Feeling accomplished

It's been a big week around here for both me and Adam, and in some really great ways. First, on Tuesday, I went to my very last graduate school class meeting ever. I'm graduating in August, so I still have to take my final comprehensive exams and do a little independent study project, but then I will have an MLIS degree and be done with homework. This is very exciting, because the cloud of unfinished reading and papers has pretty much constantly hung over my head for the last two years is finally going to go away. It is a weird (but good!) feeling to realize that a crochet project can be the number one priority on my to-do list rather than an eight-page paper on metadata schemas.

I'm not sure what will happen now that I have all this free time, but I have a feeling that my house will be cleaner. And not just because I will have more time to devote to keeping things in order, but because Adam won't be left to his own devices so often. I think he might get sick of me asking him to help out and long for the days when I was on campus or glued to my computer working on an assignment.

At any rate, the only photographic depiction I have of MY milestone is a picture I took while I walked across campus to my last class, which is much less interesting than the pictures of Adam's exciting week, which was essentially a complete makeover of our front yard. Our house was empty for over a year before we moved in, so the yard was in spectacularly bad shape. Mostly, there was no grass, and there was a pine tree was slowly wrapping its roots around the sewer line, which could eventually become quite unpleasant. Anyway, here is what it looked like then:



Last summer, Adam and his parents tore out the bushes, and then last month we got rid of the huge, ugly tree. So here is what our yard looked like a couple of weeks ago - it was essentially empty:



Adam took it upon himself to build a retaining wall around the corner of the house where a lot of soil had eroded away from the foundation. It was a little challenging at times, but I think it turned out beautifully. We also dug out the roots of the old tree (a huge pain!) and had sod and a new tree put in, effectively giving us a nearly-perfect yard. Here is what it looks like today:



I'd like to take some credit but I really can't. I did about 15 minutes of work on the wall and spent a few hours digging roots out of the ground, but this was really Adam's project, since he chose to do it during one of the busier parts of my quarter at school. I think Adam's probably ready for a break, but too bad, buddy! I don't have any homework to do, and now that I think about it I can't remember the last time anyone vacuumed, the kitchen is a mess, and I can't do both at once!