Ground control to Major Tomtom

...Or Christmas comes to Jim in September.

...Or Jim's dad finally convinced Jim to get a Tomtom (GPS and direction finder).Now Jim won't get lost delivering pizzas when it's really dark out. We went for a little drive last night so he could show me how it works. I had my camera handy so I took a picture of the screen of the tomtom. The display shows us on our way home. The tomtom even has little icons on the map for things like doctors' offices and schools, although I thought the school icon was a hockey goalie at first. I wondered what a little picture of a goalie was doing on the street and as we passed the elementary school, I realized the icon was of a school. In my defense, the pictures are really small. So yes, a hockey goalie can totally be mistaken for an elementary school. If you look closely at the upper left corner of the tomtom display, you can see part of the hockey goalie, uh, school icon.

Earlier in the evening, we went on another fall walk. Matt and Hayley like to walk with me and they chatter like agitated monkeys. Here are a few pics of the autumn colors we saw on our walk.

The Great Room Switch 3: Removing the Shelf

The sewing room gets emptier and emptier.

I needed to detach the shelf from the wall--it's a tipsy shelf and so we had to secure it with a few screws. I mentioned that some unscrewing had to be done and Jim was down there in a flash with his screwdriver before I had time to say, "Where do you keep the screwdrivers so I can do this myself?"
Now I can see all the crud and junk on the floor of the sewing room. I want a giant vacuum attachment that will suck all the detritus, big and small, directly into a garbage so I don't have to injure my back by bending over for half an hour while I pick scraps of paper and fabric, canned chicken labels, and CHOCOLATE CHIPS up off the floor. Notice that I typed CHOCOLATE CHIPS in all caps. I do not eat raw chocolate chips. I repeat, I do not eat raw chocolate chips. I prefer them in a cookie dough. Even then, I prefer the raw cookie dough. SOME PEOPLE in my house have been invading the choc chip bags in my food storage and leaving little trails of dropped chips (like Hansel and Gretel) on the sewing room floor. No one admits to doing it, of course so I've stapled a sign on my chocolate chips warning everyone off the chips. If my warning is ignored, I just might have to follow through on my threat.
This photo is not associated with the Great Room Switch, but it needs to be shared. It's a kite shaped like a dragon that someone was flying across the street at the park. Awesome!

I like a bit o' brekky

Pumpkin pancakes with almond flavored whip cream=fluffy, creamy goodness that is quite filling.

Dave, them griddlecakes was good!

So Jim and I walked into the restaurant only to have the host say, "It looks like someone is waving to you." I wondered who it could be since Jim and I hadn't made any plans with anyone else to meet for breakfast at the Highland Grill. I knew it couldn't be Dave because Marissa said she's camping and I assume that Dave went too. But for a half a second, I was extremely puzzled as to who would know us there at the Highland Grill.

It was Dad and Sharon. Dad said that he read one of my comments on my own blog mentioning breakfast and thought he would go too, and just see if we showed up. And we did! So we had breakfast with them. They got the pumpkin pancakes too. Actually Sharon got the pancakes and Dad ordered bacon, eggs, and toast, and they shared.

We chatted about Katie, family history, Paul, Jimmy, driving a bus, and other things. We had a very pleasant breakfast (although I probably won't be eating lunch because the pancakes filled me up good and proper and that fullness will likely last until dinner).

Quotes

Two things I have said that when taken out of their original context and examined on their own that have caused much laughter, but when used in response to actions or requests of others are perfectly reasonable responses:

"No, I do not need to see anymore of the brown guy." (scroll down for the other one)

For some reason unfathomable to me, this particular statement (which I freely admit to uttering) caused Hayley and Matt to nearly dissolve into puddles of laughter at Target last night. And we all know how hard it is to get puddles of laughter back into our vans. Or even out of the Halloween candy aisle, where we were standing. And then just as their eruptive laughter began to subside, one of them said, "Say that again, mom!" And at that moment I saw what the upper inside of my eyelids looked like. I was tempted to drag them through the lingerie department just to get back at them. Of course, I'd probably be the one who would end up embarrassed. Last time I did that with a little kid, that little kid decided he couldn't resist poking the carefully formed fabric "cups" that lined the aisles of the lingerie department. I think that was the only time I have ever achieved flight speed, as I dragged the little boy to the socks department. He was a little disappointed that I had ruined his fun.

Anyway, the "brown guy" statement was a perfectly reasonable response to Matt and Hayley's request to spend more time looking at some hideous, brown, stuffed, cubic creature with Spongebob-like arms and legs, and consisting entirely of teeth-filled mouth, whose name is apparently "Domo." I don't know why it was so funny. Hayley informed me it was the way I said it and she did a spot-on imitation of me, except me made me out to be a much sillier person. And when she imitated me, Matt, of course, laughed afresh and could not be calmed down for several minutes.

"Stop licking the doorknob while I am talking to you."

This one was uttered, oh, probably 12-13 years ago. We had the missionaries over for dinner and the Katie and Jimmy were misbehaving as usual. So I hauled them into the back hall and began to lecture them. Jimmy's response to my hollerin' was to lick the doorknob (guess how effective I am at parenting). And so I had no choice but to say the words above. And the missionaries must have been listening, because after I spoke, I heard snorting and barely concealed laughter coming from the front room where they were. And then of course, Jimmy started laughing and then Katie and pretty soon even I couldn't help myself. But I still had to shake my fists menacingly at Katie and Jimmy to register my disapproval at their misbehavior.

It is so hard being a mother when people, especially your children, laugh at you! Sniff!

Mama, I want to pet the big one!

I just thought I would mention that someone found this blog by googling "sousaphone petting zoo." It happened a while ago, but since then, I've found myself wondering what that person meant by that? I just keep getting visions of little sousaphones running around in an animal pen with kids following after, trying to pet one. Maybe niece Morgan might know something about a sousaphone petting zoo. Has anyone tried to pet your sousaphone, Morg? Did you get it at a petting zoo?

By far the most popular search phrase that leads to hits on this website is for "grease pink ladies" or some form of query regarding the musical "Grease" and the Pink Ladies. I get at least two a day that look up this post. Two a day may not seem like alot, but when your website averages around 25-30 visits per day, and most of those are family members, two strangers looking up Jan, Marty, Rizzo, and Frenchy per day is a big thing. Then there is also the search for "orange hair" or "lowlights" that lead to hits on this picture.

Just in the last 24 hours, two people have found my blog through searching "cat cartoon robot."

Do I have a point? No, I do not. I just thought "sousaphone petting zoo" was odd.

Random pictures

These are carrots from my garden. It's nice to have at least one produce item that can go from in ground to table in half an hour (and that includes time allotted to scrubbing and cooking, if necessary. Some we don't cook). No need to peel these orange gems either.
Paul studies his homework. Wait a minute...there is something odd about this picture.
Aah, much better. But it still makes me uncomfortable to see him sit like that. I bet if I laid a level on his neck, the bubble would be right where it should be, declaring his neck to be perfectly parallel to the ground.
Two naughty cats after I scooted them out of the garage. "We're so sorry!" one said, "we'll go have a time out on the piano bench and act repentant, ok?" The other one just shrugged and said, "I'll sit, but ain't no way I'm acting repentant. I'm too cool for that. Besides, being in the garage was FUN."Can you spot the difference between this picture and this one? Might be hard to tell since they are at a slightly different angle.

The real story of the keyboard

Stupid keyboard. It occasionally does not work. Once I had to reinstall the driver for it. That fixed the problem but only temporarily. On Tuesday, the keyboard didn't work and I couldn't reinstall the driver because the computer said that it could not find the software. So Jim bought a new keyboard and I ignored the computer all day. When Jim brought the keyboard home, we went downstairs only to find Jimmy sitting at the computer, typing.

So yes, we have a new keyboard, but the old one STILL WORKS. I have no idea if it installed itself or what. I thought I left the keyboard unplugged and Jimmy swears he did nothing to it. He just sat down and started typing.

I am going crazy, I guess.

And I see that I've scared everyone away except for Karie by turning the events into a short story. I knew I would never be a best-selling author!

In other news today, I am probably going to be perfecting the face-plant this evening, since I have booked my calendar today to the hilt. And I'm feeling rather anemic. Somebody needs to take away my calendar for a while and forbid me to do anything until I can schedule my day in a more appropriate manner.

The ghost in the keyboard

An early Halloween story for you. And like all spooky ghost stories, this one REALLY happened! (OK, it's not all that spooky)

Once upon a time, there lived a not-quite-middle-aged woman named Sarina who loved her computer. She liked to type on it, she liked to click with the mouse. She liked to keep track of people she knew from surrounding villages through the internet. She even took college classes because she was far away from any form of available education opportunities, and used the computer to submit her homework over the internet. Her son also used the computer to listen to music he collected from other villages, and to corresponded with his friends.

Sarina maintained the computer well. She cleaned the dust out of the USB ports, and rubbed the lint off the bottom of her optical mouse. She dusted the fans now and again. If the computer said that it wanted a new software update, Sarina happily clicked the "update now" box. She did spyware sweeps regularly and was very careful not to let in a virus. A few times, though, as it is with all things, no matter how careful she was, the computer got sick from a viral infection. She loaded the computer up into her cart and urged her donkey on as fast at the beast would go to the nearest Geek Squad hut so the mysterious and strange Geeks, the keepers of the secret computer chip healing rituals, could perform their voodoo magic on her beloved computer.

However, there was one problem with the computer. Occasionally, after a good night's rest, the keyboard wouldn't interface with the hard drive and so Sarina couldn't type. She couldn't access her email account, she couldn't write emails or update her Facebook page. She couldn't notify the people who bought her handcrafted seashell purses on ebay that she had sent their purchase. For a long time, simply rebooting the hard drive would solve the problem, and she would only have suffered a 5-minute delay in computing. She chalked it all up to a mischievous imp inhabiting her keyboard.

One day, though, the rebooting didn't work. Sarina tried five times. The mischievous imp, she thought, intends to wreak real havoc today. Frustrated, she banged the keyboard around in a desperate and futile attempt to shake the sprite out of her keyboard. "Go infect my wooden spoon for a change!" she shouted. But the mischievous imp wouldn't listen. Fortunately, Sarina was able to use her mouse to troubleshoot the problem. The ritual involved unplugging the keyboard and uninstalling the keyboard driver, then rebooting the computer, plugging the keyboard back in, which triggered the reinstallation of the driver. "Whew!" Sarina said as she watched the computer reinstall the program, "The mischievous imp has been defeated and expelled from my keyboard!" The keyboard worked once again. Sarina celebrated with a dance around the room with her husband and an extra half hour browsing the interweb.

All was well for the next year. But one day, the keyboard didn't work again. The mischievous imp was back. Sarina rebooted; the keyboard worked. But she waited for that day she knew was coming when the keyboard would be useless, impotent, and she could almost hear the mischievous imp laugh his little screechy trill of a laugh.

She waited. Every so often, the keyboard was nonfunctional but rebooting fixed the problem.

Then, one Tuesday morning, it happened. The rebooting didn't work. Sarina dug around in the little box of important papers under her bed where she had kept the uninstallation/reinstallation instructions. She followed the procedure to the letter. Down to the very last wave of the hand and incantation muttered under the breath.

The keyboard still didn't work. Fearing that the keyboard had succumbed to the evil machinations of the mischievous sprite, she took the problem to her husband as a last resort. He said, "Sweet Sarina, I think it is time we got a new keyboard. The tinker will be through the village in an hour and he might have a keyboard to sell for a few shillings." Sarina wiped her eyes and nodded her head. Sarina's husband left their hut with a few pennies in his hand.

Sarina couldn't stay in the hut while she waited. So she went to her neighbor's house for a good round of gossip and company while they both did mending. While she was gone, her son came home from his apprenticeship at the local grocer's shop, she waved to him when she saw him walking by and shouted to him that if he needed anything, she was right next door.

Soon enough, Sarina's husband came home with a box. He had met up with the tinker, who did indeed have a keyboard he was willing to sell. Sarina's husband handed her the box, for she was the one who could do the installation. She danced into her hut...

And spied her son sitting at the computer. He was typing.

"What?!" Her mouth gaped open. "That keyboard wasn't working this morning!" Her son looked at her like she was crazy.

"Um, it's working just fine," he said.

"But but....but.... it wasn't working! I had to reboot. I had to uninstall. It wouldn't reinstall!"

"Well, whatever it was, it works fine now."

"And you didn't do anything to it?"

"No, I just sat down and logged on to my email account and started typing."

Sarina sputtered and stared and shook.

The mischievous imp in the keyboard laughed his screechy trill of a laugh and Sarina sat in the corner and waited.

My very favorite Graphjam entry of all time.

more

Sunday walk in the fall

Matt, Hayley and I went for a walk last night to chronicle any signs of fall. I've seen some brilliant reds in a few trees as I have driven around the area, but we didn't see any on our walk. But these pictures are a collection of things we did see.

An apple from my tree. The wasps didn't swarm them this year. I have to do something with them, but what and when?
A boy-made pile of acorns for the purpose of luring squirrels to the yard.
Some brilliantly colored berries or grapes.
Matt waves his jacket around.
Hayley and the world are spinning. Except for that red thing of hers. A neopet? A tamagotchi?
Some kids I know walk the balance beam. They make it look so easy.

The Great Room Switch Begins 2: Empty Shelves

I would like to share the progress I have made in the sewing room. For comparison purposes, see this post.
Notice that all the pictures on the ledge are gone. There is residue on the wall from a border put up by the previous owners, but I will deal with that when the room is empty and ready to be painted. It was a heinous border of red and silver foil race cars, a most egregious affront to the tender interior decor sensibilities of my sewing machine. She cried for weeks. Sergei the serger never saw the border, it having been taken down before Sergei arrived, orphaned, on my doorstep. Now the clock sits on the ledge, alone but happy in his role as sole dictator.

So there is the progress on the room. Not much seems to have been done, but I'll be durned if there ain't already 7 packed boxes in the garage.

This stopped me short the other day. This piece of paper has been on the door to Hayley and Katie's room for a few months, but is no longer completely applicable. No I didn't cry, but I was reminded that things have changed around here. And just because Rozzie's name is on the picture doesn't mean she has moved in. Unless she's been hiding...Jen, have you checked for Rozzie lately?
And just because I love my quilt, I have this picture to share. The pillowcase is glow-in-the-dark too.

I'm no Dora the Explorer

I ventured into the great unknown of South St. Paul this morning. I was to meet my sister-in-law for breakfast. I drove the white car, and not my nice blue van because my nice blue van had transmission problems (AGAIN. We will not go there. I cannot deal with it). So I'm in a car that feels like a prosthetic device instead of an extension of my arms and legs. I've mapquested the address of the eatery and had the step-by-step directions, but unirregardlessly, I got lost. Well, not totally lost. I didn't turn on St. Paul Ave when I was supposed to. I was able to turn around after a while and go back.

I do that all the time. When Paul ran at the Lakeville CC meet, I waylaid myself because I was in the wrong lane, which turned out to be a turn lane and I wasn't supposed to turn. I've driven past this place a dozen times, and yet I managed to take a roundabout way to get there. Very irritating.

Anyway, breakfast with Marissa was very nice. The oatmeal pancakes were delish! The texture was different than regular pancakes but they were chewier and more substantial. The lemonade was probably one of the best I've had--tart, sweet, and fresh squeezed! Marissa and I had a good chat. She let me rattle on about Katie, Jimmy and Paul, which was very nice of her. I don't think I rattled too much about Matt and Hayley. Owen ate eggs and toast and played with toys. He even said "turtle." He has THE cutest smile! And he kept pointing to the eggs that he threw on the floor, but I wasn't going to give the eggs to him. Marissa's bike contraption that allows Owen to sit up front so she can see him is really nifty. And Owen doesn't mind the bike helmet. I delivered the pants to her (the stack of pants in my sewing room), and Marissa, I hope you made it home with the pants still on the back of the bike. Did any fall off? Did you ever figure out how to get the basket to work?

I napped after I got home while Jim mowed the lawn.

And I put the Halloween quilt on the bed--I'm so excited!

Dave, word.

If you don't do anything exciting, you won't have interesting things to blog about

So you are stuck with a list of things to complain about and then a list of things to not complain about.

Shoebox Princess being whiny:
1. Two kids are home sick today. It's nothing to worry over, one has been feeling lethargic and "sort of" yucky and is full of coughs a mile long, and the other is suffering a "weird" stomach. Both have had runny runny noses. So they are staying home and sleeping.
2. My foot hurts after abusing it this week by exercising. My left foot is the wimpiest foot on the planet. I exercise for a week and it moans and groans and refuses to heft its half of my weight.
3. My sewing room is still full of stuff. There is a lot of stuff in it.
4. The lawn hasn't been mowed in a while. Between Paul's CC schedule and homework and Jimmy's work schedule and homework, there isn't a lot of time when they are available to mow. I plan to let Hayley start mowing soon, but she's sick today.
5. I have tons of apples on my tree and no time to process them into anything. Want some apples? Come to my house with a bag and pick as many as you want.
6. The housecleaning schedule for the school year has not been put together yet, so the kitchen floor is looking grungy and needs a good scrubbing. The carpeting needs vacuuming and surfaces need wiping and dusting.


Shoebox Princess finding silver linings:
1. I'm going to breakfast with my sister-in-law today at my brother's restaurant. Yay for food! Yayer for food not cooked by me! Yayest for chatting with sisters-in-law and very cute nephews!
2. Sick children are old enough and feeling ok enough to be by themselves while I go to breakfast.
3. Jim is taking a half day off work today. He says he wants to mow the lawn--I'm lucky I married a guy who LIKES washing dishes and mowing the lawn.
4. I have emptied lots of the sewing room out and Jim carried the boxes I filled out to a mostly clean garage. There is visible change in the room.
5. The leaves are starting to change around here! Fall is here! Pumpkins should be on my doorstep in a few weeks! It's time to put out my Halloween decorations and spread the Halloween quilt on the bed! Yay!
6. I practiced the song "Trolls" (a song for a children's choir for which I act as accompanist) all week and I got so much better at it! A few more weeks and I'll have it down! And that's the hardest song of the bunch I have to play.

Itchin' for a pillowfight

Ah, a break from posts about running. All those running posts were making me tired.

I packed a few more things in my sewing room. The shelves are probably 30% emptier now. But before I allow myself to pack, I told myself I had to sew something. Not a huge project type something, I just wanted to get those pants done (see stack of pants in the first photo in this post). I did do a pair today (Marissa, that makes 3 done. 3 more to go--I probably won't get them all done by Friday morning).

Then while I was cleaning out a shelf, a plastic bag fell on the floor. In it was a swatch of pieced material that was sewn from leftover pieces from a quilt that Katie and my mom finished for me. Presumably they gave it to me so I would make something with it, and I thought now would be a good time to make something using the piece. I made a pillowcase out of it. There wasn't enough of the piece of pieced pieces (that phrase makes my tummy all tickley) to do the whole pillowcase, but I had a huge hunk of yellow broadcloth that has been sitting around with nothing to do. You can't see the yellow broadcloth in the picture though. And I foraged through my scrap box and found a blue and yellow scrap that worked well (and was big enough) to make the strip on the left edge. I cut, I sewed a seam, I sewed another seam, and then a third seam, and behold, in just 5 short minutes (as opposed to long minutes) I have a lovely pillowcase to go with the quilt (seen below).


Quilt and pillowcase:
Now I hope I find the pieced pieces that match my bed quilt (made for me by my fabulous quilting seester Jenni) so I can finally get to sewing them up and have a tower of matching pillows on my bed.

Four pictures from yesterday's race

You can't see the swelling from the wasp sting in this picture because his smile masks it a little. And the swelling was on the inside of his mouth.
Only four teams ran this meet. Prior Lake is on the far end.
There they go!
Paul was the fourth Laker in. He's on the left.

When eating a cookie is a dangerous thing

Paul had another cross country running meet today. Fortunately it was a home meet so all I had to do was drag my butt over to the high school. I signed up to bring cookies for the team, but of course I waited til the last hour and half to make them. And the first batch burned a little on the bottom. But I made sure I didn't burn the other ones.

After finishing the cookies and boxing them up, I trotted my tushie and the fake child and a picnic dinner for her over to the field to watch some runnin'. I tossed my cookies (not figuratively; no, I LITERALLY threw the cookies I had made) over to the first Laker runner I saw and said, "Dig in." I plopped my hinder in a chair I brought and proceeded to spend the next several minutes swatting wasps away from my face.

A few minutes later, I heard Paul tell someone that he pulled a thorn out of his mouth and that it hurt really bad and his lip was starting to swell. Hmmmm, thorns....wasps flying around....swollen and hurt....

Paul had apparently inadvertently tried to eat a wasp-laden cookie. He said that he'd pulled the "thorn" out of his lip (inside of his mouth) and it was long and had a lump on the non-sharp end. Coach said to ice it, so he ran around for the next half hour with a plastic bag containing a few ice pellets jammed between his lip and gum like a wad of chewing tobacco. And he had about a foot of plastic bag hanging out of his mouth. He ran warmup laps like that. Too bad I didn't get a picture.

Footnote (ha! FOOTnote on a post about RUNNING. Oh, I am clever with the puns!): Paul was the fourth Laker in out of seven. He said he felt much better this race than the last one. And he intends to keep up with the third Laker next time. He sprinted the end of the race when there was a pack of runners closing in on him. I screamed for him to run fast and he actually obeyed.

Shoulda Coulda Wouldn't

Things I was planning to do last night:

1. Sew pants
2. Pack up more of the sewing room
3. Write for Creative Writing class
4. Clean up after fake child
5. Put laundry away


But I played Settlers of Catan with Paul, Hayley, and Matt, and I don't feel guilty AT ALL about not doing the above listed things. Hayley won. Jim handed out desserts and then fell asleep in front of the TV.

Jimmy was at work, pushing carts around. Jim drove him to work and told me later that when they pulled into the Wall*E*mart lot, Jimmy surveyed the lot and said, "Hmmm, not a lot of carts. Looks like it will be an easy night." He's already able to predict probable busy-ness based on an initial survey of carts in the parking lot. Get this child an economist degree!

The Great Room Switch Begins

Here we go!

Now that Katie is out of the house, I want to play some room-switcheroo. We have lived in this house nearly 10 years and have never played that game, and it's about time. There are some families I know who every time I visit, they've played Fruit Basket Upset (or Chinese Firedrill--choose your metaphor) with the sleeping arrangements. After 10 years, I had started to feel really boring.

Hayley is going to get the sewing room, which is the first room to get a throrough cleaning-out. But there is a lot of stuff in that room. See for yourself:
Notice the sewing machine--oh, you can't see it because it's under its cover. Well, anyway, that sewing machine and I have been friends for a lo-o-o-o-o-ong time. I believe I wrote about it in a post sometime back in April. You can also see a picture of my grandparents on the ledge (Hi Grandma and Grandpa!) and you can see a stack of pants on the table that I have to tackle. We could play a whole "I Spy" game with this room, it has got so much STUFF in it.

Below we have the view from the door. My serger is visible at the bottom on the right (Hi Sergei the Serger! He and I are mostly friends too, although he isn't quite as nice as my sewing machine. Sometimes he refuses to stitch after I've changed thread. My mother told me that I was threading Sergei wrong so I mended (HA) my ways, and I believe we have our differences ironed out. I understand it's difficult to play nice when the one you are playing with keeps treating you in a manner that is unacceptable. I have apologized and he has forgiven me). And my favorite picture of me (a drawing done by an acquaintance of my mom's back when I was a senior in high school) is on the ledge, right behind my tub of serger thread cones. And the time is 7:55 p.m.
Do you need Country Time Lemonade mix? Cuz I have lots. I also have lots of #10 cans of various edibles. I've got a bottle or three of ketchup, some cans of soup and tomato sauce. Tuna, chicken, honey, a bag of Vigo Yellow Rice, a big ol' bag of brown sugar, some salad dressing, green taco sauce...
You get the idea. There is lots to move out of this room. But I will do it. Usually when I get started on a major project, I forget to take "before" pictures. I remembered this time, however! Aren't you excited to be kept informed pictorially on the process?

Running against the wind

I finally got to see Paul run today. After missing the most of the varsity tryout, being in Utah for the first race, and the second race being way the heck down in Montgomery-Lonsdale (where??), I was there to watch Paul run in Lakeville. 30 teams competed today and the small park looked more like the State Fair than a park in a rural setting. Police directed traffic and the schools had tarps set up for their "home base." I worried that I wouldn't find the team's base, but theirs was the second one I walked by. Finding Paul proved more difficult; no one knew where he was. I stood around for 20 minutes, found out the start time for the race (5 p.m.), and watched people go by. Finally Paul showed up, embarrassed to see me. Mother and camera! Here he is, arguing with some of the other varsity runners about the actual start time of the race. He thought the race started at 5:30, but he was WRONG.I got a picture of Paul running! He was fifth PL runner in--he said he had a slight cramp or something and didn't run as fast as he thought he was capable of doing. I was just glad to see him race.
And here he is after the race, tired and sweaty. Then he had to join the team for their post-race cool-down. More running. Bleagh. So I left him there.
Side note: Tonka had a team there, and in fact they are really really good. I found myself cheering the white M on a blue field, whenever a Skipper ran past. Go Tonka! I like the PL Laker team, but I must follow the primal instinct to cheer for my alma mater, especially if they are among the best.

It's all over when the fat lady collapses in a heap on the couch

So, yesterday.

Cross country running practice ends at 4:45 or so. We had planned on eating at 5. I told the lady who was bringing the salad to come at 5. I spent the afternoon making lasagnas. At 3:00, I put the lasagnas in the oven. I grated cheese, I started cleaning (there was a lot to clean).

At 4:00, the timer beeped, signaling the need to put the cheese on the lasagna. Then the phone rang. It was Paul. "We are on our way." I flipped out. WHAT HAPPENED TO "PRACTICE ENDS AT 4:45???" He said, "Oh, practice gets over early on the day before the race." INFORMATION THAT WOULD HAVE BEEN USEFUL TO ME YESTERDAY!!!* The house was still in the advanced stages of wrecktitude and the lasagna--gasp!--was still MOSTLY NOT HOT, even after an hour of baking. I had only just started to boil the water for the spaghetti. Jim wasn't home, Jimmy was ignoring my request for help by SLEEPING, and Matt is still a beginner at the art of being a truly helpful cleaner. And Hayley was doing homework.

In a whirling dervish-like frenzy, I got the attention of the three children, gave them tasks, and prayed that the lasagna would heat up. When the kids arrived, I told Paul to tell them all to play outside for a bit and asked him to vacuum the living room (YES it needed it). Then Jim got home and I sent him to the store for more spaghetti sauce, because my supply ran out. He also took Jimmy to work and made the lemonade. Dinner all came together in 45 minutes and I had enough food.

The kids made quick work of the lasagnas and the spaghetti, (although we have enough leftovers for the next two nights). Then it rained.

Pictures? Why yes, I did manage to take a few.
And since I am fond of shoes, I give you an image of a few of the shoes. Some of the kids had already left by then and others didn't take theirs off. So I lived and it was all good and the kids were fun and the house was presentable. And then I took Hayley and Matt to children's choir and played the piano for that. That was fun!

*Guess the movie reference for 7 points.

Today is all about pasta

I'm going to be up to my elbows in spaghetti sauce all day. Paul's pre-race pasta dinner is tonight. Every time I have people over for whatever reason, I worry that I haven't prepared enough food. And today is no different. How much spaghetti will 35 kids eat? Yes, I know the answer is "A LOT." but how much is "A LOT?" Is it more than "A TON?" or "LOADS?" Will 9 jars of Ragu be enough? And then we must take in to consideration the 2 pans of stuffed shells already made and the 2 pans of lasagna that WILL be made (will I have enough spaghetti sauce for THAT?). Do I have enough spaghetti noodles on hand? I have plenty of elbows, as you can see: (ew. she keeps body parts in her pantry. And they are PLUS-sized elbows! She's a monster!) (OK, it's still early in the morning; I'm a still a little groggy, and I type odd things while groggy)

Now I've forgotten my point. Perhaps there was no point to this post, other than to say that I have to cook wads of pasta today and I hope I cook enough. Another lady is bringing garlic bread and salad. We'll have gallons of lemonade to drink.

And immediately after the feasting begins, I have to leave to take Matt and Hayley to children's choir. Jim gets to deal with the teenagers as they eat their way through my pantry.

Jimmy was messing with my camera

Jimmy is taking a photography class at school, and today he came home full of knowledge and information on ISO and shutter speeds. Then I left for church (to sew some T-shirt dresses for Humanitarian aid--3 dresses total were made and I did 2 of them). When I came home, Jimmy was itchin' to show me what he did with my camera. I have to admit, these pictures are cool. I still don't know how he did it--he said something about having to have the room pretty dark and setting the shutter speed so that the camera lens stayed open for several seconds.