Tales of a Shoebox Princess

Yesterday, Friday, I was off work and decided that Matt and I needed an adventure out of the house. The weather was pleasant and we had no obligations to keep up home. I decided it was time to look for something in Savage called Boiling Springs. I had looked for it once before, without success. The first time, I gave up after about 15 minutes of following a trail because I had flip flops on and, from wearing such idiotic footwear, I hurt my left foot so bad that it took a good three months for me to be able to go on walks. (My foot still hurts a little every so often, especially when I walk. Never wear flip flops. They are miserable excuses for footwear.) So I never found the so-called Boiling Springs. I had looked up Savage Boiling Springs on Google, but there was little said about it, and nothing on the precise location and trail one would take to get there. The websites I consulted gave a general location and terse description, terse enough to make me want to fill it out with pe

It rained last night, so both the garden and lawn have had a good, thorough watering. Matt's homemade rain gauge registered over two inches of water just overnight. In other garden news, I have baby purple beans on some of the plants! So the record: With Kate, EJ, and Paul gone, Hayley away at girls' camp and Matt at a friend's house for an overnighter last night, this marks the first time EVER in the Evans household that a batch of chocolate chip cookies, make by Jim on Sunday evening, has lasted until TUESDAY evening--and there are still cookies left! Cookies! Cookies for dinner!

I'm waiting for it to rain. My garden is bone-dry. Last year I didn't plant a garden because I wanted to get used to a new job. This year, I'm mostly used to it and I have been pretty good about getting up an hour or so before work (twice a week) to go out into the garden to pull weeds (I grow weeds mostly, but there are some beans and a few carrots). I have a lot of purslane in my garden. And spurge . Purslane is apparently edible and actually quite nutritious. I am not sure I believe it. If it really is, then it wouldn't grow so freely and without high levels of maintenance on my part in my garden. Spurge, on the other hand, is said to be toxic, which accounts for its trying to take over my garden. Not only are spiders out to get me, but so are the plants. The beans I planted are from seeds that have been sitting around the kitchen for two years. I didn't think they would sprout because they are kind of old, but I planted them anyway. I was happy to be prov

This was Hayley 2 years and 3 months ago: And this is Hayley today: Lots has changed about this girl since April of 2010. For one thing, she acquired (made) toast earrings. Her hair is also styled and colored differently. Makeup has been copiously applied where none had been previously. But most importantly, BRACES HAVE BEEN REMOVED. She still has some metal on six bottom teeth, but those will come off next week. This was the white board at the ortho office:  Hayley said, "My name is the biggest. But it's spelled wrong." Also, if that were a computer font, I would not download it. It's too messy and unbalanced. And the H is weird. It almost looks like they wrote Flaley instead of Hayley. I could have done a much better job, seriously. But I do appreciate the sentiment. And the partial smiley face in the upper right corner. And the flower. I like flowers. I also like rhyming, so the board isn't entirely irritating, what with the misspelling and me