Embracing warmth

Though half of our backyard still looked like the picture above,

I was still able to dry sheets on the line! I didn't have much hope that the flannel sheets would be fully dried, but they were by the time K- and I returned from our after school building meeting.

We started our day out by walking to school. After cleaning and running a variety of errands, I walked back to get K-. There was a 3 PM building meeting, so I let K- play on the playground with the kids until time for the meeting to start.

The meeting? It lasted for over two hours. I say over, because I left at 4:50 PM and they were still going. Geeze o' Pete. Just give the custodian a shower, please! So, two and a half hours after K- got out of school, we had the mile to walk back home. Of course, she was tired and hungry. She held up okay on the way home, though. She wanted to play outside as I prepared dinner. The child just craves the fresh air, I believe.

After dinner, we went on a walk. Between the two round trip walks I made to the elementary school and the walk this evening, I have walked approximately 5 1/2 miles today. Take that cholesterol and my need to shed some of this winter storage!

The windows were opened for a glorious 12 hours today. I changed the bed sheets over to regular weight, with the plan to store the flannel sheets until the fall. Smudge got her first seasons dose of Frontline. I even leveled out the gravel ruts in the driveway.

Warmth is a good thing.

I have noticed that since the weather has turned warm, K-'s concentration seems to have taken a nose-dive. I ended up meeting with K-'s teacher after school to confirm what I thought. She has been distracted. She isn't completely following instructions. She has been too worried about what everyone else is doing with their papers/books and whatnot. She is continually getting out of her seat to discuss these things with Mrs. H-. Mrs. H- asked, "Did she tell you?" "No. I could tell because she has brought home papers with marks almost every day for the past week. That is not typically like her. I think that she has a case of Spring Fever." Mrs. H- laughed and agreed. I told her that I would speak with K- about it. On our walk home, I talked about how important it was to pay attention, to avoid distraction, keep her eyes on her own paper, not to worry about what others are doing and finally, stay in her seat. I told her that if she doesn't follow these rules, Mrs. H- might put her on yellow. Now, Mrs. H- didn't say this, but it isn't a far-fetched thing to say. Disobedience gets your clip moved. K- seems to have gotten the idea. She hasn't gotten her clip moved yet and that would completely devastate her. I told her that I will meet with Mrs. H- again next week and that I want a better report or there she will be punished. She's a good student. Her mind has just fallen into the sunshiny gutter of distraction. I understand how that can happen. I find myself staring out the window (not that it is what she is doing.) We've been so light deficient, it's like showing us a brand new, shiny toy. She'll pull it back around.

On a nicer educational note, as of Friday AM, we'll have made it to our 600 goal in reading. That is a week earlier than planned. Fantastic!

Smiles in my day:
- I've had several sightings of our hawk these past few days. I also saw a few other hawks while on my drives today. Apparently, our raptor population is doing well in these parts.
- I was able to find a book for K-'s Easter basket, one for Hubs' Easter basket, one for my mother for her birthday and an American Girl planner for one of my nieces as a birthday gift at the book sale today.
- I found a small snow globe for $2.00 at Joann's today to replace the one that K- broke in the middle of her bed a few days ago. She was so broken-hearted when the snow globe broke.
- The laundry line outside is back in use! :)

Have a great weekend!

5 AM came early and stayed. Sort of.

Hubs had a conference Wednesday morning, so he had to get up at 5 AM. He was very sweet, didn't want to wake me, but I ended up awake. He kissed me on his way out and I did try to sleep. At 6:30 AM, I finally gave up.

Pressing onward. All at once, I had the crazies land at the sales counter. Of course, I was there by myself. I had one woman walking around and talking to the earrings. She is a semi-regular who is a psychologist. I'm thinking that she cracked some time today prior to getting to the gallery. She's always a little goofy, but today took the cake. We had another lady that kept telling me, "But you h-a-v-e--- to tell me what to buy!" When I tried, everything I picked was wrong. 0She was at the counter giving me wrapping instructions. Then there was this guy sucking on a coffee. Why is it that no one can walk into any establishment without some type of beverage in hand?! At any rate, he was trying to get with the owner's daughter about something, gave me a line about forgetting the paper at home with the address . . . Frankly, it sounded like a crapped out line to me. Thankfully, the lady talking to the earrings freaked a co-worker out enough that she went over to our sister store and suggested that someone come hang with me. Sam came to my rescue and I sent him off with the guy. I knew that the earring lady was perfectly harmless. So was the lady that I was helping. They were just more annoying than anything. I don't think that they realized it, though.

So, I was tired. I know that I couldn't have been that spacey to make those characters up, though.

I am tired enough to realize that I'm just rambling through a post. If you are still reading, bless you. I shall free you from reading any more.

Smiles in my day:
- The in-law's had dinner for me the last two nights. So nice!
- Back to walking!
- Thinking of sleep.

Have a great day!

Works for Me Wednesday: Ribbon Organization

I have many rolls of ribbon because of a business adventure that didn't take off. No bother, I find that I can use ribbon on a lot of things. Problem was, I had all of my ribbon in a box. It was working, but not well enough.

When I reorganized my studio, I knew that I wanted to hang my ribbons up much like we have at work. Space in my small 9' x 10' studio is limited. That's when I saw it! I could hang the ribbons up in the dead space behind the door.

I admit that I did a first run hanging on my own. My hooks sagged a little, then Hubs came in and reinforced them. He recycled some wood strips off of a canvas that I was tossing, attached those to the wall, then reinstalled my hooks.

Voila! Here it is: To avoid having these rolls unroll on their own, I did need to pin the ends down. It was a space saving solution to my organizational need. Works for me!

Smiles in my day:
- Hubs is feeling better. Seems as though he and K- shared a bit of the intestinal yuck this week. Hubs had to leave for a conference today, so the timing couldn't have been more perfect for him to feel better.
- Walking K- to school this AM. We told Mr. Jim that we missed him. Oh, do my hips and legs miss the walking. Let us just say that I can see the effect of no walking on them.
- The PTA meeting yesterday. Mr. B-, the principal, gave me an atagirl for standing up to a citizen regarding K-'s school rebuilding plans. Her school is slated to be rebuilt here in about a year or so. The gentleman was arguing that he couldn't see a need to rebuild, that the school appeared just fine to him. I respectfully asked if he had really looked where he was sitting. "Looks great to me!" "Have you walked around the school?" "I used to inspect these buildings!" "Sir, do you have a student that attends here?" "No." Apparently, I said all of the things that the principal and architects wanted to, but couldn't. As of that meeting, I am now on the community meeting team regarding the school building plans. I am with a handful of other parents that will meet with school board members and architects every other week to try to implement ideas and shuffle space in our school for the best regarding the space that we have allotted to us. It is kind of exciting to have the opportunity to be so involved in something so permanent in the community.
- My niece will be staying overnight on Saturday (Shhh! It's a surprise to K- and J-!) We'll be starting our seeds. The girls will love it!

Have a great day!

Tales from the Trenches: Just call me Amelia

What did I do at work on Monday? I filed paper off of mat board with an emery board.

Yes, I got paid to do it.

Seems as though the paper had been trimmed away by some other co-workers, but it didn't leave a clean edge. The only way to get rid of the excess was to file away at it with nail files.

Customers wondered what Shannon and I were doing.

We get paid to do some pretty weird stuff.

Smiles in my day:
- K- went to school. She was a little concerned about the intestinal issues that she has been experiencing, but she made it just fine. I promised her that she would.
- Mike and Chris came over for their Monday "Let's work on Mark and Amy's internet" date. Long story short, we are now hard-wired, so no more problems. Our computer is running slow because of low RAM, so Chris said that he would fix that. If my 8th grade computer class isn't failing me, I think that is Random Access Memory. I could be wrong. Even if I'm not, I have no idea what it is there for, but I know that it helps to make all things work.
- We promised Mr. Jim, the crossing guard, that we will be back to walking on Wednesday. I didn't feel comfortable having K- walk so soon after having experienced digestive bouts of displeasure and I have a PTA meeting in the AM. Wednesday it is. The sidewalks are now finally clear enough. We may get a little rain, but both K- and I have rain coats, so we'll be good.
- The ladies who were in from Turkey. There were four of them, two of which spoke some English. One, the mother, spoke no English at all. We spent a few hours with them, wrapping their many little gifts to take back home. (I'm thinking that they aren't going to make it through customs wrapped, but it made them happy and they probably wouldn't have understood otherwise.) The one gave us a tip in Turkish money. I know that the coins probably don't amount to much monetarily, but it was thoughtful and a neat gesture.

Have a great day!

The Amelia Bedelia page is taken from the story, Come Back, Amelia Bedelia.

It has left me with a big smile.

The weekend, that is. Grant you, it didn't start out well. When K- came out of school on Friday afternoon, she had the biggest frown on her face. A crocodile tear was trudging down her cheek.

"Mom, I've had the biggest stomach ache all day." [Insert scene from Moses parting the Red Sea. It is amazing how fast parents will move their child away from a child that potentially has the stomach flu. And yes, I'm the same way.]

We went home, got her in jammies, set up in bed with the portable DVD player and I took her temperature. 101 F. Fantastic.

We were to go to my husbands boss' house for dessert and a movie. I called Hubs. He was bummed. We were going to meet one of his previous National Park co-workers, his family and their 10 year old foster child. They all understood our canceling. (We've had to cancel before. The first time we had dinner plans with Dan, the old RAV was totaled.)

So, I got K- all settled in. She was a sad-sack mess. I had to call my mom to come sit with K- while I ran visitation transport for my niece and nephew. K- napped while my mom was here and she slept all night. I was up and down checking to make certain that the 102 F fever that I broke didn't return. Happily, it didn't.

Saturday was a little peppier, but she still hung out in bed all day. She had an unlimited supply of Goldfish crackers, Toy Story Cheese-It's, 7-Up and movies. She was in kid heaven.

Since K- was stuck inside, I was in the next room over working in my studio. It was lovely.

I was able to get the frame done that I had promised for the mailer photo shoot. We're having a staff show at the end of April, but they needed one piece from each participating co-worker in advance.

K- was perking up even more on Saturday night, but later we found that the day must have really exhausted her since we found her fast asleep before 8 PM.

I love the child, but she called on a two hour basis from her bed in a loud voice, "Mommy!" I jumped out of bed and went running to have her ask me, "Can you turn the little TV on?"

"No."

"Why?"

"Because it's the middle of the night." [I'm having Orphan Annie flashbacks here.]

She did that at 10 PM, 12:30 AM, 2:30 AM, 4:30 AM and at 6:30 AM. Folks, it wore me out. She normally only gets one hour of TV a day, so apparently the unlimited movie watching while ill awakened her TV addicted inner child.

On Sunday morning, we skipped church because of the funk, so I yelled hey to the neighbor. I told him that we missed him and his partner. He came by a moment and was talking to me about the church that they are attending. We both got excited when he discovered these in our front yard:
A couple hours later, K- announced that she no longer had a stomach ache, but had an ache to go outside. I told her that would be Cabin Fever. We suited her up in snow clothes and sent her off to play. I figured a bit of fresh air wouldn't hurt her and while she was out, I opened the windows and doors again. I wanted to air out the yuck that she just had.

Going outside gave her one last shot at sliding down igloo hill and putting the last bits of our sled out of its misery.
While out taking pictures of K-, I looked and found our cat happily looking out the big (dirty) door window. It is her favorite place in the summer. The sun comes in and warms her kitty body. "Mom? Is the nice sun going to stay?"
"I hope so, Smudge. I sure hope so."

Smiles in my weekend:
- Sprinkled in above.

Have a great day!