spring has sprung?

If April showers bring May flowers, then April floods must bring May buds in Michigan. My little video clip today is of the Japanese magnolia tree in my side yard.


It has been a long week. I stayed up in Big Rapids all week. Friday I graded papers for twelve straight hours, but no, I am not caught up. Yesterday I went to the initial day for the Crossroads Writing Project, but I left early. The weather was so bad that I became fearful about my drive back to Grand Rapids, and indeed, there were some heavy storms to drive through. I am about to engage in another long week, our last week of classes. Then it's finals week. I've got big plans for the ONE online class I'm teaching this summer. (I did have two, but mysteriously, one of them disappeared. Apparently, students are not exactly signing up for summer classes in droves this year.)

My younger son has "thrown in the towel," so to speak, and is leaving his little town of Fulton to move in with his brother and sister-in-law in Fayetteville, Arkansas. His ex-wife had already left Fulton (which is where she wanted to live and why they moved there in the first place) to move back with her mother, and Dan's musical partner (other Dan) is finding himself working 7 days a week, leaving next to no time for their music. So my son is lonely and having trouble sleeping because his next-door neighbor is loud and obnoxious, and he's finally decided that he needs to be near family. He could have come up here, but apparently he'd rather live with his brother. (I wonder if he'll ever see "going home to brother" as being the psychological equivalent to "going home to mother"?)

So that move will take place in a couple of weeks. Then I hope he'll get a job so he won't be in S & H's hair all the time. Stephen needs to study for his Arkansas bar exam in late July, so that's also an issue. Of course I'm worried about all of them and wish they had a house, rather than a little two-bedroom apartment, but there's not much I can do about that.

Anyway, I have to do a couple of loads of laundry before I head back up to Big Rapids early tomorrow. My spouse is going to have lots of time to play golf this week, except it's supposed to rain the first half of the week. Maybe I'll have time to catch up on my blogging in a few days.