Garden Update!

Ha ! Not the garden update I had planned,  but here you go!
We are in the midst of a spring snowstorm.  Luckily, we knew it was coming and covered lots of stuff and have the fireplace on for the peach tree. As you can see, the greenhouse is nice and steamy (well, maybe not steamy, but there is condensation, so I take that as a great sign that it is at least warmish in there!) I haven't planted much outside the greenhouse, but our trees, lavender, roses, grapevines, and butterfly bushes were flowering, so some of the lumps you see in the snow are various buckets and tarps.  The snow cover on the table (center this photo) is accurate though--about 8 inches so far!  When I checked the greenhouse Thursday night, the celery, lettuce, peas and kale were growing nicely (sorry, other veggies, I can't remember what else is in there!).  The tomato, cucumber, and squash plants are still inside the house, so they are fine....I'm just happy this is today, not two weeks from today for Lobstafest!

Weekend Update (no, not that Weekend Update...)

I didn't get as much done in the garden as I wanted to--in fact, all I really got "done" was watering the things already planted.  There is lettuce (almost enough to pick) and kale (doesn't look so good...I don't think it likes the warm greenhouse) and a lot of sprouting things in both the greenhouse and the garden (I think, but I'm not sure, because the list is not right here:  asparagus (2 stalks, 5th year...I think I need to plant another plant), beets, cilantro, lettuce, kale, carrots, peas, lots of green onions and mint, some garlic, maybe some winter potatoes (or they might just be weeds).  The peach tree and grape vines both have blossoms and the tiger lilies are poking up in the front yard...probably we'll get snow this week, right?

We spent Friday night at the ski apartment--the girl stayed with a friend, so it was just The Boy, Mr. IM, the dogs, and I.  The snow is starting to melt and it is definitely mud season.  We're planning to keep the apartment through the summer and probably for next season as well, so we spent some time cleaning and sorting what was up there to switch out winter for summer stuff.  We also had a nice walk around Breckenridge and picked up some tourist magazines to decorate with. This was the first time the "new" cats stayed home "alone".  They all seem to be alive, so everything must have gone well.  (Their new game is for Alice and BOGO to chase each other and see whose tale is the fluffiest, while Sid watches)

Saturday I graded a giant pile of neglected papers and Sunday after church we spent some time looking for a new bed for The Girl (the rickety loft was removed a couple weeks ago).  In our search The Boy found his dream bed--a loft with a desk underneath (Um, wait...didn't we just remove that bed?)

So, an exciting weekend all around!

Time flies...

I saw a video today that was filmed in the building where I attended grades 7-12 and taught my first year of teaching.  It was actually a very serious video, about preventing drinking and driving, yet I found myself smiling because I could identify who taught in each classroom they entered, as well as which hallway the filmers were in. I had a moment of "Wow!  I spent a lot of time there to recognize things after all that time"...then I realized that I've been teaching at my current high school more than twice as long as I spent at my alma mater. It was a weird realization, because I don't feel like I've been at my current place very long. (In fact, this morning I came out of an unfamiliar testing room and both my office mate and I said, "um...where are we?").  I guess it is true that time flies when you're having fun!

The new cats settle in...or not

So our new friends, Sid (the not so) Vicious and BOGO have been with us a few weeks.  Sid is basically a sharp stuffed animal who likes to hang out in weird places (here he is, wrapped up like a burrito...)  He's very mellow, except for when he's not and decides that all other living creatures are snacks.  He is remarkably tolerant of being toted, dragged, and otherwise bothered  by all of us who think he is hilarious. When he is being mellow, he turns to jello when picked up...like trying to hold on to a slinky...

This is how Alice feels about the new cats...

And here is BOGO...she seems to migrate between "under the bed" and the master bath. She has occasionally ventured a few steps into the Bonus room, but always hustles back to the bedroom. She doesn't seem overly scared of the other pets--in fact, almost nightly, Alice charges at her and almost nightly she charges back.  I think she is just kind of a "homebody" and likes to hang out around her kingdom.

Here is what a "normal" evening looks like at our house these days....All three followed me into the bathroom and formed what The Boy calls the "triangle of hate" (although I think that Sid and BOGO are mainly apathetic in this illustration).


Sooo..they are settling in...we have occasional battles for sleeping on my feet and the other night The Girl reports she was "trapped" between Alice and Sid for a while until they got tired of growling and fell asleep...

Stay tuned...it's like Wild Kingdom around here...

What I read in March 2017

I found another series that I can't put down this month--I'm sure you'll figure out the theme...
1. Just One Damned Thing After Another (Jodi Taylor)--Sorry for the title...I came across this as a "Librarian suggestion" at the library...the series is about a woman who works for an organization that "investigates historical events in a contemporary fashion"  ("Don't call it time travel!").  Pretty entertaining and addictive, as you can tell by the additional titles this month...
2.  Miracle at Coney Island (Claire Prentice)--Nonfiction book about some of the first premature babies treated using incubators...at Coney Island!  No kidding, before incubators were found (at all) in hospitals, there was a doctor who had an "exhibit" at Coney Island and is credited with saving hundreds, maybe thousands, of preemies.  The author wrote another book about Coney Island that is in my pile for next month.
3.  A Symphony of Echoes (Jodi Taylor)--continuing adventures...
4.  When a Child Is Born (Jodi Taylor)--and more, this one actually a short story, but entertaining none the less
5.  A Second Chance (Jodi Taylor)
6. A Bridge Across the Ocean (Susan Meissner)--Set on the Queen Mary, mostly, it is slightly different from Meissner's other books.  It still has historical fiction pieces, but there is also a bit of a ghost story that felt "extra".  Good book if you like Meissner,  probably not a good one to start with if you've never read anything by her.
7. The Castle of Lyr (Lloyd Alexander)--Sorry, Lloyd Alexander fans, I just can't get into these...but The Boy loves them...so two more to listen to in the car and then we'll either have to go back to Harry or find a new series...They just seem like a bad copy of Lord of the Rings...and we all know the main character is going to grow up to be "King Arthur" (or whatever we are calling him in this version of the myth...)
8.  The Sleepwalker (Chris Bojalian)--Actually very good, and like all Bojalian's books, the twist was great--I should have seen it coming, but I didn't!
9.  A Trail Through Time (Jodi Taylor)
10.  No Time Like the Past (Jodi Taylor)

(Un) Fortunately, there are currently no more published Jodi Taylor books, so next month I will have to move on to something else...Don't worry, I have a pile that I am ready to dig in to!

April Again

I started writing this last April (2016) and never published it.  I'm going to go ahead and publish it now, because it's actually not a bad piece of writing (if I do say so myself) and because I've been terrible at keeping up here...so here it is...stay tuned for "what I read" later this week and garden updates (as soon as it stops snowing...)

April is a Bittersweet month.

It's the month of Columbine and Oklahoma City...when I spend way too much time running through believable and unbelievable scenarios in my mind about my school, and my kids' schools, and the world in general. It's when I realize that the families and survivors of Oklahoma City and Columbine have lived entire lifetimes since they lost their family members, their friends, their children, their parents....Children have grown up and had children of their own. 

It's the month of 420, when schools seem to battle the entire month...saying, "Yes marijuana is legal for people over 21 but not for you and not in school." 

It's springtime, and it's snow storms...writing and rewriting lesson plans, trying to decide what is most important to keep and what can be discarded with dwindling days left in the school year. Its days of crossing fingers that we have a snow day, and days of crossing fingers that we don't (and the roads are good enough to get to school in a timely manner!)

it's remembering all the crazy things that we did in college during Grand Prix week and missing those friends, then calling them on early Saturday mornings ,and late Thursday nights... and chatting or emailing or texting. And getting phone calls from college roommates who are taking their kids on "final" college visits and talking for an hour in my bathroom, because my family is sleeping, while she sits in a parking lot...laughing, sniffling, and remembering... and planning for "when all the kids are in college, we'll.....".....

April is when I think about Rwanda and the genocide there,  and how quickly things can go so badly in a place where they shouldn't have gone badly at all. A country that wasn't THAT different from ours...Which takes me into imagining the zombie apocalypse and "do we have enough canned water in the pantry?" 

It's when I start my garden and then it snows 24 inches in 24 hours...you'd think I'd learn...every year. Every year.  (Ha!  Edit, late March 31, 2017...this year I have a greenhouse! Ha!)

It's the end of the school year when the kids and the teachers are all raw and ready to move on, but we're not quite done yet.  All of our emotions are right at the surface, feelings get hurt, and we snap at each other, and then we laugh, and then we cry, and then we laugh some more and just keep moving forward.....

It's April again and that's just how it is.  It's a beginning..... and an ending..... it's just April.

And...that's all folks..Spring Break 2017 comes to a (snooze of an) end...

I have to say that the rest of our week was just as crazy as the beginning...We wrapped up the week by (in no particular order):
*Making homemade pitas (twice...Mr. IM said, "How do they keep?" I replied, "Not very well. It doesn't matter how many I make, the children eat them before you get home....")
*Making homemade tomato soup and semi-homemade lentil soup
*Cleaning up the yard in preparation for spring planting and hanging out
*Shoveling snow from patio (both before and after cleaning up yard)
*Shoveling snow into buckets to use to water plants when it stops snowing (always thinking)
*Um...two? Maybe three? visits to the library to get cookbooks, novels, and movies
*Two calls to the library to find out why Hoopla doesn't work right (The answer? It just doesn't...try again tomorrow!)
*Sleeping until 7:30 more than once (But I'm not counting on that for today, as I am the only one home who will let the dogs out)
*Watching several movies (from the library and amazon prime)--Including Dr. Strange (The Boy loved it, I think it was weird), Pete's Dragon (Um, a lot darker than the first version), Ninja Turtles (I didn't really watch), Avengers Age of Ultron (I tried to nap and was caught), The Magnificent Seven (Not what I thought it would be, but it was good, a little violent, but to be expected), Joy (It wasn't what I expected either.  It was kind of strange, but good for a free library movie) and I think a couple Lord of the Rings movies, but that was really The Boy, not me.
*Drove The Girl around (she had school)
* Visited the Grocery Store at least three times
*A nice walk to see the red winged blackbirds at the wetlands and other explorations
Annnnddd...now it is the weekend and there is school on Monday. This weekend I'm supposed to retrieve the Girl from her sleepover, go to Life Group (guess I should read at least chapter one...), church, order lunches, pay bills, pack lunches...maybe pack my school bag?
Hope you all had a spring break and that it was marvelous...