Lotsa Stuff Goin' On....

Let's see.... It's been a busy freakin' week. Nothing major & new and fabulously exciting, but the usual, just busy.

We found out this week at work that 2 of our new coworkers are going to be leaving. No sooner do they get trained & let loose at the desk, then they give their notice. Well.... Actually, one of them is woman in her 50's who's decided to get the hell out of Alaska while the getting is good. She says she just can't afford to keep living here, even though she was born & raised here and has lived here MOST of her 50+ years. So, she's sold her house and is getting out. Moving to Washington state, where the climate is a little more tolerable even at it's coldest. Where more gardening can be done due to the more temperate weather.

The other person to leave is the only guy on the circ staff. He's a putz, and we're not at all sorry to see him go. Unfortunately he isn't being fired like he deserves. Instead he's been "called up" in the Marine Reserves and is getting shipped off to Afghanistan. All the rest of us can hope is that if his stupidity and lack of responsibility result in ANYBODY getting shot (which, it surely will), it's HIM who takes the bullet. Sorry. I know that sounds cruel, but he's so irresponsible and careless in a job that DOESN'T require a lot of hard work and conscienciousness on the job that none of us can imagine how he's going to possibly pull his head out of his @$$ to do a job as intense as being a Marine serving in Afghanistan. If he's even HALF as careless and stupid over there as he's been here, SOMEBODY is going to get shot on his watch. We only hope that if anybody gets hurt or killed because of his stupidity, it's him and not somebody else. (I say we, because all the rest of us pages are in agreement that this guy is a complete & utter freaking moron & dead weight. He is quite adamant about how he loves just skating through life on a wing & a prayer and he doesn't give a rat's behind about this job. He only signed on because it looks good on paper. But the rest of us have to clean up his mistakes and cover for his blatant carelessness.) Anyway, not only can our boss NOT fire him (which she badly wants to do), she has to keep his job vacant so that when he returns from Afghanistan he can go right back to being dead-weight and a drain on our energies. Unfortunately the fact that he's a complete & utter moron and LIKES it that way became apparent right at the same time as he got called up. So, even though the boss was just starting to see that this guy needs to be replaced, she found that out too late to do anything about it. If she fired him now, it'd look like it was done because he got called up, and not because he's an idiot.

Anyway. That will leave us short-staffed. Once again. The Boss Lady's kinda pissy & short-tempered lately, but for once I can actually see why, and commiserate. Needless to say, the rest of us are keeping our head's down.

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I've been trying to get myself back on track with the healthy goals, again. Eatting more fresh fruit (easier now that spring is here and the fruit at the grocery store is decent). Getting my morning exercise in (easier now that I'm not feeling sick in one way or another). Taking my vitamins (actually the hardest goal, right now). And getting out in the sunshine (also rather easy right now, at least during the weekend).

I may not be able to do anything about these cysts, but at least I can try to live the rest of my life as healthy as possible. Maybe the vitamins and fresh fruits & veggies and exercising regularly will help. Maybe it won't. All I can do is try.

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School ends in a week. Next Friday is the last day for both Tay and I.

Then I have one free Friday before I start my summer hours, which means I'll stop working Sundays and start working Monday through Friday. I don't like that schedual. It means starting with my longest day and ending with my shortest. It also means having a normal weekend, but that means getting sucked into ALL the family get togethers and even occasional church attendence. I much prefer starting the work week with my shortest work day, and ending on a short work day. I much prefer having Fridays off so I can have a day to myself without having to join in on everything. (Not that my Fridays this year were peaceful, what with the volunteering then weekly grocery shopping trip.)

*sigh* I'm just not looking forward to starting the summer schedual. On the other hand, it will mean the end of my volunteer time. That will free up another roughly 3 hours per week.

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Scott and Tay got me my mother's day gift a day early. It's a new digital camera. It's a Nikon CoolPix S51. It's a nice, tiny little thing. Not as teeny-tiny as some, but a hell of a lot smaller than my 10-year-old Kodak EasyShare. Hopefully the pics will have much higher resolution so that next time I try to get a pic of the Northern Lights, they'll actually turn out. Anyway, as I said, they gave it to me a day early so hopefully I can get some pics of Tay tonight doing a speech about Amelia Earhart for the grandparents. The 4th graders have an end-of-the-year project in which they have to research a famous personality from history (though some of the people are still living, such as Bill Gates) and develop a speech and poster about that person and their accomplishments. Then they do a "wax museum" presentation for the school and all the families. We had the actual presentation on Thursday evening (for which I got off work an hour early), then the kids did the "show" for the school on Friday. Of course all the grandparents were at school, so Tay's going to do her speech for them tonight, hopefully in costume. *grin*

She's enjoyed learning about Amelia Earhart because the lady was cool and did a lot of interesting things and wasn't stodgy and straightlaced. *grin* There's a clip of Amelia & Eleanor Roosevelt in evening dress, looking rather mischevious, during a state dinner or some such. Evidently another time after Amelia and her hubby had dined with the president & Mrs. R, A. and Mrs. R snuck out of the white house, borrowed a plain from Eastern Airlines and went flying, both in evening dress. Apparently Ameliawanted to show Eleanor how beautiful night flying is. *grin* That's something Tay can relate to, even if she doesn't know flying. She gets the sneaking out in of some boring dinner, while all gussied up, and going out & doing something fun with a good friend. So, she's now found a heroine who did cool things and had fun. Even after finishing writing her speach, Tay actually went to the public library and borrowed another book on A.E. that she's reading through right now. A big ol' fat book based around all these letters A.E. wrote to friends & family. *grin*

She's kinda like her Dad..... She doesn't read a LOT, and it's hard to find something that interests her enough to want to read books about it. BUT, when she DOES find something that piques her interest, she'll find books for herself to read on the subject. *smile* Ok.... So maybe she's not as avid a reader as I am, but I can certainly understand wanting to enjoy the subject you're reading about. Now, if only I could get her to finish a novel once in a while. She picks them up and they might interest her initially, but it's hard to get her to finish. And, since her reading grade this year has depended somewhat on her finishing a book and taking a quiz on it, this has been a sticking point. Her reading grade WOULD be higher than it is (and it's not really low, it's a "B") if she'd just finished some of the books she's started, so she could quiz on them.

I think this is going to be a hard spot next year..... We won't be doing Accelerated Reading tests, so her reading grade is going to need to include some book reports or summaries to illustrate that she's understanding what she's reading. I wonder if we should require one every 2 weeks, or only every month. I guess that's something we can work out once we get her registered.

We have decided to go with I.D.E.A. for the homeschool program. We've heard nothing but good about this program, and they've got a very good support system for homeschooling parents. The "teachers' who kind of monitor, are actually home-schooling parents themselves. Some, of course, homeschooled priorly but have grown-up kids now. Some are currently homeschooling themselves. And they're not teachers persay, but more like mentors who need to be checked in with periodically (once a month) to ensure that the parents and students stay active in their schooling. Just what we need.... Some structure without being strictly outlined. Of course, with homeschooling we can pull her back to 3rd grade level maths, while allowing her to be at a 5th grade reading level, and science and social studies and penmanship at whatever levels she's actually at. (And, penmanship IS another big issue for her. Just this morning we saw something she'd written at the beginning of this school year and were able to compare it to something she wrote just in the last week..... Her handwriting hasn't improved much at all. And, it hasn't improved much at all since first grade. Which means that a lot of what she writes is illegible.)

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The weather has been pretty nice, though we're getting rain-showers almost every afternoon. The mornings start out beautiful and breezy. By 3 or 4 the sky is clouding over and we get dumped on. We've had a couple smaller thunder & lightning storms, but nothing spectacular yet. Anyway, by evening the rain clouds move on and we're back to beautiful. I kinda wish the rain would wait till about 8 or 9 in the evening, but *shrug* At least we're getting some beautiful weather intermixed with the rain. It could be TOTALLY dry and sunny, or TOTALLY overcast & rainy.

The trees still haven't leafed out, though they're going to do it any minute now. The buds are popping open, slowly, but there's no green yet. I should take a pic of my little birch with the buds on his branches, as soon as the battery on my new camera is charged. That way I can compare in a few days time when the leaves pop open.

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Gardening wise, I haven't been over to the FIL's since LAST Sunday evening. As of then nothing had sprouted from the seed I bought. Scott said that a lot of the cabbage and broccoli is finally sprouting, but none of the tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers, melon or onion has sprouted. *sigh* And evidently the FIL left everything outside over night on Thursday night. He thought it'd stay nice & warm, but the temp dropped so some of the stuff was looking pretty chilly yesterday morning when he went outside to leave for owrk. *big sigh* I KNEW I should have figured out some way to start my plants over here. I think I'm going to pull some of my plants out of my kitchen window and try sprouting a small pot of each of the two variety of tomato and each of the two variety of cucumber. Then at least hopefully I'll have one of each for MY place, even if nothing else comes of them over at the FIL's place. And, that's all I really have room for over here anyway.

I'm just so frustrated with all that. How am I ever supposed to develop some food self-sufficiency of things keep failing to sprout. For that matter, how am I supposed to do it if I can't grow things here, but only over at the FIL's house. I don't have time after work to go over there every evening after work. I NEED my stuff here, if I'm going to do much with it! There's been enough in the news that even Scott is starting to get my frustration. But, he's still not ready to be plowing up the front yard (or even part of the front yard) for a veggie garden.

I guess the FIL is talking about doing some potatoes over at his place too. I need to get out this evening and put my potato bins & compost bins up. But, the hubby has been rather slow about helping get the yard cleaned up and readied for any planting. He still hasn't ordered any gravel deliveries for our car-ports and the dog kennel, or the dirt for the other side of the yard where my laundry-tree and my potato bins and tiered planter are supposed to go. I don't know how he thinks I'm going to get to plant any Chard if he doesn't build me that tiered planter. And my strawberry crowns are supposed to be here next Saturday, and I still need him to commit to helping me with the bed we're going to plant the strawberries into. Either with plowing up the flower bed in front of our bedroom window & putting in some topsoil there, or building a new raised bed in the front yard. I kind of want a new raised bed, but think that using the existing flowerbed may be more conservative with space, since each strawberry crown needs up to 18 inches of space in either direction. If I stagger-plant them down the length of the flower bed, I won't need very much more space than has already been plowed up to date.

*sigh* Just frustrated.

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My coworker/Friend G.M. came over yesterday. She found a used futon over at the dump's transfer station a few weeks back, but has been hauling it around in the back seat of her car for about a month now because she needed help unloading it, shampooing it, and reloading it to get it up to her cabin, then unloading it there. So, we spent a couple of hours shampooing that thing on a tarp out on my front yard yesterday afternoon & evening. Then she stayed for dinner (spaghetti and garlic bread) before I went up to her cabin with her to unload the futon there. It was 10 pm before I got home, and 11 before Scott and Tay got home from buying Mother's Day gifts.

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Independence Day Challenge:

Plant Something: Flower seeds. Nothing major. Waiting for the temps to even out enough for veggie seeds.

Harvest Something: Nothing to be harvested yet. Even the dandilions greens are so small as to be barely visible. The Fireweed shoots should be popping up En Mass any day now, though.

Tend Something: My house plants. Nothing exciting here. Though I did also pull a couple of weeds out of my flower bed along the front of the house.

Preserve Something: Nada

Make Preparations: bought more fabric & wool ease yarn. Some of the fabric was from the store's clearance bin. Ok, so I should have been scouting the garage sales, but I haven't seen much in the way of sale adds in the weekend papers yet this year.

Cook Something: We grilled ShishKebabs tonight for us and the inlaws. Does that count??? I made that Lithuanian Chop Suey and it turned out pretty good. (And yeah, that was from scratch even if the beef wasn't organic or locally raised.)

Manage your Reserves: Not much to manage, at this point. Rotating my canned goods is kinda the norm when I buy more.

Work on/toward local Food Systems: nothing doing, yet, if you don't count the measly attempts at gardening with the FIL. This is the first weekend that the local Farmer's Market was opened. I didn't drive into town for it, though.

Compost Something: Yep. Almost every day.

Learn a New Skill: Nope. Unless you count constantly reminding myself that those bits of strawberry or that bunch of dead flowers can go in the compost bin as "learning" a new skill.

*sigh* And other folks go on about how THEY feel inadequate. Maybe this next week will be better??? I can only hope.

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Anyway, Scott and Tay just pulled up after hockey, so I better finish this post up and get back to tidying up the house. The inlaws and Dad are coming over for ShishKebabs tonight. I've gotten both toilets cleaned and need to tidy up the living room just a bit more.

To all my fellow Mom's: HAPPY MOTHER'S DAY! I hope it's a VERY good one!

Have a Blessed Day!