Giving Arts a Chance: Senior year

We moved again, the summer between my junior and senior years.  My father's contract was not renewed, so he spent the summer looking for a new job.

I missed a lot of the job search.  My aunt & uncle in Oceanside, California were preparing to move, and needed someone to house-sit for a few weeks.  So for the price of a plane ticket, I spent the summer with them.


He found another job in South Bend.

Giving Arts a Chance: Junior year

So we moved from Nebraska back  to Indiana.  The place that is home, but not mine.  My mother's family has lived in Indiana since at least 1920.   My father's side of the family has been on the Indiana/Ohio border for about 200 years.

Mom grew up visiting her grandmother on Sundays, and playing with her cousins regularly.  I was lucky to see my grandparents once a year, and my cousins less than that.

We moved to a small town in northwestern Indiana.  Starke County, just north of Pulaski County.

I don't recall registering for classes, so I am guessing my parents registered me.  I'm not sure why I didn't take band that year.  Did I consciously choose not to?  Did they simply forget to sign me up?  Or did it have activity fees that they balked at?  It might not have fit the schedule that I had.  Regardless, I didn't take band.

Endless winters when the dreams would freeze

The summer between 8th grade and high school, was the summer I went to Florida.  I wasn't sure it would actually happen.  Truthfully, living in Nebraska, where the oceans were multiple days drive away?  We didn't travel that far, and I had never seen an ocean before.  Florida and California both seemed like exotic locations.

But I had an aunt & uncle living there.  They had a 3-year-old, and another on the way.  I could buy a round-trip ticket, and be their au pair for the summer.  Eight weeks, and I only got yelled at once.  (I don't count my cousin, she was only three.)  It seemed like heaven.

Rabbits

I live in town, where backyard chickens are not allowed.  If I'm going to be serious about making my suburban yard as independent as possible, the gardening literature recommends raising rabbits.  I've done that once before.  I could do it, I've done it before.  Even if I just keep them for fertilizer.  But I hesitate.

Good teachers

I'm sorry I didn't get a post ready for Friday.  I was trying to decide what direction to go.  There were a lot of other things that happened from 7th grade through my sophomore year of high school, things I haven't described.  The summer between my sophomore and junior years, is really the pivotal moment.  That is when my world was shattered.

And I don't know how to write it.  I decided to finish the last two years of high school in this Giving Arts a Chance series, and then I can go on to other topics.  I have written the posts, and they will be posted.  But the order the facts are presented in, makes a huge difference in what the posts mean.