job ended. Ok, maybe it didn't end completely - with my kids Katie and Adam both in college, there are plenty of phone calls, BBMs, texts, facebook chats, google chats, and a few emails here and there to keep me fairly involved in their lives. Over the past year, while Adam slogged through the muck of learning to be a college student during his freshman year, coming up for air every so often to check in with me and his dad and relate the horrors of being a student and the escapades of parties at University of Arizona, I learned the value of distance and the terror of the ringing telephone in the middle of the night (MOM! This girl is PASSED OUT! We need to call an AMBULANCE!). At the same time, Katie spent her spring semester in London, and practically every weekend was traipsing off to some country or another (MOM! The pasta at this restaurant in Florence LITERALLY made me CRY it was so AMAZING!!!), while my husband Peter and I cut coupons and played with our dog Lambeau and went to movies and mostly just enjoyed the quiet and tried to save money. It was a difficult year for me (and when I say year I mean SCHOOL year...do we ever stop thinking that way?) in a lot of ways, as I had never in my life given any thought to what the heck I would do after my job as a full-time mother was over. I suppose I had some vague idea that Peter and I would give lovely dinner parties, go on weekend getaways, do a little shopping, a little napping...I don't know. What I didn't count on was my need to DO something!