Knollwood Daily Photo

Moving. Truck. Sink. Hole.

And in the life imitates low art dept...
Martha, the boys and I jumped on the train into the city to meet up with truck at Em and Ed's. Clutching our "all you can ride for $5" tickets, I joked to them that if we didn't take the train home, would someone please remind me to pick up the van at the train station. Hours of toting, team building, dining and camaraderie later, I looked out the window while getting into bed and wondered why the van wasn't in the driveway.
This was one time I was glad Martha and her entourage were loitering on the front porch.

You know,
it's not so much that the mopes loitering on the porch spend their Saturday nights using an atlas to settle disputes. It's the atlas that worries me...



OrkinTime Yet?

It is also commonly used in small quantities around the home as an insect trap, as small flies and wasps are drawn to the sweet smell and taste of the drink.
Right.

I have it on the highest authority that my fascination of snapping pics of tschotschkes and large vinyl insects will eventually wane. In the interim...thank you for bearing with me. Part of my conscious rationale, having read that Wired article about the psychological basis behind the SuperMemo program and repetition at the point of forgetting etc. etc., I play around with camera and peripherals everyday just to reinforce the skills I have acquired. So it's basically EduProps and other whimsical items. Or the dogs being "cute." Pick your poison.

Knollwood Daily Photo

Knollwood Daily Photo

"The children get caught up in the activities of the parents"
Which is OK when the parents are recycling computers, taking food to a food pantry or putting new missalettes in the pews at church. If Dad has “ a substantial criminal record, including three trips to prison, and a pending felony robbery charge” chances are that the extra-curricular activities are of a different kind. So, no, I don’t think Chicago Police Superintendent Jody Weis and/or Mayor Daley were out of line in laying some of the blame on the parents for the shooting of an eight year old. The timing seems a bit harsh, what with the kid still in intensive care, but this may be the teachable moment. Allowing a suitably polite amount of time to pass will just, I am sorry to predict, will just vault us ahead to the next tragedy.

“Although parents need to be accountable, laying blame is a simplistic response to complex problems,” was the response of a University of Chicago urban violence wonk. Well, you have to start somewhere. And we’re talking about an eight-year old, who for today is the innocent face of “complex problems.”

Aint* No Party…Like a First Things Party
Kinda makes me want to retool my resume.

*Sorry, when I Googled the lyrics, I was autocorrected to remove the apostrophe. O tempore…

Well, if will. i. am* has one…

*oh wait, I was thinking of will. i. amparkedoverasinkhole.
And if your car is going to slide into a sinkhole, you’d better have something more powerful on your bumper than an over-priced magnet sent to you as a’thank-you’ from a duplicitous political snake oil salesman.

Tomorrow's Knollwood Daily Photo...
might be very exciting.
"Someone's"* beau has parked with his right front tire on the sinkhole, just begging the laws of physics for punishment....

*you know who you are, Fran...

Grin…and Bear It!
From the educational process that brought you
“Due to Circumstances Beyond Our Control Shakespeare Month Has Been Expanded to Ninety Days,” comes “School’s Not Out This Summer!”

A bit of remediation. A bit of review. With an emphasis on language* and math.
And some bug study to take advantage of the natural bugginess of an Illinois summer.



Maybe some remedial home ec, too.


* First item: Differentiate between etymologist and entomologist.

Knollwood Daily Photo

The more dangerous of the sinkholes.
Smaller diameter, but several feet deep.
But who knows, some morning we may wake to find that the cone has been swallowed.

A School Equipment Recommendation:
Learning Resources Single Hand Pointer
Many useful applications. Especially useful when someone says, "Could you give me a hand?" And the expected puerile schtick.

I Got a Rock(et)
Work is like a box of chocolates…you know.
As much as we are bound by the realities and rhythms of the liturgical, school and calendar year, the variety and surprises that make no two days alike would quite the incentive to come to work even if I didn’t need the job. (Although
some surprises might be too much for my faint spirit.)

I checked the “drop off box” this morning and found the remains of some sort of amateur rocket with a note attached. The rocket was found on a roof across from the park (I’ve seen a big house under renovation and I would bet that’s the one) and had been labeled with a request that if found it should be returned to our parish school. It looked a little weather worn, so I think it may have been up there a long time. I’m sure it will be the most fascinating item to go over in the inter-office mail – at least this week.

I hope the students (if they’re still in our school) won’t be disappointed that their rocket didn’t get out of town. There is a nice lesson, though, in the realization that people follow through on a request for a rocket’s return.

Knollwood Daily Photo

Illinoisans pray as frequently as the rest of the country, they were less likely to report receiving answers to those prayers.
I guess that makes me doubly blessed.
But, in the future, I may go up to Ed & Em's new place in Wisconsin when I need to do some serious tactical prayer. You know, just to play it safe...

Ask yourself a few straightforward questions: Do you want to go outside and steal a car? Do you feel the need to obtain a missile launcher?
For your consideration... A little something from the Chronicle of Higher Education.

I think he makes a good point about divorcing moral and aesthetic revulsion from a perceived need to find a cause and effect relationship between video games and bad behavior.

Critics warn that anyone who plays the game will end up doing in the real world exactly what they do in the virtual world. In other words, watch out for a run on missile launchers and vigilante strippers.

And somewhere between MarioKart, Simpsons' Road Rage and GTA IV there must be something that would inspire Chuck to go ahead and get his driver's license.

Alrighty, then...
From today's Trib:At St. Sabina on Sunday, ushers distributed light-blue fliers with a silhouette of boxing great Muhammad Ali in fighting stance that read: "Ain't nothing like a comeback." When Pfleger entered the church, the congregation rose to its feet and cheered.
It never appears to be Christ crucified who is being preached.
But kudos on finally finding a green vestment!

Knollwood Daily Photo

For travels more edifying...
One can follow Fr. Robert Barron as he travels to the Holy Land.

No, really...
The building inspector finally visited the St. Is store on Friday. So, any day now, the cords will be out of the house. Considering that the Foundation located in a city that can use all the legitmate business it can get, the delay in getting all the appropriate permits has been rather disheartening. As supportive as I try to be, bringing technolgy to the underserved isn't my mission and I grow short on patience. Very short. The times when money is scarce and tech accoutrements abounding are the worst. I can tap dance through the bills or do a grand jete over the drives and monitors. But not both.

In ancient times, hundreds of years before the dawn of history...



Eddie falling a bit short on enthusiasm...but with a high degree of precision in constructing a dinner table Salisbury Plain.

Knollwood Daily Photo

Neighbor Adam stopping by to check out status of sink hole.

”But Where do We Get a Dwarf?”
Bridget told me that a friend of hers, lets call him Mr. Ben R. from Chicago, is an occasional reader here. He made an observation along the lines of, “for someone who says how much she despises pop culture, your mom knows a lot about it.” Ouch. The truth hurts.

And there’s the dreadful matter of how much I have let the taint of pop culture infect my family. At this point, it’s pretty much out of my control. The collective intellect is no etch-a-sketch and their mind-set “is one doodle that can't be un-did.” Right?

Let me illustrate...
Yesterday we were talking about the summer solstice events at Stonehenge. I suggested a family friendly, manageable re-creation using the desktop Stonehenge set. And the only question raised is, “Don’t we need a dwarf? Or some sort of leprechaun?”

I think that the problem *may* have been, that there was a Stonehenge monument on the stage that was in danger of being *crushed* by a *dwarf*. Alright? That tended to understate the hugeness of the object.

Oh, Benjamin, you are so right.
And if you happen to be in the Knoll-hood, do drop in. Just watch out for the sinkhole.

Later Today!
Live blogging from Stonehenge.
OK, "Stonehenge."

Yeah, it was like that...
Em and Big Ed dropped in last night and asked if I was interested in going out to dinner. Since Rick and Chuck were off to some sort of charitable computer event (something about giving computers to women leaving jail - I'm assuming it was to reward a firm purpose of ammendment and not to enable them to expand any criminal ambitions into the electronic realm.), Eddie had grabbed a Hot Pocket* and I was going to have some pudding and go to sleep at 7:00pm, their offer was appealing. In fact, my stomach having settled down around 6:00pm, the thought of something more than scintillating conversation was becoming increasingly desirable.

They chose a restaurant that I had only heard of (there are a lot of those these days). My only request was for a place that offered French Onion soup. (I've been taking a variety of prescriptions that leave me feeling chronically queasy, sort of a low-grade morning sickness feeling which is the one part of motherhood for which I have no nostaligic feelings. I'm thinking back to that summer before Eddie was born when I was constantly in search of the perfect bowl of soup.) Ed ordered some sort of rib plate, remarking that it couldn't possibly be what the description said. It was.
Like that rack of ribs at the drive-in in the Flintstones. The only thing missing was flashing lights and some wait-staff members to sing a song of shame, in the manner of that ice cream parlor that we loved to visit back in high school. I've gotta ask my sister what the name was. I can remember the place in great detail - but not the name. I should call my sister anyway. She called me the other day to let me know that Brownie, their 8+ year old guinea pig, had slipped into a coma and was soon to be leaving us. She should have called the Guinness Book next, Brownie being the equivalent of a 115 year-old woman.

My dainty mother, of the delicate appetite and petite portions, would find herself afflicted with sudden dyspepsia when confronted with an unusually large portion. I had not seen that type of reaction until last night, when the waiter put the platter of ribs in front of Ed. Most of them are in my fridge now, waiting to be picked up after Em finishes with Summer Reading Club registration this morning. I think Dr. & Mrs. Big Ed have their meal selections for the coming week all ready.




*what kind of mother am I?

Knollwood Daily Photo

annee internationale de la pomme de terre
Because it sounds more appealing en francais.
I just was never a potato loving kind of girl.

But…
For many of those who work daily with the potato, it has become an often passionate way of life.
yes, the potato:

The Potato with which I work daily
A work award for less than meritorious service. Which became something of a pseudo-science experiment in dessication.*
Perhaps I should enter this in the Year of the Potato photo contest.

*I would think that a three year old potato is glycoalkaloid free.

Knollwood Daily Photo

Winner of $57M Mega Millions has criminal record
Good things happen to bad people.
Good people flummoxed. Or at least want to establish a disqualifying cut off point for badness.

Another Plug...
for the Google moon phase gadget.
It helps me brace myself when answering the phone.
And despair.com has the perfect shirt for these days...
If only my employer would pay for it.

Behind the scenes at...
Despair Inc.m last night on NightLine.
That was fun.
As their website says..."A company that would create dissatisfied customers in the process of exploiting demoralized employees while selling overpriced and ineffective products to remediate the problems caused by the very process itself." And we got to meet them. I should watch NightLine more often. (I still think it's all Ted Koppel talking about the Iranian hostage crisis.)

The Next BIG Thing!
Having embraced speed stacking - the rugby of the homeschool set - we are now looking into pen spinning. At least, I am. Maven that I am, the rest of the gang won't be far behind.

Besides promising increased dexterity and the ability to amaze people, it also looks to have certain therapeutic benefits. I haven't yet told my doctor that I dropped out of "finger therapy," so if this helps I'll be willing to give it a testimonial. (Sorry, doc, I'm paid hourly and I share the car with my daughter...I just wasn't seeing an encouraging cost/benefit/hassle ratio in leaving work and driving to the hospital 3 times a week to have someone lead me in finger exercises.) And the pen spinning holds out the ability to amaze people.

Knollwood Daily Photo
Checking various daily photo blogs (especially Paris and New Orleans) is a treat.
And I have reached the level of just enough skill with Fran's camera to consider starting my own. With a bit of a hold up because I ruined the 'pins' in the jump drive for uploading pics and the proper cord has never surfaced in the m************ house full of m************ cords... But I digress...

What, of interest, would there be in my neighborhood?
Franny's garden.
Finches that could lead Fr. Zuhlsdorf into envy.
Three gas stations battling to see who goes over the $5 per gallon mark.
A variety of restaurants, some for whom trans-fat is the least of the diners' worries.
At this time the three finalists are:
1. a plush finch in a variety of poses

2. the family dogs PhotoShopped into a variety of patronizing poses

3. a sinkhole chronicle


The sinkhole is winning. On all levels...

—is that when Satan pops out of the wedding cake and takes us all straight to hell?
This may be the most versatile quote of the year. I fear that I'll be using it frequently. For all those ineffably bad moments...

I'm always on the lookout for another sign of the Apocalypse.
Me too, Mr. Kass...

Man changes name to ``In God We Trust.''
Still required to pay cash.

Does this make me look fat stupid?
The more I think about Bishop Trautman and the ineffable, I find that I am having a difficult time separating defense of the language and the overall ability of my fellow American Catholics to handle words with more than two syllables from the personal offense I take as "Ellyn Mary Smith von Huben I was raised Lutheran but now I'm Catholic. This plays to make weak point. I've long grown (figuratively and literally) beyond standing in front of the mirror and worrying about what makes me look fat. But I think I'm still as sensitive as an adolescent when it comes to looking stupid.

I'm not talking about acting stupid. Middle-age has had the nice effect of loosening me up as far as how I behave. Once painfully shy, I have finally shed the uptight coccoon of self-consciousness. Except... My weakness is I don't mind being thought of as an ass. Just not a stupid one.

Example: There was an incident at work when I was taking down information for an upcoming baptism. The mother spelled out the name of the guest priest who would be baptizing and added that he was a Jesuit. Then she said, "Put S period J period after his name. That stands for Society of Jesus." There was a great spiritual exercise in disciplining myself to simply say, "hmm mmm." When my brain was rapidly vacillating between, "No s**t Sherlock," "How stupid do I look" or a scaldingly sarcastic "You don't say?"

Now I'm thinking way back to when I was first married. I was making a little extra money doing typesetting for my father. I was working on an application form for a juried art fair when I came across the term SASE. My fresh BA in art history along with a fairly strong course of study studio art was of no use here. What was this SASE and why hadn't I ever had/used/bought one? What if I should need one? Is it like a GRE? Or was it part of one's portfolio? My new husband had studied at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago - did he have an SASE? Why was I feeling so stupid??? My dad, who had studied at Milwaukee's Layton School of Art, explained it to me. Without making me feel stupid.

Without the proper tending, from parents, teachers, spiritual leaders, the grim future predicted in Idiocracy (there's a reason it's so funny...) is not that far off: "But the English language had deteriorated into a hybrid of hillbilly, valleygirl, inner-city slang and various grunts."

Come on Feel the Illinoyance...
There's lots of gen-u-ine suffering going on in Illinois and surrounding areas, what with the tornadoes, flooding etc. So I do know how truly blessed we at the end of Smith Ave. are.

But... (and most of us do have a big but) I am maintaining a manageable level of annoyance.

I double checked my checking account before calling Dominick's deli for a pizza. Just to verify that I had about $100 left. But... noooo, I'm $17.83 in the hole. Huh? Fifteen minutes and a nice little talk with the nice lady at the bank later, I knew what the problem was. I didn't feel much better, but at least I knew. Now to make it until payday or when Rick gets paid, whichever comes first. The girls were really nice about my mini-apoplexy, showering me with flowers, some twenty dollar bills and the always appropriate M&Ms.

I should be happy that things shook out in the order that they did, for if a few automatic deductions had gone thru a day earlier, our debit card wouldn't have made it out of the SuperWalMart with $230 in groceries. Like I said, we're blessed.

It would have done me quite a bit of good to go to Mass this morning but I'm stuck at home. My car is at church but I'm at home. Yeah, there are worse places to have a belt snap than a block away from work/church. If the windows worked, I might have considered living out of the van. Stranger people have tried to find sanctuary on the grounds of our parish.

So...we're here, high and dry, the internet is working, we've gone 7 days since a gardener has sliced the TV cable, we have a week's worth of provisions. Maintaining a suitable level of annoyance. Nowhere near ineffably annoyed. Though the week-end is young.

A Cure for the Killer Tomato
Buy locally. Grow your own.
If this is too much trouble, may I suggest a way that you, too, can have the wonderful and safe tomatoes that my family is enjoying?
1) Time travel back to 1981 and have a baby girl.
2) Bear with her (and pray a lot!) during a trying adolescence.
3) Rejoice as she becomes a gem of an adult; appreciate her contributions to the family while she's still living at home
4) Encourage her when she takes up gardening as a hobby.
5) Kick back and enjoy the tomatoes. (Hint that you're anticipating more pico de gallo...)

And did I mention the extremely fresh broccoli?

Catholics coming out of a lunchtime Mass at Erie's St. Peter Cathedral weren't familiar with "ineffable."
What? Nobody (no ‘girls’ of a certain age, at least) read Love Story? Love Story, the 1970’s cheese phenom? I never thought I’d find a need to quote Love Story, but if my recall is accurate that book expanded my vocabulary beyond my ability to read obscenities out loud in Public Speaking. (that is a whole ‘nother story) So, anyway, Oliver comes home from work and finds Jennifer “ineffably” sad. The right word. Precisely right. And if it works with Love Story-struck ninth graders I think the comprehension bar has been set with appropriate restraint.

Via Whispers in the Loggia I read of Erie Bishop Donald Trautman’s
devaluation of the popular intellect in regards to the translation of the Roman Missal. He said the draft includes words such as "ineffable" that would not be in the ordinary vocabulary of people.

”We should certainly have elevated tone, but words like that are just beyond the common comprehension." So, Your Excellency, you’re saying ineffable is incomprehensible. They’re sort of vocab cousins, aren’t they?

Vanitas...
My meticulously manicured fingers and I are in a dual to the death. One of us has to go.

Because I wished to project a spiffy image for our week-end in the city, I let my nails grow to what I consider to be a grotesque length. Yes, my nails are just approaching the length that many women consider to be the absolute minimum length, but I can take no more. Especially considering the egregious typos. Work typos like "the Catholic Church as a living vulture." That kind of thing. And those are the typos that were caught.

"Emily-orate" My Guilt

Now I no longer must feel like a failure because I never took my girls to the American Girls Store. They found it on their own. If Bridget had known in advance she would have brought in Kirsten for a head transplant. Guess we'll have to make another trip to the big city. And maybe Emily will be able to purchase that doppelganger in a box.

Where is the line for the head transplants?

Knock...
and it may be opened.
Pay AT&T and your internet may work again. (After three or four phone calls. What never fails to amuse is that if one calls AT&T in the grips of a financial fiasco, the first thing the rep tries to do is sell more services)

Sooo...we're back in business. We'll drink to that!

Big Week-End...
Too hot and humid to hang around for B.B. King, Buddy Guy et. al.
Too late to get over to the Washington Library to see Augusten Burroughs. (Only two of us wanted to see him anyway...neither of us a librarian...ahem, Em)
But lots of BIG, BIG stuff.
Starting with a visit to a big door:

It was a Wild and Stormy Week-End
A tornado passed over Smith Ave. Most of the girls and I were on the train headed to Chicago and had no idea what we missed. Rick and the boys took cover in the basement. It wasn't all that surprising since Eddie and I had gone to church at 5:00pm and by the time Mass was over so little light was coming through he windows that I would have thought it was midnight. Even waiting at the train station an hour later, I felt that the air had an ominous feeling.

Fran was perplexed when I asked her how she managed to get a picture of the tornado.
Yeah...right. Well, without my glasses on and looking over pics while still on the camera it looked like a real good tornado picture. So good that it could be used professionally. Like by the Field Museum. And in the tiny format I also didn't notice those stalwart folks who appear to be walking through the twister.

"If you don't like the weather, wait five minutes."
And so begins our girls' week-end in the city...

The word is glycoalkaloids
More tomorrow as we celebrate the International Year of the Potato.

Michael's Has A Craft Sale, Five DREs Hospitalized
More fun via The Ironic Catholic.
Too bad it’s satir. I have $5 left on a Michael’s gift card and it’s burning a proverbial hole in my wallet.

Take heart in the deepening gloom…
The world continues to deteriorate.
The township decides to remedy to sink hole in the cul de sac with an orange cone. This is, indeed, a real sink hole – as in the ground under the street has washed away. So, when two shovels of asphalt applied two weeks ago were sucked into the hole, the township sent a cone. This may be the cone we requested last summer, right before the pirate party. Just so our guests wouldn’t break an ankle. We parked the Jeep over the hole instead. Now, in light of the township and our mutual dwindling financial resources, the best thing I can hope for is that they don’t dig up the street and our van (sans famille? peut etre?) falls in. They can replace our van and the old one would create substructure, just like those junked cars that are put out to sea to create reefs.

Still no internet at home. Eddie voices concern over the children who aren’t getting the Free Rice. I’ll try to earn a few thousand grains on my lunch break. Now about WarCraft…

…and reflect that whatever misfortune may be my lot, it could only be worse if I worked at St. Sabina.

Bow ties are politically, theologically and morally neutral. I think.
So why am I put off by St. Sabina’s bow-tie clad parish council president “Minister Gerald Stewart” on the WGN morning news. Bow-tie wearing Minister? Hmmm.

The Only Annual Collection for Retired Priests of the Archdiocese of Chicago
Talk about timing.
The envelopes, which also bear way too much of a resemblance to the Annual Cardinal’s Appeal envelopes and thereby will be overlooked by 95% of the people leaving Mass, do not have a line on which one can specify a specific priest whose retirement one would like to sponsor. Or expedite. Like, um, a ‘local’ media spectacle whose name could take the place of Marvin K. Mooney.

And maybe we could all chip in a little to buy him some green vestments, too.

With all its hopes, dreams, promises, and urban renewal, the world continues to deteriorate…
It’s hard to follow up a week-end of so many minor disasters. But we’re trying. The van’s AC works, which is good because the windows don’t. But yesterday the fan quit.

Then I felt something funny during dinner. Like, what is that sharp thing floating around my mouth? funny. So it’s off to the dentist on Thursday morning to have a molar spackled or whatever is the cheapest and easiest thing to do. (If I only had a dentist in the family? Wait…I do. Wonder if he could work with a variety of cements and some fifty year-old dental instruments salvaged from my uncle’s garage…)

This Camera Stuff is Fun!
My dad had cautioned me against viewing everything through a lens. But I do enjoy it sometimes - things look different through the camera.
I had forgotten how gorgeous my children are. (Bridget, here, for example.)
And how dreadful the carpet is.
That's OK - it sure beats gorgeous carpeting and dreadful children.

If Innocence had a Fragrance…
I think this would be it. I received these soaps at work for my birthday. The whole happy-birthday-the-toilet-has ceased-to-function scenario kept me from placing them in our French themed downstairs cloaca powder room. Instead, having been deemed “too nice to use,” they sit on my bedside table, the chipped Wedgwood saucer making an absolutely perfect home. White lilac when I drift off to sleep. White lilac first thing in the morning. Every day a split second when I once again feel the innocence of a five-year-old carrying a bouquet of lilacs for teacher onto the bus. Innocence.

Billy Joel, history teacher…
via Joanne Jacobs.
Most of the 11th grade U.S. history grade for the semester will be determined by the final project: A group presentation on the significance of the lyrics of Billy Joel’s We Didn’t Start the Fire, which lists events and people from 1949-89. It starts with Harry Truman and Doris Day, goes on to “birth control, Ho Chi Minh, Richard Nixon back again” and ends on “rock and roller cola wars.”

Maybe I have things bassakwards here, but I thought the purpose of education was to prepare you to understand things. Deep things . Like We Didn’t Start the Fire. And Life Is a Rock (But the Radio Rolled Me). Deep.

At Home with the Pouting Putto
It’s great to be back at work. Home is where the heart is and luckily work is something of a second home in which I can decompress from the other home (the inverse is true, too.) For a lovely early summer week-end in which no one was injured, seriously ill, no teeth chipped or lost it stunk.

Friday: Looked kind of blustery from my window at work. But my limited view of the shrubs next to the big brick church gives me a skewed meteorological perspective. It was really windy. Some said micro-burst in our neighborhood. I don’t know if that has been verified or if my family just likes to say micro-burst. There were a lot of branches down. And when I saw nothing on the digital sign at the corner Citgo, I had to figure either the prices went up so high that the sign exploded or power was out.

The good news was that Exiles arrived and I had other readable treats, so I was good to go. The girls showered by candlelight. (Humidity build-up and mildew is not the only downside of a bathroom with no windows.) After a dinner of pizza, cooked at Dominick’s deli which did have power, Rick and the boys went up to the St. Is store. To “check things out.”

Saturday Atypical for a Saturday at the end of May, Eddie woke up complaining of a stomach ache. The power was back on. But that little matter of the late bill with AT&T led to a new phase of internet withdrawal. This too shall pass. Right? Right!?! I’m dealing with it OK. The boys went back to the shop, including Eddie who decided he could recuperate better with internet access.

Someone took a shower and the faucet handle fell off. The good news was that it could be repaired. (Fran left a pliers in the bathroom just in case…) The other good news was that the inner works of the faucet were became turned 180degrees (in some fashion – don’t expect me to explain), undoing the hot is right/cold is left protocol in effect from the last time the shower was repaired.

Sunday Afraid to tinker with the shower at an early hour, I bathed with baby wipes and tried not to sit too close to anyone at 7:30am Mass. The rest of the day was given over to reading, tidying, catching myself when I was compulsively drawn to the computer and waiting for the next big thing to go wrong. Oh, and sneezing and weeping. The cottonwoods, of course.

And a little fun with Fran’s camera.

Waiting for the Benadryl to kick in...

Fuchsia Power!

Half Explanation of my Lost Week-End
(Yes, despair.com always has what I need.)
Working at home off the clock undoing a major mistake. A mistake easily remedied, except for the fact that it had been stapled between two non-mistakes. 95 times. A good example of how our parents' teachings ingrain themselves in our inner dialogue, though in this case maybe not enough. With each staple I could hear my late father..."Think twice; print, cut, glue or whatever once.

Kinda makes me sorry I threw away that stapler pincher thing that had blowing around the house for twenty years. A small Exacto knife took a great deal of the wear and tear off of my Sally Hansen Fuschia Power X-Treme Wear (it's got Bioactive Glass that bonds to nail proteins. Scientific, right? And cheap.) finger nails. I hadn't painted my own fingernails since sometime in March 1979, while BabyBot was napping. It was soon apparent that I had hit the end of an era. I think the new era is still going strong - this finger nail stuff is not too practical. And fingers need more maintenance than toes.