Some Pictures for Mom.

So, Mom emailed this morning and asked that I post a pic of the snow we received overnight. It's still actually snowing, but very lightly.

Not really sure that we got even the 3 inches that were the MINIMUM predicted snow-fall for the night and today. But today isn't over, either.

(BTW MOM, Tay thinks you're nuts for asking for pics of the snow AFTER you moved to GET AWAY from the snow. *grin* She says she LOVES YOU too!)


The first pic, up there, is the back yard currently cluttered with paraphanelia that came out of the sheds when we took down the old and put up the new.


Next is a pic of my snow-covered little veggie bed. I need to get out there (WITH shoes on next time, instead of just my slippers) and get that trowel out.







Here we've got a view at a ninety-degree turn from the veggie bed, toward the new sheds. My dead tomato plants in the pots there at the edge of the metal shed.













And lastly, the front of the house. Oh!!! That's right, this is the first pic I've taken with the new door on! So you can see the sweet little fan-window in the door!!! It's amazing how much more light comes into the living room with just that small window in the door.

Not sure if the picture enlarges enough when clicked that you can see the detail of the window, but it's a leaded-glass type window that looks very pretty. Unfortunately I also didn't get the leaves raked up from the birch there in front, and from the willow just to the left (out of sight in this pic) and piled over my strawberries as I'd hoped. Kinda wondering how effective it'd be to go out and do that today, and pile it all on top of the strawberries. I wonder if that'd protect them???

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For what it's worth, I'm not telling Tay how painful her singing is. Yes, Mom, I realize that if she was growing up singing hymns in church and practicing for a church choir, she'd probably sing better than she does. That doesn't mean she's easy to listen to NOW. However, knowing that she's enjoying it, I'm not going to tell her that I find her singing painful. I just wish I knew how to coach her toward better results. *wry smile* But, she DOES enjoy the game and ultimately that's more important than ruining her self-esteeme by telling her that her singing hurts my ears.

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Beyond that..... Not a heck of a whole lot going on around here these days. Homeschooling is trudging on ahead. Yesterday we had a good day without any arguing. Today has so far been ok. We just managed history in relatively little time without more than one or two minor huffs about whether or not the work would be done.

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At work, things are plodding along at this point. We've had very few books coming in for shelving lately, and very little going back out. It's actually pretty painfully slow right now. The lazy putz is back from military service. However, that military service (only 3 months of training, thus far, not an actual tour yet) seemed to knock some bluster out of that boy. Thank the gods for the Marines!!!! *wink*

At the same point that he's back and behaving himself, though, Liz is really pushing the limits of EVERYBODY'S patience. Liz has made it clear to the rest of us that she feels she's "above the law", and has taken it more openly upon herself to play boss. Yesterday, my coworker CM came in and started making the usual start-of-the-day small-talk, "how're you doing, what do you think of the snow" type stuff, and was immediately "shushed" by Liz with pantomimes as to how uptight Boss Lady was feeling about small talk. Within 5 minutes though, Liz started chit-chatting and making lots of noise herself. Several of us (Myself, CM, and 2 other coworkers) have been chewed out by Boss Lady lately for being in the work room, doing non-consequential duties while we should be out shelving. And yet, several times Liz has dared to do the same but has not been called to carpet about it by Boss Lady, though it'd be impossible for Boss Lady to NOT see that Liz is as guilty (if not more!) of this kind of thing than the rest of us. As CM and I have started to mutter under our breath (a kinda mantra almost, lately) "The hypocrisy is amazing!" around that place. Liz has also managed to get on the nerves of the 2 new ladies that work with us, regarding her over-bearing, patronizing "Only _I_ know the right way!" attitude and manner toward the rest of us. And yet when anybody says anything to Liz about it, she starts spouting off how unprofessional our appearance, or manner, or work habits are, and she's only trying to model professional behavior. *shaking head* There are more than a few of us who are about ready to REALLY show her "unprofessional". Oh, then CM found Liz out "shifting" books the other day, in an area of the library that CM had herself been shelf-reading not a half-hour before. CM has a tendency to leave all the books very tidily faced out as she shelf-reads her sections, and Liz had totally shoved the books, handful by handful, back on the shelves without ANY attempt to face them out. *grin* I think Liz came VERY close at that point to seeing exactly how unprofessional a coworker could be.

Another of our coworkers, Helen, is also grating on everybody's last nerve. Helen seems to be purposefully refusing to do much of ANYTHING, and gets out in the stacks and comes along behind the rest of us and in the guise of shelving, totally un-does hours of hard work that we've done with shelf-straightening and shelf-reading. Or she'll take a cart, half-full of cd's or DVDs and will take 2 hours out in the stacks to put a hand-full of them away and completely disorganizing things while she goes. Helen was demoted a few years ago because she refused to learn the computer systems in the Tech area where she was a Lib. assistant previously. She was demoted to page, because she's union and cannot be fired except for out & out mis-behavior on the job. She's systematically gotten all of her duties take away, EXCEPT shelving books, because she refuses to even TRY to do them right. Talk about passive agressive. She's about 63 years old, and thus NOT QUITE to retirement age, but she does about 1/4 of what Keiko (our Senior Page) does at almost 80 years of age. (And, Keiko is taking a LOT of breaks these days, and is only pulling desk shift and back-up shift through strength of will. Her eyesight is pretty well completely gone, and her speed is down to a snail's pace, but at least she TRIES!) The lot of us have taken to hoping quite openly that Helen will just go ahead and retire already. She's filling a position without actually doing much at all in the way of work. That's a 30 hour position that COULD be filled by somebody who'd actually be willing to pull their own weight.

All in all, CM, myself, CF, and EC are all doing our best to stay out of Boss Lady's way, and out of the work-room where we might be noticed to be not doing much ourselves. Not because we don't want to, but because there isn't much TO do. A lot of shelf-reading (real, and supposed) is going on, instead. Now if only Helen and Liz would stop tearing apart our shelves in their "shifting projects" and "shelving", the rest of us could have that library looking pretty damned spiffy in a very short amount of time. As it is, though..... It's been very frustrating at work the past couple of weeks.

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I think that pretty well covers it. I need to get back to work with Tay. She's finished with history now, so we need to get on to her Science, then Reading and Composition before she's done for the day. (Scott still needs to go over her math assignment from yesterday before she does today's work.)

Have a Blessed Day!

EDITED TO ADD: *grin* Meadowlark, you had me chuckling!!!! No, "LazyBoy" isn't related, he's one of the "casuals" at work. (Meaning his work week consists of 14 or fewer hours per week.) He started last Feb. and by the time his Marine Reserve unit got called up for training prior to assignment, he was already pissing off EVERYBODY in the building. He had a nasty know-it-all attitude and very lazy work habits. He was your quintisential 25 year old male-who's-never-had-to-work-for-a-living punk. Unfortunately, just about the time Boss Lady was herself getting piqued enough by his manners to fire his @$$, he was "called up" with the rest of his Reserve unit. Of course, once that happened any hope of firing him was out the window. (None of us would be hoping for his firing for military service, I just want to make that clear. Firing him for that would not even cross our minds. It was his incredibly bad attitude and very lazy work habits that we were all wanting to see him fired for.) Well, he's BACK from whatever Basic type training he went to for 3 months in California. So far it appears that the Marines knocked some of the bluster out of him.

(I've got a friend from HS who's a recruiter down at that particular fort or whatever now, and I half want to ask L. if he recalls seeing or hearing about "Lazy Boy" this summer. L. spent 2 tours in Iraq and 1 in Afghanistan and is "home" now and dealing with some brain problems. IE: last I heard, L's Dr's were concerned it might be cancer.)

Anyway, thanks for the chuckles. I'm going to have to pass this "info" onto CM, CF, EC, and Keiko. Except for CF, the rest of us are Mom's and find ourselves quite frequently adopting a "Drill Sergent" demenor with some of the unruly children that come through our building. (CF may not be a Mom, but she's got a commanding way about her anyway.)

Blessings.