Spring cleaning

OK, anybody who knows me knows that I am a slob. I absolutely hate cleaning, so I avoid doing it for waaay too long.

Anybody who has lived with me knows the other side of this as well, that is when I've had enough I get on a cleaning frenzy. No, I didn't have one of these last night, but I did at least get tired of the garbage in my car. I still have all kinds of other stuff in my car, but at least I emptied out the garbage.

Along with cleaning my car a little I also finished up another spring chore. I filed my renewal fafsa. For those of you who do not have to do this it is at least as annoying as taxes, and since you should have your (and parents if required) taxes done first, it may be more annoying. Of course it took me a good half hour to find my tax returns, as I had my taxes done in Feb, and my refund was already long spent. But as I said, you need info from the returns in order to fill out the fafsa correctly. Luckily it is much faster to fill out the renewal rather than the initial, and if you do it online you have access to calculators and many values fill in automatically.

Now I only have a few things left to do to get ready to go back to school in the fall. I need to fill out my housing form, and in about 2 weeks pre-register. After that it is wait, and hopefully my financial aid papers will come soon enough for me to know if I have to save money or if i qualify for more loans.

Anyway, this is probably as boring for you to hear about as it was for me to do. So:

[Untitled]
11

Julius awoke in a cold sweat. He was chilled even further by a breeze coming in through an open window.

He moved across the room to close the window, then stopped just before reaching it. The window had not been open when he had fallen asleep. He spun and nearly collapsed when he saw that Kyra was not in her bed.

“It was a tad warm in here, and your sleep seemed so fretful. I thought that some fresh air might help.”

Julius ran to her. Before he knew what was happening he had embraced her.

Gently, Maureen pushed Julius away. “What is it? What’s wrong?”

“Bad dreams, Kyra. Bad dreams.”

Maureen took Julius’ hand and led him back to the chair. Still recovering from the dream and the shock of Kyra not being in her bed, he sat.

“Tell me about it Julius.”

Coming back to reality he recounted the dream.

Maureen was silent for a moment. Then, “Is it something that we need to worry about? I mean it was just a dream wasn’t it?”

“Not just a dream. It was one of Jack’s intimidation tactics.”

“You can’t mean to tell me that he has the ability to invade dreams.”

“I can and I am.” Julius sighed. “But more importantly what I am saying is far more sinister. This dream means that Jack is no longer in captivity, he is free. I do not know what motives he has for waiting to attack, but he is waiting. It also means that he can attack at any time, we don’t know how much time there is left to train.”

“So what can we do?”

“Continue to train each day, and hope that each day is not the last that we have.”

***

“Julius, I’ll be back soon,” Maureen yelled.

“Where are you going?” he asked from right behind her.

Maureen jumped. “I need to do some shopping. I need to buy some food, and then I need to pay some bills. I don’t think I should be much more than an hour maybe an hour and a half.”

“Be safe, Kyra. I don’t think that anything will happen today, but be safe anyway.”

Maureen kissed his cheek. “I don’t think you need to worry. But, I’ll tell you what. I have my cell phone with me, if I think I’ll be late I’ll call. Don’t answer until the machine picks up so that you know it’s me. Ok?”

“Ok.”

***

“Hey, Bob.”

“Hey there Maureen. Let me grab those jars from the fridge.”

Bob walked to the walk-in refrigerator, and re-emerged with four gallons of blood.

“You know I talked to one of the ranchers. He said that blood was a new one on him; he said that he always uses plain old manure on his garden plot. He even said that he would make you a good deal on manure if you decided that was the way to go.”

“I tried manure last year, remember? Those tomatoes were so small that people kept thinking they were from a cherry tomato plant, not a full size.

I don’t know, Bob. I’m about ready to give up on gardening, if nothing better comes up this year I might just switch to buying full time from the farmer’s market.”

“Ok, well good luck with this then.”

“Thanks, Bob. Oh, and while I’m here can I pick up one of those steaks. I forgot to set one out to defrost.”

“No problem,” he said as he picked one out.

***

Maureen was back in a record forty-five minutes.

As she walked into the house she found it eerily silent. She set her groceries down on the counter in the kitchen, put away the cold food, and then went looking for Julius.

She finally found him, sleeping in a closet. Knowing how little rest he had gotten lately, she closed the door and let him sleep.

She had barely gotten finished putting away the rest of the groceries when Julius came looking for her.

“When did you get back?”

“A little while ago, you were sleeping.”

“You should have woken me up.”

“Why, so you could do nothing while I put away groceries? You need your sleep more than that.”

Maureen pulled a glass from the cupboard. Turning herself so that Julius could not see, she poured blood into the glass. Then she handed it to him.

Julius looked at it, almost surprised. “Thank you.”

“No problem. Now, once you finish that let’s get back to work.”