Night before the writing assignment

Here I sit in a darkened room being distracted by the film movement series playing at the other end of the conference table. I need to write about something that I learned today that isn't too long so I can read it to the group tomorrow. My initial thought was to convince them that they should start a blog but I think that Facebook has taken over the self posting arena on the web. Does anyone blog anymore? Facebook seems rather silly to me but who am I to say, I'm sure I don't use most of the features. I did post a couple of photos on there this morning and when I walked through the children's section today, Anne and Stephanie said they liked the photo of my grandson I put up and then we talked about other things but it was a good conversation starter. Perhaps that is the thing I learned today. Post more on Facebook and have more conversations. I just tried to post a photo with this post and it keeps telling me there was an internal error. I don't know why I had no trouble on Facebook and I am on this. I'm tryng again...Still no luck. Ok, I'm done for the day with this one. See you guys in the morning!

Sat 8/29/09

Holy Cow, Didn't make it yesterday because we had the grandson Richard here all day and by the time they left I was wiped out. I don't know how my daughter does it. I guess that she is less than 1/2 my age and that SHE and not I am the mother of that child. I'm too old to be the mother of an infant. That I know for sure now. He's a cutie pie though. Laughs and coo's. Wants to stand up and jump up and down. Did not want to eat peas though even in the absence of any thing better. Just wasn't going for the peas. Ron and I hot tubbed after he and his parents went home. A good ending to a long day. Today we drove around waiting for something to come to us to do. Saw Terri Osborne when we stopped for cash at the bank, Went to the farmers market and got 4 ears of corn for supper. Went to take the package to return to L.L. Bean back to the Ups store but they were closed. Went to Hibbets Sporting Goods store for the shoe sale but Ron didn't like any of the offerings. Went to Peebles to look at what they had and ended up getting him a pair and me a pair at 1/2 off. Went to Penn Station for lunch and watched Ted Kennedy's funeral on TV. YoYo Ma and Placido Domingo performed. This is the epitome of funerals. Later tonight I watched online the eulogy by President Barack Obama. Wow. it doesn't get any better than that...Except maybe Jesus himself giving communion. Oww. that is bad. Obama's eulogy was nice. I wonder If he wrote it himself. I spent the afternoon making a spaghetti sauce from fresh tomatoes, fresh basil & fresh peppers from my garden. I canned 3 pints of it since we are leaving for over a week and I want to have it for Katy and me later. Ron and I had what was left with some italian sausage that was in the freezer. I am stuffed. It took all afternoon to do that though. Oh and I steamed and froze some okra. This was all afternoon. Imagine doing this all summer. Doing this all day and holding down a full time job. I know women who did it but I don't know how. Youth. I think the Mrs Sharpe did when I was babysitting for them. She had a job at the doctor's offfice, raised two boys and a husband and I think she put up a bunch of groceries in the evening. That's a vague memory. She quit that though. The marriage I mean. I don't know if she quit the mothering or the job or the putting up food. Go with God girl. A little late but that is what I hope happened to her. I was gone into the Air Force when that all happened and don't know the peculiars. The younger son used to come into the library but I haven't seen him since we moved to the new building. that's been awhile. I hope he is all right. He used to love Spiderman...at least he loved Spiderman for the short time I babysat. I;m trying to remember his first name. It will come to me later. I'm going to stop this and get my stomach delfated somehow. I am stuffed to the gills. Domani. Carol

Thursday 8/27/09

Whew Thursday is once again over. I always love that even though I may be back at work on Saturday. Maybe it is just me and my age but I am always glad that the work week is effectively over. And I love my job. Maybe it is the "have to" aspect of it. You have to be there, at a certain time and for a certain amount of time. The days off are much more enjoyable just for the fact that they are unstructured. And I really look forward to having something to do on my days off but I hate it when the days off are full of stuff I have to do at certain times. I gotta have some free time to spend on my whims. I love my whims. That is when we really loose ourselves and get to be ourselves. I'm working on the writing assignment for the writing group as well as trying to post this every day for a month so I'm going to cut this short. Even Silas doesn't write a book every time. Take care. Manana. Carol

Wednesday, Aug 26, 09

New Stuff today, Hum. At around 5:30 this morning I woke up to hear Ron leave the bedroom. I was just having a dream that Ron was sick and had large fever blisters in his mounh and several other places and we were talking about going to the clinic. When Ron crawled back in bed I asked him what was wrong and he said he wasn't feeling too good. I told him that I had just had a dream that he had the swine flu. Wierd. He went to work and got home safely even though he still doesn't feel 100 percent. This is at 9pm as I write this. Richard and Katy came in about 9:00. Righard had his checkup and shots scheduled for 10:30. Katy and I talked until it was time for her to go to the appt. and for me to hit the shower and get ready for work. I took the photo below of Richard sharing a banana with his mother. It looks like the will choke but he was really just trying to suck the flavor out of it. It was so cute when he tried to hold on to the peeling and pull it towards his mouth. He gave me a hug! I held him and felt him squeezing me. It was so sweet. He is talking more, or cooing more as the case may be. Katy was going to go to lunch with Angie, her maid of honor but Angie was working so she went to lunch with Rick. After she was done dropping Rick back off at work, she called me at work and I told her to come on to the library. Some people got to see Richard. Michael, who's baby (Derrick) is a day younger and Katy compared notes on size and status. Both babies sound like they are even-steven Exact same weight and length. Katy says when they are crawling we should line them up and make them race. Katy and I went out to Gabby's to look for some Khaki's for her to wear to work if she gets the job at the video store a couple of nights a week like she wants. She found one pair of pants she liked and I found two outfits for Richard. Then we went to Walgreens to get some formula so Rick will have a bottle to give Richard if she goes to work. I hope it all works out. I think she is going a little stir-crazy at home every day with the baby and no one else to talk to. I mean I call her but I can't talk to her on the phone all the time. I know my limits (and hers) would be severely tested. When Katy was a baby, I would have given anything if the Air Force would have let me out so I could stay home with her. I tried to get out. I remember me and the squadron exec officer going over all the reasons I couldn't get out. Probably a good thing in the long run but I know how hard it is not to be with your baby when that is all you want. But there is also that "I'm gonna kill somebody if I don't get some adult stimulation" thing too. I know Katy's predicament. But I was a lot younger when I was going through it and she is a lot younger than me. It is her turn. She is a strong young lady. She is doing super. I wish this thing had spell check. I'd better so see what Ron is watching on TV. TTYL Carol

Richard gnaws

Tuesday 8/25

Not a whole lot to write here. I'm not sure I learned anything new today. I made some observations though. The middle age girls who walk all over town in the morning as a group are allowed to split up. There were three walking about 100 yards in front of the other 5 or 6 this morning. Double anxiety for Gus when it came time to pass them. Ron said that Gus pulled the leash out of his hand and took off running when a male youth approached him to sell him cookies or something while he was on his walk this evening. Gus has got to get over it. Work today was pretty calm. I worked on getting the magazines in order and deleted a lot that had slipped through the crack. Some magazines that were in the catalog from 2003. I know we don't have those any more. The books for the book group came in and I sent out an e-mail for the folks to come pick them up. I hope this book is better than the last one we did (Skeletons at the Feast). It started out pretty good but the author got himself bogged down near the end. There was some pretty graphic violence too, which I'm sure didn't go far in making folks want to continue past the first few chapters. On the way home from work, It occurred to me to take photos of our stuff for insurance purposes and post them on my computer at work. Vacation paranoia. How are we going to prove all the stuff we have to All-State when we return from vacation to a house that has burned to the ground or been ripped off because no one was here. I think I will do that tonight when I wake up and can't get back to sleep or early in the morning. The copy of National Geographic the library got in the mail today has a big article on renewable energy facilities that are already in place. That book I just read ($20 Per Gallon) and several others pretty much say that we can't get there...that we can't replace the level of energy we now produce with gas and oil with renewable resources. I suppose every little bit helps but we should get used to the idea that conservation, cutting back and doing without is inevitable. It amazes me that I will never know the outcome. I can tell Richard to let me know but how's he gonna do that? Maybe Gran and Grandaddy have box seats. That would be cool. TTFN. Carol

Monday lessons

Hi, it's me again. Lessons for Monday, Aug 24,09. Gus is the happiest dog on the planet. He sleeps on the back porch, it is now a "sun room" but we still think of it as the back porch. When I get up and go see him in the morning he jumps for joy that I'm with him again and then runs all over the house like he's been gone for way too long. I just love this dog. I learned that I can slice tomatoes at least 1/2 thick and dry them overnight on the dehydrator and they still stick to the grid. A dozen tomatoes dried don't even fill a quart size freezer bag. I don't know how long the stash I have preserved will last through the winter but I have discovered that dehydrating them is a lot less work than canning them. Katy was taking some out of her freezer yesterday that she had frozen whole. I guess that is ok, I've never tried it. I don't have enough freezer space to do that but I guess what she was doing was short time freezing. I thought about this earlier and thought about asking her what she was going to do with them when she was taking them out but forgot to do so when I talked to her at lunch time today. That sounds confusing but it makes sense on this side of my skull. I found out that people have no idea what other people have to live with. A lady came into the library today to use one of the public computers and indicated that hers was broken and wouldn't be fixed until Friday. She said it was awful inconvenient to have to come to the library to use our computers. When I gave her her reservation, it showed that she had to wait 15 minutes before one was available. She looked over and no one was sitting at #6 and one other empty one and asked what about those?. I told her that there was a reservation on those and that if they were available, the computer would have put her on one of them. She asked about what happened if the person it was reserved for didn't show up and I told her the reservation would be cancelled if they didn't log in within 5 minutes of the reservation time. I told her that she could watch and come up and try and get one if they didn't show up. She took her slip and went and sat down to wait at one of the study tables in front of the desk. Just about the time she sat down, a regular came in and asked what the wait was for a computer. I told him that the last reservation I gave out was for 15 minutes out. He asked that I check and see what it was for him. I did and lo and behold, it gave him the computer that the lady had just seen empty. I guess the reservation had just expired. I gave it to him and he went and sat down and signed in. The first lady came back to me and indignantly told me that something was wrong, she had been there long before that guy and he got a computer before her. I told her that that was the software and that it wasn't perfect but that is what it did. What ever was available at the time the reservation was made was what got reserved. She said the software was bad and that we needed to find something better. I told her we would look into it and she snottily answered "I'll bet you will". Like software is going to change the number and time of her reservation on the slip of paper in her hand just because she was there first. Software doesn't care! It's a computer!!!!! ANYWAY. She fails to recognize that what is a minor inconvenience for her because her home computer is broken is what the rest of the patrons, and most of the people she was competing for time with today, are people who have no computers at home and rely on the library's computers every day. They get it. Ah, working with the public. What fun. I made a good supper with some pork tenderloins and gourmet mushrooms in a jar that Katy and I found in Big Lots the last time we went shopping there. Holy cow. Those are some good mushrooms for 50 cents a jar. I'll never stumble across those again I'm sure. Ron and I got the last of the corn off the stalks when I pulled in from work. 5 ears and they should have been picked a couple of weeks ago. Had we been horses, that would have been the best corn ever. As it was, it was tough but, by golly, it was corn we raised ourselves. Looking around after picking the corn we found out that we have 3 more good sized cantaloupe out there that are almost ripe. I might have to take those to work since we will be on vacation when they are prime and Katy has said that she doesn't care fro Cantaloupe. Grandaddy always said he didn't grow watermelons or cantaloupe because they didn't grow well here, they needed a sandy soil. They do so Grandaddy! Maybe he didn't want to waste the space in the garden. Or maybe he was right, they didn't grow well here until they invented the new cultivars for this part of the country. Who knows? Its a new day. Gran and Grandaddy used to sit on the front porch and Gran would shell peas or lima beans or break green beans. Grandaddy would smoke his pipe and watch the cars and check the license plates pn the cars passing by on Third Street for out of state tags. Now we sit on the "back porch" sunroom and Ron has his laptop going with a slurp/slurp/trickle sound going on and I'm over here pecking away. Gus's bed is full of shoes so he's having to lay on the floor. Life is good.