Saturday, June 29, 2013

My fingers don't work anymore

I went on one of my epic gardening jags today.  I think I was out there pulling weeds for about 6 hours today and now my fingers are all stiff and sore.  I'm making tons of typos here, thank goodness for the backspace key.  But, now my garden looks beautious - there's only one little patch of weeds I was too exhausted to deal with.  To give you an idea of how beastly big my garden is, that 6 hours only covered about half the garden, the other half we'd been doing in smaller spurts throughout the week.  Now if we just keep on hoeing, it should be all nice and spiffy for the rest of the summer.  Until stuff starts coming in and I've got more important things to do than pulling weeds, like canning tomatoes and eating fresh kohlrabi.

Tanya, we were just talking about the giant underwear on the clothesline the other day!  I think poor Angel #1 was only in 1st grade when we did that to him.  We start embarrassing our children at a young age at this house!

Hubs didn't make it past the first round at the comedy contest in Winnipeg, but just the fact that he was chosen to go in the first place is pretty darn impressive.  He did a lot of networking when he was up there, so who knows where he might end up next.

This weekend is the huge event for our town.  It's the weekend of the Fireman's Picnic.  There's not a whole ton of stuff going on, but for our little spot on the map, it's a big deal.  Last night hubs and I headed there for the fish fry, the kids stuck around for the band afterwards.  The band was still going when we went back to get the kids, so we hung around to listen for a bit.  They were pretty eclectic.  We heard covers by everyone from Prince, The Georgia Satellites (I got a little change in my pocket goin' jingle lingle ling!) to Eminem and the Goo Goo Dolls.  Today was a 5K walk, horse pulling in the afternoon and another rock band tonight. Angel #4 and a friend went, I'm staying home and trying to keep my muscles from seizing up after all my weed pulling.  Tomorrow is the big parade, more horse pulling and the Wisconsin staple, a polka band.  Angel #1 is coming home tomorrow morning as well for 5 days of leave.  So YAY for him.  Angel #2 is getting in on Monday, then I'll have all my little chicks under my wing again - for a couple days anyway.  To mark this auspicious occasion, we're getting family pictures taken on Tuesday.  We haven't had an actual planned, posed family picture taken in about 10 years, so I think we're long overdue.

Friday, June 21, 2013

G2NO

This winter I had a girls night out (GNO) with my 3 good friends.  We did an overnighter and decided that one night isn't nearly enough time to get all our gabbing in.  So we decided on a two-nighter this summer at my friend Stacey's cabin.  We had the arrival plans and the food schedule all figured out and things looked to be going smoothly, until that morning.  Jamie had to cancel out due to a killer migraine.  This really sucked, especially since Jamie has been fighting chronic migraines for a long time now.  We were all bummed, but the show must go on, the the remaining 3 of us met up at the cabin on Monday noon.  The weather was cool and sunny and we had a nice time sitting on the shore, looking over the lake and talking.  We went for a little walk and even went out to supper with Stacey's dad, who lives next door to the cabin.  He took us all to the restaurant in his beautifully restored 1957 Chevy Bel-Aire. That baby is gorgeous and I felt like Sandra Dee popping out of the backseat - though getting out of the backseat of a 2-door Chevy gracefully is physically impossible.  Later on we watched a movie and spent some more time visiting.  Tuesday morning Donna woke up with a killer migraine and ended up going back home that morning.  So then there were two, it was starting to feel like one of those Agatha Christie English manor murder mysteries where one by one the inhabitants disappear.  Only in our case it was migraines and not a lead pipe in the conservatory and it was a cabin in the woods instead of Graystone Manor.  Stacey and I still had a good time together, but it was pretty disappointing that the whole group of us couldn't be there together like we'd planned.  We're going to try a re-do later in the summer and hopefully we'll have more luck.

Wednesday night, hubs really took it outside the box.  He's been dabbling a bit in doing stand-up comedy, going to open mike nights at various comedy clubs in the area and having a great time.  On a whim, he even enter a video of himself doing one of his routines at the club in The World Series of Comedy.  He made the top 40 and will be competing live in Winnipeg Canada at the end of the month.  YAY HUBS!!  Anyway, he went to the biggest comedy club in the state with a couple of his fellow comics and performed in front of about 250 people and really nailed it.  He had great audience response and had a really fun time.  He messed up on his last joke, giving the punchline and wondered why no one was laughing until he realized that he forgot to do the set-up for the joke first, which is pretty darn funny in itself, if you ask me.  If you want to see his performance, check it out here.

Friday, June 14, 2013

Quit messing with me, summer

I was just chilling at home last night, watching the trucks go by.  They cut hay in the field next to the house and were chopping it and loading it into trucks.  So anyway, watching the trucks, being annoyed at how their rumbling made it really hard to hear what The Doctor was saying as they were running to the Tardis (turns out it was "run to the Tardis!!).  Then I looked at the clock and saw that it was 9:15 and it was still totally light outside.  With the weather being so cold this year, I kind of forgot that it's supposed to be summerish outside and that the longest day of the year is coming up next week.  That so depressing, because that means that after next week, the days are going to start getting shorter again and next thing you know, it'll be dark by 5 and it'll be cold and I've got to shovel my van out of the garage and shoot, now I'm getting depressed.


Monday, June 10, 2013

take 'em out, put 'em back

The library had their book sale this weekend.  I like helping set up for the sale because I get first dibs on the books we put out.  There were so many books piled up in the storeroom that eventually we got tired and just quit putting them out on the tables though we had shelves and shelves of books still sitting there.  Today we did clean-up.  The book sale was one of their more successful ones, but in my opinion, it still wasn't that great.  In the last town we lived in in Wisconsin, we literally had people lined up at the door waiting for us to open them so they could get at the books and we always made a pretty good money haul, probably about 3 times as much as our library did this weekend.  I'm trying to offer suggestions to help improve sales, but don't want to step on any toes since I'm only the grunt work for the sale and not a real dedicated member of the Friends of the Library.  So, anyway, we had a ton of books we needed to deal with today.  In the past, they've just put them back on the shelves and took them out for next years sale (imo, one of the reasons their sales aren't successful) but this year they found a company who'll take a lot of the unsold books, they ship them to poor countries or something like that.  Whatever we didn't pack up for the donation company, we tossed out this year.  After last years sale, when we were reshelving the books, I had the idea to mark all the spines with black marker and we'd decided that whatever was still there after this sale we were going to just send out to the recycling.  It was decided to day that everything left over was going to get recycled instead.  We dealt with a whole lot of books today.  We still didn't get them completely cleaned out, but the Friends of the Library are going to make a concentrated effort to get rid of everything in the next month or two.  Next years book sale should be all fresh stuff - I suggested they make a point of advertising that point, maybe they'll get a better turn-out in the future.  We'll see.

It finally got kind of warm today.  It's about time.  It's been so chilly that the furnace is still kicking on at night.  Hard to believe its JUNE already.  Saturday night we were at a party at a friend's house and we were all sitting on the deck in winter coats or wrapped up in blankets.  It was pretty ridiculous - though at least it was too cold for mosquitoes to be out, which I guess is a *very* small bright spot.  I want sun and warmth - that's supposed to be my reward for surviving a miserable Wisconsin winter.  I WANT MY REWARD MOTHER NATURE!!!

Anybody want a kitten???

Saturday, June 8, 2013

Sing-Along Thursday

The last day of school went smoothly and I got about a 40% participation rate for lunch number singing.  I contributed as well by singing "Welcome to Lunch" and "What's your number, please?"  I had kids rap their numbers, a little bit of country and even some opera, one kid did his to the opening notes of Smoke on the Water, which was a nice touch.  The boys were much more on board with the singing than the girls were.

Last night hubs and I sold popcorn and cotton candy along the parade route for the Light Parade at the next town over from ours. The parade is put on by the Optimist Clubs, in which hubs is a member, so we got on the concessions volunteer list.  I saw a few of the kids from school there, which was kind of fun.  They thought it was cool to buy cotton candy from the lunch lady - I even made one kid sing "I want a box of popcorn please".  I got strange looks from one parent when her little girl said to me: you make kids eat under the table.   One of the things I do is jokingly tell the kids that if they're overdue on paying for their lunch that they have to eat under the table.  I try to keep a serious face when I say it to the older kids because it's so much fun seeing the looks on their faces.  Okay, I might be a little bit evil.  :)

Last week, hubs did a speech to the business class at the high school.  He wasn't sure if he made much of an impact since high school kids don't show a whole lot of enthusiasm for a lot of things, especially on the last week of school.  WE also sat in the class and got to listen since it was his dad giving the talk, but he's heard it all before, so didn't comment much.  But last night when we were walking the parade route, a lady came up to hubs  and introduced herself as the mother of one of the boys that had been in the class.  She said her son was driving her nuts constantly quoting hubs.  She said he's constantly saying: WE's dad said....    It sounds like he made a real impression.  When I told WE about it last night, he said that there were two boys from the class that kept quoting hubs and he was glad that school was over because they were driving him nuts.  Since there were only 8 kids in the class, he's got at least a 25%  speech success rate.   It's nice to know that even if our kids don't want to listen to their father's wisdom at least somebody's kids do!

Tuesday, Tuna Catterole had an appointment to get spayed.  She was looking pretty preggers and I decided to postpone the appointment.  It's a good thing I did since yesterday she had 4 kittens.  Not quite the plan, but these things happens.  So now I've got to reschedule her spaying and find a home for a bunch of kittens.

Wednesday, June 5, 2013

Graduation

Last night was Angel #4's 8th grade graduation.  I don't quite understand the need for graduations other than high school.  I mean, think about it, you're having a big to-do for something that you're required by law to go to.  Your options are go to 8th grade or go to juvie, not much of a choice there, in my opinion.  Where I went to school, we didn't have things like kindergarten or 8th grade graduation, we just showed up for school the next year in a different classroom.  But, whatever.  The graduation ceremony was nice, the kids were all dressed up for the occasion, though there was a bit of drama when Angel #4 and another girl had the same style dress, but they were in different colors, so the world didn't implode or anything like that, so we dodged that bullet.  Things got a bit teary when they had a memorial for Kordell, a boy from her class that was killed in a hunting accident last summer.  His parents attended the graduation, which was incredibly strong of them, I don't know if I could have done it and pray I never have to make a decision like that.

Tomorrow I'm exercising my unlimited lunch lady powers and am implementing Sing-Along Thursday.  One of my jobs is to enter each kids ID number into a computer so they get charged for lunch.  They tell me their number and I enter it in, but not tomorrow.  The last day of school rules are going to be that they have to sing their number to me. When they asked me why, I told them I was the boss of lunch and so they just had to, end of story.  I'm so glad I don't let my lunch lady powers go to my head.